Serendipity: The art of finding

11 Jan 2006 Category: Features, Graphics, Products, Worldwide

Writer and producer Mic Vieser and Reto Wettach, senior designer and project leader at Sony HQ Tokyo, both quit their jobs in 2002. Instead, they decided to re-discover their home country Germany, after having lived and worked in Japan for about 5 years.

Not being sure about how to approach Germany, they started a project called drifting friends: 6 months of travelling the country in a camper van. What they found was more than a richer understanding of Germany: they developed a system for finding the unknown, for discovering things off the beaten track.

This is their story about how they started a journey, which got turned into a book, exhibitions and creative workshops around the globe.

Interview by Uleshka

What was the original idea behind your first drifting friends project: a journey through Germany?

Mic: A journey through a country we already seemed to know, but trying out a different angle of looking at it. We thought it would be important to use the momentum of still having a different view on things after living abroad for so long.

Reto: We were trying to find places that noone knew about, forgotten or never discovered by travel guides but that somehow stand out from the normal, places with a story to tell…

How did you find information about forgotten places then?

Mic: At the very beginning, we would have lunch at some local restaurant and talk to the waitress, and that turned out to be the key! People were very interested in our project and kept telling us about special places. All we had to do was to continue communicating and find out which of those places had a sparkle.

What was your overall impression of Germany?

Mic: I didn’t expect it to have such a rich, cultural landscape. Sometimes we only moved about 30 kilometers in one week, because there were so many exciting places to look at! In general, I was quite touched realizing how many things from the past are still very much here today.

Reto: I was very surprised how many people either in an institution or as individuals put all their energy into realizing their personal dreams.

When our book “Overlooked Sights. German Places.” was finished, we were often told that this was the first book revealing an eccentric Germany. Everyone knows of Germans taking themselves too seriously, but what we discovered was that Germany has a very big variety of people, projects and that it is a highly creative country.

Talking about your book: it was reviewed in all serious and “un-serious” German media, you were invited on talk shows on TV, radio and are now often asked to give your opinion on all things German. What did it take to turn your project into such a successful book?

Mic: A lot of time and dedication! (laughs) Taking some time off and turning our experiences into a book was a very good way for us realize that we finally arrived back in Germany. We were lucky that we found IC Berlin as a publisher, who allowed us do the book exactly how we imagined it to be.

Reto: There simply wasn’t any book like it before. I don’t know any offtrack-non-stereo-type-books on Germany at all. After we started selling the book, we got lots of letters from people telling us that this was something they always wanted to have and do.

That of course was a nice confirmation, that our way of doing projects also works well in Germany.

Amongst all the places you have seen on your journey - what are your favorite stories?

Mic: I like the story of Mrs. Schwab who had a fascination for nuns and therefore started sewing all German nun costumes in miniature and created a little private exhibition space.

Also the Junkerhouse, an amazing piece of craftsmanship: a lonely man waiting for the perfect wife started carving every single part of his house for over 20 years. He never got praised for it during his lifetime, but now the town has discovered the beauty of the place. Both of these examples are stories of individuals who totally go for their dreams.

Reto: I also like the “Museum of Lies”: an east German oppositional artist decided to build it after the wall came down, partly because also in the West not everything was as true as one hoped for at the time. You can find everything from Van Gogh’s ear, listen to the last sounds of the Titanic or sit on a flying carpet…. and you can stay over night and purchase items for very little money… one man’s worlds….

Mic: There are many other themes: religion, food, fairy tales, natural phenomena - like the “bottomless pit”: a really tiny pond which seems infinite. The special thing about this pond are the stories people created around it transmitted over centuries.

Reto: Many of the stories we heard reveal a lot of respect for things - which is a rather new, beautiful thing for us to be discovered in Germany.

You started giving lectures and creative workshops about your way of drifting and finding things. Creative management school Chaospilots in Denmark, Salone di Mobile in Milan, management congresses in Berlin and also a lecture at Super Deluxe in Tokyo.

What is the core of your talks?

Reto: It is basically serendipity and a “system” for finding things.

Mic: Serendipity means finding something that you weren’t looking for or, in other words, looking for the needle in the haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter. When we open our talk we always start by giving some examples of serendipity in human history. Take Viagra, which was thought to be a remedy for angina. Already testing it on humans, the doctors were quite amazed when their test users continued to ask for Viagra even though it didn’t seem to cure their angina at all…. such findings are serendipity.

But can serendipity be taught?

Reto: Yes, I think so. It basically puts emphasis on the process of finding or designing (e.g. finding the right shape for something) and believing in this process. Most designers already know this or make us of it instinctively. A journey to find something is never an easy one, so you need to be prepared to develop creative ideas, you need to be ready to search, even for things that you will never expect to find.

What did these lectures make you realize?

Mic: That although serendipity is such a simple thing, people who hear the concept for the first time really get into it. It is an ideal state of mind, a serendipitous mind. And people who listened to our stories and talks came out wanting to live more serendipity, explore more for themselves. It is a system of letting go and therefore allowing greater things to happen.

You mention the “wandering craftsmen” in your talks. What has this old traditional craftsmanship system to do with serendipity and modern ways of networking?

Reto: Their system to ensure work experience, innovation and passing on valuable information was developed in the middle ages. They sent each apprentice on a journey for 3 years and a day, and believed in the importance of leaving the normal track and looking at things from different perspectives - keep moving, searching and then finding. It is quite interesting for us to see how this system still works today, combining a rather open way of communication and helping each other, but at the same time acting as a secret society. Maybe even more today it is important to share your knowledge but also to keep your secrets. That is what makes you a little more interesting. (smiles)

Inspired by the research about the wandering craftsmen we developed a framework for serendipity and for making the process of finding a success, which consist of these five parts:

1. Keep on moving
   
2. Keep records
   
3. “I ain’t take nothin’ that’ll slow down my travelin’ “
   
4. Develop your own method of searching
   
5. Networking: Share your knowledge and keep your secrets
   

What are the drifting friends up to now?

Mic: We basically still find “overlooked sights” and write new stories, which appear in the Financial Times Germany every week. One could say, that the whole thing became a way of life. (laughs)

Besides that, we exhibited our book at the d- haus a project for young German designers as part of the German Year in Japan. We also took part in the jung+deutsch exhibition within DesignMai featuring with the 70 best young designers of Germany in Berlin and Tokyo. Then we did a workshop at the Milano furniture fair and at several other places … it keeps us busy besides continuing our professional careers: Reto Wettach is professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam where he is currently setting up Germany’s first MA/BA course in interaction design. I am already working on my next book besides working part-time with Scholz&Friends, one of Germany’s leading PR firms.

Thank you very much for a lesson in drifting.

Note: the wandering craftsmen = apprentices of freemanson were also the ones who invented and established labor unions. Here is more info about those special craftsmen “auf der Walz”-unfortunately only in German ;-( Sorry about that.

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