The Question of a Digital Bauhaus
Kenneth Knoespel

The digital transformation of society has shaped a new class of digital-worker for whom the economic market appears to have an almost insatiable appetite. The demand for these new digital workers has encouraged the development multiple new programs in digital media. But the increased enrollment in our programs is hardly a function of a new market alone. The tactility of our work -- the stuff, the materiality - of the settings in which we find ourselves helps explain the strong attraction to digital technology. New generations are attracted to these environments for the bench or studio culture that it embodies; the digital worker also becomes a digital artist. Contrary to some who would see work in digital settings far removed from handwork, I want to emphasize the ways in which they fall together. Instead of seeing radical breaks with the past, I want to consider what we might learn from the history of our work. In what ways do our current settings challenge us to ask if we are building a digital Bauhaus? And if so, what social, political, or aesthetic aspect of the so-called 'historical' Bauhaus provides the most important resonance to a 'digital Bauhaus?' Our answers to these questions involve an emphasis on the new forms of writing, materiality, and cognition that shape our work at the beginning of the 21st century.