Mary Franck, Experiential Creative Director

Mary: [00:00:00] It's one thing to tell someone we do the most this, we have the largest whatever. It's another thing to show that, and that is where data visualization comes in.

Andrew: Welcome to Bears to Entry, a design innovation podcast on the Surround podcast network. This is the show where we obsess over the not too distant future of the architecture, design, and creative industries and the ideas, tools, technologies, and talent.

That will take us there. I'm Andrew Lane, co-founder at Digby. And with me as always, it's Bobby Bonnet, the Chief marketing and revenue Officer at Sandow Design Group. How are you doing today, Bobby?

Bobby: I'm good. Um, I have NeoCon on the mind. Andrew.

Andrew: Wow. We're getting NeoCon talk already. I like it.

Bobby: We've got the NeoCon Podcast lounge this year at the Merchandise Mart.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Bobby: You and I will be hosting a couple of shows where there's a live theater that, I'm gonna call it a theater this year. Well, there's a full lounge this year we've graduated. There's going to [00:01:00] be Tell Your Friends a pizza party. Wow. And we'll have the NeoCon podcast booth returning as well, all on the third floor.

So you need to come check it out. Hang out with Andrew and me and the rest of the surround gang.

Andrew: Wow. So the stairs and the elevator, both viable options, which is always good to know when you're thinking about navigating the mart.

Bobby: That's a great point.

Andrew: Every year I worked, prior to Covid taught me anything is if you want people to turn up, you have a pizza party.

Bobby: Yeah. That was, that was the entire strategy there.

Andrew: It hasn't worked with return to office quite as, no. Quite as powerfully,

Bobby: no. Uh, yeah. Uh, Foos Mall and pizza. Yeah.

Andrew: Back in the day. Bread, cheese, sauce, people,

Bobby: bagels and pizza.

Andrew: Yeah.

Bobby: We're excited to be joined by Mary Frank, an experiential creative director at Future Colossal Mary has enjoyed a fascinating and successful career working at firms and brands with which you're surely familiar, including IBM, the New York Times, and the NBBJ.

Over the course of her career, Mary has been a leader in designing and bringing to life [00:02:00] incredible experiential and immersive design projects. Today we're going to learn about Mary's process, the ways in which she collaborates, and what's next for her. At Future Colossal, welcome to the Pod Mary.

Mary: Thank you.

Great to be here.

Bobby: Mary's calling in from Brooklyn. Andrew, we had a quick, uh, off the air discussion about, uh, Brooklyn versus Long Island versus New Jersey. I'll leave that to the imagination, though of our listeners. Was the winner pizza party? Yes, exactly. The winner was pizza party.

Mary: We're, we're not in the same bracket.

Bobby: There you go. Mary, let's start with your journey to becoming an experiential creative director, which is a Title I one day hope to hold, but surely never will. Um, how'd you wind up in the seat in which you're sitting today at Future Colossal? Take us.

Mary: my, gateway to entry, not the barrier to entry, my gateway to entry was Max Jitter.

This, software that people use to create live audio and visual performances. I was an undergraduate at the time and I was studying conceptual and information art, and I got my hands on this tool and it, it blew my mind. [00:03:00] It really opened up for me the possibility of, of technology and media and bringing these things together in a way that was.

Interactive. This was around 2008. At the time, I was also collaborating with an arts group in the Bay Area called False Pro. I started doing interactive video installations and art installations and showing them at events, and I got captivated by the kind of reaction that people would give me and the way that they responded to the work.

I met Ben Levy, director of Levy Dance, and we collaborated on an evening length immersive dance performance where I used computer vision to track dancers throughout the space. This was an immersive dance performance, so the audience was intermixed with the, the dancers. It was in the round. so we had, lights and video reacting to the audience, to the dancers, and told this story about, you know, technology as this way of seeing the self and mediating image.

