Highlights - MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer - Pianist - Environmentalist

Highlights - MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer - Pianist - Environmentalist

Award-winning Composer & Pianist
His album Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time
Film & TV scores for Ad Astra · Black Mirror · Shutter Island · The Leftovers · Arrival · Taboo

For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.

So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.

MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer - Pianist - Environmentalist

MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer - Pianist - Environmentalist

Award-winning Composer & Pianist
His album Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time
Film & TV scores for Ad Astra · Black Mirror · Shutter Island · The Leftovers · Arrival · Taboo

For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.

So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.

Highlights - Julio Ottino - Founding Co-Director of Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems

Highlights - Julio Ottino - Founding Co-Director of Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems

Julio Ottino is an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University. He is the author, with Bruce Mau, of The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. He was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. In 2008, he was listed in the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era”. In 2017, he was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering.

Highlights - Julio Ottino - Founding Co-Director of Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
The Creative Process Podcast - Arts, Culture and Society

Today's complex problems demand a radically new way of thinking — one in which art, technology, and science converge to expand our creativity and augment our insight. Creativity must be combined with the ability to execute; the leaders and innovators of the future will have to understand this balance and manage such complexities as climate change and pandemics. The place of this convergence is THE NEXUS. In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Riya Patel with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Riya Patel.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Julio Ottino - Author of “The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science”


Julio Ottino - Author of “The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science”


Julio Ottino is an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University. He is the author, with Bruce Mau, of The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. He was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. In 2008, he was listed in the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era”. In 2017, he was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering.

Julio Ottino - Author of “The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World - The New Convergence of
The Creative Process Podcast - Arts, Culture and Society

Today's complex problems demand a radically new way of thinking — one in which art, technology, and science converge to expand our creativity and augment our insight. Creativity must be combined with the ability to execute; the leaders and innovators of the future will have to understand this balance and manage such complexities as climate change and pandemics. The place of this convergence is THE NEXUS. In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Riya Patel with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Riya Patel.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

(Highlights) DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU

Writer, Activist, Comparative Literature Professor
Author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back

To explore different worlds. That’s what literature has taught me. Reading has taught me how difficult it is to write well, to do you something other than the mundane or the expected, so all those things point to a kind of human creativity and a human capacity to both create and also to learn. To learn about life in different ways and to pass on those lessons to other people. One thing I think great teachers do is to embody what they talk about, the values that they profess, the things they feel are important in their everyday lives outside of the literature. So when I become involved in politics or a cause, it’s a reflection of what I've learned through any number of things including literature. Literature doesn’t stand alone. Literature is part of the world.

(Highlights) STEVE MILLER

(Highlights) STEVE MILLER

Artist & Environmentalist

I have this idea art should be in the world in as many forms and ways as possible, and I love communicating with skate decks… It partially started out in Brazil because what I was doing in Brazil is x-raying animals in the Amazon and I thought there was this idea in the old days that you’d go to the Amazon, you’d kill an animal, stuff it, bag it, and then you’d have this trophy of your kill. The alligators that we x-rayed were alive. I got them from a zoo in a town called Belem, which means Bethlehem in Portuguese.

STEVE MILLER

STEVE MILLER

Artist & Environmentalist

I have this idea art should be in the world in as many forms and ways as possible, and I love communicating with skate decks… It partially started out in Brazil because what I was doing in Brazil is x-raying animals in the Amazon and I thought there was this idea in the old days that you’d go to the Amazon, you’d kill an animal, stuff it, bag it, and then you’d have this trophy of your kill. The alligators that we x-rayed were alive. I got them from a zoo in a town called Belem, which means Bethlehem in Portuguese.

MATS HJELM

MATS HJELM

Artist, Documentary Filmmaker & Multimedia Installation Creator

Art can be part healing process. There's a lot of research being done. People heal faster a garden rather than a parking lot, for example. The theory is that an opening in the woods with a little bit of water is probably the most healing place. That's the safest because that's what we have built-in as humans as the safe spot. The ocean is not safe, but the little pond. So, what I've done in this particular project with the radiotherapy rooms is that I've taken images from healing wells, partly from Stellenbosch National Park in Capetown, in Rio. I've been filming these water surfaces. I’ve been filming the trees through the water surface basically to create that water pond and the trees around, but from these places that have kind of a healing history.

PATON MILLER

PATON MILLER

Artist & World Traveler

When we moved back to Hawaii and lived on Molokai. I was teaching at the Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony, we had no money. And I was spearfishing, not for sport, but to get food for my family. And it was a beautiful time of our lives. We were so poor, but we were not poor. Poor is a state of mind. We were without money, but we were having so much fun.