-: Hello. (audience applauding)
Thank you for coming.
And I hope half the lab that's at Chi right now,
is watching this on the stream.
We'll be taking questions from Twitter.
So if you're watching this on the stream,
please tweet, what is it?
MLTalks#.
And then we'll get them in the queue.
But I'm really excited to introduce,
we have two speakers today.
Greg Brandeau who started out
I think at NeXT, right?.
And then he was Chief Head of Operations.
And then he went and did a biotech startup
called Perlegen Sciences where he was the CIO.
Then he went back and joined Steve again at Pixar
as a Senior Vice President of Technology
for Pixar and Disney Animated Studios.
And was most recently the CTO
of Disney Studios, Walt Disney Studios.
And has just recently finished a book,
or is that's coming out called
Collective Genius:
The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation.
Is an MIT grad,
but also better known as the guy
who hung around with Steve Jobs for 14 years.
Well, we'll talk about this in a second.
And then,
Josh who is a community artist,
and he'll tell you more about that.
And the funny thing is where we met, you would never guess.
The three of us met in Riyadh
where we were presenting at a conference together,
and we all got excited about each others work
and decided we should convene here.
The matchmaker of all this was the maestro of the event,
Mauricio who happens to be here.
So, I wanted to let him make a few comments
before they start.
But the general format is
the two of them are gonna give presentations,
I'll have a little conversation with them,
and then we'll open it up to a discussion with all of you.
So, Mauricio, I don't know if you have something to say.
-: My name is Mauricio.
This morning we were talking about their presentation.
I don't live in the world of art.
So when they started talking
about what they were gonna present,
I said, well, how do we know what art really means?
So I invited to start this session,
by giving you one minute
to think about
the last time, the last experience of art that you had.
The last time you felt how this is interesting art for me.
The last time you felt, hm, this is art.
This is artistic.
This has this quality that means art.
Which is not an everyday experience for all of us.
So, I like to give you a minute just to think about it.
Because then they'll talk about art, technology, and you.
-: Thank you, sir.
Can you pass it back there? -: Back there?
-: Yes, great, thank you.
-: So, I'm the guy from Pixar
you might guess, (audience laughing)
looking at my shirt, right?
So, I wore this 'specially for you.
I am an MIT grad, Class of '84.
And I even love MIT so much
that I brought my roommate here with me from MIT.
So Doug is here. (audience applauding)
So, this afternoon what I'm gonna talk about is
just five things about art and technology.
How it got started at Pixar and created a new art form.
How it is expanded itself at Pixar.
Because we're in a technology space here,
I'm also gonna give you a taste of some of the software
that we run at Pixar to make movies.
And then some thought exercises about
what is art, and what is technology,
and how can you use the two of them to make new things.
Okay?
Do you wanna say anything before we get started?
-: Yes, just that I'm gonna follow that with
out of the same creative mind,
but on a community level how we create works of great art
using technology and also trying to
spread the gospel of creative thinking and creative thought.
-: Great.
So I mentioned I'm from Pixar,
and you guys are probably all familiar
with these various characters.
And I'm gonna talk a little bit about the making of these.
And then also just to say,
Pixar's made a number of really amazing movies
and won a number of Academy Awards.
And here's a listing of most of them.
But today, what's the big idea
that I'm gonna be talking about?
What I wanna talk about is an idea
that John Lasseter came up with
as a result of being hired in at LucasFilm.
So, way back in the day in 1986
when Lucas was making Star Wars
and
Jurassic Park and so forth.
They were using Pixar Image Computers.
But Ed Catmull who was the founder
and Ph. D. computer scientist,
he had nobody to test the equipment.
But his vision was never to actually test the equipment.
He wanted to use the equipment to tell stories.
And he wasn't allowed to hire an animator.
So he hired John Lasseter who was an animator
from Disney as a tester.
And I hate it when people do that,
but in this case, it's appropriate, okay?
So, they hired John as a tester,
but he quickly realized that,
oh, cool, look at the things that I can do with this.
So, it's very hard to see, but this is the Luxo Jr lamp.
Do y'all what that is, the bouncing lamp from Pixar?
So what happened is,
when John got hired in to test the equipment,
this was back, there were no such things as graphic cards.
That's what a Pixar Image Computer was.
A giant machine that put pixels up on a screen.
When John was testing this software,
he would be sitting in an office with Eben Ostby.
And in that office, John would say to Eben,
hey, I wanna do this with the lamp.
And Eben would say,
no, you don't understand John I can't do that
because it only has this much compute power.
But we could do this instead.
And then he would say, John would take that idea and say,
okay, well, maybe I could do this.
And what happened was they got going
on this really interesting, virtuous cycle.
And the cycle was, John would say to Eben,
here's what I wanna do, and Eben would say,
oh, I see what you wanna do, but I can't do that.
And then John would learn from Eben what was possible.
And the two of them informed each other
about what should be done.
And so, when you go back to this saying,
let me see if I can get this up here again,
so you could also say
that art inspires technology and technology challenges art.
'Cause it's actually a duality, right?
'Cause they're both sitting in the same office
and that was actually an interesting thing.
So, when they did Luxo Jr.
which is just a really simple lamp,
the next thing was John realized,
wow, could actually maybe make a whole movie out of this.
'Cause John was a Disney-trained animator,
and he had been making Disney-animated films.
So how cool would it be
if you could actually make a new film out of computers?
So John had a vision this big.
And what was possible at the time was this.
And then through the years,
because everybody was sitting in the same building.
We had Ph. D. computer scientists,
and we had world-famous artists
all sitting in the same building working together,
you got this great virtuous circle going.
So, the first movie that Pixar did obviously was Toy Story.
And here are two of the characters.
But notice that, I don't know if you ever noticed this,
but in the original Toy Story, there are no humans.
Why is that?
'Cause nobody knew how to do that.
And by the way, every thing was plastic 'cause guess what?
Plastic is really easy to render, right?
But remember, back in the day,
there wasn't very much compute power
and wasn't much known about how to do this.
Then A Bug's Life came out,
and you can see the environment here is little bit richer,
for those of you who have seen this movie.
And then we got to a point where we realized,
hm, the vision is up here,
but what we're able to do is down here.
And we hired a new guy at Pixar, Tony DeRose.
And he was the head of the research group.
And he had some ideas about how to do skin.
There's skin, now notice there's a human in this picture.
Hair and clothing.
So the question is, how do you do this?
You don't wanna put a production in.
You don't wanna test this technology on a production.
You wanna test it on a short film.
So what Ed did was he sent out email to the company
in a traditional Pixar way to everybody at the company,
and said, hey,
anybody have an idea for a short film
that would have skin, hair, and cloth in it?
(audience laughing)
And Jerry's Game came out of that.
And, oh by the way, it won an Academy Award for Best Short.
But that whole purpose of doing that
was only to test Tony's new software.
And Tony said, I don't wanna put this in production,
'cause we'd be risking a billion dollar movie on it.
Could we just do a short?
And that's how this came into being.
So that was an example of something that we did
to test new software.
Then Monsters, Inc. came out.
Notice that Sully has a bunch of fur.
I think he has two million pieces of fur.
And today, of course, nobody thinks anything of that.
Of course you would do that!
But back when we did this, it was darn near impossible.
Then we created a whole 'nother world.
In Finding Nemo, underwater, visual-rich film, right?
Incredibles, in here, we did a lot of hair.
I don't know if you remember,
there's a scene in there where
the plane crashes into the water,
and they're swimming on the water.
How do you do water?
Again another problem.
Then we did Cars.
And Cars is a really rich movie.
And I'm gonna show you a little bit more about this.
That used ray tracing which we had never used before
because ray tracing gives a much richer look.
And with cars that have chrome on 'em,
you wanna be able to see the reflections.
You wanna be able to see the casting of one tint
on a red car onto a white car.
You wanna see the glow of the neon off the cars.
Unfortunately, you can't see the picture very well here,
so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it.
Then we did Ratatouille which was even more complicated.
So what I'm trying to say here
is that as we're going through time at Pixar.
John's vision's up here,
but slowly our software is getting better
and the hardware's getting better.
Then we did Wall-E, an even more complicated film.
Up
which was in the jungle,
had people,
had dogs,
had squirrels.
(some audience laughing)
Come on!
Toy Story 3, okay.
Look at this, we actually have a human in Toy Story 3.
And they actually look appropriately realistic
for that movie.
Then, Cars 3, Cars 2 excuse me.
Cars 3 is being worked on.
So, Cars 2 you can see the reflections from,
this is in Tokyo, the reflections off the cars.
