tool and die
i’ve been thinking about the duty of artists lately. for me, personally, making tools is a worthy endeavor for any artist. personal tooling to further one’s own craft is essential to an artist’s creative output. this is something developed over time, whether it is true physical tools (the carpenter making their own workbench), or refined-procedure-as-tool through rote performance of craft.
it is also a worthy pursuit for the artist to create tools for their own community. i suspect this begins through passion for the medium. (i seem to have lost this over the years, for some media, through cynicism and depression and apathy. it returns, slowly, and in doses.)
i’d like to shout-out m15o’s wonderful projects. actually, they are very inspiring. if you’re not familiar, i encourage you to check out their body of work: https://nightfall.city/nex/in/m15o/projects/. in particular, riku forms, status.cafe, piclog, and nex.
what is striking about m15o’s works is that the tools feel intuitive and simple; nearly as simple as a hammer is. it’s nearly as obvious looking at a hammer. even if one has not seen one in use, it’s apparent that there are affordances for the human body (a handle) and an opposing end with which something must be done. you only need to see it being operated once before it clicks, what its purpose is. and so i feel about m15o’s tools: they are ergonomic in that sense.
Rollo May, in his lecture The Courage to Create, claims that physical intimacy is “the highest form of creativity in the respect that it can produce a new being”. in this regard, toolmaking is the most creative act an artist can do: to allow others to produce works of art.
for the toolmaker, they become a parent, an ancestor, a progenitor, when the second-generation artist creates this work with use of their tooling. there’s a sense of immortality in that way. an artistic lineage.
these thoughts are pretty new to me, and i don’t know if i believe them entirely yet. they are musings for now. but, there’s a certain truth to them i think; perhaps, enough to have me dabbling and enough to keep my eyes peeled for ways in which i can help my community as a toolmaker.
–hermit