Maltese artist and designer Martina Farrugia has brought two seemingly different worlds together for her latest project: traditional craft and radio technology.Her project, A Familiar Materiality, was developed as part of her Master’s in Fine Art and Design in Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, where she has been studying after receiving a Malta Arts Scholarship in 2024.At the heart of the project are DIY radio-wave receivers, with Farrugia experimenting with what happens when the techniques and materials associated with traditional handicrafts are applied to communication technology.The idea has deeply personal roots.Growing up, Farrugia was surrounded by two contrasting hobbies within her family: textile work and radio-making. Having become familiar with both practices, she began exploring how they could exist together rather than as completely separate worlds.One of the technologies explored is the crystal radio, an early and remarkably simple form of radio receiver that requires no external power. Instead, it operates using energy from incoming radio signals, with just a handful of components needed to make it work.Through a series of prototypes, Farrugia combined this electronic process with techniques and ideas associated with craft, including parallels between Ganutell wirework and the copper coils used within crystal radios.Her accompanying thesis goes even further, exploring the similarities between crafting and communication technology, DIY repair culture and the way understanding how objects are physically made could make seemingly complicated skills feel more accessible.It also reflects on the decline of repair and traditional craft practices amid increasingly fast and disposable patterns of consumption in Malta.And the experimentation doesn’t stop with the contents of the thesis.The publication itself was hand-bound using copper wire, allowing one of the project’s central materials to become part of the physical book and deliberately bending the conventions of traditional bookbinding.For her graduation work, Farrugia created a mobile radio-wave receiver accompanied by a collection of interchangeable copper coils that visitors could experiment with themselves.Displayed at Agnes Circulaire Maakplek in Rotterdam, the structure could be wheeled around the space while visitors connected different copper coils using crocodile clips and listened to the electricity and signals being picked up from their immediate surroundings.The physical work also embraced the project’s focus on reuse and repair. Wood, existing furniture, cables, copper and metal used to construct the piece were sourced from the university’s material bin.The project marks the culmination of two years at XPUB, an Experimental Publishing Master’s programme focused on alternative approaches to publishing in an increasingly digital world.During her studies, Farrugia also experimented with connections between textile traditions and the internet, including treating altered webpages as weaving patterns and exploring how practices such as quilting could be translated into digital environments.A Familiar Materiality ultimately brings those interests full circle, asking what can happen when technology is approached not as an untouchable black box, but as something that can be opened, understood, repaired and crafted by hand.This work was funded by the Malta Arts Scholarship – Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation.What do you make of Martina’s fusion of traditional craft and communication technology?Photo credits to Cian Redmond•