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- [00:10]
Robert Hodgin
So I remember sending Luca a few of these Mid Journey outputs because he had been paying attention to what I'd been working on. And I simply typed out the words, why bother? And he wrote me back this really lovely statement about how we bother because we find value in bringing to life something that lives in our mind. And ended this statement by saying, if I threw away those Mid Journey images, nobody would care because it took no effort, and things that take no effort are hard to value. And that. That sort of set me straight. Hearing. Hearing somebody say that, somebody who's half my age, he's 25 or 26. He talked me off of an interesting ledge because it made me realize that I need to appreciate the journey and not be too focused on the destination, because the journey is the fun part.
- [01:09]
Radim Malinic
Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you are already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens.
- [01:48]
Interviewer
When you dare to create foreign?
- [01:56]
Radim Malinic
Today, I'm speaking with Robert Hodgin, an artist and head of research and development at Rare Volume, a company specializing in data visualization and immersive installations that make technology feel human. In this conversation, Robert talks about projects that combine tech and design equally, and why he believes that there's tremendous opportunity to present data in art forward ways rather than just readable graphs. He also opens up about the challenge of working with tricky clients, but talks also about those who let him execute his vision without interference, and why he thrives in space in between the analytical and the artistic by not fitting in evil world. It is my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Robert Hodgen.
- [02:46]
Interviewer
Hey, Robert.
- [02:46]
Radim Malinic
Welcome to the show.
- [02:47]
Interviewer
How are you doing today?
- [02:48]
Robert Hodgin
I'm doing good. How are you?
- [02:50]
Interviewer
Yeah, excited. Excited to speak to you. But for those who might have never heard of you, how would you introduce yourself?
- [02:57]
Robert Hodgin
My name is Robert Hodgin. I am an artist living in Brooklyn, and I'm also the head of research and development for a design and tech company called Rare Volume, and we are headquartered here in Chinatown in Manhattan, but also have offices in Austin.
- [03:15]
Interviewer
What problems do you like to solve? With rare volume.
- [03:17]
Robert Hodgin
Our sweet spot is generally anything that combines tech and design in equal measures. So even though we're perfectly capable at doing really nice motion graphics work, I think we excel when there's a level of tech involved, whether that's doing, you know, like smart signage for large venues or museum installations that require some amount of interactivity, especially if there is interesting data that can be visualized as well. We're very good at taking large data sets and finding the story in it and presenting it in a beautiful way. So that's where we find most of.
- [03:58]
Interviewer
Our job, finding slight dissonance, or should I say mismatch between the words I'm an artist and then talking about large data sets. Because it's not usually what artists say. Hey, I'm an artist. And by the way, I love large data sets. I mean, those are kind of like a yin and yang, like.
- [04:15]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah, it's not surprising to hear that. I went to a science and math boarding school because I showed aptitude in science and mathematics. But once I got there, I realized that I felt like an artist at heart. I was. I excelled at the art classes and I was sort of okay at the science and math. And then I ended up going to risd, the Rhode Island School of Design, after high school. And it was there that I discovered that I was really interested in the sciences again. So I seem to always be bouncing back and forth between the two. And I think that's why I like visualizing data in an artistic way, because it's not uncommon for data visualizers to be sort of in the science bucket, where they're not really too concerned about the aesthetics. They just want the data to show up on graphs and be readable. And I think there's more opportunity there to present the data in a way that feels more art forward. And that seems to be how I spent a lot of my time lately. It's just finding interesting data sets and then finding non traditional things to do with them.
- [05:24]
Interviewer
I really like where you go with this because, as you know, the theme of the season is called daring creativity. And I love talking to people like yourself who try to stay away from conformity because it's something that feels too easy, too comfortable, too fortnight, too achievable or too accessible. Just feels like, why bother? But before we go to that bit, you said you were in a science and maths boarding school. How does that happen? Who decided that that's where you're going?
- [05:56]
Robert Hodgin
I did. That was. That was in. So I grew up in Fayetteville North Carolina. It's a town that exists because it's next to an army base. And my dad was in the military, so that's where I grew up. And I definitely did well in elementary school and junior high school. You know, I wasn't valedictorian, but I held my own A's and B's. And I was definitely interested in math and the sciences. And the opportunity to apply to this boarding school called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics appeared. And I thought that would be an interesting way to get out of the house two years earlier than I normally would. Because it's 11th and 12th grades, you know, it's in a totally different city from where I live. So I would, I would live in dorms and I would take college level classes. And so I applied and got accepted with enough of a scholarship that it seemed feasible. And so I moved out of the house at the age of 15. Go study. Way too difficult. Clap to this. It was a bit of a shock to get there and realize that I was not ready for college level of math and science classes. I, I remember I have an interest in astronomy, so I saw that they had an astrophysics class, and so I immediately signed up for it. And on the first day, the teacher basically explained what prerequisites you needed to have in order to even participate in this class. And you needed to have some understanding of calculus, which I did not. And you needed to have some understanding of basic physics, which I did not. Because those classes weren't offered in my high school. I dropped that class and decided that I would take it again as a senior. So I did. And within the first week I dropped out again because it was just way too difficult. So I might be the only person who dropped out of the same class two years in a row at the North Carolina School of Science and Math.
