Abstract

The plasticity of new media allows artists and designers to create a range of innovative interactions, and yet the most common tools to make digital work force us stay slumped over a desk.

Historically bad tools could be immediately addressed by the artist or artisan him or herself. A painter could trim the bristles on their brush, mix their pigment differently, decide to use a found object as a canvas, etc. In contrast, technology products can seem like black boxes that are either hard to mold, too expensive to risk breaking or flat-out locked down by their manufacturer.
body/object/code is an exploration into developing a scaffolding by which artists and designers could become comfortable “popping the hood” or even designing from scratch the tools they are using.

I approached the problem by setting research questions for myself, starting with isolating what skills I considered relevant to making creative tools with rich interaction styles. I also addressed how best to teach the skills and get the information to other people.