And that's because of ray tracing, okay?
And then, sadly, you can't really see this.
This is Brave,
but the richness of the imagery in Brave is shockingly good.
It looks photorealistic.
So we had this computational score called RenderMarks.
And a rendermark, we had a set of test frames
that we could run through a computer system,
and it would take a certain amount of time.
And we calculated based on that
how many rendermarks this particular computer had.
So, when we made Toy Story,
let's say we had x.
When we went to make A Bug's Life
which was only three years later, we had 12x.
When we went to make Cars
which was like seven years later, or eight years later,
we had 500x.
And when we went to Cars 2,
we had like 1000x what Toy Story was.
So when we made Toy Story,
it turns out that it would take on average,
eight hours to do a frame.
On today's computers,
you can do that same frame in like a second.
And if you have enough computers,
you can actually render it faster than real time, 'kay?
So what's going on is Pixar was able to take advantage
of new technology and create a whole new art form.
And then push it
because in the same building the artists were saying,
hey, I wanna do this.
And the computer scientists were saying,
here's what we can do.
And it got a nice cycle goin', okay?
But it turns out that while we were making these movies,
not only do you have to worry about the visual complexity,
but just the complexity
of making one of the films becomes hard.
So for example,
if you're gonna make a movie with crowds in it,
how do you simulate a crowd, so that it looks good?
One simple example is the movie A Bug's Life
and the movie Antz.
They came out about the same time.
And in A Bug's Life we wanted to have random crowds
where people were moving around
like you would see in an arena.
But the people at DreamWorks couldn't do that,
and so what they did was
they made the ants all march like in an army,
and they were identical to each other
'cause that was computationally easier, right?
But we wanted to go and do things
that were more complicated than that.
So some of the things that we did
were building tools to help our animators
work cheaper, better, faster for a lack of a better word.
If you wanna make a movie with racing cars in it,
and you've got 50 cars racing
through the scene at the same time,
how do you make all those wheels spin accurately?
'Cause if you were at Disney
and you were doing hand animation,
you literally woulda had to draw every frame,
each wheel moving a little bit, right?
But we don't have that many animators,
we'd never be able to get there from here, right?
How do you take care of
what the suspension is doing and so forth?
I'm gonna show some of that cool stuff right now.
So this is from Tim Milliron,
one of my colleagues at Pixar.
The Art and Science of Making Animation-Friendly Animation.
So, cars have to be attached to the ground.
Remember that every thing it made at Pixar
is inside of computer,
there's not any real gravity holding it down.
So you have to have some way of saying,
hey, this thing is supposed to track on the ground, right?
Remember, we're doing cartoons here.
It's cartoon physics, right?
It doesn't have to be real physics.
So the stuff that you see in Pixar films
is supposed to make it look like it's real
for that environment,
not necessarily real.
And then because there's so many things
you can't go and spend details on all the different time,
you can't spend time on all the different details of a car.
And I'm gonna show you some of that.
So, as I said, cars are cartoon characters, right?
Oh, animators by the way,
when we're simulating a car moving around,
it may turn out that that's not appropriate
for the particular scene the way it was done.
So the animator needs to be able to override
anything that the computer simulated, right?
So you need to be able to go inside,
undo what the computer did,
and then redo it way an animator wanted it, okay?
And you couldn't simulate this
'cause there's too much stuff,
and we couldn't afford the team.
So we built the driving system.
So animators when they're animating,
they take a model that's maybe like me,
and they pose it.
And then the computer interpolates 24 frames a second
and figures out what it's gonna be.
So you saw there that the car
moved to three different poses.
Then what would happen in traditional animation at Pixar,
we generate a spline curve from those three poses
that were set up by the animator.
And then from that,
you would then do a simple thing
of just showing the car move.
But look at the way that car is moving,
isn't that kinda weird?
It goes sideways and so forth?
And that is not very satisfactory.
And this is just for blocking,
getting ready while you're animating.
You see that it goes kinda sideways,
and it doesn't look right.
But what if you just said,
hey, make the car track exactly what the spline was.
An obvious thing to do,
and of course, all good inventions
are obvious in retrospect.
When they thought this up,
this was really a genius idea
'cause it allowed the animators to focus on the performance
of the characters and not on the details.
So then what about driving a car?
So here there's some stuff that the car has to drive over,
and again, all that's happening here is
that the animator setting up the pose.
And then, what would it look like
now that we've set up those poses,
how's the car gonna look?
And that was just jumping from point to point to point
but from a different view.
Then here it's the same car
but now it's just following the same standard CG spline
which doesn't make any sense.
And then, what if we just make it
follow the way it shouldn't.
But you'll notice that obviously one thing
that was not going on here so well,
is that it drove right through those obstacles.
And you know, the wheels didn't really turn,
and what's up with that?
So then you have to add on to the idea
that the wheels are gonna be locked to the ground.
So if the ground comes up, the car goes up.
And the ground goes down, the car goes down.
So in traditional animation,
you woulda had to do that all by yourself.
But once you've automated this,
and the car is a smart car,
you don't have to do that anymore.
And then the animator can work on what's interesting.
Another thing that matters is the tires.
We all know that tires are not solid things,
at least we hope not on our cars.
And they bulge.
And you can see here
that the tires are actually bulging now.
So another thing that was added.
And that you can just calculate
by how much force is on car theoretically.
It's not meant to be exact physics,
this is cartoon physics.
But you'd also like the wheels to move.
And notice this time that the wheel's actually turning
when it goes through, when it's coming around.
So notice the front wheels are actually turned.
But there's the suspension, too.
So now you get the roll of the suspension,
all of this is just being calculated.
It's very hard to see, but on the very back here,
can you see the antennas on the back of the police car?
And the bottom is a closeup of those.
And again you don't wanna have the animator
to have to sit there
and think about what's goin' on with that.
And so here's what's goin' on.
So, the point of this is that technology people
built tools for the artists,
so the artists could focus on creating interesting art.
Okay.
I also mentioned cartoon physics.
So a car if you're posing it,
it can stretch in ways that most cars can't stretch.
But you want it to look realistic.
So we have to build a cartoon physics stretcher.
And that's what this is.
So the idea here is that we built a system
that knows how stretch and contract
the various parts of a car so that you can pose it.
So there the car is putting on it's paw
for lack of a better word with the wheel.
So the big idea here again,
is that you can build tools that help artists
express a new thing.
In some cases, we had to with Toy Story,
just figure out how to do rendering in the first place.
And then as movies got more complicated
and you had to do crowds or cars or whatever,
you had to build more software
that would enable a different expression.
Okay.
So then I wanted to talk about
one of my favorite interview questions
that I ask people when I'm interviewing people for a job.
Is computer science or programming is that an art
or is that a science?
And you can get a really rich discussion from this.
So think about this yourselves,
is that art or science?
And how many people think it's art?
No.
How many people think it's science?
How many people are too chicken to say?
(audience laughing) (laughs) Come on.
Well, think about this.
If you started writing a book,
you could sit down in front of your computer,
and you start it.
And maybe you launch Microsoft Word
or whatever your favorite program is.
And you start typing.
You're starting on a blank screen.
If you're writing a screenplay,
you're kind of starting with a blank screen.
You have an idea an idea in your head
of what you wanted to do.
Drawing a picture.
How was that?
You're gonna start with a blank piece of paper?
Well, how is writing a piece of software
any different from that?
I think the difference though is that
we think because we've gone to engineering school
that perhaps what we're doing
when we're creating this thing,
is we're doing engineering.
But isn't engineering
just forming, putting things together in a different way
that is actually an artistic expression?
So we all know what an elegant program is, yes?
We all know it when we see it, right?
It's like pornography. (laughs)
(audience laughing)
But when you look at an elegant program
are we saying it's elegant because it's a good algorithm
or because there's something artistic about it?
Is it a deep expression?
What is that?
Anyway, so there's a duality of art and science
I think going on even for the technical side of
the Pixar world for example.
And I, oh, I think okay.
New technology allowed Pixar
to generate a whole new art form, right?
Computer generated films.
Without those computers that came into existence
in the late '80s, early '90s,
you wouldn't have been able to make Toy Story.
And then, you wouldn't have been able to,
because of Moore's Law, you wouldn't have been able,
if you had Moore's Law
and you were been able to do these other things
that we did 'cause we got a 1000x more compute power, right?
So could new technology revive an old art form
which are mosaics itself?
This is how we all got to be here in this room today.
So, this is my lovely wife standing in front
of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
We went there last November,
and it is an awe-inspiring place.
Built by the Emperor Constantine in 537.
