The Spark: Nicki Sprinz on Tilda Swinton, Imaginary Albums and the Death of 'Follow Your Passion'

0:02Nicki Sprinz:We're back with Nicki Sprinz from Us Too and this is The Spark. So you know what that means by now, hopefully. It means we're going to ask Nicki a bunch of fun questions so we can get to know her personally because we did chat about quite a lot of deep stuff on Monday, didn't we, Nicki?

0:19Tilda Swinton:Oh my God, we did.

0:20Nicki Sprinz:We sure did. I mean, I was going to ask you about digital ID cards and what you thought of those, but I thought, no, this is going down a really negative path. I don't want to get political. So you will leave that for now. And instead, I want to ask you a few things. The first one being one of my favourite questions to ask people, if you could host a dinner party with two people dead or alive, not including your best mates, who's coming and why? Oh, great. Okay.

0:48Tilda Swinton:I love this. I'd invite Tilda Swinton and Anne Patchett. um Tils Vinton I just love that her fearlessness and that she hasn't been boxed in creativity she's done so many different things uh which one of my favorite um films of hers is uh am I going to pronounce this right Il Sono L 'Amore um and it's Italian she speaks Italian in it um she's dressed beautifully in jill sander if i remember correctly it's quite old it's um anyway she's brilliant and then ann patchett i love her writing her story she has a real belief in kind of craft and patience and taking time over things um so i just think it would be like a generous and

1:38Nicki Sprinz:surprising conversation oh how interesting and then if i really wanted to know what you're cooking

1:44Tilda Swinton:oh my goodness that's a good question you're on the spot yeah you're really putting me on the spot that um i think i'd have to do a little bit of a sort of um otolenge allison roman mashup you know some good salads maybe um maybe either a vegetarian main or or some kind of classic chicken dish

2:04Nicki Sprinz:probably great fantastic i'd love to be a fly on the wall with that conversation um okay so what's one piece of advice you'd ban from the creative industry forever okay um just follow your passion

2:20Tilda Swinton:i i just i hate i think you can't easily monetize passion and it's just too simple i think it should be more around people following curiosity building skills thinking about their personal responsibility. I think passion is useful and really important, but curiosity above all.

2:44Nicki Sprinz:Yeah. Cause your curiosity springs up all sorts of different things along the way, doesn't it? Like what you were interested in now is not the same as what you used to like 10 years ago. Exactly.

2:54Tilda Swinton:And I think you can learn to be passionate about different things. Um, so I think, yeah, I just, that phrase, just forget it.

3:04Nicki Sprinz:What are you currently curious about? What are you, what are you reading into? Cause I always find that if you're a creative person there's always something that you're oh I need to know more about that is it is there anything on your radar I mean obviously we talked a lot about um

3:17Tilda Swinton:AI I am curious about some of the interesting creative AI tools which we didn't talk about so much um I think that's interesting I'm enjoying lots of kind of long form reading I always like that change when everything feels really short and brief and our intention is really short I like enjoying things that are overly long you know long dense articles where really people have taken the time and I'm interested in the rise of it's obviously not the rise look podcasts podcasts been around for a long time but I think how podcasts are doing really well on YouTube how YouTube is um kind of replacing other streaming platforms that the BBC is even going to develop their own short form content for YouTube.

4:02Tilda Swinton:Yes. Which I think, so I think I'm interested in, you know, how we listen, how we watch, how we consume. But for me, I'll always be a reader at heart. I love reading. What are you currently reading? I just finished Lily King, as in literally yesterday evening, just finished Lily King, Heart the Lover, which is a very raw poignant tale of a sort of love triangle set over two sort of, I guess, not quite decades, two long, two periods in time broken apart. And yeah, I cried at the end. But it's not, it's a hopeful book, but it was moving and beautifully written. And I hadn't really realised Lily King is a sort of very established, well-known writer in America.

4:55Tilda Swinton:But she's, I think, a little less read here. And I'm now going to go back through her archive and read some of her earlier work. I think we're going to have to put these suggestions in the show notes, aren't we? The film that you mentioned and the book. Oh, yeah. Do watch Il Sono L 'Amore. It's fabulous. It's actually an early, I'm going to pronounce his name really wrong and I'm so embarrassed. It's Lucia Guadillamo. he's um famous for challenges and then most recently after guadiano i think um brilliant challenges after the hunt but his the film i'm referencing is i think 2009 and in english is i

5:36Nicki Sprinz:am love it's beautiful there we go okay well from that kind of nice uh you know light note we're going to ask you what your most controversial creative opinion is.

