This project blog documents a collaborative exploration of making and teaching at the nexus of traditional craft, digital systems, and physical modeling. The project leads are Camille Utterback and Hideo Mabuchi and our work is made possible by an X-Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This project was conceived and continues in conversation with Vanessa Chang.

We begin with a shared interest in recovering the resistance and otherness of physical tools and materials in digital creative workflows, and questions around how to vitalize the expansiveness of the digital with the revelatory constraints of materiality. Our approach will be informed by Camille’s expertise in creating interactive systems that use algorithms to tune human behavior and create situated diachronic relationships, and Hideo’s empirical (as a physicist) and embodied (as a ceramist and weaver) ways of knowing natural materials and their affordances.

In addition to this project blog, the final public-facing products of this project will include a public exhibition and symposium (spring/summer 2026) and a reflective summary article.