The piece, toured it, uh, got a writeup in the New Yorker and I used that experience to talk my way [00:04:00] into an internship at Obscure Digital. At the time, obscure Digital was doing this really impressive projection wrapping work that almost no one else was doing. And I worked with them for several years, and that's really where I cut my teeth, as they say, in experiential.

And I've been working on the technology side of experiential ever since.

Andrew: I'm hesitating to ask you to put a year on those experiences. 'cause I don't wanna date anyone or out anyone on the pod. But you know, because of the fact that you're on this like leading edge, making a generative video before it was in vogue.

Like what are some of the things that you're thinking about being someone who's thinking from the creative side, but also the technology side simultaneously that's allowing you to. Kind of find that balance between the creative expression you're trying to deliver and what the technology will actually allow.

Mary: So I've been doing this dance for a long time now to to date that work that I was doing. I was showing these interactive installations around 2008. The dance performance I mentioned that premiered [00:05:00] in I believe, 2009. And I started doing this projection mapping work with Obscured Digital in 2010 formative experience for me that I wanna mention as well.

I made and released my own VJ software called Rouge, and this. You know, I connected to people all over the world through this. It really showed me, um, what can happen when people are generous with technology and, and share their tools. But in terms of, you know, obviously the technology has changed since 2010.

It's, it's evolved. New things have come along, but I think the fundamentals don't change in that technology is not the answer, and it's not. Actually that interesting for its own sake. Mm-hmm. And we have to continue to create meaning and, you know, communicate through these mediums and without, uh, a strong content component or an expressive component or a communication component.

It just isn't that interesting, no matter how high tech it is.

Bobby: Is that something that you battle with Mary, where we, we've asked this question al of almost [00:06:00] every guest I think, which is, do you ever get prompted to. Make something techie and you're like, well, I need to, we need to discuss the story first.

How do you contend with that marriage between creative and technology, and how do you explain that to a prospective client who might not be thinking about things the same way you are or through the lens that you are?

Mary: Well, I think that's where the design component comes in. Over my career, I've transition from being more of a technologist, doing graphics programming and creating these interactions on the box to being a creative leader and a design director.

And I think that working in design, we're in service of our clients. And so I see it as part of my role and part of my job to work with the clients, to take them on that journey to, uh, build the meaning and uncover the meaning perhaps, of the project and to make the work substantive.

Bobby: So what does that work look like at Future Colossal?

In your role today?

Mary: Well, what's fun about working with Future Colossal? Future Colossal started on the production side a very much a maker mentality. Our studio is like a lab. There's all kinds of, equipment and gear [00:07:00] everywhere. We're always prototyping, we're always play testing. Uh, we have a culture where, almost monthly someone will take out a prototype, something that they've been working on and will, will mess around with it as, as a group.

And this really keeps the creativity flowing and it. Creates this practice where we're always iterating. It really prioritizes iteration in our work.

Bobby: The environment. You just, you just shared one where it feels like a lab. I imagine that there's lots of opportunities and lots of excitement around working with other subject matter experts, other, other creative individuals, other technologists to bring a client's, you know, vision to life.

Mary: Yeah, absolutely. That, that creativity and colla, the collaborative creativity is, has been integral to my work and it's a part of the work there. Of course, a lot of my projects bring together, you know, writers, animators, visual designers, technologists, you know, people who are in hardware, people who are in software, and, um, you know, the creative role that I get to sit in as synthesizing all of that work and all of that creativity.

I have to rely on people who have expertise [00:08:00] beyond my own knowledge, to make the work as good as possible. You know, our work at Future Colossal often fo focuses on experiences that are playful and imaginative. We do work for themed entertainment. We do, you know, brand activations, but I, we find pretty fun clients and, and that's been really rewarding for me too.

Find these projects where it is more about story and experience creating emotion than about the tech itself.

Bobby: I wanna take a bit of a tour through your client work over your career. Mm-hmm. Not just at Future Colossal, but before, because I'm gonna jump in Andrew with an early plug here. Oh

Andrew: boy.

