I am an independent design researcher with a critical making practice via craftivisms, hardware hacks and re-appropriations of data-driven technologies.
Open Hardware Project: Moon-phases + Period tracking Calendar
Research Article: Artificial Everyday Creativity
Project: Ferozkoh Jaali in P5js - code + rhythm
Open Hardware Talk: Knotty Hardware
Research Workshop: Venetian Drawing Conversations
Research Pictorial: Drawing Conversations Mediated by AI
Research Pictorial: Exploring Kolam As An Ecofeminist Computational Art Practice
Open Hardware Project: BOOB-Factor Authentication in Banjara Embroidery
Open Hardware Project: Internet of Towels - Knotty Articulations
Open Hardware Project: Secure Your Home IoT with the CryptoCrochet-Key
Open Hardware Project: Make Your Own Resistor Cushion
Research Article: Making Everyday Things Talk
Research Workshop: More-Than-Human Design & AI
PhD Dissertation: Researching IoT Through Design
Research Workshop: Encountering Ethics In Data-Enabled IoT
Research Article: The Role of Participation in Designing For IoT
Book chapter: Feeling At Home with the Internet of Things
Research Article: Platform Ethics in Technology
Research Article: Where is the Interface?
Research Project: Thing (Data) Perspectives
Research Project: Ethnography of Open Street Mapping
Research Project: Living with a Smart Plug
Research Workshop: Subverting IoT Futures
Family resemblances between Cross-stitch and AI ❎🤖
Abstract
Human history provides countless examples of visual languages representing knowledge in non-linear, patterned, symbolic formats, i.e., beyond linear rule-based scripts such as Latin. Across millennia, cultural custodians pass down crucial knowledge by documenting their lives, values, beliefs, and myths in embodied, coded, crafted form. In comparison, modern neural networks such as DALL-E generate supposedly ‘new’ visual languages using only text prompts – translating linear rule-based scripts to propose non-linear and non-sensical ways of ‘reading’ things. In this article, I describe my experiments with DALL-E’s interpretation of cross-stitch patterns. Deviating from natural language use, I analyse twelve AI-generated variations of cross-stitch by referring to them as Family Resemblances, inspired by the philosophical concept of Wittgenstein. This theoretical lens allows cross-referencing DALL-E’s cross-stitch variations with cultural visual patterns from human history that make non-linear, non-scripted ways of reading possible. This inquiry is aligned with the methodological tradition of Critical Making, which makes room for craft perspectives to challenge dominant computational paradigms. Reading anew what AI generates from craft perspectives allows us to appreciate better non-scripted and embodied forms of communication that still exist today. I argue that AI does not produce newness but rather ‘newly’ suggests how craftspeople are (and have always been) creative agents for shaping the future of culturally and visually-informed algorithmic systems.
Keywords: Craft, Cross-stitch, AI, Critical Making, Open Source
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