And you go inside, and they have,
I'm sorry you can't see it.
It's a giant, giant place,
and my wife is the tiny little figure at the bottom.
The point of this is the scale is immense.
And they had this amazing mosaic on the wall.
This just happens to be one,
and here's a closeup of it.
And I was looking at that, and I was thinking,
hm, I wonder if you could get robots to print that out
because those are each little tiles.
And then I was thinking
about a little swarm of smart robots,
that had placers that could place each of the things.
And then I thought about that a little bit more,
and I thought,
well, you know, that's not really any different than pixels.
But the cool thing here is
that the pixels don't have to be a uniform shape.
They could be any shape.
So then I got to thinking about that.
So if you could build robots,
that would go and print these things,
how would you do that?
So, we were sitting on a bus talking about this,
and I said, well, first you'd have to pixelate this.
And it turns out that's what Josh has done.
He's written a program that does that,
and he's gonna talk about that in minute.
Then you'd need some robots
that would know how to go and pick it.
And then Joi said,
yeah, but you also gonna need a supply chain,
so why wouldn't you go and use quadcopters
to go and pick up all the tiles
and pre-position 'em for the robots
that are placing the tiles, right?
So in a weird sense,
we built a giant mosaic printer,
right?
But then the question comes up is,
well, if you could print a giant mosaic
is that still art?
And does that diminish the art of what the folks who built
the Hagia Sophia in 537 have done?
Is the Hagia Sophia so interesting
'cause it's awe-inspiring
'cause you don't see it anywhere else
and nobody's done that since?
But if you could just do that every day,
is it as interesting?
I don't know.
So it's a thought to think about.
I'm gonna leave it at that.
But I was telling my nephew about this,
who is a Course Two grad in like the last year or something,
and he's working at JPL now.
And I was saying, you know,
couldn't we get some robots to do this?
And how would we get 'em to the quadrotors
and program this all and make it interesting?
And oh, by the way, you know what would be really cool is
if we did that, we could have a giant mosaic that we made
and then you could also on the nanoscale,
why not build the exact same mosaic, but on the nanoscale,
and have them sitting right next to each other?
And then the discussion comes,
well, if you're gonna do that then,
is the art the actual resulting mosaic,
or is it the watching of these robots building this mosaic?
Is that the art?
And he says, no, you have that all wrong.
What you should be thinking about here
is not trying to do some old art form
that you've already done,
'cause the whole point of Pixar in the first place
was you were able to do something
'cause of a new technology.
So, why don't you think about what new technologies exist
that would enable a new art form, right?
Or maybe you could do something that you couldn't do before
that now is possible, right?
So, he started talking about etching things on metals
in different ways and talking about doing nano things.
And then he had a whole bunch of other ideas
which he, because he's a more recent graduate than I am,
and actually works at a place that does real engineering,
he knew about more things than I did,
so I didn't even know what he was talking about.
Just to be fair.
So, that's basically how I got onto this idea
of coming and talking to you folks and saying,
hey, would you like to do some art?
And now I'm gonna let Josh talk about
what art looks like on the big scale in community and space.
There you go. -: Thank you.
(audience applauding)
So back to the mosaic at the Hagia Sophia.
The magic factor, I call it.
The same sort of magic that you saw
when you saw your first Pixar movie.
Or when you see that great art in the Hagia Sophia.
That is the essence of what it means
to be a creative individual.
How to create the magic for this other person,
for the people around you.
So we start with the one pixel.
And you go into larger pixels.
In this case, these are glass tiles.
(tinkling)
And you go to larger pixels and larger pixels.
And here you have one million glass tiles in front of you.
And this is a project that we did in Philadelphia,
in central Philadelphia.
This is a community project.
So how do you get one million tiles to behave.
Well, before I talk about that
because that's a lot of tiles, a lotta thought.
I wanted to talk a little bit
about the process that I use to create magic.
The magic that I create is on the community level.
And it's about activating people
to be an artist or find their artist within themselves.
These are projects that I work with lay people.
With people who have no training in art, let's say,
and are able to create monumental works.
So this a project at a homeless facility in Philadelphia
6,000 square feet
with 70
men who were in a drug alcohol rehab program, 7 months.
So, how do you bring art to the streets?
This is a detail of the legs.
This is a metal.
We set up a metal shop.
We set up a ceramic shop.
We set up a glass shop in the shelter itself.
I'm sorry these images are so dark,
but this is a project we did with homeless people
where they wove textiles.
So technology though you are surrounded
by the latest and the greatest technology here.
One should also think of traditional technology
because traditional technology gives you
a window to the future technology.
It's all been done before in some ways
and in some, in other capacities.
So,
not to rely just on the latest technology,
but to think about traditional.
In this case, there is weaving.
We did photography.
How do you bring that together?
So we had people weave their stories together
and each of these weavings are in the mural itself
in this area.
It's hard to see on the left.
But each of those textiles contains a story.
A story of someone's life.
And they wrote down how they became homeless,
and how they were finding home.
And so we set up 50 community workshops around the city
to activate people to make art.
To find that process within themselves.
And really it's to create same synergy
that Greg was talking about at Pixar.
Because the reason Pixar was able to innovate
was not just because they had technology,
but because they were working with technology and art
together and back and forth.
And creating a circle.
When you create that circle.
Then you create true innovation.
And that's why Pixar was so successful.
Because they allowed that space to take place.
And so we're doing that here on a community level
with low technology.
Weaving.
Stories, teaching.
So the question is how?
How does art change the world view,
how does it change our world view?
This is a mural I did with some leading poets.
Maya Angelou.
Alice Walker.
Toni Morrison.
And so these are all speakers.
These are people who capture the essence
of what it means to be human.
And working together with their poetry,
I was able to create the imagery for this new project
which is a project in central Philadelphia about peace.
So, back to how you get the one million tiles to behave.
Technology.
We have the community process.
And how do you get,
let's say,
a hundred people to create a thousand square feet of mosaic.
This is a project in Tucson.
Where I was there for three years building an art facility
for the people of the city
in the poorest neighborhood of Tucson.
And these are all pixelated images.
Because the love of the pixel,
it's a really interesting thing.
It goes back a long way,
and I'll tell you about that in a minute.
So you have to create an order, a methodology,
for placing all the tiles.
So we created a software program, myself and Greg Barton,
wrote a program that allows you to take any image
and to change it to your color pallette.
And then to categorize.
Helps you figure out exactly where to place all the tiles.
Allows lay people to participate in the process.
So we had these large tables,
huge plasma screens
that had locations
for each of the tiles by clicking on a color number.
And then placing them.
So the community process is really important
because you're activating more
than just the people around you.
Here at MIT I would challenge you to go out
into the community around you
and share that technology in a way
that activates other people
because that's is really the essence
of what it means to be an artist
and to be a creative individual.
So these are all hand-cut mosaics.
These are odd-shaped pixels.
But they still fit together.
They're not as odd-shaped as we wanna get to,
but they are hand-cut.
So, how do you teach technology?
You teach it through creativity.
You teach it through art.
And that's the essence of passing that information on
is showing that other people can actually do the same thing
that you can do.
And then learning from them.
Because just in the environment here,
you have almost everything.
But there's so much out there that can help inform
what you're doing here.
And you need to bring that back.
You need to learn every time you're doing a new project.
You need to be learning something new
from somebody else as well, not just from the technology.
So it's the social environment.
It's the human connection
that is probably the most important part.
And if you're to ask Greg,
what were some of the successes at Pixar?
I'm sure he would talk about the human connection.
The architecture of the building.
Of how people were forced to work together.
And I know a lot of that goes on here as well.
So, for example,
the top part of this mural was done with 400 kids
in four days.
And to do a thousand square feet of glass tile mosaic
in four days is a feat in itself.
But then to organize 400 students
who have never touched glass tile before
is the exciting part.
So other technology that we use for,
and now again,
it's not the incredible technology that you have here,
but true artists use whatever means they have
to create the artwork that they need to create.
So in this case, we had a bridge overpass in Tucson.
And we had to cut out
50 sheets of steel with images.
We basically bought a plasma cutter, CNC plasma cutter
and learned G-code and did it all within a month.
And we were able to make this beautiful piece of artwork.
As opposed to just having it fabricated out.
So we wanna learn the process.
All creative individuals need to learn the process.
You can't just send it to a print shop.
At some point, you need to touch that printer.
So our challenge is technology.
Technology inspires art.
So here in Cambridge, of course,
Edwin Land was an amazing inventor.
Mentor to Steve Jobs.
Creator of the Polaroid camera.
