Why the value of art may increasingly lie in what happens before the finished image exists

The Human Hand

A finished artwork can be photographed. It can be displayed on a screen, shared thousands of times and increasingly analysed, imitated or reinterpreted by artificial intelligence. But the image is not the artwork’s entire history.

For Dutch artist Denise Buisman Pilger, that history begins with physical materials: Kozo bark transformed by hand, Washi shaped by water and fibres, metal wire bent and crocheted into structures, and surfaces that respond differently every time she touches them.

The finished work is only the visible end of that process. Perhaps that distinction is becoming more important.

🟦 Where Does an Artwork Actually Begin?

For Buisman Pilger, an artwork does not begin with a perfectly defined image waiting to be executed. It begins with material.

Kozo has to be soaked, scraped, boiled, cleaned and beaten before it can become part of Washi. Fibres behave differently depending on how they have been processed. Water changes their movement. Handmade paper carries irregularities that cannot simply be removed without changing its character.

By the time Buisman Pilger starts composing, she is therefore not working with a neutral surface. She is working with materials that already have properties, limitations and histories of their own. That changes the role of the artist.

Making becomes less about executing a predetermined image and more about responding to what happens along the way.

“The magic doesn’t start when I begin crocheting or knotting metal wire. It starts when the materials are still raw bark.”

The artwork begins before there is an artwork to see.

🟦 Can an Artist Control the Material?

Traditional craftsmanship is often associated with mastery: years of experience give the maker greater control over tools and materials. Buisman Pilger’s work introduces another possibility. Skill can also mean knowing when not to control.

Her approach to Washi deliberately moves away from the pursuit of perfectly uniform sheets. Kozo fibres are allowed to extend beyond expected boundaries. Some remain raw and visible. Others are poured, draped or incorporated around crocheted structures.

The material is given room to behave.

“I’ve decided to stop following rules I didn’t write.”

That does not mean abandoning technique. Quite the opposite. Breaking rules meaningfully requires understanding the material well enough to recognise what can happen when those rules are loosened.

Her work therefore exists somewhere between intention and discovery. The artist begins the process, but does not dictate every outcome.

🟦 Why Does Unpredictability Matter?

This becomes particularly visible in Buisman Pilger’s Unbound works.

Kozo can appear extraordinarily delicate. Loose fibres resemble cobwebs, clouds or fragments of organic tissue, yet their interlocking structure gives them surprising strength. Combined with wire, colour and three-dimensional form, the material can develop in directions that are difficult to determine completely in advance.

That uncertainty becomes part of the artwork. A fibre settles differently. A layer dries unexpectedly. A form develops tension. The artist responds.

This interaction leaves traces in the finished piece. What viewers encounter is therefore not merely a composition, but the accumulated record of decisions, reactions and material events that occurred while it was being made.

In that sense, imperfection is not evidence that the process failed. It is evidence that a process occurred.

🟦 Can AI Reproduce the Image?

This is where artificial intelligence introduces an intriguing distinction. An AI system may be able to generate an image that resembles handmade paper. It can reproduce visual characteristics associated with fibre, irregular edges, layered surfaces or abstract compositions.

As those systems improve, the imitation may become increasingly convincing. But resemblance is not the same as history.

The digital image has not soaked bark, felt the resistance of Kozo, waited for fibres to dry or changed direction because a material behaved unexpectedly. It can represent the visual consequences of those experiences without having undergone them.

This does not make AI-generated imagery inherently less creative or less interesting. It simply makes it different. The distinction lies not necessarily in what we can see, but in what had to happen for the object to exist.

🟦 Does the Process Become Part of the Value?

For centuries, craftsmanship has contained an unusual relationship between time and value.

The finished object carries within it hours, days or sometimes years that are no longer visible directly. Knowledge acquired over decades may be expressed in a movement lasting only seconds.

Buisman Pilger’s work makes some of that hidden process visible again. Fibres remain fibres. Irregularities remain perceptible. The material is not completely subordinated to the image. That matters in an era of extraordinary visual abundance.

When almost unlimited numbers of images can be produced, perhaps scarcity begins to move elsewhere. It may reside increasingly in physical time, material transformation, accumulated skill and objects whose histories cannot be reproduced simply by copying their appearance.

The artwork becomes valuable not only because of what it looks like. Its value also lies in what happened.

🟦 What Remains Human?

There is a temptation to frame discussions about art and artificial intelligence as a competition. Can AI make art? Will it replace artists? Can humans remain more creative than machines?

Buisman Pilger’s work suggests that these may not be the most interesting questions. The more revealing distinction may lie between generation and encounter.

A generative system can produce possibilities at extraordinary speed. A maker working with physical materials encounters resistance. The paper tears, fibres move, water behaves differently, structures bend and the artist must continuously decide whether to intervene or allow the unexpected to remain.

That encounter changes the work. It may also change the artist. And that reciprocal relationship between maker, material and process is much harder to reduce to an image alone.

🟦 The Human Touch

Perhaps artificial intelligence will eventually reproduce almost every visual style we can recognise. That does not mean it will reproduce everything we value about art.Denise Buisman Pilger’s work points towards the distinction.

What matters is not simply the appearance of Kozo or Washi, but the transformation that preceded it: bark becoming fibre, fibre becoming material, material resisting the artist and the artist responding in return.

The finished artwork contains traces of that encounter. AI may reproduce the image. It may imitate the texture. It may even create something visually indistinguishable. But it cannot retroactively give that image the physical history through which the original came into being.

And perhaps, in an age capable of generating almost anything we can imagine, the story of how something came into existence will become part of what makes it worth preserving.

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This article is part of The Human Hand, an Altair Media series exploring craftsmanship, materials and human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. Denise Buisman Pilger will present her work in a solo exhibition at the World of Threads Festival 2026–2027 in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

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Photo Credit

Photo courtesy of Denise Buisman Pilger / Artist Abroad.

Caption

Denise Buisman Pilger working with traditional Washi-making techniques in Japan. Water, fibres, colour and the movement of the hand become part of a process in which the artist cannot completely predetermine the outcome. It is precisely this physical dialogue between maker and material that What AI Cannot Reproduce explores.