full interview_suchi reddy_4.mp3
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] So tell us, so it's really kind of like, you know, we meet you at the elevator pitch. What is me plus you? What are you doing?
Suchi Reddy [00:00:10] So Me Plus You is a work that to me is about our own self-awareness with respect to our relationship to technology. I've been asked to think about an artwork that will manifest this relationship and maybe allow people to think about a future that we co-evolve with technology in. And because this is a subject I've sort of been dancing around for the last few years, what became really interesting to me in exploring. The idea was this emphasis really on our own self-awareness. I feel like it's up to us and we're the me in this equation where we control the outcome. So I want me plus you to have the emphasis on the me so even if I'm creating or I want to create this sculpture that reads your emotions when I ask you a word for the future and reflects it back to you. We understand that what it's doing is actually being a kind of a translational mirror, but we control that translation. And it's up to us to control the next translation and the next one and the next one. And that our future is really in our hands and this is what it is about.
Speaker 1 [00:01:27] You just said something nice. You said it reads our emotions. How does that work?
Suchi Reddy [00:01:33] The center of the sculpture is going to contain a series of computers, and what they do, to explain it very simply, is listen to you through a microphone that's placed in the center of a cluster of lights, and through this reading of your voice as you give it a word for your future, the machine will reinterpret that word as a mandala of lights and will reflect that back to you. So you get your own sort of visual imprint of your idea of what you want your future to be, or what you think your future is going to be.
Speaker 1 [00:02:12] So, without getting into the nature of the competition, the commission, what was, what did you, I don't want to say what did your pitch, but what was the kernel of the idea?
Suchi Reddy [00:02:27] The central idea of Me Plus You was really about humans and technology and our responsibility and awareness in controlling that relationship, but the form of it was also a great response to this beautiful hall where it's situated. And the central hall of the Arts and Industries building, which was literally the mother of every museum on the mall. And I am asked to do a work in the very spot where the moon rocks were first exhibited. As an immigrant, to me, that's a very, very important moment in my life and this ability to be able to speak about something as important as our future in this space is very inspiring, you know, and responding to the space I felt like the sculpture had to be about light. And then I started working with these ideas of light and sound and how to put light and sound together. So that the sculpture listens to you and interprets your idea of the future as life.
Speaker 1 [00:03:29] So was this a departure for you in terms of your creative life?
Suchi Reddy [00:03:35] This sculpture was an absolute departure from anything I had done before, but that's actually not a departure from my general path of doing things. I think most people ask me why I can't do the same thing over and over again and do not think the answer is evident in the question. Really, why would you? I don't think that's creative enough and any time I'm faced with a question or a problem of something to do, I always ask myself, why? Why would I do this? And if I can't be clear about that answer, then I don't want to do it. And when I was asked to think about technology and humans in the future, I had never had this kind of a platform and this kind of a voice in which to think about it, and I couldn't pass it up. It was really an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 1 [00:04:22] So, looking at the process, looking back at it, okay? What have you, what have you learned about the process? I'm gonna ask you about the results later, but what have learned about whole process of doing something that presumably you hadn't done before?
Suchi Reddy [00:04:40] Jumping into the void is a chronic habit, I'm sad to say. I think probably my wrinkles and my stress levels reflect that if we looked into them. But it's also the nature of being creative. It truly is this, receiving an idea is really how I feel creativity is like sometimes I'm just in a flow and I think about a question and the idea drops in and when the idea drops in, I answer it. Or the idea is translated through me somehow into the world. And that's really how I see my creative process. And it's really beautiful to be able to do that. And of course, that requires doing something you didn't know about before. And you learn new things as you go through that process. What's interesting about working as both an architect and an installation artist is the process and the methodology by which you actually birth a physical object is quite similar. And so I felt like I had the, how can I say it, the technological skill set to deliver this, even if I didn't quite understand the technology and I had yet to learn all of these things about digital coding and visual interpretations of that coding and create new languages for myself, I wasn't faced by it. It just felt like fun and something I would want to do.
