GLOSSARY

Blackboxing is based on the abstract notion of the black box, a machine that ingests material or information and outputs something different without ever revealing the mechanisms of transformation. According to Philosopher of Science Bruno Latour, “When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become” (Latour 304). This opacity creates an asymmetry of power between humans and nonhuman agents (machines, tools, materials, etc.), for the sake of improving efficiency.

As a product of technological success, blackboxing conceals histories of invention, trial-and-error, and tooling knowledge. By examining the effect of blackboxing in the arts, historians can explore the relationship between innovation, deskilling, and reskilling among labor groups, as well as less visible intersections of tools, makers, and materials.

See: Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

In The Nature & Art of Workmanship (1978), David Pye proposed this opposition, which is a more rigorous and precise way of understanding the opposition between hand and machine work. In workmanship of risk, the quality of a result is to some extent dependent on skill, rather than predetermined by the action of a tool. The maker's judgment, dexterity, and care are actively engaged throughout the process of making. The workmanship of certainty is observed in industrial processes, where the possible range of outcomes has been narrowed down through the application of tooling. Cutting a piece of wood with a handsaw is risky; with a circular saw, less so; with a laser-guided mill, not risky at all. Pye argued that every act of making and process can be positioned on the continuum from risk to certainty.

See: David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Embodied knowledge, also referred to as tacit intelligence, is experience gained and contained in physical rather than mental form. As Jennifer Roberts writes in her article, “Things, Material Turn, Transnational Turn,” “[...] the knowledge of how to make something is partially stored in the body, out of reach of abstract thinking or verbal communication, and is best transmitted through practice and imitation; it cannot be fully captured in instruction manuals or pattern books.” Examples of embodied knowledge include: the respective level of pressure it takes to chisel or carve different types of wood or score a piece of glass; the capacity to measure a substance by heft without apparatus; or the sense of how to position one’s body in relation to a material or tool.

As an internalized understanding of the actions and characters of tools and materials, embodied knowledge is intimately linked to material knowledge. Material intelligence is an understanding of the constraints, tendencies, and interior forces native to a substance and their respective responses to exterior objects or forces. Material intelligence often approaches objects as crystallizations of forces and flows within networks rather than static, self-contained artifacts. Embodied knowledge and material intelligence intersect in the use of tools

See: Jennifer Roberts, “Things, Material Turn, Transnational Turn.” American Art 31.2 (Summer 2017): 64-69.

Invisible labor is work that contributes to the making of an object, but remains difficult to detect in its finished form. Invisible labor may result from: tools that are destroyed in the process of making; cleaning, as both a discrete step in a process and a general making requirement; and maintenance work, such as tool sharpening. It is often occluded by blackboxing effects. For example, a casting mold often requires extensive labor and expertise. Molds are sometimes ephemeral, rarely preserved, and not usually exhibited with the objects they were used to make. Because such intermediary tools are physically distinct from the final form, they are often excluded from analysis. Traditional “women’s work” has often involved invisible work such as cleaning, housekeeping and carrying children to term, and has been historically marginalized. A consideration of invisible labor can be a feminist strategy to elevate such work, illuminating the hidden effort that lies behind objects and systems.

Though often associated with electronic systems (like sound speakers), technically feedback refers to any system in which an output is also an input. A simple example is hammering a nail. Each strike of the hammer drives the nail, but also registers the force and accuracy of the blow. This information is then used (probably unconsciously) to adjust for the next strike. The same subtle feedback loops occur in all hand making processes.

The term was influentially developed by Norbert Weiner, who adopted it as the basis of his theory of cybernetics. He proposed a useful definition of automation as a system that self-regulates based on feedback, offering none to the operator except in case of significant malfunction. Weiner points out that feedback can be positive or negative, either providing confirmation and thus encouraging repetition, or indicating inaccuracy and thus requiring correction.

See: Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1948.

The Hungarian scientist Michael Polyani distinguished between two types of awareness: focal and subsidiary. Both are modes of paying attention. In focal awareness, the mind actively attends to an object or action. In subsidiary awareness, the mind is still engaged with the given object but in a secondary capacity. Polyani emphasized that subsidiary awareness was not “unconscious.” Rather, it constitutes the perceptive field from which things emerge into focus, a process that he describes as “not a deduction but an integration.”

