October 05, 2004
#240 :: Random-Color Pencils
Good tools brook no question of trust. Pick up a 9mm box-end Craftsman hex wrench and you expect it will turn even the most badly seized 9mm nut with brute efficiency. If it fails - ever - you can get a refund. A tool generally does what it's designed for, at the very least, and if you're lucky, can be used for other purposes. But what of the untrustworthy tools - the ones that don't reveal the precise outcome of their use until tried - random-number generators, the Spirograph, fractal software, tie-dying, the raku glazing process for pottery, the random actions of Cosmojetz. Okay, two of these are toys, which brings me to tonight's objects: You simply cannot rely on a single color to emerge from these tools. They are prone to chaos - or, more positively, they embrace it. Thick, heavy, crammed with quadra-colored leads, they invite play. Surrendering to the outcome is an act of faith: This'll be neat. And for that reason, they are precision instruments.