- [07:51]
Interviewer
Your dad was in army. Did you guys move around a lot?
- [07:56]
Robert Hodgin
He was in the Air Force. We were next to Fort Bragg Army Base, which surrounds a smaller air force base called Pope Air Force Base. So he was in the air force for 22 years. We did not surprisingly, move all that much. I spent two years in Japan from the ages of 3 to 5, but I don't remember any of it. It was way too young. And the rest of the time we were in my house on Dandridge Drive in Fayetteville, same house that my parents still live in some 60 years later.
- [08:27]
Interviewer
Your mom is a first gen Japanese immigrant. What was the influence of her culture on you as an artistic kid? When you were young. Was there any sort of clay influences or was it homogenized American upbringing?
- [08:41]
Robert Hodgin
It ended up being a pretty homogenized American upbringing. She tried to teach my brother and I Japanese at an early age and at some point we both rebelled and said, why do you know, why do we have to spend hours indoors drawing these funny looking characters when we could be outside playing. So eventually we turned our back on it and I regret that to this day I wish that I had stuck with it. To be bilingual would be amazing and to be able to talk to my mother in her, in her, you know, original tongue would be phenomenal. She's since forgotten a lot of her Japanese language because she just doesn't have the opportunity to use it much and so a lot of it's just fallen by the wayside. In terms of her impact on my creativity, I can't think of anything concrete other than being fascinated by aspects of Japanese aesthetics. But my decision to be an artist came at a shock to both of my parents who I think expected me to follow a more traditional path that promised a bigger paycheck like lawyer, doctor, accountant. And I wanted to draw pictures all day, which at the time they thought maybe was a waste. But now they're my biggest supporters and I'm sure they're glad that I didn't receive that more boring careers because I've done pretty well for myself.
- [10:05]
Interviewer
We'll be back after a quick break.
- [10:09]
Radim Malinic
This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co. The first creative specialty coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent. With a mission to make a positive impact on the creative industry and and Beyond. Lux Coffee Co. Offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel. @luxcoffee.co.uk you can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order.
- [10:55]
Interviewer
So despite your homogenized sort of cultural upbringing, you wanted to be an artist despite your parents wishes of that time. So what was your influences like? What did you, what breadcrumbs was, as I call it, what breadcrumbs did you follow that you realized, you know what I want to draw, I want to draw something as good as this or something as good as, you know, certain influences. Like what was your, what was your way into kind of creativity and how did you discover that ability?
- [11:22]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah, so my brother collected comic books for a while and I remembered really being interested in the art. Usually the covers I found the covers to be really exciting. And I was always impressed that somebody could accurately draw a character and get the fingers just right and the pose really dynamic. And so I started to. To redraw, not trace, but to transcribe over my own version of the covers of these comic books that were the most interesting to me. And that made me think that I was a decent artist, but what I was actually doing was more I was a decent interpreter or copier because anytime I tried to draw my own content from. From my imagination, it always felt lacking. And so, you know, fits and starts. I would. I would give up on it because it was too hard. And then I would just be drawn back to it again and more interested in the mechanical aspects of drawing. Things like the science of perspective. You know, being able to draw, you know, a grid from any angle by marking the two perspective points and drawing guidelines. And so I liked that aspect of art, the really rigorous. It doesn't require too much imagination. It's very math forward and, you know, looking back, because I have not thought much about this. I guess that's why there's that sort of bridge between science and math for me, is that I'm interested in the specific details of how drawings work more than I am interested in, you know, coming up with my own visions, if that makes sense.
- [13:11]
Interviewer
So from the boarding school and obviously dropping out from the same class twice, how do we get to your first commercial creative work out there that you got paid for?