Speaker 1 [00:06:06] It's kind of interesting that we had a great conversation with Justice. For somebody like you, where the creative impetus, I assume, is the primary goal, but do you have to educate yourself on technology in order to know what to do? Or is it just something you really can just rely on and people tell you, Oh yeah, we can do that. I know we can't. I mean, how much do you dive into it?
Suchi Reddy [00:06:37] Well, the thing about being trained as an architect is that you're really a good generalist. And what that means is that, you have to understand generally how the world works and how all of these parts fit in. You may not be the specialist that knows how, you know, exactly which kind of screw needs to go into which kind socket, but you do have to know that a screw has to and that it has to be this strong and these are the things it needs to do in order to make sure that you don't see that screw or you see that screwdriver, all of these other aspects of it, right? So I had to understand what I was working with, even if I didn't know exactly how to make it work in the best way possible. And I was so lucky to be able to collaborate with amazing people who could do that with me. And it was always a collaborative process.
Speaker 1 [00:07:30] One of our other people, who was an architect, talks about the dance. That the dance architects and the creative people have to do with the people who make stuff actually work, wondering if the metaphor makes any sense.
Suchi Reddy [00:07:47] Absolutely, dancing is a perfect metaphor for how all of this comes together. The question is who choreographs that dance? And generally speaking, it's the idea, the creative impulse that's the choreographer that's like pulling all of these people into this kind of swirl that, you know, In the end, you all join hands and there's the idea in the middle, you know? I truly see it that way, it's like this ritual fire that comes up when everyone has the right amount of movement around it and the right balance I should say about that.
Speaker 1 [00:08:21] What does it feel like?
Suchi Reddy [00:08:23] It's amazing. It feels like being, you know, when people talk about being in a flow state, that's what flow state is to me. It's when you're, you have the idea, but you're working with all of these beautiful people and it's all coming together, but what you're making has a life of its own. And that life is showing you something different about you and about all of the other people, you know. And the things you learn, like, are just. They're almost ineffable, not quite, but almost ineFFable, to the point where, you know, it's all happening and you're integrating everything you're learning and you watching this dance and you are watching this object take shape, and every time it takes shape it's taking shape according to a plan, and I've made that plan, but it's still a bit of a surprise to me, when it actually shows up. And that surprise is really the place where I find my joy.
Speaker 1 [00:09:17] So, looking back at it, what was the thing you probably learned the most about the whole journey?
Suchi Reddy [00:09:25] Looking back on the process of making this, first of all, we made it during the pandemic, which was incredibly challenging to do because we had to be remote and we couldn't touch things. And this was quite hard to be able to imagine and not touch. For me, I also realized how much my imagination is related to my touching things and to being in actual context with things. So I learned how to work around that. I sort of developed a new muscle, let's just say. That was useful. But what I learned, which was really the most magical thing, was from watching people interact with the sculpture and really seeing how they might start with a word that was kind of sad, but when the lights were, even though they were kind of darker and deeper lights, showed them something that was beautiful anyway, they spoke another word in and the next word was more beautiful and was happier and lighter. And this I saw happen over and over again. And for me this is the biggest reaffirmation of the idea that beauty matters and it makes a difference it's not just in the eye of the beholder it's actually beauty this relationship to beauty is actually an emotional one that we all feel in every aspect and that happens to us when we look at a sunrise or we look a cup of coffee it all depends on what that means to you but that feeling is that there's a beautiful thing that that I just saw repeated so many times that it carries me through to the next work.
Speaker 1 [00:10:58] So, you could have done a work that just somebody said a word and it lit up, and that was pretty. That was the end of that, but you actually had something that was more ambitious, or anything that was ambitious. Can you explain the concept of collecting data and what you were trying to go for?
Suchi Reddy [00:11:18] Part of my work has always been about thinking about this relationship between an individual and the collective. May I start over if you want to have them stop?
Speaker 1 [00:11:28] Okay, there's some noise back there. It would have been a fire alarm or something. Okay, alright.
