Foreign policy analysis on the Challenges of ForeignFolk Art Production and Creative Temporal Subjects Under a Foreign Temporal Structure
Chi Wu1a*
1.Department of Foreign Language and Literature, F University
aEmail:22110110048@m.fudan.edu.cn
Technological acceleration has reshaped the structure of time and space, compressed the dimensions of modern time, and formed the core context of the current era. This transformation not only drives the rapid transformation of social structures and accelerates the rhythm of daily life, but also places cultural forms at different stages of development in the same temporal field. Contemporary folk art production is situated in a complex context of intertwined multiple temporalities. The coexistence and conflict of diverse temporal concepts, rhythms, and experiences have constructed an anthropologically tense “polyphonic temporal structure”. This structure not only reflects the cultural reality of intertwined multiple temporalities in the process of rapid transition from tradition to modernity, but also reconstructs the temporal rhythm of contemporary folk art production. With the evolution of technological iteration, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has deeply intervened in art production, which not only changes the physical and mental experience of creators, but also triggers disputes over the subjectivity of folk art creation, prompting academic circles to examine the issue of temporal subjects in artistic creation in the context of AI from an anthropological perspective.
Keywords: polyphonic temporal structure; folk art production; temporal subject; technology; artificial intelligence
1.1 The Cross-Disciplinary Evolution of the Polyphony Concept
“Polyphony”, originally a musical concept, refers to a counterpoint technique in which multiple independent voices unfold simultaneously and resonate with each other, forming a multi-dimensional harmonic structure. This structure breaks the linear logic of single-voice melody, deconstructs traditional linear structures through the combination of multiple rhythms, the advancement of differentiated speeds, and the superposition of heterogeneous meter systems, and constructs a rich musical texture[1]. Mikhail Bakhtin introduced this concept into literary research to analyze Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel creation, pointing out that there are multiple independent dialogical relationships between the ideas and self-awareness of different characters (including the author and the characters) in the novels. The French literary theorist Gérard Genette reconstructed the connotation of “polyphony” from a narratological perspective. In Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, he proposed that Marcel Proust constructed a unique polyphonic narrative mode through the transformation of narrative perspectives in In Search of Lost Time. Milan Kundera further expanded the scope of polyphony in The Art of the Novel, incorporating the integrated use of various genres in novels, thus enriching the theoretical boundary of polyphonic novels.
From the symphonic ensemble of multiple voices in polyphonic music to the diverse presentation of polyphonic novels in dialogical relationships, narrative perspectives, thematic structures and other aspects, regardless of the artistic form in which polyphony manifests itself, its core connotation always extends in the temporal dimension. The polyphony of time is the essential background of the polyphonic structure of various literary and artistic works, and the way of dealing with time constitutes the core essence of the concept of polyphony. To deeply understand multiple temporalities and temporal polyphony, it is necessary to abandon the illusion of “single-time utopia” and instead explore flexible connection paths between different temporal logics. In the process of accelerated technological iteration, “temporal polyphony” has transcended the artistic field and sublimated into an overall temporal framework of the AI era, reshaping the “time scale” of the entire era.
1.2 Technological Acceleration and the Generation of Multiple Temporalities
In modern society, “science and technology” has become a fixed cognitive paradigm, demonstrating the powerful power of modern science and technology. The progressive development of the three industrial revolutions replaced manual labor with large-scale mechanized production, realizing the first breakthrough innovation in mechanical technology; the invention of new transportation and transmission tools ended the traditional agricultural mode of animal-drawn carriages and established an industrial production system driven by internal combustion engines. Since the end of the 19th century, optoelectronic technology has emerged; in the mid-20th century, digital information technology, biotechnology, new energy technology and computer network technology have been invented one after another, promoting human society into a new technological stage. In the 1990s, the global Internet information superhighway was completed and put into use, realizing all-round and rapid interconnection in economic, political, cultural and other fields, and constructing a “global village” where information flows at the speed of light. The emergence of new technological forms such as the Internet of Everything and virtual images has promoted the prosperity of digital technology. At present, the fourth technological revolution and industrial transformation centered on AI are booming, and the penetration of technology into daily life has reached an unprecedented depth. Generally speaking, “technology” is understood as automated industrial equipment such as automobiles, ships, telephones, and chips, or a computer technology system composed of digital codes and information flows. Essentially, based on scientific laws and experimental principles, technology reconstructs the form, transforms or qualitatively reconstructs natural substances, cosmic energy and various information, and is the crystallization of human intellectual and practical activities.
