2022-04-26 Irrelevancy as fuel to generate global enviro action
8:06PM May 2, 2022
Speakers:
Alison Sander
Cory Pesaturo
Ben Von Wong
John Werner
Keywords:
world
create
question
feel
plastics
artists
great
ben
project
find
started
people
build
day
thinking
idea
art
metaverse
happen
interesting
Welcome to Imagination in Action, where we have conversations with compelling people driving the action that will power our futures. These are successful Imaginators you want to know?
Ben, where are you? Are you in Portugal? Are you in Africa? Where are you? Today?
I'm in Philadelphia right now, out of all places. Great.
So So Ben, you're an inspiration. I know you through your photography work you, you do these one wondrous pieces of work where you depict something, but you don't use Photoshop to, to make it happen. You you just use your creativity to, to tell a story. Can you maybe expand a little bit on that part of your, your you know who you are, and how you came to be someone who does these great portraits. And I know this is an audio medium, and we're going to lose something by not being able to see your work. But I did pin your URL on the top. And I know in tonight's Imagination in Action, you have an idea and you have something you really want to get out there. But let's start by kind of grounding us in who you are. And what makes you the Imaginator. That I think is is extraordinary.
Yeah, so thank you so much for having me, first of all, and maybe the best way to describe my work is to start with the profile picture that is currently on display. I like to create photos or images that people think are photoshopped. The reason for that is because I believe that curiosity is a very powerful tool that we can put at our disposal. When people are curious, they're open to learning more, they want to know how something is done, why it's done. And you can take them on this adventure. In my case, I tried to leverage that not to sell product or to gain followers, but rather to figure out how we can share important messages in the world, a lot of my work centers around sustainability issues. I've played around with plastics, electronic waste, fast fashion, just sort of using the volume of stuff that we consume as a species as a society to highlight different interesting statistics. I think the one that paired the laptops that is on my profile picture was that 142,000 laptops are thrown away every single day, the United States. You know, electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world. And less than 15% of it is recycled, despite the high value of materials that comes in it. And so, you know, I use art as a tool to communicate different things. And I just think that when you do something that's really weird and unique and different people just want to know how and what you did. Why. And and from there, you can have a great conversation.
Great, and I know, you know, this is the Earth Week, Earth Month, or time of the year when people think about that annual holiday or annual moment. What does that mean to you in the work that you do?
Sorry, I missed the question something about the holiday. We're currently in
Earth Day. What does this Day mean to you? And how does your work connect with it?
I mean, I think Earth Day, it's, it's cool that Earth has a day, but I think every day should be Earth Day. And that, you know, we we benefit from oxygen, water, clean air, land, food 365 days out of the year. And it's kind of kind of funny that we only choose to celebrate it for one day. But I guess that's how it is with many things. You know, on the cynical side, it's an opportunity for every single company to promote their sustain that they're one sustainable thing that they're doing, which is frustrating. But I think on a more optimistic note, I think it's undeniable the amount of interest that we have today to find unique and interesting and creative ways to make the world a better place to come and redesign better systems to do more than just campaigns and empty promises. And so I think on one hand, there's like the cynic in me that's just really frustrated. And then on the other hand, there's a lot of optimism and hope to look forward to.
So this is Imagination in Action. We have 300 Imaginators. You can check them out on our website imagination in action.co. And every week we interview someone we have a conversation with someone for two hours, or a group of people. And we recorded and we created a transcript and we send what we discussed to all the Imaginators as a way to help promote the ideas and we're picking people up We think are using their imagination to make action happen. And Ben von Wong definitely fits the bill. Allison, any, you know, we're gonna get to Ben's big idea and what he's doing about it. But Allison, any starter questions, any questions you want to pose to kind of help get a sense of, of the vector that Ben is on?
Well, absolutely. Ben, I love the image that you chose the select of the 142,000 PCs thrown out daily. And I'm just curious how you picked that as the example because there's so many other examples of plastics and trash. And then what kind of pickup Did you see people getting from the images you created? Do you sort of follow through to that end? Or is, is your role sort of at the front end?
