Dare to question excellence - Robert Hodgin

0:09So, I remember sending Luca a few of these mid-journey outputs because he had been paying attention to what I'd been working on. And I simply typed out the words, why bother? and he wrote me back this really lovely statement about how we bother because we find value in bringing to life something that lives in our mind and ended this statement by saying if I threw away those mid-journey images nobody would care because it took no effort and things that take no effort are hard to value and that that sort of set me straight hearing hearing somebody say that somebody who's half my age, he's 25 or 26, he talked me off of an interesting ledge because it made me realize that I need to appreciate the journey and not be too focused on the destination because the journey is the fun part.

1:08Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

1:55Today I'm speaking with Robert Hodgen, an artist and head of research and development at Rare Volume, a company specializing in data visualization and immersive installations that make technology feel human. In this conversation, Robert talks about projects that combine tech and design equally and why he believes that there's tremendous opportunity to present data in art-forward ways rather than just readable graphs. He also opens up about the challenge of working with tricky clients, but talks also about those who let him execute his vision without interference and why he thrives in space in between the analytical and the artistic by not fitting in either world.

2:34It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Robert Hodgin.

2:45Hey, Robert, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. How are you? Yeah, excited. Excited to speak to you. But for those who might have never heard of you, how would you introduce yourself? My name is Robert Hodgin. I am an artist living in Brooklyn, and I'm also the head of research and development for a design and tech company called Rare Volume. and we are headquartered here in Chinatown in Manhattan, but also have offices in Austin. What problems do you like to solve with Rayvolume? Our sweet spot is generally anything that combines tech and design in equal measures. So even though we're perfectly capable at doing really nice motion graphics work, I think we excel when there's a level of tech involved, whether that's doing smart signage for large venues or museum installations that require some amount of interactivity, especially if there is interesting data that can be visualized as well.

3:48We're very good at taking large data sets and finding the story in it and presenting it in a beautiful way. So that's where we find most of our job. finding slight dissonance or shall I say mismatch between the words I'm an artist and then talking about large data sets because it's not usually what artists say hey I'm an artist and by the way I love large data sets I mean those are kind of like a yin and yang like yeah it's not surprising to hear that I went to a science and math boarding school because I showed aptitude in science and mathematics. But once I got there, I realized that I felt like an artist at heart.

4:29I excelled at the art classes, and I was sort of okay at the science and math. And then I ended up going to RISD, the Rodano School of Design, after high school. And it was there that I discovered that I was really interested in the sciences again. So I seemed to always be bouncing back and forth between the two. And I think that's why I like visualizing data in an artistic way, because it's not uncommon for data visualizers to be sort of in the science bucket where they're not really too concerned about the aesthetics. They just want the data to show up on graphs and be readable. And I think there's more opportunity there to present the data in a way that feels more arch forward.

5:15And that seems to be how I said, a lot of my time lately is just finding interesting data sets and then finding non-traditional things to do with them. I really like where you go with this because as you know, the theme of the season is called daring creativity and I love talking to people like yourself who try to stay away from conformity because it's something that feels too easy, too comfortable, too affordable, too achievable or too accessible. It just feels like why bother but before we go to that bit you said you were in a science and maths boarding school how does that happen who decided that that's where you're going i did that was that was in so i grew up in fayetteville north carolina it's a town that exists because it's next to an army base and my my dad was in the military so that's where i grew up and i definitely did well in elementary school and junior high school.

6:14I wasn't valedictorian, but I held my own A's and B's, and I was definitely interested in math and the sciences. The opportunity to apply to this boarding school called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics appeared, and I thought that would be an interesting way to get out of the house two years earlier than I normally would, because it's 11th and 12th grades. It's in a totally different city from where I live, So I would live in dorms and I would take college level classes. And so I applied and got accepted with enough of a scholarship that it seemed feasible. And so I moved out of the house at the age of 15 to go study way too difficult.

6:59It was a bit of a shock to get there and realize that I was not ready for college level math and science classes. I remember I have an interest in astronomy, so I saw that they had an astrophysics class, and so I immediately signed up for it. And on the first day, the teacher basically explained what prerequisites you needed to have in order to even participate in this class. And you needed to have some understanding of calculus, which I did not. And you needed to have some understanding of basic physics, which I did not. Those classes weren't offered in my high school. I dropped that class and decided that I would take it again as a senior.

7:37So I did. And within the first week, I dropped out again because it was just way too difficult. So I might be the only person who dropped out of the same class two years in a row at the North Carolina School of Science and Math. Your dad was in Army. Did you guys move around a lot? He was in the Air Force. We were next to Fort Bragg Army Base, which surrounds a smaller Air Force base called Hope Air Force Base. So he was in the Air Force for 22 years. We did not surprisingly move all that much. I spent two years in Japan from the ages of three to five, but I don't remember any of it. It was way too young.

