THIS IS MATT » matthew taylor ruggieri

Matthew — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 05:19:14 +0000

So so so so proud of this and what is to come:

Directed and produced by Matthew Taylor Ruggieri

Discovering again

Matthew — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:59:26 +0000

I’ve lived the past year and a half documented almost entirely in 140 characters. I use words to discover and photographs to remember, but taking photographs when you’re in the moment always seems to be a burden. With that said, I haven’t looked back much. Maybe I just needed a break – I needed to stop looking through the lens. I get e-mails from blog readers about it continuously.

That is changing. From this point on, This Is Matt is about looking at today and looking forward to tomorrow. It is about discoveries, changes, and adventures – none of which deserve looking back. To my closest friends and family, don’t be shy when I put a camera in front of your face. I might freak out. This feels new to me again.

[Share This Entry]

A manifesto

Matthew — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:49:48 +0000

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto

Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

Keep moving.The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

Slow down.Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

Ask stupid questions.Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Collaborate.The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

____________________.Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

Stay up late.Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

Work the metaphor.Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

Be careful to take risks.Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

Repeat yourself.If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

Make your own tools.Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

Stand on someone’s shoulders.You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

Avoid software.The problem with software is that everyone has it.

Don’t clean your desk.You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

Don’t enter awards competitions.Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

Read only left-hand pages.Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

Think with your mind.Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

Organization = Liberty.Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

Don’t borrow money.Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

Listen carefully.Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

Take field trips.The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Make mistakes faster.This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

Imitate.Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

Scat.When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Explore the other edge.Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

Laugh.People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

Remember.Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

[Share This Entry]

Inclined to update

Matthew — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:45:25 +0000

I had a long phone conversation in the middle of the night yesterday regarding a television show pilot that I’ve taken the second drivers seat on. We were talking about producing a television show (reality, of course) that has some sort of substantial impact for the country. Please understand that there are fine lines for content that has substantial meaning and that of which will actually get picked up by a major network – and I’ve spent every cell in my brain working on figuring out how to do please both of our goals.

For the production of the show, I’ve traveled to Las Vegas and a city outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. If the show gets picked up (even for six episodes) it looks like I’ll be spending a greater deal of time in small town Utah. Utah is gorgeous, so I really wouldn’t mind that.

I cannot describe the show on my blog (hopefully America and the rest of the world will know about it come September), but it has been an exciting roller coaster. We’re working with an executive producer that has a ten year history in reality television with huge pitch meetings lined up for next week. I’ve been in charge of the visuals and produced all of the materials that they’ve been using thus far. I’ve developed a story and characters that I’m really excited about. This would be the first time where I completely take my hands off the camera to concentrate on story development – something that I’ve wanted to do for a really, really long time.

It would be such an adventure if this took over my life – we’ll see.

I’ll also be traveling to Madrid for the entire moth of July (don’t ask me how I’ll work on the show and be in Madrid, because I’m not quite sure…) I have to finish up my USC language requirements, so I figured that it would be best if I went directly to the source. This will give me an opportunity to distance myself completely from the city that I’ve found so much comfort in and experience something entirely unfamiliar. If you know me, I live off of the thrill that comes with that. I had a meeting about it yesterday and cannot wait to board the plane to Europe.

Lastly, I’m working on my first project for a new, smaller record label that I’m really excited about. Their roster includes artists that I actually listen to (!). No more music videos or meaningless videos for me – a kid has to grow up at some point. We’ve got real projects in mind. I’ll write about that another time.

If you’ve been reading my blog since I was working with Warner, you’ve come with me on a long journey that seemed to come to a violent halt when I decided to go back to school. I spent the last several years with over-the-top anxiety about getting back into the working world. It is all starting up again. I didn’t give up, I didn’t lose passion, I didn’t lose my contacts and I can’t wait to share the continuation of my career with you.

[Share This Entry]

3rd and Broadway

Matthew — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:22:57 +0000

Dawn outside my loft.

[Share This Entry]

Goals for 2011…

Matthew — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 03:31:49 +0000

As graduation creeps upon me, my plans for the rest of the year have become more solid. These are my plans and goals for the rest of 2011:

Graduate
Friday, May 13th is going to be a big day – I’ll be turning 22 and graduating. The celebration planning is starting now. However, it is going to be a bit of a tease because I still have to take a few summer classes.

Travel to Spain to Learn Spanish
I need to fulfill my language requirements so I’m planning to go to Spain for the month of July. It is going to be difficult to leave everything behind for the month, but I’ll be officially done with school once I arrive back in the states.

Write the First Draft of a Feature-Length Film
I’ve had the concept for a feature film in my head since I was about sixteen, but I haven’t had a chance to write it. Once I’m done with school, I’d like to spend some time off developing a first draft. It is exciting to think that I’ll finally have the chance to do so. I plan on leaving Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to write it (maybe head up to Santa Barbara?) so I can drive back down if I need to take on some work.

Read
I always tell people that I can’t wait to graduate so I can read for pleasure again. My list is full of high school required readings that I never actually read.

Expand The Motley
The Motley has grown drastically over the past three months, but it is not entirely sustainable yet. By the end of 2011, I’d like the company to be completely sustainable and ready to become profitable in 2012.

That’s all for now. I should probably get back to writing my History of International Film midterm.

Best to all…

[Share This Entry]

From Paris

Matthew — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:05:52 +0000

[Share This Entry]

In another life

Matthew — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:28:19 +0000

Live in a dream and you’ll never be disappointed.

[Share This Entry]

FEELING ALIVE

Matthew — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:42:15 +0000

Another still from my short film “The Suburbs”. This one, featuring Josiah Leming.

[Share This Entry]

DAY ONE: “THE SUBURBS”

Matthew — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:20:54 +0000

Today was the first day on a short film that I’m directing called “The Suburbs”. Below is a screen grab from the shoot. I cannot wait to release this.

[Share This Entry]