Mittal Sarra // Studying Craftsmanship Through The Digital // Disertation Thesis Fall 2017

匀瓷痷擷秷槷 滷柷 䌀狷懷曷瓷珷 混懷滷珷 棷槷 烷 吀棷狷濷痷柷棷 吀棷旷 䐀槷 柷槷 瓷 懷泷

[Studying Craftsmanship, through the digital]

This dissertation thesis was presented at the master course “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design�, in Architecture Department of Aristotelio University of Thessaloniki, as a partial fulfillment of the demands, in order to acquire the Postgraduate Degree in Architecture.

[Sarra Mittal] Dissertation Thesis : Fall 2016-2017 1

//Thanks to my professsor Spiros Papadimitriou, for his guiadance and influence.

It is assured that this dissertation thesis is an exclusive project of the writer.

The copyright of this dissertation belongs to Sarra Mittal and to the Master Course “Advanced Design: Innovation andTransdisciplinarity in Architectural Design� of Aristotelio University of Thessaloniki.

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Abstract_

[English] This dissertation studies and questions, initially, if the crafting through its interaction with the digital is lost or is merely changed through this process. In order for that to be succeed, there are several properties recognized as far as crafting, such as the creator’s hand in relation with his mind, as well as, the differential skills and techniques required.

Subsequently, the notion of digitallity is defined and through that the combination of the two (digital and crafting) are studied, observing two other sub-categories, from which the digital perceives the craft, digital crafting and crafting the digital.

Digital crafting is associated with the algorithmic approach of craft and the notion of acheiropoieta, whereas on crafting the digital the sense of morphogenesis is analyzed and focuses on the final result. Through this first reading, another materialistic approach is introduced and a new terrain is cultivated in order to invite the differentiated meaning of craft. Analysing these senses and comprehending their intersection points, the relationship of crafting and digitallity are now under a new prism, inquiring and providing some answers. [Ελληνικά] Στην ερευνητική αυτή εργασία μελετάται ο τρόπος με τον οποίο η μαστοριά (craft) μέσω της αλληλεπίδρασής του με την ψηφιακότητα μπορέι να χάνεται ή απλώς να αλλάζει μέσω της διαδικασίας αυτής. Αρχικά για να επιτευχθεί αυτό, αναγνωρίζονται ορισμένα χαρακτηριστικά όπως η σχέση του “χεριού” του δημιουργού με το μυαλό, καθώς επίσης τις διάφορες δεξιότητές του και τη τεχνική που ακολουθεί. Ακολούθως, ορίζεται η ψηφιακότητα και μέσω του συνδυασμού τους (ψηφιακότητας και μαστοριάς), εντοπίστηκαν δυο υπό-κατηγορίες, μέσω των οποίων ο τρόπος που η ψηφιακότητα κατανοεί την μαστορία, αυτή της “ψηφιακής μαστοριάς” (digital crafting) και αυτή της “μαστοριάς της ψηφιακότητας” (crafting the digital). Η «ψηφιακή μαστοριά» συσχετίζεται με μια αλγοριθμική προσέγγιση της δεξιοτεχνείας και εμφανίζεται η έννοια του αχειροποίητου, ενώ όσον αφορά τη “μαστοριά της ψηφιακότητας”, αναλύεται η έννοια της μορφογένεσης και επικεντρώνεται στο τελικό αποτέλεσμα. Μέσα από αυτήν την ανάγνωση μια νέα προσέγγιση της υλικότητας δημιουργείται, κατασκευάζοντας ένα γόνιμο έδαφος που υποδέχεται μια διαφοροποιημένη έννοια του τεχνήματος. Αναλύοντας αυτές τις έννοιες και καταλαβαίνοντας τα σημεία τομής τους, η σχέση της μαστοριάς και της ψηφιακότητας είναι κάτω από ένα νέο πρίσμα, ερευνώντας και παρέχοντας κάποιες απαντήσεις.

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Studying Craftsmanship,

through the digital

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Contents_

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1_Introduction 1.1_ Setting the digital under question 1.2_The framework 1.3_A speculation of the research 1.4_Structure 2_What about?

2.1_ What about craft?

2.2_ What about new?

2.3_ What about the necessariness of the computer?

2.4_ What about the transition from tradition to new media art?

2.5_ What about history of digital art?

2.6_What about the digital?

3_Digital Craft/ing the digital 3.1_Digital craft 3.2_Crafting the digital 4_A new terrain A new digital materialistic terrain for craft

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5_Conclusions

49 6_Bibliography

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_Introduction

1.1_Setting the digital under question

In this dissertation it is going to be analysed how the transition from traditional arts and architecture, to digital has occurred and how it may have, or have not, influenced the procedure of “making”. It is directly associated with the decision making of the artist/designer/ craftsman about the materiality applied or the procedure followed in order to create fast and quality products. Architecture, arts (especially sculpture) and crafts have many common assets identified.

They have a point of interest which meets in materiality and therefore, as Alan Turing suggested, their formation depends on chemical and mathematical procedures.

At first it would be important to allege the notion of crafting, which could be analyzed with some specific characteristics, such as the general applied skills of a craftsman, as well as, the master level of knowledge associated with material. Moreover a specialized individual’s initial scope is the production of quality work, but simultaneously variation and changefulness. Crafting is a procedure having to do with the cooperation of hand, mind and through these, the further collaboration of skills and techniques.

Furthermore through the analysis of what crafting is, during the years, its sense and future differentiates and a further analysis of what is actually the “new” and the necessariness of computer takes place and is under question. Consequently digitallity appears and changes the sense of crafting.

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Digitalization is part of the everyday lives, which is marked by the appearances of new forms or autonomous objects serving the human kind. This practice may be, or may not be constructive, but the real matter is that it implements an entirely whole new logic, perception and priorities for the user, as well as, flexibility.

From architecture, painting, sculpture, film making and many other fields, it can be conceived that human always had the need to improve his knowledge, his skills and so his power. Through this procedure human’s scope was to reach the inhuman, to exceed himself. Of course, there are practices that can only be succeeded by the hands, or tools that need the human hand to work and practices that can only be performed through automatized, digital machinery.

Through this implementation of the machine, the digital, in the handicraft crafting differentiates its general logic. Crafting can be assimilated with digitallity, through two notions digital crafting and crafting the digital. Digital craft is a sense, where the crafting emerges through the digital, numeric systems. Its materiality reinforces these systems, provides it with substance and through that the receiver comprehends it. As far as crafting the digital, strengthens the crafting mostly due to its new media materiality which further guides to new morphogenetic approaches.

So, crafting is now seen under a new prism, the one of digital and the main question arising is what are the impacts of the new digital medium on the form making, initially in crafting and further in art and architecture? It seems that the digital has as a scope to shadow and put aside the handicraft and so the real question emerged: Is crafting going to be abandoned? Is the digital capable to improve without the hand? The knowledge (with hands-the base knowledge) is experienced and so absorbed. Is that happening with the digital?

Is the digital going to improve the crafting?

Analyzing initially methodically separate chapters and further combining them, providing some speculative answers.