Modern science and technology have shaped the contemporary world in an irreversible way, representing the highest achievement of human collective cognition and creation. With the rapid development of digital technology and the rise of the fourth technological revolution centered on AI, emerging technologies such as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), quantum entanglement technology, NFT, and metaverse have been deeply integrated. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), represented by ChatGPT (generative AI language model), Runway (text-to-image model), Sora (text-to-video model), Deepseek, and Midjourney (image generation model), has spawned digital “new-quality productivity”, which has extensively penetrated and profoundly reshaped social and cultural life. AI technology has shown application potential in social services, medical and health care, manufacturing, financial analysis and other fields. It is not only used for intelligent identification, data collection and management, digital control and wealth distribution, but also gradually involved in the creation and production of art and literature. Technological innovation is not only an inevitable result of human evolution, but also plays a fundamental role in enhancing human capabilities, promoting cultural development and the evolution of artistic forms[2].
In the contemporary context of accelerated technological iteration, the world presents the characteristics of overlapping multiple temporalities. The penetration of technology into various fields of society is not balanced and homogeneous, and a unified global “technological time” has not been formed. On the contrary, it has given birth to the coexistence, conflict and interweaving of diverse and heterogeneous times. For example, in the field of AI production, industrial robots and algorithm scheduling systems have achieved nanosecond-level precise synchronization, and time has been extremely compressed and optimized; real-time pushes from smartphones and fragmented information on social media continue to accelerate the rhythm of daily life; modern agriculture has broken some natural seasonal restrictions, but crop planting is still constrained by climate rhythms. Unlike the ancients who took the initiative to domesticate time and integrate natural time sequences into daily production and labor cycles, modern people’s behaviors are dominated by technological time driven by data models, and the natural time rhythm relying on day and night alternation and star movement is disrupted by modern technological forces.
The current technological environment and conditions are significantly different from those of the mechanical age. The multiple temporalities spawned by modern technological acceleration essentially stem from the heterogeneity of “modern time machines” under different technological conditions, reflecting the multiple differentiation within technological time. “Industrial time” in the era of large-scale mechanized production, “Network Time” in the computer age, and “Algorithmic Time” in the AI age are essentially different from each other. In the AI era, time is deeply encoded into algorithmic logic, and algorithm iteration constantly impacts traditional labor forms and labor relations. There is a fundamental difference in the temporal perception between digital laborers deeply bound to digital platforms (such as ride-hailing drivers and couriers) and traditional folk craftsmen; cross-time zone workers not only need to balance local time and virtual time, but also coordinate the dislocation between physical rhythm and working time. The uneven degree of technological penetration into various fields of society directly leads to differences in the temporal experience of different individuals.
Based on the above analysis, the definition of “polyphonic temporal structure” can be clarified: a composite temporal framework with multiple temporal dimensions and intertwined multiple temporalities formed in the context of accelerated technological iteration and the coexistence of diverse technologies. This “polyphony” originates from the differentiated penetration and transformation of temporal logics of different societies, groups and cultures by technology, providing the possibility for the superposition of multiple dimensions such as natural time, ritual time, market time, mechanical time and digital time, and thus constructing a tense polyphonic structure at the temporal level.
1.3 The Definition and Concrete Presentation of Polyphonic Temporal Structure
Contemporary peasant paintings intuitively present the social landscape under the polyphonic temporal structure. Works such as Contemporary Countryside·Versatile Villages, Shanghai-style Jiangnan·Xinyuan Weitian Farming Scene, Rural Revitalization: Building Dreams in the Colored Pottery Village, and Intangible Cultural Heritage: Peach Charm Spreads Over Jinshan not only focus on the breaking of urban-rural boundaries by high technology and the reshaping of folk production and lifestyle by AI, but also depict the contemporary revival of local culture. Creators integrate traditional folk art (such as colored pottery art) and intangible cultural heritage techniques (such as velvet embroidery, paper cutting, sugar painting, traditional fabric making and pastry making techniques) into contemporary cultural life. Through these works, one can not only perceive the natural worship and totem concepts of prehistoric ancestors from colored pottery patterns (such as frog patterns and spiral patterns), but also feel the longing for future technological life and the pursuit of secular happiness. Moreover, it shows the in-depth integration of traditional and modern temporal concepts, and agricultural and high-tech lifestyles, concretely presenting the polyphonic characteristics of intertwined multiple temporalities.
