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This is Reina Moro's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone. Welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about what the future holds at the intersection of creativity and technology.
I'm Reina Moro, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
On this podcast, we explore the mindset of the world's top creative practitioners
from various industries and discover ways to stay relevant in the 21st century.
So let's get started.
雷の質問セクションの紹介
Lightning Questions
In addition to the in-depth conversation with each guest on the show,
we have a segment called Lightning Questions,
where we ask them to react intuitively to a handful of simple questions on the spot.
It often reveals unexpected truth about them as real human beings just like us.
You'll really enjoy this segment.
If you weren't doing this art, running a studio, what else would you be doing?
I would be in a shed in the woods, playing with wood and tools.
Like, like, I don't know, something still like, yeah, yeah.
I guess you want to keep this short, but yeah, I would be hiding,
hiding in a shed just like whittling away,
whittling away, playing around with, uh, yeah, just woodworking tools.
Making furniture, making cabins.
I mean, yeah, I mean, probably, I guess maybe it wouldn't be too far away.
I'd be twisting some wires together, but yeah, just, uh,
home improvements become my, uh, my therapy in some ways.
So I know, I know I meant, I said that I would keep this show,
but I actually, this got me my curiosity.
Where does that come from?
That curiosity, that interest in working with hands?
You know, I've been, I've been talking about this a lot lately,
and I don't know if I realized it until I really thought about it very recently is,
um, as far back as I can remember, I've always just been this way.
I've been doing, I mean, like literally the age of four or five,
I was, I was like rewiring my parents' house.
Like they would, I remember like, I don't know, I was still in elementary school.
My parents would come home and I'd put a new car stereo in their car or something.
And at the same time, just doing art all the time.
Like I've just always been that way.
And then once computers came into my life, I've just been, I don't know.
I've always just been tinkering and whittling and, you know,
stealing my dad's tools when I was a kid and just like messing around with stuff.
It's just been in me forever as far back as I can remember.
But was that your dad's influence, your parents' influence,
your uncle, somebody in your circle?
I mean, my, I think it's in the genes.
Like my grandfather was like a woodworker, like furniture builder.
And my, my father is, uh, I would say his equivalent was like cars.
Like he was a kind of motorhead, like always, always, uh,
literally underneath his car, doing all the maintenance and things like that.
And also, you know, I had a whole bunch of tools, but honestly,
I kind of just remember on my own, like, you know, every toy I would get,
I would immediately grab a screwdriver and open it up and just want to know how it works
and start yanking wires out and kind of breaking it.
And then seeing if I could fix the thing I broke.
Um, yeah, I don't know.
Just always, always been messing with stuff and ripping it apart and trying to figure it out.
That explains that where you are in your career quite a bit.
All right, let's move on to the next question.
Cool.
理想の住まいについて
If you live, if you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
Italy, as of today.
Any specific, yeah.
Any specific town or region?
Maybe I'm creating a theme here of just wanting to go and hide away,
but like, I don't know, somewhere just in the vineyards, uh, I don't know.
Italy is, it's one of those things where I'm, I'm constantly a bit,
I don't want to say frustrated, but like, I, you know, I travel a lot
and I'm always like hoping to have that feeling of like, oh, this place wins.
And I just, I don't know, every, every time I go somewhere new, it'll like,
I'm always like, is it better than maybe, maybe it was just like the time of my life
when I first experienced it and I had that romanticism attached to it.
But, uh, yeah, I don't know the, I, you know, years and years ago,
my wife and I, when we were, you know, early together,
it was probably 20 something years ago.
We just drove out into the, into the, the countryside of, uh, of Italy.
And I don't know, that's sort of changed me and can never, uh, can never beat it.
For the context of the, yeah, for the, for the context of the listeners,
アートと音楽の生活
you're currently outside of New York city, correct?
Yeah. Yeah. I'm in a, I just recently moved to a town called Nyack,
which is across from Westchester on the Hudson.
And it's a, yeah, it's a cool little art, very artsy, very music driven town.
And you have your studio, we were just chatting right before recording,
but you, you have your studio in Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Yeah. Yeah.
So do you commute to your studio on a daily basis?
I do. I am there at least four days a week. I try just, yeah, I, on Fridays,
I try to stay remote, not because of the commute more,
just because I don't get enough done when I'm in the studio.
So it's just my hiding time. Uh, and I'm actually today working remote
just because I have to get a ton of, just got to focus.
Um, but otherwise, yeah, it's an, it's a good hour 45 to two hour commute each way.
Oh, wow. Okay.
I've learned. Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry. This is lightning round, isn't it?
Yeah. Sure. Sure.
