How I Turned Frustration Into Creative Success | Joshua Schachter | TED

So for many years I've been doing computer art, geometric art with pen and paper on plotters. I write the code and sometimes I build the machines. I would upload the stuff to social media, figuring maybe people like the soft noises and the clicks and pops and so on. No one really paid any attention to it. (Plotter sounds) At some point, someone gave me a chocolate 3D printer extruder, and I filled it with acrylic paint, and set it up and made a terrible mess. (Laughter) I wanted to try out making some dots, and I wrote a little program, and the dots weren't in order. (Laughter) These were reactions it got. Some people got angry. Some people sympathized with the robot. (Laughter) Some people danced to it. Mostly angry. (Laughter) (Video) Narrator: If you go in a line, it’ll be faster. it'll be -- it'll be quicker if you go in a line. I think -- you're going side to side. You should go in a line and you'll go faster. Just go -- go in a line! (Laughter) Joshua Schachter: This one is “Bad day at the circle factory. ” I realized you could manufacture emotions of various kinds with just a robot and pen and paper. (Laughter) So I leaned into it. (Laughter) People got very upset. And I got yelled at a lot. Very gently. A lot about "I hope your pillow is warm. " (Applause) These started getting millions and millions of views. (Laughter) And a lot of reactions as well. (Video) Narrator: Circle, circle, I love you. Circle, circle. Did I confess too soon? I confessed too soon! Never mind, never mind! (Laughter) JS: People asked me to do mazes. OK. How do you screw up a maze? This is how. It went right past the exit. (Laughter) I had to learn the rules of this little medium. It had to be 12, maybe 15 seconds. Go quickly. And I had to try to hide the mistake underneath the mechanism. (Laughter) And mostly the ending had to be traumatic. (Laughter) (Audience: Aww. ) I promised people -- (Laughter) I would promise people oddly satisfying, and then I would betray them. (Applause) People thought this was about AI. (Laughter) That one went super viral. People spent 200,000 hours watching my 17 second video. I got so many notifications my phone died repeatedly for days. So ultimately, constraints are great for making art, but you ultimately end up becoming a crappy cover artist of your own work. And I didn't really like that, so I took a break. But remember that if you go on the internet and see something that annoys you just a bit... it might have been me. (Laughter) Thank you. (Laughter and Applause)