Bobby: You go to Mary's website, mary frank.com.

Um, you can see some of these projects which are, which are just mind blowing. Before though, before we get into that, you know, we talked before the interview today about your goal being to make data feel approachable and comprehensible, which is something that I think has a lot of resonance to the listeners of this podcast.

So what's an example where you think that? Was done particularly well in your portfolio?

Mary: Well, I see data as this [00:09:00] powerful medium for contemporary storytelling. It's one thing to tell someone we do the most. This we have, the, the largest whatever. It's another thing to show that, and that is where data visualization comes in.

I think my favorite project in this category is the work that I did for Spectrum's headquarters with, uh, ESI design, part of NBBJ, the architecture Studio. We worked with the executives from the beginning of the project to define a set of content, a set of stories for these monumental video walls for their lobby headquarters.

So there's this monumentality. The screens are 30 feet tall. Uh, they're very high resolution and they grace this beautiful lobby of course, where everyone comes to work. And we wanted to tell the story of this company to tell the story of their brand, to express their brand, of course, to tell the story of their people, the different cities that they served, and then also to tell the story of their network, the [00:10:00] backbone of their company.

I. And this was a whole process because in order to reveal information about their business, we had to make sure that we were meeting their communication goals, you know, engaging all of the stakeholders. We also had to comply in terms of SEC regulation, or we couldn't reveal information about how many customers they had, or some of these other operational things.

Mm-hmm. So we collect the data quarterly and then show it. You know, so it's a little bit dated once we're revealing it, but it is this pulse of the company and that, liveness of data visualization is also something that's really powerful. So the visualizations that we have, one is a visualization of data moving across the network.

So across their entire national network, looking at what kinds of data are being used at different times of day, how much of the network is being used for video, how much of the network is being used for gaming, for texting, for these different applications. And so you can actually see people's behavior change.

Time we normalize the data across time zones so that it's, you know, at at midnight more people are gaming during work hours, more people are on video [00:11:00] calls, and you can see that across the data set. The other visualization that we did is a visualization of data views across 12 cities. We selected 12 cities that they serve and did this spatial analysis using latitude and longitude, and you can see the data use in these cities rise and fall across the different areas of the city.

Over the day. So, uh, in New York and Manhattan, you know, there are these huge spikes of data use around Columbia, around the universities. Mm-hmm. There's of course this data valley in Central Park and some of the industrial neighborhoods, and then you can see the rise and fall, like the financial district rises during work hours and some of the residential areas rise in the evening.

And expressing that that's something that you can't just express through superlatives. We have. The fastest network we serve, the most customers, we were able to show that really directly.

Andrew: So it sounds [00:12:00] like, you know, as in addition to being a creative, there's a real sort of curiosity behind some of these explorations. What is your process like trying to bring all these pieces together when you're asked to solve a problem like the one you just described with Spectrum?

Mary: You know, curiosity.

I think that's the source of stamina. This is a little bit of a tangent, but to respond to that angle, you know, we've all been working in our careers for a while and I. In the immortal words of KRS one, the difference between pro and amateur is stamina. And I think that curiosity is how I cultivate stamina in my creativity and in my career.

Uh, that I have to keep renewing my interest and my passion by being curious and just. Pursuing just lines of inquiry that catch my attention for whatever reason. I actually recently went down a rabbit hole of learning about the history of libraries just for for fun. And actually a couple weeks later, someone [00:13:00] asked me to join a pitch for an RFP for a library.

And I was like,

Andrew: oh, wow,

Mary: I got this.

Andrew: Yeah, like that was just a pure coincidence. It

Mary: was a pure coincidence.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mary: But it's, it's a reason to, to remain curious these things, especially as creatives. You know, I work with different clients, different verticals, different projects, and uh, it just is so helpful to have these, these different perspectives.

and I love the process of learning about a totally new topic through a project. For example, I worked on, the master's activation for IBMI learned all about golf. Honestly, I forgot most of it, but it was pretty interesting. I, I would not have pursued that. That's a topic. Otherwise,

Bobby: can you take us through that project, Mary?

