Finalist: Bolor Amgalan
Parsons School of Design, The New School 2020

Website: www.boloramgalan.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bolor-amgalan-designer/

Today, more than ever, we must take pride in human abilities and not only defend against further deskilling, but also direct inevitable technological change towards more human-centric direction. Apprenticeship 2.0 is a digital tool and a handcrafting experience in VR that outputs handcrafted virtual 3D textile objects. The experience uses simulated virtual materials that behave similarly to analog textiles – they stretch, deform and wrap around other objects much like real textiles but also leverage the flexibility and advantages afforded by computation giving birth to new hybrid materialities. Using Leap Motion technology, the apprentice's hands are tracked and simulated in VR allowing them to manipulate the virtual materials with their hands.

Leveraging this functional design tool which was developed as part of my MFA thesis project, a tokenization framework and the speculative cryptocurrency faberCoin is proposed to enable the valuation and exchange of handcrafted virtual objects. The tool accurately captures both the perfections and imperfections of the human hands and acts as an encryption protocol based on true randomness resulting from human hand muscle movement. Occupying the space at the intersection of human-machine symbiosis and critical craft research, the project places Homo faber – man as the maker – at the heart of human becoming and aims to demonstrate how human hand skills and technology can coexist in ways that preserve human culture and material know-how.