The Medici Effect Blog

A truly intersectional creator

I first read about Bertrand Gondouin in a Metro article (Swedish) when he recently presented his electronic jacket at a virtual reality conference in Stockholm. His aim is to explore how computers may be used without the traditional tools – for experimental and artistic purposes. He has used electronic textiles in the jacket (which looks like a perfectly normal jacket) and he controls the computer by waving his arms. With his movements he can navigate through a 3D environment projected on the wall.

Gondouin is a designer in interactive visuals who really exploits the innovative power of intersections of different disciplines. This is how he describes it himself:

"My work combines three disciplines: art direction, software engineering and live performance. This scope of activities enables me to deliver responsive, environmental graphics in real-time, which creates uniquely immersive experiences."

At this intersection he seems to have a lot of fun and apparently barriers don’t exist to this visionary thinker. Considering what he has achieved it is amazing that he has no background in technology but he certainly brings new perspectives into this field since he is educated in art and has been working with live television. Check this crazy video from his first experiments with the jacket where he controls sound with arm movements or this earlier post which also includes electronic textiles.

/Kristian Ribberström

Motion-capture and furniture

When I saw Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers back in 2002 I was amazed, like everybody else, by the digitally animated creature Gollum. The filmmakers had achieved something extraordinary and I realized there and then that I would never again be surprised the possibilities of motion-capture technique. But I was wrong. The designers at Front make everybody surprised with their innovative design method. They make freehand sketches in the air and record the strokes with motion-capture technology. The information is then digitized into 3D models.

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One of the main ideas in The Medici Effect is that if you apply existing concepts in fields where they haven’t been used before it dramatically increases your chances of being innovative. The Front design team is a very good example of that. When they placed themselves at the intersection of 3D animation and furniture design and applied motion-capture where it doesn’t “belong” it gave them originality as well as attention. Arguably, it would take some rather advanced technical breakthrough to revolutionize the way motion-capture is used for 3D animation in films or computer games but all they had to do at Front was to use the technique in a new way.

Naturally, this is not their only design method but all their work is characterized by the same open-mindedness that enables them to break down the associative barriers between fields. When I assumed that I would never again be surprised by the possibilities of motion-capture it was because I didn’t see beyond those barriers.

/Kristian Ribberström

H&M and Rei Kawakubo

H&M continues with their innovative formula for keeping at the forefront of fashion design for the masses – they bring in new perspectives through intersections with haute couture designers. Earlier they have produced collections designed by, for instance, Stella McCartney or Viktor & Rolf that have been loved by customers and, more importantly, the media. A press release yesterday announced that this year’s cooperation will be with Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, founder and owner of Comme Des Garcons.

It is obvious that H&M has understood the creative and commercial value of tearing down the barriers between different styles and levels of fashion and they have successfully exploited that insight. Kawakubo is a perfect partner since she is a highly original avant-garde designer who is known for her intellectual profile and integrity. But she is also interested in the balance between creation and business and the H&M project will give her a chance to explore that. She also seems to be open-minded when it comes to unexpected connections – she is the designer that Speedo cooperated with in the development of their racer swimsuit that I wrote a post about earlier.

/Kristian Ribberström

Computer games and art

Convergence and cross-pollination of cultural fields is probably the most common way of inventing new art forms. Game art is one such intersectional example. Basically it is art inspired and/or expressed by computer games. It has been a field of experimentation for about a decade but apparently it is gaining ground.

The development of the field follows a well established pattern – photography was quickly embraced by artists and so was video technique. The computer game genre also has everything it needs to be used for artistic expression. Not only technically and visually; to many people born in the seventies and later allusions to classic computer games are probably as relevant and meaningful as literary references. Furthermore - the fact that it is a combination of two fields opens up for an explosion of new ideas and unexpected innovation.

Watch this example on Youtube or check this archive.

/Kristian Ribberström

Entertainment industry – intersections within intersections

Yesterday I finally saw the movie Stardust based on Niel Gaiman’s book with the same name. I did not like it very much but it is interesting to look at it from a creativity perspective. Gaiman has his own version of fantasy and just like Naomi Novik or Philip Pullman he manages to write original and imaginative stories by bringing in things we do not usually see in the genre. In other words it is writers like these that keep fantasy vital and today it is more popular and multifaceted than ever. It is constantly reinvented through new combinations and we can trace it backwards via genre intersections all the way to The Lord of the Rings. (Or, as some will argue, way further back than that.)

Tolkien in his turn created his groundbreaking trilogy by intersecting ancient mythology with the modern novel. Considering the impact it has had it is strange that is was not done earlier. It is also interesting that this innovative vision belonged to an extremely conservative scholar like Tolkien. Maybe the more experimental authors of the early twentieth century (and they were many) would not see the possibility of mixing experimental narration with archaic language; maybe visionary but old fashioned Tolkien was standing at an intersection nobody else could see?