5:46Tilda Swinton:Controversial. That's quite a heavy word. I don't actually know if I have very many controversial opinions, so most controversial. But I think that perhaps, and this is a bit of a theme, you know, that creativity doesn't thrive on total freedom, that it thrives on responsibility and some constraints. And so certainly that's in the practice of the work that we do at Us Too. You know, when the stakes are real, we're thinking about people's health, their money, their livelihoods, their trust. I think that's when creativity gets much sharper, not weaker. And that's an interesting space to play.

6:21Nicki Sprinz:Yeah. Because a lot of people make the assumption that it's the other way around that, you know, unfortunately you've got, what do they say? It's like a sphere. So you haven't got many edges to play with when you're doing something for a client, but actually there is a lot of creativity and it's solving problems, isn't it?

6:37Tilda Swinton:Absolutely. Yeah. Solving interesting problems with a set of constraints, I think that's a really fun space to be in.

6:43Nicki Sprinz:Oh, it's brilliant. Gets you out of bed every day. What's the smallest thing that instantly improves your work day?

6:51Tilda Swinton:Fewer meetings with real intent. That's an easy one. Not original, but it's not just because I think when people know why they're in the room or why they can leave the room early, it improves the quality of thinking. It's not just that. I also think if you have less meetings, you've got more time in your day to do things that nourish you to go for that run um to do some meditation to cook a really nice meal for your dinner and um yeah meaningful meetings please love that fewer podcasts as well

7:21Nicki Sprinz:no i've had a nice monday morning it's been a gentle start good stuff and it's january so you know we're easing ourselves back in exactly um what's a trend you're secretly over but everyone else seems to love.

7:35Tilda Swinton:I mean, it's probably not that secret after we spent all this time together. My trend that I'm over is just that little niggle where I feel like sometimes people are treating AI as a shortcut to creativity rather than kind of a test or an enhancement. You know, speed without judgment just gets you to the wrong answer or wrong place much faster. So as we talked about at length critical thinking remains key and ai is a help it's not the solution that's perfect

8:06Nicki Sprinz:it's a perfect way to end the spot but before you go we do this thing every season um we we have a question we do this lovely chain reaction thing so that the last guest asks the next guest a question and our last guest in season 10 was chris wilson um from uh glasgow and he said um if your What genre of music would Just Two be? And what would be the name of your first album? It's a complicated question, actually, Chris, I must say.

8:37Tilda Swinton:Yeah. Would we be sort of ambient, leaning, electronic music, maybe?

8:44Nicki Sprinz:Like Sven Vaff or something like that, or Future Sound of London. Future Sound of London, like that.

8:50Tilda Swinton:Cinematic orchestra, maybe. Ooh, nice. Yeah, maybe some cinematic orchestra. I think um don't know I just imagine all us two be thinking you what Nikki why didn't you phone a friend before you answered that I think that's a really cool answer yeah I just think I think it's more I think what I was going with there is sort of us two it feels like we're sort of electronic music that's the sort of connection to digital but made by humans who care or something I just

9:21Nicki Sprinz:think of monument valley that music and oh yeah kind of you know which you're probably sick to death of people bringing up every time no never we're never sick of it the games team are

9:33Tilda Swinton:extraordinary the game studio are amazing incredible yeah so what would the album be called what would be the name of the first album what's next oh nice and speaking of which what's

9:48Nicki Sprinz:your question for the next guest please Nikki well I didn't come up with anything nearly as

9:52Tilda Swinton:sophisticated as that um I was gonna go with a bit more of a what do you hope people feel when they experience or see your work oh that is a good one all right then Nikki we will put that

10:06Nicki Sprinz:to the next guest thank you so much I look forward to their answer I know me too and um that'll be coming out soon when this um i actually don't know when this season's launching i think it'll be the end of february but we will see we will see oh brilliant thank you for your time again

10:23Tilda Swinton:thanks so much katie it's been really fun and uh yeah you can be good pause for thought which is always the point of these things so thank you very much and have a lovely monday yes likewise

10:32Nicki Sprinz:take care we'll see you soon take care bye

10:38Nicki Sprinz:thanks to adobe for sponsoring this episode three months of adobe express premium free for new and existing UK users until the 26th of April. Just log into your Adobe account and it's yours. Link in the show notes.