Malcolm McCullough — Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand
In Abstracting Craft, McCullough investigates the role of craft in the emerging digital realm. He offers an in-depth analysis of the technical and psychological aspects of digital interfaces. The book is split into three parts. Part I explores the “fundamental humanity of handicraft, design vision, and tool usage, and introduces the potential impact of computing on each of these”, primarily focusing on hands, eyes, and tools (xvii). Part II reviews the emergence of computation as a medium, rather than a set of tools by looking at symbols, interfaces, and constructions. Part III explores the experience of craft in the world of digital media through investigating medium, play, and practice. A main argument that McCullough tries to address is to discuss how digital work can collaborate with physical human agency and to develop a critical understanding of the ways in which the computer (as a medium, not a tool) requires a new set of creative skills.
In the first part of his book, McCullough looks at the hands and how skill is attained through the use of haptic and physical touch repeated over and over again. He considers traditional craftsmanship very much located in the hands and remarks how the inclusion of digital interfaces causes a shift towards the eyes as the focus for design. The hand-eye coordination needed for physical craft changes: originally, when the hand worked a material, eye follows it but now, the hand moves a mouse while the eyes look at a screen (35). McCullough does not consider this a negative thing and states that “for some people, especially those who never had the traditional skills, computing is a source of new opportunities for coordinated action” (35). He does point out however, that we need better software to orchestrate our skills and senses for more satisfactory work, such as whole-body expression and kinetic memory.
McCullough asks the following questions about software design:
1. Can the visual representation of tools, media, and artifacts become sufficiently intuitive to allow us to use the full spectrum of our abilities and imagination?
2. Can the visual codes and metaphors themselves become objects of craft?
3. Can they become three-dimensional, dynamic, expressive, full of workmanship?
4. Can the overwhelmingly visual world of the computer accommodate non-visual actions and perceptions?
To him, the key is vision. Its mechanisms can inform technology design, and its cognitive power can make sense of symbolic orders. Since both vision and computation are prone to abstraction, the trick is to get them to coincide (41).
The industrial age introduced an unprecedented abstraction of work, in which tools’ motion became machine powered and their manipulation became indirect. Soon the means of production became too extensive to be handled by the individual craftsman. Throughout the book, McCullough discusses how CAD practice is an “abstracting craft” that is not ruled by automation but by inventive, playful artistry. This abstraction is closer to the ideal of pre-modern craftmanship instead of industrial factory work.
Automation started the death of artisanship because it distanced the abstraction of work reflected in the redundancy of traditional tool users and the emergence of creative symbols users — engineers, accountants, and managers.
However, the author claims that with the rise of such tools as Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems, along with a number of other software such as paint programs, a new technology is born with old roots. […] we have regained some aspects in what may be called indirect manipulation. “Whether direct or indirect, what matters is manipulation” (p.80)
Despite his optimism for computational design, McCullough still considers computers as devices that fragment our way of thinking, which is normally unified and refined. He states that computers are “a bit too rewarding to the short reflexive response” and they supply “instantaneous reward” (53). He also admits that visual computing is “far from mature and that future software design must go deeper and strike better balances” (56). This may be a result of the time this book was published — with technological improvements in the past decade, it can be assumed that McCullough would have further thoughts on the advances of CAD software and virtual and augmented reality.
A major point that McCullough discusses is the engagement of a medium. He states that a medium “must have sufficient effect on the senses in order to command our attention” (194). Skills are evolved from a meeting point between tools and mediums. There must be a range of possibilities for the medium and ultimately, it is up to the craftsperson to gauge how to choose the right medium and push it as far as it will go. “A rich medium offers an extent of possibilities that no one author or piece can incorporate them all, and only this is enough to sustain continued exploration” (198). The affordances of a medium are discovered through experience, not established. Additionally, a medium must have limits and constraints as a way to respect the nature of the material and the giving of form. Understanding affordances well is what designers and craftspeople do due to their deep familiarity with the possibilities and practicalities of a particular media. This leads to the question of whether a craft medium has to have a material substance. Historically, physical materials have been the best source of mediating structure but with digital crafts coming into play, the computer is now considered the medium.
McCullough points out at the distinctive response time of computers and how its quick functions may not allow us sufficient concentration to enable serious, expressive works to come forward. To him, materiality is pivotal to the question of craft in the digital realm. He asks, “May we suspend the need for physical properties, or the subtlety of touch, or the durability of tangible artifacts, in exchange for more dynamic manipulation of abstract structures of symbols?” (214). Is the word “craft” being stretched a bit more to different abstract situations that only have conceptual similarities to the physical working of materials? The idea of a computer as a medium began with the introduction of direct manipulation, and continues to depend intensively upon the ever-improving quality and range of continuous interactions.
McCullough seeks to answer the question of whether digital abstraction necessitates further decline of human skill, particularly of the hand. He concludes his book by discussing mental models and really leaving the answer up to the user — to him the most important aspect is not “how to use a computer” but “how to be when using a computer” (271). “The intellectual ability to appreciate a medium well enough to construct a robust mental model most be acquired and maintained through learning, play, and practice” (218).
In his conclusion, McCullough examines practice and individual mastery. In craftmanship, in order to reach a satisfying level of engagement, you must acquire and maintain an expertise: anything really worth doing takes practice. First you learn techniques, then strategies, then mental models all become second nature. In computing, few people reach these levels of contextual awareness due to the distracting nature and speed that digital tools are changing. Here, McCullough says that “abstraction of craft should unite educated knowledge and trained skill” (252). “Working with a personal level of motivation and commitment, we have a renewed opportunity for restoring value to the working knowledge of a medium” (271). Essentially, the quality of the outcome depends less on the technology than on those of us who master the craft and the outlook you bring to it.
Resources:
McCullough, Malcolm. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. MIT Press, 1998.
