Honoring the Lives of Objects: A Follow-Up Conversation with Eiden Spilker

Eiden Spilker (‘24) is a recent graduate who concentrated in Architecture and Visual Art. His studio practice centers on craft, specifically woodworking, and spans from large-scale conceptual sculpture to furniture to crochet to hand-whittled cutlery. If he’s not in List Art Center, you can often find Eiden working in the Brown Design Workshop (BDW). This past spring, Eiden opened his capstone show, “Objects in Flux: (a)social relations,” in List Art Center. Concurrently, Eiden also completed his architecture thesis titled “Recovering Aura: The Handmade Artifact in the Age of AI and Automated Production.” I previously spoke with Spilker for the Art Review about his sculptural work but knew I wanted to sit down with him again to discuss his most recent achievements. If you are interested in a more general introduction to Eiden’s work, you can read our initial interview here. The following conversation was recorded in the Spring of 2024 and has been edited for clarity. 

[Charlie Usadi] Hi Eiden, thank you for joining me.

[Eiden Spilker] Thank you for having me again.

[CU] Of course, I'm really excited to chat with you again. You've just finished an incredibly productive semester, completing not only an architectural thesis but also a show full of sculptural work in the List Art Center. What's wonderful is how deeply tied–conceptually and thematically–both of these efforts have been. I'm excited to talk about the two together; they also connect incredibly well to the work we talked about when I last interviewed you. It's a natural through-line, the direction your work has gone in the last year or so. It's great that I've already interviewed you with the Art Review because if readers are more interested in a general biography or introduction to your work, they can look to that earlier conversation.

With this conversation, there's so much I really want to talk about in terms of your recent work, so I think we should get right into it. I'd love to start by having you first describe generally the concept your architectural thesis focuses on, which directly influences your current studio work. 

[ES] My thesis changed a ton throughout the process. It started with looking at ornamentation and detail in architecture and then shifted towards craft and unpacking the craft-art-design trifecta. That led to an investigation into the various tools I use in my own practice and really thinking about what the essential difference is between something that's handmade and machine-made. Especially with AI, CNC (computer numerical control) wood milling, and 3D printers, it's a question that a lot of people are asking right now. For myself, in my own work, discovering an answer felt like really good groundwork for whatever I do next.

[CU] At that point, when you were beginning to settle on this thesis topic concerning the question of “handmade,” what was your perspective on the topic? What sort of work were you making in the studio, and how might that have influenced your stance?

[ES] A few years ago, when I first started making things at the BDW, I predominantly used the laser cutter. 

[CU] To frame this shift for readers, could you describe one of those earlier laser cutter-dominant works and what that process looks like?

[ES] Definitely. So, all of the laser-cut pieces were digitally designed. It's very precise and preplanned, and then you send that design over to a laser cutter, which cuts it out perfectly. You can make really intricate interlocking pieces with very precise measurements, but you have to know what you're going to do before you start.

[CU] It's predetermined. 

‍[ES] Yes. It's hands-off. I’ll assemble it afterward, but like, I'm not actually making it, if that makes sense. 

In terms of hand tools, I had done a tiny bit before, but I delved much more deeply into it last summer. I started with the tools available at the BDW. Then, I got a few small grants to get more tools. I learned how to sharpen and care for them, and it became more ritualistic: having a tool of my own, which I know how to care for–how to use. So, I started getting into hand-tool woodworking and just loved it. The slowing down, the deeper awareness of the material. I work with wood almost entirely, and that shift to hand tools helped me develop a more reciprocal relationship with the material–a deeper understanding of grain direction–than I had with machine tools. 

[CU] It's a sort of intimacy.

[ES] Definitely.

[CU] So your thesis is motivated by this context of AI-mediated design and increasingly advanced technology. How do these developments concern the craft community?

[ES] There's always been a renegotiation between the handmade and machine-made since machines first got introduced. There was the Luddite revolution, where they revolted against supplantation of manual labor by machines. There’s also the Arts and Crafts movement and these early negotiations of the boundary between humans and machines, at least within the Western canon. Beyond the created objects themselves, it quickly gets into bigger philosophical questions of what is essential about humanity that can’t be mechanically replicated. 

Today, there's a continuation of that struggle; it's not a fully new phenomenon. What makes the contemporary landscape different is a decentralization of automated machinery such as 3D printers and CNC machines, as well as the sophisticated replicability possible with this new technology that makes it harder to discern what is truly handmade, or even making it harder to define what should be considered handmade in the first place. 

