What is creation?
It feels intuitively obvious, although when we consider working on a digital piece of art, or even just physically assembling some furniture, for example, we can't help but notice that a few differences emerge.
What I am thinking about today is whether those differences matter in any substantial way, or they are simply properties of the creation itself that have no bearing on the act of creation, such as the softness of a knitted scarf, or the shading of a pencil drawing. Differences, for sure, but seemingly not relevant to the question of whether a scarf and a drawing can be considered a creation.
The kind of differences that I have been thinking about are the tools that we use, to assist in these creations. Or more specifically, is it possible to truly create something, using digital tools?
This is a hard stance, I know, and as someone who loves using Photoshop, Unity and other pieces of software to make art, I'm not entirely sure if I'm in the 'no digital creation' camp. Though there is of course a reason that I'm asking myself this question, and after much reflection, I think that it might not be as outrageous as it first sounds.
To build something from wood, you need 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 mostly simple to learn how to start using, although they can be optionally used in complicated ways.
Digital tools, however cannot be as simple as a knife or screwdriver. Even the most simple tools are doing complex things under the hood. The learning curve is significantly steeper that a hammer's learning curve, from the very beginning. In fact, the use of a hammer or knife can be intuited, unlike digital tools, which require an amount of IT Literacy which is taught and learned over time.
These digital tools are built by teams or companies, are often updated and changing, and even if they aren't, the computer that they're installed on is changing. 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 your entire workshop. Where a screwdriver enables you to work with screws, a piece of software initially hinders your march forward, demanding that you stop working on whatever project that you had in mind to learn how its own environment works. Perhaps the environment has its own programming language, and toolbar layouts, and plugin options. Suddenly, you are more invested in manipulating the software, than in manipulating your creation with the use of the software. Digital tools enable, but also hinder, creativity.
The more tools and abilities that the software offers, the more of your time you spend working with the software. This is a fundamental difference that I have noticed. When I have a loose screw, I pick up a screwdriver and tighten it. I dont pick up a screwdriver, learn that it has new features, spend hours reading documentation, rearranging its handle, customizing it's colour scheme and layout, installing new modifcations and extentions, etc.
When working digitally, the tools take up your time. When working tangibly, the creation is what takes up your time - as the tools are simple, unchanging and not acting as a hindrance.
There's also the issue of breakage. Sometimes, things break - it's just a fact of life.
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 willing 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. The servers you rely on could go offline, the company could get bought out and dissolved. It doesn't matter what, nor how likely. You can't rationalise your way out of a subconscious feeling.
I've been thinking about this because I had achieved a proof of concept regarding databases and javascript that I was quite proud of, as I worked 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. But 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. Surely, if I was drawing in that time, I would have felt different. But then what about if I was drawing with my graphics tablet in Photoshop? Is that not the same thing? These questions were what started me down between the differences beetween digital and tangible. Originally I had thought the answer would simply be "it needs to be tangible to be real, so anything digital doesn't count". But the tangibility was only a property of the creation. I belive the main reason that I felt the way that I did was that my new feature relied on so many programs, people, systems etc. that at the end of it, it didn't feel like mine. Despite it 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.
So I suppose, for now, that is my conclusion. That a photoshop drawing is less satisfying than a pencil drawing not because it's digital and digital is bad, but because until it's out of the hands of a complex tool, it's not mine. This tool can be Photoshop, but by extention of my thoughts here, it feels that the computer itself is a complex tool, which explains why using a graphics tablet and digital pen still doesn't quite match using a real pen, in this framework.
- Aluca Sol 