Technocraft

This months Wallpaper features an article entitled Technocraft - describing a new design movement featuring hi-tech, quirky one-offs.

"The technocraft movement is a European Art School take on the garage start-up culture of Silicon Valley. Typically based in shared studios and home offices, technocrafters know how to programme computers and lay out circuit boards. Yet they are not driven by Fordist dreams of mass production. Instead, with a soldering iron in one hand and a PowerBook in the other, they use technology to express their creativity. The products themselves are often deliberately chunky and retro-styled but there is poetry in the ideas."

The article concludes; "If technocraft is a movement, then it s a protest movement mixing art, design, physics lesson technology and a rough-hewn way with wit and materials. Most often home-made and one-off, technocraft exposes the false promise of the international gadget giants who bury technology in the bland design and peddle the myth of unstoppable, inevitable and technology driven progress."

I love the way the author has connected craft and poetry in making. Its also good to see craft once again being 'embedded within everyday life in new ways' as Mike puts it.

This is another 'exciting facet' to craft - more please.