- [13:21]
Robert Hodgin
So I went to the Rhode Island School of Design thinking that I would be a painter. I had spent a few years between high school and then eventually going to RISD trying to paint. I was really interested in landscape painting and I was really bad at it. But I was invested enough in it that I felt like I was paying my dues and I would eventually get better. So I went to risd. And once I got there, I was surrounded by people that were just so much better than me. And at the same time, I was exposed to all these other disciplines that I just wasn't really. They weren't on my radar. Illustration was the first thing that caught my eye. I thought I should. Instead of trying to major as a painter, I can major as an illustrator. And as a side effect that would probably be more monetizable. It'd be easier for me to find a job doing illustration than it would be for me to sell paintings, probably. I mean, it's. It's, you know, it's impossible to say, but. So I thought I'll. I'll do illustration and then I don't know, I just might. I kept seeing things that intrigued me, like people in the glassblowing department, you know, making these really beautiful glass things. And I was excited by that for a while. And then eventually I decided to switch my major to industrial design because I've never heard of this before. People have to design objects that exist in our world to be used. That's crazy. So I switched to industrial design and I was an industrial design major for my sophomore year. And then by the end of that I decided to switch to sculpture which was my major from my junior and senior year. But in my senior year I realized what I really wanted to do was make digital art because it was around that time that some of the earliest Flash websites were coming out. And I was overwhelmed at how forward thinking and impressive it was that I could just go to this URL and see someone's art and you could reach, you know, potentially millions of people through this newish medium. So I convinced my senior thesis advisor that instead of me working on a body of sculptures that I probably would have half heartedly succeeded, that I wanted to spend my senior year learning Photoshop, learning Flash, learning the basics of HTML, just enough to get a website up. And luckily he is brother either worked at or was really tuned into the 3D software called Lightwave which I don't think exists anymore. And so he understood that digital art was a path and RISD did not offer digital art as a major so he thought that it would be a good use of my time. So I focused on learning Flash in Photoshop. And then when I graduated I followed a friend to a very small startup that just made like I think it was just banner ads for other people's products. Like you'd make a little animated GIF banner ad and you have to make sure that it was 10k or smaller and then you'd have to make six different sizes. And so I did that for a little while. I showed an aptitude apps doing that type of work. So I got hired by another company called Circle Circle Interactive. They got bought by the ad agency Arnold and all this boils down to me being put on a project for doing a Flash website for Volkswagen's a re release of the Beetle in this new colorway called Tribonium. So I worked on this Flash website which was the first Flash website that Arnold the advertising agency had worked on and it ended up being a phenomenon. And it went on to win either the or one of the top awards at the Cannes Advertising Awards. That year. And so that sort of really propelled my career because I was the Flash guy. Nobody else in the agency knew Flash, so whenever they needed Flash anything, they would come to me. So it helped me establish roots in the advertising world pretty early.
- [17:33]
Interviewer
I want to go back on the point. Not would illustration be more lucrative? Because it really is about what you put your heart into. Because then the universe will actually sense that that's what you stand for. You put your soul into what you do.
- [17:46]
Robert Hodgin
I was a pretty bad painter. I'm glad none of my paintings exist. At least I don't think any of them exist. I don't even have photographs of them because I have this bad habit of aiming way too high, way too early. So instead of developing the fundamentals, I. I like to go for the finished final piece. And that's bitten me a few times. Like, I played classical guitar for something like 30 years, Spanish style classical guitar. But I can't play a single song. And part of the reason is because I never learned to read sheet music effectively. I could do it sort of note by note and figure out where that finger goes. And then I memorize how to play patterns instead of being able to just read. And there was this song called the Usher Waltz by Nikita Koshkin, which is incredibly difficult. And it's six minutes long and it's all over the fretboard. And, you know, it's the type of song that you perform at your Juilliard graduation performance. And I heard that song and I thought, I need to learn how to play it. And so I spent years and years and years trying to play something that was way beyond my skill level and it turns out my patience level. Because what ultimately would happen is after getting to a point where I felt like I could do, you know, like maybe the first. I could play the first minute really well. I would just play the first minute over and over again and never move on to the second minute. And then I get bored and I put the guitar down for months or years and then I pick it back up. And the first thing that I would do is try to learn that same song again from scratch. And so I never succeeded in playing it all the way through. And I've got, you know, it was 30 years of fairly regular playing, and I've got nothing to show for it because I. I didn't pay my dues, I didn't learn the basics. And that is probably less meaningful when it comes to something like painting, because you could be really expressive with paint without knowing the history or kind of techniques. But if you're going to play top level classical guitar song, you better know how to read sheet music and you better understand proper picking technique because I mean I gave myself carpal tunnel from bad hand positioning. But you know, I'm sure you're going to find the sunny side of that star.
- [20:12]
Interviewer
I'm with you on this one. I mean you got people like John Mayer who's virtuoso, he can't reach in music BB King never could read.
- [20:19]
Radim Malinic
There was a lot of famous people.
- [20:21]
Interviewer
Who, successful people who were just like all done by ear. And I think that's that thing that again is that expression of your soul. Because I love the dedication when you say, hey, I have been toiling with that song long time. Which is pretty, pretty, pretty impressive. But let's get back to work, shall we say? Because you got some of. Some of your other pieces of work are still. For example, you did a visualizer audio visualizer for itunes.
- [20:50]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah.
- [20:50]
Interviewer
And that still lives. And the first app you did on the first iPad app that you designed ended up on as the Copper Hewitt Digital Acquisition. So there's a lot of things that are ticking boxes quite early. You are quite at the right time in the right place because yeah, I don't think the visualizer has been rewritten for itunes many times since, if at all, you know, and some of the things we see the first iPad app is now one of the many millions, you know. So did this feel like achievements? Did you feel like you were fulfilled with your work or was it plain selling or was it not?
