Digitalisation & artisans'

Rehab Khan & Momina Orakzai, from TMUC-Rawalpindi, Pakistan, have written a research paper on the following topic: Digitalisation - a smart investment for the artisans'? This blog is to exhibit this research in an interactive form. For more details contact [email protected] / [email protected]

[3rdworldartisans]

✨ Welcome to our blog! ✨

Here’s a small brief of what it’s about:

In today's life, living without technology creates a huge gap between us and the surroundings, both physically and psychologically. We feel disconnected and distorted, almost as if there was no life before technology. However, in the art & design field, digitalization has been a double-edged sword, as artisans & workers have been immensely impacted from it, both negatively and positively. Considering all recent technological advancements, digitalization has completely transformed traditional methods of working into a virtual platform. This comes in handy when we talk about architecture & large production sites, however, cultural crafts like handmade jewelry, pottery, shoes, bags, etc. have been downgrading slowly.

There are many reasons to explain this downgrade. In an intro, I can only outline the map of this blog, so here's an essence:

traditional crafts make use of classical art so it's difficult to transfer to a digital media,

tangible canvases are unbiased,

tangible items have a high value,

impractical in third-world countries due to lack of education & resources + a lot more.

Coherently, all these factors combine and become a huge canon ball that is undefeatable, and eventually capital invested by the government for the implementation of digitalization goes to waste.

In this blog, we are going to refute & support our statements with credible sources and share primary survey results for extra credibility.

Stay tuned!

[3rdworldartisans]

Section 6: Overall Impact of Technology on the Arts

The arts organizations represented in the survey tend to agree with the notions that the internet and social media have “increased engagement” and made

This study is the best to reference to when talking about internet influence on art & design! 

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Through the digital reproduction of art, the spirit of the artwork is stripped of its aesthetic and historical motion. Its character within cultural and religious tradition is entirely detached.  People and artists have been slowly running away from traditional and cultural art and artists will soon lose their originality of their creation and ideas of work.

(Mohamed Zaher, 2012)

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Contradicting the pessimistic aura of digitalization in craft culture

As opposed to our previous post, we’ll be discussing the possible positive outcomes of digitalization in the artisans work environment, to prevent biasness of opinion. 

Digital art is faster than traditional media.

When working digitally, the artist does not need to worry about the material tarnishing or destroying his product in any way, except other technical issues. Everything is already available, and all they would need is to get their software. Digital art doesn’t require any intricate editing for publishing work like handmade jewelry detailing, or final touches for oil canvases. Check out this pin to see the quick process: https://pin.it/6576RBI 

Digital art is more practical than traditional media.

Once you make a mistake you can undo it with one click or redo it. Traditional art cannot be handled likewise, everything you put on paper or canvas or wood will most likely stay there, once it’s done, it’s done. Therefore, there isn’t a lot of room for mistakes when working traditionally, this could be one way in which capital is lost due to damaged products

Digital media can be duplicated very accurately for variations of the same artwork.

It’ll stay unaffected by physical means, such as traditional art needs to be preserved and varnished frequently so that it’ll stay original. Digital art has unlimited directions of exploration, there are so many different kinds of brushes and functions to work with. Patterns and prints can be repeated or reused on different products without starting from scratch. Additionally, it allows you to relocate or edit your components separately, e.g.; fashion collections have similar prints in a single collection to depict the theme accordingly, this feature therefore makes it easy to experiment with different ideas. 

A useful tool for artists during COVID. As the pandemic everything went through lock down, while many artist organizations went through online virtual.  Many organizations held an online fashion show to showcase their work for example Gucci showcased her 2021 collection on digital media.

However, digital art can delude you into thinking that you could draw without the need to learn the foundations, skills or working with different kinds of medium. While it makes our lives easier and saves our time, it’s not a replacement for learning these foundations. It’s common for a beginner to try to get something right over and over rather than learn what works.

However, there is always a necessity to educate yourself about the basics, like the proportions of human body to create figurative art, perspective to begin shading, gestures to further learn drawing, composition, light, shading & other concepts. The more you know, the better you work, regardless of the tool you use. 

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Reasons why digitalizing the craft culture is pessimistic:

This development opens door to infinite options, and significantly increases the opportunity cost for the artisans. While this might be an advantage in most cases, however, in this situation it confuses the artist in many aspects, when they’re faced with myriad options, their hesitation is reflected in their work immediately. This hesitation can be in a form or mistakes, error, biasness etc. Their artworks could become repetitive and lack imagination, which could result in less creativity being produced. Moreover, digital work is vulnerable to theft and malware, even the strongest anti-virus and malware software have a very small percentage of uncertainty.

Roxana Boitel, (2019), “Famous paintings are being reproduced and altered by graphic designers and computer hackers at an increasing rate.” 

It isn’t practical or arguably only partially practical as the full implementation of it would only be possible in first world countries with huge private/public funds to spare. Eg: USA has only a very small percentage of primary sector businesses and are 100% digitally infused. For countries that operate in the primary and/or secondary sector almost completely would face a huge debt, both financially and economically. Eg.: Bangladesh has a huge production and artisans’ community that cannot afford to benefit from the digitalization of the work environment, rather they are vulnerable to the negative impacts caused by it.

High unemployment: digitalization at work results in a huge number of workers being redundant and a possible economic crisis. The contradictory statement used for this claim is “more jobs are made”, the new job slots that open up are less than the job slots being closed, so the unemployment factor stays. E.g.: initially 5 workers altogether work on the jewelry designing and sketching before the production process, after software introduction, all 5 workers are made redundant and one IT technician and a software expert has been hired, 3 jobs were lost anyway.

This proves that digitalization for traditional craftsmen would be inadvisable, as they are recognized for processing skills and makes it impractical. Digitalization cancels out the process work involved, making the whole point of handwork useless.