What is A Hand-Made Object?
A hand-made object is not something that is necessarily entirely made by hand, nor free from any division of labor. A custom chef's knife forged by a blacksmith may be considered hand-made, even as the blacksmith takes advantage of steel that has been extracted using mining equipment and mechanical processes that are very much the instigators of mass reproduction. Similarly, a one-off painting or sculpture may be considered hand-made, even as the artist uses paints or other materials that have been manufactured by a mechanical process. We are not at a point where hand-made implies that all aspects of a work of art (including its very materiality) are free from mechanisation. At present, hand-made implies that the bulk of the labor associated with the creation of the piece as it is understood (rather than its constituent components) has been carried out with a personal touch by a practitioner with a vested interest in the outcome. Many items of mass reproduced clothing may be considered to be hand-made owing to the large investment of human labor in their production, however, these items are very much the product of the age of mass reproduction. The involvement of the hand is not enough to guarantee the stamp of hand-made, rather, the sense of touch is implied, which involves the entire human sensorium. To make an object by hand one must conceive of it, one must plan it, one must work the materials, and one must be personally invested in it. It is not necessary that the hands be involved at all, what is important is the return of the individual to a host of roles concerned with the totality of the object rather than merely its components. It is a return to a holistic sense of the object, which in turn views the object as a reflection of its creator. In the present time, the hand-made object is something which one can purchase with a fairly clear conscience.
How Did We Get Here?
But aren't mass reproductions the promise of the modern age? No more are works of art or quality products the exclusive purchases of the bourgeois, now everyone can enjoy the same commodities. Mass reproduction ensures a certain uniformity as well, we can all listen to the same music, appreciate the same art, wear the same clothes. An end to differences and division, a great levelling of culture! Why have we rebelled so violently against this non-hierarchical promise? Simply put, the age of mass reproduction is drawing to an end, its death spurred on by the emergence of electric media and a new era of tribalization. Electric media connects us nearly instantaneously, and it puts us in touch with one another. Our media and devices serve as extensions of our senses and their speed and connectivity enable us to bypass the conventions of a mediating formal culture. Our electric senses are more organic than any of our mechanical extensions ever could be, becoming responsive, and this responsiveness promises a level of personalization that we are beginning to expect and demand. In a world that is everywhere connected, the familiar loses out. We crave novelty and differentiation.
The mechanical age has also fallen far short of its lofty promises. There has been a dark side to mass reproduction – the dehumanising effects of the machine. Far from simply eliminating the repetitive and 'dull' portions of a work, mechanisation has increasingly eliminated the most pleasurable and rewarding aspects of human labor. Physically holding the paper and continually viewing the work gives the artist a connection to the eventual purchaser who will return to the work over time and view it in different lights in a way that is of a different character from the production of a digital work that is only printed as a last step, its production having been completed on a screen. Indeed the latest developments in the realm of digital art have all been focused on approximating to greater levels of fidelity the tactility that is lost in the transition from analogue to digital. Tablet technology is currently focused on drawing direct on screen, with increasing degrees of pressure sensitivity and a focus on achieving the most pleasurable 'texture' for the drawing surface. In short, the goal is to replicate the immediacy, the ease, and the tactility of drawing directly on paper. There is increasingly a recognition that the process by which the object is made is just as important as the product itself, for this process impacts not only the final product (sometimes in subtle and other times profound ways), but it also affects the maker and the environment. Makers are no longer distant or separate from consumers, we are connected to them with electric speed and ease, so that we can not ignore their plight, and their ability to enjoy their work is tied up with our ability to enjoy the fruits of their labor. This connectivity also creates a conversation so that distinctions between consumers and makers become blurred, and where a community participates in the creation of things rather than a minority, the emergence of standards arises – we all demand better.
What is the Role of the Hand-Made?
Even as we yearn for a return to the hand-made object, the shadow of mass reproduction looms large and it is not clear that we can escape it. Mass reproduction, in spite of its pitfalls, offers decisive advantages. It would appear that the role of the hand-made object is to exist as a necessary but small relief valve for self expression against an inexorable tide of conformity; a revolutionary under-current to preoccupy consumers and makers who otherwise might disrupt the status quo. However, just as the appetite for the hand-made has been instigated by the development of our new techno-tribal world, so too has electric technology begun to infiltrate the methods of mechanical reproduction, making possible the undoing of the old assumptions underpinning the age of mass reproduction. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing in common parlance, opens up not just the possibility space for new forms (geometries previously conceivable only on the page or computer screen can now be physicalized), but also for new levels of personalization. Additive manufacturing does away with the specialized product-specific tools and technologies of the mechanical era, enabling the ready
development of a diverse host of forms from no more than a simple electronic blueprint. Organisational systems consisting of a high degree of labor division are beginning to give way to high levels of automation, negating the need for a great many staff. The end vector of this development is the possibility for a reunification between the maker and the owner of capital. It is now becoming possible to be a single creator, using sophisticated software to assist where formerly whole teams of people were required. While this automation has the potential risk of producing uniform goods, it also returns the individual to the center of creation and allows the maker to dive in to any aspect as required to apply a personal touch. As automation increasingly infiltrates all sectors of the economy, the demand for the personal and the hand-made can be expected to increase, and indeed the role of the artist may become the only viable mode of work left, as objects lacking a hand-made quality are out-competed by those produced by algorithms.
The hand made object also exists as a political entity. The all pervasive influence of capitalism has come to encompass every aspect of life in the modern world. People are encouraged to identify and associate with brands: false identities created to give face to the soulless machinations behind what we consume. The return to the hand made is then a refutation of the frame in which all interaction has been reduced to exchange and consumption. By eschewing the division between capital and labor, the hand made rejects the thesis of the profit motive as a worthwhile or satisfactory ambition, re-imbuing the term investment with non-monetary connotations.
As long as the hand-made is expensive it will remain a niche within the context of a larger soup of goods. However, exclusivity and expense are being decoupled by digital technology, which promises the ability for everyone to become a maker and for the hand-made to become the status quo. Automation, in eliminating whole sectors of jobs, will free up labor to move into the space of personalised craft. People will increasingly engage in the process of making items both for themselves and their neighbours, assisted by electric technology. Crucially, this depends upon a consumer desire for and insistence upon the hand-made, a preference for more expensive (albeit still affordable) goods with a personal touch over the inexpensive and endlessly reproduced. In the worlds of fashion, of art, and household items of persistence there is little doubt that the tide is turning this way and will only continue. Connected and communicating, modern consumer-producers are moving the dialogue and thereby the power away from centralised authority and out into the open from behind closed doors. With the making of products becoming increasingly plain for all to see, the brand fictions of the past decades are unable to persist. Only those products whose making process speaks to people, with which they identify, will be tolerated. Mechanisation that dehumanises will be dragged out of the shadows and wither in the burning light of mass shaming.
The Revenge
This new order doesn’t represent an elimination of the mass reproduced, merely a delegation to a less privileged status, while placing the hand-made in an appropriately more prominent position. After centuries of being pushed to the margins, the hand-made object is poised for a resurgence, taking center stage in people's daily lives and in the sphere of attention. It will be a revenge because it will come at the expense of the mass reproduced, displacing that which has come to define the age of mechanisation.
References
McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media. London: Routledge & K. Paul.