Anyway, if we look at the development of western literature as a whole we will see that all the important leaps were taken at intersections between cultures, genres or ways of expression. The idea of putting stories in writing in the first place is usually seen as the invention of a rhapsod (storyteller) we know as Homer. 2700 years ago he intersected the Greek oral storytelling tradition with a concept that was quite new at the time – the alphabet.

/Kristian Ribberström

Naomi Novik - novels and interactivity

To some people associative barriers do not seem to exist. Author Naomi Novik is an excellent example. Her Temeraire series is a historical fantasy series set in the Napoleonic era. This genre description may sound like a contradiction, but Novik likes to play with the idea of “what if…?” and this is a good way of finding new creative paths. In some ways the series is a conventional historical drama, but fantasy elements, like dragons, are integrated as if they were an undisputed part of European history. It is an unorthodox way of treating the fantasy novel as well as the historical novel but when she explains it in one interview it sounds very simple:

- I liked the idea of having an air force of dragons on the Napoleonic Wars. It fit very naturally as a military force, she says.

With that kind of open-mindedness it actually sounds quite easy to be innovative.

But an even more interesting intersection in Naomi Novik’s work is found on another level. She used to be a game designer before she became an author and her experience from that field gave her a method of improving her writing. Before a game is released on the market it has to be tested by beta players. Their task is simply to play the new game and to report flaws in the program. Since this concept was natural to Novik she thought it would be a good idea to do the same thing with books. Although they do not include software flaws she believes that there are always things that can be made better. Therefore she lets fans read her script before a new book is published and then she listens to their feedback.

She does not only make minor adjustments according to the beta readers’ input; she makes enormous amounts of changes and sometimes she allows herself to be pushed in new directions where she wouldn’t have gone otherwise. This interactivity has huge impact on her creative process and she is convinced that it has enabled her to write better books. Her readers obviously appreciate the stories; she is an award-winning and best-selling author and none other than Peter Jackson has bought the film rights for the Temeraire series.

/Kristian Ribberström

Doris Lessing - productivity and successful creativity

“The Nobel Prize for Literature goes to…Doris Lessing”. And then, as usual, the debate starts: Did they make the right choice? Although Lessing is widely regarded as a worthy winner there are voices of dissent. It is argued that she is too uneven; the worst novels in her enormous production are simply too bad and because of that it doesn’t really matter how good the good ones are. Luckily, the committee chose to look at it from the opposite perspective; it doesn't matter how bad the bad ones are.

Even though she crosses barriers between cultures as well as genres in her narratives I’m not going to let her exemplify intersectional innovation. However, her claimed unevenness makes her a very good example of the correlation between quantity and quality and The Medici Effect argues that those who create a lot are those who have the most significant innovative impact. Not because of the quantity itself but if someone produces many things there is a greater chance that some of them are really good. One or two may even be groundbreakingly innovative. Such is the case with Lessing’s books and originality is one of the criteria for the Nobel Prize.

“I have written an awful lot of books” she says in one interview, and concludes that nobody can be expected to like them all. And, in theory, the less qualitative of those are arguably necessary parts in the lifelong creative process that enables her to write masterpieces.

/Kristian Ribberström

Limit yourself

I have just returned from quite an incredible trip- you’ll hear more about it. Over the past month I traveled through Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the Philippines with my wife, Sweet Joy. The primary reason for the trip was me speaking at an innovation conference in Melbourne, a diversity conference in Auckland and a few other places, both excellent. We also managed to pursue all kinds of research in a number of different areas and just have an amazing time.

Now, I am a massive fan of the Lord of the Rings movies and could not pass up to go on a couple of tours while on the South Island in New Zealand. The guides were quite knowledgeable and could talk a lot about the creative process that went into the various scenes and one of those scenes really stood out to me as an excellent example of the power of limitations to force cool, creative ideas.

There is a scene in The Two Towers where Legolas has just fired arrows towards attacking orcs mounted on wargs (wolf-like creatures). As the Aragorn-and-king-Theoden posse follows on horseback, the elf manages to grab a hold of the reins on one of the horses and swings himself up into the saddle in an incredible and insanely graceful maneuver. And these stunning acrobatics happens in passing, the camera barely focuses on it. Each time I saw this scene in the movie theater (ehhhmm… 4 times) you could hear a chorus of amazed gasps in the audience.

Turns out the scene was not planned. Here is what happened: Peter Jackson had filmed Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, shooting the arrows, and then riding away. Unfortunately they could not get the footage of him getting on the horse because Bloom managed to break a couple of ribs. While editing the movie they realized that they had no footage of him getting on the horse which presented a big problem. They had few options and had to come up with something different. And that’s when they thought of this amazing scene. It was done with computer graphics and looked like a million bucks.