Suchi Reddy [00:11:33] So, part of my work has always been about exploring this relationship between the individual and the collective. And whenever I do something that I make as an individual interaction, I'm also thinking about what the collective interaction around that is. And so the central totem that I created, which wove together all the colors of everyone, whenever anyone realized that what they were thinking and they were feeling influenced the person next to them, that aha moment in their eyes was just amazing. Was really beautiful. And so the sense of really us weaving a kind of a light textile together through our feelings, for me is very poetic and beautiful, but it's also so emblematic of what we are as humans, how we even create culture. And we can only do that through creativity. It doesn't happen without us influencing all of the other people around us with whatever new thing we made. And that could just be, you know, the creativity that people felt when they felt like, oh, I said something and I got these lights, you know, even that agency, I think is a really important thing to feel in, in community. Um, it's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 [00:12:45] Okay, so that was great, but let's, I'm sort of thinking about, let's try to get that in present tense. Present tense, okay. I'm actually interviewing you in Brooklyn, you know, when you're putting it together. Okay, and you need to explain the tone. You know, what the tone is. What it is. Than what it's supposed to do.
Suchi Reddy [00:13:06] So when I first started thinking about Me Plus You and this relationship of humans and technology, the ideas of the very first computers obviously were something that came to mind because I was thinking of the historical context of computers and as you might very well know looms were the very computers and these were the things that in the very beginning used a binary system to actually create a beautiful creative output. And I wanted to create this kind of digital textile that wove together all of our feelings. But through that, I want to explore how individual feelings and collective feelings can influence one another. And my work is always about the individual and the collective. It never looks at one or the other. I just don't think we are constructed that way as humans. And so it really, I created this central piece that, or I wanted this central peace. To start weaving together everyone's lights, everyone's colors, everyone feelings, and to create this constantly evolving sort of ball of light at its center that would change every time someone spoke into one of the mandalas in the piece. And it was really beautiful to see.
Speaker 1 [00:14:17] It come to fruition. This is like, okay.
Suchi Reddy [00:14:30] So I should just start about wanting to see it, is that good? And I want to see this central piece weave together everyone's feelings. I want to see how people will feel when they know that what they just did or said or felt affected the person next to them, and to really be conscious of that as well. Not to just be conscious of the fact that their interaction and their vision of the future, dark, happy, whatever it is, is affecting them. But that it's going to affect the person next to them, because I think we often underestimate our imprint on other people. It's very easy to think we were in little silos, particularly being the pandemic. It is very easy think we're alone and we're not. We're never alone. Sometimes I think art is a great way to be able to speak about ideas like that.
Speaker 1 [00:15:24] So when we look at that tone, what do we see?
Suchi Reddy [00:15:30] So the central piece is, I'm calling it a totem, and it's made out of six sort of fins of textile, and its a textile actually that's woven out of paper, and in the center of that are these other LED boards, and these LED boards speak to all of the stations that are around the sculpture. So, anytime there's an input on one end... All that information goes into the center. The center weaves it all together and pulls it up into a column that's in the middle of the sculpture where one can see how all of the individual interactions are playing with each other and how they change. And I'm really excited to work on that to really set the balance. For whether the happy feelings have bigger spurts and the sadder ones have darker ones and what those colors are and how they come together because that visual language also I think is really important not just to explore but that people will feel that very viscerally and so I want to get to that point.
Speaker 1 [00:16:39] People aren't going to know what the colors are. They're not going to what the happy colors are, are they?
Suchi Reddy [00:16:45] People will not know what a happy and a sad color is, but they will feel the intensity of them. So there's really what I want to work with are combinations of colors, like deep blues and deep purples have kind of a, even though they're beautiful, have a more of a somber tone than light pinks and yellows that go together, you know, and a lot of these color combinations are derived from things we see in nature. So I'm also looking at histories of color, histories of pigments. Cultural histories of color to see how these families of colors can be something that I work with.
Speaker 1 [00:17:22] So, you're going, though, for something more than just at any given moment, it's mostly red or it's mostly blue, right? You're, there's something else going on. You're trying to collect, you try to consolidate the knowledge of that, right. I mean, it wasn't about data, it was about gathering, you know.