Additionally, contemporary consumerism is so depersonalized, and there's a lot more reliance on labels such as “crafted,” “handcrafted,” or “family-owned,” to communicate a sense of authenticity that seems lost with mechanical production. It’s because the object’s history is disconnected from its value, and consumers are increasingly distanced from how things are made.

In reaction to mass-produced items, craftspeople have begun accentuating irregularities, the “mark of the hand,” to almost create a new “aesthetic” of the handmade. However, this focus on the outward formal qualities makes it easily appropriated by AI and mechanical production. Research that I found revealed that these irregularities can be replicated mechanically because “handmade” has often become a purely stylistic label rather than one concerning the process or the direct relationship to a craftsperson. 

‍[CU] You talk about how, increasingly, given technology’s ability to recreate the surface-level quality of “handmade,” we need to look deeper for something beyond that can differentiate truly handcrafted work. You speak about the “aura” of objects, a theme so central to the thesis. Could you provide a working definition for “aura” as it applies to this discussion?

‍[ES] For sure. I drew a lot on Walter Benjamin's essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and borrowed the term “aura” to unpack the difference. He defines aura as the historical testimony of an object. Prior to widespread mass production, each object had a presence as a unique thing in space and time. It's not just about the disembodied form of the object; it's about what this thing has lived through. He says that once you can capture a thing’s form with an image and create exact replicas, the image becomes the essential characteristic of something, and the history of that object and its physicality is diminished. He describes how it reaches a point where we even view a unique thing only as an image, a form, rather than this presence.

[CU] In your thesis, you connect that to a history of capitalism and production. How do you see those tied together?

[ES] So I also read a lot of Marx, especially Capital, for this thesis. Both Marx and Walter Benjamin talk about commodification, the sense of a “universal equality” of things created by commodity fetishism. Commodification presents the value of something as its price or exchange value. Price can be established by saying, “This similar thing costs us this amount” or “It costs this amount because it takes this many hours to produce it.” But that quantitative analysis is disconnected from, for example, the specific type of labor or the social conditions that define it. Beyond purely economic value, who made this object and how? How is that relevant? There’s this distance from how things are produced. Commodification presents an object's essential characteristic, specifically outside of its historical testimony, in order to obscure the exploitative conditions of labor under capitalism, replacing aura with commodity fetishism.  

[CU] So today, capitalism facilitates this distancing between us and the objects we interact with. It also becomes increasingly challenging to know if something is truly handmade from observation as technology improves at recreating that surface-level aesthetic. How do you see that impacting the way we value “handmade” and “craft” objects?

[ES] The main impact is that our value of the handmade is predominantly filtered through the label ascribed to an object. The word “handmade” evokes so many things: a sense of intimacy, an individual person, authenticity, passion. But it can be used in marketing when an object is only hand assembled; the word itself gets applied to things that we wouldn't consider handmade. Another main source for my thesis was Jean Baudrillard, a French postmodernist philosopher. Baudrillard expanded on Marx on this topic of “sign value,” where the symbolic value of something follows the logic of capital. We live in a world where most things are made mechanically, so the handmade becomes this object of fetishization once again, where the symbolic value or sign value of a “handmade” object becomes its essential characteristic rather than the actual history of an object. 

In its authentic form, I think there is something genuinely there about the values associated with the “handmade.” The intimate relationship and other core values might not have changed, but the way they're expressed or consumed has changed. It’s this imaginary relationship of, like, “I met the farmer, and they live more authentically, and I'm more authentic because I value that.” But that understanding of authenticity is ultimately expressed through consumption and has a symbolic value in order to communicate to other people: “I get it; I see through the ‘artificiality’ of consumerism.” Ultimately, it's once again less about the genuine history of an object and more about what the handmade symbolizes within contemporary consumer culture. Also, expressing this value of the handmade today requires having capital and has become increasingly reserved for the bourgeois. 

‍[CU] Yeah. To be able to access something that takes that much time is increasingly difficult. The time that it takes not only to craft these items themselves, but to develop the skills to craft them becomes harder to rationalize, as increasingly similar products become available at mass scale through mechanical reproduction. 

‍[ES] There is something there about knowing who made your things and developing that relationship, but to have the time to develop those relationships and to really understand the processes that led to the objects you interact with also takes time, and most people don't have that time, on a consumer level.