Yeah, so I mean, inspiration, or which projects we tackle are always a function of what we have available to us how much budgets available, how much time we have to do it, you know, it's basically real world constraints when I think it comes to imagination and bringing that forward, bringing that to life. In my case, you know, this, this project specifically was co created with the help of Dell. And so the first step was going to Dells electronic waste recycling facilities, where I learned that they're the largest electronic waste recycler in the world, for the last 20 years or so. And then went went and learned about which materials they were collecting, what like how they were recycling it, what they were using, which ones they were using back into their own products, and then trying to use that to sculpt a story and a narrative. You know, I think there's, there's always going to be like an acknowledgment that Sure, they're, they're the largest electronic waste recycler in the world, but they're also one of the largest producers of electronics in the world. And so there's always this tension between the two. And I think there's a, there's always a balance to be struck between leveraging the resources that you have your disposal, and then also trying to tell a story. As far as electronic waste, and like taking action goes, Dell has this program where you can just, you know, send your electronic waste for free, and they'll recycle it for you. They have drop off centers all across the United States. And so, at the end of the day, I don't know about you guys, but it's very, very easy to have a bunch of cables, adapters, USPS computers, just sitting around, like lying around on our shelves, that are not being put to good use until one day we get tired of it, and then throw it away. And so there is a certain amount of action to be taken on behalf of the consumer to. And so I don't know if it's any one person's job is kind of all of our collective duties to do the best that we can to take some action. And the last part of your question, which was, do I measure do I know I mean, it's, you know, with art, especially, I feel like, it's very much a one directional relationship, you create something, you put it out into the world, people will consume it, but they might not say anything. It's sort of like this, this relationship we have right now to the audience where we're up on a stage I'm speaking, what impact is it having on people, I have no idea. And so there may be one or two people that may say something, there may be a couple of bottles that come back in terms of opportunities, or emails, or accolades or otherwise. But by and large, I think it's a one directional relationship. And in some ways, you just have to have faith that cool things are gonna happen. I have a bunch of like small anecdotes of people who ran electronic waste drives. At home, I have employees from Dell, who were really excited to bring it home to talk to it to their kids. So what I do know for a fact is that conversations that would have never happened otherwise, actually happened. Is that enough? Is that getting us to where we need to get to? I have no idea.
Then I know you coined the phrase. Something recently that is taking you to a few different continents. But before we get to that, can you talk about maybe a few of your past projects, in addition to the Dell one? Did I cut off for a second?
I think you are clear. John, did you get the question though?
Yeah, the question. Can you describe some of your past projects? Like you said, the Dell one, but I know you've done many. And you know, each one is as interesting as the next?
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe a good one to start with is single use plastics as a topic that I've tackled for many, many years now. I first started off, the first product that I ever did was right around when the Great Pacific Garbage Patch had just been discovered. I you know, I think everyone knows that plastic to a certain extent is a problem. But at that point in time, we hadn't realized how big of a problem it was, how much of it was flowing into the environment. And and, and my mom had just discovered a mermaid tail designer at the time. And I was like, Oh, cool. I really want to work with this mermaid tail designer. What are some issues around mermaids ie the oceans that I could pay attention to. And so of course, I started looking around and stumbled across the story of how there was, you know, a patch of plastics that had so much so much density and plastics the size of an island in Texas, a size of Texas that, you know, and I think it's only grown from now that I just thought it'd be really interesting to try to represent that, metaphorically. And so we ended up getting 10,000 plastic bottles that we cleaned, D labeled organized, we strapped a camera to like the ceiling of this warehouse, and we put a mermaid on top of these 10,000 bottles to talk about how, you know, the average person uses about 10,000 plastic bottles in the course of their lifetime. And, you know, what would it look like if each of us took individual action. And I've done many sort of campaigns like this with with cups like 18,000 plastic cups that we collected in a single day while I was in Singapore 168,000 plastic straws collected over the course of nine months. And, you know, it always, you know, no matter how many times I create this project, it was constantly talking about the downstream impacts of plastic pollution, like, this is what we have to do as an individual, this is what you have to do. It isn't real, you have to say no, when you go by this thing. But I think over time, what I've increasingly started to realize is like, you know, it's not just about these small actions or some systemic change that really needs to happen. You know, companies need to change the business practices, we need different incentives, governments need to create new regulation. And yes, of course, we need to provide the support in order to make that change happen. And so I've been slowly but surely starting to shift away from these downstream consequences, just saying like, Oh, we need to change our individual habits, but also starting to look upwards at figuring out well, how do we create messaging around how one tackles and changes an entire system?
Alison, to you,
I'm so fascinated, I love sort of artists getting to the front and really changing our image about how we consume and what we consume. I mean, is this who Who do you look up to as the people who started doing this? And where did sort of the original idea come to you of of doing these sort of almost like human landscapes?
Yeah. It's an interesting question, I don't think was any person or style that I was really trying to emulate. I just I was really just trying to tell a story. Since the beginning of my career, I was always creating large scale crazy, fantastical images, I would always be looking for stunts to attract attention whether it was tying a mermaid sorry, tying a person to a shipwreck in Bali, or putting superheroes on the edge of a 40 storey skyscraper, you know, extravagant costumes makeup, an extraordinary individuals that I was just combining together to tell tale narratives and, and that sort of extension of the fantastical world just happened as I started shifting my focus from trying to attract attention and do crazy things for the sake of doing crazy things to choosing rather to to go and tell stories that are more meaningful. And so yeah, I don't really know anyone else that does the same kind of thing that I do. So I'm not sure if there's really someone to be emulated. That isn't to say there aren't other people doing really cool things. I mean, Chris Jordan, as an example, there's really amazing photo montages of real world statistics. But I've never met him in person, I've only heard him do a TED talk. And this was only after I had gotten fairly deep into the plastic world. And so it's, it's by no means a unique thing. But it was, it was not specifically inspired by anything specific. Have you
approached IKEA or some other multinational companies that have a lot of product that you might want to raise awareness on some of the sustainability things that you care so much about?
