The Tool at Hand

I have been invited by Ethan Lasser of the Chipstone Foundation to take part in a forthcoming exhibition, The Tool at Hand, to be held in the Milwaukee Art Museum later this year.
To take part, the invitees have been asked to produce an object using one tool and to produce a short video describing the process and our relationship with the tool.
I chose my MacBook Pro, the thing that I'm using right now to write this.

As I'm sure you're aware if you have followed my occasional ramblings over the past few years my interest is how the skills that I developed as a potter can be transferred to the world of digital technology, so Ethan's offer was definitely not to be missed.

Here's the video:

Michael Eden - The Tool at Hand from Michael Eden on Vimeo.

I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, I'm not sure how well it has communicated my relationship with my MacBook so any thoughts would be appreciated.

Post Craft? Post Digital?

I took part in the excellent FutureEverything Festival in Manchester this weekend. I was invited to take part in a discussion titled 'Post Craft'.
Now I know what you're thinking, because that's exactly what I thought - what's that supposed to mean?
This is how the Festival described the notion:

"Post Craft
In an increasingly post-digital world, there is a move towards a pre-industrial landscape. Eased by global connectivity, cottage industries are sprouting up everywhere. People are creating their own products, services, and art. They are rediscovering the satisfaction of creating a tangible product, the process of making, the lessons from making by hand.
This session brings together four people working at the edge of craft — a leading practitioner in modern ceramics, a design researcher, an interaction designer and a curator — to look at what craft can learn from digital behaviours, and the lessons it has to offer.
Session presented by Andy Huntington, James Boardwell, Michael Eden and Sally Fort"

And there's the other phrase -'post-digital'. Sat here at the keyboard of my Mac, I didn't know that we live in a post-digital age, did you?

I can understand that people need more than screens and mice in their lives and there's an inbuilt desire to express our creativity through whittling sticks, gardening, even walking on the hills, but to call this era 'post-digital' is so far from the truth. We've hardly got started; in my particular field of Additive Manufacturing we have hardly scratched the surface. To paraphrase Geoff Hollington 'If this was the First Industrial Revolution, we are now in the year 1800'.
There is so much potential for this technology, it is going to change the way we think about many of the designed objects that surround us. It allows for individualisation, customisation, distributed manufacture, repair of broken equipment. The list goes on...
However, when I hear of the 3D printing of human organs I am both excited and concerned. Yes, it could help to solve the shortage of organ donors, but surely it's not such a huge step to then change the DNA of 'living' printed structures? After all the human genome is likely to be Open Source if it isn't already.
Or is this science fiction?

Anyway, back to 'Post Craft'.
Sally Fort, the chair of the panel, asked for our understanding of what the term means. There was some scratching of heads, but we all basically agreed that it doesn't exist.
Craft is Craft is Craft, regardless of the tools or technology the maker chooses to use. It's the idea that should be at the forefront of the maker's mind, not the tool. In my experience as a potter, the tools 'vanish' when I'm throwing a pot on the wheel. I'm trying to capture the energy of an action, the tension in a line. And it's those qualities that I try to achieve through the mouse in my recent work.
So for me, it's all about whittling voxels.
Having said that. I choose to use new technology because it allows me to create 'impossible' objects, ones that I can't make on the wheel or with other conventional methods.
But both the starting and end point is the story that I'm exploring and attempting to communicate.


If you would like to read more about the discussion follow this link to the mini-site that Sally published.

And if you haven't been to Manchester, I would highly recommend the place. OK it's wet, but it's a great 21st century European city that looks forward whilst embracing it's past. It has a really creative buzz, but without so many of the posers that you find in postcodes beginning with EC.

yet more actual and virtual.....

These last few months have been both exciting and frustrating in equal measure. I have been continuing my investigations of the actual/virtual theme in my work with the design of a new piece, or pair of pieces called Amalthea. They are complex cornucopia like pieces, one filigree, its companion a solid version with raised surface decoration.

