The truth is that I love, love, love writing with actual writing implements as opposed to a keyboard. Don't get me wrong... I love email and word processing just as much as the next person, but there's something so personal and lovely about holding a pen in my hand and writing words.
All my poems start on paper before they make it to the keyboard. All my jewelry designs start in my sketch book before they make into metal.
But let's be clear, I am not anti-technology... my computer is an important design tool that I use just as much as my pencil and ruler and templates. Some of the things I create would be much less without the aid of my computer. I am not anti-technology. I am pro-balance.
I have seen objects that literally could not have existed in the real world without Computer Aided Design or 3D printing... the forms too "M.C. Escher," literally impossible to fabricate or carve by hand. And on the other side of the coin, I have seen objects in museums that needed a maker's touch, a finger print, the delicate evidence of skilled hands... there are just some things that computers do not understand.And as in all things, there are camps, each arguing the virtues of the different approaches. I make things, (and I've already told you how much I love pens), so it should be obvious that I err on the side of handmade... but like I said: balance. There can be a crispness to objects that hands just can't quite manage, an exactness. But there can be a tension created by plans gone awry, when materials just don't behave the way they're "supposed to" and something better, inspired happens.
Machines take this tension away, computers cannot comprehend the beauty of plans gone awry... usually plans gone awry lead to blue screens and lost data, unbalanced binary code. It's the job of the maker to decide when to let the crispness take over and when to let the natural order and possible chaos rule the day. Balance... it's something I'm working on.
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