Neri Oxman: preference

Transcript context

…Is there are things you’ve done in your life where just doors opened? I think everything, everything, everything good I’ve found in my life has been found in that way of letting go and suspending my sense of disbelief. And often you will find me say to the team, suspend your disbelief. I don’t care that this is impossible. Let’s assume it is. Where does it take us? And that suspension of disbelief is absolutely part and parcel of the creative act. I did so when I was in medical school, I was in Hadassah and in the Hebrew University, and I remember I left medical school for architecture the day my grandmother passed away. And that was a moment of relief and that was a door that was closing that opened other opportunities. But that of course required letting go of the great vision of becoming a doctor and letting go of the dream of being surrounded by wonderful patients and the science of medicine and the research associated with that science. And letting go of that dream to accomplish another. And it has happened throughout my life in different ways. MIT was another experience like that where people pointed at me as the designer for whom the academic currency is not necessarily the citation index. And of course in order to get tenure at MIT, you have to look at the citation index. But for me it was not that. It was manifesting our work in shows and writing papers and writing patents and creating a celebration around the work. And I never saw a distinction between those ways of being. I also think that another kind of way of being or a modality of being that I found helpful is Viktor Frankl wrote this incredible book, Men’s Search for Meaning after the Holocaust. And he writes, different people pursue life for different reasons. According to Freud, the goal of life is to find pleasure and according to Adlers, to find power. And for Viktor Frankl, it was about finding meaning. And when you let go of the titles and the disciplines and the boundaries and the expectations and the perception, you are elevated to this really special, yes, spiritual, but definitely very, very creative plane where you can sort of start anew, look at the world through the lens of a bacterium or a robot, or look at ecology through the lens of chemistry and look at chemistry through the lens of robotics and look at robotics through the lens of microbial ecologies and so on and so forth. And I feel that kind of rebooting not every 10 years, but every minute, every breath, is very, very important for a creative life and for just maintaining this fresh mind to reboot, reboot, to begin again with every breath, begin again. And that can be confusing some. For my team members, I like to change my mind. It’s who I am, it’s how I think, it’s how I operate. nd to reboot, reboot, to begin again with every breath, begin again. And that can be confusing some. For my team members, I like to change my mind. It’s who I am, it’s how I think, it’s how I operate. And they’ll come and we found another technique or another technology that’s interesting and we thought that we were working on this functionalized fragrance, but now there’s another opportunity and let’s go there. And to me, I would much rather live life, like if I had to pick sort of my favorite Broadway show to enter and live through, it would be Into The Woods. It’s not a specific fairytale. It’s not the Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood or Rapunzel, it’s all of them. It’s sort of moving into the forest and seeing this wonder and getting close and learning about that and then moving to another wonder. And life is really about tying all of these little fairytales together in work and also in life.…

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