required daily reading

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

searching for the good stuff

sometimes (more often than not, these days) i’m amazed at how it’s the small, seemingly insignificant things that can turn my mood around, calm me down, and remind me what really counts.

though i’m not sure why, i do know what kinds of things these are and the wonders they do for my sanity.

it’s three hugs from mum in one day, fresh laundry, and a new cd to fall asleep to instead of noises coming from upstairs.. .
it’s basking in a pool of nag champa incense, sipping chocolate chai before bed.
it’s taking my study day off to go on a roomie grocery trip, to chop veggies and bake sheets and sheets of mini quiche (preferably without the guilt from lack of learning that needs to get done, though).
it’s being able to open a window for the first time all year, letting fresh air in to mingle with the streams of sun that fall across my bed.
it’s spray-painting the latest thrift store find (gold bird to matte white) and finding it a home (hung up above my bedside lamp).
it’s seeing andrea at the corner outside my window while eating breakfast in the morning, and at the bus stop across the street on my walk home.
it’s rachel dropping by a busy day at work just to peek her head between the espresso machine to smile hello.
it’s letters in my inbox reassuring me that my selfish, hermit tendencies have not caused the important people to leave me behind...

although without of any solid explanation why they are worth seeking out, these are the only moments that make sense to me.

more than any self help book lying beside my bed, more than ten-hour-days at university securing my future in knowledge (?..).
more than elaborate plans and errands etched into a battered little black books.
more than 5:30 am bootcamp; more than textbooks that put me to sleep, more than money signs accompanied by high numbers.

i don’t know when or why it was that too many things got piled on to my life, but i’m sick from all this food on my plate.

instead of self-imposed deadlines and feelings of remorse, i desperately long to get to a place where my days are filled with these simple, inspiring moments. preferably with time in between to catch my breath and internalize the energy they give me. to figure out how i can cling to that rather than the stress of everyday life. stress which i should, by all my own calculations, be able to rise above more often than i am right now. which should not turn me into a horrible ball of teen-angst; it overwhelms me with guilt and confuision. and this causes me to worry even more- that if i can’t handle myself now, what am i going to become when the rest of life’s bigger realities and struggles get tossed in my face?

for whatever reason i’m continually struggling to adjust these days.
but i am seeking and hoping to do so. soon.
i haven’t yet quite figured out what that means, in terms of planning ahead and changing this current emotional rut i’ve found myself in.

three months in europe sounds promising for a start.
and maybe it’ll be another four months away in the berkshires of western massachusetts come autumn.
maybe it’ll be embracing year two at university for all it’s worth, or at least feeling okay with the unknown.
maybe it will be an illusive alternative option i have yet to discover.
no matter what, i know that what i end up doing isn’t going to be the real solution. what it will really be is more of an internal shift, a stabilization in attitude;
gripping this restless heart by the horns and allowing it settling into itself.

and then, maybe one day i’ll finally be able start spilling ink and scratching pencils onto empty white sketchbooks,
read all the books and magazines that grow into piles on my wooden floors,
and find myself in a place i can call home, be genuinely comfortable in my own skin.
i’m sure i will. (i’m sure i will?!)

for now-
while i’m busy repeating made up excuses and pity stories of reasons why i can’t possibly get myself together-
it’ll be these small moments in between it all.
these ones i get glimpses of when i finally open my lazy, stubborn eyes,
are all that i can ask for.
they’re all that i should ask for,
and what i wish i could see
are surrounding me
all along.