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1.2_The framework

In order to understand the physiology of crafting through the digital and comprehend its further scope of materiality, there are specific writers and philosophers who enlightened this research. Firstly, Christiane Paul in his book “Digital Art” analyses the notion of the digital and how it improved and changed during the years. Then, Lars Spuybroek, in “The Sympathy of Things” is referred to Gothic and further associates it with the mentality of a traditional way of designing and thinking. Then he imports the notion of “machine” being installed in the Gothic, how a “metamorphosis of tools” occurs and how this phenomenon was accepted, or not, by other philosophers such as Charles Babbage or John Ruskin. In this research they are both studied and compared in a way where meanings like variation and continuity are prominent.

Moreover, as far as, the definition of crafting was provided by the book “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennet, where he talks about the differential characteristics of a craftsman and talks about how he perceives generally the craft as an object.

From the point where the notions of digitallity and crafting are consolidated, Peter Eisenman, in his interview the “Problematic of Homogeneous Space”, talks about the necessariness of computerized methods reinforcing the research to discover roots about the combination or the merging of numeric systems and handicraft.

Through that, two fields occurred, the one of digital crafting and the one of crafting the digital. Mark Garcia in his article “Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design” introduces the conception of acheiropoieta, deeply associated with digital crafting as a sense. Furthermore, in the task crafting the digital, the sense of morphogenesis appears, being examined by three theorists, Goethe, Thompson and Alan Turing. Last but not least, after finding the cooperative points between craft and digital, it is necessary to comprehend the impacts on materiality.

In “Digital Materiality in Architecture” Gramazio and Kohler characterize materiality with variation, flexibility, adaption and they are no more referred to the conventional approach of the matter, but import a new dimension to the notion. In this dissertation, these theorists are going to be studied and analyzed in order to conceive another point of view about the crafting and the new digitalized approach of crafting.

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1.3_A speculation of the research

In this dissertation, the scope of the research is to comprehend how the crafting through the digital is improved or worsened. Crafting is a process which combines and promotes the cooperation of mind and hand. It is the application of skilled mastered knowledge, scoping in quality work, being characterized by variety and changefulness. Its physiognomy through digitallity changes and from variation occurs, continuity, multi productivity and identicality. This transition may have, or have not, beneficial impacts on crafting. It is an indispulate fact that creating digital crafts require, as regular crafting, skills such as knowledge on relevant fields, a focused mind and having as a goal the quality. An initial speculation of the research is that the computational way of making and thinking works as a medium and as a tool to reinforce and strengthen the traditional craft, as they both have mutual points, similar to each other, redefining the relationship between creator and craft. Crafting will retain its fundamental characteristics and improve through the computational process.

1.4_Structure In this dissertation it is going to be analysed if the handicraft is influenced by the computational design. It is necessary to comprehend their physiology and in order to compare them and find their golden section, the knowledge of their roots are required.

Initially the notion of crafting has been developed, where the sense of mind, skill and technique are imported, compared with the art. It talks about the discipline of mind and body and the actual desire of a craftsman to create quality work. In the past the demands were less so the goal was not fast multi-production like in the Industrial Revolution. At this point some specific facts are recognized, such as the merging of fields, a situated general transdisciplinarity and last but not least the fact that there was never parthenogenesis. From this another questioning arises, about what new really is, how it develops according to the human and how human reacts with it. On the next level the necessity of computer is contested and how does it really connect with the human, as it may, or may not provide something new, variation or continuity.

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Why

Digital?

Transition?

Computer?

Craft?

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Moreover, questions arose about how this transition from “traditional” to the computational design occurred and so it was important to study the historical evolution of the digitalization, beginning from the 1950s, officially and going through many changes in terminology, logic as well as naming. Furthermore, on the next subsection digitallity is analyzed in such a way to achieve a beneficial comparison with the “obsolete” crafting.

Two prominent social thinkers are compared, John Ruskin, opposite to multi-productivity and machine making and Charles Babbage, a fervent supporter of the computerized world.

After this micro-analysis to specific notions, a macro-analysis takes place which has to do with the differential character of digital through or in combination with crafting. At the first subsection, digital crafting is defined, associated directly with algorithmic and numeric approach, additive or subtractive. This type of crafting grows in relevance as computational media which imports a secondary materialistic view. The receiver comprehends the digitallity but cannot justify it. On the other hand, crafting the digital is defined on the further subsection, where there is an actual real materialized result. The notion of morphology is introduced, which is analytically explained from differential points of view (Goethe, Thompson and Alan Turing) and the notion of hacking from an artistic perspective.Subsequently, the last chapter blends these two notions and figures out if there is, or there is not a new materialistic approach. It can be assumed that through new media materiality, another perception emerges, controls and reinforces the structure.

Consequently, the dissertation concludes to the fact that with the implementation of digitallity in “traditional” crafting there are going to be some severe impacts as far as the society, the culture the politics. Crafting will not be abandoned as the digital cannot improve without its knowledge. Digital is a tool, a medium and with combination of the two, a beneficial balance is achieved, as well as advance and innovation.

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2 _What About?

2.1_What about craft?

In order to assign a definition of craft, it is necessary to understand that in this practice lays the idea of applied skilled knowledge and mastery of material.1 Usually there is confusion between what art is and what craft is. Art is often described as unstructured and open ended.

It has no limitations of expression, just like in painting or in architecture.

On the contrary craft is structured, which means that it has a certain form that is visible. Unlike craft, art is known to come out of the heart and soul.

Crafts stems from the mind and needs considerable practise to be expressed with words, excessive forms, characterized with excellence.2 Glenn Adamson introduces some basic principles in order to clarify the notion of craft. Firstly, while the modern artwork has usually been held to be autonomous, the work of craft is supplemental.3 Adamson associates it with the crucial application of a frame in a work of art. In a sense it should not be noticed and shadow the piece of art. It should have perfect balance and simultaneously to emerge it. 4 “To say that craft is supplemental, is to say that it is always essential to the end in view, but in the process of achieving that end, it disappears.”

-Glenn Adamson 5 Secondly, where artistic practice has normally been oriented to optical effects, craft is organized around material experience.6 Using differential materials, differential formations can be achieved as well as different utilities are created. 7 Last but not least, Adamson presents the case of skill 8 and as he supports, crafting seem like a ghetto of techniques, whereas the art as an arena of free ideas. 9 Christopher Frayling and Helen Snowdon pointed out that Pye’s great breakthrough was to “divorce manual skill from mental skill” going against to the Arts and Crafts opinion. 10

Andrew Richardson, “New media, New Craft ?”, Electronic Art and Animation Catalog Richard Sennett, “Craftsmanship”, MAK Lecture Hall, 09/10/2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIq4w9brxTk) [last visit: 13/01/2017] 3 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.4 4 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.13 5 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.13 6 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.4 7 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.39-45 8 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.4 9 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.71 10 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007, p.73 1 2

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Crafting is associated with craftsman’s desire to create quality job and in the abilities required to succeed this task. It is performed by an artist who obtains particular skills and knowledge in order to fulfill his task. The carpenter, lab technician and conductor are also craftsman 11 but in this dissertation, as craftsmanship, we are going to consider anything that has an artistic or designing/architectural turn. He is dedicated and focused on his work, in order to achieve the best result possible, as well as he represents a rational and earthly side of human kind. It is important to note here that a craftsmanship has not only one perspective, the one where the artist’s work is equalized to one manual skill, but it has a trans-disciplinary aspect. To clarify that, for example, a sculptor is not creating mechanically forms but he follows a combinational knowledge. Chemistry, or firing, or tool making are indissoluble elements. The craftsman uses his hand, minds and skills as a machine to create fast and perfect outcome, an architect, his hands, as well as his math knowledge in order to design.

