Decoding Crafts – the digital transmission of tacit knowledge and material expertise

Is intangible knowledge transferable? How can we make embodied knowledge accessible to all?  In the crafts these questions are of paramount concern as we slip from the age of Human Intelligence ‘HI’ into the age of Artificial Intelligence ‘AI’. How do we transfer centuries of knowledge and experience to a new generation of conservators, researchers, crafts people, artisans and designers – if AI, robots and 3D printers can just do it for you? This lecture explores these factors whilst focusing on the breadth of ceramic practices, proposing scalable, transferable methodologies across learning networks.

As part of our tangible cultural heritage, historic objects play an essential role in the construction of our social memory, Objects have different meanings and uses for different individuals and communities. Research on the history of objects proposes to reflect on “how persons make things and things make persons” (Tilley, 2013). The acquisition of Material Intelligence (Adamson, 2018) is essential to grounding intangible cultural knowledge towards a future of digitally enhanced crafts, were crafts person and machine work together. Tacit Knowledge, which Polanyi described as ‘knowing more than we can tell’ is the hard-earned embodied knowledge gained through personal experience, what we might describe as expertise, which in turn can be understood to be the experience of having done something for a really long time, that you become really skilled at it. However, ‘the complexity of skills and forms of mastery developed in real time performances’ what Siburn calls Gesture Knowledge which requires the incorporation of another layer of knowledge to encourage machine learning between crafts person and co-bots, resulting in the preservation and transmission of expertise between machine and human.

The Erasmus funded CRAFT project brought together consortium of partner HEIs including University of the Arts London, Weissensee School of Art Berlin, KHiO Oslo, UMPRUM Prague and NOVA University Lisbon, supported by selected associated partners, with the express intention of having a discipline overview across Europe.

Decoding Ceramics is a new network and open educational resource that maps ceramic knowledge across makers studios, workshops, manufacturers, research centres and universities. It assesses the salience of practice to place, builds a visual and oral record of specialist processes and techniques, leveraging digital technologies to effectively share this knowledge for future learners, teachers, craftspeople, and enthusiasts.

Please note that the lecture will last one hour and there is an option to head to the bar afterwards for self funded drinks.