New Video: PSV006: Create Your Tools, Create Your World

A few years back, I wrote a short piece regarding Canadian scholar and author Marshall McLuhan.  One of MM’s most insightful observations is that the tools we make (MM was speaking collectively – ‘We’ as a civilization) can indeed help us perform the tasks that they were designed for; but over time they exert a very real and definite ‘pull’ in terms of dictating our behavior.  This has a whole range of implications for artwork, culture, and society in general. We are not wholly masters of our tools; we may benefit from them, but we are limited by them as well, and once certain tools are widespread enough, they can exert their own prerogatives, leading our societies and psyches into places that we might not have chosen to go otherwise.

When I first moved to Bridgeport back in 2005, I met an artist who’s work is concerned with exploring this dynamic; this relationship between mankind, technology, and perception.  It’s an intensely modern project that’s fueled by an idiosyncratic manipulation of antique technologies, and he offers an especially compelling account of the advantages that await the artist who makes his/her own tools.  Click here, or below, to watch the video.

For more about Tom Mezzanotte, click here.