Crafts + Innovation Conference at CEARTE, Coimbra, Portugal
I was invited to give a paper on the impact of new technologies on traditional crafts at this conference that I entitled Traditional Crafts: New Frontiers. As with a similar paper I had given in Toledo the previous year I presented the new technologies as new ‘not by hand’ craft skills that should be seen as alternative or complimentary rather than a threat to traditional hand craft skills, not an argument that is very well received in the traditional hand craft camp it has to be said. Whereas designers are taught to buy in craft skills to realize their designs as and when certain skills are needed, professional crafts persons can have a tendency to be more insular and therefore suspicious of any talk of New Frontiers. In his article The Death of Craft (Crafts Magazine January 2009) US ceramics historian and writer Garth Clark makes the point that traditional craft is too small and cannot survive alone, but should align itself with design.
I used the work of four designers I had come to know through Metropolitan Works as exemplars who accessed new technologies in just the way that designers/makers had always accessed new technologies, simply as another tool. Here are the quotes each of the four gave me:
- Tom Price “I approach the new technologies in much the same way as I would any other tool or material.I like to have a basic working knowledge of its intended use but then try to find a way to subvert the process. I try to find the glitches; make it do something completely new and unexpected; introduce a bit of entropy into thesystem.” www.tom-price.com
- Assa Ashuach “More than ever, the pace of technological progress is increasing exponentially and the evolution we can expect in the next two years is likely to surpass the progress seen in the last ten years.” assastudio.com.
- Tomoko Azumi“I enjoy the challenges of fabrication methods and materials and move freely between traditional and new craft technologies to complete a project.” www.tnadesignstudio.co.uk
- David Goodwin“I believe that just as the lathe and spinning machines had an impact on crafts in the industrial age, the technological revolution brings with it new opportunities that need to be explored by contemporary crafts people.” www.david-goodwin.com
Assa Ashuach“More than ever, the pace of technological progress is increasing exponentially and the evolution we can expect in the next two years is likely to surpass the progress seen in the last ten years.”