Semi-Open Editorial Meeting: 'Technology and Craftspeople' (須藤望)
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Isn’t the Risograph one of the few “useless” machines still around today? The ink bleeds, the plates shift, and the color overlaps are impossible to predict.Both preparing the data and changing the ink require physical effort—using both hands and feet. Yet I still print with a Risograph. It is precisely in those errors that I find the value of printing. It is precisely in that lack of reproducibility that I am able to express my artisanal dedication. It is a seemingly “useless” machine in which a constant dialogue exists between the tool and the human.
In the past, “craftsmanship” was inseparable from the human body. Reading the wood, kneading the clay, forging the iron—within those very gestures lay the very essence of how we engage with the world. Yet as technology becomes standardized and optimized to function as a driving force within systems, craftsmanship is gradually stripped away from us.What Illich called “convivial tools ”—technology that coexists with humans—can no longer exist in its naive form.Will craftsmanship become nothing more than an operating manual for reproducibility and economic rationality, ultimately following the blueprint of “fully automated luxury communism ,” where even its creation and operation have been automated?
“Knowledge” is similarly in flux. An information environment optimized for search and feeds; mass-produced text and images; dating apps; the mindless swiping through short videos; filter bubbles.Passively consuming cyberspace amounts to a loss of reality. Within an optimized feed, it becomes unclear even what one is looking at. The closed loop appears to be the entirety of the world.
That’s when a 404 error appears. It’s the sensation of suddenly falling outside the designed experience. Standing before a screen displaying a space that shouldn’t exist, I sense the presence of something that might have been there—a “chilling sensation.” “Reality” returns, triggered by some chance occurrence.It might be the raw, everyday act of picking one’s nose; it might be the madness of dedicating one’s life to creation; or it might be an anonymous external element like a 404 error. But in any case, it is something that severs the circuit of optimized consumption. We must regain the tactile sensation of “knowing” once again.
Suddenly, I find myself picturing Akihabara’s electronics district. Street-level shops lined with parts and circuit boards, buildings whose exterior walls are covered with anime characters, and component shops tucked under elevated train tracks. Here, the craftsmanship of gadget enthusiasts thrives: homemade devices that operate outside standard specifications, electronic components of unknown purpose, and combinations never envisioned by manufacturers.At the same time, Akihabara is a district that has been multilayeredly reimagined through science-fiction and virtual imagery. Fictional characters are superimposed onto real architecture, creating a strange coexistence between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds. Here, the world beyond “404” has descended to earth.
Among the graduation projects that have garnered acclaim in recent years was one that took Akihabara as its subject. It posited that when the cultural assets and structures accumulated over many years are regarded as “topography,” and new cultures and architectural spaces are allowed to flourish upon them, a new, towering tree—a fusion of machine and human—rises there.In an era where the reality of “technique” and “knowledge” is shifting, what is being asked of us—as students of architecture—is the quality of our imagination when faced with “topography,” that is, architecture and the city as material entities imbued with power.
In this agenda, we will explore three questions in stages. First, the process by which technology is losing its “color.” Why is “technology with color” being lost, and how can it be regained? Next, we will consider what can serve as a foundation for constructing a “new reality” as the foundations of conventional reality are shaken.Finally, we will explore the potential of architectural and science-fictional imagination as a means of escaping both boring science fiction and boring cities. Moving back and forth between materiality and speculativeness, we aim to gauge the current state of craft, knowledge, and existence.
Craft and Texture
The modern era functions as a system in which craftsmanship becomes obsolete. Technology is subsumed by the logic of efficiency and standardization, gradually losing its distinctiveness. As “craft” is abstracted into “operating manuals” or “fully automated social designs,” the physicality and sense of place—that is, the texture—that once resided within technology is stripped away.As technology moves away from our immediate lives and becomes a cog in sophisticated systems, this leads not only to the loss of our rights to “things” but also to an existential anguish stemming from the loss of the “skills” we have honed over time.
Knowledge and Reality
The modern era—a system in which knowledge is automatically generated—is also a time when the foundations of traditional reality (materiality, singularity, and provenance) are being rendered obsolete by the mass production of AI. As the very boundary between “authentic” and “fake” dissolves, there are also instances where a different kind of reality emerges through AI.When image-generating AI extracts “local character,” or when AI edits residents’ voices to create a radio program, something is born that—though different from the original data—undoubtedly functions as the “voice of the town.”
Practice and Speculativeness
The modern era is a system in which imagination is increasingly optimized and templatized. The futures envisioned by creators and corporations are reduced to a sense of déjà vu, and visions of technology can no longer be conceived beyond the realm of efficiency. As the format of “futures already narrated in the past” continues to be reproduced, our ability to conceive truly new landscapes is being put to the test.The HCI “toy” debate highlights the tension between optimizing technology as a “convenient tool” and opening it up as a “toy for play and surprise.” How can our practices envision the future?