8:18And the rest of the time we were in my house on Dandridge Drive in Fayetteville, the same house that my parents still live in some 60 years later. Your mom is a first-gen Japanese immigrant. What was the influence of her culture on you as an artistic kid when you were young? Was there any sort of play influences or was it homogenized American upbringing? It ended up being a pretty homogenized American upbringing. She tried to teach my brother and I Japanese at an early age. And at some point we both rebelled and said, why do we have to spend hours indoors drawing these funny looking characters when we could be outside play?

8:58So eventually we turned our back on it. And I regret that to this day. I wish that I had stuck with it. To be bilingual would be amazing. And to be able to talk to my mother in her in her, you know, original tongue would be phenomenal. She's since forgotten a lot of her Japanese language because she just doesn't have the opportunity to use it much. And so a lot of it's just fallen by the wayside. In terms of her impact on my creativity, I can't think of anything concrete other than being fascinated by aspects of Japanese aesthetics. But my decision to be an artist came at a shock to both of my parents who I think expected me to follow a more traditional path that promised a bigger paycheck like lawyer, doctor, accountant.

9:46And I wanted to draw pictures all day, which at the time they thought maybe was a waste. But now they're my biggest supporters. And I'm sure they're glad that I didn't receive that boring careers because I've done pretty well for myself.

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10:54So, despite your homogenized sort of cultural upbringing, you wanted to be an artist despite your parents' wishes of that time. so what was your influences like what did you what breadcrumbs was as i call it what breadcrumbs did you follow that you realized you know what i want to draw i want to draw something as good as this or something as good as you know certain influences like what was your what was your way into creativity and how did you discover that ability yeah so my brother collected comic books for a while and i remembered really being interested in the art usually the covers i found the covers to be really exciting.

11:35And I was always impressed that somebody could accurately draw a character and get the fingers just right and the pose really dynamic. And so I started to redraw, not trace, but to transcribe over my own version of the covers of these comic books that were the most interesting to me. And that made me think that I was a decent artist. But what I was actually doing was more, I was a decent interpreter or a copier because anytime I tried to draw my own content from, from my imagination, it always felt lacking. And so, you know, fits and starts, I would, I would give up on it because it was too hard.

12:21And then I would just be drawn back to it again and more interested in the mechanical aspects of drawing things like the science of perspective, being able to draw a grid from any angle by marking the two perspective points and drawing guidelines. So I liked that aspect of art, the really rigorous. It doesn't acquire too much imagination. It's very math-forward. And, you know, looking back, because I had not thought much about this, I guess that's why there's that sort of bridge between science and math for me, is that I'm interested in the specific details of how drawings work more than I am interested in coming up with my own visions, if that makes sense.

13:11So from the boarding school and from obviously dropping out from the same class twice, how do we get to your first commercial creative work out there that you got paid for? So I went to the Rhode Island School of Design thinking that I would be a painter. I had spent a few years between high school and then eventually going to RISD trying to paint. I was really interested in landscape painting and I was really bad at it, but I was invested enough in it that I felt like I was paying my dues and I would eventually get better. So I went to RISD and once I got there, I was surrounded by people that were just so much better than me.

13:49And at the same time, I was exposed to all these other disciplines that I just wasn't really, they weren't on my radar. Illustration was the first thing that caught my eye. I thought I should, instead of trying to major as a painter, I could major as an illustrator. And as a side effect, that would probably be more monetizable. It'd be easier for me to find a job doing illustration than it would be for me to sell paintings. Probably. I mean, it's impossible to say. But so I thought I'll do illustration. And then, I don't know, I just might, I kept seeing things that intrigued me, like people in the glassblowing department, you know, making these really beautiful glass things.

14:29And I was excited by that for a while. And then eventually I decided to switch my major to industrial design because I've never heard of this before. People have to design objects that exist in our world to be used. That's crazy. So I switched to industrial design and I was an industrial design major for my sophomore year. And then by the end of that, I decided to switch to sculpture, which was my major for my junior and senior year. But in my senior year, I realized what I really wanted to do was make digital art because it was around that time that some of the earliest flash websites were coming out.

15:09And I was overwhelmed at how forward thinking and impressive it was that I could just go to this URL and see someone's art and you could reach, you know, potentially millions of people through this newish medium. So I convinced my senior thesis advisor that instead of me working on a body of sculptures that I probably would have half-heartedly succeeded, that I wanted to spend my senior year learning Photoshop, learning Flash, learning the basics of HTML, just enough to get a website up. And luckily, his brother either worked at or was really tuned into the 3D software called Lightwave, which I don't think exists anymore.

