It is often overlooked, but the tools we use to explore various possibilities have an enormous impact on the potential outcomes. In addition to facilitating specific processes or workflows, each tool, whether a pencil or software program on our computer, has a specific logic and deep structure that imposes constraints on the way we think about making. For example, if the objective is to explore issues of transparency and reflection, using a pencil would pose significant challenges.
However, one could easily use 3D software to give simple shapes and planes precise levels of transparency and reflection, develop a lighting source, place those objects in a particular environment and accurately simulate various visual effects. Each tool presents various opportunities or advantages as well as significant limitations.
The tools we use fundamentally change the way we think and explore. Often when we use a particular tool and have done the difficult, time-consuming work of mastering that tool, we fail to acknowledge how it has molded our thinking. Some even become dogmatic and skeptical of new tools and approaches, focusing on their limitations rather than the new opportunities they offer. In extreme cases, the work produced using these tools seems to pose an existential threat and are attacked in one way or another. When we engage in making the goal should not be to exult or favor one tool over another but rather nurture a deep awareness of how the use of various tools shapes and impacts our processes and thinking.
Unfortunately, when educating young makers, some programs are still drawing an unproductive distinction between digital and analog tools. They keep their students from using the computer for the first few years of their development – until their patterns of thinking and processes are established. They contend only then is it “safe” to introduce the computer as a tool. This strategy reveals more about the limitations of the instructors than addressing any real educational goals. Individuals that were taught a particular subject matter in a particular way with a particular set of tools have difficulty transferring their knowledge using unfamiliar tools and processes. It could be argued that limiting student’s investigations to a particular set of tools and processes during their formative years is a form of indoctrination as opposed to education.