Yeah. I'll keep them lightning.
I keep asking additional questions.
No, it's fun.
Yeah. It's on me. It's on me.
旅行と食事の好み
Where's the next place you like to travel to?
This may be related to the previous question.
Well, no, I'll try to, I'll try to shake it up.
The next place I want to travel to, um,
Yeah.
Oh, that's a good, you know what?
China, like, like we've been, uh, we've been making our, I mean, so much.
I mean, we'll probably end up talking about this,
but there's a lot going on with China right now, but like, I've never been,
I've never been, we've been, which is, it seems crazy, uh, given that,
you know, a lot of the people in manufacturing that I've worked with,
like they're all there, but working with them for over a decade.
And I've never been there. It seems wild.
So, uh, yeah, that, you know, maybe stop through Hong Kong on the way.
Okay.
But, uh, yeah, that area of the world that I haven't been to enough.
But, um, but yeah, I mean, it feels crazy that I haven't been on the ground.
Maybe somebody who listens to this podcast can give you a commission in China.
Yeah. That would be great.
Yeah. All right. Next question.
Next question. Your favorite food.
Ooh. You know, this is going to sound silly.
So I've, I've had to start eating like a rabbit, uh, for, for health reasons, like two years ago.
So literally every meal is, is like vegetables and almonds.
So honestly, I just want to sink my teeth into a cheeseburger.
I don't know if it's my favorite food, but it's just like the thing I can't have.
Perfect answer. Perfect answer.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right.
好きな時間と音楽
What's your favorite time of, uh, of your day?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that's good. Um, man, it's, I feel like it varies.
You know what I mean?
A coffee in the morning with nothing to do is, uh, rare, but I would, yeah, I would just like
a quiet morning, late morning, so, you know, good sleep, but yeah, a little late morning
with a coffee in my hand.
That is, that's, that's my special time.
That's awesome.
What's your favorite song or type of music?
Oh, oh man.
You went there.
That's a whole different podcast, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, it changes all the time.
Like this is, you know, it's, this is the funny thing.
Um, oh gosh.
I mean, I'm, I'm, so I was in a band for years and years and years before I did all of this.
I toured around for seven years and I was very, very emo-y band.
And I guess there's just something in there that's still, I don't know.
I'm definitely an alt rock.
I was the early nineties.
Like I just, I eat that stuff up and, and I kind of want to say something more creative
than that.
But the truth is, you know, that's, that's, that's where it sits.
Yeah.
Is that something that you did professionally full-time or is that something that you did
on the side?
I did it during, I would say it was a bit of a, a race between early web day.
I mean, you know, when we were kind of cutting our teeth while that was going on.
So in my, you know, through college and then into my early twenties, probably until I was
like 26 or so, um, I was doing, touring around with the band.
I wouldn't say like, I was working a day job for sure.
It didn't, it didn't make much, but, uh, yeah, we played some pretty serious venues
opened up for some pretty decent acts and, and kind of, it, it honestly became something
where I, at some point I had to decide whether I was going to kind of commit to the music
world or commit to the sort of interactive world.
音楽とキャリアの転機
And at the time things were going very well on the interactive side.
And in all honesty, uh, sometimes I have regrets there.
I dream of the music world often.
Right.
What, uh, what instrument did you play?
Uh, I was actually the singer kind of just cause, uh, yeah, I played guitar as well,
but I was, I was the singer more, one of those situations where, you know, no one else would
step up to the mic and, uh, you know, I spent years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I got the hang of it after a while.
It took a few years.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Well, we can, we can record a different session on that topic along.
Yeah.
Oh, I love that.
All right.
So this one, uh, on a slightly more serious note, uh, about your career and I guess it
could be your personal life as well, but what was the biggest turning point in your life?
Oh man.
Um, oh, it's hard to pinpoint one.
I mean, everything I'm doing today comes back to this.
I don't, I don't know if you knew about it or ever heard about this little thing.
I called, it was called Baker tweet.
It was the first, um, it's when I was at poke in London.
So this is in, I don't know, oh seven, oh eight.
I made this funny.
It was the first time I kind of bridged the physical and the digital.
And I made this device thing that went into a bakery that whenever anything came out of
the oven, they could turn a dial to that item, press a button and it would tweet it out.
But it was like, this is before there was an app store and everything, you know, this is
the early days of Twitter.
And it's one of those things that just, it blew up.
Like the thing ended up in the MoMA, it landed me in like a centerfold and wired and all
this.
And it's literally what, it is literally what set beyond the path that I'm on.
Like it was this little thing I tinkered with and then it just blew up and I was like, oh,
let's just do more of this.
And so I think, but I mean, I could probably pick out.
