Figurations of the Tool Agnostic

In this chapter, we sketch the outlines of the tool agnostic as figuration, a cultural trope for techno-social agency, that is particularly suited to contemporary cultural production. We develop this sketch through an analysis based on fieldwork of a graduate digital media training program. After a brief introduction, we begin the chapter by discussing our conceptual framework for the tool agnostic as figuration. We argue that it affords its actors with the ability to circumvent the antinomy between formalism and its critique as technological determinism by presenting the creative subject as perennially ambivalent—both lured and skeptic—toward the affordances and possibilities of softwarization. It gives the subject a sense of creative control through software by striving to be free from any commitment to software. The empirical investigation provides a historical background for programs like the one encountered in the fieldwork, demonstrating how these institutions impart creative practice as something that is interdisciplinary, industry-oriented, and organizationally flexible. We then relate three vignettes of encounters with the tool agnostic over the course of the 16 months of fieldwork. We conclude by comparing the tool agnostic with another figure of contemporary creative practice, the craftsperson, and ask whether some traits of the former might present the contemporary creative subject with a suitable alternative to the latter’s nostalgic alignment with autonomous technical mastery.