Artisanal Intelligence at Stella Matutina

For the last two weeks, I’ve been living at Stella Matutina — a new philosophical R&D institution hidden away in a slice of Switzerland crafted by the divine.

Set in the delightful campus of an ex-nunnery previously owned by the Sisters of Baldegg, Stella Matutina — meaning “morning star” — is a breathtakingly beautiful peninsula the on the shores of Lake Lucerne. The mission? To solve the grand philosophical challenges of the post-AI age.

I was invited to participate and present a talk on Artisanal Intelligence. Yet, I found something much bigger.

Stella Matutina will either become a centrifuge of philosophical, technological, and creative innovation that follows in the footsteps of the University of Jena, the Bauhaus, and Dartington Hall, shaping the course of the coming centuries. Or it could become an A24-worthy techno-folk cult for eccentric creative technologists where someone gets murdered. Both good.

The cast of characters was exceptional.

Metascientists. Silicon Valley accelerationists and demonologists. Organists. Biotechnologists. Stafford Beer obsessives. Transhumanists and UFOlogists. Maple syrup Bopeas. People that talk to bats. Anthropic doom-mongers. Literal rock stars. Renaissance venture capitalists. I Ching shaman. Matcha mystics. Yogis. Memelords. Stoner horror filmmakers. Public health researchers. Philanthropists. Fashion designers. Conspiracy theorists. Endless architects, artists, philosophers.

My kindred spirits.

I first heard of Stella a few months ago. I met the co-founder Sylvan to talk Cræft Prize and artist-technologists. Sylvan quickly lured me in to Stella with talk of nuns, craft, technologies, and the mystery of European Cosmotechnics. After meeting his co-conspirators Haley and Tobias, I was hooked in.

Months later, knowing almost no one, I found myself deep inside Stella’s founding milieu dreaming of what it could become.

Stella’s dangerous mavericks were invited to give talks. I used my slot to give a lecture in the church.

Part of the mission of Stella is to do the tricky thinking about how, in a potentially dystopian post-AI world, we forge an awe-inspiring civilisation. Why? The emergence of AI splinters various assumptions about the underlying concepts that have structured society since the Industrial Revolution.

My contribution was an examination of Artisanal Intelligence. We know that the distinctions between craft vs technology — or indeed artisanship vs science — are fairly recent conceptual innovations. The pioneers of the past often had to be all at once.

Yet if once again AI collapses context and disciplines, what are the interesting questions to explore? What are the meaningful categories and concepts that should shape the future?

Looking at Artisanal Intelligence at three levels — traditional, industrial, and on the cutting edge — I posed various questions for deeper R&D including:

• In what ways can craft serve as a blueprint for the future of work, life, and leisure?

• How would a new artisanal intelligence paradigm elaborate on the spirit of Josiah Wedgwood, William Morris, Walter Gropius?

• How can artificial and artisanal intelligence work together to create new paradigms of creation and production?

• What are the social and philosophical dynamics of the artisanal life that we should learn from?

• How do we keep skills alive to ensure tacit knowledge is not lost? What else could that tacit knowledge find when applied in different spheres? (e.g. advanced materials, manufacturing etc.)

• What old crafts could find a new lease of life with new applications?

• How can technologies resurrect and support dying crafts?

• How could the crafts of the past root the technologies of tomorrow?

• How could emergent technologies create meaningful products and forms that enrich our future culture?

• How could traditional crafts be deepened with insight from AI systems?(e.g. AI decoding hidden patterns)

I also began to elaborate my vision for a future Artisanal Intelligence Lab. Imagine: a space to answer these questions in partnership with masters of art and craft, cutting-edge technologists, and frontier theorists.

The idea would be to incubate various practices and creations — both to recursively enhance theory and develop wonderful products and processes that could forge a rich, more soulful future.

This was all presented in a slide deck. Paid subscribers are welcome to read the attached PDF — but I shall be keeping it out of general circulation until the thinking is truly ready.

The next bit is paywalled. Feel free to upgrade if you want to see it.

While you can’t all see the deck, I will share some images of Stella. It’s exceptionally cool and scenic.

• A reminder that the £60,000 Cræft Prize submissions window closes on 31st August 2026.

• There’s still plenty of time to throw your hat in the ring, but if you are not sure if your idea is eligible, please get in touch.

• There will be six nominees — each receiving £5,000 grants — and the winner gets another £30,000.

• If you know any makers, designers, creative technologists — or indeed artisan-technologists, engineers…. or any combination of the above combining technology and craft to make interesting new things for the world, please forward the prize to them and perhaps they can submit.

• Teaser: the judges have been assembled and will be announced in the coming weeks. It’s an all star cast.