Figure 1 “Contemporary Countryside·Versatile Villages”, by Wei Jun, photographed by the author
Figure 2 “Shanghai-Style Jiangnan·Xinyuan Weitian Farming Scene”, by Chen Huifang, photographed by the author
Figure 3 “Rural Revitalization: Building Dreams in the Colored Pottery Village”, by Dang Zhibin, photographed by the author
Figure 4 “Intangible Cultural Heritage: Peach Charm Spreads Over Jinshan”, by Zhang Jie, photographed by the author
2.1 The Natural Temporal Rhythm of Traditional Folk Art
In traditional agricultural societies, folk art was embedded in a temporal structure of mutual benefit between “nature and humanity”, and its production rhythm was synchronized with natural time sequences. Folk art creation has always been closely integrated with material production and daily life, and has not been differentiated and independent from people’s lives. For ordinary laborers, artistic creation is a natural extension of daily labor. They do not define themselves as “artists”, but practice their skills in daily work—art is inherently an organic part of life. This makes the production rhythm of traditional folk art follow the logic of natural time sequences, and the production cycle is dominated by natural rhythms, achieving a dynamic balance in interaction with all things in nature.
The adherence of agricultural civilization to natural time sequences and seasonal festivals, the waiting for the growth cycle of natural materials; the cumulative nature of traditional handicrafts emphasizing “slow work yields fine products”, the intergenerational inheritance of skills; the folk artists’ grasp of the “timing” of creation and the pursuit of “flow” state; the natural attributes of art materials selection, the “time-compliant” principle in the creation process, as well as the texture, simplicity and traces of time presented in the works, are all products of time accumulation. Through these works of art, one can clearly perceive the awe of human artistic behavior for natural time and the compliance with the logic of “heavenly time”. The temporal rhythm of traditional folk art is not a mandatory rule, nor does it emphasize the conquest and intervention of nature. Instead, it pursues the resonance between human and natural rhythms, and the interembedding of artistic time and life time, demonstrating the temporal wisdom of “Heaven and earth coexist with me, and all things are one with me”[3].
The production process of traditional lacquer art embodies the synchronization between artistic rhythm and natural time sequence. The creative concept of traditional lacquer art originates from a profound understanding of the durability and natural characteristics of natural lacquer materials. Lacquer craftsmen follow the principle of “harvest when leaves are luxuriant, stop when leaves turn yellow” to collect lacquer[4]. The speed at which lacquer flows from lacquer trees is extremely slow, and it usually takes several hours to collect a certain amount. This process requires lacquer craftsmen to maintain patience and not rush for quick results. To realize the sustainable collection of lacquer, craftsmen must control the depth and frequency of lacquer cutting to avoid damaging the lacquer trees. After cutting, sufficient healing time must be given to the trees to ensure normal lacquer production in the coming year. This collection method of “complying with nature and not violating heavenly time” is a concrete embodiment of the traditional idea of “harmony between man and nature”, demonstrating sustainable care for natural resources. Essentially, “nurturing and cutting lacquer” is the in-depth alignment between the behavioral rhythm of lacquer craftsmen and natural rhythms. From the growth cycle of lacquer trees, the selection of lacquer cutting seasons, to the flow of lacquer, tree maintenance and the timing of lacquer application, all need to comply with natural time sequences, reflecting the coordination between human production behaviors and natural rhythms.
