Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Craft, Making, and Tectonics
"Corruptio optimi pessima! (Corruption of the best is worst!) Some materials promise far more than others but only the workman can bring out what they promise. In this domain of quality our environment is deteriorating." Pye, in his "The Workmanship of Risk and the Workmanship of Certainty", argues that what threatens craftmanship most is not bad workmanship in mass production but because each product is so uniform that it lacks depth and character. This reminds me of African tribal craftmanship where they believe that gods and spirits come and live in each thing they create. Do we stay with our uniform and lifeless plastic products and try to put uniqueness in them? How would we do that? Or should we try to retreave some of the ancient arts?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I do not believe that there is a way for us to create a uniqueness in the mass produced objects of today's society. It is important for us, not only to revive, but to continue the art of craft and the handmade.
It is without the uniqueness of the handmade that we gradually progress to becoming nothing more than mass, identical clones with identical possessions. As we stand today we are well on the road to being a society of people were our every possession is the same. (Imagine a world were you could change states and not have to take anything, not even your cloth because the house you are moving to will have everything that you need, want, and desire.)
It is the uniqueness of our things that create heirlooms, and praised possessions, and I don't see mass produced blackberries getting passed down to our children.
Now, there is place for the craft, uniqueness, and hopefully the individuality that follows it. But let us pray we can keep it that way, the alternatives create a very bleak world.
"Imagine a world were you could change states and not have to take anything, not even your cloth because the house you are moving to will have everything that you need, want, and desire." JWash, that doesn't 'create a very bleak world'. That's just plain disturbing.
I agree that it would be extremely hard to try to make mass produced objects unique, but I do think that there is a large enough portion of our society that likes individuality to not let everything become identical. I think there are enough of us involved in and who appreciate the arts that they wouldn't die out soon. Actually, I think the only way the arts could truely die out is if humanity lost most of their emotions and are intentionally kept from reconnecting to them. Think Lois Lowry's The Giver.
Post a Comment