Making
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Important Quotes and Things to Note:
Knowing From The Inside
“It is, in short, by watching listening and feeling — by paying attention to what the world has to tell us — that we learn.” Pg 1
“In anticipation rather than retrospection lies the path of discovery” pg 2
In quoting C Wright mills pg 4 “there can be no distinction between the theory of a discipline and its method; rather both are ‘part of the practice of a craft’”
“we cannot make the future without also thinking it” pg 6
“the theorist does his thinking in his head, and only then applies the forms of thought to the substance of the material world. The way of the craftsman, by contrast, is to allow knowledge to grow from the crucible of our practical and observational engagements with the beings and things around us. This is to practice what I would like to call an art of inquiry.” pg 6
“In the art of inquiry, the conduct of thought goes along with and continually answers to the fluxes and flows of the materials with which we work. These materials think in us as we think through them.” Pg 6
“design and making; materials; objects and things; gesture and performance; craft and skill; senses and perception; craft and skill; the senses in perception; lines; drawing; notation.” Pg 12
The Materials of Life
“The makers ambitions, in this understanding, are altogether more humble than those implied by the hylomorphic model. Far from standing aloof imposing his designs on a world that is ready and waiting to receive them, the most he can do is to intervene in worldly processes that are already going on, and which give rise to the forms of the living world which we see all around us — adding his own impetus to the forces and energies in play” pg 21
“one had to be careful and coaxing. Then we realized that it was actually this resistance, the friction set up by the branches bent forcibly against each other, that held the whole construction together. The form was not imposed on the material from without, but was rather generated in this force field, comprised by the relations between the weaver and the willow.”pg 22–23 (think about wind tilting baskets, unintentional but elegant, muscles that ache, what’s the end point, each is uniquely different, stature of the maker)
“above all, about what it means to make things, about how form arises through movement, and about the dynamic properties of materials” pg 24
“what about making bricks, for example? In forming the brick, prior to firing in the kiln, soft clay is pressed into a pre-prepared, rectangular mold. The mold it seems prescribes the form while the material — the clay — is initially formless.”pg 24
“at the moment of encounter, when the brick maker ‘dashes’ a clot of clay into the mold, the expressive force of the makers gesture, imparted to the clay comes up hard against the compressive resistance of the hard wood of the molds walls” — pg 25
“generation of things should be understood as a process of morphogenesis in which form is ever emergent rather than given in advance” — pg 25
- Artisans or practitioners have an intuition in action- pg 25
“In every case there seems to be two sides to materiality. On one side is the raw physicality of the worlds material character; on the other side is the socially and historically situated agency of human beings, who in appropriating this physicality for their purposes are alleged to project upon it both design and meaning in the conversion of naturally given raw materials into the finished forms of artifacts” pg 27
“it is not the history of a life intrinsic to the stuff of which it was made. It is of the human life that has surrounded it and given it meaning.” Pg 28
Pye “ properties are objective and scientifically measurable; qualities are subjective — they are ideas in people’s heads that they project onto the material in question”pg 29
“the experienced practitioners knowledge of the properties of materials, like that of the alchemist, is not simply projected on to them, but grows out of a lifetime of intimate gestural and sensory engagement in a particular craft or trade” pg 29
“Whatever the objective forms in which they are currently cast, materials are always and already on their ways to becoming something else” pg 31
“Their every technical gesture is a question, to which the material responds according to its bent. In following their materials practitioners do not so much interact as correspond with them.” pg 31
On Making A Handaxe
One theory pg 41 “There can, in short, be no final product without an initial design; no completion without an origin. For finality can only be judged in relation to a project of assembly that is already prefigured at the outset, albeit, in virtual form, in the mind of the maker.”
“human craftsmen have often made extensive use of both templates and geometry. These templates are not in the mind, however, but are artifacts themselves, cut from materials and used alongside other tools of trade” pg 43
- Ideas of bodies being able to carry out design ideas based on functionality and size
- surrendering to the material and then following to where it leads — pg 45
- making not as assembly as a procession, but as a carrying on- pg 45
On Building A House
- Architects vs. craftsmen and designing as you go
- Designing, like drawing, was a process of work, not a project of the mind pg 56
The Sighted Watchmaker
‘being always one step ahead of the material’ Sennett pg 69
- Narrative of anticipated use pg 70
“it is precisely where the reach of the imagination meets the friction of materials, or where the forces of ambition rub up against the rough edges of the world, that human life is lived.” Pg 73
Round Mound and Earth Sky
- Design of a space or mound dictating how you physically interact with it ie. A door frame.
- Nature intertwined
- Heidegger and design of things (things to objects)
Bodies On The Run
Brenda Farnell on the body “ it is something to think from rather than about” pg 94
- Agency and action of a thing
“grasping and fingering movements of the potters hands in the initial task of centering a lump of clay on the wheel.” Pg 99
- We cannot always assume that something is stable based on its materiality pg 103
“propulsion of animate being as it spills out into the world” pg 104
“ such mixture, where sentience and materials twine around one another on their double thread until they become indistinguishable, is of the essence of making.” Pg 108
Telling By Hand
“we can tell of what we know through practice and experience, precisely because telling is itself a modality of performance that abhors articulation and specification.” Pg 109
“recognize certain cues in one’s environment and respond to them with judgement and precision” pg 110
“and whether or not the artisan has an idea in mind of the final form of the artefact he is making, the actual form emerges from the pattern of rhythmic movement, not from the idea.” Pg 115
“The rhythmic repetitions of gesture entailed in handling tools and materials are not, however, of an inherent rhythmicity of those components of the environment with which he or she is engaged. Pg 115
Leroi-gourhan “the making of anything is a dialogue between the maker and the material employed” pg 115
“and the intelligence of this use is not placed in advance of the technical act as a capacity of the individual mind in isolation, but arises as an emergent property of the entire ‘form-creating system’ comprising the gestural synergy of human being, too and material” pg 116
- Hands showing wear of one’s craft pg 117
Sennett, “a rhythm involved in concentration” pg 120
“ a technologically enhanced sensitivity, brought into the service of hands-on engagement with materials in making, could genuinely enlarge the scope of humanity, rather than further eroding it.” Pg 124
Drawing The Line
- Kinaesthetic awareness
Drawing it “a process of thinking, not the projection of a thought” pg 128
Thoughts and Questions:
Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013.