I'm not gonna give you a history lesson
because you probably know more history than I do
about local art and local creativity.
But, sorry for the reproduction here.
But one of the key ingredients to Land's success
was that he understood that art and technology were one.
And the way he did that was he hired art students.
Out of Smith College.
Taught them chemistry.
Brought them into the lab,
and created this lab that was energetic, synergetic.
It was an incredible place to work.
And then he would hire artists as well
in the outside world, professional artists.
Ansel Adams was on his payroll for 30 years.
And he would report back to Land every time
they had a new invention.
Land would send him a new camera and say, take some shots.
What do you think?
And he would report back to him and he would say,
not so great.
Or, this is what you need to make it better.
It was that relationship which caused for a great invention.
And not only that, but it caused for a great life.
And it's that relationship.
So back to,
this is one of Ansel Adams' most famous pictures,
Moonrise.
So he took this
outside of Santa Fe.
Became the most popular, most expensive print ever.
In this case, technology was inspiring,
was helping create the artwork.
He had forgotten his light meter
when he was about to take this shot.
He couldn't find it in the car.
The light was going down, the sun was setting.
The moon was coming up.
He had only that very brief moment to take this one shot.
And he was able to do that through science.
He calculated the lumens of the moon
and figured out his exposure from that.
So that's the magic factor.
And that's what I talked about in the beginning.
The magic factor is what's at Pixar.
Or was at Pixar with Greg and all the other folks
that were working together.
The magic factor is here I'm sure on many occasions.
But how do you bring that magic factor to the wider public?
And that's why I do the community process that I do.
So, why are we here today?
Well,
the convergence of art and technology
we're at a point where
we truly have the means to impact a larger public.
So not just through the invention itself.
Not through the product, but through the process.
And that's the important thing.
So I'm going back to the first pixel.
Does anybody know this first pixel?
The first pixel is 6,000 years old.
These are Sumerian cone mosaics.
Three colors.
Black, red, white.
Not really RGB colors but close enough.
And they make up mosaics in these columns.
And the beauty of it is that
it shows that this thought, the idea of working with pixels,
is so old that we need to look back to technology
from the past to help us inform how we work together today.
From our own retina,
looks very much like cone mosaics, right?
Large pixels.
This is a project I did in Minneapolis.
Nine feet square pixels from a Monet painting.
How do you reinterpret the pixel?
To make it something new, something different?
Something that has a wow factor.
The magic factor.
So,
I look towards other great writers
to point us in the right direction.
Anybody read William Gibson's work?
So Neuromancer.
Looking into the future, right?
Well, he wrote that on a typewriter.
Anybody write a book on a typewriter?
(audience laughing)
It points that you can still see the future
with whatever existing technology you have.
And that today, I think that,
we need to be able to have a wider view
of how we use our technology in creating amazing things.
So that, it's the wider view,
really is about working together as human beings,
and that's the important thing.
And that's the magic factor.
So never to forget that while you're in your place inventing
that when you get outside in the outside world
that's where that magic takes place.
So there it is.
So.
(audience applauding)
-: Thanks, guys.
So, what I'm gonna do is drag this into
-: Oh, sorry.
-: A little bit of our framework.
So I apologize 'cause we're in the media lab
I'ma make you listen to our framework.
But, 'cause you asked,
I think one of the reasons you didn't get response
when you asked whether it was art or science is that,
at the Media Lab, we try not to differentiate.
So I think,
first of all, I think there's an interesting matrix,
and I can't attribute it
'cause I can't remember who told me this.
But
there's art
and design
and science and engineering.
And design and engineering tend to take the constraints
around you to produce something of utility.
And art and science tend
to be more looking within or looking at nature,
but kind of your blank paper.
And sometimes art doesn't have to have utility.
Science doesn't have to have utility.
And then there's this really interesting thing
where it's the tension between those two.
And one interesting observation somebody had was
it's easier for engineers and designers to work together,
and artists and scientists to work together
than for artists and designers or scientists and engineers.
But the thing about the Media Lab,
the secret sauce that we're trying to make here I think,
is that all of that is in one place
and maybe even in one body.
And I think that as we talk about anti-disciplinary people
as being the core Media Lab thing,
is that you don't try to define each other.
So I don't think any of our students would ever say,
oh that's not, I'm an artist, I don't do that.
Or I'm an engineer, and I don't do that.
I think that all of the engineers and all the artists
are assigned to some, and design as well.
But Nicholas Negroponte, the founder here,
often uses photography as an example.
Just like you did.
'Cause it's very interesting
because if you compare photography to other forms of media,
like television,
that didn't have artists in the loop at all.
Where the creators and the artists
toss the specs over the wall
to the engineers and the technology
sort of went in parallel.
Whereas in photography was much more tightly linked.
And I think including Kodak,
there are a number of,
but most of the photographers
knew a little bit of science and engineering,
and so that the medium evolved together with the art.
And so continued to stay as art, I think, much longer.
And I think, but still what's interesting is,
this is kind of nitpicking,
but I wanna pass it to you in a second,
is that we don't like the word interdisciplinary too much
'cause it sounds like the engineer talking to the artist.
And again, that's better than them not talking,
but what you really I think want is to tightly couple it
as much as possible.
And we just had some kids come back from Shenzhen
where they were sitting on the factory floors.
And the thing that they told us that was fascinating
was that they had the designer.
They went to the factory floor.
And it wasn't somebody telling the designer,
oh, we can't do that.
They said, no, you can't do that 'cause of this,
but you can do this.
And all the designers had
the factory manufacturing equipment in their head,
and the factory people understood
what the artists wanted to do, the designers wanted to do.
And instead of making single prototypes,
they made prototypes in the thousands.
And this idea that you would actually
take the manufacturing process
and combine it with the designer
I think is this really interesting thing
about the more tightly coupled you do,
the more interesting it is.
And so that's kind of a general frame,
but I wonder do you see, did you see at Pixar for instance,
this sort of designation as an artist or as a designer?
Do you see that trend-wise, where do you see that going?
Do you see that becoming one person?
Or do think there's always gonna be a division
between the engineer and the artist or the animator?
-: Yeah, that's an excellent question.
So, the cool thing about Pixar is
that everybody thinks that they're,
everybody who works there
feels as though they're part of the filmmaking process.
So, in the particular product that Pixar makes,
which are basically blockbuster animated films,
everybody can help on making those, okay?
So, the goal of everybody at the studio
is to help the director get his or her vision up on screen.
And it turns out that we all go to restaurants,
so we're all restaurant critics.
And we all go to movies, so we're movie critics.
Well, one of the insights that John Lasseter had was,
well, I've got 300 people here working on this building.
Every single one of them can help me
with this making of this movie in one way or another.
And he explicitly set out to make that happen.
By inviting everybody to look at the films
as they were in process.
So, a simple example would be
while the reels are being put up,
they're not complete.
So when you start working on a film
somebody just has an idea for what the film might be,
and they put together maybe 50 storyboards.
They're just drawings.
And then they get up and make a pitch.
And when they make that pitch.
Literally, they hold up one of the drawings,
and they say what happens for five minutes.
And then they hold up the next one and talk about it, right?
But as the movie, as time is going by,
the film is getting more and more fleshed out.
Well, once you have it on reels,
why not show it to everybody in the company?
Then it turns out that everybody can make a comment.
And it turns out when you're doing that process,
if you get 50 comments from people that say,
I don't get why this character does this in this scene.
You might wanna think about maybe the message,
the point that you're trying to make there
is not being transmitted.
And those questions can come from anybody
in the company from a security guard
to another director to somebody in finance.
And that happened all the time.
And if you only got somebody who made the comment once,
well, I don't know if that's an important comment
unless it was from somebody
who actually is skilled in the art, right?
So we actually set out carefully
to make sure that it was not an interdisciplinary team,
it was a team.
Right?
So, one of the thought examples that we had
for thinking this through is,
imagine Microsoft.
This was back 15 years ago
when Microsoft was a really big force
and Steve was still the head of Pixar
and also part of Apple.
And we talked about him all the time.
But one of the things we always wondered was
if were Microsoft were to make a movie,
how would they go about this?
And we decided that they would do the following.
They would go and hire a bunch of computer scientists.
And they'd get the best software
that they could possibly have,
and then they realized, oh, we need some story people.
And they hire some story people.
But what you'd end up with, is a two-tier system, right?
And then if you went down to Hollywood,
let's invert this idea.
You'd go down there.
And the people in Hollywood, they would go,
and they'd hire a whole bunch of really great story people
'cause that's what they're really good at, right?
