POSITION PAPER: Joep Hurkmans

Joep Hurkmans
Position Paper Digital Craft
2018

Me as a graphic designer:

I start to form myself as a designer who works from the process and experimentation. I am a maker, I like working with my hands. I am looking for the challenge between analog and digital, but the end point will often be physical. These physical designs are focused on a combination of typography, illustration and free form experiments. This visual language that I have developed in recent years stands for recognition of my work.

My Craft:

I think this process is an important aspect when you talk about my craft. This is also the working method I am linking to this. An interesting area that I am currently in is creating the visual analogue image through machines and new technologies. A number of possibilities emerge here. You learn new machines and new technology and you try to make them yours in a unique way. There are no limitations in these working methods and thoughts, everything is possible. If you look at a machine or technology in a way like this, you can see it as an extension of the human body.

Perspective:

If I look at the future in this perspective, how this will develop within our profession, then I think of different possibilities. I think that in the future we will increasingly depend on the new technology that keeps on developing. What interests me in this is that there is a permanent learning curve, these robots / machines also make mistakes. These mistakes that are made are and remain human. So I want to focus on this, the mistakes or errors that these machines are going to make. Using a machine in the way it is not intended and in my visual expressions focusing on these errors. It is a part where you can not get a grip on as a designer, to see the beauty of it seems valuable to me.

I am now working on a project where I focus on both graphic visual areas in combination with digital craft. I am working in collaboration with a fellow student to give other functions to machines within the academy. Here we use the Affordance theory by James Bibson: "James Bibson was influential in changing the way we consider visual perception. According to his theory, perception of the environment inevitably leads to some course of action. Affordances, or clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action, are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing.

What we want to achieve is that we will interpret a machine differently and have it work in a different way so that it influences the outcome of the work. At this moment we are applying the theory to the CNC machine. We have made a device that we can connect an airbrush to this milling machine instead of the drill. This means that this machine does not remove any material, but we can spray paint and generate an image by means of code.

Recent project:

CNC Air_BRUSH

The focus of this projects is to find new techniques of printing. Using machines and the hand -made into an art form. Foccusing on the exploration of machines. For this project we are working together with the cnc machine.

The CNC machine is intended for milling and to remove material. We have made an extension that you can connect to the machine so you can air-brush instead of mill. You can send digital artefacts to the machine. In this way you make artificial creations that a human hand only can create in collaberation with the machine. The combination of this perfect in-put and the analog looking out-put generates imagery that is both analog and digital.

This inspires other creators to raise the questing on how its made, and the possibilities of this tool.