15:54And so he understood that digital art was a path and RISD did not offer digital art as a major. So he thought that it would be a good use of my time. So I focused on learning Flash and Photoshop. And then when I graduated, I followed a friend to a very small startup that just made, like, I think it was just banner ads for other people's products. Like you'd make a little animated GIF banner ad and you have to make sure that it was 10K or smaller. And then you'd have to make six different sizes. And so I did that for a little while. I showed in Aptitude apps doing that type of work. So I got hired by another company called Circle Interactive.

16:39They got bought by the ad agency Arnold. And all this boils down to me being put on a project for doing a flash website for Volkswagen's re-release of the Beetle in this new colorway called Trebonium. So I worked on this Flash website, which was the first Flash website that Arnold, the advertising agency, had worked on. And it ended up being a phenomenon. It went on to win either the or one of the top awards at the Cannes Advertising Awards that year. And so that sort of really propelled my career because I was the Flash guy. Nobody else in the agency knew Flash. So whenever they needed flash anything, they would come to me.

17:28So it helped me establish roots in the advertising world pretty early. And when I go back on the point, would illustration be more lucrative? Because it really is about what you put your heart into. Because then the universe will actually sense that that's what you stand for. You put your soul into what you do. I was a pretty bad painter. I'm glad none of my paintings exist. At least I don't think any of them exist. this. I don't even have photographs of them because I have this bad habit of aiming way too high, way too early. So instead of developing the fundamentals, I like to go for the finished final piece.

18:06And that's bitten me a few times. Like I played classical guitar for something like 30 years, Spanish style classical guitar, but I can't play a single song. And part of the reason is is because I never learned to read sheet music effectively. I could do it sort of note by note and figure out where that finger goes. And then I memorize how to play patterns instead of being able to just read. And there was a song called The Usher Waltz by Nikita Koskinen, which is incredibly difficult. And it's six minutes long and it's all over the fretboard. And, you know, it's the type of song that you perform at your Juilliard graduation performance.

18:46And I heard that song and I thought, I need to learn how to play it. And so I spent years and years and years trying to play something that was way beyond my skill level. And it turns out my patience level. Because what ultimately would happen is after getting to a point where I felt like I could do, you know, like maybe the first, I could play the first minute really well. I would just play the first minute over and over again and never move on to the second minute. And then I'd get bored and I'd put the guitar down for months or years. And then I'd pick it back up and the first thing that I would do is try to learn that same song again from scratch.

19:25And so I never succeeded in playing it all the way through. And I've got, you know, it was 30 years of fairly regular playing and I've got nothing to show for it. Because I didn't pay my dues. I didn't learn the basics. And that is probably less meaningful when it comes to something like painting, because you could be really expressive with paint without knowing the history or the techniques. But if you're going to play top level classical guitar song, you better know how to read sheet music and you better understand proper picking technique. Because, I mean, I gave myself a harpal tunnel from bad hand positioning, but you know i'm sure you're going to find the the sunny side of that stuff i'm with you on this one i mean you've got people like john mayer who's virtuoso he can't reach in music bb king never could read there was a lot of famous people who successful people who were just like it's all done by ear and i think that's the thing that again is the expression of your soul because i love the dedication when you say hey i have been toiling with that song long time it's just pretty pretty pretty impressive but let's get back to work shall we say because you got some of some of your other pieces of work are still for example you did a visualizer audio visualizer for for itunes yeah and that still lives and the first app you did on the first ipad app that you designed ended up on as the copper huid digital acquisition so there's a lot of things that are ticking boxes quite early obviously you are quite at the right time in the right place because Because I don't think the visualizer has been rewritten for iTunes many times since, if at all.

21:11And some of the things, obviously the first iPad app is now one of many millions. So did this feel like achievements? Did you feel like you were fulfilled with your work? Or was it plain selling or was it not? I think every one of those examples you mentioned definitely felt like an achievement. The visualizer represented a time in my life where things just kept falling into place for me creatively. I'd spent a lot of time messing around with particle simulations, and it wasn't until I started working with flocking simulations and coming up with my own style of flocking simulation, which became Magnetosphere, which is iTunes visualizer, that I started to really have fun with doing creative coding because, you know, like a lot of people, I listen to music when I'm working.

22:04And working on an audio visualizer is a lot of fun because you're seeing the results in front of you, reacting to the music that you're playing while you're working. And it becomes really hypnotic and you just get lost in it. And the next thing you know, it's, you know, three in the morning, got to go to bed because you've got some ideas that you want to try out the next day because you're keeping notes and everything just seems to make sense. And I really love those periods in my life where it seemed like every new day there was already 20 things I wanted to try out. And that was also true for the iPad in Planetary, which was poorly conceived in that it was meant to be for people who listened to music on their iPad, which turns out wasn't very many people.

22:48But as a concept, it was really solid. It would analyze your music library and it would create a galaxy, really beautiful representation of a galaxy. And every star in that galaxy is a musician, a band or solo artist, whatever. And you click on the star and it would zoom down to the solar system level with the star at the center. All the planets represent different albums by that musician. And then you click on a planet and all the moons around the planet represent different tracks for that album. And looking back, I think working on this project was probably the most fun that I had in developing creative code aesthetic because there were a lot of questions that we had to answer.