It is helpful to distinguish between these two types of awareness in discussions of making, and also to juxtapose them with the state of distraction. An effective maker will certainly be able to put their focal awareness to good use, in the application of a tool to a specific task. But skill may actually reside more in the depth and richness of a maker’s subsidiary awareness – their holistic understanding of the productive context.

See: Michael Polyani, “The Structure of Consciousness,” http://www.polanyisociety.org/mp-structure.htm

A theory developed originally by Aristotle, in which being is understood as matter (hyle, originally meaning “wood”) shaped into a form (morphe). Within this philosophical model, matter is held to be a constant, which can take on new forms when things change. Every object has both matter and form – neither can exist without the other. This contrasts with other ontological models, including Plato’s, in which a form is conceived as a transcendental ideal, in which specific physical objects and entities participate.

As a long-lasting and influential theory, hylomorphism has structured attitudes toward making down to the present day. This can give rise to misperception. For example, many mistakenly believe that artists or makers can have pre-existing or abstract forms in their head, which they simply impose on to matter, giving it shape and meaning. Hylomorphism need not involve such a dismissive attitude to materiality, however. Within the Aristotlean tradition there is an acceptance that “proximate” matter (that is, the stuff of which something is made) does give rise to some of an object’s qualities, either by resisting or steering a maker’s work. If both form and matter are conceived in this way, so that their relation to one another is also understood as dynamic and mutual, then hylomorphism can still help to think through acts of making.

By maneuver, we mean a basic physical operation that can be observed in multiple fields of making. Examples are: cutting, layering, turning, reversal, compression, heating and cooling, and weaving. Maneuvers tend to have significant conceptual and cultural resonance, and may be the basis of mythology or lore. Because they occur across artificially imposed categories and hierarchical structures, maneuvers are excellent ways to ‘see across,’ and understand continuities between fine art, science, labor, craft, engineering, and other arenas of activity.

Material intelligence is the understanding of the properties of things, and their responses to exterior effects. All humans are born with this innate capacity, but it must be fostered, like any other basic human faculty. Material intelligence often involves understanding objects within networks, rather than as static, self-contained artifacts. Makers are often deeply invested with it, but one can also develop material intelligence through use, or scientific study. It is a way of thinking that correlates closely to embodied knowledge, for it is often easier to grasp a material’s qualities through tactile rather than linguistic means.​

In the act of creation, the Maker does not simply impose ideas onto passive material, but must continually process information that feeds back from the making process. This demands material intelligence: an understanding of the properties of a substance and how it responds to tools and processes. One can see flow as a ‘cybernetic’ exchange, in the sense that the output of work is constantly adjusted by the input of that work’s result. A good example is hammering a nail, where the accuracy of each strike provides a guide to adjustment for the next.

Flow can also refer to large-scale exchange of commodities and information, as in worldwide container shipping, or the Internet. While such enormous networks seem totally different in kind from the type of bodily and material flow that happens in craft, they can be compared and in fact, it may be useful to think of these different types of flow as distinguished primarily by scale rather than kind. Explorations of material flows, whether at the size of a workshop or the entire globe, offer historians opportunities to look beyond finished objects, and connect them to political debates around material and labor in dynamic ways.

See: Ingold, Tim. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14.1 (June 2007): 1–16; and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

This idea is borrowed from the anthropologist Alfred Gell. He argued that technical processes have the power “of casting a spell over us so that we see the real world in enchanted form.” This derives, he thought, from the fact that a highly wrought object establishes an asymmetrical relationship with a viewer. Whether made using skilled craft, advanced technology, or even complex artistic concepts, the technical artifact confounds attempts to understand it completely. Gell pointed to elaborate weapons and canoes used by Oceanic tribes as an implementation of this effect.

Technological enchantment relates in complex ways to both material intelligence and blackboxing, in the sense that it arises from a failure to understand an act of making completely.

See: Alfred Gell, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology,” Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, ed. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton. Oxford: Oxford University, 1992.