full interview_matt shlian_1.mp3
Matt Shlian [00:00:00] I'm Matt Shlian, I'm a paper engineer, I'm an artist that works in paper. I've worked with paper for about 20 years and this is all I do.
Speaker 2 [00:00:11] Come up with that term when you put it in the paper.
Matt Shlian [00:00:13] So a paper engineer, I did not come up with the term, I did come up the term for paper engineer. It's what they call people that make pop-up books, greeting cards, things that make paper in a kinetic sort of way. I came to paper engineering, I had a background in ceramics, I was an art student, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, and I had faculty professor that was into collecting pop-up books. I had an affinity for geometry, I understood how things moved and how to understand things spatially. I used paper and she used to give me pop-out books and was like, take this apart, figure out how this thing works. I would dissect them, I would try to understand the mechanisms on each page. And try to wrap my head around how I could make them. And so I did that for a number of years. I had a job as a paper engineer designing pop-up books and things like that in Essex, Connecticut. And that led to what I do now, which is professionally fold paper.
Speaker 2 [00:01:16] And it feels like with that term, not to harp on the term, but that it could go one of two ways. You could go more towards engineering, more towards the artist. Did you always kind of know you wanted to head towards the art?
Matt Shlian [00:01:27] Yeah, so the engineer part of that isn't really engineering like you would think of like I'm an engineer, I build a bridge. It's more like how you can take paper and transform it and take it from a two-dimensional thing to a three-dimensional sculpture, right? So it's flat to 3D. My background is not in science or engineering at all. I was steered away from math and science when I was in high school. They were like, this is not for you. And my background's entirely in the arts. It's just sort of a way to talk about the work I do and it sort of differentiates it from, for example, when I tell people I work in paper, like I'm an artist that works in paper they immediately say like, oh, you do origami. I do not do origam or traditional origami, I'm not necessarily interested in some of the constraints that origami presents.
Speaker 2 [00:02:21] So somebody comes up to you at a party and says, what is it that you do? What exactly do you do.
Matt Shlian [00:02:26] Yeah, so I say I'm an artist and I work in paper, sorry. When I meet somebody that's never seen my work before, they say, what do you do? I say, I'm a artist that works in paper. And then they go, oh, you do origami. And I say no, I mean, I fold, but it's not like traditional origami, and so in traditional origame, you start with a square sheet of paper, and it's only through folding that you derive form. You're not allowed to cut or glue or use machines like I use, they think it's cheating. And so. So my background using pop-up books and computer technology and things like that is slightly different than traditional origami. It's really hard to talk about what I do. It's sometimes like, I explain it, people go like, okay, they don't really get it, and then I'll just be like, give me your phone, and I'll show them what it looks like, and then they're like, oh, what? Then they're probably more confused, I think. Like, why would, how, what.
Speaker 2 [00:03:24] Is there a sort of purpose that helps get that message across?
Matt Shlian [00:03:29] Like a perp, how do you mean like a purpose? Like.
Speaker 2 [00:03:30] Do you say, well, here's what I'm trying to do.
Matt Shlian [00:03:33] Yeah, I say like, well, this is what I do. Like, this the work that I make and they might be confused but then they say like oh, so it's like fine art. So this is something that lives on the wall, something that could be framed, something that can exist in a gallery sort of setting and then they start to understand.
Speaker 2 [00:03:51] So, I know we talked about this, we've talked about it before, but there are many materials in the world with which you could work. You chose paper. Tell me why paper?
Matt Shlian [00:04:02] Paper is an interesting material for a number of reasons. First of which is that it's super ubiquitous. You can get a piece of paper anywhere, everybody's handled paper. It's not precious. So you can just take a sheet, start folding it. You don't have to worry about messing something up. And there's a certain freedom that comes from not having to worry about like, I don't wanna mess this thing up. I like that it has a material that has a memory. So paper, if you fold it a certain way, and you unfold and it wants to go back to that certain place. And so you can almost program it in a sense. So if you know what you're doing, you know how to work with the paper and the grain direction of the paper, you can get it to do some pretty incredible things. And then there's that transformation that happens. Here's the simple material, but it's seen through a different lens and it's shifted what it could be and the potential of it is actually pretty incredible to take a flat sheet and make it something dimensional.
Speaker 2 [00:04:55] Was there a catalyst that drove you? I know you worked in pop-up books. Was there something previous to that that made you? Because that's kind of similar in terms of the material.
Matt Shlian [00:05:05] I don't remember how I really came to paper. I feel like I was probably just a poor college student. I mean, I was in ceramics and I was doing work in clay and the ideas that I had, I couldn't get the clay to do what I wanted it to do. And I remember thinking I needed something thinner, I needed a crisp edge. And it's almost like, there's different processes in art, right? There's additive processes, like clays, you're building things or you're throwing something on the wheel, you're throwin' a form. And paper for me was just a way. That was very immediate to get the forms and ideas I had in my head out into the world. So instead of me explaining like, oh, I wanna make this form that does this thing and situates itself this way, I could just take a sheet of paper and put a cut score in it and go, look, this is it. This is that curve. This is the form. And it just made sense. I think, I remember reading, there's like several different types of intelligences. There's like body kinesthetic. There's mathematics. There's interpersonal, right? Then there's one for spatial intelligence, like spatial relations. And I remember thinking like, that's all I have is the ability to see something that's flat and then what it would look like folded or how to unfold something. I could see those things in my mind and the paper was a way to get those ideas out into the world.
Speaker 3 [00:06:18] Sort of quickly and cheaply.
Matt Shlian [00:06:20] Yeah, quickly and cheaply was my primary reasoning for it. But it was an immediate thing. Paper was very immediate for me, and it was, I don't know, I think. I think that quickness lended itself to my ideas, my ideation. I've had friends tell me that I'm not necessarily a great artist, but I'm a pretty good editor. Like, I make a ton of stuff, and then it's what you get to see. So, for example, I'm working on this series, this Oma Plata series, and I'm on 170-something right now. But people have only seen the first, they've only seen pieces along the way. You might see Oma plata, 11 was a good one, and 21 was good. But between 11 and 21. You know, and so choosing what gets seen and what gets pursued was important and paper was a real easy way to work through those ideas.
Speaker 2 [00:07:21] Can you trace a line, so to speak, you know, when you first started you probably weren't using all of the tools and computer technology that you're using now. Can you talk about that, sort of briefly, that evolution and what you are using?
Matt Shlian [00:07:37] So in terms of technology, when I first started, I was using things like protractors, rulers, compasses, straight edge. Like if I wanted 90 degrees, I had to find it. And I did that for a number of years through college and then beyond. And when I started working in the industry, they used a lot of technology. Everything was designed using CAD software and then made via these plotter cutters. And initially working with them was really hard. It was like, I say it was drawing with a brick, because you're used to, oh, I wanna make a line, I'll draw a line with my hand, and now you have to write, this is how you make a in CAD, is you hit L, enter, then you choose your point, and then you say how long you want that line to be, and you enter it, and it's like, what artist is thinking like a programmer, right? And so I started working in CAD and it took many months to get proficient, to get the ideas that I had in my head out into the machine and to get it to cut what I wanted it to cut. And it's funny, I can look back at earlier CAD files now, and I'm just like, oh my god, I was just doing things like the long way, like I didn't know a command, so I was like pulling an edge back would take me so long because I didn't know how to offset something, no one taught me. So I was going through old manuals for these software programs and doing it. And so doing that informed my process and I got better at CAD and I was able to ideate faster. And so now I use a lot of tools with my hands. I use Xacto knives. I'll use, you know, cutting mat, scissors, you know, bone folders and spatulas and all the things you need to make the work reverse action tweezers. But then there's the whole other side, which is more on the technology side. So it might be 3D modeling or 3D rendering programs, things that unfold. There's unfolding softwares I might use to help, but I still find that the hand is a really crucial step, whether it's drawing first. Or it's the actual hands-on assembly and figuring out how things fold and move, that's a crucial step for me.
Speaker 2 [00:09:32] Well, I'd love to hear you talk about this deliberate choice you have to work with something which is tactile. You are making something in reality. But also, as a necessary part of that, using technology to achieve it. I'd like to know why you choose that, but also how you balance that.
Matt Shlian [00:09:52] Yeah, I'm drawn to things, let me back up, I think with my hands. I'm the type of person where if I can put my hands on something I can understand it. I think the computer for me is another screen to work through, not to be like a punter or metaphor, but it's another step that removes me from the process. And so when I'm designing something on the computer, it exists only in that digital space. And it's not until it's tangible and made out of paper that I have a real understanding of this thing. And I think we forget that people have hands. I think right now we design stuff like, it's an app, it's a thing, it an NFT, not to shit on NFTs, but like, I don't want a digital thing that only exists on my phone or my computer. I want a thing I can hold and like, I like books. You know, I liked audible books or audio books, but like I like holding a book. I like smelling ink. I like having that physical experience because We've evolved using our hands and our bodies and our smells and all those parts are part of the process. So, for me, I can connect to something better when I have my hands on it.