Interestingly the audience reaction led Jackson to want a “Leggy-moment” in Return of the King and he created a huge scene where the elf single-handedly climbs an Oliphant, kills it and then surfs down the trunk. It’s not a bad scene, but it is very predictable. And it is the result of working with a lot of resources to come up something cool. So what is the lesson here?

Are you trying to come up with something fascinating? Imagine doing this: cut your perceived options, cut your budget, cut your time, cut your resources, cut everything. And then work hard - very, very hard - to come up with some type of solution. Your ideas will be different, and with some luck, insanely creative.

Oh – and this is me, at the exact location, posing as… well….you’ll figure it out…

 

Mixed teams boosted creativity at game developer Dice

Tobias Dahl is lead animator at Dice and read The Medici Effect about a year ago. Since he works in a typically creative field it was easy for him to link the examples in the book to his job. One thing that struck him was that the concept of mixed teams had the potential of improving innovation in their own studio; closer interaction between professionals from different fields simply made a lot of sense. At least it was worth trying.

At Dice (EA Digital Illusions CE), most well-known for the Battlefield series, innovation is an absolute necessity. “The success of this company is built on its IP and if we are not constantly creative we will not survive in this business” says Tobias. Therefore it is natural for them to try different methods that stimulate ideas and when he suggested a change that he thought would heighten creativity he was immediately allowed to implement it.

In the original organization the animators and the programmers were sitting apart and handed each other specifications and requests via e-mail or sheets of paper. It worked just fine. But what would happen, he thought, if they were forced to work closely together?

His team had started working on a game called Mirror’s Edge when he put the programmers and the animators in the same room. Right next to each other. Not unproblematic. “To some extent a mix of animators and programmers will be a mix of artists and engineers and for a while I thought that the friction would put an end to this experiment.” Tobias says. However, as time went by the close collaboration between these two groups turned out to be extremely fruitful and quite soon the conflicts were just a minor problem. The advantages became too obvious for people to want to go back to the way they had worked before.

The difference is that now the animators can tell the programmers directly what they need and show them why. The programmers, in their turn, can explain why they can’t do certain things but also what they can do instead. “The fact that they get a thorough understanding of each other’s working processes makes things a lot easier”, says Tobias. The possibilities and the limitations of the two respective fields are now known to everyone and we solve problems not only at meetings but throughout the process in constant dialogue and cooperation. All this has had tremendous impact on the innovative performance of the team - the atmosphere has become highly creative. It is not like we are doing crazy things like playing with Lego to produce unexpected ideas - we are, after all, Swedish – but the ability to generate many ideas and higher quality ideas has increased dramatically.

This has given the team confidence. The phrase “How hard can it be” has become a mantra with which they attack problems and challenges that arise. For instance, the project has required many advanced technical solutions that simply didn’t exist before and had to be created from scratch. Sometimes it seemed impossible but with input from the animators the programmers did it. “These processes helped us achieve truly new and original things in movement and animation which are the most important parts of Mirror’s Edge and we are sure that is what will set it apart from other games.” Tobias even believes it has the capacity to break the stagnation that has prevailed in game design for years. “Whatever people will think about it they are going to have to admit that it is unlike anything else. I am convinced that the mix of people has been instrumental for our ability to generate and develop these groundbreaking ideas”.

Considering the advantages that were gained it is interesting that there were no costs involved. “All we needed was a room. And then, after a while, a bigger room when more people wanted to join the team that seemed to have such a flow”. He hopes that they will be able to work in the same way on new projects and he thinks that other teams will follow.

After this glimpse behind the scenes it will be interesting see how Mirror’s Edge is received when it is released next year. I will surely find reasons to revisit the team at Dice before that, however, and report about it here.

/Kristian Ribberström

Music: New combinations will open people’s ears

I would never have guessed that a live band at a private party last weekend would turn out to be the best music experience of the summer. To me it sounded like typical techno, but with one important difference: They didn’t use synthesizers and computers. Instead the five-man band played electric guitar, drums, two bass guitars (!) and organ. The music wasn’t new and the instruments are actually quite old, but the combination! It was techno with a nerve and a presence that at least I don’t associate with that genre and the audience was spellbound.

In The Medici Effect it is described how music composer Mike Oldfield put himself in the avant-garde in the seventies partly by using instruments and arrangements in genre contexts where we don’t usually hear them. When I heard the live performance last Saturday it struck me how powerful this method is when it comes to creating something fresh and unique in the field of music, and for skilled musicians that intersection is always within reach.

On Youtube, which is a seemingly unlimited source of things you never expected to see, this duo shows how they take advantage of this possibility. A violinist or a DJ would have to do something quite spectacular to be “viewed” 285,000 times but this combination of a violinist AND a DJ really deserves the attention. Enjoy!

/Kristian Ribberström