Turning human weakness into creative superfuel

[Music]

thank you so much for that introduction

i brought my backpack because we are

going on a journey

50 years of creative research

in the sea of creativity and

first i want to try to explain the brain

and how i see the brain

for this creative journey i’ve sort of

done a new kind of model and i would

like to show it to you so maybe you will

think about the brain in a different way

from after this

this is sort of the typical picture of a

brain you have the two sides

left and right or whatever you call it

creative or and structural

and i would like to look at it in a

totally different way

i would like to split it up in two parts

and i would like to call it the known

and the unknown

and this can actually give us sort of a

visual presentation of

the journey we’re on because this is a

journey that’s inside the brain you

don’t need

any uh you don’t need to cross any

borders this is an unlimited

journey so if you look at it as one of

the side of the brain is a boat

it’s the safe place you can keep all

your stuff and then you have the sea

and you take the boat and you place it

in the sea

and then you actually have a working

model for this creative travel

most people have sort of a sort of a

limited

kind of of c uh and it’s controllable it

can give you a bit of a

of uh waves and so on but it’s it’s it’s

pretty uh

sort of controllable and you can see the

edge of the sea

and the thing that happens when you uh

when you grow up

you tend to sort of go into this

situation

where the amount of water that you can

move in

is sort of shrinking and you think okay

my boat is safe

it’s uh i know my stuff everything is uh

is in place but the stuff that the

things that happened to me is that

my c just keeps getting bigger and

bigger

and from the very beginning when i was

standing on on the boat

in my young young years i was looking

into the sea and i just wanted to jump

in because there was so much opportunity

in here

[Music]