The popularization of large-scale industrial mechanized production has promoted the comprehensive intervention of technology in human life and reshaped the overall temporal concept of society. The application of industrial technology in the field of art has initiated the exploration of the integration of art and industrial production. The influence of natural time has gradually weakened, and the connection between folk art and agricultural culture has also loosened. Although mechanical technology has brought convenience to daily life, it has severed the mutually beneficial relationship between “nature and humanity”; the involvement of industrial production chains in folk art production has reduced the labor intensity of artists and improved production efficiency, but it has broken the awe of traditional handicrafts for the logic of “heavenly time” and natural time sequences, and disassembled the synchronous relationship between art production and natural rhythms. The integration of industrial elements has imposed more technical norms on the artistic creation of grassroots laborers, triggering a core conflict between “artisanal slowness” and “efficiency pursuit”.
2.2 The Reshaping of Artistic Temporal Rhythms by Industrial Technology
This conflict is reflected in two aspects: on the one hand, folk art production is a process of time condensation, and its core value relies on the time precipitation and cultural accumulation of “slow work yields fine products”. “Artisanal slowness” means investing a lot of time costs in the meticulous carving of works of art and the learning of skill inheritance, while injecting natural rhythms and life rhythms into the creation process. Taking lacquer art, which carries profound traditional culture, as an example, it is essentially a traditional craft that transforms time and skill accumulation into concrete aesthetic feeling. The production of lacquerware is time-consuming. From base making, lacquering, polishing to buffing, each process requires time precipitation, highlighting the core value of temporality in lacquer art creation. The completion of a lacquerware work is not only the realization of technology, but also the accumulation of time—each layer of lacquer needs to dry and harden in accordance with natural laws, endowing the work with temporal depth and historical thickness. The complexity of traditional lacquer art requires artists to invest intensive labor, a lot of time and continuous mental effort to realize the integration of skills and spirit in the extended temporal dimension.
On the other hand, industrialization and market competition force the improvement of time efficiency, pursuing the maximization of production rate, output timeliness and economic value increment. The essential goal of technological innovation is to improve time efficiency, which is the potential logic of human civilization development. Replacing inefficiency with high efficiency is the core driving force of technological iteration. Driven by digital technologies such as big data, AI and cloud computing, the potential of technology in improving efficiency has been continuously released, and human pursuit of time and efficiency has become increasingly extreme. As Hartmut Rosa put it: “The individual and competitive energy of all accelerating machines will eventually be sacrificed to the social competition like a hamster wheel. This is completely equivalent to the loss of autonomy, a complete departure from the promise of modernity.”[5]
2.3 The Core Conflict Between Artisanal Slowness and Efficiency Logic
In contemporary lacquer art production, to shorten the construction period, it has become a semi-open practice in the industry to replace traditional manual shaping with high-precision laser cutting and 3D printed bases, weakening the “slow work” value of lacquer art; mixing chemical lacquer with resin lacquer to replace rare wild lacquer for priming, and only brushing raw lacquer on the surface to imitate the texture of natural lacquer, resulting in the confusion between synthetic lacquer products and real lacquer works of art, forming a market dilemma of “bad money driving out good money”. Although patterns generated by AI are exquisite, they lose the warm texture and unique “aura” endowed by traditional manual polishing and palm glazing. Some producers blindly pursue industrial production efficiency and capital returns, ignoring the essential requirements of lacquer art for “excellent tools” and “fine materials”, and forgetting the traditional craft concept that “excellent tools are like the four seasons, and fine materials are like the five elements. When the four seasons proceed and the five elements are complete, things are born. When the four virtues are combined and the five colors are complete, craftsmanship is achieved”[6]. Historically, some complex, material-intensive and high-value lacquer art techniques recorded in A Record of Lacquerware Craft have been gradually eliminated with the changes of the times. In contemporary times, some practitioners try to compress lacquer art production into an industrialized mode of on-demand piecework and instant online sales. At the same time, traditional lacquer art craftsmen who adhere to tradition refuse to cater to the production rhythm of the “time-shortening” era, resist automated and intelligent equipment, and insist on manual cloth mounting, ash scraping and lacquering. Their temporal concept still remains in the traditional context. However, the shapes, patterns (such as dragons and phoenixes, flowers and birds) and color systems (mainly black and red) of traditional lacquer art works are disconnected from modern aesthetics, and craftsmen are unwilling to adjust their creations to cater to the market, leading traditional lacquer art to drift away from contemporary life. The prosperous market scene of lacquerware recorded in historical documents, such as lacquer shops in Lin’an City recorded in Dream Liang Lu and Wenzhou lacquer shops in Bianjing recorded in Dongjing Menghua Lu, no longer exists today. If traditional lacquer art becomes divorced from public life due to its high price and can only be traced in ancient paintings (such as Along the River During the Qingming Festival and Prosperous Suzhou), then the craftsmen’s choice to resist modern technology with “tradition” is essentially a closed development model.
