OUGD601 / COP3 / Reading / Lucy Johnston - 'Digital Handmade'

'We must be prepared for such profound changes to alter the entire technological aspect of the arts, influencing invention itself.' Paul Valery, Pieces Sur L'Art, 1931

'By the machine we mean an instrument of mass production. In a sense, every tool is a machine - the hammer, the axe and the chisel. And every machine is a tool... The problem is to decide whether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art.' Herbert Read, Art and Industry, 1934

A Renaissance in the Art of Making

'Two centuries ago the first industrial revolution revealed a new order... This period of technical innovation resulted in a diminished role for the craftsman within such a mechanised environment...' p.7

'this [digital] revolution sees the skill and vision of the craftsman once again anchored at the heart of a making process.'

'No longer dictating or restricting the creativity of the making process... [digital tools] are instead being applied in unconventional ways to enhance and assist it, enabling the crafting of extraordinary, artistic forms that would previously have been all out impossible.'

'[the digital artisans] are producing individual, crafted products of exceptional quality that retain the soul of the material and the skill of the human hand., while also benefitting from the precision, efficiency and increasingly unrestricted sculptural parameters of digital design and fabrication.'

A Story of Beauty and the Machine

'The term [digital handmade] describes anew aesthetic for our times; an exacting beauty, achieved only through the fusion of hand and machine.' p8

'Where machine production on its own provides us with the objects we expect to see, the emerging freedom of the craftsman to challenge the tools of the digital revolution... brings an element of creative magic to the process.' p8

A Very Modern Toolbox for a Very Modern Craftsman

'the digital-artisan movement has no common style or output.' p8

'the iconic phrase of this era of creative manufacturing is undoubtedly '3D-Printing', a sweeping term used increasingly to represent a wide range of object shaping processes.' p8-9



'We live in the twenty first century and I believe we should embrace the tools available to us, use them to take our craft beyond the traditional and create the extraordinary.' p40

Valissa Butterworth p39

Lia Cook p47 DIGITAL LOOM

'Every artistic material and medium resists our attempts to perfect it, leaving the marks of the maker. I try to find those marks in digital media.' Sophie Kahn, p129

'For me, it is not really relevant if a tool is digital or analogue, as long as it works for the end resultI want to create. It is about making something that has not been done before.' Lucas Maassen, p151

The resulting 3-second computer file is sent to a CNC milling machine that 'mills out' the Brain Wave in soft foam. It is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a futuristic production workflow in which the designer has only to close his eyes and a computer 'prints out' (processes) the result as a functional form. Maassen