23:36It was me and three other people at a startup that no longer exists called Bloom. And anytime we stumbled into an aspect of this app that we didn't understand how it was going to work. Eventually, we found just an amazing, elegant solution. And it was so much fun looking back because as an experience, it worked beautifully. And it was really fluid and was just a lot of fun to show off to people. You just fill your iPad with music and then you just go exploring through this galaxy. Oh, and one aspect of it, the moon orbiting around the planet, time that it takes to orbit is equal to the track link.

24:14So you can use that as a way to scrub through the playback. And the metaphor was just so much fun to expand on. And it ended up being a really beautiful project. And then randomly, I think a year or two later, we were told that the Cooper Hewitt was going to acquire the code base and it would be their first digital acquisition for the Smithsonian Design Museum. And that was unexpected and crazy because I don't know that any of us thought that it would go that far because as an app it didn't do great it's like i said people just weren't putting music on their ipads they were generally listening to it on their laptops or their phones so didn't quite get the use that we wanted but it definitely achieved a nice long-term status by being memorialized at the design museum so tell me about the coding language it obviously played a huge part in what you do today.

25:09Yeah. So in Flash, there is, at the time, there was a very rudimentary scripting language called ActionScript, and it used that for pretty basic things, like telling the playhead where to go, you know, really minor, high-level things. It just wasn't very powerful, and it wasn't great for doing what I was interested in, which was pushing a lot of particles around. Because in the, you know, if you're messing with particles, more is almost always going to be better. It was around that time that a couple of my Flash peers were using this new thing called processing. The things that they were able to show off were so much more impressive to me than what I was able to get at Flash.

25:48So I started to explore processing as a creative tool. That was my first official coding language that I endeavored to learn. And it was rough. It was a lot harder to pick up coding languages back then because you had to ask questions on like bullets and boards and stuff. There wasn't AI to give you the answer, you know, in two seconds. It was often tracking down the person who might know the answer to this obscure math related question. So I spent a lot of time with processing and got pretty good at it. That exposed me to a little bit of how OpenGL works because I wanted to be able to draw graphics faster.

26:26Because faster is also better when it comes to doing particle simulations. And it was around that time that I met Andrew Bell, who was the co-author of the iTunes Visualizer and my current business partner and the head of, he's the director of tech at Rare Volume. He created a coding framework called Cinder, which is a C++ framework with a wrapper for making it easier to create new C++ projects with an eye on more visual projects and created with C++. So I would ask him coding questions and often he would say something like, I don't know how to do that in Java, but in C++, you do it like this.

27:08And so he dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of coding with C++, which was hard and painful and wrapping my head around pointers versus references, all these things that just were so foreign to me. But after many, many years of that, I started to help him with writing Cinder tutorials. And so in a sense, I became like a co-creator of Cinder through doing tutorials, which were geared specifically for people that were moving from something like processing into something more powerful like C++. And then at some point I hit a wall with C++ because I kept wanting things to look more rendered.

27:51You know, multiple light passes and subsurface scattering. I was able to get sort of a basic aesthetic. Whenever I wanted it to be more lush and more believable, I would just end up spending weeks researching faster algorithms for doing all number of different lighting and shadow techniques. And I hated that because I stopped being an artist and I became more of like a researcher for myself. And it just got to a point where creating with code just felt like it was holding me back. And so Andrew also, again, seems to know what's best for me more than I do myself. He told me I should look into Houdini as a tool for doing creative coding.

28:36and that was an interesting and painful transition because if you're not familiar with Houdini it has one of the hardest learning curves for 3d software because it's for its specialty is for doing smoke and fire and water sims that you see in in movies and I'm not interested in that I'm interested in just using it as a creative coding framework but a lot of the tutorials you find online were geared towards learning how to make the most realistic building explosion. And it just ended up being incredibly challenging to get up to speed with it. And it took several years before I felt like I was finally at a point where I was back when I was still doing C++ stuff.

29:19And so it was a huge step backwards. And then now I feel like I'm in a really good place because Virginia's great for doing rapid prototyping of ideas. and if I want a slick rendered look that's there for me and it's really easy you just drop some lights in the scene and hit go the trade-off of course is you you lose the real-time interactivity which I do miss when you were telling me all of this it brought me back to a few words that our friend Bertram Rust mentioned on this podcast when he was talking about you and it was a quote that he heard you saying it at Paradiso and he said that quote hit me like a you know a punch to the gut I was like okay what was it and he said well Rob you said he said things that make no effort are hard to value yeah well I should I should offer that that wasn't my quote it was what was told to me by one of our employees, Luca, who is wise beyond his years.