Figure 5 “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” (Ming Dynasty·Qiu Ying) – Details of Various Gilded Lacquer Shops
Figure 6 “Prosperous Suzhou” (Replica/Detail), Qing Dynasty·Xu Yang, photographed by the author [7]
3.1 The Integration of AI Technology and Folk Art Production
The rapid transition from industrial civilization to digital civilization, accompanied by the rise of digital technology and AI, has provided diverse innovative possibilities for artistic creation. In the field of art, “AI-generated art”, as a product of the integration of AI and art, generates creativity and automatic design through massive data analysis and deep learning, realizes automated creation in “quasi-conscious” forms such as images, texts, sounds, animations and videos, and conveys artistic expression to the audience through human-computer interaction. At the same time, AI technology also plays an important role in the protection and inheritance of traditional culture, being widely used in data collection, collation and dissemination. From a technical perspective, artists can use machine learning algorithms to process image data and generate digital images and videos with specific styles. However, AI-generated art is still in the “human-like” creation stage, and it is difficult to completely replace humans in completing artistic forms that require spiritual inheritance and value continuation (such as traditional painting and calligraphy), and has not yet achieved a comprehensive replacement of human artistic creation. Nevertheless, driven by the popularization of AI technologies such as computer vision (such as pattern recognition and analysis), intelligent production equipment (such as laser engraving machines), and digital archiving technology (such as 3D scanning), the in-depth integration of technology and art has achieved a historic breakthrough, completely changing the “humanity” of art production and challenging the status of humans as the sole subject of artistic creation[8].
Both history and reality show that the progress of science and technology in the field of material production has profoundly changed the production methods and ecological environment of folk art, promoting folk art to achieve breakthroughs in the technical paths of material and spiritual production. In contemporary folk art production, the application of generative AI and 3D printing technologies has significantly improved creation efficiency. For example, in carving arts such as wood carving and stone carving, 3D printing technology can quickly complete the online design of complex patterns and easily produce exquisite patterns that are difficult to achieve by traditional handwork. With the support of intelligent algorithms and models, national aesthetic trends and folk art styles can be instantly converted into texture data called by AI, leading to the gradual dissolution of the core human-specific characteristics in traditional folk art—the emotional investment of artists in being immersed in the “flow” state and resonating spiritually with their works.
In the context of intertwined multiple times under the polyphonic temporal structure, the fragmentation of folk art production and creation contexts makes it difficult for artists to regulate the creation process relying on breathing rhythm and manual labor rhythm. At the same time, the temporal requirements of digital and intelligent production force creators to adapt to accelerated physical rhythms and fragmented time allocation, which not only hinders the in-depth understanding of the essence of skills, but also loses the possibility of transforming “physical skills” into “physical memory” through long-term practice. Such experiences derived from immersive physical training, physical memories accumulated through long-term creation, as well as temporal concepts and emotional experiences formed in daily labor, are gradually fading under the impact of modern technology.
3.2 The Dissolution of Artistic Physical Experience in the Digital Age
Walter Benjamin used “the storyteller” as a metaphor to explain the social value of constructing and transmitting experiences through narration. Traditional folk artists and craftsmen, like “narrators in specific contexts”, are rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts, possess unique life experiences and “local knowledge” systems, practice localized art production, and form deep connections with the surrounding world. In the era of popular AI, AI has become the “narrator” of the times. The AI expert Hans Moravec put forward a pioneering view in Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence: human consciousness can be copied and transferred to robots, and AI will serve as the “mind children” of humans, enabling human minds to break away from the limitations of the body and promote the evolution of civilization[9]. In Moravec’s view, the human body is only a carrier of consciousness and mind, and human nature is composed of information; the evolution of machine intelligence relies on the replication of neural network architecture and the exponential growth of computing power, rather than simple algorithm optimization. This view regards humans as modifiable, detachable and optimizable information processing machines, implying that all dimensions of life can be quantified into formulaic calculation processes.
