An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (selected) - Bruce Mau
Allow events to change you
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Forget about good
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
Process is more important than outcome
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
Drift
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
Don’t be cool
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
Ask stupid questions
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
Be careful to take risks
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
Take field trips
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
Laugh
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
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