Immanuel Kant, two centuries ago, remarked that: “the hand is the window on to the mind”, as it is a part of the body that has extensive variety of movements that can be entirely controlled and hence referring to an interdependent and interactive dipole (hand – mind). Reaching some techniques, which concern hands, to a higher level is totally relevant the mind learning, which in turn “teaches” the hand to make automatized, smoothened, controlled and accurate movements. 12

Richard Sennet, “The Craftsman” , New Haven and London, 2008, p.20 Richard Sennet, “The Craftsman” , New Haven and London, 2008, p.149

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These disciplines of mind-body-hands have a direct influence in society, creating a society of coordination and cooperation. People work together in harmony, as one, completing one another. Of course there was not the need for a mass production, thus the rhythms were slow, but convenient, for that times.

But these rhythms were acceptable until the “Industrial Revolution”, after that period societies got thirst for continuous, unstoppable and maybe needless production. Machines dominated the arrangement of a society, even its political state and therefore gradually over the years, human tried to distance from expressing himself with the usual sense of art and imported digitallity. Modern societies tend to focus on financially beneficial skills, reorganizing its people in intelligent and unintelligent.

After the “Industrial Revolution” (1820 approximately) the Arts and Crafts movement (1880 – 1910) was formed, by the architect A. Pugin, writer J. Ruskin and the artist W. Morris, as an answer to the mass production and industrialization of the period. From Morris’s point of view, production by machinery is “altogether an evil, believing that an artist should be simultaneously a craftsman, a designer and working by hand. 13 Crafting, as well as hand – making, are fields which are based on variation, hence imperfection is possible to occur and therefore changefulness. Variety can occur intentionally or randomly, but when its pattern “breaks” seems to reorganize itself. 14 To exemplify and clarify it, if a latex mold was created for a multi-production clay models, after two thousand copies its form would be damaged and thus this distortion would give variable results, totally different with the initial one. This is how changefulness appears randomly, without any specific estimation, accepting the “mistake” and providing infinite variety. Considering crafting as a pattern or a motif, Lars Spuybroek explains: “The coming to life of a motif via figuration that is a line with active points on it, a line that, when those points are moved, still runs through all of them, in a new expression. If we trace a line in beautiful flowing curves, our inner feelings unconsciously accompany the movements of our wrist. We feel with a certain pleasant sensation how the line as it were, grows out of the spontaneous play of the wrist…” Lars Spuybroek - The Sympathy of Things 15

V.Ryan, “THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT 1880 to 1910”, 2007-2010 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.33 15 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.34 13 14

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2.2_What about new?

New is a notion that has to do with modern, something recently created or discovered, having the sense of innovation, of difference. As Parmenidis says, there is no parthenogenesis, it has a start point which constantly improves, evolve and it is endless. According to Aristotle firstly, the new element may not be always visible before a change, but after it may be tangible and secondly if an element loses its initial qualities that means that it may adapt other ones, more advanced.16 In order to develop something new – innovative there are two sub-branches, the one has to do with how it is essential, for the creator, to have basic knowledge of the obsolete and through experimentations to improve the old. The second category has as a centroid the human’s point of view, trying to distort it and rearrange it, in order to visualize it differently. This result to everything seem xeno, the machines become xeno-machines, the materials, xeno-materials, xeno-technics, xeno-aesthetics etc. trying to create an alternative future, based on the presence and projecting this xeno on something existing to reconstruct the new.17 So is there existing one?

the new, or is it just a distorted reflection of the already

Human always developed and will develop his curiosity for the new. This is achieved mostly through hisimagination and his nerve to create constantly advanced experimentations. For example in the movie Metropolis (1927)18 it is shown the need of the societies to expand and evolve with strange hypothetical future buildings or with aerial roads and railways scanning the city.

Individuals have the desire for discovery from the very first time they comprehend the world and through some speculations theoretically or practically they bring the advanced, the new.

Lecture in master program “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design” by Dimitris Gourdoukis, “ The production of the new”, 04/11/2016 Benjamin Bratton-Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics 18 Lecture in master program “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design” by Anastasios Tellios, “Devising Utopias”, 04/11/2016 16

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2.3_What about the necessariness of the computer?

Firstly, we should question ourselves: why to use computer? Why do we need the digital? Peter Eisenman in the “Problematic of Homogeneous Space” says that a computer gives a facility but not an idea. It has the ability to change the nature of a space or an object, it has the ability to change the priorities and the authority of the designer/ artist. We should manipulate it and should no t let it manipulate us.

Characteristically, in the movie “Modern Times”, Charlie Chaplinm shows this confliction between worker and machine, talking about the tyranny of the technology (its authority taking) and how the humanity, suddenly, was forced to fit around and within the machines.

Thus, as Eisenman believes, there should be a constant critique of the metaphysics, of the form finding, a critique of the authorship and if they are feasible, than digital and computational design can be utilized.

People have the capacity of characterizing things as right or wrong, of recognizing the aesthetics, functionality of the object or a space created.

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“Unless we know why we use the computer, we shouldn’t get near it.

Unless we have an idea that require us to do it…..if the computer can become a critical instrument than it is fine, if it is an instrument of production than it is just a tool” – Peter Eisenman, Problematic of Homogeneous Spaces 19 From the other hand Spuybroek claims that computer is neither a tool, meaning not an extension of a hammer or a pencil, nor a medium to create art but a conflation, a merging, between art and work.

“A computer is not a machine that replaces hand – drawing or handicraft, it is handicraft taking place at the level of drawing and design, a way of positioning any possible motor schema inside production itself ” 20 According to motor schema theory, written by Richard Schmid (1975), where a subject – a computer learns a schema- a rule or an algorithm to produce an action. Learning the rule requires practice and once it is taught, under a certain range of conditions, it is ready to perform and give the final outcome. The computer – at this stage the motor – may give variable results according to the rules that the user (designer or artist) defines. 21 Considering that in temporary times variability is demanded, a system that is not flexible and cannot obtain discriminations that would not be utilized, at least in such a wide range as it is. Variation, as John Ruskin says, is a part of life’s system.

“Handicraft, while offering variation, cannot provide us with nearly enough continuity, and inversely, industrial casting (prefab) offers continuity but no variation. By bringing the concept of handicraft into the very heart of molding technology, we can have both variability and continuity.”

Ruskin – The sympathy of things 22

P. Eisenman, The Foundations of Digital Architecture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKCrepgOix4) 20 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011,

p.34 21 http://slideplayer.com/slide/5287921/ [last visit: 13/01/2017] 22 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.35-36 19

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2.4_What about the transition from tradition to new media art?

It is an indispulate fact that we belong to a period where computers and robotic machines dominate and take over handiwork, which is constantly reducing. But do computers have the ability to take important decisions or have critical thinking? As things grow and change, fields merge with each other and so, to exemplify, architecture, arts, programming, mathematics etc. can totally collaborate.

We can characterize it as transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity of fields and hence when we talk about, for example art, we should not think about it as something autonomous but more as a combination of things, a blending. Even in the book “Digital Art”, Cristiane Paul indicates that the history of digital art is shaped in such a way that draws a parallel line with science and technology.