- [21:26]
Robert Hodgin
I think every one of those examples you mentioned definitely felt like an achievement. It's the visualizer represented a time in my life where things just kept falling into place for me creatively. I spent a lot of time messing around with particle simulations and it wasn't until I started working with flocking simulations and coming up with my own style of flocking simulation, which became Magnetosphere, which is itunes visualizer that I started to really have fun with doing creative coding because I, you know, like a lot of people, I listen to music when I'm working. And working on an audio visualizer is a lot of fun because you're, you're seeing the results in front of you reacting to the music that you're playing while you're working and it becomes really hypnotic and you just get lost in it. And the next thing you know, it's, you know, three in the morning, gotta go to bed because you've got some ideas that you want to try out. The next day because you're keeping notes and everything just seems to make sense. And I really love those periods in my life where it seemed like every new day there was already 20 things I wanted to try out. And that was also true for the iPad Planetary, which was poorly conceived in that it was meant to be for people who listened to music on their iPad, which turns out wasn't very many people. But as a concept, it was really solid. It would analyze your music library and it would create a galaxy, really beautiful representation of a galaxy. And every star in that galaxy is a musician, a band or solo artist, whatever. And you click on the star and it would zoom down to the solar system level with the star at the center. All the planets represent different albums by that musician. And then you click on a planet and all the moons around the planet represent different tracks for that album. And I, looking back, I think working on this project was probably the most fun that I had, you know, and developing creative code aesthetic because there were a lot of questions that we had to answer. It was me and three other people at a startup that no longer exists called Bloom. And anytime we stumbled into an aspect of this app that we didn't understand how it was going to work, eventually we found just an amazing, elegant solution. And it was so much fun looking back, because as an experience, it worked beautifully and it was, it was really fluid and it was just a lot of fun to show off to people. You just fill your iPad with music and then you just go exploring through this galaxy. And oh, and one aspect of it that the moon orbiting around the planet, time that it takes to orbit is equal to the track length. So you can use that as, as a way to scrub through the playback. And the metaphor was just so much fun to expand on. And it ended up being a really beautiful project. And then randomly, I think a year or two later, we were told that the Cooper Hewitt was going to acquire the code base and it would be their first digital acquisition for the Smithsonian Design Museum. And that was unexpected and crazy because I don't know that any of us thought that it would go that far because as an app, it didn't do great. It's like I said, people just weren't putting music on their iPads. They were generally listening to it on their laptops or their phones. So it didn't quite get the use that we wanted, but it definitely achieved a nice long term status by being memorialized at the Design Museum.
- [25:03]
Interviewer
So tell me about the coding language. It obviously played a huge part in what you do today?
- [25:09]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah. So in Flash there is, at the time there was a very rudimentary scripting language called ActionScript and it used that for pretty basic things like telling the playhead where to go, you know, really minor high level things. It just wasn't very powerful and it wasn't great for doing what I was interested in, which was pushing a lot of particles around because in the, you know, if you're messing with particles, more is almost always going to be better. It was around that time that a couple of my Flash peers were using this new thing called processing. The things that they were able to show off were so much more impressive to me than what I was able to get Flash. So I started to explore processing as a creative tool. That was my first official coding language that I endeavored to learn. And it was, it was rough. It was a lot harder to pick up coding languages back then because you had to ask questions on like bulletin boards and stuff. There wasn't AI to give you the answer, you know, in two seconds. It was often tracking down the person who might know the answer to this obscure math related question. So I spent a lot of time with processing and got pretty good at it. That exposed me to a little bit of how OpenGL works because I wanted to be able to draw graphics faster. This faster is also better when it comes to doing particle simulations. And it was around that time that I met Andrew Bell, who was the co author of the Itunes visualizer and my current business partner and the head of, he's the director of tech at Rare Volume. He created a coding framework called Cinder, which is a C framework, a wrapper for making it easier to create new C projects with an eye on more visual projects and created with C. So I would ask him coding questions and often he would say something like, I don't know how to do that in Java, but in, in C you do it like this. And so he dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of coding with C, which was hard and painful, and wrapping my head around pointers versus references, all these things that just were so foreign to me. But after many, many years of that, I started to help him with writing Cinder tutorials. And so in a sense I became like a co creator of Cinder through doing tutorials which were geared specifically for people that were moving from something like processing into something more powerful like C. And then at some point I hit a wall with C because it, I kept wanting things to look more rendered, you know, multiple light passes and subsurface scattering. And I was able to get sort of a basic aesthetic, but whenever I wanted it to be more lush and more believable, I would just end up spending weeks researching faster algorithms for doing, you know, all number of different lighting and shadow techniques. And I hated that because I stopped being an artist and I became more of like a researcher for myself. And it just got to a point where creating with code just felt like it was holding me back. And so Andrew also, again, seems to know what's best for me more than I do myself. He told me I should look into Houdini as a tool for doing creative coding. And that was an interesting and painful transition because if you're not familiar with Houdini, it has one of the hardest learning curves for 3D software because it's for. Its specialty is for doing smoke and fire and water sims that you see in. In movies. And I'm not interested in that out. I'm interested in just using it as a creative coding framework. But a lot of the tutorials you find online were geared towards learning how to make the most realistic building explosion. And it just. It just ended up being incredibly challenging to get up to speed with it. And it took several years before I felt like I was finally at a point where I was. I was back when I was still doing C dev. And so it was a huge step backwards. And then now I feel like I'm in a really good place because. Because Houdini is great for doing rapid prototyping of ideas. And if I want a slick rendered look, that's there for me. And it's really easy. You just drop some lights in the scene and hit go. The trade off, of course, is you lose the real time interactivity, which I do miss.