This raises core reflections: when manual throwing is replaced by CNC machine tools, and traditional lacquer art patterns are replaced by AI-generated patterns, does the subjectivity of folk art creation need to be redefined? When physical rhythm is dominated by the logic of technological acceleration, and art production is separated from the physical and mental experiences of creators, does the temporal sovereignty of art production belong to humans or AI? Furthermore, is the essence of the strong intervention of technology in folk art production instrumental assistance or the penetration of cultural hegemony? Do creators have a conscious awareness of safeguarding their own cultural subjectivity?
3.3 The Reflection on the Subjectivity of Folk Art Creation in the AI Era
Examining AI artworks and machine replicas from the perspective of the artistic category defined by the “panoramic human art history landscape” pursued by art anthropology, and comparing them with folk artworks with material presence and uniqueness, it is clear that: the industrialization of art will inevitably lead to the commercialization of artworks, and such folk artworks have lost the pure and simple characteristics of traditional folk art. By comparing three contemporary lacquer art works—Carved Silver Wire and Iridescent Double Phoenix Rotating Box, the combined lacquerware “Dripping Time”, and the high-end lacquer box “La(core)quer”, the latter, although showing the exquisite craftsmanship, smooth shape and experimental exploration of “craft + design” of modern lacquer art, lacks the artisan’s ingenuity, delicate life texture and artistic aesthetic expression contained in the former. As Feng Jicai put it: “The spontaneous, simple and innocent spiritual emotions in folk art are gone… Its inner soul and life are lost.”[10] Such modern craft products directly trigger disputes over the subjectivity of artistic creation in the AI era. If modern production methods erase the temporal traces of artworks, abandon the artist’s personal experience, and replace manual warmth with cold machines, artworks will be separated from their cultural context due to the loss of processuality. Whether such “perfect crafts” can be defined as real works of art is worthy of in-depth discussion.
Figure 7 “Carved Silver Wire and Iridescent Double Phoenix Rotating Box” (Wooden Base, Natural Lacquer, Silver, Mother-of-Pearl, Tin), by Yin Liping, 2004, photographed by the author
Figure 8 “Dripping Time” Combined Lacquer Ware (Wood, Natural Lacquer), by Huang Zixin, 2022, photographed by the author
Figure 9 “La(core)quer” High-End Lacquer Box (Natural Lacquer, PVC), by Huo Yijin & Su Xiuying, 2021, photographed by the author
Contemporary society has undergone essential changes from the era of mechanical reproduction where Benjamin lived, but his alertness to mechanical reproduction technology and his worry about the disappearance of the “aura” of traditional art provide an important theoretical reference for examining the relationship between technology and art in the AI era[11]. Benjamin defined “aura” in Little History of Photography as “a strange interweaving of time and space, a unique appearance or look that always maintains a sense of distance no matter how close it is”, describing it as a unique atmosphere perceived by humans when gazing at nature: “Resting on a summer afternoon, contemplating the mountains on the horizon or the branches spreading shade above the head until this moment of contemplation merges with the image of the thing it contemplates—this can be said to absorb the aura of the mountains or branches.”
The disappearance of the “aura” in the era of mechanical reproduction mourned by Benjamin is essentially the dissolution of the authenticity of artworks (uniqueness, material presence, irreproducibility). In the AI era, the way technology intervenes in art production is more in-depth: through data collection, induction, algorithm recognition and computing power processing, artistic creation is transformed into mathematical logic operations. AI technology not only dissolves the “aura” of traditional folk art, but also erodes its inner spiritual core, leading to the demise of the essence of traditional art.
