"making" mistakes

I had an interesting talk about production with Eric last night. I've been reading The Craftsman by Richard Sennett and I'm in the section on "Machines". There's a quote by Ruskin which I found interesting:


"You can teach a man to draw a straight line; to strike a curved line, and to carve it...with admirable speed and precision; and you will find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that, he was only a machine before, an animated tool."


There is a self-consciousness that comes from making mistakes; an enlightenment. Eric and I discussed the methodical way in which we were taught to make things. You were never supposed to waste your time working in 3 dimensions; you were supposed to spend ideation time working things out on paper because it was faster. The process of making was presented as a linear process from ideation to creation (much as it still is in industry). We weren't allowed to make mistakes in 3D and time was always the supportive reasoning. It hasn't been until recently that I understand the importance of discovery through the tactile response to material and form. We can build virtually on paper all day long and we can theorize and talk until were blue in the face about what "something will be", but it takes "making" to inform us and what we create.