Speaker 2 [00:11:01] Why is that important for everybody?
Matt Shlian [00:11:03] I don't know if it is important for everybody. I used to go to the Seagraph conference, do you know what Seagraft? It's like a nerd conference, it's computer graphics technology. And they brought me in as an artist in residence one year and then I just kept going back because I was having fun. But I would sit and I would fold paper and people would come over to me and they'd be like, oh, I'm an animator for Pixar, I'm literally just like moving nodes around or whatever. And they'd come and hang out and we'd like fold paper and make stuff and they be like this reminds me of being an undergrad This reminds me of my days in architecture. And they'd be like, it's nice to make something with my hands again. And I think we've moved away from that, maybe as a culture, you know, for whatever reason, but like I have kids, my kids like holding stuff. We did a year with Zoom because of the pandemic, like being on the screen was torture for my kids. Like it's another, like I said, it's like another mediator between an experience. Like talking to someone in person is different than having a Zoom conversation. I think seeing something digitally on the screen, you get one understanding of it. But there's a context, there's the context of, I'm looking at a screen, this is the same screen I was just watching a YouTube video on, I am going to write an email later on this thing. Versus like, here's an art object, you can hold it in your hands, you have no other experience with this thing, and like, it's this alien object. And I think that that sense of wonder you get from having that tactile relationship is important. I wish more people could see my work in person. I think a lot of people see it digitally, but I think it means something different in person to move around and see the light shift around it.
Speaker 2 [00:12:33] You know, you could say there's a certain pride in, well, I do it all by hand and I measure by eye. Yeah. Where does that, you know, why do you feel like technology is a tool and you should use it, but there's still the human element.
Matt Shlian [00:12:48] Technology is another tool in my toolbox, right? So if I need to figure out something specific, like a curve that moves up in space, I could figure it out by hand, but I can also use technology as a way to get at it. I think the trap people fall into is that once you kind of get in, like it's a gateway drug, like you can just keep going back and like, it becomes, the work becomes about the technology. I get a lot of people asking me about parametric modeling software and like. I don't know how much you know about parametrics, but like you can set up a system in 3D modeling where you enter a code, you enter an input, and then you basically design a shape to like do what some of my work is doing. Like it swirls around or it creates this pattern. And to me, it seems a little authorless. Like it seems like if you know the code, you can also generate this thing. And I'm really picky about how I design my forms and shapes, I wanna have more control. I don't wanna make something that just like, It's a slider that I'm moving one way or the other. I'm not trying to dismiss all of parametric modeling, but I do think a lot of it like you look at it You go well who made this it looks like anybody that has access to this program can make the same thing And I'm, not interested in making something that looks like what you've seen before I want to make something I haven't seen Specifically and so when I use technology I'm really mindful about how I use it. I don't want to just I Don't know it's like using photoshop and like using a lot, of filters like I know you can use filters But I think if you use too many filters, it ends up looking like everybody else's work that's using the same filter on Instagram or Photoshop.
Speaker 2 [00:14:27] So this is a good segue to talk about how you get into a work, how do you start your creative process. It's a Wednesday, you wake up.
Matt Shlian [00:14:40] Okay, so I wake up, I deal with children. I've got two kids. I get one of them off to school or one of the daycare and then I come to the studio and I try to figure out what I need to get done that day. And my days are pretty varied. Some days I'm doing, I mean, people think an artist is this glamorous life, but really it's a lot of invoicing and dealing with shippers and. And emailing design consultants back and forth and trying to figure stuff out. And some days, that's all I do. And then some days I get to actually design stuff and get the ideas I have in my head out into the world through paper. And so depending on the day of the week, I might be able to get into something I've had in my mind. So I keep sketchbooks and pretty much all of my work, my process starts through drawing. I think drawing is a way to calm me down. I think I'm kind of all over the place in a lot of my life and if I can just get like a half an hour, I get allergy shots and when I go to get the shots, like I'll just sit in the waiting room and I will draw for whatever half an hour, 45 minutes you have to wait there. And it's the most productive half hour of my life because there's no email, there's no phone, like it's just me waiting for my arms to not be swollen. And I draw. And from those drawings I can then take it back to the computer and digitize things and clean things up in CAD and figure out what this piece is going to be about. But process-wise, different pieces start different ways. Generally speaking, if I know what the piece is going to look like, I won't make it. I wanna be surprised. I want the piece to teach me something along the way. So when I start a piece, I usually have like 25% of it visualized. Like I know some aspect of it, but I can't see the final form. And then through working, I get to find its final form It's a bit of a weird process, and it took me a while to be okay with it. I think when I was in undergrad and grad school, when you go to critique, you have to justify every decision. You say, I made this this color because of this reason, or you have buttress arguments up against, because people are gonna go, why did you? And a lot of times there is no like, I don't know, it's what I saw, it's this idea I had, and I can't really vocalize it, but the work is the idea. And then you come to it through making.
Speaker 2 [00:17:04] It's sort of the unanswerable question, right? It's like where an idea comes from. We only knew we'd be there all the time, but do you keep something on your nightstand? Do you dream? Or is it just floating around?
Matt Shlian [00:17:15] My dreams are fucked up. I don't know if that would help. I think ideas come to you when you least expect them. You know, I have two kids and sometimes I'll be talking with my daughter and she'll say something and in my mind I'll just be like, what? Where did this come from? We were having breakfast one morning and I was singing a song that we had sang the night before and she looked at me and she said, dad, this is not a time to remember things. And I was like, holy. Like, that's a great title for a piece. Like, this is not a time to remember things. Or, you know, we'll be swimming in the pond and something will happen and I'll think like, oh, that an interesting way the water moved. Or, I feel like Tom Waits had this thing where he was like, if you try to grind out a song in the studio, it's not gonna come. It's like, you're on the freeway in traffic and you'll hear this.
Speaker 3 [00:18:02] Na na na na
Matt Shlian [00:18:03] And it's like, you're trying to catch this thing. Like, why does it show up then? I don't know. So sometimes it's through drawing. Sometimes I'm doing something very different and ideas come and you try to catch them, write them down.
Speaker 3 [00:18:20] You said something in a piece we saw. You said you had a unique way of misunderstanding the world. Yeah. Remember that line? Can you just say that?
Matt Shlian [00:18:30] Yeah. I'm inspired by a lot of things. I wouldn't say there's one specific inspiration source that I turn to and like, I need an idea, let's go back to this thing. I mean, I think looking at things in science or nature is fascinating. I think there's so much left to discover and to explore. I think artists in a larger sense walk around the world and frame things and say like, this is interesting. Like it's what videographers do, it's with photographers do, they go like, look at this, look at the way the light. Hits this thing at this specific angle, and I want you to see what I see, because it's fascinating, and you're not paying attention, but pay attention, because this is it right now. And I think that's what artists do, is I'm saying I'm interested in this pattern in this form, and these eight levels of shape are happening here, and you need to pay attention to it as well. I think I have a unique way of misunderstanding the world. I think the main points of things are often lost on me. If you're gonna tell me a story, and you'll be like, I don't know, You're gonna tell me some key points of the story. I don't know, there's some facet of your story that I just, I'm like stuck on. Like if you said, I don't know, Mark Twain grew up in an orange house and he did this and he wrote this thing and I'm literally still in the orange house. Like I'm not, I like, was it orange inside? Was it shaped like it? Like my brain is already like, I am done. You're not gonna talk to me anymore because I'm stuck there. And that's not good for most things in life, but it's pretty good for art because I think artists, they think differently. And I know my brain works in one specific way and it really doesn't work great in other ways. Like filling out a form is torture. Like taxes? Forget it, it's not gonna happen. But if you were like, Matt, go outside and look at the sky for a little while and then take this piece of paper and make a thing.
Speaker 2 [00:20:21] So do you have the issue of a blank slate sounds like you are struck and then you go to work?
Matt Shlian [00:20:29] Yeah, no, I don't like have that thing where you're like, it's the white page and I don't know what, that's not. I don't think I've ever really had a block like that and that's like to say I might not get one but I haven't really had that experience where I haven't had an idea or something that I wanna take on or do. I think there's a lot of things I have on deck that I'm like waiting to get to. And it's just a matter of time. I think time is that thing where it's like, I don 't know. I just turned f- 42 this year, I just turned 42 last month. And I'm like having this moment where I'm like, all right, what do I really wanna do? You know, I gotta figure this out soon because I'm gonna grow up. But it's whatever, man, you just. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't been stuck like that.
Speaker 2 [00:21:18] And then so you get an idea, wherever that may come from, and you go to work, and as you talked about, you got 25% of it figured out, and then the rest is processed, it comes. Can you talk a little bit about those times when you get 80% of the way through, and you know that it's actually not working at all, this is not gonna work, or you try again, or you just throw it out in that part of the.