Suchi Reddy [00:17:42] Me Plus You is really about being almost like a cultural repository. You know, there's these ancient Sumerian objects on which the very first dreams were recorded and there'll be these kinds of drums on which they're written. It's almost like that, where I feel like it can be an ever changing, never the same in any second. To have the same quality of a dream where we're all writing this dream together of the future and what does that dream look like if it's changing all of the time. And that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 [00:18:23] So now that the, now that it was on a limit, and it's been, you know, it's just getting hibernating right now, what did you learn from that, from all that input? Did you study what the input was? Did you care about that, or was it just a moment?
Suchi Reddy [00:18:42] Sculpture is really about the moment. Learning from it is a whole other, is a who other artwork, to be honest. And to really look at the words and the frequencies with which they were spoken, to think about the fact that happy was maybe the most popular word, and weak was the least popular word that was spoken. Dangerous was somewhere in the middle, you know. To really think about those kinds of relationships, that's the birth of, I think, several other artworks.
Speaker 1 [00:19:15] Are you basically, are you happy with that, K-Man?
Suchi Reddy [00:19:19] I'm delighted with how it came out. I truly am. I could not believe really as an immigrant to this country that I was getting this opportunity to work in this amazing spot and truly that meant a lot to me and there were a lot of people who came by who were people of color from all parts of the world who would come up and speak to me when I was there and be so proud that somebody like us would have this voice and be in this place. And that was beyond delightful, but also just the fact that it reminds you, working in Washington, that we actually have this as a national resource. The arts are free, and they're available to everyone, and that people of all ages had access to this. And there were incredible numbers of people who interacted with my sculpture. And that truly was incredibly satisfying. That's not the way an artist actually – you don't think about it when you're making a work. Even when you're making an interactive work, so it's always this beautiful thing to realize that it has this kind of impact and that it can reach these numbers of people and that some little kid will never forget what they saw. You know, I think that's a real beautiful thing about it.
Speaker 1 [00:20:37] Lovely. Do you have any other questions about the NRCURC? Because I'm going to go with you and other stuff. This is great.
Speaker 3 [00:20:45] I realize that we can't talk too much about the data, but we need to talk a little bit about it. About what it is that you were able to glean from it. Because we saw some of the stuff on the computer, which we can use. Is there something that you have taken away in general sense? In terms of what's learned more than just a feeling? Okay, something that's actually a little bit more scientific.
Suchi Reddy [00:21:14] Got it. What I learned from looking at the back end and the data that we actually could see as this sculpture was being used and was in progress for over a year, was that almost 83% of the people who interacted with it felt positively about their future. And that those who didn't, there was maybe 28% I want to say, that expressed a little bit of depression or some kind of being scared about the future, but that might have been more of a generic tendency that maybe got expressed through this, which was also really lovely to think that this was a voice for that, but to understand that as humans, really, we're very positive. We're positive animals, so we wouldn't be able to move forward. And I think that became really clear from the data that we were looking at in terms of the words that people were using and the types of words that were even follow-ups to difficult words that got input into it. Because I think, I always say, I think creativity is one of those things that it keeps us from thinking about death for sure, you know. The next creative impulse, the next creative thing we can do. And that keeps us also from being depressed and being sad. And during the pandemic, I remember one of the first, I think, I didn't know what a webinar was, but the first time I did one and someone was asking me, you know, who was suffering from depression, they were asking me what could they do because they were sort of closed in and they didn't have their usual support techniques and all I could say was like, go make something, go make anything, pick up anything in the house and just make it, it doesn't have to be beautiful, but the act of making will make you feel better. And it's really that, right? This seeing this act of making, but I think particularly for the data from my sculpture, the fact that people also felt they were making something while they were interacting with it, I think gave kind of a higher positive kind of backing to the data that we were seeing from it. Hopefully that's a little bit more specific without being too obvious.
Speaker 3 [00:23:22] I'd love to know if there was anything that surprised you.
Suchi Reddy [00:23:28] I was actually quite surprised that it was as positive as it was. I was expecting it to be 50-50, to be honest. I really thought there would be maybe an even split in the population of people who could feel happy about their future and all the people who were worried. And I was really surprised to see that it was much higher on the positive side. And I do think a lot of that has to do with being able to walk into this light-filled atrium and kind of seeing this light sculpture and going kind of, ah, and that changes your body chemistry enough that you feel positive when you say something next. Or at least you have a sense of wonder or a sense discovery that something's about to happen. I was surprised to see that.