‍[CU] In terms of fostering that really intimate understanding of craft, we should talk about the studio work that runs parallel to your thesis. Your VISA capstone show was up this May, and the majority of the pieces within it are included within your Architectural thesis to explore the themes of interest. The work really effectively complements the traditional research-based writing within the thesis. Did you always know that was going to be a part of the process?

[ES] Yes. I wanted to do a project-based thesis; that was always my intention from the beginning. It definitely ended up developing into a more paper-heavy thesis based on what I was learning and what I found myself getting interested in, but the project focus was the central goal. 

Throughout the thesis process, I was making a lot of different things, much of which didn't end up in either the thesis or the show, but I think engaging with the process of making really helped me think through a lot of these concepts. As I'm making work, I think about how I'm making by self-critically examining the way I interact with the material and tools.

[CU] A concept that emerged towards the end of your thesis is how critical the craft person's relationship to the object is. In many cases, it’s the only relationship that can be experienced fully. I mean, as you describe, the consumer oftentimes doesn't really know what the life of the object looked like. But there's something unarguably authentic about the relationship craftspeople have to objects.

[ES] Absolutely. 

‍[CU] All of the pieces in the show speak to the themes you cover in the thesis. Some of which, in particular, really effectively highlight that tension we're facing right now between hand- and machine-made. Practically, the first piece visitors encountered when they entered your show were these blocks titled Artifacts. I'd love for you to talk about them.

[ES] This piece really established the difference for me. I made two textured panels, one by hand and one by machine. I first made them around February when I started thinking about the “mark of the hand” as being a characteristic “sign” of the handmade object; this surface quality of slight imperfections that make each object unique, which I think are also more aesthetically desirable. So I carved one of these blocks by hand, and then I used Grasshopper, which is a plugin for a 3D modeling software, to create a parametric program that randomized, within boundaries, the latitudinal and longitudinal movement and placement, the length, and the depth of marks which were then cut on a CNC machine. I was trying to replicate the formal quality of the hand-carved object. The first test really didn't look exact, but I'm happy with the result I got; I was surprised with how close it was. A lot of people can't tell which one was handmade.

[CU] I can’t.

[Both laugh]

[ES] I think it proves the point. If I were to carve a lot of these panels and then use AI to generate new ones, it would get even closer.

‍[CU] Something that challenged my notion of value in terms of these two pieces is how much time it took you to make the machine-based block. Especially hearing you talk about how you worked with the software–how it was a learning process–it sounds similar to the way one might learn to wield a new hand-working tool.

[ES] Yes, I mean, I had a slight bias going into the thesis; I really enjoy working with hand tools. It challenged that bias because I realized I was actually engaged throughout the process of creating the machine-made panel. It was a fun problem-solving exercise to work with the different softwares, to iterate, and to try to get it to the point I wanted. But I still wouldn't call it handmade. There's definitely an engagement with the process; there's a part of me reflected in that, but the object itself is not actually handmade.

[CU] Because the material itself is out of your hands at a critical point it's missing that intimacy, that object history.

[ES] Exactly, and the material itself was not part of the conversation; it’s just a passive recipient of the form that's created. It's not reciprocal, and it's not embodied; it's an image projected onto material.

[CU] Another series that represents a really interesting probing of the concept of handmade are these finger-printed pieces, one of a kind. 

‍[ES] Yeah, those were some of the last works I made for the show. “Artifacts” set up a dichotomy for me in my thesis: “This is the essential difference between something that's handmade and machine-made.” But, like you touched on earlier, most things use some amount of machinery and some amount of human intervention. So, where do you draw the line? These pieces were trying to push that to the extremes. They're 3D printing forms. I spray-painted them white, and then I pressed my thumbprint onto them. Could I call that handmade? The metric I ended up using was “Does it have aura?” I redefined aura in my thesis to speak to that intimacy that isn’t mechanically replicable.

‍[CU] I remember we had a conversation really early on in your thesis development where you were really focused on that dichotomy, finding that point where something falls from handmade into machine-made. Has the importance of defining a boundary increased or decreased for you through this process?

‍[ES] I think it's something I want to continue exploring. The binary operates as a merism where it provides the extremes, and most things fall within the gradient between them. I originally was going to make works that spanned from handmade to progressively more machine-made to try to locate where a boundary was. But that became less important than firmly establishing what the binary was. I see the thesis as the foundation for what I want to continue thinking about and working on; exploring that gradient might be the next step.