- [29:42]
Interviewer
When you were telling me all of this, it brought me back to a few words that our friend Burton Rust mentioned on this podcast when he was talking about you. And it was a quote that he heard you saying it at Paradiso. And he said that quote hit me like a, you know, punch to the gut. I was like, okay, what was it? And he said, well, Rob, you said. He said things that make no effort are hard to value.
- [30:10]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah, well, I should. I should offer that. That wasn't my quote. It was what was told to me by one of our employees, Luca, who is wise beyond years. I had been working on creating these procedurally generated Japanese stone lanterns in Houdini, and it was a couple months in and it was starting to get to a point where I felt really excited about it because I was procedurally growing moss and all sort of the shady bits and making the surface look really weathered and cracked, and it's a lot of fun. And then I would hit, you know, render and then go to sleep, and I'd come back the next morning and see if it looked okay. And it was around that time that I thought, I wonder what midjourney would be able to do with this prompt. So I typed in, you know, aged Japanese stone lantern, moss, whatever, and immediately got back four beautiful Japanese stone lanterns of all different designs. And it made me angry. I didn't know what to think about this because the desire to continue working on my version of it evaporated. It's like, why would I. Why would I spend the time now when it's going to be so easy to jump to the end, like reading the last page of a book? You don't then want to read the book because you know what happens. So midjourney showed me the end of my journey for this particular project. And it was really frustrating to me because I was really excited by the project until I saw that AI can generate good results pretty quickly without any of the struggle. So I remember sending Luca a few of these mid journey outputs because he had been paying attention to what I'd been working on. And I simply typed out the words, why bother? And he wrote me back this really lovely statement about how we bother because we find value in bringing to life something that lives in our mind. And ended his statement by saying, if I threw away those mid journey images, nobody would care because they took no effort, and things that take no effort are hard to value. And that sort of set me straight. Hearing hearing somebody say that, somebody who's half my age, he's 25 or 26. He talked to me off of an interesting ledge because it made me realize that I need to appreciate the journey and not be too focused on the destination, because the journey is the fun part. Being done with a project is not going to be as fun as working on the project. And so I'm glad that that quote landed for Burton, because it definitely landed for me. And I make it a point to incorporate that story into my conference talks of late, because it really had an impact.
- [32:58]
Interviewer
You made a really amazing comparison. And by the way, Luca seems unknowingly wise beyond his years.
- [33:06]
Robert Hodgin
He's one of those guys who refused to get a smartphone because why would he need, you know, a computer at his fingertips? And he had to buy one because I guess the building that he moved into, you couldn't operate the washer and dryer. Without having smartphone access. So he had to reluctantly get pulled into the 21st century.
- [33:28]
Interviewer
I like that. But you made a really amazing comparison when you said midjourney. Showed me the last page of this story by creating this amazing thing and you're sort of eavesdropping, you're jumping in sort of mid, mid journey or towards the end journey. And yeah, you kind of. You persevered with actually creating your own code, because ultimately you own your code, you own your ip, own your process. And what I really wanted to know, like, how difficult is it to actually code moss, or how difficult is to coat texture in this?
- [34:00]
Robert Hodgin
Well, the mathematical brain kicks in and you start to think about, first, where would the moss grow? And so I did these sort of very rudimentary rainfall simulations, which would show me where on these randomly generated structures there would be the most amount of pooling water and also creating an arbitrary light source just to see where the shadows would be. And so my logic was, I'll start where there's the most water and where there's the most shadow, and that's going to be where the moss begins to grow from. And then from there, I started to research infectious growth solvers, which would start to slowly cover the form. And. And then you pay attention to things like gravity. Like, it's more likely the moss is going to be on the top of an object than on the side. And I don't know if any of this is true. I don't know if moss favors sunlight over shade. It probably does. It would need to in order to grow. And I don't think moss has any problem growing on the sides or the undersides of objects. But it was just through looking at reference material and seeing it out in the real world and just breaking down what I think would need to happen in order for me to reproduce this. Of course, tutorials go a long way. There's a few tutorials online for doing this style of procedurally generated plant growth. So, you know, you dive into those and you figure out what bits of those apply to what you're working on. And then it's just a lot of trial and error until you get a look that feels right. And then once you do, you exploit it as much as you can and create as many variations as you can.