And then they'd were like,
oh, man, we gotta hire some of those
nasty computer scientists, right?
And then again you have a two-tier system,
it's just inverted.
But what we intentionally tried to do at Pixar
was to have people as peers.
So that there is, it's not like there is one right answer,
and one person in charge.
It was everybody contributing in their own way.
And then as the story I was telling you earlier
about John learning about the technology
and the technologist learning about the art,
what was really going on is that you blurred the line of,
they came in as subject-matter experts
in both of these fields,
but then they moved and got spread across
and became T-shaped generalists.
So it's a combination of all these different things I think
that make it go.
Does that--
-: That's exactly I think what we're trying to do here.
And the path that a lot of our students come on.
I have random question just because you're here.
I heard a rumor that the reason Pixar released
mostly only great films was
that you just didn't release the bad ones.
Is that true?
(men laughing) (audience laughing)
-: That's a really excellent question.
That's a really good question.
So, it turns out we had three films that were in trouble.
And we didn't know that they were gonna be in trouble.
By the way, nobody sets out to make a bad film,
but bad films get made.
It turns out making a movie is really hard
because everything is interconnected to everything.
So, what's happening at the end
is a function of what happened
at the beginning and vice versa, right?
So, on Toy Story 2, we were all busy making A Bug's Life.
And we had a team that was working on Toy Story 2,
we were thinking it was gonna get released to DVD
because that's what Disney's model was.
You know, you make your sequel, you put it on DVD.
And then we saw Toy Story 2, and we said,
nah, that's actually really good.
We're gonna release it.
And then, John finished A Bug's Life,
and he saw the reels of Toy Story 2.
And he said, that's not good enough.
We can't release that.
So at some level, we did say we're not gonna release that.
But then what happened was,
we stopped production for three months.
Everybody in the company stopped what they were doing.
The story people went and rewrote the story.
And then, while that was going on,
the technical directors that built the models
and the layout people.
They went in and did set dressing and so forth,
that could be done without the movie being done.
And then the story was fixed,
and then everything was rushed to get it done.
We had that happen also on Ratatouille.
And Wall-E as well.
Where the story got into a crisis,
and we had to stop what we were doing
and then go fix it.
But we had to have the courage to do that
'cause that was a big deal.
-: So, it's kind of half true.
And the thing about non-animated films is
everyone's gone by the time
you're getting ready to make that decision,
and you can't redo it, right?
-: Yes. -: I think that's another.
And also you do think that that's too bad.
I had a question about the, you were saying,
learning from communities and what's interesting is,
so here's another little thing
that we've been talking a lot about is
in design you have engineers entering design
back in the days of Henry Ford saying,
every car as long as it's black,
color as long as it's black.
Or like Japanese consumer electronic model numbers
being the name of the product.
And then you have user-centric design
which is obviously Steve Jobs and Apple
caring about the user.
Then you have participatory design
which is a little bit of what you were talking about
about people giving feedback.
And then there's co-design
which is kind of what we've been trying to do in Detroit
and some other areas,
where we empower the people to do design.
And then I'm interested in
when you said we learn from the people,
but you didn't exactly say what you learned
and how you learned it.
'Cause we just came back from Detroit
with a bunch of students and faculty and friends who went.
And we worked in Detroit with people there,
and we learned a ton.
And we learned a ton about what you can do
within the constraints of a certain environment,
which I think you're used to doing a lot of.
Both of you in working with constraints.
But also,
what you learn by interacting with the people there.
It was a completely different way
of approaching different things.
And I'm wondering when you have though,
a million pixels and thousands of people,
how at that level, I mean,
ours were just a couple dozen people,
what do you learn, and how do you learn it?
-: Well, a lot of it's actually organizational capacity.
How do you...
Behind all great large-scale artworks and art productions,
there's the organizational capacity
is probably 80% of the work that you're doing.
So if you learn how to do that
in a way that allows for creativity to come through
then you can create this magic factor.
But you're learning how to organize
and how to work with human beings who are not machines.
So, you have all of these variables
that suddenly play into your world.
You know, I don't know what it was like it at Pixar,
but I think that you would have a similar thing.
You're still working with other human beings.
And so how do you bring that
the project together
while managing the human interaction as well?
And so, I'm not so sure it's so much a concrete thing
of what I specifically learned from each individual,
but I learned how to create beautiful artworks
by letting go some of my own ego.
So that it's not just about what I can do or my vision.
But the vision is complemented
by other people's vision along the way.
And then also then you're creating something
that would not have been created on your own.
And you're creating a new piece of artwork.
Something that breaks the boundaries
because of that input
that you're getting from the community.
-: It's interesting cuz we're,
I think are we in front the Lego Lab?
Well, Lego's one of our big collaborators and friends
and it's interesting.
Neil Gershenfeld and other people talk about this,
but there's kind of the assembly snap togetherness
of a Lego that allows the child to be sloppy
but the result to be structured.
And then I also think about the Internet,
where you have certain things
that you just don't, you don't mess with TCP/IP,
but then you have an explosion of innovation on top.
And so, I look at your pixels and mosaics
and then the thousands of people,
and it's always these kinds of layers of structure
and layers of complete freedom
that kind of go into these sandwiches
that create really amazing things.
And it's again, the art layer and the engineering layer
or the design layer,
and I think that that it's interesting
because that when I see the two of you, you both do it,
but you're kind of doing it on really different layers.
And what's interesting I think also,
as you start to design new forms,
is you kind of have to pick where you're not gonna change.
Like if you're building a board game, here are the rules,
but here's where we're gonna allow the flexibility.
And when we do things like at the Media Lab,
we're very undirected and unconstrained,
but we have to create some constraints.
We do a lot of it by talking to companies,
talking to people, and sort of listening to people's issues
and things like that.
But I mean, how do you decide,
and how intentional is your design
of where the constraints go at?
-: Well, I don't know how it is with you Greg,
but limitations are the mother of invention.
I mean it's basically,
it helps you create something that is the impossible.
You're creating the,
you have an impossible question to answer.
And when you have the limitations and constraints
it forces you in a certain direction
and makes the most creative part of your body come out.
And makes you think of all the things
you could not think of before.
And so, you know, with our projects,
the limitations are very, a lot of 'em are physical.
Space of environment.
And I guess a lot of limitations
would be virtual in some ways in your world.
-: Yeah, absolutely.
If the question is do constraints matter
and where do you get them from?
Sometimes they just happen.
So, there's the story I've heard,
and I believe it to be true of
when Steven Spielberg was making Jaws.
They didn't have the
model shark that they were gonna have to swim around.
And so all he could do while he was waiting for it,
was film the water.
And he discovered, oh look.
Filming the water is actually more powerful
than filming a fake shark
because everybody projects what they think on that.
So there was a constraint that actually caused him
to discover something new
that he hadn't actually anticipated.
And at Pixar many times we ran into constraints.
Either there just wasn't enough compute power
to do the thing we wanted, or we didn't have enough people.
Or we didn't have this or whatever.
And we had to think up some other way of accomplishing
whatever our goal was.
And it turns out that no matter who you ask at Pixar,
if you ask John Lasseter, who's the director,
the creative genius of Pixar.
Ed Cadmull the founder and scientific genius of Pixar.
If you ask them whether constraints matter,
they'll both say, oh, it matters a lot.
Because it guides,
it forces people to be on that edge of where creativity is.
'Cause otherwise you stay in your comfort zone,
and unless somebody's pokin' at ya,
you don't really get out of it.
I don't know how to explain this,
but you can see it time and again that where really
clever things have been done
is because somebody had a constraint
that they were trying to get around.
So, it could even be in a story
if like that story is not working
'cause the character doesn't make any sense this way.
But we don't have enough time to fix it,
and then somebody says,
well, why don't we just have the character do this.
And it's like, oh, yeah, that'll work.
So it's not just the money or technology thing.
-: In addition I was gonna say that
the chess game that you're talking about.
How do you solve problems?
I think is pretty much, it's the same,
no matter whether you're an engineer
or you're an artist or you're a scientist.
It's the beauty in how you discover that,
and how you find the answer to the problem
that you're trying to find.
It's the actual process is the most important thing,
I think.
And I think that's what drives artists in all genres.
-: You're saying that part of the process
or the process that makes good art
-: Yes.
-: Is having constraints and so forth?
-: Well, not just the constraints,
but I'm just saying the actual process
is the important thing in a lot of ways.
And I think it's what drives great art to be made.
That chess game that you play.
-: So I'm gonna go back again
and try to hit this word learning.
Because it's inside of your book.
But I think that
so different people I think
learn in slightly different ways.
