Tools and Digital Creations
What is the difference between Physical and Digital creation? When we consider working on a digital piece of art, or physically assembling some furniture, we can't help but feel that there are some significant differences between each of these forms of creation. Despite this question being seemingly obvious, I would argue that the difference between these modes of creation extends deeper than the mere tangibility of the output. As someone who loves using Photoshop, Unity, VS Code and other such pieces of software, I am grateful for the ability to express myself digitally, and create things otherwise not possible with just a pen, anvil or drop-saw. And much like when learning IDEs or programs to create digitally, to build something from wood you also need the right tools. You may be able to use minimal tools, such as a whittling knife, or a standard minimum such as a saw, screwdriver or hammer. The more complex you want your output to be, the more complex the tools you may consider using. The point here is, you can start from a very minimal tool set, with tools that are simple to learn how to start using. Digital tools, however are not as simple as a knife or screwdriver. Even the most simple tools are doing complex things under the hood. Microsoft Paint, a famously simple program, still requires the complex manufacturing of motherboards and computer chips, the millions of lines of Operating System code, the technological competency to switch it all on and correctly use a mouse or track pad. The learning curve is significantly steeper that a hammer's learning curve, from the very beginning. Digital tools require an amount of IT Literacy which is taught and learned over time, and rely on software created and maintained by other people. Hammers can be found scattered all over the ground, in the shape of rocks. Knives in the form of sharp edges can be found almost anywhere, when the need becomes strong enough (or the luck bad enough). Even your own teeth occasionally suffice! Physical tools can be intuited and improvised, by default. They are simple by nature, and a good tool remains invisible – aiding in the creation and nothing more. Digital tools are built by teams or companies and are often updated and changing. Even if they aren't, the computer that they're installed on is changing, updating, ageing. These tools are mostly proprietary, and differ in significant ways to other tools that can achieve similar results. They act more as environments. The computer program is less like a saw or knife or hammer, and more like an entire workshop. The more tools and abilities that the software offers, the more of your time you spend with the software itself, and not with that which it helps you create. This is a fundamental difference. When I have a loose screw, I pick up a screwdriver and tighten it. I don't pick up a screwdriver, learn that it has new features, spend hours reading documentation, rearranging its handle, customising it's colour scheme and layout, installing new modifications and extensions, etc. When working digitally, the tools take up your time. The digital tools themselves are the subject of your creation. When working tangibly, the creation is what takes up your time, and the tools are simply there to enable your interaction with whatever you are creating outside of the tools themselves. When a screwdriver breaks, they are so abundant that you can find another one to use. Worse case scenario, you have a million businesses in your immediate area that will be happy to sell you one for almost any price point you are willing to match. What happens when an automatic update makes the program incompatible with your hardware? Or a company's pivot changes your usage license? Or Adobe give up trying to secure Flash and just discontinue it completely? This is where the main point of my exploration comes in. No matter how good the company are/seem to be, by using their tool for your creation, you are at their mercy, in a way that doesn't really apply in the real world, due to the abundance and availability of simple tools. I believe that subconsciously, this reliance on digital technologies removes the satisfaction of ownership over a creation. There's always a bit of doubt in the back of your mind, as any day, a tool could corrupt/break/be discontinued/become unsupported/update in a way that you find unusable/increase their cost/implement a subscription model that you cant justify or afford/retract your lifetime license. The servers you rely on could go offline, the company could get bought out and dissolved. Pick one. It doesn't really matter which, nor how likely it is to occur. You can't rationalise your way out of a subconscious feeling. I recently achieved a proof of concept regarding databases and Javascript that I was quite proud of, while working on a new feature for this site. At the time, it was scratching that creativity itch that I often get when I'm sat idle for too long. It felt good to be making progress in this new thing that I was building. Though, when I stopped for dinner, I was overcome with a sense of dread at yet another day wasted. It suddenly hit me that I hadn't made any progress on anything at all - I had simply lost yet another day to the computer, with nothing to show for it. With my computer off, my creation was gone. And it was in the hands of God knows who, on a server based in God knows where, completely removed from my influence or reach. I had an instinctual feeling that if I had spent that time drawing instead, I would have felt different - Nowhere near as bad or guilty about wasted time. But then what if I was drawing with my graphics tablet in Photoshop? Would that not be the same thing as drawing? And I could even print it out after I was finished, for tangibility. This line of questioning was what started me down between the differences between digital and physical. Originally I had thought the answer would simply be "it needs to be tangible to be real, so anything digital doesn't count". But tangibility is only one property of a creation. I believe the main reason that I felt this way was that my new feature that I was initially excited about relies on so many programs, people, external systems etc. that at the end of it, it didn't feel like mine. Despite the creation being completely my own doing, I felt that I had spent my day essentially 'working' for those programs and systems, not using them for my own goals. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks away from my home computer, where Photoshop is installed. I was required to make a presentation for work, and had a few ideas of diagrams that I could have put together with ease, if only I had Photoshop handy. Instead, using my slow old laptop, I pulled a lot of my hair out and struggled through; browser based programs, free trials of random programs, MS Paint, GIMP, pencil drawing and then scanning, only to get a result that still didn’t meet the idea that I had in my mind. Again, this points to ownership. Have I really learned how to create Digital art – do I really own that skill – when if I lose access to one program from one company, I’m back to fumbling around in the dark without a clue how to manipulate the pixels in the way that I want? I realise now, after all these years, that I haven’t been learning digital creation at all - only simply how to use a single digital environment that a company can take away from me whenever they feel like it. I’m not a creator – I’m a dependent of Adobe.
- Aluca Sol