- [35:38]
Interviewer
We are very much back to science, math, boarding school. It just basically, I'm sticking with my problem. I've created a space for myself. It's science, it's math, it's art. Like, you're looking at pretty much the science, the nature, like the way how do we make the real life references even more desirable? Like, how do we create a hyper. Well, how do you create. Not me. Well, how do you create the hyper realism that can actually push your work into new realm and actually not kind of running away from that conformity of like, what is the status quo and what can we do with it? Because as you said, using Houdini, not for water simulation, not for Moss simulation in this case, but it's a creative code that transcends the program. And I kind of almost uses it for what it was necessarily designed in the first place. And I think, and I like that because it creates unprecedented, unexpected results that inspire other people to do something different with it. So how long would you normally perceive a project like this? Because it's not a quick result. I mean, obviously you know your tools, you know your ways, you know where to look for, for. For ways to sort of troubleshoot things. But that's a determination. It's been like the athlete that shows up on track every day, you know, because they're obsessed about a thing. They show up in the gym, they also, they work on themselves to learn, teach, learn, understand, you know, observe, and then put into practice. So how much of dedication do you put into your work?
- [37:07]
Robert Hodgin
It's. I don't want to say it's all I think about, but it's really a large portion of my day is contemplating things that I want to understand better. And I think one of the original examples of this fascination I had was seeing flocks of birds, murmurations of birds, millions of starlings flying over Rome or wherever it might be. And my natural instinct was to want to understand what was going on, to have a sense of what each bird is paying attention to in order for millions of them to create this cohesive whole that feels like a living creature. And so I spent a really long time exploring how you could reproduce that effect in code, starting with Craig Reynolds original Boyd's algorithm from the 1980s, and then just building on it through trial and error, through just taking in a lot of reference material, just watching as many videos of these bird flocks as possible so that I could have a more intuitive understanding of the science behind what's actually happening. And that just. It's just how I pass my day. And I happened to be thinking about the Japanese lantern in my mom's backyard, which had been there for several decades, and I thought the shape was really evocative. And I wondered what it would be like to create a system that could just generate these shapes. Randomly, not abstractly, but believably generate Japanese lanterns of a variety of shapes. So I started to research the history of these particular type of Japanese lanterns, see all the different design styles over the centuries. And in the back of my mind, I'm constantly thinking, what would I need to do in Houdini in order to create this shape? Or what would I need to do in Houdini in order to understand how to handle the Moss Rift? And it's just something that I think about. I want to know how things work. I want to. I want to have a better understanding of how the things that interest me work. And that's. That's usually how every one of every single one of my Houdini projects begin.
- [39:30]
Interviewer
I love the fact that we. I guess we, as humans, we go through this dissonance of life. Oh, I want to be creative at a moment where I'm not creative, especially in our younger years. You know, like, I've got this idea. I need to make it now, otherwise it's never going to happen. What you beautifully describe is this space to think, to absorb, to analyze, to observe, because you talk with such grace and eloquence about, like, how your interests or sort of small obsessions take you to understanding this thing that you tried to portray it with code. Because you've told me you had a sort of. Before the conversation, you told me that you had a sort of bout of imposter syndrome. And I'm like, but how? You know so much and you can do so much more than a lot of people I can combine with a large number of people I can combine. But, yeah, imposter syndrome and elements of doubt and imperfection can. Can come through the cracks and take over. Psych. Would you be happy to tell me a little bit of how, despite everything, you know, your achievements, you got to find yourself with imposter syndrome?
