> [!cite]- Metadata > 2025-07-02 07:55 > Status: #secondary #course > Tags: `Read Time: 41m 11s` > Es Devlin is an English artist and stage designer. She is known for creating large-scale performative sculptures and environments that fuse music, language and light. Devlin works in a range of media, often mapping light and projected film onto kinetic sculptural forms. > [!Tip] [Class Guide Book](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fe6uypzsChhYJK5mEMZmHvcfWXVmM-lK/view?usp=sharing) > [!Abstract]- 1. **Meet Your Instructor** > I used to spend quite a lot of time in the dark as a kid on my own. > > I guess one place you could go and have some kind of control over the environment was a small magical dark cupboard under the stairs. > > It was a place where using a light, using a torch, using a small projector you could create a world of your own. > > How do you give physical form to something that's abstract? > > How do you give physical concrete form to something as nebulous and abstract as music? > > To an idea, to a thought, or to imagination. Give it feet of clay. > > I think so many artists, designers, makers, once you start to peel away the surface you realize they are making to conquer a sense of loss or a sense of something that's been taken away. > > My practice began in small scale theaters, then to large theaters, then to large scale opera houses, then to pop music. > > I think it's important to define what it means to be a performance designer, or what it means to be a designer in general. The label itself is sort of strainy at the seams. The hierarchies we form at any given environment are tricky. > > I started to wear the garment of "I am an artist" and I liked it. > > I think more and more what you'll find as you enter out into the world is that we are entering definitions that are somewhat more borderless and less boxed in. You should lean into that. You should define yourself as a multi-hyphenate of whatever you want to. Honestly, make it up. Add all the hyphens. > > I think it's important in this class that I give you not only the sort of general principles which might apply to whatever field you are in. > Equally I want to give you really granular advice. Things I have learned in this field working over two decades. > > I want you to feel at the end of this class that you have more choices. Whether it's in the field you currently work, whether it's about expanding the fields that you currently work, or whether it's specifically in the field of design. > > This class is for those who have ideas. Who have forms in their mind, who have shapes or thoughts or philosophies. This class is for those who want to turn something in their mind into something they can hold in their hand. This class is for those who meet a fork in the road and don't know which path to take. I'm here to tell you. Take both. And then take both again. > [!Abstract]- 2. Research, Then Sketch > everything really does start with a pencil and paper. > > one of the most important things you will have to learn is how do you go from the idea into actually bringing that thing to life as it occurs in your imagination. > > pretty much every project begins with entering a world that you will then transform into a new world and communicate to people. > > the easiest way to enter a world is through research. find patterns in the books and in the research. Maybe lots of people have looked at one thing or another thing, but you may be the first person to make that connection. > > Origami architecture. 2D to 3D. Children love the simplicity. > > James Gleick - Chaos. 1967. > > Your life will be an endless, and I hope fruitful and happy journey, of endlessly not knowing enough. Maybe forget about the "re" and just say "search" because really what you are doing is searching for a way in for you. > > I had a wonderful teacher when learning stage design. Kandice Cook and she said "Never think without a pencil." Always have a pencil in your hand while you think and you'll leave these traces behind. > > Trace paper > > This is a bifurcating structure. It reaches a fork in the road and it chooses both paths. > > Always I am interested in Labyrinths and Mazes. It's something that I think most of us are. It's something that we feel. Constantly wandering through mazes. Meeting walls, meeting obstructions, having to make choices. > > Don't ever be afraid of imitation. Don't ever be afraid of standing on the shoulders of others who have had extraordinary ideas. > > I went to an exhibition on Salvador Dali and when I walked in I thought my god, this is Picasso, this is Braque, this is Chagall, and I realized that Dali had just been trying on different versions of himself until he figured out who Dali was. That's fine. > > I might start by taking an Xray of the bronchial tree within the lung. As I research and learn that sketch might turn into something like this. That may turn into a maze like this. > > Mazes are pathways. (My insight) > > If you just force yourself, even when you think you've arrived at something interesting, to just go at it three more times, then the third time might just push you out of your comfort zone. You might just infuriate yourself into having a new idea. > > Forest of Us is a work that invites the audience to be the protagonist. It's an artwork, but it's not for sale, instead people come in it and take photographs of themselves. > > People were making the same labyrinths all over the world and they didn't know it. The labyrinths within us, the human body. > > How could I go from a single story labyrinth to a multistory labyrinth? > > From there it became a really simple model. Using pins using glue, thinking really quickly, how can I create stairs and layers. Then of course this whole process of safety and fire exits and all sorts of parameters and logistics. > > You have to keep coming back to the core idea and not get lost when it tries to be diluted by fire exits and safety handrails. > > Your sketch is your intent > > one of the most important things you will have to learn is how do you go from the idea into actually bringing that thing to life as it occurs in your imagination. and all of the thousands of steps and people that are between. > > My advice is really, at every stage, reprise your view on the whole thing. > > For example, you might have a vision of a fabulous giant sphere made of helium and edge to it in gold leaf, right? It'll soon become apparent that helium is a scarce source and you're not going to be able to get enough helium and gold lead is too expensive. > > My advice to you is don't then get aversional. You have to always calibrate at what point does a version of actually become a new idea. Ask yourself, if I can't get exactly the version of it that I had in my mind, does this version of it work? > > You'll always be able to, like a barometer that goes from green to red, just ask yourself "Is it still expressive of the