Matt Shlian [00:21:43] Yeah, there's a lot of times when I'm working and I'm looking towards an idea or initial form and then the piece maybe makes a left-hand turn and goes, we're not doing that, you know? And if you're paying attention, you can follow that path and it might lead to something interesting or it might not. And there's times where you're working on something and like you really think this is gonna be it and then you get close to the end and it's not it at all, it's something very different and it maybe doesn't work the way you wanted it to. You know, what's the joke like, if you don't get what you want, you get experience, something like that. And it's like, you don't want that experience, but you get the experience. And so you kind of go, all right, well, that didn't work, but maybe this one part of it, this one little bit of it is working, and I can take that to the next thing, to the piece, to the idea. And so in that process of working, I see the work as a lineage, right? So I tend to work in series, so I have the Aura series, which is now at 600 something. Or I have the Omoplata series, or the As Long As You Hear series, and each one builds on the predecessor. So my favorite pieces are the ones that end in a question rather than a period, because it asks this next question, like, well, what do you do now? You learned how to do this thing. How do you apply this new technique to the next piece, or how do you go back with this new bit of information? And where can that take you?
Speaker 2 [00:23:05] And you fail, but then you, sorry, I totally lost my train of thought.
Speaker 4 [00:23:20] Is failure actually consensual? Do you think it's important to be creative?
Matt Shlian [00:23:27] I don't know if I believe in the idea of failure. I don't think of it in terms like either it works or it doesn't. I don't buy that dichotomy at all. I think maybe there are times when things haven't worked out the way I wanted them to, but I got new information from that experience that takes me to the next place. I don.. I guess I don't think about it in those terms, and I never really think about at all as success or failure, I just see it as a longer process. So it's like as I'm working, I get excited by something and it makes me wanna get in the studio early the next day to do the follow-up or do the next thing for it, but I don't see it like, this is successful and I'm gonna sit back and be like, put it in a frame, great. I'm always just on the next piece. And I think that that recipe, maybe that's a. That's a recipe for longevity in this, and that I'm not thinking in terms of like, when I make that one piece, or I fuck this one up, it's over, I've lost it. It's never that extreme on either side, it's just like, what's next?
Speaker 2 [00:24:34] And that actually follows what I remember I was going to ask you, is would you say that you have a healthy curiosity in your work, that it really is, it's kind of a trope to say that it's about the journey, not the destination, but you are sort of always searching.
Matt Shlian [00:24:52] I think curiosity drives my work. I think that that's the start of it, this question of what happens when I do this thing? How will this thing look? Or what happens if I shift this light or I take this thing that I learned here and turn it upside down or invert it or whatever. And that's reason I make it, is because I don't know. I was a curious kid. I liked taking things apart as a child. I didn't like using things the way they're intended. I still don't like using things that way that they're intending. There's a quote by, I think it's Antonio Portia, who says, whenever I take too much or too little, I never take the exact amount. The exact amount is of no use to me. And I always thought that made sense. Like, that's my life. Like, I either wanna go deep on this one thing, or I'm like, whatever. And that's, like, to a larger extent, I surround myself with people that are equally obsessed about things. Like, my wife is super into polar research and Arctic history. I'm into paper. My buddies are into music or whatever they do. Like, no part of this culture told me to fold paper. No one was like, Matt, you know what you need to be sold doing? Get on that table and start folding this book. No one told me do that. I was interested in this thing before people cared. Like, to say that people care now is a bit of a reach, but like, I was interesting in this things before. I'm gonna be interested in these sort of questions after people stop caring. This is what I wanna do.
Speaker 2 [00:26:21] Do you think that comes...
Matt Shlian [00:26:25] I don't know what's driving any of this. I had this interesting conversation with my buddy who's a neuro-linguistics professor. And he's very smart, as you would assume for someone who's into neuro- linguistics. And we were talking about this idea of free will. And I was saying something like, I obviously believe in free will, I don't think anything's predetermined, anything can happen, anything is open. And we're talking about the idea like, well, I'm wired to make work. I don't have to make that decision, it's already made for me. Can I actually take credit for that? Because it's like, I didn't choose it. It's just there. Like, I'm always gonna be making stuff. If I don't use my hands for a couple days, I get really anxious and I'm terrible to be around. But I didn't t choose that. So is it mine? Right? And so sometimes I'll make a piece and I'll like see it at the end and I think. And it's not like a prideful or boastful thing, I'm just like, look what happened. Like I'm a conduit for it, but I didn't set about to make this thing. Maybe I set up parameters that good things can happen, but I wasn't like, I don't feel like I own it necessarily. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit, I wonder if other artists that you've talked to have had that experience that they kind of were like, I don't know where this came from, but now it's here.
Speaker 2 [00:27:45] I must really love your work. Oh, yeah. So speaking of that kind of precision, part of this curiosity and this discovery is innate in your process. You must be, to some degree, pretty playful to be open to that. And yet, I saw the diagrams. I mean, this is down to a science as well. How do you kind of balance those two parts?
Matt Shlian [00:28:14] Play is really important in my process. I think if I'm not having fun, especially at the start of a piece, it's not gonna be. I think of play in a way where you're investigating. It's a serious sort of play. It's not like I'm just faffing about, but I have ideas and I want to get them out and I feel like that joy that kids feel when they're exploring new ideas or new toys or new objects, like that wonder is still there. I think that's what drives it. And so at a certain point you have, you make some decision about what this thing will ultimately. Become or how it will look and then you have to really narrow, at least for me I have to really narrow things down and be hyper-focused on details, I have pay attention to all the little nuances that make it work. But that comes much later, generally when I sketch it's very loose, I'm not super tight, my sketchbooks are not, I don't think they're nice looking but I think they contain a lot of information that is good. I've seen people that sketch and their sketchbooks just stunning and that's the work itself is like their drawings, their thoughts. My thoughts are generally pretty quick, and it's like just enough that I can get it out on the page so that I could begin to work on it and chisel that thing down further.
Speaker 2 [00:29:28] When you talk about that kind of serious kind of playfulness, and you alluded to this before, putting some limitations, some boundaries on that playfulness important to the process, not having every color of the rainbow to work with. But yeah.
Matt Shlian [00:29:44] I think it's important to have limitations when you're working or something to push up against. I remember reading that the enemy of art is the absence of limitations. So like if you said, Matt, I'm gonna give you a million dollars and you've just gotta make me something spectacular. It's gonna suck. Like it's gonna be terrible. Like it not gonna be good. But if you say like here's five dollars, go to the dollar store, pick out five things and make me a sculpture that talks about, I don't know, evolution. Like I can knock that out. And I think it's important because you can kind of work within those constraints as an artist. And so some of the constraints I'm interested in is, well, what if it's just white paper? And I only use this type of curve or this type of crease and the modular shape, if it is a modular shape is only two forms or whatever it is. What can I do with less? You know, those are interesting restrictions to put upon. Those are interesting limitations to work within because I think that's where things grow, as you kind of give something space and then... That's where things can flourish.
Speaker 2 [00:30:48] When you do get to the end, how do you know it?
Matt Shlian [00:30:56] It's hard to know when something's over. If I'm working on a specific piece. Like I mentioned, I work in series, and so that one specific piece, I might say everything I need that piece to say, but the larger body of work is not over. I hope it's never over. I hope that it just continues on. I try to start pieces that there's multiple ways that they can go, and I don't know where they're gonna end. I don't know what they're going to become or what they'll end up being. But not knowing is important. I think that's the exciting part, is like, you don't now. It's hard to know when something's finished though for sure, because you might always be like, well, it's done for now, but in three years, I'm gonna approach it again from a different angle and see what it could be.
Speaker 2 [00:31:45] I feel like your daughter said something similar.
Matt Shlian [00:31:47] Yeah, I don't know where she gets that from. I do think having kids has shifted my understanding of play and my understanding how to be attentive. Kids are so present, just like my kids are. They're right in it, emotionally like right there. And I think maybe as we get older, I moved away from that. I remember being a kid and thinking like, adults are fucking stupid, adults are weird, they don't get it. And now that I'm an adult, I think sometimes I think I've moved further away from that point and I'm like, I don't get it, I dunno. It's hard to relax. You know, sometimes as an adult you stress your thing about all this other stuff. But being present is important.
Speaker 2 [00:32:35] And would you say that ending a project or finishing it is merely a necessary means to beginning something new or continuing that?
Matt Shlian [00:32:46] Yeah, I think ending one series or one project is really just opening the door to the next idea or form to happen. I don't think, maybe it's like a, I don't think anything really ends, maybe. At least nothing in mind seems to ever end. It just keeps going and going. I mean, there's stopping points. There's moments where you can kind of put a pin in it and go like, that's as good as that's gonna get. I don't know, if I'm 80, 90, whatever, and I'm finishing a piece and I give it and then I die, I'm happy, I'd be all right with that. I could, I could go, and then.
