Comments on: Pro-Craftsmanship, Anti-Virtuosity

By: edbice

edbice — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:05:42 +0000

david, always nice to read your writing. great observations. sparked a bit of thinking about another aspect of the move to digital crafts. i found myself, as a person who has spent time as a craftsperson in the traditional sense–chisel to wood–thinking about the graph that shows the rate of tool change/evolution against the changing nature of craft. One of the lovely things about being a craftsperson–and perhaps this is the truer definition of a craft, is the sense that you are belonging to a tradition–that the way you move your fingers across the guitar frets or the certain slant of the chisel to the piece of black walnut has an intelligence that not only indicates your learning but also locates you alongside hundreds and thousands of years of those who have dedicated themselves similar pursuits. to say, there is a belonging. Not surprising, then, that the ‘early social networks’ aggregated around trades, etc.

The point is that the digital craftsperson–in the sense of the blogger or wikipedian or the coder–must show their craft explicitly by moving through the tools of their trade as quickly as they are replaced. The fall of the professional and the rise of the amateur has as much to do with the fact that the amateurs do not have the institutional (or technological) inertia that tends to surround the professional. So, the new craft is in a way the antithesis of the traditional notion of the craftsperson. To be totally clear, it is wonderful and I love the product of this digital workshop and I would encourage people to show up on your porch and podcast conversations with you if you really took the apple crate of books to the country. However, there is a new kind of virtuosity that we might not notice in our own digital restlessness–it shows up when I need to explain to my father what a hashtag is.

By: El Oso » Archive » No More Opera

El Oso » Archive » No More Opera — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:42:51 +0000

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By: El Oso » Archive » [Brazil] A Ministry of Culture for the 21st Century

El Oso » Archive » [Brazil] A Ministry of Culture for the 21st Century — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:57:26 +0000

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By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:55:41 +0000

David, I really enjoyed this piece. I’m in the middle of a sensory experiment at the moment, so excuse the short form.

I try to be a craftsman in what I do, but I don’t discount virtuosity as either a negative or as antithetical to craftsmanship. Striving to be the best at what they do is I’m sure the driving motivation of many who become craftsman in their realms.

I have met many craftsman winemakers who strive to make the bea wine and that comes through in the product that the produce and have to stand behind and are proud of. Same for craft distillers. The pursuit of perfection, while fated for failure, is what drives so much innovation and what I think you are calling craftsmanship.

As for not wanting to play with a more skilled guitarist, that is a manifestation of a feeling of relative inadequacy as much as anything else. If you were all as good as he was, you would have felt just fine playing with him. The boredom of hearing a superior guitarist does not have to do with his virtuosity but with a gap in skill that prevented you from being comfortable playing with him.

Again, great piece. You are a craftsman thinker and writer.

Greg