[CU] I love these partner pieces, Crime of Passion I and II. The play within them between hand- and machine-made is wonderful and so well balanced. They’re beautifully crafted pieces, and they represent a synthesis between the varied processes of the dichotomy you investigate. 

[ES] I made these in February or March. What I realized in my thesis, both within the research and also in making, is that being physically engaged in the process of making allows you to change direction as you work. Things can emerge from the process of handcrafting in a way that becomes impossible if the design is predetermined; machines leave very little room for unpredictability.

So, these pieces had zero design going in; I was just starting with materials at hand and making quick decisions. Laying it out, staring at it for a little bit, and then quickly connecting things. They start with the big formal moves, and then I play with ornamentation. The title, Crime of Passion, references Adolf Loos’s “Ornament and Crime” (a modernist architect’s highly critical essay on ornamentation in architecture). I was also thinking a lot about the writing in the Arts and Crafts movement, about how ornamentation is where individuality can really be expressed. Even if everything else is machine-made, that's fine according to some of the theorists of the movement because the individual can express themselves in those finishing details. I want to continue pushing this idea.

‍Crime of Passion II uses a William Morris (one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement) wallpaper pattern. I CNC cut the design onto a panel and laser engraved it onto bowties to strengthen some of the joinery. I then combined it with handmade elements and joinery. So those details were clearly predetermined, but then they became components of a larger piece in which I didn't know where they would fit, so it still was part of this emergent process. For myself, leaving room for unpredictability throughout the process is necessary in order to stay engaged with the work. If I pre-plan everything, I just feel mechanical, like I'm no longer engaged in my wholeness. Being able to make more creative decisions along the way is essential for my practice.

[CU] I love the two works, especially as they relate to Loos. Both of the ornamental interventions feel very architectural, the wallpaper especially, so it’s a wonderful synthesis of your architectural understanding with your studio practice. I'm excited to hear that work like this is the direction you're interested in going in.

What you seem to be discovering through this body of work is how you can personally engage with those technologically mediated processes in ways that feel genuine and intimate to you and your practice, in the same way that hand tools do.

[ES] Yeah, absolutely, and I think an essential part for me was not being moralistic. John Ruskin, for example, is another figure in the Arts and Crafts movement who was incredibly moralistic. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with working with a machine; it's just figuring out what it’s really good at and where it can play a role. It’s also remembering that handmade things still have value even if machines can do all this. That combination between the two can work really well.

[CU] And your work is such clear evidence of that fact. I’d love to talk about the text in your show and how it relates to the work. Your work brings so much rich visual information itself, and in your show, you presented viewers with exhibition labels, which have paragraphs of text purposely redacted. It definitely confounds someone who is used to the traditional gallery format, and it really got my gears turning. I know that the bulk of the text is pulled from the thesis. Could you speak about the text and why you chose to subvert it?

[ES] Definitely. I'm still exploring the way I communicate to viewers. Much of my thesis process was very much focused on the maker’s relationship to the object, and not as much critical thought was given to the viewer, that third party.

To me, there are a few different parts. There's the object itself as text. There’s that mark of the hand, and if someone knows what to look for, you can almost read the process and the traces of that process within the object. So, I’m thinking about what the object itself communicates. With a lot of conceptual art, there's this desire for an explanation of a concept, but a lot of my work is about the object itself, so I’m trying to resist applying thick external meaning.

I still don't know how to balance the fact that my work is conceptual, but the concept is in the object. How do I allow a viewer to appreciate what is already there physically? That’s what I'm trying to figure out.

[CU] It's a really challenging balance. I think it also speaks to something you talk about in the thesis, the fact that labeling objects has become so critical at this moment where imperfection can be mechanically replicated. One thing about your labels that worked really well is your inclusion of the processes that went into the works. As the surface-level clarity between handmade and machine-made objects blurs, do you see that sort of transparency of process as being necessary for the future?

[ES] I think so. I think that including the machines that facilitated the pieces in the show in label text is a very clear way to clue somebody into thinking about how these pieces were made. That immediately does what I'm trying to do. I don't know what my work will look like next, but this dynamic view of objects is always going to be a part of the foundation of my work. I am thinking a lot about language, semiotics especially. I did a lot of reading by the philosopher Derrida and Bernard Tschumi, who’s a deconstructivist architect, which has inspired the way I’m thinking about object versus meaning.