idea that I had in my sketch or is it something else?" then it's a case of rapidly taking people and turning around. that problems scales. > > Constantly audit your idea and constantly iterate. > [!Abstract]- 3. Scale Models > There's no human being that I know that doesn't love a miniature model. It starts when we're kids, doll houses, a model house. Then it's architectural, models of cities, models of your living room. > > I think it has something to do with the ability that humans have to operate from a number of perspectives at once. > > There's also a factor to which the model is a kind of currency, a sort of communication tool. So for example, any artist or designer who wants to make a piece at some kind of scale. A large sculpture or a large set design. When I have a large model and I'm able to put it on the table, it means all of my collaborators can learn from it. Can apply their craft and their magic to it. > > Sure we can communicate through drawings and computer renderings, but there's something really democratic about a model that's placed on a table in a room full of collaborators. > > The process needs to be as quick as my ideas. > > I might make 3-15 models for an idea. > > Cardboard, mountboard, mirrored cardboard. > > The choice of materials that you make may be governed by many things, you might be working in your bedroom or a huge workshop. That will change the parameters of your materials to a degree. > > In my case, I am ridiculously impatient, and weirdly quite lazy, although I work very hard. I think at heart one of the reasons I work quite hard is to mitigate my innate laziness. > > The reason I love working in paper is because it's so obedient and it will do exactly what I tell it. If I fold it then it will fold. If I tear it then it will tear. > > What's interesting is the material you choose will influence your train of thought. When working with clay, something really organic and really messy, it gets into your hands. > > Work with every material and don't be afraid to get into it. > > I had a slightly unusual relationship myself with models and miniatures because I happened to grow up in a small seaside town in the south of England called Rye. One of the peculiarities of this town was it had a model of itself that a teacher and an electrical engineer made as a hobby. > > The weird thing about this model was it spoke, and it sang, and it would tell you little stories. So a voiceover and a sort of son Lumiere, a little light show would appear every Saturday morning. > [!Abstract]- 4. Scale and Architecture > I was I guess, like any child, surrounded by things in an Alice in Wonderland way, that were way larger than myself. Which is a useful context to be placed in to recapture that moment of looking at things from a different perspective, of looking up. > > We so often look out, we look down. We don't look up. So even that, in itself, is valuable. > > I think experiencing ourselves at scale. Even experiencing ourselves as small creatures in relation to something larger than ourselves, experiencing ourselves as powerful creatures in relation to something tinier than ourselves -- these are all really useful mental and psychological exercises that you can play with if you're working at a sculptural scale in performance. > > **"Carmen Hands": A LESSON IN SCALE** > > One of the dreams of anyone who works in performance design is to design at Bregenz Festival on Lake Constance in Austria. It is singularly, perhaps, one of the most challenging environments in which to design because you are designing an object which is going to emerge from a lake which is tidal. So the water will rise by 1.8 meters, six foot, throughout the course of the run of the show. So you need to design something that looks good no matter how high the water is. > > So if you want to make a connection between the water and the object, you've got to think really carefully about how the performance might transition between water and object with this tidal variation. So it's quite an engineering adventure. > > And in terms of scale, these giant hands that you see that just magically appeared behind me -- they are versions that are 1/8th the size of the hands that we made at Bregenz which were 35 meters tall, 100 foot. > > It was for the opera Carmen so how were these things going to work? What would be the big gesture? How would we account for all the moments in the opera that have to tell the story? How do we present the singers? How would we communicate the tragedy at the heart of the piece, the choices that are made by the protagonists? > > There's one very specific moment in the third act of the opera where Carmen deals out tarot cards and she sees her fate. And there's a piece of music called "The Death Theme." And that emerges when she comes up with the Death card in the tarot and she doesn't want to accept her fate, so she takes the cards and she throws them in the air. > > So huge engineering feat to make these cards look like they're just suspended when in fact, if you look around the back, there's a whole load of brute metallic force carefully engineered to hold them in place. > > If you work in theater design, stage design of any sort, if you work in architecture or events, maybe, also, you'll be familiar with this tool. This is a model figure. > > I think we read an awful lot into human made larger than themselves, for better and for worse. And I actually was quite in awe of these giant hands. It's something humans have always done -- to take the human form and explore what it feels like at different scales. > > Emotionally, it's very resonant. It can be powerful for positive and negative use, I think. > > **Making Giant Things** > > It's engineers and fabricators who will lend all of their expertise to make these things actually work. So if this is something you want to embark on, you will need a commitment, a budget, some time. These are not things that can be rushed. > > Large scale design with projection mapping > > In the end thanks to some brilliant engineers, and some unexpectedly unwindy weather we were able to use this sculpture on the stage at Coachella. That's just where you have to assess risk and have a hunch. > > So much of what your work will be if you choose to take this kind of path is to have a sense of the just-about possible. Because that's really where you want to be working -- not in the possible, not in the impossible, but in the just-about possible. > > You have to have a few failures to know where the edge of possibility lies. So I may have tried a few things that were impossible in my time. > > **Invitation 1** > > I think it's a really interesting challenge that you might all want to have a go at, whether you're a video designer, a furniture designer, a clothes designer, whatever it is. If you are used to working always at one scale, be that larger than life, smaller than life, one-to-one life scale, why not just