“Gyro/Scopic Visualisation - Overseeing Complex Situations Using Cognitive Shifts”

By Richard Grant. December 2018 - 15 minutes - 3163 words ----------_______________________________________________________________________

Over the years I have built a reputation as an inventive strategic innovator, lending my skills to make incredible things, lead complex projects and solve difficult issues. This has led to my current role best described as an experiential technologist, combining concepts and technology whilst creatively directing projects. My journey has been a combination of multiple career paths. I want to share some of the mental models and techniques that have helped me process, sift and combine information to solve demanding problems across numerous work areas. I hope they may prove useful to others.

I love to talk, to communicate and am passionate about sharing, passing on knowledge and ideas with friends, loved ones, colleagues and LinkedIn associates. Even strangers don’t escape. Equally I love to listen (having learned its importance) and to interrupt, challenge, advise and be advised.

In doing so, I learn about the reasons people have for thinking as well as how they think. I am fascinated by how they solve problems; how they work out stuff and crunch the numbers.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil.

Friedrich Nietzsche

It's a learning curve to see and hear how other people describe their strategies and methods. In hearing and seeing others methods I add to my own and impart experience. Some are different to mine and others will be different to yours, but most fit within a framework of some sort.

In doing the above throughout my life I recognise I have developed personal approaches to dynamically creating and amending my spatial consciousness, preventing me from being overwhelmed by new emerging, fast changing information and allowing me to see a comprehensive picture of very complex situations.

Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.

Friedrich Nietzsche,  Beyond Good and Evil

Understanding, an approach

Having consciously worked on understanding my brain’s processes for about 20 years I realised I was no longer afraid to really use it, or more accurately, let it be seen in use. However that in itself could be problematic. Buddhist talk of restraining the galloping horse of the mind, taming it for constructive use, struck a nerve. This may include making sense of crazy notions that might just work; conceptual leaps, surprised discoveries and stumbles that lead to invention and novelty across numerous fields.

There are specific reasons I have analysed this. Primarily, I kept being asked “…what is it that links your projects? They are all so different.” In answer I repeatedly explained my mindset (though this is an incorrect description as will become clear later) and what it was that I bring it to any given issue.

I feel the simplest answer to what connects these apparently disparate skill sets is…“me”. My ability to transpose or pivot my mental resources, my experience and my talents into entirely new situations. Crucially this does not terrify me, in fact it is fully liberating as Mr. N. describes:

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.

Friedrich Nietzsche,  Anti-Christ

My experience tells me it is rare to find a situation that is entirely novel or original. We are all on a planet that is under the influence of gravity, the laws of physics and people. There are materials, deadlines, (budgets) money and emotions. Also thoughts, ideas made up of instinctive and egotistical imperatives. I am always pretty sure at least a couple of these turn up in every project, so the chance of a true shattering of my noggin, is, for now remote.

I am a great believer in creating and making, having been a tinkerer and inventor from 5 years of age (this equates to 40 years experience currently) and developing into a wide skilled broad ranging professional maker and creative. Nietzsche understood that striving for understanding the infinite, a form of nihilism, could actually be short circuited by a simple appreciation of earth, the use of hands in nature, the manipulation of stardust itself.

…hope becomes hope for  this Earth, and the hope that we Earthlings will not ruin it; charity becomes the overflowing virtue of generosity linked inextricably to amor fati and to creativity itself; and faith becomes remaining true to the Earth, and faithful to its unfathomed possibilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_in_the_Earth

As a baseline, the laws of physics, some money or an idea (regardless of money), ultimately people have thoughts and desire those thoughts turn into action:

“Will to power” (Friedrich Nietzsche).

The will to power describes what  Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in humans – achievement, ambition, and the striving to reach the highest possible position in life. These are all manifestations of the will to power…”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power

Drawing by Hans Olde: Friedrich Nietzsche

Introspection

I really love to get involved in the nitty-gritty, the detail of things be it an idea, finish or technical aspect. Equally the visual artistry and subjective beauty inherent in something - potentially to be treated as relative and objective, professionally. I'm happy to have conversations in two dimensions, three dimensions, multi dimensions be it made, modelled, played, scanned, pyrotechnically exploded, printed, digitally authored, flown, crashed or filmed… it doesn't matter. Often I'll be asked to consult with senior producers, artists or be overseas coordinator on a very complex project that involves dozens of strands. How this came about and how I became comfortable with true uncertainty I attempt to explain below.