I was a very, I'm not good with authority,
so when somebody tells me that's hot,
I don't believe it until I touch it.
And I burn myself, and then I learn that it's hot.
I learn through failure.
I learn through finding the boundaries.
And I'm interested both in what you talk about in your book
because you're talking about how we learn,
but also as an artist you're talking
about the constraints and challenges and things like that.
But how much of it is,
is the passion for learning
have anything to do with why you do your art?
Or is the learning an incidental thing that happens,
or is learning not anything that you think of
as part of the process that you're talking?
Because to me all these failures,
always with when you learn
and that boundary of where the failure,
where your comfort zone ends,
and your risk of failure starts
is really when you start to get into that little
giddy feeling like you're about to learn something. (laughs)
-: Yeah, no, I think that,
I mean that learning is,
if you're not learning then you're
not living. -: Dying. (laughs)
-: Yeah, you're not living.
And I think all the great companies
and all of the great geniuses know that
every time you do something new,
you have to be learning something.
You have to.
It's like a part of human nature.
And if you're not, then you're not creating great products.
You're not creating great art.
And it's not worth doing.
-: So I think that there's many different layers there
that you've asked about so.
I do think that there's a curiosity piece
that people have to have.
That allows them to go
and be willing to learn that new thing.
But there's also I think a piece of psychological safety
that if that doesn't work out it doesn't mean,
you know, this thing I've tried,
it doesn't mean that I'm a failure.
It means that this thing that I tried
which was so hard is a failure, right?.
And then, thinking about my kids,
you were talking about learning about the stove being hot.
So a lot of people when they have kids in my age,
they get their house child-proofed.
And I didn't know this at the time
until I had my own first child,
you can hire people that will come
and make your house child-proof.
And they go around, and they put things in the outlets.
And they take all your chemicals.
And they lock up your cabinets,
and they make sure like your kids can't get to the stove.
My wife and I chose not to do that
because if our child doesn't.
I mean, we locked up the poisonous chemicals, okay.
Listen, we're not crazy. (laughs)
But you know,
if they're gonna walk into the side of the table,
they're gonna hit the side of the table and find out,
wow, that's hard, right?
And they learn from that.
And I think that part of what you're talking about
in an organization is very analogous to this idea
of hitting something and then learning what it is.
And you were talking, or somebody here,
we were talking about learning about the tools
and when you use them, you learn about how it works.
You were talking about in the Detroit plant, I think.
Where the design people went to the manufacturing floor,
the manufacturing people went to Design.
Both sets of people were learning about the other's needs
and learning about the tools and so forth,
so that they could more precisely use them
to achieve whatever goals there were.
So I think that that's another part
of a learning organization that's super important.
Anytime you go can go and talk to somebody
and find something you don't know,
you wanna do that.
-: And I think the interesting thing is both of you
work on creating things, expressing things,
and I think that that's also an interesting thing.
At the lab, we have this very much a build atelier model.
And it turns out that
if you're criticizing something somebody made,
it's a lot less personal
than if you're criticizing somebody's theory or somebody's,
just directly.
And I think that that allows you to kinda set up,
hey, this is an experiment.
I'm trying it.
Okay the experiment failed, this is what we learned.
Versus I believe I'm right.
No, you're not, right?
And also it allows you to have
a lot of different disciplines mixed together,
because a film either sells, or it doesn't.
A robot either works, or it doesn't.
You can argue about it all you want.
But it either works, or it doesn't.
Although there are some academics who
question reality when their theories don't work.
But we don't have any of those here.
people laughing)
By the way,
Stacy?
Let me know when there's anything from Twitter
that you wanna pull out.
And I mean,
I'm happy to start involving people in the conver,
hey, Patty.
So there's, can somebody be a mic person?
Or do you wanna? (female voice off mic)
Do you wanna have them?
Actually we'll, sorry.
-: Hi.
So both of you talked about the collaborative process
involving many people in making art,
but it seems to me that both of these examples
are examples where there is still sort of
one genius who has the creative vision,
and the hundreds or maybe even thousands
in the Pixar case of people involved
in implementing that vision
and realizing their vision
have a little bit of input in the process,
but it is still very much a centralized
sort of one creator,
one artist,
and everybody else can make minor
inputs sort of.
And I'm curious whether you've seen
other examples where it's truly a more collaborative
process that is much more decentralized
and where the lots of people that are in involved
have more input in the vision?
-: So let me just clarify.
So at Pixar,
I was being
economical with my words in describing how it works,
and just making sure that everybody understood
that everybody at Pixar participates.
However, John Lasseter when he's making a movie,
he doesn't think of the movie all himself.
He doesn't come up with that all by himself.
He has the basic idea of the movie,
but it turns out some people are better at doing jokes.
You know, gags, physical gags.
And some people are better at written gags, verbal gags.
And some people are better at story arc,
and some people are better at character development.
And John needs to draw on all of those people
to have input into this film.
But yes, they're all trying to make a specific film,
but nobody knows when they start that film
how it's really gonna end.
So it's not that John says,
oh, here's the script, make it.
That's not at all what's going on.
What's going on is a creative feedback loop
among the, literally, people who are sculpting with clay,
people who are drawing pictures with pen and paper,
people who are building computer models,
people who are writing stories.
All of these people are informing each other
about what that movie is, and it emerges, okay?
So it's not that one person has
the ultimate here's what we're gonna do,
that's not at all, and, in fact,
that's not what John wants.
And so, dailies at Pixar are more like this,
everybody gets into a room.
And just as you were saying, Joi,
of having an experiment
that you could look at and criticize,
the point is not to criticize somebody's work.
It's to say, does that express that character correctly?
All the animators are sitting in the room,
and they're learning from each other
about what that character is.
So they're all going up a learning curve
for each film together.
So it's not one person saying,
here's how it's going to be.
But ultimately, you do need to have somebody who's
making a decision, okay we're done, right?
So, I think it's a little bit more complicated
than just the simple,
okay, well, somebody had a comment from the cafe.
No, it's true the person in the cafe
is not working on the film.
But the people who are actually making the film
say the 50 or so story people,
they all are actually contributing directly,
and it's not one person.
Does that make sense?
-: Yes. -: Okay.
(voices overlapping) -: For example,
in the mosaic that I did in Tucson
with this community over a few years.
For a single project,
we might have had maybe 16 community-wide meetings
where people were actually coming in
and talking and reacting to and drawing.
We had photo workshops.
We had computer workshops.
We had mosaic workshops
which allowed for people to learn the process
and then to have input into the actual design
and the actual production of it.
So, while it may be the goal,
the goal that you're talking about is
to have every single person have equal participation
in creating something new,
I think it's a unfair expectation
on all of the participants.
And I think that while it might be sort of idealistly nice,
functionally it's not even good
for all the participants as well.
I think that people can give what they can in a process
and everybody has individual and unique qualities.
But there does need to be some driving force
that allows for the bad days,
to get through the bad days and get to the next day.
And to share something eloquently with the group
something to move and motivate.
And so, I think that you can still have leaders within,
but also,
respond to.
And I think the most important thing,
is that everybody is treated
as a human being who's involved.
So that people know they're acknowledged.
Their presence is acknowledged.
Their skills are acknowledged.
-: And valued. -: And valued.
-: Yeah, right. -: Yeah, totally.
And that comes out,
and I think in great collaborative artwork.
And every single mural that you saw that I showed.
I could not do on my own,
and could not have been done by a single person.
I mean that's the same with the Pixar movies,
it could not have been done by a single person.
So that that collaborative work is, yeah.
-: But I think you asked a really good question.
Because as far as I know,
there is no open source animated film
that has ever been successful.
People have tried this.
But you do need to have a,
a story is a particular art form that has an arc.
You know, you have a Act I, Act II, Act III.
There's actually structures.
And there are courses taught
on how you do the structure of stories, right?
And when you're doing this in a distributive fashion,
if you don't have somebody who is making sure
that the structure is followed.
It's very difficult,
and to the best of my knowledge,
to date, there has not yet been a open source
animated film made.
People have tried.
But it's a very complicated thing to do.
-: But I think there are theories
that we may be getting there
as just like via cars as you start to automate the elements,
you can start to build pieces that,
again we had a interesting conversation
with Baratunde Thurston who's a comedian.
And he was arguing that he didn't think
that there would be ever robot comedians.
But it's an interesting avenue of research though.
Because what you do is you start to learn a lot
by trying to model what it would look like
if things were sort of automated
or more bottom up, you know.
-: Excellent point.
So, you've touched on a couple
of really interesting ideas that are.
