Welcome, and thank you once again for being here. Meta is the Blackbird Foundation’s publication exploring creativity. This month, we’re continuing our series on Creativity in Action. Make sure you subscribe and share with your friends.
Creative People in Action
This month, we sat down with Damien Gaume, the mastermind behind Marble Mannequin, a TikTok artist creating oddly satisfying fever dreams to share with his audience of over a 3.4million. His art is based on altered rigid body simulations and Computer Generated Imagery.
Damien’s motivation to learn CGI came after trying to recreate a fever dream he had when he was 10. After being unable to explain the dream verbally, visuals became the best way to communicate properly.
When asked if he sees himself as creative, Damien shares, “I see myself as a person who can channel creativity easily. I am a medium in which creation finds a way out. I haven’t always felt this way. I have been into music and visual arts for over 30 years. In the beginning, I did it because I wanted to, and I didn’t care whether I was good at it or not.
“Nowadays, my creativity depends a lot on the inspiration of the moment but also comes from certain fuses that I managed to learn how to trigger.”
As for his own personal definition of creativity? Damien defines it as the adult word for playing.
“That’s all it is. A kid making things with blocks or paint without thinking what others will say.”
“Being creative depends on the ability of growing up without killing the child you have in you. Just be yourself, and don’t be afraid of being judged.”
And as for where it all began?
“I was lucky enough to have an extremely rich formative experience in my home country, Argentina. My teachers were musicians, visual artists, scientists, and engineers. I think the main thing for me was that they never taught by the book but they used their experiences. Of course, there’s a technicality that I had to learn, and it was a bit painful because I am more of a creative guy, not really technical.”
“But the focus was on learning real-life facts in music and arts in general, emphasizing what we feel as artists, made of flesh and bones, instead of what we should be able to achieve at the end of the degree because we “passed” the exams.”
“I think I was more inspired by the sentiments of real
people than by the books they presented in class.”
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