I understand how on the face of it, the breadth of such can be both confusing and frankly hard to accept; I also realise that there can be tussle between appearing confident, arrogant and even something else altogether. Pride in ones ability gives strength, borne by experience and perspective gained. It should always be docked beside humility in accepting that to be human is to err. Further, once you know a few things, as any fool knows, you really ought to also understand how little that actually is.

Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,  Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I distinctly remember through my youth snide comments regarding appearing arrogant or cocky, something I am very sensitive not to project nowadays. Ensuring I am able to qualify my statements and understandings or equally accept new learning if needed. Sometimes people suggested I should wait or be patient. I realised something very important as I gained perspective through years of experience. The following quote is a two way street;

A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle - or as a temporary resting place.

Friedrich Nietzsche,  Beyond Good and Evil

These accusations were simple and very effective control mechanisms learned in our young formative years. Attempting to make the user feel less weak (better) by trying to hold back others (for whatever reason) primarily because it is instinctive to feel threatened by competition or fear, not knowing or understanding as well as another. 

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” 

Friedrich Nietzsche

Very human in nature this instinctive defensive mechanism is based on fear transmuted to jealousy and has no doubt held back many innovators and pioneering individuals.

"I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually the memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche,  Beyond Good and Evil

For myself though, I developed a conceptual metaphor to train and focus my abilities and resources. The analogy is very simple, relying on visualising a technical device that illuminates fundamental forces. It is the “Scopic” element from the title of this article.

Scope

I tend to ask early on in a project conversation for the broad picture, simply put. An explanation of the overall situation, low in detail. This allows me to start to “shape” a strategy or spatial approach. Within this, drawing on wide practical experience I draw up a list of points to look into based on previous issues and problems in similar, or not so similar but relevant situations. Within me this informs a number of responses and questions.

On a larger scale, I have been fortunate to co lead huge global experiential tours on behalf of a specialist branch of Disney European marketing. These were multi territory, wide media and broad show craft based events in novel architectural sites. In Tokyo we had a problem. The shipping containers were emptied into a bonded warehouse and the install for the tight venue space involved a large lift with limited time slot access. Get the show elements up the lift and installed on a floor plan that had no margin for error dimensionally.

The show had to be loaded in a specific order, to be built from the furthest corner toward the lift due to space limitations. This was complicated by a key issue a few questions turned up (thinking wide and small). The lift area had numerous sub floors. This flagged to me that architectural weight limits were likely. On checking we were offered small 3 tonne gross trucks, tiny loads. The simplest solution was to rotate 6 of these having sorted the show load at the warehouse to be load packed correctly for specific install unload order. Also slot these rotating loads and unloads into the 8 hr lift availability slots (another studio at NTV studios was being used too). It all worked, very well. The Japanese crews were epic; their seniors were astonished at how we made it work.

In life you have to.

I imagine myself as the “eye in the sky”, a telescope in geo stationary orbit around the project/scenario I'm looking at (imagine an introspective Hubble). Able to zoom in to check on something, anything. This may include seeing if I've delegated correctly or followed a suitable path. If I have had the right conversations and taught/instructed the right people (or rather if I made sure I'm not talking to the wrong people). If I know that I have considered this, it can pretty much get on with itself and if I sense a problem coming I'll be zooming back in on to that so nothing heads off in the wrong direction. In a sense a spatial map of the actual dynamic process, given edge boundaries, if these are breached the map can be reset to cope.

Hubble/NASA

Crucially no matter how big or complicated a project gets I am able to mentally zoom out until the entire project is back in picture, full frame, once more.

This gives one of the most powerful tools of all, perspective.

To ordain the future in advance in this way, man must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from chance ones, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and what the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute.

Friedrich Nietzsche,  Genealogy of Morals

I consider this idea of zooming in and out telescopically, an incredibly powerful conceptual metaphor or tool helping me understand both broad brush strokes of an issue or project without losing the ability to go into the micro. It might be the macro impacts the micro, or vice versa. This perspective informs the need to talk to relevant head of departments, producers, directors, suppliers, stakeholders, the artists or the high net worth individual about their ideas and contributions. My field of view zooms out just far enough so I've always got everything full frame and I sense if it is going wrong or right (most likely a bit of both). It is very powerful and so far I have not come across a project that did not benefit from this zooming out process creating a mentally enlarged response area in the minds eye, a cognitive shift of understanding.

