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A match made in heaven

Susan Ostling

June 2004

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I am to respond to the proposition: A match made in heaven. Contemporary Craft and digital technologies, how long will it last? 'A match made in heaven...' The romantics among us, or, techno-utopians as Richard Florida ¹ describes individuals who create romantic myths about the future, would take this to mean a perfect partnering free from internal contradictions and discordant elements. In short a union of fundamental understanding. Those more pragmatic would see it as an arrangement that is mutually beneficial and synergistic. One argument goes further to propose that no matter how beneficial the new opportunities of a digital world may appear, interfaced with them are 'new closures, dangers, invasions and constraints'.² I am therefore inclined to a more prosaic response to this proposition, to say that Contemporary Craft and digital technologies are a match made in our everyday culture and that the match will last as long as it is useful, or until digital technologies of production, communication and consumption are superseded.

I have been interested in the description of craft objects in examples of the literature of cyberpunk, identified by Peter Schumacher in his article 'A Cyber-punk vision of craft in the future'.³ Schumacher refers to the work of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, science fiction writers who use the presence of craft objects and their makers as devices to mark out difference in their future worlds. They function as representations of a continued innate curiosity in novel materials and objects and a continued indefatigable drive to fashion strange artefacts from anything at hand. They are also used to identify wealth and social status. For only the wealthy in these tales can afford to purchase the objects from isolated communities of craft workers dedicated to hand-making.⁴ Why do these scenarios of amateur makers of novelties, or isolated makers caught in a time warp, continue to linger into the imaginings of the future? Both possibilities have makers who are out of touch and out of time. Though undeniably exhibiting imagination, tenacity and commitment, they are nevertheless aberrant and useful in their quaint obsolescence.

Edward Lucie-Smith in The Story of Craft highlights how effective John Ruskin and William Morris were in their nineteenth century protests about the machine. Both men however, looked to an ideal medieval society which never existed, creating Lucie-Smith says, 'a comedy of misunderstandings'.⁵ So influential were their protests he maintains, 'that what was said and written then has ever since tended to conceal the real complexity of the issues.'⁶ While Ruskin and Morris struck a deep chord in anxieties about the dehumanising effects of factory labour and the machine, they also rode on the wave of 'a profound psychological shift' in the consciousness of the individual self.⁷ The craftsperson could express their individuality through 'the very process of making.'⁸ Perhaps it is this credo coupled with the search for earlier models of work satisfaction that is the basis of residual attitudes about the role of craftspeople and craft objects. In the West there have been at least four decades where craftspeople have chosen alternate life styles, chosen to go against the grain, chosen individual pursuits. The question is, in the wake of digital technologies, are they less and less out of time?

Andy Clark in Natural-Born Cyborgs Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence ⁹ argues that we are all 'natural born cyborgs'. This is not a reference to developments in medical science, which have resulted in an increasing number of people with implants or prostheses of various sorts. Rather as a philosopher of cognitive science Clark is claiming that we are continually capable of using and making use of non-biological structures.¹⁰ This 'cognitive hybridisation'¹¹ is not a phenomena of the modern world but is as fundamental as the development of speech. Clark proposes that the cyborg trait can be traced through the development of speech and counting, to the written word and numerals, the various manifestations of print and now digital code bringing words, sounds and images into a system for wide transmission.¹² On the whole, we are uneasy about the idea of the cyborg, the hybrid human/machine. Clark wishes to refashion the image of the cyborg to reveal it as a form of our own biological makeup. For what distinguishes human intelligence, is the ability to absorb and relate with external non-biological phenomena. The point is that this facility is not dependent on implants or wired attachments so much as receptivity to 'information processing mergers'.¹³

What has all this got to do with craft in a digital future? If Clark has a credible case, then it may well alter deeply held cultural attitudes towards the nature and being of craft. It may modify widely prevalent beliefs that craft is an antidote to social alienation; a sensuous experience to counter the unreality of the virtual world.¹⁴ It may encourage a more enthusiastic embrace of digital possibilities in making objects. However the digital environment is not exactly heavenly. Clark notes that inequality, intrusion, uncontrollability, overload, alienation, narrowing, deceit, degradation and disembodiment ¹⁵ all abound. These inhabit the 'cyborg closet' and should be confronted 'without fear or prejudice'.¹⁶

In doing research for the exhibition Future Factor 2002-2003, I discovered many craftspeople and designers using digital technologies in planning or executing their work. Often the impact of this was imperceptible in the finished work, particularly in textiles (no surprises perhaps, considering the links between the Jacquard loom and the concept of the digital). I discovered many craftspeople and designers utilising digital technologies for laser cutting in order to speed up processes, or in order for the maker to undertake commissions on a larger scale. I also discovered craftspeople who enjoyed the play between the coexistence of high technology and low technology in their practice. For example, for Future Factor Elizabeth Kelly developed a series of glass forms imaged through a CAD modelling program that were sent electronically to a mould maker who digitally milled the positive moulds. The glass objects made from these moulds on the other hand, were produced by the very basic and ancient technology of direct sand casting.

I discovered craftspeople who had entirely changed their practice seduced by their engagement in digital technologies. Like Tom Annear who began to use digital laser cutting to speed up production in his practice as a jeweller. Along the way, he says he was smitten by the possibilities of simulated digital environments where objects could bounce or spin forever. For the Future Factor exhibition Tom produced two animated DVDs that explored the aesthetics of objects constantly moving in simulated environments.

Sheridan Kennedy and Pearl Rasmussen were both interested in digital technologies in an abstract sense. They asked how future digital environments might impact on a future body? Sheridan Kennedy created a work which mapped (through a projected 3D animated DVD), the imagined psycho-chemical effects that jewels might have on the human body. Perhaps future technologies will be able to read and reveal these impulses and responses.

Pearl Rasmussen wove wire filament through machine embroidered nylon threaded bodices. She asked how does sensory overload affect or become implanted within the body? What trace might it leave on the body? In these works future technologies of mapping and reading are imagined and their impact is anticipated.

In Sheridan Kennedy's vision there is perhaps enthusiastic expectation, though in Pearl Rasmussen's spidery thin work there seems to be a forewarning.

The works discussed do not claim to act as antidotes in our times. The makers engage with the prevalent hopes and fears and contradictions and utilise the technologies that excite them and that they can access. They are in time, in our everyday culture.

Footnotes

1. Florida, R., The Rise of the Creative Class, New York: Basic books, 2002, p24
2. Clark, A., Natural-Born Cyborgs Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, p167
3. Schumacher, P., A Cyber-punk vision of craft in the future, Designing Minds, ed. Robert Crocker, Proceedings from the Designing Minds Symposium, University of South Australia, July 21-22, 2000, pp79-83
4. My own interpretation of the extracts cited in Peter Schumacher's article differ from those of the author.
5. Lucie-Smith, E., The Story of Craft The Craftsman's Role in Society, Oxford: Phaidon, 1981, p281
6. ibid. p11
7. ibid. p281
8. ibid.
9. Clark, A., 2003
10. ibid. p6
11. ibid. p4
12. ibid.
13. ibid.
14. cf. 'The sensuousness of the crafts would seem to have particular resonance at this time, as we witness the intensification of a digitised information technology...A computer terminal provides access to information, a craft object implies access to a certain kind of knowledge.' Pamela Johnson 'Out of Touch' Obscure Objects of desire: Reviewing the crafts in the Twentieth Century, ed. Tanya Harrod, Crafts Council Papers, University of East Anglia 10-12 January 1997, p294, cited in Peter Schumacher, 2000, p81
15. Clark, A., 2003, p167
16. ibid. p195

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