What are the values which will be important for crafts in the future.

Sustainability ( Resources )

Crafts need to be environmentally sustainable in how and where the material is sourced from and how much is used. Sustainable may mean to only use locally sourced materials or it can also mean to change the way the traditional crafts is practiced by using new materials or techniques.

The produce and the scale of craft should not end up repeating the industrial exploitation of resources.

For example We cannot expect all houses to be constructed of Wood as we cannot support that amount of deforestation. Similarly…

This story is a proposal for a crowd sourced heritage conservation effort

In light of the recent tragedy at Notre Dame,World has come to realise the fragility of even highly funded and protected heritage in the west. A lot of support has been outpouring from both through crowdfunding and billionaire donations for the restoration of the 800 year old Cathedral.

In terms of resources and attention its getting, the Notre Dame represents an extremely rare few and primarily western monuments which can so quickly raise the funds for restoring the damages, most heritage sites in the world are not fortunate…

For the last week and past few months I have been Increasingly working with Artificial Intelligence or more specifically Machine Learning. I have trained a system which can classify gestures, an object recognition system, a few generative algorithms and algorithms to visualize datasets. With more and more experience I have started to see machine learning less as an objective way of computing rather a very personalised and subjective way of dealing with algorithms. Almost always you have to feel your way around with the datasets and parameters and even the best approach doesn’t give a result which is objectively correct…

As we encounter job losses due to Automation and Robotics in upcoming quarter of 21st century the big question might be what do we do with our time ? We will not need to do much to live our lives, food made would be made by our WholeFoods food printers, Everything we need will come to our home delivery, by drones, perhaps we all would also get a universal basic income, okay not all but atleast a privileged few of humans will have such access.

In a world where as Yuval Noah Harari puts it ‘Irrelevance rather than Exploitation’ is…

Part I of a series of dispatches on Design’s relation with Craft

Review of Designs on Craft, DeNicola & Weber (D&W)

Modern Craft discourses by designers often describes the craft as ‘traditional’ and ‘handicraft’ or something to be preserved, often missing the ‘everyday socio-economic interactions where authorship,expertise,purpose and history are negotiated’ but instead the way the crafts are described often ends up ‘weigh down the ideological conception of labor’. The discourse also helps reinforce class and power difference between craftsmen, designer,NGOs and so on often downplaying the complexity of craft production in which a single ‘craftsman’ can take multiple roles in a single career moving between labor-producer-middleman-entrepreneur-institutional teacher.

This…

Craft and Future is my thesis project for Bachelor in Design at National Institute of Design which I am doing under the guidance and sponsorship of the Busride labs.

The Busride labs is a research and experimental lab led by Ayaz Basrai based in Goa. It deals with Heritage Conservation, Cities and Speculative futures of India

Why I am doing this project?

The research project aims to examine traditional crafts in respect to modern technologies and the futures they would bring. Can these technologies change the way the crafts work ?

At the same time it also aims to take the larger craft practice and craft…

Craft and Future is my thesis project for Bachelor in Design at National Institute of Design which I am doing under the guidance and sponsorship of the Busride labs.

The Busride labs is a research and experimental lab led by Ayaz Basrai based in Goa. It deals with Heritage Conservation, Cities and Speculative futures of India

Why I am doing this project?

The research project aims to examine traditional crafts in respect to modern technologies and the futures they would bring. Can these technologies change the way the crafts work ? . At the same time it also aims to take the larger craft practice and…

National Institute of Design

National Institute of Design is the oldest Indian design institute located in the heritage city of Ahmedabad,Gujarat. The institute which was born out of the India Report drafted by Charles & Ray Eames which outlined the need for design education in India to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity of the newly Independent India through extensive work in craft, social design and systems thinking.