Compared with folk skills completely replaced by technology, the core crisis of traditional lacquer art is not extinction caused by technological replacement, but the dislocation and rupture between tradition and modern time caused by the failure of the old production system. The long growth cycle of lacquer trees leads to the scarcity of raw materials. The seasonal collection method of raw lacquer, which is described as “a tael of lacquer from a hundred miles and a thousand cuts”, is fundamentally conflicting with the commercial requirement of “seven-day delivery” in online e-commerce; the workshop-style production cycle of traditional lacquer art, which takes at least three months, cannot meet the mass production demand of the market and is difficult to compete with machine-made crafts in price and quantity; the inheritance gap of traditional lacquer art, the aging of craftsmen, and the estrangement between traditional shapes and modern aesthetics together constitute its contemporary production dilemma. Elaine Scarry pointed out: “If our crafts do not affect us, then there is no meaning in making them. We make material crafts to internalize them: we make things so that they in turn reshape us and revise the interior of embodied consciousness.”[12] As a technology integrated with human physical experience, lacquer art not only endows human temporal experience with artistic form, but also provides a path for meaning creation of embodied temporal experience. However, the continuous compression of the production cycle forces lacquer artists to adopt methods such as 3D printed bases and chemical lacquer mixed with resin to shorten the creation cycle from several months to several hours in order to improve efficiency and reduce costs, resulting in the loss of the spiritual core of lacquer art that relies on “slow work” precipitation—while saving working hours, it also strips the “soul” of art, putting this 8,000-year-old “slow art” in a survival dilemma in the era of pursuing speed and intelligence.
The technological completeness of the high-tech era has precisely exposed the emptiness of the essence of art. If folk art unrestrictedly accepts technological intervention and is fully “connected to the cloud”, it will not only abandon the artist’s unique personal experience, lose the cultural context of their life experiences and life feelings, but also dissolve the temporal flexibility of folk art production and the creators’ integrated physical and mental creation experience. In the context of increasingly complex AI technology, the strong dissolution of cultural logic by technological logic is more harmful than the annihilation of the “aura”—the emotional background, life memories, fate connections and the meaning of instantaneous experiences in human daily life may gradually fade in the future.
In a contemporary society dominated by digital filters and algorithmic quantitative production, the unpolished “authenticity of life” has become increasingly precious. People are obsessed with handcrafted skills and endow handiworks with artistic value beyond the crafts themselves, precisely because each handcrafted work is inscribed with traces of time, permeated with the creator’s emotions and labor, witnesses the “lived moments” of humans, and confirms the essential difference between humans as subjects of emotion, thinking and consciousness and sophisticated machines. Zhao Fang, a poet of the Yuan Dynasty, wrote in “Ode to Sawyers Splitting Wood”: “When will your departure and my arrival end? Thanks to the pulling and dragging to pass the time.” Two carpenters reached a reconciliation with time through rhythmic interaction in repetitive sawing work, maintaining their livelihood and filling the emptiness of life time in ordinary labor. Folk artworks are by no means isolated objects; they carry the creators’ unique historical emotional memories and cultural cognition. Folk art production is not an empty passage of time. Each creation practice concretely presents the authentic form of specific historical culture and daily life, condenses profound artistic heritage, and bears the cultural roots and historical accumulation of human civilization.
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2.Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 2008. (Original work published 1968)
3.Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi. Translated by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, 2013. (Original work published 3rd century BCE)
4.Huang, Cheng. A Record of Lacquerware Craft. Annotated by Yang Yin, compiled by Wang Shucun, Renmin University of China Press, 2003. (Original work published Ming Dynasty)
5.Rosa, Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. Translated by Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, Columbia University Press, 2018. (Original work published 2005)
6.Huang, Cheng. A Record of Lacquerware Craft. Annotated by Yang Yin, compiled by Wang Shucun, Renmin University of China Press, 2003, p. 6. (Original work published Ming Dynasty)
7.Xu, Yang. Prosperous Suzhou. Liaoning Provincial Museum, 1993. Replica photographed at Yangzhou Grand Canal Museum. (Original work created Qing Dynasty)
8.Zheng, Yu. “The Emergence and Basic Connotations of Art Anthropology.” Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), vol. 28, no. 4, 2006, pp. 2-7.
9.Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Harvard University Press, 1988.
10.Feng, Jicai. “The Contemporary Transformation of Folk Art.” Proceedings of the International Symposium on Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage: Folk Paper Cutting, edited by Central Academy of Fine Arts & UNESCO Beijing Office, 2004.
11.Scarry, Elaine. “The Merging of Bodies and Artifacts in the Social Contract.” Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, edited by George Bender & Timothy D. Druckery, Seattle Bay Press, 1994, p. 97.