Stream

Sympathy of Things

Reading Response 1 p. 31-41

In the reading Lars Spuybroek argues “Craft and Code” are really one in the same and describes code as something that “speaks the language matter speaks”. Using the example of someone writing the same letter over and over, each letter will never be identical just like code can make infinite variations of the same action. Mechanical machines are guilty of creating perfect copies where digital machines can express the nuances and interlacing structures done by craft work. The way this works is through continuous systems and using Lars’s steps/check list of Redundancy, Changefulness, Rigidity, Naturalism, Savageness, and sometimes Grotesqueness(p. 39-40).

What stood out to me was the proclamation that “as all craft moves towards design, all labor must move towards robotics”(p.39) In order for craft to survive in the protection of design, digital manipulation must replace labor from the artist to the machine, but not in the way industrial manufacturing has altered the labor of products. The “products” must be varied, like technologically induced evolution in the mutation of genes. I can grasp how digital machines can replace drafts of gothic cathedrals but it is something originally done by craftspeople and now copied by machine. We are still stuck trying to emulate hand work. It seems like digital machines are really the only hope to maintain a sensitivity to craft since human labor must eventually be replaced by machines. I do agree with Lars but it is still unsettling. Yet the idea of “technological abstinence” is even more damaging. Progress cannot be slowed, it is something you want to stay ahead of.

Question: is Spuybroek trying to sell digital machines to crafters or a warning to try to preserve craft?