From the ancient times even when our ancestors sculpted on stones the Aphrodite, they developed specific techniques, they created tools, convenient enough to work as the extension of the hand. Technique is an integral part of art, it may seem a tedious condition or even superficial but it was and it is, over the centuries, the medium that people mostly used, to achieve further his goals. Technique is not only a knowledge regarding hands, but its soul generates in mind and thinking, becoming the actual agent for the next generations. As knowledge and information improves over the years, technical approach improves too. Mind and hands cooperate in such a way to create art and these are the base where it is built and flourished. So as art is becoming more advanced, this cooperation is boosted proportionally. 23

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Richard Sennet, “The Craftsman” , New Haven and London, 2008, p.20

To exemplify, a traditional sculptor without being able to use his tools, his inner mental condition to understand the desiring result, his probable knowledge in anatomy and even his cooperation between hands and mind, he would not be able to create art. Furthermore the machine took over and sculpture, as any other artistic category and human relearned art, obtained a modern way of seeing things. Therefore, by digital sculpting we talk about the appliance of knowledge of sculpture in contemporary terms. More specifically, the conception of the initial idea and application of the final result, of a “traditional sculpture�- craft, meaning surface texture, materiality and further formation, follows the same procedure of thinking with creating a digital sculpting- digital craft artwork, in both cases. The only region where they differentiate is the tools that each one utilize, in the first the traditional artist takes advantage of his hands discipline to achieve the result- final formation, whereas in the second case the artist uses the computer as a tool, through that he achieves the discipline of the formation and its final morphology. Tools have persistently been misrepresented through the notion of use, which defines action as fixed purpose.

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So we could talk about a certain metamorphosis of tools, in the sense of evolution. In the book “The sympathy of things” Lars Spuybroek is referred to a “metaphysics of tools”, bringing as an example the printing of a page and questioning if the written data on it could be owned by the person who printed the document. In the past someone could easily differentiate the genuine handwriting, only by observing the writer’s penmanship, whereas in contemporary times it would be really difficult to recognize the un-similarities in the context and that occurs due to the computers copy- paste characteristic. Another alteration between the handmade and the machine – made is that the first, even if we intend to make a copy, it would never seem alike, while the second can produce identical copies as many times as we wish and thus we could say that the first is based on a system that accepts imperfection, though the second would not. 24 “Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect, part of it is decaying, part of it is nascent.” – John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1853 25 Lars Spuybroek compared two critical, but totally opposite personalities of the 19th century, John Ruskin and Charles Babbage. On the one hand, Ruskin is non – negotiable and negative about the machine use, he unconditionally believes in the handicraft, on the variation that it can produce and therefore he strongly trusts the mistakes of a hand. His considerations have also a social aspect, the one that the machine will begin to have a more prominent value and so labor division occurs. On the other hand, Babbage is placed entirely on the other side of the scene, talking about a world which is “fixed” by machines, espouses the industrial revolution and agrees with its logic, where “making” transforms into “manufacturing”. 26 “In other cases, mechanical devices have substituted machines for simpler tools or for bodily labor. But the invention to which I am adverting comes in place of mental exertion: it substitutes mechanical performance for an intellectual process” - Charles Babbage

Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.32 Lars Spuybroek “the sympathy of things”- Faculty of Architecture, University of Innsbruck 2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfAgl4dhuFs) [last visit: 13/01/2017] 26 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.35

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Both Ruskin and Babbage have two extreme ideas of how crafting and “making� should be accomplished and therefore how society should be organized. It is important to say that they positioned their ideas in a flourished period (industrial revolution) where machines could be seem repelling and destructing or could be seen utopic. Of course that differed according to the social state that someone belonged, for example the labor class started suffering from unemployment whereas the higher class’s business had benefit.

Transition Making -> Manufacturing 27

2.5_What about history of digital art?

This chapter is referred to digital art and it is assumed here that craft is directly associated with art. “Technological art” has undergone several name changes, firstly as “computer art” (since the 1970s), then as “multimedia digital art” until nowadays, named as “new media art”. What is interesting about this parameter of art is that it offers an entirely new experience to the receiver. In this assignment the term, “new media art” is going to be used also as “digital art”, hiding actually the sense of aesthetics. From the 1990s technology firstly witnessed the intro of the digital medium, known as digital revolution. Hardware and software became more affordable and so artists, technicians, architects and others started experimenting with the new media. 27 As a matter of fact the roots of digital art could be argued that are ancient, if the prehistoric cave paintings and sculptures in France and northern Spain could be thought as the earliest examples of graphic storytelling. By digital art history it is actually referred to technological advances, which is also used in art. It started from the 1950s many artists and designers started working with analogue computers and mechanical devices, being a pioneer of the further digital art. A characteristic example was the “Oscillon 40”, created by Ben Laposky, used an oscilloscope, a device for displaying the wave shape of an electric signal. Ben Laposky’s experiment was to record these waves on a paper, through long exposure photography, allowing us to see them today. 28 Later, in the 1960s it was an inception for the computers, they were limited, financially not yet affordable and found only in laboratories or universities. At that time artists and scientists had to write their own programs and so they had the ability to experiment freely with the creative potential of the computer. The only source of output that period was a machine which held a pen or a brush and its movements were controlled by the instructions given by the computer. Due to the limited facilities provided the output was usually linear images, with the ability to shadow it through cross hatching.

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Christiane Paul, “Digital Art”, Thames and Hudson world of art, 1999, p.6 Bruce Wands, “Art Of The Digital Age”, Thames and Hudson, 2007

People were thinking of computer as an independent, autonomous, machine that would enable them to accomplish their imaginary thoughts in real visual experiments. For instance, Frieder Nake was interested in the relationship of horizontal and vertical, with the goal to recreate “Hommage a Klee” by defining specific parameters on the computers and then applying randomly variables. He explored the ways of how logic could produce exciting visual structures and the direct relationship between forms. 29 Furthermore in the decade of 70s, artists, coming from the traditional background, began to teach themselves to program, skipping the cooperation with computer programmers and standing in contrast with the earliest practitioners. This is the period where the computer is fully established in art. Paul Brown is an artist who produced computer assisted drawings by writing a program.By the 1980s computer is installed in the everyday life both in business and personal use. As we can observe until this decade the computer art was limited in drawing and 2D visual approach, it started from random results and improved to a controlled. Computer graphics appeared in films such as “Star Treck II – The Wrath of Khan” as well as in television programs and computer gaming. With digital art in the scene, there is a clear new optical view, a new “computer aesthetic” and the impression of a 3D environment. 30 Finally, the 1990s, the term “computer art” fades, the installation of computer in art is not something new and inapproachable but a physical extension of artistic view using the new media as a tool, making artists work in an increasingly interdisciplinary manner. James Faure Walker is a characteristic example, which describes a traditional artists as well as a digital artist. The process he adopts is to paint an abstract painting, either with pencil or pen either with watercolour technics, further he elaborates it with differential computation tools. Then he creates digital patterns that are projected on his works of art. He tries to combine and in the same time to distinguish his physical and his digital art, he plays with the balance of the two, manages to figure out the golden section of the two but for the observer it is really difficult to understand the intersection of the two. 31

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http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/computer-art-history/ [last visit: 13/01/2017] http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/computer-art-history/ [last visit: 13/01/2017] Bruce Wands, “Art Of The Digital Age”, Thames and Hudson, 2007

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2.6_What about the digital?

