THE CREATOR
THE RED BULLETIN: Were you always inventing things as a kid in Sweden?
SIMONE GIERTZ: I always had projects, but it was mostly things like whittling wood or making weird sculptures out of trash. I wasn’t an electronics kid or into engineering. I thought maybe I’d like to be an astronaut or mathematician.
Why did you quit your physics degree?
I started tinkering with electronics. Realising I could write code and make actual things move felt like an immense amount of power I wanted to possess. The first thing I built was ridiculous – retractable guitar strings I could pull out [from my phone] and secure to my belt loop. Then I programmed an iPhone app that made the screen look like a guitar neck – you held the chord on the screen and the phone played the sound when you touched a string. It worked poorly, but when you turn something from an idea into a real thing you’re on top of the world.
Where did you go from there?
Next, I made a toothbrush helmet [a skateboard helmet mounted with a robotic arm holding a toothbrush]. The video on YouTube got 50,000 views. It just kept growing from there.
Why was that playfulness and intentional failure important?
Looking back, building things with a sense of humour definitely helped quell my perfectionism. Also, I just thought it was really funny; I was just trying to make myself laugh. But then, part of it was a defence mechanism. I wasn’t an expert, but now I’ve spent eight years building things, I feel more confident in my skill and I’m trying to shed some of that self-deprecation. I think in some way I was trying to be unthreatening as a woman with skills. Now I want to be threatening.
What’s your starting point?
With most of my inventions, I’m taking an everyday problem and solving it in the most ridiculous way possible. Then I had a brain tumour, which definitely helps sober things up a bit. When I was recovering, I had such limited energy it made me question how I spent my time. Was I doing the things I wanted to? My stuff still tackles everyday problems, but now in more thoughtful ways.
Like your electronic, light-up, habit-tracking calendar…
I built that because I wanted to meditate daily but it’s hard to maintain a habit. I wanted something that hung on my wall that, if I skip a day, it’s going to be an eyesore – when you tap a day, it lights up. When I was recovering from my tumour, it really helped me through that difficult time. I missed one day of meditation, and that was two days after surgery because I was in hospital and constantly throwing up. But I thought, “This works… maybe it would for other people, too.”
Will all your future inventions be conventionally useful?
I’ve just spent three years designing a foldable hanger for shallow wardrobes and I’m so proud of it. But I’m still building a lot of weird stuff, like a pasta maker made from a make-up mannequin – instead of hair coming out, you extrude pasta. Then it changed to a moustache for technical reasons, but then I had to change it to a goatee, which is just awful.
Inventing must teach you how to cope with frustration and disappointment…
Yes, and solving problems. It’s like doing a puzzle where nothing works the way it should. I remember that feeling I had as a kid when I finished a woodworking project and got to bring it home to show my parents. That’s my fuel now – being super-excited about something I made and wanting to show it to other people.