First things first..

There is a myth out-there, that the creative process is a process of unique genius. I don’t think that is correct at all. Yes, some people have pre-dispositions that allow them to bring ideas forward more easily – but crucially, these ideas are never completely original.
Everything is a Remix began as series of video essays in the early 2010’s and it has had a big influence on how I understand the creative process.

The core argument is simple; that the fundamental operators of creativity are:
1. Copy 2. Transform 3. Combine
So while there is definitely a spectrum that is recognisable there, pure originality does not exist. And so, when I decide that I would add 4. Curate into the mix – it is not purely original either. Others have had the same though before, but I am here to express it my own way. One, that is actually unique to me.
So welcome to the curation section of my little gallery on the internet. I hope you will will leave here with something new that excites you, so that (no matter how big or small) you can make your own creative operations using it.

Music

I don’t know about you, but I really love listening to music while working. I think that, as someone who started out in graphic design, that is almost to be expected.
That is pretty much why there is a whole music app integrated into this website. Listening to music helps me get inspired, stay focused and “in the zone.”
(Section under construction. More to come.)

History of Technology

So much to be said about this. Since all the way back, when I wrote an Extended Essay about the history of Apple over the course of the 2009-2010 school-year, I have been a huge nerd about this. And this speaks to where I trace my works lineage today, all the way back to Fairchild Semiconductor, Sony — and then Xerox Parc, Disney Imagineering, NeXT, General Magic…

I am an early adopter at heart, but something else that is really close to my heart is the liniage of so many of the technological innovations we take for granted today. The study of the past has given me some important frameworks for he future. Copy, transform and combine — as well as curation — only works when you have source materials to work with.

Rebel Culture

You have to be a contrarian to think you can build new things. As Steve Jobs has said, “everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”
For better and for worse, Jobs has for a long time been an icon of mine. In my view, he was a Creative Technologist in the purest sense. One with bad qualities to match? Yes. But in some ways that is what it takes to be a changemeker. There needs to be a willingness to be controversial.

Being a bit rebelliously minded in my late youth, I will be the first one to admit taking things a little too far at one point to another. And it has taken me some experimentation to find what I believe is a balance that works for me.

Travel

I have once been called “the worst tourist ever.” No joke. And I wear that with pride. Because I do not want to be a tourist in the first place. I was not trying to see the attractions in the first place. To me that is not what travel is really about.

There is not one “correct” way to travel. Some might want that all inclusive club hotel stay, and others may collect countries and attractions that they have been to. Among with countless other preferences shaped by individual motivations, there are many different ways to travel.
My preference is more aligned with the philosophy late television cook Anthony Bourdain was advocating for. To explore more or less randomly and find out how real people experience their cities.
And notice the word I used there.. I said “cities” — because there is an undeniable bias I have toward travelling cities, rather than the far flung regions of the world.
The point is: drop me into a city and I probably start by walking around, just following the path that looks most interesting to me in the moment. I might still pull out Google Maps here and there, to find a supermarket for example. But the randomness of stumbling across places and people I otherwise would not have — that is at the core of experiencing a new environment for me.
And about the story at the beginning, that happened in Tokyo. I only had one week in the city on that trip, but I experienced enough life in Tokyo, that I ended up moving here — where I am now writing this passage from before making one of those drip coffee’s all the locals like dringing.
Wherever I live and go — the openness to new and random experience that the “traveler’s spirit” hold is something I aspire to every day.