There is not, yet, a specific definition of digitalization, but that occurs because it is not possible to predefine limits for something which is not entirely understandable, since it is constantly improving and have not yet reached to its pick. New media art is applied in digital imaging (photography and print), sculpture, installations, virtual reality, projections, internet art, performance, sound, video, lighting, architecture, engineering and of course the combination of them, as well as their combination with more traditional approaches.

Digital art has to do with the “art experience itself ”, having as a scope to stimulate the spectator on four levels: their sensory system, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. 32 We can distribute and differentiate digital art according to how the artist utilizes technology, as a complicated tool, or as a medium from which he can express his optical view. Both categories are very interesting and are going to be analysed further on this research. 33 Digital art cannot be applied without art’s fundamentals data. It may be radically new and yet many of its facets have grown out of traditional art practice.

“The digital is totally scholastic, numerical, programmatic way of thinking” Lars Spuybroek To understand the physiology of this transition (handmade to digitalized perspective) it is necessary to mention that there is here also a prominent trans-disciplinary character. Digital world, as it is analyzed through its history, is an integral part of programming and coding.

Moreover elements associated with crafting, such as the intelligence of mind and thinking, as well as, the analog skills developed is explicit on digital world too. Consequently this does not mean that traditional ways of performing art become obsolete, but on contrary, a modern society endeavors a beneficial combination and merging of the two. There was always a transition from one period to a more revolutionary one, over the centuries.

Charles Babbage, a fervent supporter of technological approach, conceived the idea of Industrial Revolution as the metamorphosis of “making” into “manufacturing” – meaning an abstract organization of the making. He visualised a world where machines are not just a tool, or just calculation devices, but instead, as the base for a larger machinery which has the ability to create new material, new formations, which human would not be able to produce with hands or simple tools. 34

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New media theory, aspect and production, in contrast to crafting, appear to have continuity, an “unerring precision” (Charles Babbage) and thus without variation achieving the perfect uniformity. The capacity of assortment, in this case is not random, but thoroughly calculated, by making a machine or a system to allow the abstraction each time it is activated, assigning elements of a handicraft. Simondon, a technological philosopher, termed this variability as a “continuous temporal modulation”, playing with the minimum and maximum states of formation. Gilles Deleuze translates this differentiation in terms of oscillation, as a simultaneous vibration of the actual and the virtual, which are coexistent. Deleuze and Simondon consider that both, actual and virtual, are real, but the first one characterizes the complete materialized formation, the result, whereas the other refers to the problematic field of the creation itself. 35 According to Mario Carpo, in Alphabet and Algorithm, characteristically says that in the world of hand-making similarity was the norm and visual identicality was the exception, whereas now, in the digital world, it is irrelevant and regular. 36

Bruce Wands, “Art Of The Digital Age”, Thames and Hudson, 2007, p.10 Christiane Paul, “Digital Art”, Thames and Hudson world of art, 1999, p.26 34 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.35 35 George Teyssot , “The Diagram as an Abstract Machine”, 2012 36 Mario Carpo, “The Alphabet and the Alhorithm”,MIT Press, 2011, p.3 32 33

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3 _Digital Craft/ » ing The Digital

3.1_Digital craft Digital craft is referred to any system whose process, additive or subtractive, cannot or is very arduous to be applied by human hand.

Digital crafting is the combination of typical, traditional techniques and logic of craftsmanship reinforced by computer processes. According to Richard Sennet, a sociologist as well as a modern philosopher, indicates that the digital should be thought as a new form of craftsmanship, where craft is pursued as code. 37 To elaborate that, structures created entirely through machine and code-thinking, affect the process of making, setting aside the hand. The receiver, by observing the final result comprehends the digital nature of it but simultaneously the output is created with regular material and sometimes gives the impression of mere craft.

There is a differentiation between verbally created virtual spaces and visually created ones. The first evoke a sense of space at a degree much higher than visually created virtual spaces because in the former, the space of imagination is much larger. The spaces presented in front of the viewer are separated from them by the appearance of the computer. They are “on the outside looking in”, they don’t feel that they are “in” those virtual spaces. Only in one condition, they could begin to feel like being in a space, that is, in situations where the animation and simulation presentations are visually as real as the physical world. On the other hand, verbally created virtual spaces are not physically seen, they are spaces in the mind, spaces of imagination and uncertainty. The feeling of being in a space is so real, although the shape of the space is vague. 38 According to Mark Garcia in “Drawing Architecture”, this way of approach is characterized as “acheiropoieta”. Acheiropoieta, having a Byzantine etymology, which means, making without hands having a supernatural sense, miraculously created. Initial examples of this term are Veil Verona, Piacenza Pilgrim etc., which were thought as a miracle or even created magically, opposing to present, where these “acheiropoieta” have turned to be fake and consequently takes a totally different notion. In contemporary times, the idea of post- humanism, automatism, non- human hand making and intelligent system operations have been emerged. Developing upcoming technologies have not only as a scope to be intelligent and automatic, but autonomous and taking decisions as well. 39 Lecture Richard Sennet, “Craftsmanship”,09/10/2016, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIq4w9brxTk) [last visit: 13/01/2017] Digital Architecture: Theory, Media and Design, Yu-Tung LIU, p.10 39 Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.30 37

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A speculation of this attempt was displayed initially in movies such as Metropolis, where a fantasy world is presented, or in the “Harry Potter”, where the images were moving, were intelligent and interactive with their environment. Moreover, at the science fiction movie “Terminator” the robots cultivate feelings and rational thinking. Through fantasy and futuristic productions in movies, art and architecture, the goals of the human kind seem prominent, highlighted and a new perspective is implemented in emerging technologies and so a way of living and reorganizing societies. 40 “The architectural drawing and image in the age of cyber-bioinfo-nano reproduction can be most clearly evidenced within the unfolding of emerging technologies that are contributing to the experience, if not the reality, of these new acheiropoieta.” Mark Garcia 41 Crafting’s most excessive characteristic, as it was previously analyzed, is that the craftsman utilizes his special hand and mind skills. Words, like “architectural drawing” or “image”, attribute to hand- making.

Actually Mark Garcia indicates that the future of drawings and architecture, through computational design, “without hands”, under these terms seem anachronistic and inaccurate, but simultaneously that the computer designing is not absolutely abandoning the “hand”, since the images are still created by using the mouse and the digital- hand, gestures which are prominent enough. According to Garcia, handmade drawing and images are no longer the most necessary medium to create imaging or architectural design. A new theory is emerging with a synergy of sciences, arts and architecture, where fields merge and create a multimedia, multi-disciplinary and multi-technological approach, which extends its living, its intelligence and its interactive nature. 42 To exemplify, a CNC milling machine is used to create a complex, deeply carved and smoothened surface, inconceivably arduous and time taking for an individual to create, but the whole idea’s conception, the production and the programming of the CNC milling machine itself, is utterly human handmade. At this point, when digitallity imports, it is necessary to reconsider the possible advantages or disadvantages of this addition. Digital crafting does not mean that mere crafting is obsolete and needless, but on the contrary, digitallity facilitates some conditions in fields like medicine, construction, multi-production or to assign a differential perception of experiencing art.

Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.30 41 Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.30 42 Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.30 40

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[Exquisite Realities]

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Another characteristic example of this artistic digital crafting/sculpting approach is the sculpture titled “Exquisite Realities”, created by the Zeitguised, a Berlin-based design studio seeking to blur the boundaries between digital design and physical craft. The creators combining their skills as architects, designers and fashion designers, they achieve the development of a very tangible digital art.