So, thing one is,
I showed you through time
how much more sophisticated Pixar films have gotten made.
It turns out the amount of technical work hours
that are needed to be done on Pixar films
is shrinking through time.
But the number of story hours is staying the same.
So, really Pixar's a story company
whose medium happens to be computer generated, right?
And so the focus is on that.
And so, if you took this to the absurd,
you could say, if I had an arbitrarily fast computer,
why couldn't it be the case that I as a director
could just make my own film?
I don't need any technical directors.
And maybe I don't need any story artists to do this anymore.
But what we have found is that you actually need
to have that interplay of people
making sure that you haven't,
you know, what seems really good in the middle of the night
when you wake the next morning
is not really a great idea, right?
Is making sure that you stay on track.
-: And while we get the mic to Jeanine,
I'll just tell two quick things at the Media Lab.
So, you can look this up on line.
But Todd Machover recently did a symphony in Toronto
where everyone in the city participated.
But just kind of trying to quantize and do the interaction,
so they feel like they're part of it.
But it still kinda makes sense in the end.
I think was an interesting exercise,
and it worked pretty well.
And the other thing is,
the person you met yesterday, Sep Kamvar.
He has a programming language called Dog.
The object is a human being.
And the idea is that you can actually,
and he's got some artwork where he writes code
that instructs people who look at the screen
to do different things, and then at the end you create art.
So he may be able to encode a lot of the work that you do,
and it's an interesting way to maybe scale it.
Because what it allows you to do,
is use cell phones and mobile
and screens and stuff like that to engage
tons of people in a codified way.
'Cause he didn't talk about that yesterday.
And that's something--
-: Eh, exciting.
-: Jeanine?
-: So we have a question from Twitter.
Kim Sievig asks,
what is the number one skill shared by your team members?
How should teachers direct focus in education?
-: Was that?
-: To either of you.
-: So, actually another thing
that you touched on earlier, Joi,
I think is directly relevant to this.
I think that a skill that is required to be on the team,
is that in order to be on a team,
I think there are five things you need to be able to do.
You have to be good at what you're asked to do
if you're a subject-matter expert in a certain field.
So if you're a cook, be a good cook.
If you're a story writer, be a good story writer.
If you're a programmer, be a good programmer, or whatever.
But that's a necessary but not sufficient condition
to be part of a high-performing team.
You also have to be able to play with the other kids.
Because if you're on a team,
and you're trying to do large-scale projects,
and you can't get along with the other kids
or they can't get along with you.
You're not part of the team.
And then being able to communicate effectively.
So, if you can't explain to other people what you're doing
and if you can't hear what they're doing,
again you're not part of the team.
Then also being able to adapt to how the work is morphing.
So being adaptable.
And typically that means
I think being smart about what's going on
because what we're today is gonna be different
than what we're doing three years from now.
And so, how do you adapt to that?
And then, the last piece is being willing to work hard
and not have when we're talking about this experiment here,
you know, when somebody says,
well, I think it would be better if it was this way,
you don't take that as personal attack on you.
But also that when you're talking to other people
that you're not making it a personal attack on them.
So, you have to be good at what you're doing,
but you also have to have these other sort
of characteristics to be successful I think.
-: That was a good answer.
-: Okay. (people laughing)
-: And can I, are we gonna run the mic,
or should get as others?
-: Thank you for sharing.
Just to comment on the prior question.
I guess the team environment and the team sharing
that's part of improving skills of metacognitions.
And that's one of the questions in a tech forum in China
one of the students was asking,
how can I while I'm learning arts and technologies
and while the arts is inspiring technology
and the technology's inspiring arts,
how can I improve my skill of thinking about my own thinking
and learning about my own learning
so during the process I can be more creative
and open about
my limitation and to find the boundaries?
And the second question is about the cultural aspect
and the human dynamic aspect in the process
of the mutual inspiration between arts and science.
Thank you.
(people laughing)
-: Wow, that was a lot.
-: So there were two question,
and can we just restate them in just one little bit?
-: So the first one was,
what were the--
-: How do you reflect on your own thoughts as an artist?
Is that what you're saying?
Or as a scientist?
-: Yeah.
The best way to reflect on your own thinking
and learning about your own learning
and to be creative during the process.
I guess it's the strategies
of improving your metacognition skills.
-: So, that's sort of like asking,
how do you know what you don't know?
Is that basically
sort of the idea? -: Or how do you
discover the area that you don't know you don't know about?
-: I mean I think that just on an abstract level
you have to be open to listening
and to seeing what's around you.
I think that if you're so caught up in your own experiment
then you may not be learning.
Because you're too focused,
and you need to take a step back and take some breath.
And to
see the wider picture,
I guess that's my suggestion on that.
-: So for me, the way I think about this is,
I actually do ask people how do you know what you don't know
'cause it's actually an interesting question, right?
'Cause that implies that they're,
if you answer that question one way, like I know everything,
then that means that there's some question about that
'cause I don't anybody in this room knows everything.
So poking at the things that you don't know yet,
I think is a really important attribute.
So going out and trying things that you haven't been able
to do that are interesting to you
and being willing to take the chance of
that doesn't work out and what did I learn from that?
Much to Joi's point earlier about willing to risk failure.
And then also I think,
interacting with other people that have
different divergent ideas than you do.
Because they're gonna poke at things in ways
that you had never considered.
Which was one of the, for me,
the thrilling parts of working at Pixar is
there were people that were so different from me,
and yet we were all working on the same thing.
And I learned from them; they learned from me.
And that made me better at what I did
because I got to
hoover up all the things around me from them.
-: I think that you can just take a general rule
which is, you don't know
very much.
Period.
(people laughing)
And everything contains risk.
So the minute you feel safe, you should be afraid.
Because you're not safe.
-: Exactly. -: And,
the minute you feel comfortable,
you're probably either in a space
where you're completely wrong,
or you're in a place that you know so well,
you're not learning anything.
So, I think you have to always to be in a situation
you feel like slightly threatened,
slightly out of your comfort zone.
But excited enough and confident enough,
so that you're pushing into it.
And I think the minute you start to feel comfortable,
and if you become happy with that comfort,
it's kind of game over.
(audience laughing) You're an adult.
And you're just now in repeat mode.
And so I think that that,
I would phrase the question as slightly different.
It's not, how do you know what you don't know.
It's how do you continue to be in areas
where you feel like you don't know.
Because unless you don't know, you don't learn.
-: That's right. -: It's brilliant.
-: And if you're not learning, you're dying. (laughs)
-: Yeah.
-: Patty. -: Thank you.
-: Or did we have other?
Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
-: Hi there, I was gonna actually ask about production.
I've never made movies
or worked on large-scale community art projects,
but I've worked on video games before,
and of course we have a lot of the same,
at large studios, a lot of the same issues
of art talking with design talking with engineering.
And I find that at least in video games,
the really successful studios
have to be somewhat schizophrenic
because they have to have a period of
open discussion and creative churn and all this.
But at some point,
they also have to shut it down, and just execute.
And I have to imagine that Pixar would be a place
where that would be a science at this point.
Like, okay,
we've had the creative discussion we're gonna have,
but now, please go off and design 500 bricks.
(man chuckles) Or you know,
there is a point where you have to do the inhuman,
really boring tedious work of getting it out the door.
-: Right, so in the book
that my co-authors and I are writing.
We talk about these things.
One idea I think you're talking about there
is creative agility.
It's the ability to generate
and test a whole bunch of ideas.
So the idea of just doing brainstorming,
and everybody gets to throw out any idea.
That's interesting but not as interesting as
we throw out ideas,
but as the ideas are coming out
we are allowed to criticize them and test them
and see whether they're actually gonna go anywhere.
And then you get a feedback loop.
But then, when you have too many ideas out on the table
or you have a lot of them.
You have to have a way of having creative resolution.
Coming to a decision point.
And so, there are actually ways of thinking about this,
and it's more then a two-second conversation.
So, I'm happy to talk to you afterwards then.
-: Hi, so I have a question relating
to the art and technology, I guess, side of things
from the point of view of someone who creates tools.
And my question to you is,
right now there's this whole movement called STEAM.
So, science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
And so, the idea there is to bring art into teaching
science and tech and stuff.
And I've found that when you take artists
and give them technology and say,
go be creative and playful.
They're more than happy to do that.
They do so many wacky things.
But I'm also interested in bringing art to the engineers.
And when you tell an engineer,
use your tools to express yourself,
strangely enough, I find some of the most creative people
when it comes to problem solving get really, really stuck
when you ask them to tell a story or something.
