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å October 2014
í Unit 3: For next week
A tool—any tool—is possibility at one end and a handle at the other.
Select two tools of your own choosing, from two different quadrants of this matrix:
- physical + design/art— (ex: letterpress, calligraphy brush, camera)
- digital + design/art— (ex: photoshop, or one particular action / filter within photoshop)
- physical non-design/art— (ex: photocopier, telephone, trowel, dice)
- digital non-design/art— (ex: microsoft word, excel, google)
Explore both tools’ default behavior(s). Explore their most unorthodox potentials. Hack the tools, break the tools. (If they belong to RISD, please don’t actually break the tools.) For this week, experimentation is key. Process rather than final results.
í Unit 3: In class
“Tools make revolutions. ‘When we make a new tool, we see a new cosmos,’ says physicist Freeman Dyson. He was probably thinking of microscopes, telescopes, and atomic particle accelerators.
But even the workaday tools . . . can alter our perspective. A tool—any tool—is possibility at one end and a handle at the other. Because tools open up options, they remake us.”
—Kevin Kelly, 2000
You will each receive a common item—art supply or household item—sourced from RISD 2nd Life.
How can this object be utilized as a tool? For communication? For writing? For mark making? Experiment using your tool on letter-size paper. We will pin them your results for a brief discussion at the end of class.