Um, because I'm a golf fan. Oh. You know, just learning about how much like you did with Spectrum, which I, I, again, I would encourage folks to, we'll, we'll link to in the show notes to Mary's website and her portfolio because the way in which the Spectrum project manifested itself was excellent. I can imagine, Mary, when you first saw folks looking at that wall as they're walking into headquarters, it must have been a pretty.

Exciting moment for you. [00:14:00] So take us through also the IBM project, because just hearing about how you're bringing data to life is really fascinating.

Mary: Yes. so IBM brought me in for their 2023 Master's tournament experience. This was not the first time they had done this. It's a showcase of the award-winning work they do for the master's app.

So they pull together this. Incredible amount of data streams, you know, from the video cameras, the, the microphones, the, you know, analysis that's happening, the, all of the score keeping, they're pulling that in live. They, made that accessible to viewers and fans in a really, um, exceptional way.

And we were making an experience for VIPs to get the behind the scenes look at that, data and that app experience. So. This is the kind of special project that I love to be brought in on because, it's immersive, it's storytelling, it's, you know, uh, in a really unconventional way of, of communicating content.

It's a large scale, video wall again. so we're able to bring in a lot more visual information 'cause of the scale on the resolution. [00:15:00] So. This room scale live data exploration with AI prediction features. I worked with the studio A, b, and C to, to realize this. I was on the IBM side, but they were building it.

Then this year we wanted to create more stories around AI features to illustrate how the AI was working, what was happening to, create the predictions within the app and. I wanted to inject a more cinematic and IBM centric approach. The, the branding had been very master centric and I wanted to inject a little bit more IBM personality.

So in terms of visual design, those were really key components. And then in terms of storytelling. We made these visualizations of AI processes to actually show how in particular the AI generated commentary was created. That AI commentary process has now become normalized. It's, it was part of the Olympics broadcast on, on Peacock, but, IBM was [00:16:00] really a, a leader in this area.

Andrew: I love projects like this, and that's really, really fascinating. I'm a particular kind of a nerd. What is it when you're creating these experiences, particularly in the conversations with the clients who you're building them for, is the ideal outcome that they're really looking for? Like, what's a successful person who walks in without any idea of what they're about to experience what you've created?

What do you hope for them to think, feel, do, and what do your clients hope for them to think, feel, and do?

Mary: I think client success is a really big piece of this. Experiential projects are often, they're exceptional, by definition, they're unusual. Mm-hmm. And so a client might have experience running more traditional campaigns or even more traditional event marketing, but they're often splashing out to do something different and new for them.

And so the. Client education component is really key. And also bringing that strategy lens throughout the project to make sure that the client goals and expectations are being highlighted. [00:17:00] I think that experiential can be really hard to measure. I think that often I. Social engagement is this proxy for mm-hmm.

Experiential success. so that's usually how we're able to, to frame measuring the success of experiential. But I think that for me, I. I'm always looking for people's reactions, and that's something that I love about doing experiential. Yeah. If I were making, you know, a web campaign or something, I couldn't really see people responding to that, that creativity.

Whereas with experiential, I get to actually watch them in, uh, in real time and that's, I think something that remains really satisfying for me. I think that. I'm often going for, you know, cultivating a sense of curiosity. Wonder is, I think something that can be, it's a, it's a word that gets thrown around, but what I wanna create for a person when they're having some sort of experiential moment, I usually am more interested in, in creating.

A, a place for [00:18:00] them to be more present and more attentive. I wanna cultivate curiosity. I wanna cultivate connection to create a space for people to have a shared experience. That's really important to me, and I think that's really one of the special opportunities of experiential, is that it is genuinely social.