No, that's a great story.
Was that a client commissioned work or was it something that you didn't?
Yeah.
That was just me sitting on my bed, twisting wires together, trying to, it was me getting
into this whole world of trying to take all the skills I developed in the web world and
trying to like bring them out of it.
And so it was early Arduino days and I just needed a project.
It was just like, what can I do?
And so I worked with a couple of the other guys that were there and yeah, we kind of
knocked it out.
Not with any big dreams, you know, it was just a little side project that kind of just
hit at the right moment.
心の切り替えとスーパーパワー
Wow.
I'm going to dig deeper into that topic.
Okay.
Question number eight.
How do you switch your mind when you're feeling down?
Hmm.
Uh, we're, we're picking out the themes here, picking up a guitar.
So that, I mean that I'm, again, I'm bad at lightning rounds clearly, but, uh, you know,
I read a few years ago that, that when you get into that moment where you're playing
music and you're not really thinking about it, um, your brain is actually going into
the same state that it goes into if you're meditating.
And I walk away if I, if I kind of can get into that state and just playing guitar and
singing or whatever it is.
And just, uh, I always walk away just feeling, I think the same way people who are really
good at meditating kind of walk away with this sort of cleansing moment.
So, uh, yeah, I'd say that.
So getting into that flow state is your meditation.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
That's a, that's a great way to switch your mind.
All right.
Two more questions.
Two more questions.
Almost there.
What's your superpower?
Oh, geez.
Uh, relentless hard work is the way I put it.
It's just, it's something I've always been able to do, which is just like, I will, I get
the sense that I will always put in the extra three or four hours in a day that other people
generally aren't willing to.
And I feel like it's, you know, I think it's the difference between things happening
and things not sometimes it's just squeezing a couple more hours out of the day.
It doesn't sound very sexy for a superpower, but it's just, it's just the ability to commit,
I guess, in that way.
Yeah.
But, uh, yeah.
Do you, do you, do you, where do you think that work ethic comes from?
That, I have no idea.
You know, for instance, like, uh, did you, did you see, was your dad an interpreter?
Was your parent, uh, parents?
努力と報酬の関係
Did they run their own business or did you play sports when you're growing up?
Or I honestly, like what, what comes to mind right now?
And I, I, I don't know if it's really this, but like, I'm picturing when I first got a
computer and, and it's like, we're talking DOS, right?
So there's just a blinking, a blinking cursor there.
Yeah.
Too floppy.
You know, there's no hard drive.
There's nothing.
And I just remember to do anything took hours and hours and hours.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, and your goal is just like, I don't even know what the goal was.
It was to like get something to print.
And sometimes it would just take you like four or five hours to like get something.
And I feel like I just spent a lot of time doing that and kind of like, okay, if I put
in, you put in this time and you get this little reward or whatever it was.
And I don't know, that's what comes to mind.
I don't know if that's where it came from, but I just, uh, I remember spending hours
just yeah.
Trying to achieve the most basic things.
And maybe that, that little reward mechanism taught me to put in the hours.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To make it, to make you want to figure things out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think I can point at a person, but I don't know.
Yeah.
I need to think about it more.
Yeah.
Great answer.
All right.
クリエイティビティの重要性
Last question of the lightning rounds.
What is creativity to you?
Oh, okay.
All right.
Um, you know, I would, I would set the bar very low on that.
You know, I think meaning, uh, I think it's just not letting go of it.
Meaning, you know, we live in this world of, uh, I don't know.
I mean, you know, my kids are getting older now.
They're like 10 and 13, but like, I don't know.
I've watched, I've watched so many, you know, the school system in this country in particular,
like the, the, the watching creativity go get pulled away.
And, and, um, I think all I'm getting at is, is, uh, it's, it is something you lose, right?
It's something that like, if, if you don't kind of water it and let it flourish,
uh, it, it can go away and go away pretty quickly.
And so to me, creativity is just, it's just not losing it.
It's that weird to say, it's just not, uh, it's kind of just keeping a little bit of
imagination and, and, and, uh, and just keeping your, I don't know, just not letting this world
squash, squash it.
Uh, I don't know if that's really the answer.
Maybe I went somewhere sideways on it, but no, no, no, no.
That's when my brain, when my brain goes down, we're not losing it.
Yeah.
No, I appreciate that.
That was the lightning questions.
Hope you enjoyed this segment as much as I did.
If you're listening to this on Spotify, there's a Q and A field.
So please do send us your questions and comments.
And if you like our podcast, please leave us a five star rating.
We'd be so grateful.
I'm Reina Moro, and this is A Creative Mindset.
See you next time.