Speaker 2 [00:33:32] What's the feeling though when you look at something and you say that's as good as it's going to get, does it sound like a positive?
Matt Shlian [00:33:39] I think my problem is that I don't want it to end. It's like a good book or a movie or a story and you don't wanna lose the characters. You don't to stop that. Like they still live on. Like you still think about them even though you're not still in the movie or whatever. If it's good, it sticks with you. And I like to think my better pieces stick around. Like there's some longevity. I think about this idea of like art escaping the frame. Like a good piece. Isn't contained by the boundary that you put it in in the museum, but you get to take it with you. Right? So a good piece is something where It speaks to you in a way, without words, where it tells you something maybe you already knew, or you couldn't quite vocalize, and you have that connection. And so I'll get people in other countries or people that don't speak my language just be like, that's the one. Like, that it, you understand. And there's a level of understanding that happens that artwork or visual art or music, especially, can you connect people, and in its best case, that what happens.
Speaker 2 [00:34:41] I think, I would say a lot of people would describe your work as beautiful, and I'm just curious if that factors into your process, if you believe beauty is...
Matt Shlian [00:34:56] Real. Beauty's nice. I'm interested in things that are nice looking. I don't think that's the only qualifying factor for a piece to be successful for my work. I don't know if interesting is too vague a word, but I like there to be some other hook that gets a viewer involved in a piece beyond it just looking nice. I think I can make something that looks nice, you know, I can something in a pretty color. And sometimes that's all people respond to is they go, I love red, all right, blue. Love that blue. I want it to keep you around. I think Jerry Saltz had this thing about art and artists where he said like, you want someone to go. You don't want them to go. You see the difference? One, you leave them with the wonder. You don't want to leave them confused. You want them to be confused initially, and then like. So maybe it's about wonder, maybe it about, I mean, it's a strong word, but the idea of sublime, which I've heard defined as beauty in the face of terror. There's something unknown to this piece. I like making pieces that are sometimes just pretty and beautiful. I like make some work that's sometimes dangerous. The piece you were shooting earlier with the black, that one of you said, it looks like it's for a nuclear fallout site. It tells people to stay away. I think art has that ability to shift. You know, it can change you. You get to see this thing and then you get to feel a certain way because of it. Like, in an abstract sense, think about this. Like, I can take a piece of paper, I could fold it, and then I can give you an emotion from it. That's a wild idea. I mean, the idea that like, you can hear three chords and you go, ah, who else can do that? It's magic, right? So that's what art is. I mean, beautiful, fine, but I like a song that maybe tells me something different and makes me consider things in a different way or that shows me a different emotion rather than just like pretty. Pretty's fine, but it's like one avenue to go down.
Speaker 2 [00:37:18] And just to follow up to that, obviously speaking of patterns, which is I think innate in the work you do, it's also ancient, it's extremely human, it has been around forever. Do you think that the idea that wonder or beauty or whatever it is somebody doing the work is feeling comes partially from that kind of ancient recognition of patterns or where does that fit in?
Matt Shlian [00:37:48] I think pattern is something that is cross-cultural. I think people have visual languages everywhere. It doesn't matter what part of the world you're in. We express ourselves through mark-making from very early times to now. And it's a reflection of technology and it's reflection of the culture. I think, I like that my work can exist for different people without any preconceived. They don't need to know a lot about art or about my work. They can just kind of approach it and understand it in their own way. That it's not something that's predicated on. You need to know English or you need to know this one way of approaching a piece. I like that there's multiple entry points in that. So I don't know if it's something about the ancient idea of mark-making or hieroglyphics or, you know, pattern through different cultures, but I think innately we like to tell stories. We like to innately entertain ourselves. We like find meaning in signs and symbols. So maybe this is just an extension of that.
Speaker 2 [00:38:58] So, switching gears, can you tell us a story about how you came here and reached out to scientists? How did you get into a science...
Matt Shlian [00:39:12] So my art path has not been linear, which is probably something a lot of artists experience. It's never like, oh, do this and then do this and then now you're, that doesn't happen. And so I went, I came to Michigan to go to graduate school. I went to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills and I graduated in 2006. And while I was at CranBrook, I originally went in doing. Kind of pop-up books, artist books, stuff that was like handheld kinetic work. I was in the print media department, but I wasn't really doing any traditional print media. And while I was there, I worked with designers and architects, excuse me, while I was there I worked designers and architects and ceramicists, and eventually met a few scientists. I was working on some forms where I was looking at things like protein misfolding and thinking about how proteins misfold and cause other ones around them to misfold. And there's people that study this and it's the root cause of. Parkinson's and cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer's and so on. And, and I was thinking about that as a starting point with paper, obviously folding and misfolding. And I started making work like that. And I remember I had a critique with, um, Peter Lynch, who was the head of architecture there and I making a piece, you know, this big. And it moved. And he said, this is interesting, but I think it would be really interesting if it was either really big or really small. And I w I kind of initially dismissed him because I was like, if it works here, why, you. And then when I graduated, I made a 13-foot-tall robotic paper sculpture. And now I work on the micro and nano scale, folding things. So he was right. I think when you shift that size, you change your understanding of how this thing can exist in the world. And so when I was at Cranbrook, I wrote to a bunch of scientists at the University of Michigan. My wife was a grad student at U of M here in Ann Arbor. And I knew I was moving to Ann Arbor, and I didn't know what I was going to do. I figured I'd teach. Art somehow, and I did, but I wrote to 50 scientists and researchers, so the University of Michigan is like the life science institute and microbiology and, you know, aerospace, and I just picked 50 people that I thought would be interesting to work with, and I sent them DVDs, because this was 15, almost 20 years ago, of my work, and little paper things that folded and collapsed. I can show you some little things. And I sent them out and they, out of 50 people, six wrote back saying like, cool, thanks for the art. I don't know what to do with you. And one guy said, why don't you come give a talk? And he was part of the macromolecular science department. Um, and I went, I presented my work and it was weird because I didn't really know anything about macromolecular science. I now know it deals with polymers, but at the time I didn, I was very naive and I thought, well, they don't what I do, so like we can just have a conversation. And so I showed up and I presented all my work, and I was showing things that folded. And they understood it. Then they understood in a way that I hadn't thought about my work. They saw it as a tool to illustrate scientific principles. So they were looking at things like one guy in particular was looking at an autophagosome, this thing that in his mind had a double cell membrane wall, and rotated around on itself. And then my piece was moving, how this thing moved in his mind, and he wanted to work together to illustrate this scientific principle. And then slowly I started working with more and more scientists. And then we realized that the paper wasn't a tool just to illustrate science, but it was also a tool to be used as research. So could we fold something in paper and then actually recreate it on the micro or nano scale to make things like more efficient solar cells or, you know, self-assembly systems, things like that.
Speaker 2 [00:42:45] Back up to what you said, as an artist, you decided to reach out to 50 Sciences. You're coming to Ann Arbor and not sure what you're going to do. I don't know if I were you, that's what I would think to do, why did you do it?
Matt Shlian [00:43:02] I figured I should just shotgun it when I was reaching out to people. I figured if I sent 50 out, someone was gonna be interested, or if they weren't, like, whatever. I got a DVD burner, I don't know, I'd burn some movies or something. I donno, I didn't think I had much of a plan. I just thought, I'm gonna be there. I think what I'm doing is dope. Like, maybe they'd be into it. And what's crazy is, having been at the university long enough, like, I'll meet someone, and I'll go to their office, and like, one of my pieces will be on their shelf, and they'll be like, oh, you're that guy.
Speaker 4 [00:43:31] I'm like, yeah.
Matt Shlian [00:43:32] Like, why didn't you write to me? Like, you put it up on your shelf, but you didn't, you know. So I don't know, I think putting something in people's hands was exciting. I don't know, it's thought, I didn't wanna just, I didn't wanna get a real job. I thought I could collaborate. I thought could work with these folks and maybe there'd be some crossover. And I was hired as a visiting research scholar. I say hired, but I was really a volunteer as a Visiting Research Scholar for a number of years at the university. And I would meet with scientists and I would show them what I was working on and they would show me what they were working on. And we formed a bond.
Speaker 2 [00:44:05] That just asked a different way, as an artist, why did, what made you think that scientists would be the ones that collaborate? You didn't reach out to other artists.
Matt Shlian [00:44:15] Yeah, I think I reached out to the scientists because I wanted to see what else my work was capable of doing. When I left commercial design, I knew it could exist to sell products. I knew that it could exists as artist books and pop-ups, but I wanted see what it could be. And from that comment, I thought, well, maybe there's a world for this to exist somewhere else that I can't see it, but i want to go there. I want to try it out. And my other thought was like, when I wanted feedback on work. Like if I was doing printmaking or something, I wouldn't ask another printmaker because they would, not always, but they would talk about registration or they'd talk about ink or they talk about printmaker things. But if I talked to a glassblower, they would about process or they would talked about time and how does time factor into a piece. And so I remember thinking like, I want a different approach and I want different way of seeing this work. And the scientists have given me that. I mean they see it as a totally different thing in a different context. And that shifted the way I see my work. And the great thing about working with them is that what they do and the collaborations we have always come back to influence my studio. The reason I do it is because there's a collaborative, the reason I did it is because it's a symbiotic relationship. They show me something and then it feeds what I do and I show them something and it feeds with they do. And to me, that's the best kind of collaborative partnership is where each person gets something out of it. Maybe they didn't know what's coming, but it helps that thing grow.