And so creating almost a container for people to be more present and and to engage with what we're putting forward to them is usually the goal.

Andrew: Experiential is a really big word, um, particularly in marketing, but like, I love that you used the word container because of the way that a lot of these examples are really in a, in a specific place, in a specific moment.

It makes me think a lot, uh, about filmmakers. And I, I wonder if you ever think about in that context, a filmmaker, you know, they, they, there's always this sort of, do you ever go and see your own film in front of an audience kind of thing and see when people oo in awe, uh, you know, do you, have you had those experiences where you've been able to see people Oo, in awe.

Mary: Yes.

Andrew: What is that like?

Mary: [00:19:00] It's so rewarding

Andrew: and, and having had them, have you learned to design for more of them in the future?

Mary: Yes, absolutely. I think that one of the connections, there's so many connections between filmmaking and experiential. A lot of the people who do experiential work come from a film background.

That's not a coincidence. One of the things in common is. Time and duration and creating the right duration to set the stage for an experience is, is really key. Pacing the experience to, you know, create a rhythm, you know, much like filmmaking or editing, I think is a really big piece of the creative choice.

An example of an experience that I found really inspiring is as Devlin's retrospective at the Cooper Hewitt, and she's of course a master of this, the, the, the best in the business. Uh, it was a pulsed experience, so everyone was collected into this ante room, to the exhibition, and the ante room was this workshop.

It had a few kinda magic touches, this radio that comes on, different projection mapping, and then there's a whole introduction and people are released and so that. [00:20:00] creates this, this timeline, this start point for everyone. Everyone's starting together and it also plays into that sense of showmanship.

That film does. My own use of time within experiential media. I think my favorite example of this is the Prisms Project. Again, I did this with ESI and PPJ and this is, for a, a public space and it's a series of six LED chandelier. These are five sided. Boxes. And of course, this introduced a whole slew of technical challenges around perspective and creating a video that has the right perspective vault, wrapping a dimensional surface.

The art we made, uh, has several different, uh, styles and motifs that it moves through over time. My favorite being this crystalline pattern. It looks like the box is this multifaceted jewel and it shifts, uh, color throughout this refractive space. [00:21:00] We wanted to make this change over time, of course, but we made it change very slowly.

The goal was to make something that was dynamic day to day, not minute to minute or second to second. So this is a completely different timescale than something like editing a film for an advertisement for a 15 second spot. We're editing for a year. I think this approach to time has been a, a really satisfying way of working.

Bobby: As you develop a portfolio, I'm projecting here, and, and you might tell me I'm wrong, but I can imagine that IBM might see the Spectrum project and say, I want that, and that the portfolio starts to inspire clients to, to think about what they could do, but they, they wind up putting themselves maybe in too narrow of a sandbox and you might say, no, we should do something different.

And as time has gone on, how has like the client experience. Evolved over the last few years, and then how do you manage that so that you wind up with a project that has that wow factor at the end of the day and doesn't feel like, I'm sure as a creative, you're, you don't wanna just copy paste what you've done for, for a new client.

Mary: Right. I think [00:22:00] what keeps me motivated and interested is doing new projects and, and new project types. With ai, you know, I've yet to have a client fully embrace using that technology. They, they remain skittish for good reason. Mm-hmm. I really liked something that Matthew Lenu said on your podcast, actually.

He said, there is no magic in technology. And he was talking about ai. Yeah. And I think it's so ironic that this thing that promised to be the most magical. Technological development of our lifetime has actually kind of sucked the, taken the air out of the room, like kind of sucked the juice out of, um, yeah.

What we were all so excited about. And the, the irony of that is, is really interesting to me. My hope is that this actually creates more value around like, artistry, individual expression, like. Things that are handmade actually, see, like I I, I anticipate almost a reactionary creative trend towards things that are more authentic and more human.