invite yourself to switch scale for a day to see what happens. > > **Invitation 2** > > A really interesting exercise which is quite common in theater design schools, which you might want to have a go at is to measure things. We actually have a pretty unclear sense, often, of what actually is the measurement of things. Like this room. How wide is this room? How tall is this room? How high are the shelves? How tall are the objects? > > Observation -- go around with a ruler. Just measure stuff. Go around and measure things and just make a model of it. > [!Abstract]- 5. Storytelling with Light > Light is one of the ways that you can most directly and dramatically affect people's emotion and tell them stories. If you think about it, we tell stories to children in the dark, don't we? > > We concentrate better with our ears when our eyes are focused on perhaps a small area of light. Rather than too much, information. So light and dark are very important tools for telling stories and communicating emotion. > > When I was a kid we used to have a small projector. It had a little roulette wheel, a carousel of slides. And you'd press a button, and the next slide would come in front. All that a slide is, really - a little glass slide is just a mixture of light and dark and various shades in between, different ways of allowing light through an aperture. > > So I learned a little bit just about how slide projection works from a really early age. And I guess when I was a kid, slide projectors were used for photographs, family footage. So was in my mind a connection between memory and time and the past. > > How could time be captured on a piece of glass? Then be brought back to life by light being illuminated behind that glass with a little bit of printed ink and obstruction on it? So to me, it was something quite magical. It was a way to reinvigorate time, I guess. > > So really simple forms that we just made out of a piece of paper, some glue, and some pins can start to come to life just by a simple, little dancing with light around them. Look how that changes the mood. > > Of course, with a mirror something extraordinary happens because each ray of light bounces off each piece of mirror and gets broadcast and disseminated around this. I can bounce the light from the mirror around everything else. Then using an aperture, control the light. Things that glow from within. Look how that transforms something that was all about how it reflected light to now being how it emanates light. > > I once worked with a theater director who said "ES, can you just not put a light in it?" I was like no, not really, no. For me it's really fascinating how these things behave. > > This is something really easy to do. Get a torch and play with it. > > We normally start in the dark. We begin our lighting sessions in the theater or in an arena. Or, actually, in a stadium, we work at night. We might start our lighting sessions at sort of midnight. The first action is to turn every single light off and begin by just carving out the elements that we want to talk about to bring the audience's attention to one thing at a time. > > Often, when I'm standing in an arena, I look up around. I'm like, oh my goodness. All of that space, all of those molecules of air -- how are they going to dance? How are we going to bring them to life? And light is something that will do that. > > The conversation between light and music is very important. So often the musicians we are working with will have sung these songs many times in front of audiences. The most portable thing is light, you can create kilometers of light out of one small 1/2-meter unit, right? The light is carrying the music in the particles. > > How do you manage when you're outside? How do you do a show in the daytime? The single most important event that happens on a big outdoor performance like that is the setting of the sun. At its most basic we are all gathered to see the sun setting in the context, that's the biggest event. > > Peppers Ghost. If you hold a mirror at 45 degrees you can create the illusion of somebody floating. > > I use mirror in two ways. One is a mirror that's pretending it's not there. For example I will sometimes put a mirror on the ceiling. The idea is that the audience doesn't think about this as a solid surface of mirror. What they do when they're standing in there is they look up, they see themselves, and they consider the room to be twice as high. So this mirror feels more like a glass portal. Imagine this mirror isn't there, and you are seeing beyond it. > > That's one way of using mirror, as an illusion device. > > Then at the same time all of these facets, on each of these walls are made of faceted mirror. If I'm being reflected in this mirror and someone else is standing near me, then I am kind of creating a spliced community of different audience members all seeing fragments of themselves all interwoven. > [!Abstract]- 6. Mazes and Patterns > Mazes have been made by human beings across so many cultures, for really, as long as we can remember -- ancient Greeks, Minoans, Aztecs. I think it may have something to do with an externalization of the forms of our own brains. The way that our brains are like a pair of mazes meeting each other within our skulls. They feel like a piece of psychological architecture. You don't go in them to get somewhere, you go into them to find yourself. > > I think as makers of performance work we sit in the dark a lot. We sit inside a lot. We look at screens a lot. I think the invitation, really, that I would give you as a student is go outside. Go find something complicated and messy. Find something that doesn't easily resolve itself. Find something that doesn't have straight lines anywhere. Observe it. Draw it. Study it. Take photographs of it. Be bemused by it. Confound yourself with it. Find something that you can't easily categorize, and then bring that back into your practice. Enrich your practice with something you don't understand yet. > > **Choose Your Own Adventure** > > A maze made of something that would naturally grow into a far more organic form. Had been pruned into boxes by human hands so in itself a kind of contradiction between growth and constraint and yet those parameters allow growth in the mind as you walk its paths, as you try and solve it, as you try and find your way out or find you way to the center. > > There's quite a distinction between a maze and a labyrinth. With a maze you have choices at every turn. With a maze it's a case of multiple choices and multiple decisions. With a labyrinth, actually, there's only one way to go. You'll find that with a labyrinth there are no choices. You just have to follow your path. > > So first, choose what of these forms is going to most express what you want to talk about. And then, I would say, you really do need to do a bit of research because there's quite a lot to learn about how to even start to draw them. It's