CARPA’s Craft Hype Taxonomy and Evaluation (CHyTE) program seeks to investigate revolutionary technologies to asses and value craft hype around hand-made Etsy products that would significantly improve their arts potential through means other than adding more crochet or folk elements.

For the past 100 years, increasing the value of craft objects has boiled down almost exclusively to a simple equation: More folk expression equals higher cultural value. The art market’s ability to penetrate bullshit, however, has advanced faster than craft’s ability to withstand scrutiny. As a result, achieving even incremental improvements in craft survivability has required significant increases in “authenticity” which has utterly crippled the craft scenes across NATO-countries and its allies. With the new Craft Hype Taxonomy and Evaluation (CHyTE) program, the aim is to increase the status of craft while cutting the crap, figuratively speaking. “For many craft hipsters,” a spokesperson at CARPA said, ”this means goodbye to Etsy as well as the Craft Councils. We’re levelling up!”