Transmediale 2013 BWPWAP Berlin/DE:29.01-03.02.2013

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. – Mark TwainSoftware is mind control—get some. – i/o/d Through a selection of 13 artists, Tools of Distorted Creativity questions the notion of creativity that has been instrumental to the development of the personal computer, from its first stationary instantiations in the 1980s to today’s mobile devices. Since its introduction, the personal computer has embodied the dream of the creative machine that allows the user to expand and explore her creative potential, rather than making her a slave of the machine. The personal computer itself is, however, only half of this story about machine-aided creativity. The other and equally important half of the story are the software tools at the user’s disposal within the machine environment. Each of these hundreds of thousands of tools presents certain forms of perception, ways of thinking and modes of acting, that in turn activate certain kinds of creativity. So rather than being a general notion, creativity needs to be recognized as a multiplicative and diverse form of practice. Creativity also needs recognition as the source of open potential for tools yet to be invented.