Electronic handicrafts: A chance for regional workplaces?

Can we expect a renewal of craftsmaking?

Christine Axe, German ‘new crafts’ pioneer, thinks so:

Excerpt:

(I tried to improve on the english translation I received – MB)

“At the end of the era of “mass production”(Piore/Sabel) today we note the perspective of a “post-industrial” structural change which condenses itself in the model of the “virtual production” (Davidow/Mallone). This model of production and economics, developed on the base of new technologies, in the past was mainly examined from the perspective of the industry and is discussed in the contemporary literature as “mass-Customization” (B.Joseph Pine) or “clients individual mass-production” (Frank Piller).

But the new technologies are not only a new challenge for the industry but also for the handicraft. For a joiner, the example in this study, 10 to 15% of all enterprises are connected with the internet and have CNC-machines. So for the first time since the beginning of the industrialisation 150 years ago the handicraft is technologically and economically competitive.

Nevertheless many requirements still need to be met for a renaissance of a workman’s production. Using the particular forces of the new informational and computer-controlled production – technology an extensive structural change is necessary who embraces like the shoemakers the whole process chain – development of a product, clients-communication, production and distribution.

The neo-handicraft kind of production which is characterised by some features like production of single pieces, direct clients contact, use of universal tools, small working units and decentralized structures, requires and favours both in industries and the handicraft sector a “neohandicraft style of production” as well as “virtual design”.

For Ruskin and William Morris and also for other representatives of Arts and Crafts the mechanical production of “art” and of pretentiously designed products lied beyond the possible. An estimation that related to the technological standard of the machines at the end of the 19th century was quite clear. The contrast of the mechanical products and the results of genuine arts and crafts for every artificial educated observer of that time had to be a real catastrophe.

It was the beginning of the “industrial design” which at least with the “Bauhaus” creates the bridge towards a new, “functional” aesthetics.

The vision of an electronic handicraft might perhaps stand at the end of a process which has the target that the handicraft assumes the new arranging possibilities which result in the flexible tools and transform them in an economic successful model of production and consumption. To this we need laboratories and workshops in which the artistic use of the new technological and designing possibilities are in the centre of professional formation and experimental production. Locations of freedom and communication in a quickly changing world who is always seeking its (individual or collective) suitable shape. The gateway Hamburg might not be a bad place for this.”

(thanks to Franz Nahrada for the pointer)

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