There is something else. When the field of vision and framing of new information grows then there is a prerequisite for the brain’s storage, processing and coping mechanism to alter too. The need for expanding the amount of conscious bandwidth to assimilate that new vista, a corresponding match in cognitive capacity. I visualise a rapidly inflating additional layer to my brains consciousness, like a modern inflating bike helmet suddenly appearing. This is then absorbed into my available resource. A conceptual upgrade, if you like - more synaptic RAM.

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” 

Friedrich Nietzsche

I think it's quite a well-known trope that you break something complex down into something simple and start there. To have a broad understanding of the entirety of a process or complex situation is, for me akin to seeing laminar flows of processes and time, problems and opportunities. While seeing potential show stoppers (literally sometimes) within this as the corruption of said flow, allowing action, to restore order.

Ultimately the process that links all this is perspective, which I am grateful for. It is extremely valuable as it is the culmination of this full framing macro/micro process, the Scopic. 

Gaining a wider perspective whilst constantly buttressing your mental capacity to take this on board and working out ways to shuffle some of that demand for processing away is crucial. Leadership traits such as delegation, sharing and communication to the right team, person, process or strategy are key. 

Not mitigating complex learning could cause problems, as Bowie sang;

My brain hurt like a warehouse

It had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things

To store everything in there

David Bowie. Five years

Gyro

I tell you: one must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche

All this talk of crunching numbers and constant processing suggests that running cerebrally hot is a necessity; I feel the opposite is true, at least the option to not run hot, to just be and let things happen. It might be called stillness, or colloquially, mindfulness? When I first recognised it as a state it was under the name “Zen”.

For example I love film and there were a number of years I couldn’t watch a movie without analysing and looking at it technically, creatively or as an Art Director or Director. Or even though the eyes of the Gaffer, if the lighting was flat, I could tell straight away the budget was low because it looked like a cheaply lit soap opera. This level of inspection and analysis is OK up to a point, and that's fine. I recognised it was starting to ruin my enjoyment of things and making me a boring person (more importantly). I acknowledged I needed a metaphor based process for simply living day today and not bringing my experience and abilities to bear upon every single issue (there were others, trust me). 

In a way I feel this is when I made the conscious decision to limit a by product of any thought process, an inherent part of any consciousness. To self limit my journey to partway along the anxiety spectrum (autistic response). To literally put in place a process of control and shackle my higher brain, to focus it and give it a defined purpose. In a Zen sense, to think with intent.

I knew I had to reign in my excesses, though not huge, they were worth bearing in mind or inevitably they would lead to anxiety and neurosis (as well as being pointless and a waste of energy), likely leaving me unhappy and less able to relate to other people.

“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman- a rope over an abyss. 

Friedrich Nietzsche

NASA/EVA

So where did that leave me?

I realised I had been using a useful visualisation for some years, in fact since childhood. A simple trick as part of a specific day, period or more recently project. In the centre of my mind's eye I see and sense (hear, feel) a shiny chrome gyroscope and the string is being pulled and it starts to spin very fast, snapping into axial alignment. I literally feel the powering up of the gyroscope and as Dorothy got swept up in her fantastic spiral of adventure, I allow my mind and its sensations to be similarly elevated by elemental centrifugal energy.

Shutterstock

A preparative ritual that enables my understanding, or rather my resolving of complex issues to not hit a limit, but to have faith, literally in my learned ability to cope with very unusual situations and creative and technical quandaries. 

I am thus enabled, finding balance in uncertainty. The positivity of inevitability - in that mode or modality where full potential (for all concerned) is acceptable; nothing more, nothing less and that’s OK. 

I realised it is a definite set, the combination of two mind models: Gyro and Scope (Scopic) the idea of the gyroscope in my mind's eye as “thought experiment” as Einstein christened it.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and question - as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

Friedrich Nietzsche

It allows me to incorporate new information into my frame of understanding, having zoomed out the frame gets bigger my understanding grows; crucially my spatial map keeps pace.

Gyro/Scopic Visualisation

Fundamentally the two thought models are powerful feedback and response loops. I am fortunate to be recipient of and participant to both, offering a sense of direction and purpose. Perhaps most of all, the real gain of these combined approaches is perspective.

Using edges reached as a metaphor for personal limits, and then over coming these responsively, dynamically and creatively to become something else. 

To become through very human response mechanisms, an explorer - Seeing things differently.

NASA/Apollo 17 Earth rise moon

Nietzsche, holder of the eternal perspective helped frame my thoughts immensely (thanks to Einstein and Bowie too). Big thanks to @Matthew_Burgess for sharing our initial conversation and tidying my ramblings.

Think we worked something out.

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand fold dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some Minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,  Beyond Good and Evil.