Unlearning How to Build
A Stradivarius is an instrument that gains with time (recall antifragility), literally:
Despite being constructed by the workshop of Strad more than 300 years ago, the sound quality of these instruments improves with usage and gains value.
These are the most expensive instruments in the world right now.
Nobody today knows how to build an instrument like that.
Industrialization
It is self-evident that the industrialization of everything allows for no touch of human hand whatsoever.
Hey, but things are cheaper now!
Yes, because it is all mass-produced meaningless junk made with cheap materials.
Look around
What object in your field of view conveys any meaning? Any wisdom?
Who made your chair?
A human or a robot?
The only difference is that if it was a robot it means that the design was intended for the cheapest possible amount of resources.
What difference does that make?
Not much, really.
If it is one item you might not even notice it. But you may also not notice it at all when it is all the items in your house. And that is the point we've gotten to.
If you buy say a simple water bottle, it's all there:
the cheap logo (ugly)
the cheap casing (plastic)
This damages our culture and collective wisdom.
It dumbs down one’s aesthetic sensitivity and general good taste.
It hurts the mind, numbs our taste for good-looking objects.
Myth
Craft can convey mythology, embed it in the most unlikely and vulgar of places, to make them less vulgar and more relatable.
More human.
No wonder people feel “disconnected”1 and alienated:
We are surrounded by alien artifacts.
Craft can enrich items with the mythology of a culture.
There is a whole story playing out here.
Whoever rides this camel isn’t riding any camel. After hours of patient human handwork, it has now become singular.
You can imagine a child listening to the story and running its fingers through the relief knight. A tactile experience of craft that reminds and enhances the mythological context for this society.
Cinema
Movies and video games clearly lost any sense of craft these days.
While the first Star Wars movies had intricate handmade pieces, Disney’s recent The Mandalorian consists of projections and 3D VFX, much cheaper and faster.2
Of course, this makes the whole experience shallow and cheap.
Despite being from the same franchise, these are opposites on many levels:
One person at the camera filming a set that is an entire world created in miniature vs One actor in the scene, no world, and 10 people operating devices around him.
One armor is extremely ornate and full of craft while the other only reflects and has no content.
Disney is also doing many other titles, hence they aim at reducing costs, while George Lucas had full dedication to his vision.
The actor is the only thing they need on set (other than the floor), and all the rest is created virtually, which reduces costs enormously.
This is the epitome of modern film. The actor’s face is only visible for less than an hour in the whole series, and everything else is VFX.
The opposite of it would be something like theater, with crafted handmade scenarios and many very expressive actors.
Not to worry though, Zuckerboy is working to connect all of us.
Note the symbolism present here, the main character is that helmet. The helmet has no ornaments and is extremely reflective (that’s why they didn’t use greenscreens but projections on a 360 degree set).
This reflexivity and lack of content or intrinsic beauty is very characteristic of modernity.