Speaker 2 [00:45:43] So it sounds like you would say that thinking like a scientist is maybe different than thinking like an artist. Do you feel there are similarities, or is it all different?
Matt Shlian [00:45:53] I think artists and scientists think differently. That being said, I work with scientists that are incredibly creative, incredibly artistic. They wouldn't consider themselves to be artists, but I would. It's a lot about problem solving. I think when I was in high school, I saw science was this thing in a box, and art was this in a thing in the box, and math lived over here, and there was history. And it's like, why did we put everything in little boxes? Science and cutting edge science is incredibly curious. It's the same questions I'm asking, but to a different extent, right? Really cutting edge math is super creative, but I was taught math is this thing, memorize this and give it back. And that's not what math is. Maybe we were taught like art is this things, copy this thing draw this thing from life and that's how that it lives, but that's what it actually is. And it wasn't that long ago that we were dissecting bodies and drawing them. Like that was one and the same. Like, why did we put everything in separate categories? And so, I don't know. I think artists do think differently than scientists. I tend to think very laterally. My thinking process is not straightforward. It's often hard to justify decisions when I'm making them, especially artistically. I'll be thinking like, I should follow this, or I'll think like, something here is doing something and I need to go with it. But like saying that out loud is super vague and trying to convince a team of people to give you money or to work with you as you pursue this vague idea that you can only see 25% of is really hard. And so maybe we've set up a system where it's hard to fund those sort of collaborations. When Max and the team and I got the grant that we got from the National Science Foundation, we didn't know what we were gonna do. We'd kind of put like a bunch of. Scientists in a room and and and me and they were like, what do you want to do? And it was like we can do anything. You don't get that kind of freedom. Usually it's like make this thing happen and this is what you have to do and these are the checkpoints you have hit and that's not how that's how the creative process actually works.
Speaker 2 [00:47:57] That's great you mentioned Max because I want to tee that up and how did Max Stein come into your life?
Matt Shlian [00:48:02] So I met Max Stein at one of the talks. I feel like it was maybe one of the very first talks I gave at the university. And I remember he hung out after and he had a lot of questions. And I remembered thinking he was a little bit insane, but I liked him a lot. I liked that he was really curious and he just had like a, he had vibe to him that he was kind of a little outside the system. Like he. I'm trying to remember, I have a terrible memory, but I feel like in my mind, like, a lot of the scientists showed up, like wearing, like tackies and like a button down and Max was just like, maybe just got off a bicycle or something and he was wearing like, like a biking outfit. Like he was just, like are you a scientist? Like who, what's your deal, man? You might remember it differently, but maybe I've conflated two different images in my mind. But Max was one of those people that looked at what I was doing and was like, we have to work together. Like, I don't know where to put you, I know how to get you in my lab, but like, you're thinking in ways that I'm thinking about, but you understand these things in a different way. We need to work togther. When we started working together on the project, Max said the nicest thing. He said that when I showed up with all of these ideas, like I brought a box of ideas and I just kind of dumped it out on the table. He said, you showed up with all the answers and we just had to figure out the questions. And I thought, that's like the best, like that's the best place. And then he would hold stuff up and go like, what is this good for? Like, how could we? What about this? And he would just be like. His infection and his enthusiasm, I mean you've talked to him before, that transcends, that's like that child-like wonder of like, We gotta do this, bro, we gotta, you know, we got to go with it, so... I don't know, I responded to that on a personal note and I got excited and he made me excited about it.
Speaker 2 [00:49:56] I'm going to come back and ask, what do you think scientists can learn from artists?
Matt Shlian [00:50:05] I think they can learn that discovery is non-linear. I think scientists can learn from artists that discovery's non-linear, that sometimes this thing you're doing isn't the actual thing you should be doing, but it's actually this other thing over here, and you can kind of go over there and pay attention to that thing. In my mind, science is like you have a hypothesis, you're trying to prove a thing. And it's either true or false or you prove it or you don't or whatever and that's not really the case always in science. Sometimes science starts with a question what happens if but sometimes you're constricted by grants and funding and all the bureaucratic stuff of like having an answer to someone so that you can keep funding and and all that stuff. I think art doesn't happen that way. I don't think, I don't think I could set out and be like, all right, I'm gonna make a piece that's four feet by four feet and it's this color. Like, I can do it, but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily art taking place. That's me doing design work, maybe. That's my fulfilling a role or solving a problem. I think what I liked about Max was it wasn't so much about problem solving, but it was question finding. He was interested in good questions. Because he would spend time trying to figure out, What are we trying to do in like? Why are we trying to do that thing? And that question was what drove the entire project. And if you had a dumb question at the start, you could come up with a good answer, but it wasn't a good question to be asking. It's hard to find a good to ask. Does that make sense? That's sort of how it felt to work with him as a team. And it made me think about my artistic process like, well, what are the questions I'm asking when I start and are they good questions to ask? I mean, I can make a nice piece, but like, is the question like, what pretty thing do I wanna make today? I don't wanna do that. I'd rather be like something that challenges or something like that. Makes you see something in a new way.
Speaker 2 [00:51:51] You have said before that you were worried originally in working with scientists that they'd be too results driven. And you had a great line, whether you remember it or not, about when nothing is known, anything is possible. We all love that. I'm wondering if you could share that with us. But in the context of this artist-scientist,
Matt Shlian [00:52:14] When I first started working with the scientists, I was really worried that they would be results driven and not interested in the play aspect of creativity and of design. And I found the opposite to be the case. The team that I worked with especially was super curious. And they were like hands on, like let's get in, let's play, let's figure something out. They're kind of insane. One of the teams was putting, they were studying self assembly. And they were trying to figure out how things form and they we're putting Legos in a dryer. And I remember because they brought a dryer and they found like a dryer at Goodwill and they're putting Lego's and they are predicting very accurately how many chains of two Legos would form or three Legos will form as this dryer would tumble and you're like, what are you doing? Like you are insane. You're artists, you don't even, like this is a conceptual art piece, you don't realize it, but like this fascinating stuff. Like I wanna be around these people. You know, and I think when nothing is known, anything is possible. If you don't know what you're doing, if you have a vague idea, it can go anywhere. You know the problem is if you think you know a little too much, and you sort of stop certain paths from being gone down, that's the problem. I think, when you don't know what your doing, that's a great place to start. It's terrifying, but I think that's where really good stuff comes from.
Speaker 2 [00:53:39] Can you tell us a little more about your work with Max, specifically, what you were working on?
Matt Shlian [00:53:45] Sure. So when I first started working with Max, I'm trying to remember exactly what we started on. That was one of the projects. But prior to that, we team taught a class together, Max and I, we taught, it was half engineering students and half art students. There were a couple architects in there. It was one of the first classes I taught, I think, at the university. And it was wild getting the artists to work with the architects and the engineers was really tricky. I think they saw the engineers as very uptight, and I think the engineers saw the artists as like, these are a bunch of dreamers, they can't get stuff done. And it took till around the middle of the semester before everybody started to congeal and work together, and then it was really beautiful. We did work, we went to like the Hands On Museum and we did experiments with kids and stuff like that. It was a really fun class. So then when we started working together, when Max and I first started working on projects, he was interested in making flexible solar cells. And so He can probably explain this better than I can, but this is my understanding. If you look at a solar cell under a microscope, it's not actually flat. It's an array of four-sided pyramids. And the reason you, you build them this way is so you can harness as much sunlight as possible and you want the light to go in and bounce around and be absorbed. Um, but the problem is throughout the day, the earth rotates and then the sun sets and, and when the sun is moving in the sky, it not directly overhead the solar cell and you're not getting as much yield. So they do make solar cells that are. Um, Heliotropic, they're like sunflowers and they follow the sun and they, they work, but they, if they get broken down, they just, they are static and they're hard to repair and whatnot. So his question was, could we take a surface and using paper folding, um, can we get that surface to stretch and tilt and actually track the sun? And you can. So if you took a sheet of paper and you put a series of slits into it, depending on the type of slit and the orientation and how far apart they're spaced, as you stretch that sheet, it's a bit of kirigami. So origami with cuts. You can get that sheet to be tunable, so you can get it to shift and turn, and actually track and follow the sun. And so one of our first projects we did was looking at flexible solar cells and making solar cells that work like that. And it was all based in paper folding and paper cutting.
Speaker 2 [00:56:01] And do you keep up with actually working on the sensor also based on cure?