To begin with, I generated a type of QR code known as a ‘blotcode’ which links to a page on my website when scanned by a barcode reader, available as an App for some smart phones. I then extruded the 2-dimensional image into a 3-dimensional form using Rhino 3D software. The cornucopia shape of Amalthea refers to the wealth of knowledge available on the World Wide Web whilst the cryptic symbols within the filigree refer to the consequences this may have on society.
Objects often have stories attached to them. They can commemorate an event; they are often transformed into family heirlooms and passed on with the stories associated with them. Amalthea also tell stories, but these stories are online, so have the potential to include text, video, image and music. They can be added to over time, creating a repository of memories and information.
So when the viewer scans Amalthea with a barcode reader mobile phone App, it connects to a page on my website telling the story, providing additional information thereby creating a simultaneous actual and virtual experience.
I plan to offer a series of similar pieces where the QR code is generated for a client linking the piece to information specific to that person. So, as heirlooms, the virtual experience could tell the story of the journey of that object through the generations.

In the making of Amalthea I have become increasingly aware of the complexities of Additive Manufacturing and selective laser sintering (SLS) in particular. The machines are complex, with a myriad of controls that the operator/technician must become as attuned to as any craftsman does to their tools. It's certainly not a case of 'pressing a button' as some people think. And though I am not the highly skilled person operating the machine I need to have both a reasonable understanding of the technology and a good working relationship with the operator.

When my work was produced in France, it was made on a ZCorp 3D printing machine. This is far simpler than the SLS technology as it employs a liquid binder rather than a laser to build the layers. And it's one of these machines that we are going to use in an attempt to print objects in clay. This is the dream that I have had since I first heard of Rapid Prototyping quite a few years ago. Our project at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London will build on the excelent work of Mark Ganter and his team at the Solheim Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle. We are also grateful to Ronald Rael and the ceramics laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley for providing us with a detailed technical report of his team's thorough testing of ceramic materials.
The Open Source philosophy of this research is fundamental; thanks to the generosity of Mark Ganter there is a growing community of like-minded groups all ploughing the same furrow. By bouncing ideas of each other the momentum is increased and reliable materials will be available for the many, rather than the few.

Though printing the Amalthea in clay is probably a little way off, I am very excited by the prospect of being able to bring both my experience and knowledge of ceramics together with the emerging technology of the 2!st century.

more hand and glove........

I was at the opening of ‘Lab Craft’ in the Truman Brewery at Tent London last night. Curated by Max Fraser, it’s a Crafts Council touring exhibition exploring ‘Digital Adventures in Contemporary Craft’.
The exhibition followed on very nicely for the museum and gallery curators attending a Crafts Council Craft Curators Forum that I was speaking at in the morning. It had been organised to demystify the use of digital media in contemporary craft and help the curators position this type of work in their collections. The discussion was lively and partly centred on the relationship between the hand and the machine. For instance, where is the dividing line between a pole lathe and a 5-axis CNC milling machine? Both are tools controlled by a combination of hand and eye and though the latter is definitely a ‘hands-off’ tool, the thought processes required to produce a piece of work are essentially the same.
As I mentioned last week, the London Design Festival is on at the moment, but for me the highlight was the Anti-Design Festival, centred on Redchurch Street, in East London. The brainchild of graphic designer Neville Brody, it encourages risk-taking, experimentation and dismisses the notion that every creative act has to have a polished, commercial end product. For the visitor, used to the beautifully presented gewgaw, it may have been a bit of a shock, for me it was a breath of fresh air.

Officially part of the London Design Festival, but more like an offshoot of the Anti-Design Festival was a week of ‘Design Against the Clock’ events held at The Duke Street, St. James’s gallery of Established and Sons. I was involved on Wednesday when I was teaching the artist Gavin Turk to throw pots. The day went really well, Gavin was focused and determined and by the end of the day he had produced a couple of dozen simple bowl forms. The outcome was the experience and will definitely not be polished and highly finished range of commercial products.
Some visitors and staff members had their first experience of throwing pots and were all completely captivated. I have long maintained that creative expression is instinctive and part of the human make-up. For the lucky few who find an appropriate vehicle, great things can be achieved; for a large number it can be channelled through hobbies, including gardening and appreciation of the natural world, and perhaps for an unlucky minority who have never had those opportunities, a life of frustration.

