Innovation
At Fundación Telefónica we want to find out what happened in that place of Cala Montjoi for a group of chefs, led by Ferran Adrià, who revolutionize gastronomy. These is ‘Innovation’ where the creative process is audited.
Creative audit: when a monkey peels a banana, is he cooking?
For the ‘Ferran Adrià exhibition project titled ‘Auditing the creative process’, we thought we should give the exhibition’s new website the challenges Adrià set for his team at elBulli while they worked, as well as the public at his conferences. This has been our particular creative process.
“Creativity is like humour”
John Cleese, Monty Python screenwriter and actor, used to say that creativity cannot be deciphered as though it were a machine you can take apart and examine. “It’s like Mozart’s music or a Van Gogh painting”. Something more than a method.
There is no perfect place to create
In “air and light and time and space”, one of his most famous poems, Charles Bukowski reproaches those who think that they need a certain time and place in order to create.
Ferran Adrià: “Avant-garde is not business”
Behind the streets we walk along every day, through those alleyways you never go down, the city hides hidden landscapes and unimaginable scenes. That’s where creativity is found. In that uncertain detour that Ferran Adrià took.
The funnel method at elBulli
At the source, nothing is impossible. The only limit, in any case, is set at what is not “realistic”. Madness leads you nowhere. But what is impossible today could be viable. A hot ice cream defies logic. Nobody knows how to do it… Until they find the formula.
Renzo Garibaldi: “Everything that is born from you is creative”
Each person has a different reaction to the same images. That reaction for Renzo Garibaldi, owner of Osso, a slaughterhouse and salami-making operation in Peru, is creativity.
When creative success is a great leap
Fosbury was victorious at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and his way of jumping became the new standard among athletes. Mockery of the unknown gave way to widespread use of the innovation.
The importance of keeping everything at elBulli
All the hours of research and work at elBulli are stored in records, drawings and documents. The learning was stored in what is now the elBulli archive and, simultaneously, the starting point for further research
That is how work was done at elBulli
On the walls of elBullifoundation there are small spice jars. The raw material you work with should not be stored only in the memory. It needs to be visible. Ferran Adrià believes that visualising things is important when working with them.
The “three-dimensional chicken” campaign
Ferran Adrià has been repeating it since this project started: “We need to prepare a three-dimensional chicken .” An inspiring chicken, a chicken that breaks the mould, a chicken that works for everyone, a fun and useful chicken, the mother of all creative chickens.
Ferran Adrià: “The ability to spur action is my obsession”
The Austrian journalist Stefan Zweig once said that of all the mysteries of the universe, none is more profound than that of creation. The key to the enigma has been as sought after as the Holy Grail. However, none of those who have carved their names in the rock of the universal history of creativity have stopped to observe, deconstruct and analyse what it was that made their work so extraordinary. And if any did, they never told the world.