“Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun” — Albert Einstein
Contagion (the blockbuster movie featuring Jason Bourne and Goop Paltrow) tells the story of a worldwide epidemic that spreads uncontrollably across the world. And it’s usually only the destructive phenomenon that gets air-time, but contagion with a positive bent is the one to be revered. No disease, death or zombies, but instead a rapid mind-shift that aggressively challenges norms and seeks out and destroys the status quo.
Despite a living a fairly disciplined life, I’m fascinated and in awe of anything that has contagious and uncontrollable qualities (the good and the bad). Maybe it is the chaos that appeals or perhaps just the reminder that despite being masters of our iPhones, we have control over little else.
Contagious ideas push humanity to realises its true potential. When ideas spread at epidemic rates, evolution shifts into turbo. The usual dissemination of information is bypassed for a complete whitewash of what we know and what we think we know.
I spend every day trying to channel creativity: as the entrepreneur designing and executing ideas and as the chef with combinations and concepts that add to the collective beautiful body of food. In both forms, I strive to attain the intoxicating power to create contagion that only a few reach but all aim for.
Shooting Papalosophy without a script but with plenty of lipstick.
In my game, creativity comes in the form of food and tech and when you stumble across a production that combines the two, you’re forced to stop chewing, put down the knife and absorb the crackle of the truly original.
Lernert & Sander are the duo behind the stunningly beautiful Cubes, a composition of 98 isometrically-arranged cubes of food cut with a modified Mandolin slicer.
“We wanted photograph them in isometric perspective, as we love that everything in this perspective is equally important.”
The production stunned me for it’s simplicity (raw unadulterated food cut into cubes) together with the reminder that perspective is more powerful than reality. It’s mesmerising and became an obvious viral hit, but also offered something more profound. In a world where we imitate, improve upon or fuse existing ideas and art, this work was truly original. It personally set off a mad bout of creativity and drive that was unrelated to Cubes, but whose sheer originality breathed life into my work both in and out of the kitchen. This domino effect of creativity will continue to show up on the plate and the screen, and if I succeed, will seep into the endeavours of someone out there creating something.
Being original seems to become harder as every generation passes; art is painted, music recorded, manuscripts written and dishes cooked. There are fixed number of combinations and sequences that are possible – or not?
In and out of the kitchen, originality, and the creativity that inspires it, is prized above all. We are all artists today and in the words of the father of all that is creative…
“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” — Albert Einstein