I mean, I have found it more effective to not go up to to companies and try to pitch a fully formed idea. So there's this thing with artists. And this has happened to me many times in the past where a company comes up to me and they say, Hey, you do cool, unexpected things, do you have any ideas that you want to share with us. And then what you end up doing is thinking or selling. So you spend a lot of time thinking about different ideas and then pitching them and for whatever reason the project falls through. And now you've just invested X number of hours or weeks to come up with something that now can no longer exist in the world. And so I started to think of my creative process in like two phases. I've like forced myself to alter my my approach because I was just really running out of energy and motivation to just constantly think of ideas for people that weren't going anywhere. And nowadays, what I do is I think of it as more of a the first phase is the design phase where you're more likely to consultant, you're listening, you're absorbing information, but people are paying you to do thinking to see is there is there can you think of something that's particularly interesting because we like the work you've done in the past. And we're really curious to know what you might do, you know, with with our company with our line. And so the these days, it's really just consultant first, and then the artists kind of comes up. But I don't try to just pitch things come up with ideas. Before there's an actual, there's any kind of money being spent. And I think just by forcing people to spend a little bit of money upfront, they already get more invested in you and the ideas, and I just think it's a healthier relationship overall. So if
money wasn't an issue, and resources weren't a constraint, what project would you do to make a statement and raise awareness?
Yeah, I find, I find that sort of mindset, also a little bit hard to answer, because if there's something that I really wanted to do, I kind of figured out how to do it anyways, like right now there's a project I'm very excited about, we're going to try to build a living underwater art installation made out of bio rock, which is essentially read metal rebar, that you pass an electrical current through, that then creates a layer of calcium carbonate so that corals can grow 10 times faster on them. And so the idea that you can build, you can restore the land attract more tourists, support the local economy, while creating a piece of art is something that I think is really cool, because it it's saying that all these things like it's like, all these things are possible. You can benefit people, you can benefit the planet, and you can you can benefit like the human spirit. And it's just really, really fun to be able to do something like that. But I would say like, rather than think of individual projects, my my mindset has been more about figuring out, how does one stay at their most creative, and their most connected, and I think it comes down to finding a home. And maybe it's more than one home, but it's a place where you can work, live and learn comfortably. And so it really was more down to how do you put yourself in a consistent state of feeling inspired and connected and excited to tackle the next thing, right? So it's, I feel
like every season you should be an artist and resident in a different hemisphere and do good like Johnny Appleseed. But but but different. I'll turn to Allison. But one last question. Before I turn Nelson. When you pattern match what you do? Do you find anyone in centuries past that did something similar? Or history doesn't tell the story of people that may have been doing things that you do today? I mean, I know some of what you're doing is based on technology. And, you know, two centuries ago, there weren't there wasn't the camera. But I'm just wondering if you've come across anyone in history that you think did similar things to what you're trying to do?
That is a great question. And I feel like I haven't studied enough artists in history to actually have an answer to it. I'm sorry. I'm all good.
Alison, to you.
I love the fact that this is the first time in all the toxic John and I have co moderated that we have climate activists in the audience. So I think then you've got followers, and I can't wait to the q&a part. But I would love to hear more about the living underwater exhibit that you described. And just a little bit about how a vision like this comes together. Because you're so right. It sounds like it combines restoration new materials, benefiting people benefiting fish. I mean, how? How did that vision come together? And how many people or processes are involved in the collaboration?
