“Technocraft” presents 10 female artists whose work weaves together technology and digital media with craft and non-conformist femininity, expressing the zeitgeist of a shifting gender paradigm through creative use of technological tools.

Fluttering strands of hair, makeup and fashion design techniques, gears, rocks, and vegetables are juxtaposed with an ornate virtual reality headset, programmed electronic boards, and dazzlingly precise techniques of video mapping onto delicate paper cutouts. Though the artists are working in the field of new media, it seems they aim to engage with technology without “sanctifying” it, and not in a “standard high-tech” way. They seek to leave room for openness and loose ends—integrating with the technology a sense of materiality and softness, as well as personal objects and items from daily life.

Some of the projects were developed through prolonged, intricate digital craftsmanship. The participating artists blend material with hardware, code with poetics, through practices of hacking, open-source implementation, and “making.” They do so with an eclectic approach, free from the analytical and engineering-dominated hegemony often found in new media art, which tends to emphasize technological achievement.

The works in the exhibition represent layered feminine forms and are the result of a growing consciousness around technological craft. They reject strict definitions of reality, authenticity, or medium. Innovative techniques such as net art, augmented and virtual reality, video mapping, or microcontroller programming are combined with more traditional media like video, sound, and sculpture—creating a mashup of new hybrid forms. These serve as poetic tools that rearticulate the artists’ voices, evolving into a personal, direct, and unapologetic artistic language.

The artists exhibiting in this show are graduates of the Musrara School’s Department of New Media Art and the Department of Photography.