Andrew: That's a [00:23:00] really interesting way to take that quote. And I mean, I think the other part of what Matthew was saying there was how hard it is to impress people now. Because of this. Mm. Maybe that's where you were going, Mary. But like, I think that that's in people in positions, well, in any position, but it was particularly in positions like yours.

Where to Bobby's first question, people are coming to you for a level of magic, uh, in the way that they think about it. You know, how are you using that curiosity and that desire to create new things, to try and find ways to, to impress. A tough to please crowd.

Mary: Well, I think that's been a sea change over the course of my career that when I started in experiential and especially like the art and technology part of experiential, there was this sense of wonder.

If you think about, you know, I. That time, you know, around circa 2010, you know, the, like touchscreens were a new technology and I think that, you know, the Internet of things was just this really nascent idea and really nascent [00:24:00] technology and, and people saw a lot of possibility and that, that sense of possibility I think is what created this sense of tech optimism.

We're in a different moment. We're, you know, maybe more tech pessimistic. I think what this requires of us as creatives though, is very interesting. In a sense, this medium interactive technology, experiential design, immersive media, they've become normalized in a way that makes them less impressive for their own sake.

I. I think that they have become normalized in a way that establishes them as a medium that can be used in a more interesting way with an audience. The audience has expectations you can work with and against those expectations. Before people had no expectations. It was totally new. So there was almost this, a lot of instructional, uh, content.

You couldn't expect the audience to necessarily understand what they were seeing, whereas now everyone is more conversant and. The technology and you know, maybe that means that [00:25:00] they might be less impressed, but I think it requires us to, again, have more substantive work. It requires more of us.

Bobby: Mary, in addition to all of your amazing, uh, work on the commercial side, you have a personal art practice as well.

I'd love to hear about that and how. One Medium inspires or influences the other, uh, in your, in your work?

Mary: Yes. I continue to make art. My first degree was in art. My second was in architecture. And I think that training as an artist, it, it taught me to, um, to follow my own instincts and to, and to work, to uncover my own thinking.

My work as a designer and, uh, on the commercial side has given me these really powerful tools and skills. Nothing hones your work, like doing it as a professional. And so I've taken those skills and I, I use them with within my creative practice. So it's really bolstered my work. I think one of my favorite art pieces remains, uh, an immersive video performance I did at the [00:26:00] Society for Art and Technology in Montreal.

They have an immersive video dome there. I did a live realtime video performance with my audio collaborator, cadet Kune, and so I was able to immerse people in this organic architectural space. That evolved over time. It had these different movements. The whole piece was about loss and. Kinda ego and the dissolution of the self.

And so it was a little abstract, but it was, uh, it was amazing to be able to literally bring people inside of the visual world that I was making. And, uh, that kind of work. It's, you know, more personal and, you know, maybe more abstract than the work that I do for clients, but it's something that keeps me.

Curious and experimenting and that curiosity and experimentation feeds my professional work.[00:27:00]

Andrew: Often, we already have talked about ai, but you know, one of the things that is top of mind with anyone creating any type of intellectual property, um, are the concerns that that technology's starting to generate. I'm just curious, and we ask this to most of our guests, where are you on that spectrum of concern, trepidation, investigation?

How are you thinking about the way in which intellectual property and automated properties, uh, are going to intersect?

Mary: Well, I had the great fortune of co-hosting, co-curating the X Life Track at LDI Lighting Design International with my longtime friend Jake Pin holster. We put together, uh, a whole program.

Part of it was focused on ai. We highlighted some amazing artists working in the area, and as well as we had a talk from Tyson Winarski, who is an intellectual property rights professor. And he took us through the implications of AI and intellectual property and some of the case law, some of the precedent law [00:28:00] that's come out.

Hmm. So it really helped me feel more confident in the ways that I'm using. AI within my creative work as a creative professional, someone who is selling my ideas, my designs, my intellectual property, uh, it affirmed for me that using it in the early stages for concepting, you know, throwing ideas at the wall, uh, parts of the creative process where I would have used, I.