Yeah, for sure. Um, so. So I think the best kind of art happens as a byproduct of sort of listening to what others have to say. Because that's where you get your you get inspiration from I personally am a person that gets inspired. Like, I'm an extrinsic ly inspired, like I need outside things to happen. I can't just take a shower and come up with brilliant ideas. And I think like the the kind of work that I try to create, which aspires to help and support the real world requires me to go into the real world and talk to people who are on the ground who are doing things far more knowledgeable than me. And so this happened while I was in Indonesia. This is pre pandemic, I was in Indonesia. For wedding. I happen to have a friend who introduced me to was able to get me like a free boat ticket onto this island called the Gili Islands and ended up there and I was looking for like local environmental organizations while I was there to chat With different folks and you know, find, quote unquote my people. And, and I found this scientist who was running an organization called Gilly eco trust. And so we just sat down and I asked her what she was working on what she was excited about what the challenges were. And she started to explain to me like everything, like the politics between the, the the dive shops and the scuba shops. So dive shops are usually owned by richer Europeans, while the scuba shops are owned by the locals, and so there's like, contention between these two parties, because both are trying to fight for the same clientele. But then you have like the scuba folks that will go and and follow, quote, unquote, not follow the rules as well. And so they may anchor places that they're not supposed to, so that they can attract more people. And so for them, it's more of a volume game. And then you have these outsiders that are getting mad, but then really, they're also outsiders. So there's this tension between these two parts, there are entire areas that had been destroyed. You know, during economic downturns, you have issues like fish bombing that take place. And so we just started talking about this. And then on the side, she was also talking about this project that she was working on to collaborate with a an organization, a startup that was going to be creating an underwater turbine. So that that could be powered by waves so that they could, they could have a current that would power the structure and was like, Wait, why you want to do that. And it's because right now they have a couple of buyer rock experiments. But in order to power this thing, these rebar structures, they have to run cables all the way to land. And so so the science behind this, and she she was a she's a an actual scientist, she has a science background. You know, she was there conducting research and experiments on how to restore a lot of the coral reefs that had been destroyed. And so I was listening to these two stories, and I was just like, oh, have you ever thought of like using art to, to try and, you know, attract, attract people and also tell the story of, of conservation. And she was like, yeah, they kind of tried to do this, they sunk like a VESA underwater. And there's, there's a lot of people that go and take selfies, they've tried to create a couple of like, smaller structures, but they've always kind of blown over. And they just said, like, Well, why don't we try to do something that's like, really, really big, that can be modular, so that it can grow slowly, over time, we can choose a place that's already been destroyed. So there's, you know, it's kind of a flat level space. And then from there, what if we could design this art installation so that it can actually reconciliate the differences between these two groups of scuba scuba guys in the circle, guys, by making sure that this is an art installation that can be appreciated, both from the top of water, and through the bottom right, so So it's this sort of like layered, slow, kind of intricate thought process and and only recently did I actually start thinking about how we were going to build it, what it's going to look like, because almost that part of it is almost less important than the entire backstory that gives meaning and purpose to the art itself. And so right now we're at the stage where they've already fundraise I think 3030 grand through grants, I'm looking at finding some other some other funds, everything was really, really pushed back by the pandemic, because as a tourist island, they basically lost 80% of their revenue. And so it's been a little bit challenging for them. But it's something that, you know, you plant these seeds, and you never know when they're going to come back. So it's been like three years now. But I still think I still believe that it's actually going to happen at some point, either either this year, either next year, or maybe the year after, but who knows. And so I have a bunch of these, like, sort of seeds that have been planted by people who are doing interesting thing, where I think art can be of service, and just waiting for it to manifest.
And I know, you have talked about open source art, and you were recently in Nairobi, and you had a big project that really captivated you. And can you can you describe that and, and I knew there was a water faucet involved in plastic.
Yeah, so the latest project that I did, was a three storey tall giant faucet called Turn off the plastic tap. And so the terminology of turn off the plastic tap sort of references what I had said a little bit earlier, ie, we can't just deal with downstream consequences of plastic pollution, we need to look upstream and we need to actually like turn off the plastic tap, we need to stop producing it. And there's this very this is not a term that I coined myself, rather it's a term that I just heard reference so many times in the nonprofit space because the the analogy is like if this bathtub is overflowing, and water is flowing everywhere, do you start mopping the floor? Or do you just go turn off the tap? Right? So we need to address production. But if you look year after year, every single year since the since the dawn of like plastic invention, that curve has just steadily gone up and up and up and up and it's never slowed down. And so I was like, you know, we need to have a visual symbol for this thing. This thing that's been said that's only in This nice part of the world, but it's just never actually visually represented. So what if I could create a symbol? And so I stole the idea from the levitating faucets that have like water just flowing out of it, those magical faucets? And I was like, Oh, why don't we just create like a huge version of this. And so the first time I created this, you know, I, I actually created it. No, like not believing that even if the art was very good that it would get seen by enough people. And so it was like, Okay, if I build this art installation, and it's not gonna be seen by people, how can I ensure that it's still reaches as many people as possible. And so what I ended up doing was I cut the faucet out in Photoshop. And I started sending it to as many influencers as I can. And I had hundreds of people actually take this single piece of art that I had created and remix it over and over and over again. And so this, this idea that you don't need to do things alone that you can find allies, I think was was one of those simultaneously, like, on one hand, felt really frustrating and disempowering, but on the other was just amazing, because so many cool things came out of it that would have never been possible otherwise. And then I decided to actually remix my own foster when I had the chance, most recently in Kenya, and Nairobi, Kenya. And so I don't know if many people know this. But while the war in Ukraine was starting out, the biggest treaty around plastics was signed like this is the probably the most positive news we've received in in the plastics world since the since it was first set up set loosen to the world. And so essentially 1500 delegates from 193 different countries all came together to, to talk about how they needed to build a legally binding treaty, to control the flood of plastics and to ensure that poor countries had financing that it didn't take away the livelihoods of the 20 million informal waste pickers that are out there, picking up trash and you know, earning less than $2 a day. And so and, and the quality of the treaty that ended up passing this resolution that passed to get ready for this treaty was was so good, like even the most militant groups, the the most pessimistic ones were happy at the outcome of this thing, and, and I somehow managed to, to within like three weeks, raise enough money to go over there, build an entire new version of this, this time, four storeys tall with three tons of plastics, we hired a bunch of local folks from the slums of Kibera and brought plastics from the slums onto like the pristine green grass of the United Nations. And along the way, raised $100,000 for this charity to help support the work that they were doing. And and now it continues to travel, like the same installation continues to be remixed, there were just some kids recently in high school that recently made like the small eight foot version of it out of PVC pipes and, and small, like aluminum ventilation duct. And it's just been so heartwarming to see the power of a single symbol start to show up everywhere. And I think it's it's only going to continue as the resolution that was signed, needs to become a treaty and as the challenges that it will inevitably face will continue to arise. So I think I think there's something really, really interesting there how some something that really started off as me creating something and not believing that it was going to work actually pushed me to find the allies in order to make sure that it could be seen by as many people as possible, despite the fact that I think a lot of the work that I do these days really play against algorithms play against play against what's expected.
