User:Vera/minor/Research document

What did we knit?

A essay/ Research document about machines, objects and human feelings. We found a knitting machine: the Open Knit [1],[2]. We used this machine and adapted it for our purposes. This machine is only able to knit technically simple tube patterns. However, the idea that a machine is able to copy the result of a human craft, is super awesome in my opinion. Actually a lot of people are unaware that most knitted clothes are made bye knitting machine, who knits all your cloths. Please take a closer look at your one cloths.

In this essay I do not want to tell you about how to knit, but the charm of a knitting machine as an object and as a human made machine. In this way we can investigate and create some empathy between human kind and machines.

In this essay we will tell you about the steps we make from the traditional machine till the knitting machine that is creates as a human.

Preface/introduction

From graphic design to digital craft. Previously I have written in ‘my craft’ that I was afraid for computers. They didn’t do what I wanted maybe because I was ignorant on how to operate one. When I understood better how to deal with the computer I became less afraid and now I feel comfortable with digital objects. Before this art academy I did not have WhatsApp not even a mobile phone or even internet at my home. Not because I didn’t want it but I didn’t care about these intangible things. Always I was working with physical materials to make collages, lino’s or string beads. I really like to have material in my hands and have some control over its also with materials you have fast and quick prototypes allowing for quick visual results. But in this second school year I discovered the plotter. The plotter was the first digital application for which I had some intuition. It creates this blurry and glitchy appearance where I was looking for. It has completely changed my mind on what I could do with digital technology and increased my desire to work with it. After this experience I felt more confidence to work with electronical machines.

Also I read a lot, because I like reading a lot and especially Dutch or Flamish literature. But also Thomas More`s Utopia. In this project I rediscovered myself as a reader because I found so many interesting books about human- machines and object relations. Specially in Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. And hertzian and tales by Anthony Dunne and W. Benjamin - “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”: My interest in books exceeded the speed with which I could read them. All in all however I found many interesting new idease to facilitate what I wanted to do. In the end however the work is a practical application existing outside of the theory of books.

In this minor I was able to make something what I never thought I could make, namely an art object on the cutting edge of robotics, electronics and human craft. I’m happy with the results but there are still way more things to learn and I am still atearly stages of developing these robotics.

Abstract

We adopt a machine, a knitting machine. The knitting machine was left alone somewhere in the school. A machines where a lot of people ask what that machines was doing? Maybe because it doesn’t look to the real craft anymore. Maybe because it doesn’t looks as knitting machine? And why do we have machines in life that don't look any more like what it supposes to be, how do we humans used it before? Objects, products, machines keep getting more distant to human design and are starting to be more about the ritual and not how it works or made.

For example, the knitting machine. The knitting machine is a machine that is not like the human craft is was before. Before the Knitting machine we had the knitting human. We know our craft by that. We forget how big this simple thing is and how big it is on our growing industry.

So what if we tried to reestablish the link between human intuition and machine working mechanism. Can we make our machines be intuitive and logical for human perception again? To dream about such an intuitively understandable machine is to use the original human craft as a starting point and adapt the industrial machine accordingly. In this way machines will be able to have a more natural place in our homes and life. People will no longer be an expert to understand what my knitting machine would be for.

Central Question

What is this robotic knitting machine?

Relevance of the topic.

The world where we humans live in grows. It is growing in humanity, technology, and economy, there has been a constant trend to make things bigger and bigger never less. When we talk about the future it has to grow. Of course, humans grow as well so it makes sense that we want everything around us to grow too. When we work with technology or machines they can help us in this. This shows we have this belief in technology: technology will help us live prosperous lives and is able to solve many of our problems. But it doesn’t mean that the technology will save us entirely. In Design noir by Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby (p. 6) [3] this belief is put forth as well. They explain that technology is able to be the solution for every problem. This belief in technology has caused generations of ever growing and swiftly changing industries. In our minds there are also things that seem to only change slowly like knitting, which has been the samefor generations. Even if everything has been digitalized the fabrics in knitting the craft and the knitting machines still use the same principles. At this time you may wander whyhy we talk about this granny thing buy you may not have realized that the whole world has knitted clothes. Look some closer to your own clothing.

Probablyy 70% of your closet is knitted. But do you know how knitting truly works? That we had a big immigration of the textiles industry to Asia where a lot of children works in theindustry? This, to give you cheap knitted clothing. All this clothing is produced using the same machines. Even if everything surrounding the industry has changed the act of knitting does not change.. But the system of the knitting stays the same. You have the granny-style knitting with 2 needles. and 2 systems of machine knitting. What we want to do is not make a knitting machine, but show the gap between human craft and machine production.

The relevance to the topic is also to see the gap between human and machines. With the gap I mean that we give machines a place and a roll in our lives but there is distant between the will of the machine and the user of this machine. The machine have to do what he have to do and if it’s not working it is his the machines fault. Such a wrong thing to think. The machine does exactly what you want but when you tell, make, it differed the machine will behave differently on the human. The human will give it a place in in their minds. I think it is just a feeling what the human have with this machine. Where it is used for and where the machines are.