At first it seems as a simple series figurative sculptures, “dressed” with cloth, but by adding animation it provides a whole new perception to the viewer. Zeitguised refer to their work as a “handmade algorithmic approach”, and therefore the computer generated designs were followed by manual moves, indicating the artistic value and emphasizing in the craftsmanship laying behind and creating a bases for the digital design process. It could be thought as an embodied definition of digital craft. 43 Last but not least, an example which can be characterized as digital crafting is the Mandelbrot set, a complex numeric algorithmic set. A repeated calculation is performed and translates the information into pixels-image, having as a goal to reproduce and achieve infinite zooms in the pixels in order to create new patterns. This is an extreme case of digital crafting, but beneficial enough for the viewer to comprehend the existence of digitallity, where the craft is not directly tangible but understood through vision. 44 Digital craft grows in relevance as computational media invade material design. It builds on interdisciplinary approaches emerging from an ongoing debate between craft and design in digital media. There are differential ways of conceiving this approach, either through a “handmade” machine which reads and reacts on algorithm commands, either through a combination of hand-making and a camouflaged code or through realizing its existence with mere vision. Craft is redefined, adapted and influenced by new data under contemporary terms.

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http://postmatter.com/articles/new-mythologies/zeitguised/ [last visit: 13/01/2017] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set [last visit: 13/01/2017]

3.2_Crafting the Digital Crafting the digital is the reconsideration of the digital code through a materialistic approach, which has the ability to create actual formation, morphology. In architecture, it is the study, where forms are evolved through the urban environment. Morphology occurs through a combination of interactive and an interdisciplinary path of differential sciences, for instance biology, chemistry, physics or sociology, as well as, the blend of diverse material. It is a form that emerges due to a growth, a materialistic merging or layering. Both in art and architecture, the platform tools that reinforce the production, are 3D printings, laser cutters, CNC milling machines, virtual reality programs etc. The final result-object, design and formation, is tangible by the viewer or guest and providing them the ability to experience it with senses, apart from the vision, the touch.

From Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s point of view, a German writer and scientist, analyzes theoretically the concept of morphology in relation with the natured: “… Morphology depicts the elicited “character” of systems, of both an animate and inanimate nature, by the inextricable link of form and formation. A system that is in constant transformation.” 45 Morphogenesis is inspired and imitates some of the characteristics of natural behaviors, such as complexity, variation, generation, iteration and interaction, creating a terrain for computational design to develop.

Goethe talks about the deconstruction of the nature which concludes to a redefined reconstruction. At this point, it would be important to mention the Gestalt move, whose creator were a group of psychologists (1920s), one of these theorists was Goethe.It describes shapes and forms, depicts and analyzes the natural system as uniformity and not as the assemblage of separate elements. More specifically, Gestalt is defined as “organized whole” and means when parts classified individually have different characteristics within the whole. For example, a tree can be described by differential components, such as its trunk, its brunches, its blossoms or fruits, but when somebody observes an entire tree does not concentrate on its parts but at the whole, even if they are clear enough.

Goethe supported this theory by implying in this a synthetic point of view, mental and cultural items, in the concept of formation and transformation. His morphology turned against contemporary models of nature which treated life as an inanimate mechanism and implemented as a set point the complexity and power principles in order to work as agents of natural and mental reality. 46 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “AD Computational Design Thinking”, “Formation and Transformation”, p.30-31 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “AD Computational Design Thinking”, “Formation and Transformation”, p.30-31

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Furthermore, D’ Archy Wentworth Thompson, a mathematical biologist, indicates another view about morphology, which is analyzed in his book “Growth and Form” (1917). He also believes, as Goethe, that a formation occurs through the environmental pressures and adds a mathematical aspect to the geometry. His inspiration, on scale and shape, is based on that of animals and plants. Transformations of forms, surfaces and effects similar to structures such as cells, arrangements of leaves (phylotaxis) or animal scull changes. He creates his own methods of reformation in combination with a Cartesian grid. He alleges that mathematics is a beneficial tool, providing innovative formations through the interpolation of multiple morphometric mappings and so a conceptual framework is created with two subcategories, parametric and homologies. Parametric is associated with a group of products, which vary with each other and simultaneously carry particular similarities, concluding in homologies. The whole idea of transformation has to do with these embedded relationships through their reaction with the external influences. Thompson described initially some organic forms and growths in simple language and made it more specific with a mathematical terminology. Mathematics may seem obscured, inflexible and ambiguous as far as the form, but on the contrary are very beneficial as they provide quick and easy mathematical concepts, as well as statical solutions by understanding the forces. 47 Alan Turing, another mathematician (1912 – 1954), in his article “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, describes how out of a physical homogeneous uniform state, non-uniform natural patterns emerge, such as stripes, spirals, spots etc. The differential chemical substances, detected by Turing, are named morphogens and while this process works additively it equates to the notion of morphogenesis. He uses metaphorically biology as the start point of his syllogism, describing a growing embryo through mathematics, with two differential approaches. The first recognizes the cells and translates them into geometrical points, whereas in the second one the matter of the organism is thought as constantly distributed. In both there is a sincere cooperation of the two sciences, mechanics (described with certain positions, directions, velocities and elastic properties of cells) and chemistry (chemical compositions of each cell), giving as a result a further point of view about materiality and formations. Turing associates morphogenesis with an embryo in its blastula stage, which retains its perfect spherical symmetry and as it grows in combination with some chemical reactions which take place, alterations and deviations appear in order to recreate this perfect symmetrical system to something more complex and unique. 48 47

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D’ Archy Wentworth Thompson, “AD Computational Design Thinking”,”On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forrms”,p.32-41 Alan Turing,” The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”,1952,p.37-72

In this chapter the assumption of hacking emerges, in a sense where it chases the ultimate quality and excellence, through the technological production. Hack does not concern, only, people who work with informative systems but has a whole new perception substituting the design logic reassembling algorithmic data. It does not have a negative notion, but on the contrary, it develops a positive framework, redefining and directing protocols creating a new condition. Hacking is firstly associated, partly, with the computational thinking, by turning into a tool which deconstructs the flows, having as a scope to merge them in another composition, redefining the sense of machine (a need created from the Industrial Revolution). Secondly, it releases the flows to achieve a liberating process in order to recombine them and produce a plethora of alternative objects, which cannot be theorized. 49 Hacking is deeply associated with experimentation and today’s society is built, develops and becomes more advanced on this logic and approach. According to computer scientist Brian Harvey, is someone who leaves and breathes computers, someone who can perfectly manipulate it. In Harvey’s view a hacker is more of an artist than a criminal and according to their own “ethic code”, his assignment is to contribute to the advancement of their field by writing open source software and enabling access to knowledge. There is a general scope for innovation. McKenzie Wark in his book “A Hacker Manifesto” clarifies and extends the notion of hacking to other domains. He characteristically writes:50 “Whatever code we hack, it is programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colorings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world…. In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any production of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it and where in that information new possibilities for the world are produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old” 51

Lecture in master program “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design” by Manos Zaroukas 50 New Media Art, Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, Taschen, p.17 51 New Media Art, Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, Taschen, p.17 49

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Many digital artists identify themselves with hackers or use hacking as influence or content in their work. Later the activist approach emerged through many hackers artists and by the combination and merging of the two, named as “hactivism”. There are many facets which can blend in with hacking, being externalized creating beneficial or non-beneficial consequences in art, culture, ethics and politics. 52 In architecture and arts agility, flexibility and adaptation are their fundamental characteristics. Through these notions a new role for the material was implemented abetting the morphogenetic process and computational design emerged and further digital fabrication, to fulfill the constant needs of contemporary societies. Digital fabrication attempts to the rapid production, creation and construction, the immediate correction of mistakes, resulting to a beneficial material saving, accomplishes a wide range of variation and complexity by reassessing in sort time some parameters.53 It is mostly succeeded, with the use of machines such as, 3D printers, CNC milling machines or laser cutters, “reading” specific computational files and according to the material provided, differential results are produced. Due to technological advances over the last two decades, tools for producing digital art have become more refined, common and accessible. The term, digital sculpture, is most often used to describe various digital fabrication processes, including computer-aided design (CAD), computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM), CNC milling or Rapid Prototyping processes.