Allison, any follow up questions on that? I think it's amazing what Ben's do.
It's just I mean, I have to say, you know, all the way over here in London, just listening to this. It's incredible. I mean, what runs through my head Benjamin is? And maybe this is like a fair and unfair question. But I'd love to know, like, which of all these projects you found the most fun. And if there are any projects you've gotten partway through where you're like, Okay, this isn't doable, because it just sounds like the volumes that you're dealing with and that you find and the levels you work on are so creative. Have you ever gotten into a project and just said, Okay, this one can't fly?
Honestly, I have to say that, that none of the projects are fun. When they're happening. They're actually really, really painful to do. What they end up they're not like the artists working alone. And it's in a studio. It's more like the artists managing dozens, if not hundreds of people with conflicting deadlines that are constantly shifting and inadequate resources. And so it's sort of this like constant battle to figure out what like, how do I survive until the next day? How do we survive until the day after that? And I would say, you know, even in this project that I did in Kenya, Uh, there were so many moments in time where I was like, Oh, this this product is is not going to happen. Like we got, we got final permission to go build this thing in the United Nations Friday at 6pm. And we had to install this on Sunday. So until that point, we were operating, you know, as if this was something that was going to happen, but But at any point realistically could have been pulled. And I think there are just so many projects like this, where, you know, you're given every excuse, why this is not going to work. And you just kind of still forge ahead naively, with all the optimism in the world and try to solve the problems as best you can. And I think that's just very much how I approach each and every project. I think the one thing that we just never compromise on is safety and security. So if, you know at any point anyone, engineering or otherwise just says like, right, this is not possible. You got you got to stop, then then that's when things get pulled. But yeah, I mean, are there any projects that I've never seen, like, I think that failure comes in many guises, right, like something can be an artistic success, but a marketing failure, something can be a marketing success and an artistic failure, something can be both an artistic success and a marketing success. But then nobody really understood the message. And so if the intention was to create change, but it didn't create any change, then that part of it can be a failure. And so I think, we think of success and failure as binary, but in reality, it's sort of broken down into all these different components. What I try to do with every project is to actually, at the end of the day, like, regardless of what happens is to make sure that everybody leaves with a feeling of having accomplished something, or learned something or done something meaningful with their time. And, and so we, you know, I think in the back of my head with every project, as we bring on dozens, if not hundreds of people, it's just say like, oh, how do I honor all the people that came in to be a part of this thing? How do I honor all the folks that that trusted that this was going to be a thing? And so I think, from there comes the pressure to perform and to do something great. And but it doesn't, it doesn't always work out, like you can just, you can't guarantee if if the bulk of the products you do or things you've never done before.
Ben, can you editorialize the title of this room? You were the one that suggested it? And I think you said it was based on something that inspired you help, kind of paint that picture for us?
Yeah, for sure. Um, so this, this is actually the title of the TEDx talk that I just did, together with John, John Werner, where it's, it's like a 12 minute talk that sort of breaks down, what drives the desire to create these big, large, crazy art installations that has like a message behind them. And, and essentially, for me, it sort of stems from this fear of, I think, like, I always wanted to be different. When I was younger, I was always like a new the new kid, I was always sort of awkward. And it started off when when I was just young, a young kind of stereotypical Asian kid that that played violin, did martial arts and was good at math and physics. And it was just like, such a hard thing, like I struggled so hard to stand out and to be different for so much of my life. That that, that I think it just kind of carried me forward throughout a lot of my creative career where I started doing all these projects that were designed to stand out. And none of this has anything to do with with with climate change. But I think that same desire to stand out that same desire to, to do meaningful things is actually that same kind of that maybe that same fear that we feel when we look at big global problems, and we go like, Oh, my gosh, this thing is way too big for me to tackle. My individual actions don't matter. My, you know, there's nothing that I could possibly do to change these entrenched systems in place. But But I think that as you as you take control of your ability, or your frustration is your fear of being irrelevant, and you start doing not everything, like you're not changing the world, you're just changing your part of the world. And you're finding other people who are changing their part of the world, that together, you know, that that that whole shared sense of irrelevancy, that shared sense of eco anxiety, that shared sense of powerlessness actually builds into something that is actually quite powerful. Or like the only reason that all these 1500 delegates from 103 Different countries ever came together to to create a plastic straws because so many people were standing up against it. There's so many cleanups, so many petitions so many like videos of turtles with straws up their nose, so many kids in schools I'm trying to use trash as material for arts like that, at some point, something had to happen. So did did any one of those actions alone really matter? No, not really. It was it was everything combined. And if we. And if we didn't have that fear for relevancy, we didn't feel like we were really smart that we wouldn't seek out the other collaborators that are actually critical to make cool things happen. Because nothing really happens in isolation, I would even venture so far as to say that great solutions that are developed in isolation actually turn out to be terrible once they hit the real world. And so that's that, I guess, is where the title comes from.