[CU] I think it provides an amazing sense of transparency, which is often lost today now that we've become so separated from the labor that goes into the objects we interact with. It reemphasizes those processes as being critical to the final product. 

Speaking of the information you provide viewers of your work, something I want to touch on is that a number of the pieces in the show include the symbol of the hand. These pieces weren’t included within your thesis, but I think this symbol makes so much sense, given what your thesis is thinking about. From the work I've seen you make, the inclusion of such iconographic imagery feels unprecedented. Could you speak to where this hand emerged from? 

[ES] It very much is new; I've avoided representational or symbolic stuff in the past. For the same reasons I’m resistant to conceptual text, symbols immediately signal to the world of ideas and language, which exists outside of the objects themselves, so I've specifically avoided them.

Initially, I didn’t plan to make pieces with this symbol. I had found this form of the hand to try new techniques in functional objects. I was going to make candlestick holders. I started cutting the symbol out of copper, and I also wanted to try marquetry, which are veneer inlays. This image of the hand is pretty intricate, so it provided a really good way to practice. It did not start as a conceptual symbol. But then I had these hands, and I was thinking a lot about alienated, abstracted labor and this separation of self from the work you're doing in capitalism. The way that hands are viewed within capitalism is not about the whole person; it's about the hand–what it mechanically can do that is too expensive to do with a machine. 

So, I was thinking about that separation, and I realized that this iconography made a lot of sense. What's really interesting about iconography is that when people can look at it, it can still lend itself to so many different interpretations. I think the titles of the pieces help indicate a little more to viewers what I'm thinking about in specific pieces, but I'm also fine with the openness.

[CU] Oh, yeah. No matter what you're doing artistically, you always have to accept that you can't control interpretation fully. I think that you're reaching a really strong balance of providing information and withholding, and knowing that you can lead interpretation without limiting the scope of it. I think your titles, specifically, are really strong in terms of keying in viewers to your concepts in really creative and kind of cheeky ways.

[ES] Thanks. I’ve been having a lot of fun with titles lately.

[CU] It's wonderful. Now that you don't have to be working in the confines of this conceptual framework that the show and the thesis have provided, do you have a prediction of what your next steps might be and what the work may develop into?

‍[ES] Yes. There are two parts to it. Now that I'm graduating, I don't have the separation from the reality of what it means to sustain yourself as a craftsperson or an artist. Part of the economic reality of college freed me up to spend time using all these hand tools and woodwork. Part of the next step is figuring out if there are compromises I'm going to have to make if I want to sustain myself doing this. Maybe I can't do everything by hand, but I’ll realize there are key processes that I continue to do by hand. Being out of the bubble of college will challenge the theoretical framework I’ve built. Though in my next role, I’m optimistic that I’ll still have some of that freedom,

[CU] Could you share a bit about what that next role will look like?

[ES] I just started as the ‘Maker in Residence’ at the Brown Design Workshop (BDW)! I’m going to be building out the woodworking area and doing more advanced trainings on hand-tool woodworking in the hopes of building a stronger craft-focused community. In addition, I’m going to be doing outreach to bring more of the Providence community into the space. The role also gives me the time and freedom to continue improving my own craft. It’s perfect for what I want to be doing for now because it allows me the freedom to explore new techniques and forms without the pressure of having to rely on making as my primary source of income yet. I’m content with prolonging my separation from the economic reality of craft production for now. 

[CU] It sounds like a perfect role for you. One thing that's always inspired me about your work is the diversity within it. You'll be working on this very large-scale, conceptual, more “fine art” work, but at the same time, you're always making furniture, whittling, and working on test projects. I think that the diversity of the work you're making at this point will really lend itself to flexibility to see what balance works in the future. Final and maybe most important question: for anyone interested in learning more about you or your work, where can they find you?

[ES] Instagram is the easiest one, @eiden_spilker. There’s also my website, eidenspilker.com; I think those are the two best ways.

[CU] If readers are interested in looking at your thesis, where could they find that?

[ES] They can currently message me on Instagram, and I can email it to them. I’m in the process of figuring out how to put it on my website or how to get it published in the archives at Brown. 

[CU] Thank you so much for speaking with me. It's been wonderful getting more insight into your work, and I'm excited to see what comes next. 

‍[ES] Thank you!

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(Photographs courtesy of Eiden Spilker)

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