Matt Shlian [00:56:06] Yeah, so Max and I worked on the Solar Soul project and then a few other things I feel like afterwards. And then COVID happened, our grant ran out, or grant ran, out then COVID happened. And then it's been like, so I haven't, I haven't been in the lab for a while and I'm excited to go back and see what they're working on. I feel, like we all had kids, it was just like life kind of took over. And beyond that, I've just been really busy in the studio. Like I have my own practice, right? Where I do my own work and it goes to galleries and shows and commissions. How hotels and hospitals and stuff get work. And so I've sort of taken what I've learned from Max and brought it back into my own world. And I've been thinking about the stuff we talk about in terms of form finding and process, but my work sort of has branched off from that and gone a different path. But I would love to get back in the lab and play with them some more.
Speaker 2 [00:56:56] I'd love to just ask one more science thing and then we can kind of open up to Louis, I'm sure he has questions with us. But, you know, there's a long history of artists communicating scientific concepts, medical illustration, obviously. Do you see yourself as sort of part of that tradition somehow? Is that something that's important to you or do you feel like it's not relevant?
Matt Shlian [00:57:24] I don't know if it's important to know, I don't know if its important when viewing my work to know necessarily where it came from. I think if you can know that some of the pieces I've done have been influenced or were born out of scientific collaboration, that can add to your understanding of it. I don't know if that's pretense before you get to see a piece. I don's know if I would classify myself as like someone that lives in that space between art and science. I feel like maybe because I haven't been doing it recently, I don't know if I could really claim that at this moment. I feel as an artist you're constantly defining yourself and it's almost like what's your last piece? What's the body of work you did this year? And so it's cumulative in a sense. I think I'm influenced by that. I'm influence by music and we mentioned nature before but I'm a drummer, I grew up playing drums and it when I think about rhythm and repetition and visualizing sound, it's all connected to me. Like the work I do if you look at it. It might be a visual representation of music or it might have something to do with science. And I feel like those are important things that feed my work. I don't know if they're the things that define it.
Speaker 2 [00:58:40] It's very interesting, you just threw that out of nowhere, we're talking to a well-regarded drummer named Will Calhoun. Ah! You know Will. Yeah? Yeah, we were doing a story with him, and he's great, and had sort of incidentally... Wait, Will Calhoon...
Matt Shlian [00:58:55] Wait, will Calhoun live in color, will calhoun? Tell him I said he's the best.
Speaker 2 [00:59:00] No, I don't know him. Tell him he's the best. He knows, he knows. Okay, very good. You'll meet him at the camp party. I'd love to meet him, yeah. You know, he had described sort of drumming and patterns and shapes. He'd used that word. Yeah, it's true. This was not written down anywhere, but since you had drumming...
Matt Shlian [00:59:19] Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at rudiments or drumming, like, I don't know, there's the paradiddle. It's like right, left, right. You can invert the paradiddles. So instead of right, left, right, right, you start in the middle. So you go, you can, you can move it. Basically you're taking the 16 bar B and you're moving it. You're putting the E first, you're putting the and first, you're pulling the up first. And it's, it's design, it shape, right? So if you look at some of my patterns, something like this piece over here, this green piece, like it's a series of, it's the same shape. This is the same note, right? But it's shifted over one. So when you take this shape and you slide it over one step, well, instead of it being this circle being the center, this other thing becomes the center. If you shift it down, well, now that's the corner piece. It shifts again. I think about that stuff all the time. I think there's a visualization of music and there's visualization of sound that's happening in my work. And I think if you can see it, you get it. I think, if you're a drummer, you probably get it, I do have drummers that follow me and that are like, I get it man, I see it. This piece is called RLRR. I know why it's called that. They can understand it in that way. And so I'll throw stuff in pieces like that. Like it's, I don't know, I love puzzles and I love things where there's multiple layers to it. So you might see a piece in one way and understand it from one level, but if you know what's really going on, you can kind of go a little bit deeper and follow that path.
Speaker 2 [01:00:44] This whole time I thought we were visualizing science, you're just visualizing music.
Matt Shlian [01:00:47] It's all together. But that's the thing, it's not like I sit down and I go, I'm gonna make a piece today that's about this thing. It's not didactic, it not like I'm trying to tell you something with this piece. I'm tryin' to show you something, but then you as the viewer get to say like, well this is what I see. This is what get from it. And then you get to tell me. Like when Shura was like, oh this is like darkness, but there's a little bit of, like what the, like I never said that to her, I never thought about that, like yeah, sure. That's what you see, like I'm for it. And as the artist, you have to honor that. That's what your audience sees. Like if they're in good faith bringing that to you, you have be like, that's there. If you saw it, it's there, I'm not gonna be like that's not what this piece is about. You can't do that. It's not your piece anymore. It's out in the world. It's everybody's.
Speaker 2 [01:01:32] You've got to put the critics out of business. I'll let Luis come in here, yeah.
Speaker 3 [01:01:39] So, I don't know whether you're being modest or... Could be both. I mean lots of artists take advantage of technological innovation, scientific knowledge, and work it in on doing this based on like the sounds of Pluto, and then putting it in. There's lots of people like that, and we're filming some of them, and it's quite wonderful. But very few can say, oh, my work has influenced science, and that's really rare. And you're going to be looking at Chris when he answers that. Yeah. Does that mean anything to you? That's kind of special. We can tell you that from our perspective. It doesn't happen.
Matt Shlian [01:02:24] I think the art-science collaboration gets a lot of lip service, at least it has in the past 10 years where it's like, oh, it's artists that work with scientists. And it comes down to like, it a beautiful slide, like it's a beautiful microscope slide. Fine, I get it. I don't know if that's a real collaboration. I think to be true as a collaborative spirit, it needs to move both ways. And so I mentioned the work I do with the scientists comes back to my studio because it informs my process. The work that I do informs their process and to me that's that true collaboration between art and science where it's not just, ah that's beautiful, put a frame on it, hang it up, I'm not interested in that sort of understanding of art and sciences. Yeah, it's exciting to me that my work has value, or is utilitarian in that specific sense, like the idea that I could make more efficient solar cells and do good, like definitive good, not just like bring wonder or beauty in the world, but like actually reduce, like yes, awesome, I'm for it. You know, Max and I were working on a brief project doing like heart stents and looking at, I mean, this project unfortunately didn't go very far, and I don't know how much I can actually say about it, but I'll tell you guys. When babies are born and there's a cognitive defect, I think, or congenital, I don't know what the phrase is, there's the defect in their valves. The doctors need to put a stent in at that point, and then babies grow, and so every couple years they have to go back in and put another stent in and another stents in, as the kid gets bigger. And the question was, could we use something like an aperture, an iris, maybe out of paper, not paper, but using paper as a way to figure it out and then translate it to another material, and then can we implant that, and as the child grows, this thing actually expands and opens up? You can. Like, I designed some stuff and it got far along. I don't know if it made it through trials because body was rejecting things or whatever, but like, holy shit, like what better use of paper folding, of curve folding are you gonna get than that? There's not a better case scenario. You know, a lot of times things get funded, maybe this is editable, but like maybe things get funding by DARPA, like it comes from the military because that's where our budget is as a country. And so if we're designing something that's like the skin of an airplane and it's It's transformable. It starts one way and then you program it to move or tilt and it can change the airflow and dynamics. Like that's cool on an airplane, but we can take that same technology and apply it to other things, change the length scale and make it something that's good for the planet or helpful or. I don't know, definitively good would be nice. Yeah.
Speaker 3 [01:04:58] When we talk to scientists, yes, there's doing good things for the world, but understanding that would be important to you personally, as it is for me, but with scientists also it's just simply advancing the body of human knowledge.
Matt Shlian [01:05:12] A hundred percent.
Speaker 3 [01:05:13] You're playing the role of...
Matt Shlian [01:05:15] Yeah, that's the wild thing about this is we've put out a couple papers and in the science world like having your name on a paper and especially like what order it's in on the paper is a big feather in the cap especially when you're trying to get research funding you're try to get that next job position. I'm an artist like my name's on all the papers. I couldn't tell you what they say. I know about my diagrams and my imagery but I couldn't tell you I couldn't read it. Um, but what's cool is some of the scientists will send me links. They'll be like, Hey, check out this paper. It cites our work and it's been cited hundreds of times, the kirigami work because people are using what we did in building upon it. And it's part of that larger conversation. And so that's, that's the thing that blows my mind is like, and I'll look at someone else's project or their paper and I'd be like again, I can't really read it, but I'll see the imagery and I'm like, Whoa, they're using it to do this other thing, or they're using it, to make batteries better, they're using it to make... Hearts things or what I don't know that's that's super rewarding beyond you know I have a patent on some of this stuff I haven't seen one penny it's fine but maybe at some point it will get used for some some some project and then maybe I'll become wealthy because of it who knows but the idea that it's it's part of that that lineage it's part of Part of that world is exciting, gets to live on.