So then, I'm really fascinated, which sort of frontiers you think about when you think about where you want to go next. I mean, do you think about projects? I love the way you talked about success and failure being multi-dimensional? But do you tend to think about a message you want to deliver an artistic vision? As sort of part of a marketing campaign? I mean, how do you sort of focus in on let's say, e waste or plastics, or the coral reefs? And I do you have a sense inside you sort of what ideas are, are going to be the next ones to come out?
Yeah, honestly, for me, the big shift right now, is I feel like I've spent a lot of time talking about problems I constantly talk about this is what's wrong with the world. This is what's wrong with the world. And I am getting really tired of that. Like, just personally, I feel like, you know, with plastics as an example, if everyone already knows that it's a problem, and you're continuing to raise awareness for it, what are you truly doing? You're just like raising frustration along the way. And so there's this like, deep personal desire to start moving and shifting and looking at regenerative designs. I don't know things like I think mycelium based packaging is super cool, regenerative agriculture, and just just trying to realign myself with with solutions that are exciting to me to keep myself motivated. And so, you know, one of the projects that I'm currently working on is with a data, a data scientist, he's a, he's a senior TED Fellow, his name's Eric Barolo. He's actually an ecologist. And, and he's been doing like these, these, these studies, on how 80%, over 80% of funding in the climate space all revolves around technology. And none of none of these have an equity angle to them. But if we think about climate change, and we think about the people that it's gonna affect the most, it's the people that are on the bottom of the food chain, there are 3 billion people that earn less than $2 a day. And so if we just keep creating cooler solar panels and faster electric cars, well, then how are we ever going to make sure that the people who are going to be most affected by climate change aren't going to be forced out of where they live. And, and we've already seen what a few million people running away from Syria can do to create chaos in Europe, we're seeing again, what's going on with Ukraine. Imagine what happens when when when hundreds of millions of people start to migrate and start to move across the city, across the world, it's going to create so much chaos and so okay, that's the negative side. But what are the solutions? Well, the solutions, you know, we tend to think of climate solutions as something super far away and complex. But it can be also simple. We can build climate resiliency mitigation and adapt adaptation tools for those that are on the bottom of the food chain. And we can actually solve two problems simultaneously at the same time. And so what I'm doing with him is, is essentially, I didn't know this, but it was it's a copy of something that was done 700 years ago. It's called The Allegory of good government and bad government, which shows what the world looks like if if it's run by a good government and what the world looks like if it's run by a bad government. And what I've created right now is this like six foot tall, six foot long, 15 layer deep diorama that shows the consequences of migration on climate change, in one way, and showcasing the positive version of that, what happens if we actually get climate change, right, and we start actually supporting those who are on the bottom of the food chain so that they can actually help this in the fight against climate change. In a world where all these resources are more evenly distributed. And so I guess that's like, the direction that I'm heading, what it looks like how it's gonna manifest is a complete black box at this at this stage. But I think that's one of the beauties of being an artist and a creative is that there's no career path in which you you need to follow there's no right and wrong and even if you think you're doing the right thing, likely it's the rug is going to be pulled under you because the world is going to change faster than you keep up with it. Right? If we think about 10 years ago, where was where was the world? And where did we end up today? I think it would be really, really hard to predict.
You know, what I'm thinking for you is you should not only be an artist in residence similar, you should have a bunch of fellows who are in a fellowship, where they're getting trained, like you're a Jedi Master. And you're, you're training all these people to be a certain kind of artists that raises awareness, as a way to try to help help help all of our imagination, see what we can be doing to make the world more sustainable. What do you think of that idea?
