Tanya Harrod

Harrod, Tanya. 2003.
‘Otherwise unobtainable: the applied arts and the politics and poetics of digital technology’.
Pixel Raiders I

As part of her paper Tanya Harrod discusses designing a 3D object on the computer, she writes

“This idea of editing - we have not known its like in the production of objects before…with Photoshop or CAD software each state can be saved. There is no identifiable original and no final outcome” (Harrod 2003:8)

I looked briefly at the this in my previous post, responding to Voderberg’s question of how evidence of problem solving etc is shown when using digital technology (Voderberg 2004). Harrod answers this, every stage of the process can be saved, documented, returned to and reworked.

Harrod argues that the notion that the computer is only a tool is a cliché, using it is a “massive intervention” (Harrod 2003:8). This is the opposite to Eden’s view (as discussed in previous posts) that the computer is purely a tool that he employs to realise his ideas (Eden 2008).