Fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan told the world that the medium is the message[1], and I have long taken that to mean that it is as valuable to study the tools and techniques as the final product if we are ever to understand the whole.
The artist can easily get lost in the tools, though. Photographers can bang on about their camera specs. Writers can wax poetic about their favourite keyboards. And musicians these days it seems are just as apt to post content about the subtle tonality differences between brands of violin strings as share their music.
Yet, creativity is and always will be an intimacy with the tools and techniques. The art and the mechanisms that enable it are inseparable and interwoven as two things can be.
Maybe that’s why we get hung up on the medium and the message and often confuse the effort to concentrate on them both with the attention they deserve.
Or maybe I just like writing about my toys and I am going to devote some space on this blog to share my thoughts about keyboards, cameras and violin strings. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
Under the category of Tools & Troubles, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.
References
- ↑ . (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Terms FROm this POSt
- blog
- I am old. And I started posting formatted words and photos online before the word blog had entered the common lexicon. Most people work in the medium of social platforms these days, but being both a product of my time and a stickler for content ownership and control, I still lean into and promote the idea that the blog (a content managed general purpose personal website) is the beating heart of the internet I once knew and loved.
- violin
- I write here quite a lot about the violin. It is exactly what you think: that four stringed wooden instrument with the distinctive curved body shape. Played well it is tuned to the range of the human voice, so it often haunts our hearts and reminds us of singing. I have been playing since 2016 when I took it up as an adult student, but one who could already read music. I can play, but the quality to which I aspire is something I will work on for the rest of my life.