fascinating because it'll remind you of how you think. > > How we think often is that we, as humans, stick our thoughts to objects, ascribing memories to certain trees and certain rocks in the landscape. We've always been creatures that want to make connections between the structures in our mind and the environments we find ourselves within and the objects around us. > > So a maze becomes a kind of expression of the mind. > > **Turn Systems and Patterns into Art** > > One of the many things that you may do if you start to design for the stage is you will gather a lot of information. You'll do research. You'll read the play. You'll read about the characters. You'll read about their histories. You'll read about the historical context. You'll amass a whole load of bits and pieces. And you'll need, then, to almost put on a new pair of glasses. A pair of glasses that seek some kind of unifying pattern or system that's going to allow you to actually conceive a useful correlative, a useful environment. To communicate all of these bit that you've now gathered. > > How do you go from this patchwork into one discrete gesture that you want to make? That's where you'll lean into your natural ability as a human to seek the system at the heart of things, to cook the pattern. > > For example, a play that's got 64 scenes, one in an airport, one in a restaurant, one in a hotel room -- what's the actual gesture that you're after? Seek for the gesture that's going to communicate. Seek for the system underneath. Find what it is. And by the way you're not just going to find it by kind of putting your finger in the air and waiting for it to land. > > You almost have to get more granular to be able to abstract. So for example if you are designing a play in each of these scenes, then go really granular on each scene. Go to a Chinese restaurant, listen to the clicking of the chopsticks. Go to the hotel room. Take photographs of every angle. Understand the system at play within each of those places. Then lay them all out in a row and say, right, what's the common thread? What is it that I can find and what is the point of each scene? What is each scene trying to tell me? And how can I only take the essence? The important thing about the Chinese restaurant was the way they sat next to each other. So I don't need anything else. I just need the two chairs. The important thing about the hotel room is the way he looked out the window. I just need the windowsill. And then you find suddenly, you've got two chairs, a windowsill, and whatever you needed from the park bench, one plank. Put those three in a row and suddenly have a sort of conversation between elements which will begin to form itself into something in your mind -- an object, a maze, whatever it might be. But don't be afraid to go incredibly granular before you then extract out because then you'll be abstracting from something really carefully observed. Because abstraction itself can be generalized, whereas abstraction from something really carefully, personally observed will have that meaning if you found it. > > Often I go to nature, not least because it's what I didn't study. You know, I studied poetry. I studied language. I studied art. I did not study science and I'm desperate the older I get to learn more. This will be a system that will inspire me. > > **Inside the body** > > I think if you're interested in systems and patterns, then it's very human of you, because most of us are. We are a pattern seeking species. And designers and artists -- really that's their 10,000 hours of expertise, in pattern finding, in zooming out looking at the bigger picture, and finding the pattern. > > So in your practice, whatever it is that you do, perhaps just become a little more conscious of when you're seeking a pattern, seeking the common denominators, when you're making the connections between things. And maybe just make a note of it, make a diagram. If we want to make changes in our culture, seeking the patterns and then making changes at a systemic level, at the level of pattern-making could be the way to the most profound changes that we want to see. > [!Abstract]- 7. The Audience > For an audience who's turning up at a theater, they are doing something which is quite unusual to them and every other aspect of contemporary life. They're putting themselves out of reach of others. They're committing to just this little community, just this temporary society. And they're committing just together to that one story, so you have to offer a return on that. > > One of the things that you're working with if you work in performance in any way or even working in anything that's going to be shared it doesn't have to be performance -- one of your prime materials is anticipation. Whether you are writing a book, creating a piece of art or whether you are painting a painting, whether you're making a performance, chances are the people who ultimately receive it will anticipate it in some way. How are you going to work with that anticipation? > > In theater the experience is perhaps more concentrated because it's happening is real time with people all together. So fans who are attending a pop concert, their anticipation has been felt often for days in the lead up to the concert. Their anticipation may have started a year ago when the tickets went on sale. Remember these are people who know the music better than the performers themselves often. So you're working with that anticipation. That's perhaps the most important ingredient. The hope. People's hope. > > Remember that these are all a part of the material you are working with and use them to your advantage. Use them to the advantage of the audience as well. > > The audience's anticipation is an indication of how much they trust you as a maker of something that they've committed time to. So if you sit down and you're watching a film you've put yourself in the hands of that filmmaker. You have to trust them. > > I would say anyone who's worked in stage design or performance has spent like 100,000 hours. Forget 10,000. One of the things in 25 years that I've spent probably many, many thousands, more than 10,000 hours is just sitting. Being in an audience. Being an audience whisperer. Audiences are the most sophisticated species. I think more than many people give them credit for. > > Sometimes I watch the performance through the mobile phone of the person in front of me. In a way you could see the phone as a window for each audience members' experience of the show. > > **The Biofeedback Effect** > > When an audience member watches a mother grieve for the loss of her soldier son they go through the same emotions. Their bodies will give off the same levels of serotonin and oxytocin. The audience empathizes and mirrors. The audience becomes connected because they have a shared memory of something. They witnessed a piece of time together. > > How can we become a community when we are