Artisan to Automation: Value and Craft in the 21st Century

Abstract This article focuses on contemporary craft as a transactional phenomenon in the twenty-first century. It explores the influence of automation technology – such as laser-cutters and robotics – arguing that our approach to automation has gone unchanged since the Industrial Revolution. Practical implementations of automation reinforce a Marxist ideology that labor is placed under threat and individuals stripped of skill. By focusing on craft as a fundamentally transactional activity between individuals, the essay confronts preconceived ideas regarding automation. It steps through a series of theoretical frameworks including Wittgenstein, Arendt and Marx to unpack the relationship between labor, value and craft. Using two case-studies – one designing aided by a laser cutter, the other drawing portraiture with an industrial robot – the author offers a conceptual shift from considering production to be “from” machines to production “with” machines. I use this shift within the case-studies to offer a delineation of streams for approaching and ultimately reclaiming craft from machines.