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CLUSTER CRAFTS FAIR

Dear readers, Today we turn our attention to some of the new horizons that craft practices can look towards, bringing you an interview with Charlotte Nordmoen, a design researcher currently a PhD candidate from the Media and Arts Technology programmet at Queen Mary University London.

We first came across Charlotte’s work at Central Saint Martins, during her graduate degree show from MA Material Futures, where her robotic prototype humanMADE drew major attention for by mechanically spinning pottery with a mechanical arm finished with a “human” finger.

Now part way through her PhD, Nordmeon speaks to us about her craft-based exploration of materiality and the relationship between labour, technology and creativity, drawing out new design understanding.

Cluster Crafts Journal will continue profiling innovation in all craft disciplines, meeting practitioners who push forward disciplines and open up new opportunities. More coming soon.

Your current research stages workshops with craft practitioners, investigating human-computer interaction, the grain of digital materiality and craft-based inquiry. Could you explain briefly the processes you take participants through and what their reaction has been to this type of making experience?

I was specifically interested in understanding how people make sense of unfamiliar materials through hands-on exploration.

The workshops are centred around using magnetic fields as a material for crafting new sensors. These sensors consist of a conductive element such as wire, conductive thread or conductive tape, a non-conductive element such as textiles, foam, paper, and a magnet. The way the sensors are constructed determine both their sensing capabilities and how they are interacted with. The output of the sensor is read by a Bela microcontroller and for the workshops were sonified as a way to give the craftspeople ‘access’ to the otherwise immaterial magnetic field.

At the beginning of the workshop, I introduce the sensor technology and how it works by using some examples of sensors I have made. I let all the participants explore these sensors themselves before asking them to recreate or make a sensor inspired by the examples as a way to get making. Depending on the group size everyone presents their sensor and explores each other’s sensors before starting the next round of making.

How has the reaction from crafts practitioners been to this process and the technologies you’re using?

The response has been very positive. Many craftspeople are a bit wary of working with technology - but these workshops offer almost a craft approach to making technology, where material engagement and experimentation is more important than getting LEDs to blink or writing bits of code. The materials I bring to these workshops are for the most part familiar for craft practitioners, and the skills needed to develop interesting sensors are craft skills more than mechanical or electrical engineering skills.

I think the slightly mysterious nature of the technology itself is interesting. It is difficult to describe what sensors made in this way are and what they sense.

Your project humanMADE (2016) raised the potential of AI industrial displacement of potters and by extension other craft practitioners, although a hypothetical proposition at the time a lot has changed in the past four years, do you think in the future we might see this type of disruption?

It depends. In humanMADE I was interested in querying the economic system driving the change from human labour to machines. It is not a given that creative workers will be displaced; however, in a market economy driven by profit growth, it seems more likely. I highly doubt that it will happen to pottery makers anytime soon though. Economic gain is rarely the key motivation for making a living from craft practice.

Increased automation does not have to mean the end of skilled creative work. Some researchers such as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams argue that with the right social framework automation could create a social utopia where people have more time to spend on the things they like.

In The Creativity Code (2019) Marcus de Sautoy recounts a concert in which music aficionados were fooled into thinking that a piece by the AI composter Emmy was a legitimate work by Chopin. Do you think machine creativity will ever be comparable to our own?

I think the idea of machine creativity is slightly misleading as the algorithms running behind any machine creativity have been written by people. The AI has also been trained by a dataset put together (and sometimes carefully labeled) by people. The resulting “creativity” holds the assumptions and ideas of the creators of the AI system. I think Brian Eno’s work on generative music is a good example of the potentials of these types of technologies. He takes authorship of the music-making system and at the same time acts as a facilitator for people to make their own music within the framework he’s created.

In the workshops you run, do you ever meet a resistance from craft practitioners and creatives to exploring these forms of technology?

If anything it had almost the opposite focus. I specifically wanted to work with craft practitioners because of their skills and knowledge - much of which is based in the body and is still very difficult to replicate in machines.

The people attending the workshops were a self-selecting group of designers with an interest in or curiosity for technology. Some of the participants were a little scared at first, but I think that has more to do with the expectation of technology being something difficult to understand rather than a fear of being replaced with robots. There was some anxiety among the older generation of craft practitioners I spoke with. In particular, people who make and sell goods were anxious. However, these types of worries have been around since the industrial revolution.

Through your career you’ve moved between various models of educational institutions, from London College of Fashion to MA Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, and most recently Queen Mary University of London for your PhD. How have you felt those shifts and do you find differences in the types of or approaches to creativity?

It has been less about the institutional approach to creativity and more about my own journey. I’ve been lucky to study on courses with a strong creative ethos of their own, working in some way independent of the rest of the school.

I did my undergrad at LCF in costume design and at the time, I was really interested in clothes, but did not want to be part of the fashion industry. I liked how the course taught me the craft of making and designing costumes, although I barely worked in the field after graduating.

Material Futures let me combine my love of craft and making with research - allowing me to explore the socio-political context of design and making. I enjoyed the multidisciplinary approach to making and design, encouraging us to explore beyond our comfort zones and collaborate with experts in fields other than our own.

Now, I’m almost halfway through an interdisciplinary PhD at the Media and Arts Technology programme at Queen Mary. It’s not a practice-based PhD, however, I still get to do a lot of making as it turns out that some forms of engineering have a practice too.

Finally, we’re living in a peculiar time, how has your practice adapted to the changes and do you have any advice for other makers?

In regards to my research, I have had to adapt to a constrained working environment. I’m currently developing an apparatus for a research study into hand carving; working from home means I have to work with what I’ve got rather than make use of the brilliant workshop facilities we have on campus.

Spending so much time at home has also given me the opportunity to make a dent in the big collection of yarn I have built up over the years. I find knitting helps take my mind off the research work I’m doing.

As for advice for other makers, now might be a good time to challenge yourself, or try something you’ve always wanted to try but didn’t have the time or the confidence for. But don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re not the most productive right now, just take one day at a time.

Thank you for reading,
Pita & Elliott Burns