Speaker 3 [00:24:16] There's one more question about this before you move on. You mentioned when we were talking there about, wouldn't it be nice if this kind of thing was in public squares all around, kind of like a digital therapy. And now you have some sort of proof to that idea of, a lot of people walked away feeling better. So what do you think about sort of public art and the benefit from a mental or emotional standpoint of having stuff like this in the world?
Suchi Reddy [00:24:44] I think the beautiful thing about public art is exactly that, is that it's public and that there is no velvet rope around this. And it's not meant to be enjoyed by people of a certain anything, you know, it's open to everybody and everybody can interpret it in whichever way they want and that's the power of it. And I would love to take this work into sort of digital, into the digital or physical square or the physical digital hybrid square. Where there's sort of, you know, therapy modules and people could go and speak their worries and their fears into them and be given some kind of either reflection of that or a solution to it. That's a dream. That's my next dream.
Speaker 1 [00:25:23] There's a lot of great public art, but your art, it doesn't seem to be complete without kind of the active participation of the viewer. I don't know if we can talk about that. There's lots of stuff where people go, that was really cool, I love watching it, blah, blah. But then, if you don't talk to it, then is it there? Or is it fully there?
Suchi Reddy [00:25:51] My work really does require participation. I, my sort of creative satisfaction relies on getting the participation of anyone from a work that I make and that must be from my training as an architect where I really do, I create for people, I'm not just creating for myself. And yes, for me the work is incomplete if it doesn't have that interaction. You know, I might as well be making a photo or a video. Not having you be in space interacting with something. Yeah, I definitely think that's important that relationship
Speaker 1 [00:26:28] You know Danny Rosen? He does these reflective, he does these things called mirrors and he says they're not complete until somebody appears in front of them and it talks to you, you know, kind of like my job is done, so it started the same way with me.
Suchi Reddy [00:26:46] Yeah, I really think that the piece has its own voice and it's own voice doesn't come to life unless somebody interacts with it, you know, otherwise it's just the image of the piece that someone's interacting with and that's only half, or maybe less, I don't know.
Speaker 1 [00:27:08] Can I ask you about your own creative journey? Why do you think you're so creative? Why did you start?
Suchi Reddy [00:27:19] Such an interesting question actually. I wish I knew that I wish. I knew the answer to that Why am I so good well first of all I did never thought I was so creative and It's taken me many years to realize that maybe I am slightly more creative than some other people around me And then maybe they're creative in other ways, but for me I just felt like creativity is kind of the the thing that I don't know It's like it's hard to imagine being human without being creative for me because you're being creative always somehow, whether it's in what you're saying or how you're doing or how you're crossing the street or whatever, you know, because creativity sometimes is really a question of a certain number of choices and a set of choices that you make and how you make those choices and what criteria you use to make those choices and whether you're using that to make a thing or you're using that to be a certain way or you using that to present a certain way, that's what it comes down to. So making those choices was never something that I could divorce myself from, you I couldn't imagine not. Making choices. But as I have kind of grown into having essentially a body of work that I can look back at and I can see how I was thinking at a certain point and what I learned from that and I see how that went into the next thing and the next and the thing, then I realized that there's a there's a chain of a certain kind of creativity that I've been cultivating for myself rather consciously, but doing this so that. The next thing is always the step in the unknown that's revealing something brand new. And that then becomes creativity. It's like, what am I seeing that I've never seen before? What am I doing that I have never done before? What is this idea that hasn't had this kind of voice or this kind life before? That I think is the exciting thing about it. And I can imagine being creative until I die, to be honest. I'll probably be breathing my last breath and going, hmm, you know? And we're like, what's the next thing I want to be doing? Yeah, that's who I am.
Speaker 1 [00:29:27] Ed, was there anything in your childhood that you think prompted this or made it easier or, you know...