not physically together? This is a great rehersal for forming communities across national and global boundaries. We will perhaps form communities virtually moving forward. A collective act of imagination makes life really worth living. You have to take the audience with you. > [!Abstract]- 8. Aperture and the Cube > We spend a lot of our lives going around with a kind of stencil of what we expect to see, different ways of searching for light. Piercing through surface to find depth. On each face, a different mode, a different entry point, a circular aperture, a triangular aperture, straight aperture, different ways in, constantly searching. > > In 2016, Es was invited to give a talk at the Serpentine Gallery in London. While giving the speech she built a sculpture in front of the audience which she called the "Miracle Box." On each side of the box is a different shaped aperture. This Miracle Box was a kind of portrait of her practice. Ways in which we were searching. Different ways to find the light. Different ways to access the center. Different ways of piercing through, tearing through, breaking through. > > We are always finding words for things we no longer need to say. That's really what the piece is about. A kind of personal portrait about her practice. Each side another attempt to say something in a new language. > > The term aperture we use just means an opening. But we use it also as a framing device. The aperture in a camera will determine how much light will pass through or how much image might pass through a lens. > > One of the disadvantages of working in theater is that a human being is always the size of a human being. In a film you can zoom in, they could become large in the frame, you can't do that in a theater. > > One of the things I do every morning as a practice is that every morning when I wake up I notice the line of light in my room. You probably have a line of light that arrives in your room every morning. That's an aperture that you all have. Just remember it is a connection between you and the nearest star. > > I use a cube often as a framing device. What's inside the frame? What's outside the frame? When am I breaking through the boundaries - and actually so many people who do this exercise like it because they are given parameters. One's first instinct is usually how do I break that? > > The translucent cube, cube as a structure, cube as a holding device. It's something that I have been playing with again and again. The conversation between the organic and the geometric. It's a conversation between control, the boundary, the parameters, and the revealing. > > The Revolving Cube. In the case of "The Seed" a sculpture in Abu Dhabi. The planting of a seed, the growth of a chute, the blossoming of a flower and finally to the dispersal of seeds. > > Coming back to film, so much of what we do is in series. How do you present your ideas in series. In a context where you're not moving your audience in a space with a camera. > > We are so used to, as a culture, receiving information via a screen or some kind of piece of film making. So many of the young playwriters were really writing film scripts. A lot of writers would end up taking their film scripts and turning them into plays. As a stage designer I had to adapt my practice. > > What is the theatrical equivalent of a cut, or a wipe? Of the expansion of the aperture, or the framing of that scene? How do you do a close-up in theater? One of the devices we came up with was a revolving cube. So often when we sit in a theater, we get frustrated because nothing moves. > > Do you get bored of flipping through the pages of a book? It's just a mechanism. What's within the pages is infinite. > > Cuboid. A rectangular cube. Intimacy at a grand scale is a phrase we use often. IMAX screens. Often they are big. Never big enough. A huge monolith that could split apart. > [!Abstract]- 9. Creative Leadership and Collaboration > The work of being an artist, the work of being a stage designer fluctuates. You're alone, then you're with a a few, then you're with many. I'm surrounded by people who not only help me communicate my own ideas, but bring their ideas to the process as well. > > Usually I work with eight associate designers in my immediate studio, which is in my front room, in my house. We work together and eat together. They'll work through ideas with me. My group in the studio is fluctuating. These are people who love the versatility, the flexibility, the variety that they experience in any given day. It really requires their analytical mind. They love to think. It is in the space of thinking and doing that this studio exists. > > Chimerica 2013. Into becoming 3D models into becoming objects. > > As a stage designer really, the career path is generally you work on your own to begin with. As you start to further gain experience you may have an assistant. You need to provide an environment for them to grow. > > At the moment, the way that I run my studio is a balance between brutally, projects which can fund the studio and projects which I want to do and I want to explore, even if they're entirely self-funded. So if you run a studio and you have people to pay, you have to consider that. Then when the project comes into the room you throw all that out the window. You're handed the menu, the menu has no prices on it because you care. > > And each project has to be great. Really the criteria are, does the prime text resonate with me? If it's a play or a piece of music do I echo to the same vibration of it? Have I got anything to add to it? Is there anything through me that I can add it? If yes, definitely do the project. If no, next question, is there an opportunity to hijack the project and say, actually, this music's okay, I don't adore it yet, but I think the opportunity to develop some of the things I've been thinking about. I think the context. I think the people. If some of these things align then maybe I could take on the project. > > Things to avoid. If you haven't enjoyed a one hour conversation with the person you are collaborating with, then you really have to have a good reason to spend more time with that person. So think hard about that. Don't definitely say no. If the person is hard to be with, but inspiring, then stick with it. It will be tough. But stick with it. > > I don't like the word client. I don't use the word client, it's kind of banned. Why don't I like the word client? I don't like it because it reduces the relationship, the collaboration, to a transaction, a kind of financial hierarchy. One person is paying, one person is being paid. For me, that is really the least of anyone's worries. Everybody is giving their life to this collaboration. I don't like the sound or smell of the word client so I don't use it. So I tend to refer to all my collaborators as collaborators. > > The way it will work generally is the work is both reactive to invitation but also often