Speaker 3 [01:06:37] When you gave your great speech at the National Academy of Sciences, remember that? Yeah. It's been a few years, but yeah. I know, history. Okay. And you tell the story about speaking, giving the first talk, and about a guy in the back row. Yeah. I don't know if you can sort of say that kind of briefly.
Matt Shlian [01:06:54] I do remember. So when I was presenting my work to a group of scientists for the first time, I was showing this artist's book form and it was a pleated form. I can't remember exactly what it looked like. And this guy stood up in the background and he went, that's it, that it. And I went, yeah, that is it. And he went no, you don't get it. And he had been working on this thing called an autophagosome, which has a double cell membrane and it rotates around itself. And the book that I was making, that I'm showing, moved the way that this thing moved in his head. And he'd been trying, his name was Dan Kleonski, and he had been trying for years to visualize how this thing could exist in space, and he hired, I think he hired painters or illustrators to do it. And in his mind, it was like this thing that has a double cell membrane wall and rotates around and divides during cellular division. And here was this thing out of paper that was moving the way that this thing has moved in his brain. And he was like, we gotta work together. And I went, okay, let's go, let do it, And so we made. You know, devices that he could teach people with, and seeing that the work was useful in that way was important. I hadn't intended that piece to be that. I mean, I made that piece because I was interested in, you know what happens if you make a book that doesn't have a beginning or an end? Like this sort of half Taurus shape that rotates around itself. Like, that was interesting to me from an artistic perspective, the idea that it had usefulness beyond what I was considering useful for its case, I was like, I was excited about. You know, and I think, just like I talk about my work and I'm not always knowing where it's going, the same thing is true for that larger process. Like if someone's telling me, hey, pay attention, this isn't what you think it is, this is this other thing, I have to pay attention to that. And I wanna see where else that can go. And then since the years from the grant, there's been a number of origami science people, like it's a thing now. When I did it, there was Eric DeMain at MIT, I don't know if you know Eric, he does work with curve folding, he's a math guy, he's genius. There was Robert Lang was doing work with NASA and then that was like it. I didn't know anybody else that was doing it. Now it's like a, like you could probably major in it. Like it's a thing like origami research, whatever. I just thought there was something there. I was like, there's something to this. Let's figure it out. It feels good, I wish it was bringing me more money, but you know, whatever, notoriety, boy.
Speaker 3 [01:09:13] Is that folded at MIT?
Matt Shlian [01:09:16] Yeah, yeah, Eric DeMaine's at MIT. He's a genius, he's the best. And it's an interesting role because everybody in it is like super kind and like, they're smart people that like to explore and figure stuff out. We see patterns where they don't exist. You know, are you familiar with Apocenia? It's the idea of perceiving patterns in like randomized data. And it sometimes thought of like, you know, like celebrities always die in threes. Well, maybe they do, but it's like this thing we tell ourselves, it's something there but might actually not be there. I'm fascinated by that, that idea that something's there but maybe actually isn't, or it's only there because we're perceiving it to be there I don't know if human beings are hardwired for it, but I definitely think there's something about it when shapes and patterns come together and resolve. It's like music when you listen to a song and there's a certain phrase and then you're waiting for it to end and then it just ends and there is a feeling of like, there's Thanks for watching. There's a, it's really satisfying, like a good, a good chord progression or someone who really knows what they're doing with it can like really kind of mess with you, like they can make you feel. Yeah, there you go. Like they string you along and I think visual artists can do the same thing too. I think you can Not manipulate people, but you can get them to feel certain ways Based on how you're presenting Repeating shapes and patterns for sure. I think there's probably there's I mean there's studies of psychology of like color and color theory that goes into this further, but I don't know, and I think because there's such variation and limitless possibilities, it's like everyone gets to dig in and everyone gets to make it their own, right? And there's only whatever, 88 keys on the piano, but anybody can transform that into something unique and personal to them.
Speaker 2 [01:11:18] Yeah, well, I was just going to, you know, we saw you with your daughter playing today, and just curious, you know, about a kid's mind. We talked a little bit about, like, I talked about, so, you know, a kid classroom is colorful. It's an interesting thing. You're welcome, it's not there anymore. What do you think about the way a kid approaches creativity?
Matt Shlian [01:11:54] I think kids are interesting because there's no barrier to entry. They don't care who you are, they don't care what you're doing, they just want to do what they want to do. You know, there's no, I don't want to, it's funny, my daughter's nine and she's entering this point where it's like I see it happening, where it's like, I don't wanna be wrong, so I don't t wanna take a chance, and that crushes me because for the first part of her life that didn't, that wasn't part of it, it was just like, watch me! Look at this thing. I'm fantastic. Do you see how fantastic I am? Like, look at this. Look at this thing, dad." And now it's like, I don't want to, sometimes she'll say something and feel like, if I don't see myself being able to succeed at it, I do not want to do it. And it's like this constant reiteration of like, well, there's no such thing as like a failure in the sense like you're learning. So you're not expected to know what you're doing. So don't worry about that. Like, and I feel like as we get older, maybe we kind of box ourselves in And like a lot of adults, I used to teach community college and it would be like. I don't know how to draw. They come out day one in a drawing class, be like, I don't know how draw. And it's like, maybe you've never drawn, but let's not put up that wall yet. Like, let's try. I can only draw stick figures. We're not gonna draw any stick figures here, so don't worry about that. Or like, getting people to draw what they see, not what they think they see is important, because people just wanna, like, oh, it's an eyeball. Oh, it' an almond with a circle in it. It's really not. That's not what you're looking at. And so I think. When we're kids, like kids take a chance. They just go for it. Like my three-year-old will come in here and she will just draw on anything. She doesn't care. Nothing's precious. It's just, she's gone for it So I think in some ways maybe the creativity in our culture, like it stops people. Like you enter a point where it's like, you're told you're not creative or you're like this isn't for you and then you don't get to pursue it further. And I think that that's bullshit. I think everyone has that creative capacity. And it's just like who you're around and who nurtures it and what you get to do with it that dictate where you end up. I feel like there's two kinds of kids. There's kids that are encouraged. Because they're good at decision making and there's kids that are encouraged because they are good at creating things, being curious. And I have no decision making capabilities but I'm interested in everything. And I feel like when I was a kid I was always making stuff and my mom was just like, she was a big champion of creativity and she was like, that's fantastic, keep going, that's all, keep goin', just keep going. And I felt like if she had been like, whatever, not interested, I feel it would have been like a thing that shut me down. I have a story about that. When I was in second grade, I had a teacher. And she made us do, my mom reminded me of this story as she told me and I was like, yes. She made us to do like pumpkins. We were drawing like cardboard cutout pumpkins. And then you remember those like, those braids that you put in to make like, there was like a little helicopter so you can make like things pivot. I've made this pumpkin and she was like are we gonna put arms and legs on this pumpkin and everybody's arms are gonna look at this and the legs are gonna to look like this and it's gonna do this. And I didn't wanna do it the way she wanted. I was my daughter. I like gave it like three arms and a leg and a horn or whatever and the leg's were wrong size and whatever. I remember she held it up in front of the class and went, who's is this? And I went, that's mine. And she went, this is everything that's wrong. This is completely wrong. Like every part of this is wrong. And she made me cry. I remember crying and being like, I'm not gonna say her name. She's probably dead, whatever. I'm gonna say your name. She made me crying. I came home and I told my mom what happened and my mom was like. And she drove to school the next day and she cornered this woman and she was like, you encourage my son, you tell him he's great. This is second grade, I don't give a shit what this pumpkin looks like, you'd tell him. And then I remember like, we had a glazed piles or something, it was literally like put color on a pile and she held up my pile and she went, this is great. And I went, it's great, I'm good. Like, what the hell, I didn't know. And it was like all I needed was just to be told, like keep going, that's it, that enough. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 [01:15:43] Well, I wanted to ask you about education in general, not just for your kids, but for all kids. You know, how creativity is taught, at least in this country. Especially where it concerns the siloing of art and science. I mean, how do you feel a classroom should be? I have a feeling it's not to separate people.
Matt Shlian [01:16:03] Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about education. I think we do a disservice when we put things in different categories and different boxes and say science happens over here and it occurs for these people in this certain capacity and then math is over here and art is over here. Like I think if you can teach math visually and bring color into it and get a kid's hands in it, you can get a much better understanding of proportion and numbers and you know, as soon as... I'm a visual person, obviously. Everyone says they're a visual learner, but I literally cannot understand. If you tell me something, it's gone. If you draw it, I'm going to understand it. If I draw it I'll never forget it, right? And so if I was taught like math that way... I would have a much greater grasp of math, especially as an elementary school or middle school, high school. Same thing with science, science is incredibly fun. My daughter just went to science camp and she had a teacher that blew her mind. She was just there like two weeks ago, so it's fresh in my mind, but she said the very first thing he did, he brought out liquid nitrogen. I was like... That's the first thing, that's like the last day. She's like, no, it only got crazier from there because he put goldfish crackers in liquid nitrogen and had the kids bite it and then breathe so all the kids were breathing smoke. And I don't know what she learned about liquid nitrogen herself, but she was like, she came out of the classroom, she was like, dad, I breathed fire today. And I was like word? She was like yeah, and I was like she couldn't wait to go back the next day. He had her hooked in, he had her right there and she was into it. I'm trying to remember the guy's name, I can't remember his name, I'm sorry. But it's like, how do you hook a kid into this thing so that that's the thing they go towards, that's a thing they're following. I don't know. I think we do a disservice to kids when we do it like industrialization. It's like this thing, this thing. This thing. Good luck. You know, it's, like, and then it's up to them to want to take this stuff on extracurricularly or like have a parent that's like come here. Let's let's take apart this thing or let's I don't know, let's find a way to approach this in a different way. That's hands on.
