Video

Reflection

Over the past three weeks in my Real-World Media studio, I’ve been asked to consider craft, not only as a personal relationship between me, my tool, and my material, but also in the greater social and cultural contexts. Easy answers like ‘its about expressing yourself’ or ‘it’s a reflection of myself’ come from the school of thought that we express ourselves to varying degrees of fame and change society, while failing to consider how our environments morph us into unique individuals. Many see cultural and social affects in an individual’s work as a tainting, when, personally, a work untouched by society speaks more to ignorance than purity.

Saito (2022:205) notes that ‘where style was once seen as merely a form of embellishment,’ in today’s hyper-consumerist society ‘The design of goods is accordingly geared towards satisfying this aesthetic imperative in today’s economy by putting ‘a major emphasis on product appearance.’ The contemporary modern aesthetic makes our products, architecture, and media hostile to the human condition. Things like furniture and smartphones reveal no personality of its manufacturer because, an unfortunate side-effect of mass-production, most products are outsourced to unethical sweatshops in other countries. This manufacturing cycle imprints an effect on individuals, and that is one of dishonesty and fear. In the past it was more common to see people sporting stitches and patches which, in Wheeler’s (2017:28) words, ‘tell specific stories,’ where through ‘these stories, the physical artifacts of a patch or stitch carry meaning’, allowing for one to be able to discern another’s nature through their physical belongings alone. Presently, everyone’s sporting the same clothes and accessories manufactured perfectly via machinery, and any wear, tear, or crack made is by its wearer, who would be shamed and ridiculed by their peers if they didn’t immediately throw the still usable object and buy a new one. Essentially, we as a society, have been groomed by both corporations and peers to reject our humane aspects, and don materials that hide our true selves in order to project an identity of superiority, wealth, or trendiness.

As technology encroaches on our agency as craftspeople, we have smaller communities that seek authenticity conflated with, in Kettley’s (2016:167) words, ‘the scientific world-view of ‘disenchantment’ promised,’ ‘stripped of all prejudices,’ demonstrating ‘personal responsibility not to others in society but to the emotional state of the inner self.’ These traditionalists, or purists, cling to more traditional art like sculptures and paintings, demonising digital technology and AI art, ignoring changes in social and cultural contexts with tools and art.

Ultimately, the solution to the issues that we as craftspeople face in today’s shifting technological climate isn’t selling our souls to a hyper-consumerist capitalist hell, or to regressing culturally and socially. Ueda (2023:1) and Figoli (2022:97), in their research into human-AI collaboration, discovered how ‘AI could significantly impact the creative phases of the design process,’ concluding that ‘human–AI collaboration will lead to better creativity and that AI’s generative power is comparable to that of humans in creative fields’. Like how one had to understand a hammer to be able to become one with it, we must do our best to understand digital and AI technology as tools of art in order to become one with it, and evolve alongside it, not succumb to it, or regress away from it.

 
Reference List

1. Figoli F, Mattioli F and Rampino L (2022) Artificial intelligence in the design process The Impact on Creativity and Team Collaboration, Milan FrancoAngeli, Milano Italy.
2. Hitsuwari J, Ueda Y, Yun W and Nomura M (2023) ‘Does human–AI collaboration lead to more creative art? Aesthetic evaluation of human-made and AI-generated haiku poetry’, Computers in Human Behaivour, 139(n.d.), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107502
3. Kettley S (2016) ‘You’ve got to keep looking, looking, looking’: Craft thinking and authenticity, Craft Research, 7(2):165-185, https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1386/crre.7.2.165_1
4. Saito Y (2022) Imperfectionist Aesthetics in Art and Everyday Life, Taylor & Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003251361
5. Wheeler D (2017) The Design-Build Studio : Crafting Meaningful Work in Architecture Education, Taylor & Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315650746