TAIWAN CRAFTS JOURNAL

Jun. 2020 / Vol.77

|Feature

The Future of Crafts

Crafts that derive from the needs of life and evolve with skills and cultures over time deeply reflect various sides of human society. Besides tangible things we see on them, crafts continuously respond to the changes in environment, demands and aesthetics. It is fair to say that accumulated wisdom and innovations adjusted during different times of human history are reserved in crafts. Coming to the second decade of the 21st century, we want to know how contemporary craft design corresponds to contemporary life. We would like to take a look at national policies, cultural activities, economic models and technological development on the premise of collaborative relations between crafts and design, whereas reviewing some paths that might lead us to the future, possible developments and trends of contemporary craft design in Taiwan.

Collaboration of Crafts and Design in Modern Time

In order to understand the current trends of design and crafts, we interviewed NDD Design’s creative director Hu Yu-tsung, who has been deeply involved in both the design industry and academia, and understands the importance of bringing crafts and design together. He shared the developments and trends of contemporary global design from three angles - recognition of unique values, focus of hands-on experience and challenges of tools, while giving his insights on how crafts and design can further collaborate.

The Coming of Digital Technology - Explore the Future of Fiber Art

Digital technology has been widely used in the textile-related industries to improve the efficiency of fiber design and weaving. Taiwan’s academia and research institutes started toproactively bring digital technology into the industry after 2000. This article navigates through the “Cross-Border Collaboration and Innovation Workshop on Natural Fiber and Laser Dye”, as well as the special projects on applications of biodegradablematerials and digital jacquard technology conducted by the Material Experience Lab from the Netherlands. It is hoped by introducing digital technology to iber technology and art, material innovation and experiments, technical and cross-disciplinary, cross-domain dialogues of our times can we see more imagination and possibilities.