Assemble Conference- some thoughts

The Crafts Council organised a conference timed with the launch of new reports on the vision for the future of Craft in the UK.
I was one of the panellists invited to make a short presentation and discuss our place as makers in terms of the portfolio lives that many of us lead.

The choice of the 22nd June for the Assemble conference was completely appropriate as I’m sure everyone remembers, it was the day of the ‘Axe and Tax’ emergency budget.
The audience in the lovely, converted St.Lukes church was made up of a good number from craft and art organisations who would have been wondering what effect the chancellor was having on their immediate futures at that precise moment. I suspect the feelings amongst the makers amongst the audience were a little more ambivalent. For one thing, the conference acknowledged that Craft is definitely out there in the zeitgeist, making is happening all over, from informal groups of pals creating their Christmas gifts for each other, to Louis Vuitton bringing makers of the bespoke into their flagship stores.
The design world now acknowledges craft and some would say, feeds off the hard won skills of makers. You don’t have to travel far down the high street to find industrial ceramics imitating hand thrown pots. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Isn’t it all part of an educational process, awakening the buyer to Craft?
Where does this interest come from? Is it a reaction to the period of austerity that we are apparently entering, or a reaction to the ‘hands-off’ digital world that most people’s lives revolve around?
Making stuff, growing stuff, getting your hands dirty isn’t just about economics or fashion; it’s an outlet for an innate force that we all possess. It gives us ‘agency’ as Matthew Crawford articulated in his ‘provocation’. It gives a real shape to our lives; it connects us, both to natural laws and to each other in very real ways. Why are there long waiting lists for allotments? It’s not just about fresh food; it’s about sharing, about human interaction and according to Martin Raymond of The Future Laboratory, it’s about anarconomy.
For CJ O’Neill and Andy Cathery the effects of ‘agency’ were extremely tangible, giving focus and a sense of ownership to young people in Stoke-on-Trent and a future to a group of disaffected youths in Cornwall. Fantastic work, making a real difference to peoples lives, but for the ‘moneymen’ listening to George Osborne, how do you put a value on self-esteem? Maybe we need adopt the GNH (Gross National Happiness scale) instead of GDP?
We were all in agreement that Craft Matters and Craft has Value, but how do we get that across to an audience ranging from policy makers to the public. The public is largely behind us, as vast amounts of statistics from Gerri Morris prove, but the craft items that the public buy is mostly made by practitioners who were trained when Colleges still had workshops and taught material and process knowledge. That still happens in a precious few institutions, but the policy makers have to be made to understand that it is a serious mistake to erode what little there is left any further.
‘Thinking through Making’ is not an empty mantra, it is a fundamental part of the creative process that has brought about robotic arms for the Space Station from a maker of automata, as just one example of the way in which this approach encourages transferable and lateral thinking. If the economy of the UK is to have a significant income from intellectual property, then those closed workshops need to be reopened.
Whilst I’m on my soapbox here’s a few more ideas- There should be a return to subsidised apprenticeships, as away of ensuring the handing on of skills. Independent businesses should pay less business rates than the ubiquitous big names that have helped to make our town centres so anonymous. These suggestions are part of a way to ensure a future where consumers can connect with their locality, where young people can remain or return to the community in which they grew up. This may sound all rosy and middle-class, but aren’t these ways to create a C2C sustainable society?
So how can we make this happen?
As Mike Press, the chair of Assemble so passionately said: ‘”We can seize or squander this moment”, and advocated that we all get out there and tell our stories. But to whom, and what stories?
Craft, as Assemble clearly demonstrated is far more than the making of exquisite, hand made objects, consumed by a certain section of society. At it’s most inclusive it is “the desire to do something well for it’s own sake” as Richard Sennett defines it; it’s also an approach, a way of thinking.
So the stories that need to be told must demonstrate how Craft shapes our daily lives, how Craft gives meaning to our lives, how we are all dependent on Craft, how Craft is fundamental to the sciences as much as to the arts, and how Craft is instrumental to most parts of the economy.