Just normal mood boards in the past. I think it's a really appropriate tool for those parts of the process. It also is something I really love, the Retexturing features. Uh, this elevates my, my work as a visual designer. I'm able to sketch something. I'm able to model something and then take it up to a concept or level that I, you know, just take me more time than I usually have.

And so that, that's something that, from what I understand is fair came. But it's just, uh, this isn't gonna be a substitute for actual design work. I think my observation so far is that, well, you know, it can be really [00:29:00] interesting as soon as you want something specific. If you need to solve a specific problem or you need to, you know, visualize a, a really specific idea, it's, it's not a great tool.

It's actually becomes more time consuming. So, so far it is not putting me out of a job.

Andrew: I agree that, that that creative partnership is so, continues to be so important, but it's pleasing to hear you say that you're not retracting from, uh, from that interaction because of any concern. And you've now consulted with a, a professional, uh, it sounds like as well.

So,

Mary: yeah, I, I, I think that actually like AI is this really amazing way to exercise your imagination and I would en encourage people to play with it for that reason. I was really struck by something, again, like from this conference that I mentioned, the artist, uh, Aaron Santiago. We featured him for a talk and something that he said is that AI is empowering people who don't have massive budgets, but who have [00:30:00] massive imagination, and I think he was so right about that.

I've been thinking about it ever since that. You know, it, it can be something if you use it in a different way, it's a different, almost a different medium. And it can be something that can just really extend the, um, the creative reach and the creative possibility of, of an individual, especially if you're not attached to having copyright of the work.

Bobby: I think, Andrew, we talked about this a couple years ago, it, it also makes harnessing that imagination and visualizing that imagination more accessible for younger people too. Like I've. Played with chat, GPT and Midjourney with my daughters. They all have, have designed to be artists as they grow up, as you know, a 9-year-old and a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old would.

Um, and as they're inventing things at school, as they're trying to manifest what's in their imagination, they're able to see it come to life on a screen and they spend all day on screens. So the fact that they now have these tools to, to start to think about and learn. How can I make this a reality, even if it's not a [00:31:00] reality?

Keeps them super inspired. So I'm wondering for you, Mary, I, I doubt like, uh, creating a manifested version of your second grade invention is something that inspires you. But what is inspiring you today from, from an artist or whether it's an artist, a designer, a technology, um, that, uh, that, that you're following because you're like, Hey, this can, this can help me take my career to my next level.

Mary: You know, inspiration as a creative person, it's almost like taking a, a shot of espresso or something. It's, you know, this moment of feeling energized and more alive. And I actually think that I get that effect. Um, most often these days from illustrators. Illustrators are the most succinct visual storytellers, and there's just something so beautiful about their work.

I think that I also really admire how prolific they are. Uh, so some, some of my favorites, you know, I really love the work of Lydia Ortiz. She makes these really colorful, super vibrant, super graphic illustrations. They're really fun, uh, really expressive, uh, and kind of surreal. I. And yeah, I feel like I could enter a whole world [00:32:00] through just one of her images.

I also really like the illustrator, um, Israel Vargas. He does this work that's very, uh, you know, maybe data inspired. He captures this aesthetic of, you know, our kind of technological world or these technological processes in a way that feels really insightful. I think visual design just continues to be a big inspiration.

Andrew: I grew up being fully inspired by the work of Gary Larson.

Mary: Yes. Wait, the far side.

Andrew: Oh my

Mary: God. You know what? I would say that's a big influence for me too. I think that that was maybe an early exposure to art being weird. Yeah. You know, and I loved it.

Bobby: We need your dog, Andrew, in the. Style of far side. Maybe that's the breaker.

I know, right? Its

Andrew: absolutely one of my favorite far sides ever is about the professor who invents the helmet that, uh, can decode what dogs are actually saying to each other and he walks out in the street. It's one of the best.

Mary: So good. So imaginative.