Suchi Reddy [00:29:37] I think one of the most seminal memories I have of being a child is actually when our house was being built and I remember seeing all of these kinds of materials come together and these stones and these rocks and I actually hurt myself, I fell over something, I have a cut from it still, you know, on this construction site because I was running around like a crazy child in all of this debris. But I remember that feeling of all of these things coming together and then like we had this one wall that was made of a certain kind of stone and and if you struck another stone against it you would get sparks and that you can imagine for a kid this was really fascinating you know I would like go and keep doing that so it was sort of that was maybe the first thing and then also my mother was a very creative person who never went to school Learn to speak seven languages. Would take me to small weavers in a special town called Kanchipuram where all these special silk saris come from. And we'd go to these little weaver and looms and look at all of the colors and the threads and she'd be designing her own saris and things. And that's also a really seminal memory for me about beauty and creativity and how. Patterns and shape and design come together, and I think all of these ideas sort of drove me to becoming somebody who makes things whatever they are.
Speaker 1 [00:30:59] Do you, um, do play, I mean, do you just like to think about the world as a stand-by?
Suchi Reddy [00:31:10] Yeah, I love playing. Mostly my playing looks like finger painting. That actually is what I've come down to now. I love to paint with my fingers. I pick up some watercolors and I'll be rubbing them on paper to kind of see what they do, see what kind of idea comes out. That's generally how I play, but I do feel like it's not just the world that's a sandbox, but it's the world of ideas that's sandbox. And that's the most exciting sandbox. That's out there is to really be able to play with ideas and to understand that new ideas can really change the world. And there's a way in which if you look at that as material, there's new material that can be found. You know, it's like discovering a new planet. There might be, who knows, Pluto titanium somewhere that we can't live without. But it's sort of finding that that I think feels like play. But truly when I'm in kind of the creative flow of like thinking about it or having a Eureka moment That's when that becomes most evident is that sense of feeling like it's play
Speaker 1 [00:32:18] What are you, I don't want to say most proud of, but what do you think you are, creatively, as you know, as a creator, your contribution has been?
Suchi Reddy [00:32:31] You're not going easy on the tough questions, are you? My contribution as a creator.
Speaker 1 [00:32:40] I think you think a lot about doing good. To be honest with you, a lot of people talk to you that's pretty low on their list. How do you do it? That seems to animate you more than a lot people talk too, which is admirable. But it's great to have that idea in terms of executing. What I'm trying to get you to do is talk about some of the spaces you've designed and things like that. What do you? What are you doing that you feel is, I don't want to say abusing the field, but you don't understand, just that your absence would be felt.
Suchi Reddy [00:33:16] I think, I mean, more or less what I'm coming around to is that I think I do have a vision of a world where we're all, this is going to sound really Pollyanna-ish but it's coming out this way, where we are all the happiest we can be. And whatever that is, whatever it takes us to get there. I think is really what we should be thinking about as humans, if we're creating a society and we're whatever, functioning within one, we should thinking about how we can all be happy, not just one, but all be happy. And you know, there is that saying, you know may I be happy, may all beings be happy? There's a Buddhist prayer that does that, which I say every day. And truly, that's what I want all of my work in the end to be that contribution, to be that one thing that I made that made somebody happy. You know, in whatever way, or changed how they felt about themselves. That, I think, is really important. And I can do that through space, I can do that, through art, I could do that through, you know writing, which might be the next thing that I want to take up. I don't know, you know. I'm not a musician, sadly, so I'm going to leave that one for this lifetime, but I think I'd like to really explore that and see as a contributor to really our kind of collective I think really I would say, I think my contribution is that I think about how other people feel. In making what I do. Interesting question. I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 4 [00:34:58] There you go. Thank you.
Suchi Reddy [00:35:01] You know, you'll learn something from us.
Speaker 3 [00:35:07] Well, you know our series is about confluence of art and science, right? How does that play out in what you do? I mean, you're obviously an architect, but you're also an artist, and how do the two blend in your work, or do they? Are they separate? How do you approach each thing, or is there just some sort of semblance of order?
