This talk is about the digital manipulation of data in relationship to craft and art, how is it achieved, does it change the end result and can it still hold authenticity.

Some anthropologists are contributing to a growing interest in art and design research that is based on fluid forms of understanding that are acquired and changed through the processes of making, especially when specifically related to materials, places and people, rather than static notions of knowledge more familiar to western academic thinking.

This expansion of how making/art creation is carried out and conceived is changing the nature of study in a number of disciplines. This talk poses questions about the antique artefact and its reinterpretation. Can perhaps these artefacts (usually kept in museums) help us understand our past and develop our futures.

In parallel with this increased interest in making within academic communities, there has also been a wider rise in the popularity of making in domestic and non-academic spaces. Since the late 1990s this movement has gained momentum and followers, as can be seen in the huge increase in ‘Hackspaces’ and ‘Makerspaces’ internationally, this has contributed to ‘seeing through’ the digital capture of data and has developed questions about authorship, replication and diversity.