Triangulation and referencing final text

Do we value craft and the analogue in the digital age?

This essay will discuss the value of the analogue and craft in the digital age. It will be looking at the importance of craftsmanship and the hand of the maker, the introduction of technology to the analogue processes and using advances of the digital age to enhance work through texts by David Crow, Phil Taylor and Grayson Perry.

Part of what makes the analogue so appealing and ‘more alluring’ (Taylor, 2010) are the unpredictable and performance elements. David Crow, author of ‘Magic box: craft and the computer essay 2008, discusses Alice Kettle, craft practitioner, how she views craft as a performance and help from assistants or apprentices is allowing the unexpected to surface rather than be mechanical. It is this ‘unexpected’ (Crow 2008) element that cannot be predetermined that draws both artists and viewers in. It allows artworks to be individual and not just carbon copies of one another - they have quirks and charms about them and artists and designers sometimes allow the accidents to inform their next decision in the creative process. Artist, Grayson Perry (2016) also states that because technology is doing exactly as it is told, ‘digital production’ can have a ‘lifeless feeling’ which again contributes to the idea of the unpredictable. This begins to build on the idea of a presence of the maker, where a laborious relationship and commitment to the work is evident and not the under lying fear that it is a digitalised outcome that could have been resolved by the push of a few buttons. Phil Taylor also comments on this in his paper that students can sit ‘in front of an old, poorly operating typewriter’ (2010) to achieve an ‘unpredictable outcome that may involve ‘happy accidents’ along the route and a chance of alchemy’ (2010). The definition for ‘Alchemy’ on the Cambridge Dictionaries website has connotations of magic which is an extraordinary way to describe an artwork and Taylor goes on to comment that ‘the magic of the digital does not matter - the alchemy of the analogue is more unpredictable and therefore more alluring’ (2010) further backing this up.

Equally, Perry (2016) states that ‘as technology develops, craftspeople will become better at predicting and nuancing their instructions to machines and digital manufacturing will become more refined’ which suggests more ‘happy accidents’ (Taylor, 2010) will be apparent in digital work. It is about working with the digital as a craftsperson to enhance the work rather than take away from it.

In the digital age that we live in, it has become very difficult for an illustrator to work completely analogue with programmes such as Adobe Illustrator and Abode Photoshop easily allowing adjustments and touch ups to be made to analogue work created using craft and old methods of image making so it is important to use the two together to push the process… As Crow also goes on to say it is the ‘process of play, experiment, adjustment, individual judgement and the love of material’ (2008) that defines the practice than the material itself, suggesting that the digital can be part of this process to create the work. The digital can become a part of the craftsman’s toolbox.

The hand plays a very important part in craft as emphasised in chapter five of Sennett’s book The Craftsman - ‘two centuries ago, Immanuel Kant casually remarked: "The hand is the window on to the mind.”…Of all our limbs, the hands make the most varied movements, movements that can be controlled at will. …plus the hand's different ways of gripping and the sense of touch, affect the

ways we think.’ (Sennett, 2008) which is only stressed further in Crow’s 2008 essay. He says that ‘key to the way we talk about craft practice is this presence of the hand’ (2008) and that ‘the hand is an important metaphorical signal for the presence of the individual in craft.’ (Crow, 2008) This is heavily important as it makes work more personal and meaningful showing the hand of the maker.

Often it will be questioned how long has been spent on the piece and how has the process enforced context to the piece and this ‘presence of the hand’ (Crow, 2008) is so important in reinforcing the visual language and appropriate and sensitive tone conveyed of the piece. Being in the digital age, for young creatives it is the old means of making and craftsmanship which appear new and appealing. Phil Taylor conveys the idea that craft today is fuelled by the young creatives with whom ‘the DIY approach… seems to resonate’ (2010). This is further explored through comments on popularity of the traditional letterpress facility as a pose to the new technology on offer. It is a hands on approach they crave and shows this, the traditional and crafts, is what is exciting, new and heavily considered now for them in their practice.

In the article ‘are computers killing off craft’ (Perry, 2016) Perry seems to go heavily against this idea of the hand and crafted analogue work being so important as he believes that ‘digital technology offers the craftsman and the artist creative opportunities that were previously too expensive for an individual, too time-consuming or just plain impossible’ and that ‘to become skilful with these newer technologies is to be just as much of a craftsman as a traditional weaver or potter’ (2016). He sees the digital and newer technologies as just as much of a skill as the analogue crafts - valuing them as a combination. Crow equally understands that ‘in the age of the machine, as industrialisation came to dominate in the nineteenth century, there was less and less place for the hand.’ (2008) Phil Taylor (2010) does discuss the ‘intriguing contradiction dilemma’ of not using the digital in the creation of the artwork but in it’s ‘dissemination’. This links with Perry’s comments on his craftspeople that ‘every one of them uses – to a greater or lesser degree – the wonderful technology now so woven into our lives’ (2016). All of these points lead toward to conclusion that analogue and craft is still valued and used heavily in the digital age but it is important to fuse the two together to achieve greater things and allow modern technology and advances to enhance the artists, craft mans, designers, illustrators practice.