Suchi Reddy [00:35:34] Got it. Do you still want me to look at Louis? So, you know, coming from India and really coming from this culture where I don't think there really was this sort of defined art and science division that happened in the West, let's say in the 1600s, where they decided this is art and this is science and never the twain shall meet. And now we're in this place where we're trying to bring those things together in so many ways. And we realize that this more kind of holistic way of thinking is really where it's at, and we're actually holistic humans, and we don't have like the art half and the science half, and, you know, the middle is no man's land. We're really all together in this, and I think it's really important to always think... I mean, physics is one of my... Favorite things and who, how can we even stand without physics, you know? So if you're an artist you're thinking about physics because you're think about, you now, the qualities of, or chemistry, you know, if you are thinking about even just paint, you're just thinking about how one thing interacts with another, right? You have to understand the science of that. And being trained as an architect I think is really such a boon and I'm honestly so grateful for that because we're taught to be the perfect collaborators where we understand the work of scientists we bring into the, we understand also the value of science. And truly it's physical value, but also kind of its physical potential, because it allows you to stretch some boundaries and you understand how far something can overhang or how thin you can make something and not have it break. Like these kinds of things, these are all scientific truths to me. And for me, when I'm working with art and now when I think about data and I think about science as information, that becomes even more interesting as a thing to bring into the work, because... The informational aspect of science, I think, is incredibly important for people to understand. And I really don't see a world where they're separate. I think it was a big mistake that the West made in the 1600s.
Speaker 3 [00:37:35] So, on the topic of creativity, you sort of talked about, it's a fairly human thing, to be creative, to some degree, everybody. So, what is creative?
Suchi Reddy [00:37:49] Creativity is, I'm going to have to say creativity is confluence, I don't know if that's going to work for you, because that's the title, it's going to be too trite. But it is, what's another word that I could use?
Speaker 3 [00:38:04] Intersection. You can use more than one word. Can I?
Suchi Reddy [00:38:12] Yeah, creativity is kind of like the waterfall. It's like what happens when all of the water comes together to go somewhere, and this is really beautiful, and the energy of it as it falls over a cliff. That's that ineffable part of creativity. It's not when the water is leaving the cliff and hitting somebody or falling on the rock or the sound it makes. Those are all its physical aspects, but the actual transmission of it in space, that ineFFable thing. Typically, right, people call it flow. It really is flow, so I guess I would equate creativity to that kind of physicality in the gesture of a waterfall as it goes over a cliff because that's how it feels. It's always like off into the unknown somewhere, but in this beautiful way that you cannot understand how it's going to be shaped, depending on where it lands and how it becomes a pool or a river or an ocean or whatever it ends up being, but it's in that transformational process. In some ways, creativity for me is a process, it's not a state. It really is a processes, it is a state of change.
Speaker 3 [00:39:17] How's that metaphor? That's like the Eureka moment. That's kind of what it is when you when you go over the cliff
Suchi Reddy [00:39:24] I mean, I literally, I mean you don't want to put this in there, but I literally had a eureka moment sitting over there working on this thing for the National Building Museum. Like we were working on all these shapes, circles, and da da da, and stuff blowing up and then all of a sudden I'm like, why don't we work with a child's game? They're all looking at me like, where did that come from? Look, I don't know. I just stayed open. It's about staying open to the idea. That's the other thing. You know, like I like to do the thing where I put an idea in my head and I go to sleep and I'll wake up in the morning and I know what to do with it. And that's creativity to me. There's so much that's happening inside, underneath, that needs to come out that our lives aren't necessarily set up to allow. And I think we need those spaces, like sleep, like dream, like play, where things that don't rationally or logically make sense in a straight line. Can all emerge at the same time, and then you can see if they make a circle, or they make a star, or a starfish, whatever it is.
