New economies of making in post-disciplinary and post-industrial climates are pushing the traditional boundaries of the craft industries. This article examines recent artistic practices exploring and experimenting at the bleeding edge of art-science-technologies, where artwork is critically crafted, combining digital with physical materials through hybrid forms of hands-on-making. New materials and technologies are being incorporated into contemporary craft and new modes of making are revealed as we witness a move away from modern-craft to an era of post-craftwork. Electronic media sits at the heart of these developments, but in contrast to modernist dematerialisation of art and the dominance of screen essentialism in art production and in daily life, post-craftwork engages with digital technologies in ways that re-materialize data in physical and hybrid spaces and artefacts. The authors draw on new materialism philosophy in consideration of digital material agency, cutting across posthuman, transhuman, and more-than-human paradigms, to examine post-craftwork through examples of six artworks that embody the creative thoughts and insights of their makers, instilling them with social and spiritual value. Re-imagining material conditions and technological futures may offer potential to reconnect culture with nature.

How knowledge can be adapted, exchanged, and transferred in between disciplines, is an open question in art-science. The project Unnatural Symbionts explores through rituals how knowledge from several disciplines and fields on micro-organisms can be made palpable in one space. Using kombucha fermentation as field for exploration, the various relations of microbes and humans in scientific and non-scientific discourses are discussed. Microbial life is understood in its other-than-human agency and its role in our human identities which becomes connected to personal memories of making food and drinking tea. The goal is a curatorial practice that invites artists, scientist as well as a wider audience to reflect on concepts of symbiosis from the perspectives of lived experience and multispecies rituals. Microbiological research on microbial diversity is questioned in its meaning for self and individuality as philosophical concepts. The kombucha-making as a process becomes a method to experience microbial life with the naked human eye. The ritual binds these elements together to create a socio-cultural practice that avoids being bound to traditional conventions and creates a space for new ones.

The practice of pictorial carpet making aims to reproduce figurative images in fibrous materials. For contemporary pictorial carpet practice, the range of colour is infinite however the available physical resources in the form of suitable yarn can be problematic. Pictorial carpet-making requires quantising colour into discrete values to build chromatic relationships. In this paper we explore a new 3D carpet previsualisation methodology that leverages digital signal processing approaches to aid in the consolidation of chromatic relationships in the carpet making process.

This paper presents an argument for observing non-human perspectives for the design of wearable technolo-gy through a form of speculative post-human transcend-ence. The paper proposes Provocative Embodiment, a more-than-human design approach that supports the wearer in imagining the inner experience of non-human entities by intentionally creating and embodying con-flicts between human and non-human perceptions. Artic-ulated as a theoretical framework for understanding non-human perceptions and experiences by combining non-anthropocentric theory and speculative design, an argu-ment is presented for the possibility of humans observ-ing non-human realities through this framework and an accompanied workshop of design activities. The paper concludes with a detailed explanation of the three prin-ciples of Provocative Embodiment providing concrete guidance on how designers may put them into practice. By contributing a new theoretical and practical frame-work that attempts to expand the boundaries of human perception beyond the traditional human-centred per-spective, this research provides us with new lenses and tools for understanding and exploring the reality of the non-human entities that surround us.