Exploring Craft in the Context of Digital Fabrication

In this work in progress, we start to unpack the act of making in a digital fabrication process. In particular, one kind of digital fabrication - 3D printing - that is typically considered to be highly automated but in this case is not. In this process, a tension exists between our skills, the properties of a novel material and the capabilities of a novel machine. As design researchers, we navigated through the design space that emerged in this tension and explored how to 3D print in wood. In unpacking this tension between machine, material and designer, we pay attention to how the embodied nature of this process was essential for its development. We start to explore how we might explain the embodied act of making in the context of digital fabrication through the lense of ambiguity and resistance, notions previously used to unravel craftsmanship.