How Technology Informs the Craft Revolution
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Important Quotes and Things to Note:
“Technological advances are often positioned as if they’re part of a zero-sum game in design; how can a mass-produced, high-tech table be as beautiful as a handmade piece by a master craftsman?”
“the storyline that technology gets in the way of craftsmanship doesn’t make sense anymore.”
“traditional workmanship and computer-aided design create intriguing hybrids.”
“All the forms of gathering — go back in time and can be seen as belonging to the collective memory of our mothers and grandmothers. In an incredible reversal of roles, these historical memories are now feeding our high-tech industries — driving them to review the production process with new and more abundant options, lending a sense of frivolity to industrial design, feminizing the modernist movement, domesticating the creation of form.”
“Designers love their machines so much that they treat them as partners or assistants. The result is the birth of a new hybrid form of production that brings together man and machine.”
“In the future, people will want to combine both the warmth of humanized design with the coolness of the other digital accessories present in our lives. It’s no longer a question of either/or but really more a case of embracing old and new, ethno and techno, natural and synthetic and beyond. This new era of fusion between opposites is truly of our time and will determine lifestyle choices into the decades to come.”
Thoughts and Questions:
How are new technologies and materials not only expanding the world of crafts, but helping designers create new ones?
How have workspaces grown to accommodate this new style of creation, where the hand and machine are one?
Why is the “feminization” of a concept the taming of creation of form?
Why would one describe the “feminization of the modernist movement” as lending a sense of “frivolity” to industrial design? Are we to assume that the skill and craft embedded in the design paradigms that are beginning to integrate with technical design methodologies are not to be taken seriously?
- Important themes include feminism, technology and mass production, evolution of the definition of a craftsperson, and integration.
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Sisson, Patrick. “How Technology Informs the Craft Revolution.” Dwell. Accessed September 23, 2016. https://www.dwell.com/article/how-technology-informs-the-craft-revolution-fd7569a3.