Consequently, although there may be some very excessive and valuable attributes there are also some disadvantages of how these ideas grow, gets concrete and further being embodied in the societies and cultures.

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New Media Art, Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, Taschen, p.17 Lecture in master program “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design” by Maria Voyatzaki, “Hacking Architectural Materiality Towards a More AgileArchitecture”

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4 _A new terrain

A new digital materialistic terrain for craft Materiality was always deeply connected with fields such as crafting, architecture, sculpture etc. and played a fundamental role in how an idea can be conceived and how it is finally put into practice. People chased new materials, experimented and combined them with each other.

Since the digital age developed, human are no longer the center and the focus of the world, new decisive values are taking place, such as the task of material. Looking through that offers a whole new perception of formation, digital making and thinking.

Generally the word material is relegated to something tangible, with its physical substances, like the wood, the fabric or the steel. With the introduction of digitallity this notion changes and so materiality explains and provides a useful matrix to comprehend how digitallity affects the organizing process. Materiality is now conceived more as a medium of understanding the value, the properties of an object and escapes from the classical meaning of existence.54 Wanda J. Orlikowski an organizational theorist and Information Systems researcher was involved in socio-materiality, a theory which examines the intersection points of technology, work and organization. 55 She characteristically says: “Consider any organizational practice, and then consider what role, if any, materiality may play in it. It should be quickly evident that a considerable amount of materiality is entailed in every aspect of organizing, from the visible forms - such as bodies, clothes, rooms, desks, chairs, tables, buildings, vehicles, phones, computers, books, documents, pens, and utensils - to the less visible flows - such as data and voice networks, water and sewage infrastructures, electricity, and air systems.” 56 She actually defines materiality as “stuff ” and separates it into tangible and non- tangible. Clothes, tables, vehicles are characterized by tangibility as the user can touch them, but data such as magnetic fields, voice, electricity are “untouchable”.

People can touch a paper but cannot touch the words themselves. 57

Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociomateriality [last visit: 13/01/2017] 56 Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 57 Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, /First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 54

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Paul M. Leonardi in the article “Digital materiality? How do artifacts without matter, matter?� indicates that in order to conceive materiality in all senses, it can be categorized in three differential approaches. The first one and the most common is its relation to the physical substance, which refers to anything tangible. The problematic that arises is if the physical matter really matters, consequently researchers whose focus is on digital materiality, lose a part of the physical parameter by perceiving materials as something that contain action. 58 The second aspect is associated to the practical instantiation of a theoretical idea and used frequently in mathematics, designating, for example, numbers into models with substance in adequate ways.

Materiality is the medium to imagine and to conceive the idea in order to be further applied accurately and precisely. In contemporary times, where all artifacts and designs are created entirely by software programs, the need for simulating specific realistic materials has emerged. Texture and materiality of an object plays a fundamental role to understand its substance and conception. Whether an artifact is thought in physical or digital form, sometimes the only medium to translate an idea into action is material. 59 The third facet, in order to define the matter, has to do with the significance, the importance and the priorities, where the receiver actually focus on. To exemplify a chair may have multiple uses, as a stool, as a ladder or as exercising equipment and it can be categorized in each task according to its structure and material significance. Such a conceptualization of it suggests that although in numeric system artifacts there may be many features, not all are equally significant to everyone and they are utilized to accomplish certain types of work. 60 Initially, crafting is a material based practice that implies that the entire design process is directly associated with the notion of making. With the rapid implementation of new computational tools and fabrication techniques, there is a tendency for the relationship between crafting and materiality to be severely decreased and another point of view for craftsmanship to be emerged, cited as digital materialism. The acceptance of upcoming technologies and software, establishes an environment letting crafting and craftsmen to rediscover and redefine themselves.

Craftsmanship creates a new terrain where digitallity is growing and handicraft is going to have secondary value, either by combining the analogue with the numeric systems, either by being referred to non-tangible but existing materials. Matter is actually following new emerging morphologies.

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In the example of “Exquisite Realities” (by Zeitguised), their goal is to blur the physical with the digital, where the algorithmic approach meets the analogue chasing a surrealistic tension of merging the real with the unreal. In this case the material is the one that gives substance to the virtual formation. Zeitguised group alleges that the manual craftwork is not different from the numeric systems. 61 Mark Garcia mentions, in his article in “AD-Drawing Architecture”, that new material change the traditional, manual way of drawing.

Artists still use their hands to create artifacts by utilizing new medium and materials. Digital technologies can enhance and improve them by adding intelligence, agility and flexibility to the conventional ways.

According to Juhani Pallasmaa traditional handmade drawing and crafting is the most effective and efficient method of translating and communicating with the external world. With the installation of new media and material the receiver’s mind thinks with the old traditional ways and consequently temporary crafting and design loses its magic and imagination. From the other hand M. Garcia indicates that through the new materialistic approaches, invisible or intangible enhance the aesthetics, conceiving differently the idea of space and world. 62 Generally digital materiality leads people to a new perception and sensuality of architectural design and further crafting. In “Digital Materiality in Architecture” Gramazio and Kohler characterize materiality with its ability of variation of elements, flexibility, adaption in differential formations and it is not rooted solely to the physical material as it does not follows laws such as gravity or matter’s fundamental properties. Digital materiality is generated through the integration of the design process and programming. Moreover, they indicate that robot is the medium for the successful connection of the virtual reality of a computer with the material reality. 63

Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 59 Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 60 Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 61 http://postmatter.com/articles/new-mythologies/zeitguised/ [last visit: 13/01/2017] 62 Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.33 63 Lars Muller, “Digital Materiality in Architecture, Gramazio and Kohler, p.7-9 58

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Digital materiality’s basic characteristic is variability and increasingly rich diversity. It emerges as it becomes possible to recreate a large numbers of different elements using digital means, renegotiating the relation between digital system and variation. 64 It is mostly reminisced organic structures of the animal and plant world and imitates their differential “postures”. In “AD-Drawing Architecture”, Mark Garcia talks about Patricia’s Piccinini’s (Thorn,2012) drawings and images, grown from biological materials and to literally live and evolve as signifier, signified and the medium itself.65 On the contrary, according to Gramazio and Kohler this comparison masks the fact that digital systems do not arise out of biological conditions neither they are rooted in them. 66 It can be assumed that through new media materiality, another perception of creation emerges and reinforces the structure.