Speaker 3 [00:40:28] And then I just have one other thought of wanting to make people happy in the way people walk away from the pursuit with that feeling. Technology seems to me as so often to be pleasure-seeking, or want to give people a button-to-press feel away when probably, to some degree, our pursuit should be peace as opposed to pleasure. We're always going to be chasing that thing. Do you think that there's an onus on people like yourself, like other people who deal with technology to... Shape the way we interact from finding a kind of status, maybe feeling happy or content with your pieces as opposed to wanting to just seek that next thing and constantly chasing, does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
Suchi Reddy [00:41:20] I think there's definitely an onus on people who have the opportunity to work with technology in a kind of a visible way, to take it away from this stage of being this sort of serotonin dopamine-inducing shot, which is a very, very small, limited view of what technology can do for us and what it has done for us, to be honest. But to take that... Focus away from it, and really bring it back to how does it make you more human? How does it let you be the most of who you are? How does let you care for somebody next to you in a way that you couldn't do before? And really put the onus on that, not on the, you know, I press this button and I did it in 30 seconds or two seconds or a split second, but really that it let you spend another half an hour with someone. That we shift that onus and that this is why we do things. That's why I say the why of things is so important. So when I'm asked to do something, when I ask to think about it, I always have to ask the question, why? Both the why and why I would do it, but also the why what that thing is, and why it should be that. And should it really be that? Or should it be something else? And really being able to have this kind of critical dialog, even if it's just with yourself and in your shower, you know, about am I doing this, am I do it for the right reasons. Is it the right thing to do? I think that's very important, especially for people who have a big voice in the public to be focusing on. We can't talk about things like deforestation or water or climate or any of these issues without really taking on the responsibility as well of thinking about how we should be reorienting to handle both the potentials and the problems of those things. And art is the same thing. I think it's a very big voice and I think the very big responsibility.
Speaker 1 [00:43:18] So I have a question that is related to one of our themes that occurs to me when I swing this thing, which is your relationship to materials. How are materials important? Why are they? When you think about material, what do you think of that?
Suchi Reddy [00:43:35] I always start any creative project by thinking about material. I've always been like that. I think it just comes from being a child and lying in the mud all the time. One of the things I used to do as a kid is I used run around in the garden and I would pick leaves and then I would stick little weird flowers on them and make stuff. But it was always about the making and the touching of things, or the smelling of things or the feeling of things. And that's one of the delights of being in a body. And I think one has to really give into that kind of sensual nature of creativity, at least for me, you know, for it to feel like it comes from a whole body place. And not just a brain idea that I've forced into the world, but really something that works the other way up. And that's just my process, I guess.
Speaker 1 [00:44:29] But when you think about materials, you must make decisions about which materials to use. Do the materials talk to you and say, oh, I want to be this or I want convey the feeling, or just tell us a little bit about it.
Suchi Reddy [00:44:41] Materials always convey a feeling to me, always, and it's always about the feeling that I look at them for. When I work as an architect, and obviously I'm doing commercial projects and things, I'm really thinking about durability, I'm looking at things of longevity, I am also thinking about sustainability, how they're made, what they're make from, what's their life cycle, are they going in a trash heap, can they be reused, all these things feed into it. But primarily, those are all, for me, the kind of... In movable conditions but the condition that's movable is what feeling can I get from this material? Is it soft? Is it warm? Is it good to the touch? Is it going to look good next to something else? One of the materials I really like is cork and cork actually has this quality of being almost at your body temperature. So when you touch it or if you sit on it you don't have the kind of shock, right, of touching something else and that would be a feeling that I would want to use that for, is to create this kind of softness around the, to break that barrier. So yeah, I think all materials have feelings, they project them.
Speaker 3 [00:45:56] Just a follow up to that idea, do you find yourself finding material and you say, I gotta go make this project, or do you think of a project and find material with the chicken and egg in it?
Suchi Reddy [00:46:10] Really good question. Materials will often intrigue me to the point that I think about what I could make with them. For instance, I came across this concrete once that was translucent. That was being made because it was made translucent because they would introduce a fiber into it. And so, you know, something that looks solid all of a sudden becomes a material. And the kind of magic of that was something that I stuck in my head and I kept it there and kept it there until the right time came to use it. And then there are other times when there's something specific, like I think here's an atrium that needs a sculpture that's made of light, and then I have to think of all the different ways in which I can transmit light in that space, whether it's a solid acrylic tube that brings light almost magically, where it's not lit, and you can see that it's light, but there's light at the end of it, and that's only because it's a passage for light, or that there are LED boards that are getting their light transmitted through layers of paper. You know, it's different ways of working with the same kind of quality. So all of those materials transmit light in different ways, but it was like thinking about which feeling was going to come from what. And so it's almost like as I go along, I create this kind of library in my head of the potentials of all these different materials and then how to put them all in combination for something.
