The theme for this year’s AIP competition is Craft (re)focused: Art of Intent, which challenges us to examine where we have been, where we are headed, and what we must preserve as tools and technologies rapidly shift around us. As usual, we invite not just submissions—but conversation as well.
For this March blog we asked our Editor Gordon Grice to share his reflections on this year’s theme.
Architectural Art has come a long way in the past three decades, from hand-created drawings using techniques unchanged since the Renaissance, to stunning realistic images generated by computers. This is still “Art,” but has “Craft” been lost along the way?
“Craft” may be defined as “an activity involving skill in making things by hand.” Pencil drawings, for example, are created by hand, on a sheet of paper. Digital imagery is created by hand, on a screen. For a pencil drawing, there is only one “original,” that may be valued as a tangible, hand-crafted artifact. For a digital drawing, there is no true “original,” only limitless manifestations of the same image. The craft involved in the creation of the image is not in question, but it is obscured by the fact that the image itself is intangible.
Does any of this really matter? Not really, at least not until Artificial Intelligence (AI) enters the picture, at which point, “Intent” becomes a critical consideration. AI is a digital tool that is able to create compelling imagery based on the slightest suggestion. But something seems to be missing. Where do motivation and understanding of the problem originate? And when one idea organically leads to another, as it inevitably does, or when the resolution of the image involves a team, who keeps track, guides the process, and sorts out the better from the bad?
Can a vast problem-solving digital database understand why the problem it has been asked to solve exists in the first place, or why a solution may be necessary? Also, can the problem, once identified, be solved without an explanation that is so elaborate it would amount to a solution? Well, yes and no. The more wisdom we put in, the more logic will come out.
“Craft” can also have another meaning: “sophistry” or “deception,” which finds its way into the word “crafty,” meaning “cunning” or “cagey.” “Deception” is something that we architectural illustrators have been suspected of practising all along. Don’t we create tempting, romanticized images of possibly unimaginative schemes for the purposes of devious persuasion?
In fact, this second kind of craft may be right down AI’s alley, since it has no capacity to question motivations—only to produce seductive results. But for us Architectural Illustrators, persuasion that leads to greater understanding requires Craft of the first kind—skill—while studiously avoiding the second kind—deception. We call our work “architectural communication,” which is a way of advocating, expanding and interpreting an architect’s ideas in pictorial form, to help visualize—and hopefully realize—a project and generate a response that is both emotional and intellectual. With any luck, the architect, the illustrator and the viewer gain some knowledge from the exercise as well, emotional and intellectual.
“Craft” as we define it, is something that analog people do, with or without the help of digital technology. “Intent” is something that (so far) only people can form, because it’s fluid and analog, and it requires understanding that may not be quantifiable. Intent is common to all art forms and fulfilling that Intent is surely the goal.
This may be where the true meaning of craft lies. As long as talented humans are guiding the process, the tools don’t matter. Craft will survive.
We look forward to seeing how you define Craft in your own work—and how, together, we continue advancing the art and profession of architectural illustration.
Enter Architecture in Perspective 40 Now.
