This article was taken from the June 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Over the past 18 months, Lucy Johnston has been scouring the globe for progressive artists. After investigating 400, she noticed a trend that she calls digital-artisan -- combining the classical skills of a crafts worker with tools once reserved for the automotive and aerospace industries. "The digital world isn't replacing humans, it's enhancing what humans can make," explains London-based curator and author Johnston, 36. "The two can work together to create objects that couldn't have been made purely by hand or purely by machine." In her new book Digital Handmade, Johnston chronicles 80 of the artists at the forefront of this movement. The artists are diverse in how they tap into advanced digital tools – from using 3D printing to building gigantic moulds for traditional bronze casting, to accessing architectural virtual-wind-testing programs to digitally alter porcelain vases. Johnston points to artists such as British textile designer Nadia-Anne Ricketts, who created software that allows her to visualise music, so she can then weave the patterns into fabric. "Just because you're using a computer, a lot of people think you're cheating," says Johnston. "But it still takes thousands of hours of skilled work to create the final piece."
And these objects are not just significant in terms of aesthetics. "Some of these techniques and technologies will actually impact on everyday consumer culture," says Johnston. "They are what mass consumer culture is going to be." One example is Dutch designer Joris Laarman's furniture series, which envisions a future in which furniture is not stored and transported -- instead, consumers download and 3D-print the parts to build it themselves. "Everyone in the book is a pioneer," says Johnston. "They're inventing techniques." WIRED asked Johnston to curate a few of her favourites.
- Nautilus, 2012Belgian artist Wim Delvoye's CAD-designed sculpture is made from thousands of pieces of laser-cut steel.
- Marquise Pear Light, 2014Ceramicist ValissaButterworth, from Australia, 3D prints white shades before slip-casting them in plain porcelain.
- Stratigraphic Porcelain, 2012Each piece in the series, 3D-printed in layers of clay by Belgian studio Unfold, is assigned its own source code.
- Louis Table, 2010London-based Gareth Neal hand-chisels his CNC-routed pieces to reveal the timber and classical forms beneath.
- One in a Million Bird, 2013The series of one million unique rings by Michael Cornelissen are 3D printed using varying software algorithms.
- Bloom, 2010Michael Eden from Cumbria employs selective laser-sintering -- he then hand-finishes the nylon with a ceramic coating.
- Venturi Stool, 2014The Venturi fluid-flow effect inspired Assa Ashuach's glass-reinforced plastic and airbrushed, polished design.
- Fish Bracelet, 2011Michaella Janse van Vuuren made the piece in one run using a multi-material Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 3D printer.
- Era Uma Vez, 2011Guto Requena from Brazil used recordings of his grandmother reading stories to make his set of glass vases
Digital Handmade is out on May 19
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
