Digital Entanglements: Craft, Computation and Collaboration in Fine Art Furniture Production

This paper joins a growing body of CSCW and HCI work exploring questions of creativity and collaboration at the intersection of digital and material practices of craft. Drawing on studio visits and interviews with fine art furniture maker Wendell Castle and his team, we investigate one studio's experience with integrating digital fabrication tools into their studio practice, and its implications for the collective organization of work and creativity. We explore how the introduction of new computational and industrial machine objects (here, Computer Numerical Controllers) remediates traditional relations of craft and the forms of human-object value, care, and creativity built around them. We also chart new forms of creative practice and material flow that emerge from this encounter, and show how remediations of craft in the Castle studio may pose questions and opportunities for wider CSCW concerns around craft, creativity, and design.