and the great thing is that

i brought this the only tool you need

is a pencil and this pencil is totally

magic because

at one end it has a focused delivery

point

of product in the other end it has

infinite possibilities

so having this in my hand i jumped into

the sea

and this is me at four years old

in the first picture and this other

drawing i did

a couple of years ago uh to try to

explain

the freedom you have uh in this sea and

you don’t need to use a pencil you can

use

all kinds of material so so this uh

this travel agency is 24 7 it’s low cost

and it’s immediate you can go anywhere

so this is the amazing power of the

brain

and i can clearly say my starting point

for my journey

came when i was sitting watching the

black and white tv

and jacques cousteau came on with his

adventures

in to the edge of the world and beyond

and this totally sparked a dream that

you could actually

you could live in the sea you didn’t

have to stay stay on the boat

so watching these things it totally

connected me with water and i

basically think that water is the

creative substance

it’s a it’s a magical place and yeah

you know when you’re in water you are

happy uh

sort of on a general scale uh sort of uh

it sort of it induces happiness

uh so i could hear yelling from the boat

you know my parents were standing up

there

come up come up you can’t you can’t stay

in that sea you had to get an education

you had to

learn about the life you know the real

way you had to dry out those

that water and uh but i was staying

there and i was i actually spotted a

possibility because there was this

amazing vehicle circling around in the

creative sea

and it was called advertising because

this was a safe place you can crawl

inside

this amazing yellow submarine and you

could actually stay

in creativity world and actually make a

living at the same time

so i crawled inside and yeah

this was an amazing place i walked

around copenhagen with my

drawings looking at all the different

agencies and they say get an education

get an education and the last place i

went

they actually liked what i did and they

invited me in

and this happened to be the most

fantastic agency in the world

because they had the most amazing client

yeah i’m talking about a toy company

called lego

and a little

time later i actually had another

experience

because i started to get this blind spot

on my retina and imagine this

living the dream and living the

nightmare at the same time i went into

to the hospital and was put inside a mri

scanner

and i had a look into my brain so this

was really a

it was an amazing experience because it

showed me that

was something that shouldn’t be there

but

at the same time it gave me a totally

creative look on the world because you

need to take your

weakness and use it as creative fuel

this was the kind of picture you don’t

want to take home when you are 20 years

old

but this was looking inside my brain and

there was

something not supposed to be there it

was a tumor

it was pressing on the pituitary gland

and it was pressing on my optical cord

so at the same time i was opening up the

creative world i was getting shut down

from inside

this was really really uh not a good

development

but i found out that the the body is

basically made out of chemistry

so i’ve put a little extra sentence in

this assist to be or not to be

that’s a matter of chemistry uh because

i got these pills i got these

capsules that i was eating every day and

they

were starting to like like an army of

small medical soldiers going into my

body and fighting this

tumor this was really amazing it was not

cancer

so i had really the feeling of being

reborn when i went out of that hospital

again

but the cameras chemistry had in effect

it had a side effect

and i want to rephrase survival of the

fittest

because my experience was survival of

the weakest

i had to sort of almost crawl my way

into the agency because every morning

i would feel like a zombie because of

the medicine and basically my next

object i will take forward is imagine

being

in an advertising agency where you know

everything is about you know fantastic

living and

colors and so on but when i came to the

agency i crawled into the bathroom

and i took this and you know you can

apply creativity in a lot of ways

because you can use this as a pillow as

well

so i was lying uh in the bathroom of the

agency

with my head on this and that also

redesigns another sentence

being on a roll has another meaning i

was on this role for

10 years eating the medicine and making

strange connections

in my brain which actually led to this

next development

because our fantastic client

had this series of mechanical

or biological heroes made out of

parts and it needed a story near the

universe

so why not take the capsules that i have

been eating for 10 years

and made them into this

product it’s gone after the market so i

this is not advertising but this is uh

this is bionicle and it’s a biological

chronicle

so taking the disease taking the story

of the

of the of the body that had to be

rebuilt

and put it into sort of a legendary

setting that is what bionicle is about

and this story had a 10-year

run with a lot of fans around the world

and

it’s still actually out there a lot of

fans have continued to build

and yeah those people are

going into education now they are taking

uh classes in 3d modeling and so on and

they uh

i’m still in contact with them so this

is fantastic

this is actually the secret behind the

whole bionicle

legend that you have this gigantic robot

line underneath the sea

the island that the the heroes arrive at

is um is the face

of the robot and the whole fight is

about

getting rid of the virus that’s

in this robot so taking the illness

into storytelling is a fantastic way of

of

coping with the problems and weaknesses

and the biological

uh yeah adversary

but what happens when you’re in this

submarine of advertising

uh you start to develop another blind

spot

and that’s actually uh that’s actually

uh

entitled blind spot and i think it’s

it’s a problem of a lot of uh

the western culture that you know we

think that everything is okay we

we are sort of we are on the boat we

have everything safe we

we have a pleasant everyday life i know

there’s a lot of trouble right now with

the cobit

but i will get back to that because this

was what happened to me

i had to get back into the water i had

to get get sort of this numbness out of

my

fingers and i had to sort of go back to

depending on this one

so when i went out back into the water

and looked back at the boat

i suddenly saw this this is sort of a

representation of the whole human

civilization being on a cruise

which a couple of years ago was sort of

a perfect vacation form but now it’s

more like a

horror movie being secluded on on this

on this boat but this is actually a

civilization in

a nutshell and you can find everybody

on the globe in this drawing some will

be under the water line some will be

on top inside the gyrosphere and some

will be in the front

looking for the future trying to get the

other ones to react

so based on this thing i will say that

creativity has a totally new role

uh it used to be advertising selling

stuff it used to be entertainment

but now we have we are on a quest for

humanity and the creative

people everybody needs to be on this

because we need to use the water as a

mirror

to look at ourselves and um

we also oh this text has jumped a bit

we need to move from hero to vero and

what i mean with that is

we have been searching for heroes to fix

our problems for

years and years of our civilization but

i think we’re getting to the point in

2021

where we realize that it’s actually us

it’s the we

that needs to take care of stuff and i

can see traces of this

all around you can see young teenagers

fighting for

climate change uh you know getting that

on the on the

agenda you can see old scientists doing

tv programs

about nature that is uh disappearing

you can see uh all the scientists doing

the

vaccines and so on these are these are

sort of

uh heroes that are attracting

attention to the we that we need to

accept that we are together in this so i

really want all the creatives on the

on the globe to unite we have this one

boat we are sailing in

and we need to use creativity to to make

change

so the story i really want to tell is

that going on a

rescue mission in the near near future

you can imagine having your

near relative in the future lying in

this uh

orange safety raft and you are maybe

controlling the drone on top trying to

save this

you know distant relative and you have a

windmill

which is like a new energy

and some years it will be the old way of

doing things

maybe it will be the safe haven for for

this

future relative i’m actually inviting

everybody into this

new creative storytelling project

inspired by the global goals

and it’s actually about our everybody’s

near future and our unborn children

and the world they’re going to live in

we should tell stories about that we

should focus on that

and creativity should become a serious

science

so the last thing i want to take out of

my

bag here that is uh

we’ve been giving this fantastic gift

of the global goals and i really want to

say to people

don’t make this into a blind spot don’t

just put it on your

on your jacket as a little symbol and

then you’re safe

this is this is a fantastic story engine

it’s a story starter

and you should play with it you should

put it into action

so uh for the next slide

be ready for the future tell the stories

and uh

keep this in your hand then you will be

safe in the water of creativity

thank you

you