And I was wondering if you had any advice
from that point of view,
as how do you give someone expressive confidence,
as opposed to problem-solving confidence.
'Cause both are creative,
but they're very different forms of creativity.
-: I think you have to sneak it in.
(audience laughing) I think you have to,
you basically have to trick them,
the engineers into believing
that they're actually creating a new tool, too.
Because I think that's the important thing is
the creative mind needs a problem to solve.
And especially with an engineer, right?
And if you want them to be just creative on their own,
you have create the limitations and the boundaries
in order for them to be creative within.
That's why, I don't know,
my suggestion would be to work with them
on making new tools as opposed to just giving them
a new tool and saying, be creative.
'Cause that's scary.
-: It is. -: If you gave me,
for example, I work big, right?
-: Okay.
-: If you gave me a canvas this big and you said,
create artwork on it, I'd be scared.
-: That's a good thing, right?
(people laughing) -: That's what Joi said.
I think it's a complicated question you're asking.
It's, how do you get somebody out of their comfort zone
to do something that they don't usually do?
So, I'll just tell you that,
I worked at Pixar and you guys all think
that I am personally responsible
for creating all those great movies.
Not so much, okay just sayin'.
I can't tell a story to save my life.
I can't draw a picture to save my life.
But I can help others be better at doing that themselves.
And so that's what my gift is.
And so I don't try and go and write a story
'cause that's just not my, that's not my gift.
And I do, there are stories that I can tell
that are my gift,
but there are some that are just,
how Pete Docter thought up Up is beyond me.
Where did he get that idea?
I mean, that's a crazy idea that there's a house
that gets taken away but with balloons
and there're talking dogs.
Like, really?
That's not what I do.
-: I think-- -: Anyway.
-: I'm gonna rip on that for just one second.
'Cause I don't know if this is true, in fact.
But, I would theorize
that school teaches you to become less creative
and forces you to kind of focus.
And some kids remain creative despite the fact,
but a lot of kids are turned into engineers.
By the time, they get to you,
it's kind of too late, you know?
And I think that a lot of the kids
at the Media Lab are the people who have been able
to keep that creativity despite their education.
Like, I saw you holding that embossing machine
from China being so excited about the tool
but also excited about the art.
But I kinda feel like
if you roll it all the way back to preschool,
and don't let you say that,
wait, I don't do painting.
Or I don't do art.
Because I kinda feel like
if you exercise some of those muscles.
You may not become the best,
but you may still have a lot more sort of
spectrum as adults if you just didn't
force people to be so focused.
-: I completely agree with that.
But I do think that there are some people
that are so good at what they do.
-: No doubt and I agree. -: That you're just
not gonna be that good.
And so when I-- -: Maybe at Pixar you don't.
But, yeah. -: Well that's the problem.
So I went to MIT.
And when I went here, I'll tell you.
I'm a very good engineer.
But I met people here
that I had no idea what they were talking about.
(people laughing) They like were up here.
And I realized that that's not my gift.
My gift is being able to talk to them
and talk to those people over there
and talk to these people over here.
And so,
-: Now, okay.
-: Do you see what I'm saying? -: Yeah.
There's your gift but then there's those
strengths, yeah. -: That's right.
-: Is this you?
Or, no, sorry.
Go ahead. -: Oh.
So one of the things we talked about
is how technology and art are essentially the same.
But when you were talking about the different Pixar movies
you mentioned some of the technological limitations
that happened.
You also mentioned that there's a big vision
for technology and art.
What are some of the biggest technological challenges
that are preventing the achievement of that vision?
-: Somebody told me that
somebody in this audience would ask that question,
and that I should be prepared.
The big one that I see that is holding things up for,
there're two actual things at Pixar I think
that could be done that are interesting questions.
Thing one is
most of the films that you've seen from Pixar,
when you see a Pixar film, you can kinda tell,
that that's a Pixar film, right?
'Cause they have a similar look and feel to them.
Wouldn't it be interesting to go and explore different looks
that you could do with a computer
that is not being currently done.
So I think that that's an interesting area to explore.
And then just in terms of hardcore technology
of how do you make this go faster.
And so can do it easier
'cause if you take the thought experiment of saying,
I have it in my head, and I just need to express it.
If I gave you a tool that could express it fast enough
then maybe that would work.
Lighting is another area
where it requires a lot of compute power
and a lot of human time to focus on.
Because you're placing a light here,
you have to wait for it to be processed.
You see the image.
Oh, that's not quite right.
And oh by the way it takes maybe 16 hours
to go from I moved the light to I get to see what happened.
If you could make that go from 16 hours to 2 seconds,
that would be a big deal.
So figuring out ways to get feedback to the artist
much more quickly,
so they can iterate more.
Because one of the things that makes a Pixar film go so well
is because the number of iterations on the story
and on the looks of each of the scenes.
So those are the two that I would say
that are interesting right now.
There're probably a bunch of other ones,
but those are the ones I'm thinking of.
-: Maybe one last question.
I'm sorry,
how 'bout you? -: Oh, sorry.
-: Go ahead.
-: So before I came to MIT,
I actually was a screenwriter and playwright.
So I spent a good chunk of my time thinking about
how you put together stories
and really on a ones and zeroes level.
So it's something that absolutely fascinates me.
But what I'm really interested in is how does a movie,
so Monsters, Inc. is my personal favorite,
how does a movie like Monsters, Inc. or Up
get green-lit based on the kind of concepts
which the movies are based on?
You know, you said, just said,
how does someone think of picking up a house with balloons?
How does that not get thrown away on the writing table?
-: That's a really, really good question.
So,
there are four or five guys at Pixar
that are called the brain trust.
And these are the directors that have actually made movies,
and they worked on Toy Story together.
They worked on A Bug's Life together and Toy Story 2.
So they've been there done that many times.
So when one of them comes up with an idea,
and does their story pitch,
it's not a guarantee that it will get green-lit.
But if that story kinda makes sense,
and you can see that there's an arc there.
And that it's gonna be an interesting world
that's never existed before.
Then, yeah let's take the chance
because we, Pixar, have built a process
that will support that person
to get and fill out that vision, right?
So they may have a big vision of what they're trying to do,
but they don't know the details
of what they need to get done.
And if somebody can sort of see how to do that
and buy into, yeah that will work,
then it'll go.
But there have been pitches that have been made
that weren't green-lit.
But, I always say that making a movie at Pixar
is like jumping out of an airplane
with everything you need to make a parachute,
and you know that you have all the parts.
You just don't know where they are,
and you have to put them together before you hit the ground.
That is what basically the goal that's going on,
or the game that's going on here.
Because you have to take that leap of faith
that the story is gonna make it.
And that, yeah, so there's some details here that,
first of all, we don't know how to make that.
You know, computationally, right?
Or visually we don't know how to do that.
And then, the story arc needs some work as well.
And you have to believe,
and we take that leap of faith and go.
So, I guess that's. -: I know Patty wants
to get in a last word.
-: Please?
-: Yeah, question for Greg.
So you talked a lot about how Pixar has been pushing
towards more
or photorealistic animation,
better physics and so on.
And it seems to me that that means actually
that the artists have less expressive freedom
rather than more
because they are stuck with making things look like reality.
And I'm curious to what extent you guys have looked at
totally different aesthetics and other styles
of animation like Bob Sabiston who came from the Media Lab
with his rotoscoping work and so on.
It seems it would be interesting to
explore sort of very different looks
and very non-photorealistic types of animation
and building tools for those.
-: Right, so if I've left you with the impression that
the tools that have been built are constraining our artists
then I have done a bad job here.
Actually the whole point of making these tools
is the artists are saying to the technical people,
I need a tool that will help me do this,
so that I can then express this.
And so, I don't think that it's actually a limitation that
in the physics and so forth.
'Cause it's cartoon physics.
I mean, really, there is no world of talking cars, right?
And cars can't lift their, you know, legs?
What do you call them?
Wheels? (chuckling)
And the world of monsters and so forth.
I mean, these are like,
think about what you're actually asking there.
I mean, these are crazy places
that were created at Pixar that don't exist.
And they don't actually obey the laws of physics really.
But I think to your point, and I mentioned this earlier,
the look and the stylization of Pixar films,
I think just people will get to a point where
they wanna see something new.
And people at Pixar are already working on
what would that look like?
And how would that feel, and what could we do?
You're absolutely right
that you need to poke at those things,
but it's not because the tools are constraining the artists.
It's really what do the artist wanna do
and have we built those tools yet.
'Kay?
-: Thanks very much everyone, and thanks Greg and Josh.
-: Thank you. (audience applauding)
-: Thank you.