Well, if anyone wants to offer me a residency, please let me know. I'm actually actively hunting for one, especially in New York City. And as far as like, trying to teach people how to do what I do. I've tried, I've tried in the past, I've actually written out some documents, I can, I can share this in the chat, in terms of like, like, I have this like seven page document on how I think and build these campaigns. But by and large, I think what I've realized is, I don't know why this is, but people are more interested in, in doing things that are simple, they're not interested in making their life more complicated. Even even if in theory, it's more impactful. And they think, I think maybe it's a it's a privilege thing. So I have the privilege of doing projects that takes weeks or months to do even though it's a privilege that I worked very hard to accomplish. I just I just don't think that most people want to go through the hassle for it. But if someone wants, if someone has any questions, feel free to hit me up, I'm more than happy to, to share.
them, I wanted to ask, I know that John asked a little bit at the beginning about your origin story. But now that I'm looking at your incredible websites, and I encourage everyone listening to this to look them up, because the pictures are just extraordinary videos, but it says that you started as a mining engineer, if I had that. And I mean, what, what exactly what role did you play? Where did you play that? And does that have any role in what you're doing now?
So it gets it's important to like, explain that I'm Canadian. I think as a, as a Canadian, it's it was just like one of the four major schools of engineering that we're out there. And so I just, I think I was planning on becoming a mechanical engineer. And I went, I went to the open house when I was 16 years old, started university at 17. And I just, I got in, and I was just kind of like, well, what like, why am I like, what? What are these different engineering disciplines and the guys at the mining booth just had a really, really great sales pitch. They said I could travel the world, I could get highest pay compared to all the other peers have the highest starting salary. I had paid work terms at smallest classrooms and was like, wow, this is such a great deal. I'm just gonna go do this mining thing, whatever. And so I ended up doing that I got a bunch of work terms. I graduated with cash, cashflow, positive, zero debt. And then I think like, four months before graduating, I was like, oh, no, like, what have I done? Where am I going to go with my life? This is not what I want to do. But I didn't really have anything better plan. So I just finished my degree and, and then went to work. So while I was, as you know, doing my thing, as a mining engineer, it wasn't so much that it was a passion, it was really just a job, I didn't have a clear sense of where I was heading. And I was doing long term mind planning. So most people don't think about this, but the gold, silver, copper, you know, all these materials that we extract from the ground, it has to come from somewhere. And so how do you go a mile underground with big machines and explosives to take things out of the ground? Like, what What equipment do you use? How much is it going to cost? How long does it take? All these are questions that I was kind of like just plugging into an Excel spreadsheet and coming up with calculations. And so I ended up doing that for for quite a little bit of for three and a half years. And then one day I woke up. I really didn't want to go to work. I had nothing to do, but I just had to go and show my face because that's what you do when you're an adult, you just go to work even if you have nothing to do. I was just like, This is so stupid, like, what am I doing? And I figured that I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew 100% What I didn't want to do with my life. And that was enough of a reason for me to quit. I tried to get myself fired, because I had no idea what to do. I was just like, Oh, I better collect unemployment just in case and they wouldn't fire me so i i quit anyways. And first step was to get an MBA, master's in business administration or GMAT. The GMAT tests just so that I could get an MBA because I really didn't think about that this photography thing was an option but then I had ended up quitting my day job in January and school started in September and so I ended up With a whole bunch whole bunch of months to kill with nothing to do. And so it was just like, well, since I have nothing better to do, I'm going to try this artists thing I'm going to travel I'm going to teach and things just ended up working out, there was never a good enough reason to quit. And I think, you know, over time just became an environmentalist. And now it's just kind of funny that I've gotten from mining engineer to environmentalist.
Hey, Ben, cop happens, you know, on a rhythm? Have you thought about doing art around those gatherings as a way to raise awareness? Or is that like preaching to the choir and the year thinking there are other eyeballs and other networks you want to get your workout to?
I mean, generally speaking, I'm willing to entertain an installation anywhere, it's just hard, it's always hard to find funding and access, those are probably the two biggest constraints. And then maybe the third biggest constraint is like finding long lasting access. So you might be able to get access to a place for three days. And then everything has to be taken down again. But you know, if you have people that cop that might want to work together, hit me up, I'm always I'm always interested in terms of efficiency or effectiveness of art, like, where are the greatest pressure points and levers on which it can do? I mean, as with everything, I think there's like the the micro change that that we're, it's about reaching the everyday person. And then there's the macro level change where it's reaching to the policymakers, and the corporation's the folks that, that influence the actions of the everyday people. And I don't think one is better than the other. I think they're both necessary. And for me, it's just about taking up the opportunity whenever it presents itself, regardless of of where it, it defines itself.
Allison, do you have other questions? At some point? I see we have some people on stage, but defer to you, Alison, but let me know if you want to go to the audience.
Sure, I definitely have one. And then there are people who've been patiently waiting. So. So Ben, one thing that's amazing listening to you talk is that you bring a level of of honesty and self reflection and humility to these, you know, because you're, you're basically creating a new field here a whole new way for people to see their consumption in the world to see our collective impact. It's truly inspiring. And so I would love to know, just in terms of your self reflection, I mean, how have you had to evolve your own sense of what it is you want to do, or that fulfills you to sort of go from a mining engineer, it's hard to think of more jobs that have more concrete kind of metrics, numbers, known path, known shafts for mining, to something like this, that really is so generative, and so creative. Have you have you had to sort of adjust your thinking along the way? Or was it just very natural?