We look at the knitting part of the machine a very human thing to do. We think machines are smart, able to do everything what we want. But why? We have to make to teach and create this machines. And no, they don’t want to save our lives because there not able to do it. It is a Notopia for us. We live with the machines and the machines not with us? Why not.

Can we have some band with machines? Can we have feelings for it? We adore objects for many years know for many centuries. We live for that thing this unknowing thing. Starting by to worship. like trees, the sun, ore objects how human’s make. They make story’s and give it natural powers and the objects create a aura around it. This aura is from the human perspective of living. The aura is created by us human. We constantly change the form om how we see art, objects and machines. We can see this art, machines, objects. outside, inside, in books, on phones, on a picture, on the internet. Everywhere. And we can create it in our heads differed perspective of feeling, colour, sympathy and empathy. When you want to have some empathy en see his aura, go to this artefact. Feel, see and create you’re one relation with it.

The technologies is maybe the next step by unknowing and we human creating our one story’s by this machines. We lose control about machines and what if the machines start being smarter than us? Or make decisions without our permission?

But why shouldn’t we fascinate what if the impossible is possible. What if this dreaming machine is working? It is human to think that everything is working in theory of prototypes. But there is where everything start from, it could be? A fascination, a imagination, a speculation of something is a start for everything what you want to create. And we want to make a knitting machine, how act like a human against to all the rules of creating save machines. Maybe a human can build a relation with this machine and give it some love and create more empathy. Then they can create humanness machine.

While working we also developed some empathy for the abandoned knitting machine. It felt as if he needed to show itself and what it went through. He did not have a lot of potential but his look was enough. When we used it to make a first DIY design the result was pretty crappie and not very complex. The people in school however told us it was a crazy machine. They didn’t think it looked cool. After this whole DIY knitting machine (rest of explanation is on the wiki) we want to create our one knitting machine.

As we go further into the future, we will have more machines, objects, things what will make our life’s easier. We have machines that can recreate crafts. Only the thing is who knows about a craft in this days over 100 years? So Suzanne and I speculated on what a knitting machine would look like if we left it to the human imagination. So we give it to hut our human imaginations. And create our one machines.

We want it to fits in our human life’s. we want to have a band with it because we create it and give it our love. It creates our neutral powers that is is something what give us power to create this to make it better and better. Even like the DIY machine en the machines what we create. People around us talk what is this crazy machine and did you made this? It’s create without our knowing his aura and power this fetishism. This fetishism a human-made object that has power over others. We look with our human perspectives though the object/machine. And give the powers to an object. The human expressed real relations of power among the participants in ritual. This ritual is not only described In the fetishism but also by Walter Benjamin in his essay “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”: “At the time, art reacted with the doctrine ofl'art pour l'art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of 'pure' art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mallarme was the first to take this position.) An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. ”[4] The relation of our machine what we make have also a lot of relations though the book of W. Benjamin. Eventhough the book is written in 1936 it talks about when art can be said to be art and how the aura contributes to this. Is art art when you see it in the real world, when you see it in a book? When is is written down? When are you the closed though the art and yourself.

The reason for adopting the KNIT is that we try to look from the perspective of the machine, the knitting machine thought the human and the the human thought the knitting machine also this in a group space. This relevance to it is the growing part of it how it will fit in a human and machine space for now and over years. And how will the human create they one ritual between the machine as a art object and there one feelings. We can make a hypothetic how it will be, but when we present it at the expo we will never know how the machine and human will react.

Hypothesis

It could be that the robot knitting arm is not able to work, or maybe it is too slow and dysfunctional to work efficiently as a machine. I can tell you it is dysfunctional for sure and also not able to knit but we are still working on it to pretend it looks like it knitting. We hope that the human feels and can recognize it as a machine that is knitting. We hope also that humans realize that this is not the way to knit mechanically. This will depend on whether they have an appropriate consciousness of the systems. Possibly they do not as they never had any interest in knitting because there are too many distends between generation, technology. ‘To be human is to refuse to accept the given as given’ (p33. of specteculfe everything) [5]

This hypothetis is also it could be. But is is also a critical reflection to our self’s. We had also expectations of this machine. Of course we talk about our conceptual theory. When we had a knitting machine which is working as we want in our desires and our rituals with machines. Also we talk about our relation to it and how we think both differently about this machine.

My hypothesis is that the machine is a machine like a printer. All my printers end up under my bed I think every machine ends on the ground. The TV, Wi-Fi router, lamps, water cooker. Every machine. But during this week I created a band with this machine. I handle it with care and give it soft blankets around it otherwise he will break. When I’m home I pack it out and place it on my windowsill. Than they have something to look at.

When we have the expo the machine will definitely not be as good as I was always talking about. it has to do with machines never being truly ready and the time pressure to work until the expo is due. Every time when we say machine it feels as if we`re talking about a big metal object without any softness in it. I hope to see at the expo that the human will feel something for this ‘machine’ and give it some help because it’s dysfunctionality. How will the the human participate in the expo? Will the machine give the place to let it be helped by the human? I hope and think that human will be fascinated by the fact it is moving and later on think what it actually doing and maybe give a bit of help, or just wait till it doing his own thing.