proactive, and a word I use quite a lot is hijack. Often, I'm invited to do one thing, but I kind of purposely misread the email and hijack whatever that invitation was to do whatever I really want to do. Entertain the notion of trying this method out. Next time you are asked to do something, whatever it is, just consider if you could hijack that request to serve your own ends while serving the request. Just think about your own body of work and think "How could this request be something that elides and coincides with things that I am interested in." You may be doing it subconsciously, but do it consciously. Everyone will be happy. > > One of the enemies of good work, I think, is fear. So take fear out. The real contributor to good work is trust. There's your own trust in your work. There's trust in you collaborators. As you build trust, you can bring more to the collaboration. > > You'll often find that you'll be able to go from project to project purely based on what people say it was like to work with you. So it doesn't matter if the work is amazing. How people enjoy and feel fulfilled by your practice will have a real impact on how your design moves forward. > > I would advise you, whatever you're working on, to try to avoid the conversation about budget for as long as possible. Just start with the ideas, because one thing I have learned is that ideas can be expressed in a number of registers depending on what the budget it. If you are confident in the idea then when budget is talked about it will be far easier and comfortable to make the changes you need to make. If you start talking about budget in the beginning you'll never get to the place of saying what you really want to say. > > Often, you may find yourself presenting an idea that you know will not happen. You know it's just the wrong side of possibility. And whether it's to do with physics or wind conditions or budgetry parameters, you know this idea won't happen. I invite you anyway to present it if it's the absolute core belief that you have, this is the right idea here. Because from presenting that I idea that you really believe in, you will then evolve in line with the parameters to something that's a version of it that's doable. Please, present what you really want to do. Please don't self edit. There will be enough people who will want to dilute your ideas. Just don't do it to yourself. > [!Abstract]- 10. The Weeknd > There's a kind of pattern to all pop concerts. It's a little like the flight path of an airplane and it starts with liftoff. If you decide that you would like to design for live music, ask yourself at the show what is actually happening? > > What is the transference of energy? What's the phenomenon? What's actually happening when people come to a pop concert? It's something like a flight path. > > The line graph as a shape. The linear shape of action across time. > > Don't let the audience down. Their anticipation is your most important ingredient. They don't know what to expect. All they know is they've come to see the person they've heard. They want to be in the room with them. > > Hold on to great collaborators. One of the things that I really recommend, if you possibly can, if you find a collaborator, marry them. Or if you can't do that at least hold them close and don't let them go. Because your life in this kind of practice will depend on the quality of your collaborations. So when you find those collaborators, don't let them go. With every project go deeper. You have to craft that as if it were clay. > [!Abstract]- 11. Memory Palace > Every map is an act of taking control. When you map something and you mark it, there's nothing objective about that. Every map is subjective. Our maps are mirrors of our cultural point of view. > > It's a really good exercise if you want to start building a muscle of translating thoughts you might have into objects you might make, set yourself this task. Without thinking too hard, write down the 10 most important most salient memories that most define you as a person. Just write them down, don't think about it, just do it. > > When you've done it then draw! Anything that comes to mind when you think of these memories. Then with more time, once you've got the sketch captured, take time and make a small model. Or find an object that expresses it and put those in a row. Allow that to be the beginning of your reminder, of your train of thought. > > There was a book that was written in the house that I grew up in by an author named Joan Aiken and it was called "A Necklace of Raindrops." With every story told another raindrop would add to the necklace. So make your own necklace of raindrops. > > Memory Palace was a large scale installation that mapped pivotal shifts in human perspective over 73 millennia. When I was about 16 years old, an English teacher gave me a book called "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci." And for me who, was interested in the coalition of things abstract and concrete, memory palace was an invitation for exploration. > > What I learned from reading the book was about systems, mnemonic systems, that we use from the ancient Greeks, from aboriginal cultures. So many cultures have these systems where you, as a human, ascribe an abstract memory to a concrete object. Someone thing that has no form except in your mind, some sparks and some ignitions between your synapses can be ascribed a position. > > For example the way a memory palace works is you would start from a position in a room and then say to yourself "What do I need to remember?" I need to remember all the names of the Kings and Queens of England. So I'll ascribe Henry VIII to that box and place him there. Then ask "Why is Henry VIII like that box?" Because there are six steps and he had six wives. Because you are hanging a new piece of information to an existing piece of information in your head, that piece of information will stick. > > People have used these techniques pre-computer to memorize a ridiculous amount of stuff. Matteo Ricci studied this stuff and wrote it down in a book. Brought it to China and amazed the people over there so much that they actually converted to Catholicism because they were so blown away by the magic of his mnemonic techniques. > > The concern is with my readings around ecophilosophy and ecopsychology had brought me, I started to wonder. Could I make a kind of chapel of consolation? Could I make a memory palace that would remind all of us, a kind of collective memory palace documenting when human species have changed our minds. We believe ourselves to be less capable of changing our minds than we actually are. > > I wanted to draw attention to all the moments when human beings have actually changed course. We started 73,000 years ago and worked our way all the way up until Greta Thunberg. We found there were specific moments which encourage us. We used to think the earth was flat, now most of us