Materializing the postdigital highlights innovations, rising up from the intersection points of the sciences, engineering, arts, and design transforming the way of thinking, leaving and learning contexts.

Lars Muller, “Digital Materiality in Architecture, Gramazio and Kohler, p.9-10 Neil Spiller, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Mark Garcia, p.31 66 Lars Muller, “Digital Materiality in Architecture, Gramazio and Kohler, p.10 64 65

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5 _Conclusions

The last decades, computers penetrate more and more in the daily lives of humans at all levels and fields. Due to its sudden development, differential practical and ethical issues arise being harsh for the societies to fit and adjust and consequently phenomena such as labor reduction and loss of specialization appear.

Firstly, it would be important to observe the craftsman association with his product. Following the conventional ways of creation, he has a direct connection with materials, feels his model and through his experience comprehends it. Mental condition cooperates with the physical and the mind coordinates with the hands. Having so close relationship with the resulting product, the knowledge being harvested is incomparable and priceless. In order to create repeatedly multi-production of an artifact, through the physical approach, identical copying is difficultly achieved, so variation and differentiation emerges, not calculatedly but randomly. 67 Another characteristic of crafting is that the skill of a craftsman has to grow and mature, this is the reason why mere imitation is not a sustaining satisfaction.

The new images, structures etc. may be more intelligent, efficient and effective than the traditional image, but they miss the artist’s touch, the sensitivity of the creator, the inner thinking which is hidden and the communication with the receiver. On the other hand the digital facilitates humans and societies to improve and to produce something fast and to provide them time to think for further creation of something new and innovative. The future of the digital age will bring new control of the material and so a new connection between the creator and the artifact is developed.68 Old physical methods of designing are still existing and relevant, although they are observed under another point of view, the digital. 69 From the new intelligent media point of view, the goal is literally multi-productivity, where identification is also achieved, but variation70 (as physical approach) does not exist, only in the sense of algorithmic variation, which is totally calculative and the notion of randomness fades.

“The slowness of craft time serves as a source of satisfaction; practice beds in, making the skill one’s own. Slow craft time also enables the work of reflection and imagination—which the push for quick results cannot.”

Richard Sennet 71

Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.35 68 N. Leach-D.Turnbull-C. Williams, “Digital Techtonics”, Willey Academic, p.49 69 N. Leach-D.Turnbull-C. Williams, “Digital Techtonics”, Willey Academic, p.49 70 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011, p.35 71 Richard Sennet, “The Craftsman” , New Haven and London, 2008, p.295 67

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Computers and machines are now the extension of human’s hand and mind. They are tools, mediums, with many sub-tools, each one designed for every use and comfort. Traditional craftsmen, on the other hand, design their own tools according to their own personal comfort, tools that may not be able to be used by other artists. As the history has already proven, there is no parthenogenesis, everything is an improved version of an older one and this is applied in computational design/crafting too.

Conventional design plays the most essential role during this evolution, as knowledge concerning materials, skills, techniques and of course the conception of the formation (2D, 3D or even t he negative space).

Assuming there are extended differentiations between mere crafting and digitalized one, each of them have their advantages and disadvantages.

It is an indispulate fact that the computer making would not even exist without arts and crafting’s accumulated skills and knowledge.

The new digitalized approach of creation enables machines to take responsibilities and make decisions alone. Besides the fact that it may be very beneficial for the future humanity (healthcare), it may emerge severe issues, as far as, the societies, their organization and the general ethics and culture. Isolation of the traditional crafting may bring impacts such as the tangibility of the craftsman with the material and the resulted formations.

Digital world may forfeit some general “obsolete” but crucial knowledge.

Moreover specialization fades, merging of fields occur and consequently less people are necessary. So there are “useful” and “useless” craftsmen, or are the two fields going to be balanced? To exemplify, in order to create metallic pottery, craftsmen are still necessary as the carved details on its outer surface, could never be achieved by a machine, which would not be able to control the quality factors and the differential ornamentations created.

Consequently as it is necessary for digitallity to retain some basic properties of mere crafting, in order to improve and develop, thus the same logic is applied in architecture too (crafting and architecture are similar). To exemplify, an architect, as a craftsman, learns how to use his conventional tools and mediums in order to design and further his new tools, new mediums and new materials provided, or even achieve the combination of contemporary and conventional design (3D printers working with clay and building houses).

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It is an indispulate fact that as much as technology improves, basic and fundamental knowledge will always be the base point of learning. It is a fact that parthenogenesis does not exist, so digital has to cooperate and combine with the old and the “obsolete�, in order to create something new. Crafting won’t be abandoned through the centuries and digitallity is going to be utilized as a medium or a tool to reinforce it in a further development. Digital tries to come closer to conventional and simultaneously improve it and improve itself too. Both, craft and digital, cooperate and coordinate in such a way to retain the cognizance, cultivate it and flourish it with new media systems.

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6 _Bibliography

Bibliography Christiane Paul, “Digital Art”, Thames and Hudson world of art, 1999 Bruce Wands, “Art Of The Digital Age”, Thames and Hudson, 2007 Lars Muller, “Digital Materiality in Architecture, Gramazio and Kohler N. Leach-D.Turnbull-C. Williams, “Digital Techtonics”, Willey Academic Richard Sennet, “The Craftsman” , New Haven and London, 2008 Lars Spuybroek, “The Sympathy of Things, Ruskin and the Ecology of Design”, Bloomsburry, 2011 Benjamin Bratton-Some Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics Andrew Richardson, “New media, New Craft ?”, Electronic Art and Animation Catalog V.Ryan, “THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT 1880 to 1910”, 2007-2010 George Teyssot , “The Diagram as an Abstract Machine”, 2012 Mario Carpo, “The Alphabet and the Alhorithm”, MIT Press, 2011 Mark Garcia, “AD-Drawing Architecture”, September/October 2013, Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design/ Neil Spiller Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “AD Computational Design Thinking”, “Formation and Transformation” D’ Archy Wentworth Thompson, “AD Computational Design Thining”, “On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forrms” Alan Turing,” The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”,1952 Paul M. Leonardi, “Digital Materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter?”, First Monday, Volume 15, Number 6 - 7 June 2010 Glenn Adamson, “Thinking Through Craft”, BERG, 2007 New Media Art, Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, Taschen Digital Architecture: Theory, Media and Design, Yu-Tung LIU

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Links _last visit 13/01/2017 History of Digital Art (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/computer-art-history/) Lars Spuybroek “the sympathy of things”- Faculty of Architecture, University of Innsbruck 2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfAgl4dhuFs) P. Eisenman, The Foundations of Digital Architecture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKCrepgOix4) Motor Schema (http://slideplayer.com/slide/5287921/) Richard Sennett, “Craftsmanship”, MAK Lecture Hall, 09/10/2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIq4w9brxTk) Example Exquisite Realities (http://postmatter.com/articles/new-mythologies/zeitguised/) Mandellbrot Set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) “Man vs Machine”- Bbc.com/talking business

Lectures in master program “Advanced Design: Innovation and Transdisciplinarity in Architectural Design” by: Maria Voyatzaki, “Hacking Architectural Materiality Towards a More Agile Architecture” Manos Zaroukas Dimitris Gourdoukis,, “ The production of the new”, 04/11/2016 Anastasios Tellios, “Devising Utopias”, 04/11/2016

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