- [40:40]
Robert Hodgin
Especially after getting to know Burton better and hearing his podcast episode and seeing his talks, it's become even more obvious to me that it's just. It's something that most people go through, I assume, and if not, then they're probably secretly narcissists that think they could do no wrong. And that is definitely not me. So the imposter syndrome moment that really sticks out for me was I was pretty regularly doing conference talks through the 2000s and early 2010s, and I started to get pretty good at it, and I enjoyed doing them. And it was not uncommon for me to be chosen as the final speaker of a lineup because I've definitely Put a lot of effort and time into crafting brand new talks for every conference. I, for some reason, I got it in my head that I should never do the same talk twice, even though it would be for an audience in Europe versus an audience in San Francisco. There's not going to be many people that are in both audiences. But I didn't want to ever give the same talk twice, which was a silly limitation I put on myself that just made my life much harder. And I started to get a little burnt out doing talks. But that one talk, I don't remember exactly where it was probably Brighton. I think it was in Brighton I met Stefan Sagmeister and we chatted a bit because he really liked my talk where I think I broke down the logic behind flocking simulations and how they work and how I work with them. And so we got to emailing and we would occasionally meet up for meal and just chat. And he sent me an email one day and it was to invite me to a conference that he was organizing in India. And he wanted me to be on a panel. And he said that the other people on the panel were going to be David Byrne and Peter Gabriel. And I immediately said yes, of course I said yes, because, you know, how exciting. And then the sort of the doom of it all set in. And I talk about this at Paradiso. This was my intro statement about how I said no to Stefan Sagmeister. I lost sleep. I had panic attacks. I couldn't understand what I would possibly have to say on stage next to Peter Gabriel and David Byrne that would make any difference. I would be the guy that people would point at and say, who's that sitting next to Peter? Gabriel looks terrified and he hasn't said a word. And after many sleepless nights, I eventually sent Stefan an email saying that I just couldn't do it. I don't even remember if I gave him an excuse. I think I just said, I can't do it. I'm sorry, I can't do it. And oh, the relief, like hitting send on that email. Immediately, all the clouds lifted and I just felt like I could breathe again. And that sort of ushered in this very long period of me not wanting to do public speaking anymore, because that moment was so frustrating to me that I just decided to avoid anything that would trigger those feelings again. So I said no to conference after conference until people stopped asking. And finally, 10 years later, I feel like I found my voice again and I want to do it. So I've been trying really hard to Speak at conferences and do these types of podcast episodes because now I enjoy them. They don't feel like obstacles to my happiness. They feel like just interesting things to do in my journey. And so I'm not going to say I conquered my imposter syndrome, but I'm certainly paying less attention to it now because it just. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what I think other people think about me. As long as I feel like I'm making strong work and I'm keeping myself entertained as I go, then just focus on that.
- [44:36]
Interviewer
I like that you said that people might be thinking, who's the guy over there? He looks scared. And he said nothing. But I know there's always a what if. But imagine David Byrne looking at you going, how do you do that in Houdini? Because I never heard of Houdini. You know, I mean, it was funny because I think it was interview with BJ Richardson, who said, at Paradiso, would you tell Stefan Seinweisse in our. In my talk? And I was like, well, it turns out there's a lot that Stefan Segmeister doesn't know because he doesn't think about these things, you know, but we put ourselves in such undue pressure going, thinking, well, why would I be deserving of that space? Why would I be doing this? And then you realize there's the people who know half of the stuff, a third of the stuff, and they go like, hey, sign me up. I want to do this. I'm like, you sure you want to.
- [45:25]
Radim Malinic
Be of any value?
- [45:25]
Interviewer
Of course. But, you know, this is the conviction where people say, like, well, I can do it, you know, And I spoke. I spoke at of. Of 2015 myself, and it was somewhere upstairs. And yeah, I spoke there. But again, I thought the same, just like you. Oh, I need to do different talk. For everywhere I go, I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. You make it difficult for you on yourself without anybody even noticing whatever you've done, how you did it, you know, unless you speak on the main stage at every festival, every month, that is. Now, you should really freshen up the talk. Even, for example, Stefan, I think, ended up talking about beauty for about three years, and then he talked about something nurse for about three years. And no one was like, oh, it's just the same talk by Stefan.
- [46:03]
Robert Hodgin
That makes perfect sense. And I think it was mar. It was either Marco or Hector who told me that the way I should think about it is when people go see bands that they like perform, they don't get disappointed when that band performs songs that they've heard already. They get excited because they're familiar with the content and it means something to them. So I'm trying to embrace that aspect of it. I'll still try to mix my talks up and not just use the same keynote for each one. I want it to be a little customized for each conference, but I'm less concerned about coming up with a full new 50 minutes, you know, every two months, which is just draining.
