Hartland Hanga: Capturing creative communication of tacit knowledge in printmaking

From October 2021 to July 2022 the author, Wuon-Gean Ho, was invited to work with a printmaking collect­ive called Pine Feroda. Based in the UK, Pine Feroda create impressive large-scale woodblock prints of nature. Using a practice-led approach, the author developed an entirely novel printmaking technique which she named Hartland Hanga. Making audio-visual recordings of the artists working together captured the transmission of tacit knowledge as it emerged in real time. Using elements of conversation analysis from ethnography revealed how this group spoke to each other. The artists used creative strategies such as new phrases, verbal metaphors and gestural analogies to communicate elements of tacit knowledge. It is postulated that humour and creative communication might help the transmission and embedding of tacit knowledge between artists