What Remains of the Craft

2026-07-13

(This article is based on a segment produced for the Cellophane et Vaseline podcast, available on all listening platforms.)

This morning, I came across the very first “logo” for Studio Pixel again. Our tattoo studio.

Looking back, it really makes me think of a hair salon brand. The slightly gloomy kind you would find in a shopping mall, with a “friendly” font, but not somewhere I think I would trust with my beard.

I still like it. But it was six years ago.

And it is funny how much a logo can change the way we see a place. The space and the people inside it could be exactly the same. But change two colours, a typeface and a small icon, and suddenly you are telling a completely different story.

Speaking of hair salons, I recently came across a video showing a robotic hairdresser. The thing scans your head in 3D, analyses your hair, then an articulated arm gives you a haircut in a few minutes.

At least, that is what the video claims to show.

There is no real company name, no full demonstration and no identifiable product behind it. And given the state of the internet in 2026, there is a decent chance the video was generated by AI, or at the very least heavily faked.¹

But maybe the most interesting thing is not whether it is real. It is that it feels believable.

We already have vending machines for drinks, sandwiches, pizzas and Pokémon cards. We have machines that serve coffee. And now we also have articulated arms capable of preparing slightly more complex drinks, with milk, foam, cappuccinos and lattes. I saw one in a shopping centre a few days ago.

When I want a can of soda, I do not particularly feel the need to build a human connection with the machine. I put in a coin, press a button and get my Coke. Job done. Nobody asks me how my day went. And honestly, that is fine by me.

So naturally, the question comes up pretty quickly: where are we with tattooing?

There is Blackdot in the United States, for example, which is developing an automated machine capable of tattooing skin. Ten-dollar tattoos at last, you might think? No.

Trying the technology costs several hundred, sometimes several thousand dollars depending on the project. Some designs have even been offered for as much as $10,000.²

So we still have a little breathing room. But that does not mean we are safe.

The Blackdot machine does not decide by itself what it is going to tattoo. An artist prepares the design. An operator positions the person, places the markers, secures the arm or leg, then monitors the machine.

The device analyses the skin, calculates the depth and reproduces the image as tens of thousands of tiny dots.³ For now, it mainly works on relatively flat areas of the body. Arms and legs. Not really hands, chests, backs or the places that move in every direction whenever you breathe.⁴

The machine is also better suited to fine lettering, small details and dotwork than to large areas of solid black or thick lines. So no, the universal tattoo robot is not here yet.

But all of this raises a fairly interesting question: when a machine can reproduce the gesture, what is actually left of the craft?

Because a job is not just one thing.

First, there is the result. I want a coffee. I want a haircut. I want a tattoo. I want something specific at the end.

For some services, the result is more than enough. When I buy a Pokémon card from a vending machine, I am not sad that I did not spend five minutes talking to a salesperson before collecting my booster pack. I just want my shiny card.

Then there is the technique. The way the coffee is prepared. The way the hair is cut. The way the skin is tattooed, the line is pulled, the depth is controlled and a moving surface that is never perfectly flat is handled.

That part can be passed on. To an apprentice. To a machine. To a robotic arm that never shakes, never gets tired and never complains about back pain after six hours, or about needing a wrist brace after a few years of practice.

And then there is everything else. Understanding what the person actually wants. Because they rarely arrive with a perfectly clear request.

Sometimes they come in with three Pinterest screenshots, a blurry photo, an idea they had in a dream and the sentence:

I want something like this, but not exactly.

You have to ask questions. Understand why they want the tattoo. Adapt the design to their body. Explain that the idea may be too small. That the area they picked may age badly. That putting twenty details into three centimetres is not minimalism, it is just a future blob.

Sometimes you have to reassure them. Sometimes adjust the design. Sometimes refuse. And above all, you have to accept the responsibility of leaving something permanent on someone.

So the human relationship is not always essential. For a coffee, it can even be completely unnecessary. For a tattoo, it depends much more on what the person is actually looking for.

Some people just want a perfectly regular word on their forearm. They may not want to tell their life story. They may not want to create any connection with the artist. They want to choose a font, sit down, wait fifty minutes and leave. In that case, the machine probably meets the need very well.

But for other projects, the relationship is part of the result. Not just around the result. Inside it.

A tattoo connected to grief, a change in life, an identity or something difficult cannot always be reduced to reproducing an image accurately.

And maybe that is where the distinction becomes interesting. A craft is made of several layers: the result, the gesture, the judgement and the relationship.

Machines do not always replace an entire job all at once. They begin by separating out the simplest pieces. The transaction. The repetitive gesture. The precision. Then, gradually, they move upwards.

And sometimes, once everything that can be automated has been removed, almost nothing is left. In other crafts, what remains becomes the most important part.

I know Ciel sometimes calls me Tony Stark because I like tinkering, building things and automating everything I can.

But as someone raised on The Matrix and Terminator, I still find myself asking this question: are we using robots to save time? Or are we simply preparing the ground so they can finally take over the world?

Anyway, I have to go.

My Tamagotchi needs feeding.