Knitting, sewing, embroidery, lace and weaving can all be manufactured by machines and mass produced. Crochet is one of the only textile crafts that cannot be automated in this way.

This gives crochet, as a artistic medium, a unique nuance when it is used to explore the nature of craft, hand fabrication and the impact of the machine and digital ages.

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MADE BY HAND is a sculpture that is created to look like a textile printer…an imaginary crochet machine.

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The intertwining of digital futures and craft is unavoidable but how do we want that future to evolve? How can we ensure craft doesn’t get swallowed up in the rush towards modern fabrication methods? This artificial crochet machine is a glimpse into a new crafted future.

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This craft-fiction suggests an impossible alternate reality where the bliss of automated fabrication creates a fake that fetishizes the tactile qualities, imperfection, skill and tradition of textile craft. It even states in regularly repeated pixelated text that it is ‘MADE BY HAND’.

The mechanics are invisible and the crochet is pristine.

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Do electric sheep dream of crochet machines?