don't think it is. We used to think that if the color of your skin was different to the color of another person's skin, that made you less valid. Now most people don't think that. We can be encouraged to change our minds. > [!Abstract]- 12. The Lehman Trilogy > A story written to describe the rise and fall of Western capitalism with three actors in three hours with a piano. How do I keep an audience entertained? If you set up the expectation for newness, newness, newness, you can quickly exhaust the possibilities of how much you can deliver on that expectation. > > So what if you set up from the very beginning a grammar that doesn't require novelty, that says you know what, I'm giving you one thing to look at, and I want you to explore it. From every angle. And that's what I want you to do with me, together. > > In the case of Lehman trilogy, the text is almost stream of consciousness. Three hours of taking you through from the arrival in the 19th century of three brothers from Bavaria into America. Their rise from cotton merchants to running one of the biggest banks in the world. > > How the commodities that they dealt with began as concrete; tools, cotton, then on to coal, railways, and finally into pure numbers. The impetus behind the system that we devised for telling this story was the description that Henry Lehman gives us when arriving to America in the story. "And there was New York, revolving around me like a magical musical box." > > Every director and designer team work in a different way. In this case, Sam Mendez works with music throughout the whole process, and he is as well as a theater director a film director. So he was underscoring the film director, the pianist and the composer with that throughout. Every time the scene was rehearsed the piano was playing. > > A manifesto for collaboration. When you work as a stage designer you will work with a variety of directors. Some are very visual thinkers. Some directors are entirely cerebral non-visual thinkers. And you will quickly find the balance between who is giving and receiving the information. > > The director of The Lehman Trilogy wrote these notes in marker on a large sheet of foam core: > 1. Animate the idea > 2. Make concrete the shape of history > 3. Understand the order present in choas > 4. Understand in your head... because you can feel it in your gut > 5. Reveal the simple human needs behind the creation of complex human systems. > > A good piece of advice. Why not set a manifesto for your collaboration. Sit down in the beginning and write it out. Who is it for? Why are we making it? Should we bother? > > Often I have phrases of text running through my mind. My advice is when you read a text turn everything off, don't answer the door, don't answer the phone, concentrate on it. Just absorb it. The salient parts will rise to the surface. The parts that are most resonant to you will kind of reoccur like ear worms. If they are surfacing to the top of your mind, they will probably resonate with others. Then draw! > > Don't be afraid of letting the subconscious guide you. It's often when you are not thinking about your project that the inspiration will guide you. Go for a walk. Play with your dog. Do something else. > [!Abstract]- 13. Passion Projects > Over the past 5 years a significant change has taken place with me. For much of my practice my role has been to bring someone else's text to life. But now, I'm beginning to generate my own projects. As a solo exhibiting artist. > > If you are an artist or designer who works in applied art or applied design. If you are used to working to a brief. If you are used to responding to a primary text. Why don't you, like I did, take that little step out of your comfort zone and try to make work without a brief? > > You may already be someone who works without a brief. For which I applaud you because it took me years to dare to do so. But, just give yourself a Saturday afternoon. What would my brief be if I were to write my own brief? If I weren't responding to something that somebody else asked me to do? > > What I found is that I was somewhat like a creature that walks around the edge of the room who's scared to come to the middle. I needed my systems and my process. My process is reading and research. When I started makinng my own work, I used that same process. I read books. Ecopsychology and Ecophilosophy. How do we change our minds? What does it take to shift from being the person that contributes to the problem to being someone who helps contribute to the solution? What kind of mental shift do we need to go through? > > Timothy Morton - Hyper objects. In a speech he gave he said. I've got a kind of manifesto for artists and I want to help. My advice to this is, preaching hasn't really got us where we need to be. In fact, preaching might have contributed to the problem. So how about we don't preach to people to change their behavior, but we try to amaze them into changing their behavior. > > Please amaze us. Amaze us into perspective shift, into behavioral shift. And actually, when you go genuinely amaze people, when you blow people's minds, for a minute they stop behaving how they usually behave. For a minute they believe in magic. For a minute they believe that things might be possible. What if you were to amaze us into changing our minds? > > "I saw the world end" > > There have been a few times in my practice when I have been asked to express a country. Often I've been asked to express a musician or a playwright. But this invitation to express a country has happened a few times. It's a delicate area when you're asked to express something as colletive as the expression of a country. It has to be personal and you also have to view it through many strata. > [!Abstract]- 14. Sustainable Art > I would say that if you are at a conference full of designers, and you ask them all please put a hand up if you want more stuff, nobody will put their hand up. And yet every designer goes home and designs more stuff. > > "This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein" > > Designers want to design systems that are beautiful. They don't want to design systems that are destructive to their environment. Yet, there is a contradiction because the invitation to make anything is in itself an invitation to contribute to the problem we are all in. So how does a designer deal with that? > > In my practice I start with ideas. The ideas lead to geometry and finally the geometry leads to material choices. What if you start with materials first and make your choices based on materials? As designers we work to parameters. If you tell me my stage is this wide, and there's a concrete wall here, and I can't go beyond it, I'll respect the concrete wall. If you give me the parameter that the show needs to blow your mind, but also it needs to be entirely carbon neutral, if that were my parameter, then surely I and all my colleagues would work to