Post-Digital Craft: Defining Digital Risk

This thesis seeks to define what the research refers to as digital risk. Risk in the making of an artifact was mostly eliminated with Fordist principles of manufacturing and efficiency. However, in a post-digital era, these principles no longer fully apply. Although mass-customization and micro-manufacturing still do not rival large industry, the process is demonstrating promise. The shifting to customization allows designers now to reengage in the production of custom artifacts with the aid of digital applications and fabrication techniques. Digital fabrication has been researched and is continuing to develop, but the unique post-digital question of this thesis is how risk, an element all but eliminated from our process, can be reintroduced productively. Intentionally taking risks while working with digital applications does yield results not otherwise achieved. This thesis demonstrates that digital risk is a valuable principle within post-digital processes. The experiment in this thesis, Digital Ceramic Risk (Section 4), explores the entanglement of the post-digital and post-human condition by examining risk through the crafting of a hybridized digital and physically made artifact. These experiments were conducted in three phases. Phase one profiles the creation of a digital tool that enabled hybridized manual and digital ceramic printing. Using this 3D printer, the research Identified risk variables through documented tests. Variables such as material failure, tool failure, and digital errors were tracked and analyzed. Phase two demonstrates a high level of skill and craft through the use of hybridized methods. By applying the identified risk factors from Phase one, the outcomes of the experiments generated newly crafted forms that otherwise would not have been realized through an only digital process. Phase three demonstrated optimized printing skills and craft through sustained practice and improved digital tools. The outcomes of this phase created a visually distinct collection of vessels. Each vessel was modified as it was printed to create a version of the control vessel that was digitally modeled, and that generated the g-code controlling the 3D printer. These improvised artifacts were re-digitized and dimensionally quantified into data. This data was encoded into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) database for the propagation of an infinite number of new vessels. This extension of the handmade object into an AI database is a human infusion into the post-human cybernetic network. The case studies and experiments contained within this thesis demonstrate how craftspeople can now both exist in the material world while still existing in the broader post-digital and post-human condition.