Papadaki, Elena ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6653-4334 and Dare, Eleanor (2026) From Craft to Code and Back Again: Rethinking Art, Materiality and Exhibition Practices in the 21st Century (A special issue of Arts: ISSN 2076-0752). MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

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Abstract

This Special Issue invited contributions that critically examine how exhibition practices are navigating the shifting space of materiality in an age defined by digital technology, algorithmic culture, and increasing socio-political instability. As immersive environments, machine learning, and generative AI become increasingly embedded in artistic and curatorial processes, we ask: what does it mean to create with and through matter today? How does this converse and critically interact with tools and platforms that are deeply entangled with extractive, corporate-military infrastructures and ideologies? Can the resurgence of craft, with its emphasis on process and embodied friction, be seen as an antipode to the automated solutions offered by machine-learning tools? The two co-editors were particularly interested in scholarship and practice-based research that interrogates the ethics of working with digital technologies at a time when major tech corporations (often aligned with authoritarian, anti-democratic ideologies) continue to abandon commitments to equality, diversity, and social justice. In the wake of increasing far-right influence within AI development and the growing militarisation of digital infrastructures, this Special Issue called for contributions that do not treat technologies as neutral tools, but as politically charged agents with real-world implications for labour, the environment, and human rights. Moving beyond simplistic binaries of digital versus physical, virtual versus real, or code versus craft, authors were thus invited to explore the creative possibilities and responsibilities that emerge in this complex territory. What forms of resistance, renewal, or reinvention are possible within the curatorial field when technological tools are themselves implicated in canonical structures of oppression? How might the act of creation and exhibition become a space to critically reclaim, reimagine, or subvert technological engagement through materiality and care? Contributions have addressed the following themes: Curatorial methodologies that foreground material engagement and embodied knowledge; Hybrid exhibition formats that negotiate the tensions between virtual tools and physical practices; Critical responses to the politics of AI, generative media, and data extraction in creative practices; Case studies of exhibitions and/or artworks (such as sketches, drawings, comic strips, prints, and other material forms) that interrogate or reimagine the aesthetics and politics of algorithmic culture; Theoretical reflections on the entanglements of craft, code, and curatorial labour; New readings of materiality in response to ecological degradation, political violence, or social precarity; Curatorial strategies that engage with DIY, speculative design, or anti-corporate approaches to technology. By foregrounding the renewed urgency of material practices and the ethics of technological engagement, this Special Issue offers a platform for reflecting on how exhibition practices are evolving at the intersection of matter, machine, and critical resistance.

Item Type:	Other
Uncontrolled Keywords:	This is part of the multicomponent output: "Friction as Method: Curating Process in the Age of Automation".
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Design and Creative Industries
Last Modified:	13 May 2026 15:23
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/53395

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