Bobby: So where we sort of wind our way to, in every episode, Mary, is the opportunity for our guests to [00:33:00] just.

Plug what they're working on or what they're passionate about. So I'd love to just hear, or the floor is yours, I should say, to share, uh, you know, what's going on, uh, in your career. And if you would tease us on some ongoing work that's happening right now at Future Colossal, that might blow our minds. Uh,

Mary: let's see.

Well, I don't know if this is mind blowing, per se, but I've been working on a. Synthesizer and MIDI instrument. It's a collaboration with my, uh, romantic partner and it's just been so fun to, uh, you know, get into the industrial design of it, to, uh, to, to make this expressive little box. And so that's been really fun.

The design is kind of space age inspired, but with this injection of exuberant color, hmm. Another project that I have been working on, I've been providing some assistance to the artist Camille Erba, on her most recent commission. Fathom Fathoms, a glass and live video art commission for the Stanford Campus's new, uh, building Computing, the Computing and data science building.

And Camille Erba, she's like an amazing video artist. Her. [00:34:00] Work was the first interactive art to be collected by the Smithsonian. She's an a hero of mine, so it's been amazing to work with her and to contribute to this piece. So the ribbon cutting for the building is gonna be April 15th, so that's coming up really soon.

That's awesome. Congrats.

Andrew: Um, the standard, the place where we end off. Is advice, um, you know, you're taking in so much information, you're curious about so many topics. What advice would you, would you give, what resources would you point to our listeners? Uh, for someone who wants to hone their creativity or curiosity or even, uh, you know, just to follow something that you think is really fascinating.

Mary: I think that one of the most interesting areas of AI since that's, you know, hot topic, uh, is the way that people are re-imagining interfaces using ai. I think that's the thing that I'm probably the most interested in. I wouldn't be surprised if you use this tool. Actually, I think my favorite example of this so far is D Script.

It's a. Transcription and video editing application. [00:35:00] And this allows you to interface with your video or audio, uh, through text instead of cruising through a timeline, which, you know, anyone who's lived in Adobe has done mm-hmm. Quite a bit. Mm-hmm. Instead of, uh, interacting with a waveform on a timeline, you're able to interact with the, the text of the content.

And so that kind of total shift in, in interface is something that I'm. Excited about and hope to see more of.

Andrew: Love that. It's a great, a great response. We'll make sure to link and maybe we'll get producer, Rob, when he's back. We'll get his hot take and we'll get him to do maybe a little tutorial. Yeah.

Bobby: He's go, he's going to be doing a tutorial at, uh, the NeoCon podcast lounge just to bring it

Andrew: first. Oh, wow. Way to bring the episode right back to the beginning. Um, I didn't even mean to wrap it up with such a nice bow, Bobby, but, um, Mary, thanks so much, uh, for joining us today. I mean, it's. It's, uh, always so exciting to speak to people who are doing work on the edge the way that you are.

Um, it's great to hear the way that you've been able to balance, um, you know, some big corporate clients with [00:36:00] some really grassroots artistic work as well. I think that's a balance that few people, um, can successfully and happily strike, and so congratulations to.

In stores. What? 2026?

Mary: Just wait for it. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew: Bobby, do you wanna read us out?

Bobby: Yeah, of course. As always, we'd like to extend a big thank you to the Barriers to Entry Production team. Our producer, Rob Schulte, our guest producer today, Rachel Cator, and everyone else back at the studio by Sendout. Pod Cave Barriers to Entry is part of the surround podcast network.

Make sure you go to surround podcasts dot. Com, that's podcasts with an s. Smash the follow button. And join us next time as we continue to break down the barriers to entry.

Andrew: I'm so glad you guys got the Gary Larson callback.

Bobby: I mean, I hope we got in the show notes to, uh, your, your,

Andrew: [00:37:00] your dog. I want, do you, do you know that cartoon? Do you know that comic though? Oh, yeah.