Manual Operations in the Age of Digital Design: A Case of a Beginning Design Studio

Walter Benjamin, in his renowned essay, “The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction (1936),” introduced the compelling metaphor ofthe painter/magician and the cameraman/surgeon. The painter works like amagician, who only “slightly” reduces the distance between the hand andthe body; whereas the cameraman works like a surgeon, who “considerably”the distance, by dissecting with the surgical knife the body. The painter seesthe appearance of the subject and mimics its wholeness through depiction,maintaining the distance that ensures the aura. The cameraman penetrateswithin the subject, cutting the subject into fragments and re-contextualizingthem through re-assembly. Benjamin’s metaphor signifies the transition inmedia technology and the mode of artwork. As this Benjaminian frameworkbrought insight into the tendencies of fragmentation and collage-like structureof the historical avant-garde, the recent change in digital technologydemands a new agenda for critical assessment of the current mode of artand architecture.The manual operations introduced in this paper followed the pedagogicalstructure of three phases. 1) In the first phase, the students were askedto identify and observe the performance of both the tools they use and thematters they sense. Through these operations, the students acknowledgedthat the modes of production and reception are constantly in tension; thatthe process of design is the constant feedback between being the authorand the audience. 2) In the second phase, the students began with a physicalmodule. Through material understanding and manual operations, thestudents then developed ways of repetitive iterations that accumulate themodules into a performative artifact. 3) In the third phase, the studentsinvestigated the parameters of the site, its spatial and temporal phenomena.The modular repetitions from the second phase were then transformed byresponding to the parametric intensities of the site.The operations raise awareness toward the three key aspects that constitutethe new design agenda of digital technology. The interactive nature oftoday’s artwork ensures the participant’s self-awareness as both the authorand the audience. The design is profoundly genetic rather than mimetic, asit is involved in formulating the kernel that performs as the source of selfgeneration.The newly defined authorship and the strategy of genetic engineeringare both directly related to site-specificity. The spatial and temporalphenomena of the site and its collective mass are the significant parametersof the studio operations.The Benjaminian framework is profoundly dialectic. Benjamin, by attendingto the modes of production and reception, poses the artwork as not merelyresponsive to the technology, but as its dialectic counterpart. The beginningdesign studio work introduced in this paper, in this regard, is suggestive ofdigital technology, but produced through manual operations. The key goalhere is to verify and re-imagine the potential modes of digital productionand reception, without adherence to digital technology itself.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1