Speaker 3 [01:18:09] I think the question for Russell, where we're juggling is that almost everybody agrees that oh yeah, you go to a kindergarten, you're going to a second grade class, and they're just there doing really cool stuff. It's like middle school, high school, very hard. So like, oh let's teach you chemistry and science, get you ready for college, and also having all this play. And I don't know the answers. I'm obviously not an educator.
Matt Shlian [01:18:33] I don't know if I have the exact answer, but I think kids are interested, at least my daughter is interested when she has a hand in deciding what it is that she's following or focusing. And so if you give people options and you say in high school, like, okay, we can do this, we could do this, or we can come up with something together. If you give an authorship or an ownership in their own education, inherently they're more involved and interested in it. And so I feel like, I don't know, I'm the type of person where I want to get involved and I want a hand something. I love the idea of like... Self-directed learning. My daughter's in an open school right now and it's a lot of self- directed. And what's cool about it is their education can change. There was a meteorite that came over Michigan and then her classroom was like, forget what we were learning, we're talking about meteorites this week. And she's like, way into meteorites and meteorites are amazing, right? So if you have the ability to pivot and change and not be held accountable to, God forbid, standardized testing, is it important that everyone knows this exact same thing for the standard? Like, who gives a shit? Like we're not all standard.
Speaker 2 [01:19:35] Less meeting is it?
Matt Shlian [01:19:38] Yeah, right.
Speaker 3 [01:19:40] I'd say one more thing which is, again, I'll be ready, but going back to earlier, is that technology is a tool. You seem to have a creative approach to what you use as a tool, so...
Matt Shlian [01:19:54] I think the history of art can be traced back to the history technology. I think what's available to the artists of that day is what shapes what comes after, right? I think artists love to misuse technology. It's my favorite thing. It's like, here's this thing, it's meant to do this. That's not what it does anymore, right. Like the machines that I use to make my work are like a prototyping machine. It's what you use before you get on a die press. I'm not making dives up. I'm interested in that. I want them to do what I want to do. And so if you can look at tools like that, that, I don't know, it's like this, whenever I take too much or too little, it's that thing, it is like, this isn't what this was meant for, but I'm gonna use it for what I need it to be for. And artists have done this forever. You think that's what spray paint is for? You think they were thinking about this? No, they were trying to spray crafts or whatever. They had no idea. So I think once you let artists get their claws into something, that's when it becomes interesting. And I feel like some of the newer technologies, like... I get asked a lot about 3D printing and my answer is like, it's cool, I haven't been blown away, I've never cried at a 3D printed object. I mean there are people that do amazing work with 3D Printing, there's a group called Nervous System, which I think used to be out of MIT, Jessica and Jesse, like they do amazing, they're great, but I think a lot of other people that use it, it's like, its this swirling thing and you put a pencil in it, I have nothing for that, there is nothing in it for me. But if you start to let people give them time and see what they can do with it, that's when it's gonna get interesting. Like when they first made film cameras where they weren't thinking about what movies are today, they had no idea. You know, and so I think it's still new, and I don't think the right people have gotten their hands on it. I don't think it has been accessible yet, but I think there's some potential for it where it could become potentially very, very interesting. I mean, I have further thoughts on NFTs and things like that, but I don't think that needs to be in this documentary. But I think it's in the wrong hands right now. I think that it could be useful, but it's not yet.
Speaker 3 [01:21:56] That's one of the things, we just totally nailed it, we actually went with the guide of the lube to talk about oil paint. Yeah, yeah, they could go outside, paint it too, they can go outside oh my god, therefore you have any questions?
Matt Shlian [01:22:17] There's something really interesting as I was talking to someone about video games and technology and in painting, do you know about this? So like, so in painting you would be beholden of a scene. Like you'd see like if you're watching people play cards, you watch a bunch in a painting in the time of times, you'd see a bunch of people sitting at a table playing cards. And then as painting developed, you were holding the cards like you got to see the hand or you were looking over the guy's shoulder and seeing how he was cheating. Like you became part of this, this active experience. And I was talking to someone about, I was talk to my old assistant about video games. And it was like, when I played video games, you watched Mario jump on shit. Like you were beholding of this thing. And now it's first person. You're the guy doing the activity. And I'm saying, it's just like painting. And he was like what are you talking about? I was like I'm old. But listen to me, like there's something to this. Like you become brought into this thing and now it is VR and immersive. And it's a little bit terrifying. I don't know if you guys have done VR, but like there is something like, remember like violent video games like Mortal Kombat or whatever. Like, it's like you watch this action happen and you're like, that's crazy, but it's also not real because it's Mortal Kombat and you watching it. But like the idea that like, now you're in VR and you are literally, it not like you're pushing a button and you ripping someone's head off. You go like this with your, and you rippin' a head off and you feel the tactile response of their vertebra. That's fucked up, man. I don't know if I can get into that, right? It's a little too real. I want it, I want Mario again, so I don't know. That's my hot take on that.
Speaker 2 [01:23:44] Yeah. We're also getting into video games and we also talk to nervous people.
Matt Shlian [01:23:49] Oh awesome. Well tell them I said hello, they're great. Hello, they're great.
Speaker 3 [01:23:53] There's another example of people who, some guy, a doctor, some guy approached him, a scientist. Yeah. Because he needed 3D, he could think of them as gurus. They're the best. And they did this whole thing with the heart model and stuff, 3D. Yeah. It was like, this is great. This is like, we'll have math and math. Now, we have a nervous system, this guy uses it, and then the guy basically is basically selling his company to start up and he's completely locked up. There's non-disclosure, so that's like.
Matt Shlian [01:24:19] Ah.
Speaker 2 [01:24:19] Yeah, we'd only caught him a year earlier.
Matt Shlian [01:24:21] Do you still have nervous system though on Deckard? They're gone because they're with him.
Speaker 3 [01:24:26] Oh shit
Speaker 2 [01:24:34] Can we just ask real quick about how well you know Sharon Glotzer and if you want to talk about working with her at all?
Matt Shlian [01:24:42] Sharon is amazing. She's a total ass kicker. Her lab, well you'll talk to her, but her lab focuses on self-assembly and nanoscale structures. And when I first got introduced to Sharon and some of her PhD and graduate students, I was really blown away. They were looking at patterns forming through like polyhedral shapes. So if you picture this in your mind, if you had like a big box filled with icosahedron, so 20-sided, think of like Dungeons and Dragons dice, and you just took that box and you shook the shit out of it for years until those dice were like, couldn't go anywhere. And they did this not with dice in years, but with computer simulations. And then you took that and you cut it, you cut a slice into it and pulled it apart. The pattern that would form from those dice would become something like a six-sided a periodic tiling pattern, which is not dissimilar from Islamic tiling. And I saw some of the stuff they were doing and I was just like, wait, what? Like, that's how these patterns could grow and that's these patterns can form? And they're like, well check this out. If you take that same box, but you slice it in a different axis, it's a four-sided array. How does that work? Like how do these building blocks build like that? And for me as a visual artist, like I'm always searching for pattern. I'm thinking about these patterns found in, you know, thousand year old Marquanus, the ceilings in like Iran. And it's, and they're doing it but from a very different vantage point. And the idea that you can build things from two different approaches, but they're converging was fascinating. And so I started to look at what they were doing and bringing it back to my own work and making. Patterns and structures that were somewhere between Islamic piling and this algorithmic or this polyhedral modeling. What's crazy is, I would have these conversations with Pablo, who was one of their students then. He's now gone on, he's now, I don't know, doing something else. But I would talk to Pablo and I would say, like, when you do these simulations, does it mimic anything in the world? And he's like, yeah, you can find these patterns in nature, certainly. And we were talking about different-sided arrays, and I was like, do you ever see, like, five-sided tiling? Because five-side tiling doesn't really work exactly. You can do some Penrose tiling. You can figure it out, but it doesn't really occur in nature. And he's like, no, it never doesn't happen. And then he sent me, years later, like an article. I think it was in Science. And they found a five-sided pattern that was formed in a meteorite. And he was like not on this planet, but it happens, and so I was, like.
