Tool Use and Creativity

It is often said that poor workers blame their tools, the irony being that mistakes do not arise from inanimate objects but from the clumsiness of their users. The converse (that good workers praise their tools) is less often said. To say this would be to suggest that the outcome is due more to the property of the tool than the dexterity of the tool’s user. And yet, we have all experienced tools that make a particular action so easy, so pleasurable, so ‘right’, that we marvel at the quality of that tool as it saws through wood, slices through food, or makes marks on paper. It is this sense of ‘rightness’ that is of interest to me in this chapter. Further, if some activities are made easier, etc., by some tools, then the question is whether the activities are framed by these specific tools. Taking this a little further, I want to explore how the ‘framing’ of the activity (that a specific tool might permit) extends beyond the mere physicality of using the tool to the very basis of creativity. My central argument is that the movements involved in the use of tools are not instrumental to creativity; these movements are the creative act.