- [46:39]
Interviewer
Yeah, no, because you will find yourself, like, really chiseling the next talk. You know, doing it for the first time, being a little bit nervous for the first time. And then you get, you know, the likes of Stefan or Draplin just doing that one talk they've been doing for the last 10 years. You were like, well, that's a lot more fluid than my talk, you know, Then you realize, yeah, because they've been doing it for 10 years, word for word. But the thing is, it's about what you want to get with it, because the more vulnerable stuff you put out there, and we don't advise anyone to be rewriting their talk for every event because, you know, you want to put some care in it. Again, things that take no effort are hard to value. So you want to put something on the stage that people be like, I needed to hear this. And sometimes is that the moment of vulnerability, the revelation of, like, fear of shame, you know, like having love, sort of shame, resilience, all of that stuff, that's what really resonates with other people. Because you can talk about architecture from hundreds of years ago. We're like, well, some people like it. Some people haven't got a clue what you're talking about. But being out there, being open, which is one of the reasons why we on this podcast today, and why what I'm doing, what I do is actually being able to shine a light on some of these topics and make it really clear how we are all equal in life and creativity. We do. We do have our own stories. We have our own tools and ways of working. But I've said it many times before. You see some really accomplished people having so much anxiety about their work. And, like, well, your 300,000 followers don't really think that, you know, like, why would you be worried? I think we need that sort of defense mechanism. I think we need those sort of anxiety sensors and alarms going off because we can't just take it easy. Sometimes, like, if it's way too easy, if you're not pushing enough Then are you really creating value? Are you really pushing yourself? Are you growing? Are you, are you moving forward? And I think that's the question. And that's kind of whole idea of daring creativity. Like daring creativity is not about jumping out of a plane. It's following the flocks of birds and thinking, I want to do that in Houdini. I want to talk about rare volume before we wrap up. So you told me you like putting things on big screens. How difficult is it to start with a vision and see it delivered in a way that doesn't compromise, breaks the mold, fears, conformity? How difficult do you find the agreement of what excellence means to clients, the production team, the creative director, all sorts of stuff?
- [49:14]
Robert Hodgin
Yeah, that's an interesting question. And it's something that I'm not great at. I've seen many of my ideas get butchered by clients because they're paying us to execute their vision most of the time. And I'm not the most calm and collected about those moments because I do have this sort of inner diva that thinks that because I had so many successes in my life that they should treat me as if I know best. And I know that that's a silly thing. Especially in light of relationships with clients. It's an interesting, it's an interesting challenge. The projects that end up frustrating me are the ones where the clients show up and they say, we want you to do what you do because we love your work. We want it to be arch, forward. We're going to stay out of your way. And then you show them something that you're happy with. And the first thing they do is they show you like some deck or mood board their creative came up with and said, can you make it more like this? And that just happens so much. It's gotten to the point where if I hear the phrase arc forward, I'm going to assume that it's not going to be. And they already know what they want to see. They just, they're, they're too afraid to dictate it during the call. I guess there's been some projects that, that were fantastic. We did, I think our first project as Rare Volume was to do content for Samsung for their flagship store in the meatpacking district. And the content was on like a three story video wall. It was huge and stayed out of our way. We got to execute our vision almost to the letter with minor notes because what they wanted at the end of the day was art. They wanted big, beautiful, moving art on their big, beautiful three story video wall. And they didn't need to throw the Samsung logo up on everything and, you know, dictate brand guidelines. They wanted us to do sort of a love letter to New York City as viewed through a Samsung lens. And so that. That was an example of a project that I think is. It was up there with ones that I feel most strongly about. We did another project for Barcelona for the big Torre Glori's tower, the sort of big phallic tower in the middle of the city. We have an installation in the ground floor that you walk through in order to get up to the roof deck. And it's this huge, expansive, very, very wide projection wall. And we did a series of art pieces for that project that are little data stories. One's about the wind, like how strong the wind is moving at that very moment as visualized with this rippling cloth. And another that shows what stars you would be able to see if it were suddenly dark and there was no building in the way you'd be able to see this specific star field and all the satellites that are passing by. That was also. It was a challenging project. But I think ultimately I feel really strongly about how well it turned out, because this looks fantastic. It looks. You know, the scale of the piece is just kind of overwhelming and. And then there's plenty of projects where I'm just like, you guys were wrong with your decision. You should have listened to us. But I guess we got to take the money and. And just pretend that you knew best when I know secretly we would have executed something much nicer than they got if they had just stayed out of our way.
- [52:42]
Interviewer
So you remember me saying, how we discover how we are equal in life and creativity. So the things that you produce, the level of complexity, the clientele, the executions, displays, you still get clients who come to you and say, hey, I love what you do. Can you do something for us? This is kind of universal language of, oh, shit, this is the red flag. And it's amazing that even with what you do and how you do it, it still happens to you too, because it happens on so many levels. I think everyone's had that experience, and it really drives it home how we are all equal and it all happens to us. Robert, thank you for talking to me today. I've really enjoyed learning so much about you, and your work is beautifully complex. It blows my mind. You've got lots of fans of people who love what you do, so it's great that you're coming back on the speaking circuit and sharing this with lots of people. And thank you for talking to me today.
- [53:36]
Robert Hodgin
Thank you Radam. This has been a lot of fun and I was looking forward to this because people seem to enjoy themselves when they talk to you and now I see why. You are a very gracious host.
- [53:47]
Interviewer
Thank you so much.
- [53:58]
Radim Malinic
Thank you for listening to this episode of Daring Creativity Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions and suggestions, so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinage. The audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Bikes Podcast. Thank you and I hope to see.
- [54:19]
Interviewer
You on the next episode.
- [54:22]
Radim Malinic
If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever.
- [54:43]
Interviewer
You are and whatever you do.
- [54:45]
Radim Malinic
To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code Podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.