that parameter. > > What we've tried in our studio is setting ourselves entirely new parameters. Look at it honestly. How much carbon did my practice deposit? What do I need to do to diminish it, or offset it in some way? > > A word that is better than the word future is the word now. Even better than the word hope is the word action. > > The digital is not carbon neutral. The amount of energy used by porn is the same as the amount of energy used by Belgium. > > There will be an every growing conversation between physical-local and digital-global. > [!Abstract]- 15. Your Career Is Your Story > Whatever it is that you do everyday, make sure you learn something. Ask yourself at the end of the day "did I learn something? Did I expand my knowledge? Did I expand my practice?" If you are about to go to sleep and you didn't, then make sure you do. > > In 2015 I got an Email I think it said "Dear Es Devlin, would you like to recommend a director for a perfume advert?" But I actually misread the email. And I though it said "Dear Es Devlin, would you like to make your first large-scale art installation?" > > Try different words on you like you might try on different clothes. You might be in a shop and see something you think you could never wear. Put it on. You might see a term that you think could never describe you. Just try it, and you'll be surprised. As soon as you start calling yourself a thing you want to be people will just follow suit. > > When you're starting out how do you gain experience in order to gain experience? Firstly, you need to really know what work it is that you want to to. You'll only know that by going to see the work of others. > > You must do your research. You must find out, who are the makers who are making work that you actually really respond to? Do that first, and then have a vision in your mind of which room you want to be in. There might be work that you really admire. Really do that first. Then write to those people and say, please just let me walk into your room for a minute. > > In my case, at the end of my studies in stage design there was a competition and the prize was a job. The job was in the Bolton Octagon in the North of England. So I went to Bolton and made a show there. It was good to have something permanent in my portfolio rather than model boxes. Really everything else came from writing. > > You have to hustle, hustle, hustle. Don't underestimate the amount of hustle. Please give me a job, please let me in the door. Don't be afraid to hustle. Enjoy it. > > **If at first you don't succeed, fail again, fail better.** > > It's a really important question to ask yourself. I would say that one of the weaknesses that I struggle with the most is actually having the confidence, weirdly enough, to say things at the moment that you know they're true. And that is something that you will want to build on throughout your practice. So often, you will have a hunch when you see a sketch, or you have a hunch when you see something passing by you on the camera, or you have a hunch at some point in the process. If you act on it then and trust your gut - you know that later, especially in a collaborative practice it can save hours and hours later on. > > **Fail better at this.** > > How will you balance your practice with your life? How will you make a choice at 7:00 PM whether you are going to go home and put your kid to bed or stay on at the shoot and continue making the work? As those choices add up to a life, how will you look back on that part of your life where you didn't go home, but you stayed working, or you did go home? > > You have to constantly calibrate. Today I made progress in my work, but I didn't attend as much as I wanted to my child. Or tomorrow, I had a great day with my children but I neglected the things I said I would do in my work. Try to shift either side of that balance and be patient with yourself. > > **As long as you grow each day, you are doing the right thing.** --- ### Takeaways From This Course - Feet of Clay - You should define yourself as a multi-hyphenate of whatever you want to. - The easiest way to enter a world is through research. Find patterns in the books and in the research. - Constantly audit your idea and constantly iterate. - The process needs to be as quick as my ideas. - You have to have a few failures to know where the edge of possibility lies. So I may have tried a few things that were impossible in my time. - We normally start in the dark. Get a torch and play with it. - "The light is carrying the music in the particles." - A maze becomes a kind of expression of the mind. - Seek for the gesture that's going to communicate. Seek for the system underneath. Find what it is. How can I only take the essence? - We are a pattern seeking species. - One of your prime materials is anticipation. How are you going to work with that anticipation? - A collective act of imagination makes life really worth living. You have to take the audience with you. - Do you get bored of flipping through the pages of a book? It's just a mechanism. What's within the pages is infinite. - You're handed the menu, the menu has no prices on it because you care. - I don't like the word client. I tend to refer to all my collaborators as collaborators. -  A word I use quite a lot is hijack. Next time you are asked to do something, whatever it is, just consider if you could hijack that request to serve your own ends while serving the request. - One of the enemies of good work, I think, is fear. So take fear out. The real contributor to good work is trust. - If you start talking about budget in the beginning you'll never get to the place of saying what you really want to say. - There will be enough people who will want to dilute your ideas. Just don't do it to yourself. - Hold on to great collaborators. One of the things that I really recommend, if you possibly can, if you find a collaborator, marry them. - I wanted to draw attention to all the moments when human beings have actually changed course. 1. Animate the idea 2. Make concrete the shape of history 3. Understand the order present in chaos 4. Understand in your head... because you can feel it in your gut 5. Reveal the simple human needs behind the creation of complex human systems. - Please amaze us. Amaze us into perspective shift, into behavioral shift. For a minute they believe in magic. What if you were to amaze us into changing our minds? - A word that is better than the word future is the word now. Even better than the word hope is the word action. - You have to hustle, hustle, hustle. Don't underestimate the amount of hustle. Please give me a job, please let me in the door. Don't be afraid to hustle. Enjoy it. - **As long as you grow each day, you are doing the right thing.** --- ### **References** [MasterClass | Es Devlin Teaches Turning Ideas Into Art](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/es-devlin-teaches-turning-ideas-into-art)