“The time has come to reflect on what happens in the transition from the physical to the digital. Are the once-clear boundaries between our physical and digital worlds beginning to dissolve?”

Such is the description of this year’s theme for the Craft & Design Biennale. The theme is summarized with the slightly bland and vague title “Conversion”. Regardless of the choice of words, the exhibition aims to illuminate the relevance of the digital in this domain.

From the organizers, I gathered that the theme has sparked some debate amongst potential exhibitors. Naturally, some artisans view the work of the hand as the most essential in their practice. And some feel they have been excluded from a significant platform, of which there aren’t many in a Danish context. The chairperson for the Danish Craftsmen & Designers, Hanne B. Sønnichsen, did spend a good portion of her opening speech defending the theme choice. Yet, it’s surprising that it’s necessary in an era where the digital is so ubiquitous and rapidly evolving. Of course, it’s a relevant theme. I believe it’s out of touch to argue otherwise. In a way, it almost feels old-fashioned to thematize the digital. It has become such an integral part of our daily lives, our work, our relationships, and our society, that it should be considered a fundamental premise.

Moreover, meaningful theming will inevitably exclude some. Perhaps another year the biennale might explore the non-digital, thereby sidelining several digitally based practices. That would be a refreshing theme.

Actually, I would argue that it might have been beneficial to exclude a few more. Not because the exhibition feels overcrowded. Curator Anne Thomasen has done a truly thorough and concise job with the distribution of works in the space. And Copenhagen Contemporary provides an uplifting setting. The practical curation is beautifully executed.

My objection stems from the fact that a good handful of the works on display do not engage with the digital. While these are indeed excellent pieces of very high quality, they simultaneously are pieces that aren’t relevant to the theme. The exhibition would have benefited had they dared to make tougher exclusions and further tightened the concept in their open call.

Having said that, I would wholeheartedly recommend readers to visit the exhibition before it closes on November 12th.

In our deliberations, we emphasized selecting works that related to the exhibition’s theme in an interesting and original manner. I was particularly drawn to projects where the digital was employed seamlessly.

Seamless. I’ve always found it a peculiar word, but it’s returned to me multiple times when describing a virtuoso use of the digital. In my eyes, it’s a frictionless and natural application.

Frictionless in the sense that the digital often entails difficulties in the experience of the work:

How do I turn this on?

Oops, this doesn’t seem to work…

You’ll need to download this first before you can…

Fortunately, such issues are becoming less common in recent years. In the frictionless use of the digital, the technical aspect becomes an invisible factor that just works and which one intuitively understands how to use.

Endless Possibilities of Effects

At times, I find that some are fascinated by the endless effects the digital offers, but aren’t quite sure how or why they should employ them. Part of this fascination is evident in the exhibition. Both in some of the projects but also in the setting of the exhibition itself. It was decided that each participating project should create a metaverse exhibition, accessible via the biennale’s website. The result was quite frictionless, but the overall impression was underwhelming, and the seamless nature occasionally faltered.

Perhaps my sense of being underwhelmed stems from the fact that technology is advancing so rapidly it’s hard to keep track of what’s possible. I sometimes forget that it was only a year ago that OpenAI released the first version of ChatGPT. I actually had to look it up to be sure. With the advent of artificial intelligence comes a feeling that everything is possible and even easy, even though that isn’t always the case in reality. We’re becoming harder and harder to impress, and we increasingly take some pretty astounding possibilities for granted.

In that light, I sensed untapped potential in several of the projects. The exhibition serves as a good showcase of how VR, 3D, and AI function in the works of craftsmen and designers – and perhaps even more so, how they could function in the future.

More Knowledge in the Archive

Formkraft holds a vast digitized archive of magazines from 1948-2009, as well as exhibition catalogues for the Craft & Design Biennale from 1995-2021. Read the magazines and exhibition catalogues here.