* Master’s Thesis: “The Art and Craft of the Machine”: 3D printing, the Arts and Crafts Movement and the democratization of art. Patokorpi, Lassi. 2014. University of Tampere.

Lassi Patokorpi writes:

The Arts and Crafts Movement of late 19th century England professed to democratize art and the production wares. The most prominent character of the Movement was poet, craftsman and socialist William Morris. I claim that today open source philosophy and peer production combined with 3D printing technology represents a similar philosophy about the democratization of production as the 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement. 3D printing is a nascent technology which allows the physical rendering (prototyping) of computer models. As The Arts and Crafts Movement was opposed to machines, I try to ascertain to what extent the Movement’s opposition toward the machine extends and what it is based on. Therefore, I discuss the machine’s two-sided role as, on the one hand, the destroyer of art, and on the other hand, the saviour of art.

The Arts and Crafts Movement and 3D printing along with its related philosophies are connected by their endeavour to make the production of wares more accessible to ordinary people. They also share ideas about co-operative work, the strive for quality instead of profits, and a kind of socialism. In the upcoming future, if current trends persist, it is foreseeable that progress toward an Arts and Crafts vision of society will take place. The concepts of art, handcraft and machine work have been, and still are, in a state of constant change. This entails that other related concepts will change, too, such as the concepts of authenticity and uniqueness, which are definitive concepts of the era of handmaking, and they will begin to denominate new, contemporarily more relevant phenomena. My discussion of Lewis Mumford’s concepts (Megamachine, polytechnics, monotechnics) details that the role of the machine as the destroyer or the saviour of art is contingent on the ideology of the man who wields power over the machine. In this light the Movement’s opposition toward the machine appears more as opposition toward the prevailing capitalist system rather than as simple Luddism.

I study the Arts and Crafts Movement through the texts of its members paying special attention to the writings of its father character William Morris. As 3D printing is still an emerging field of technology my study material, aside from academic articles, also includes news articles, popular literature, lectures and interviews that I have conducted myself. Study material on peer production and open source is based on academic literature. This thesis falls under cultural criticism in which I apply comparative analysis.”