Um, well, thank you for the kind words, I'm trying to think like, was there a real shift, I mean, the biggest shift, I guess, was going at some point from being alive to choosing to live. And I think that, you know, a lot of my earlier childhood days was just being alive and doing the things that I felt like I was supposed to do and following, like, a track of expectations that I felt like I had to enact and play out. And I think that as I gained confidence in art, through my photography, even if I was just doing it on evenings and weekends, I think there was a slow but sure sense of agency over who I was, and what I was able to do. I think maybe that's something that's really powerful about art is that it gives you the ability to birth something into existence that was never there before. And I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, right? Like if you, if you choose to believe that nothing you do ever matters, and so you're not going to do anything anyways, then you've already lost the ability to ever do anything cool. But if you just choose to believe that you can create something out of nothing, then where you go from there is you start testing out the boundaries of what those look like. And I think that as I was able to, you know, bring crazier and crazier projects to life and build a following over time, I got hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of followers. I just sort of, I think I kept out on the whole need for my own validation. I think it was just kind of like, well, I'm getting paid money. I'm doing these big campaigns. I have half a million followers. And now what well like what do you do with you just get bigger jobs and you get more followers. So that can get more likely, it just felt kind of like a zero sum game. Where, Why? Why was I needing to accumulate more stuff, more accolades, more things, if I wasn't going to do anything meaningful with it. And so I think, I think I think maybe those are the two major shifts first, first, stepping into the ability to do something, and then second is stepping into the ability to contribute to other things. And then I think my current shifts that I'm exploring and trying to explore within myself is, how can I do this in a way that doesn't like that doesn't feel so exhausting and painful all the time? Like, how can I? How can I enjoy the process more? How can I how can I seek to have an impact without, without constantly like beating myself up over the fact that it feels like it's not good enough? So I think I think these days, in the beginning, it was maybe a lot more I wanted to have freedom to do things. And I think now and maybe looking for freedom from things like freedom from the feeling of anxiety or pressure, or stress of of inadequacy or otherwise.
Oh, what do you think of Greenpeace been?
Yeah. Greenpeace, I think they serve a function. So in the plastics world there on the far there, the extreme, the extremists, the one that go and like try to call people out and beat them on the head with a stick, I think they're extremely necessary. And then maybe on the, in the center to maybe more corporate friendly, you might have like a WWF as an example. But like, both serve a function. We need the Greenpeace's in the world to actually shift the needle, like shift the medium, one direction or another. You know, sometimes I love what they do. Sometimes I question what they do. You know, I don't I don't stand in alignment with everything that they do. You know, as an example, nuclear, Greenpeace was founded. To combat nuclear energy, I actually think nuclear energy is one of the greatest tools we have at our disposal to combat climate change, because it's such an effective way, like all this shift towards solar and wind is not actually reversing climate change. It's just simply putting on the brakes, but we're still headed off the cliff in the wrong direction. Whereas something like nuclear could easily change that. If if, if we let it. But our fear of nuclear is too strong. So, you know, I don't stand. You know, as with I think, as with everyone, you know, every individual you don't see eye to eye on everything. And I think anyone that worships even a person or an organization or thing is probably not looking at it with a full enough picture, because it would be unrealistic to fully aligned with everyone on everything.
Well, I worship you, Ben, I think you're amazing. And I'm really inspired by your work. Niche. Do you have a question for Ben? Hey, man, yeah, Hi, Ashley, actually just finish. I just want to point out this is Imagination in Action. And Ben Vaughn Huang. If I were tonight, someone in Imaginator, he is it. He's been doing projects serially that is raising awareness on climate change and sustainability. And he's a real inspiration. And I'm so glad that he's on tonight's platform, and that we're recording this and others will be able to hear it. And we'll share the transcribe transcription with the world. There was a commercial in the 80s Be Like Mike, be like Ben, I feel like there's something to be said, for the way you live your life and the way you work. And I hope by the end of the show, we can find artists and residents home for you in New York City, where you want to camp out and I think we should have a whole fellowship, the BenBen one, fellowship, BB W fellowship of people who are training to do to carry on the great work that you're doing. Thanks, man.
Hey, Lauren. Hey, John. Thanks for giving a chance to ask a question. I've know a lot of things. What one has been telling obviously like czinger Batang. What we are planning and what's been going on is like a miser like no like an imagining the things but that's how the hustle is the biggest question which I still find is now if we do a for efficient, there are multiple laws now within any country if we go and the government's How did you find the resolution resilience? And how you actually try to make it happen? What was the things coming on? Because either you find the plastic way. So there are a lot of flows. And either the government isn't making you to do the things of or either their people. So whatever you want to do, and whatever people try to oppose, how do you try to make the things before that I wanted to introduce myself, I'm Manish working as an Associate Program Manager, Indian switches network, have tried to build in browser where people can browse the internet and get free access to it with no data collection. But every time we someone would search from that web browser, we have a sorry, mobile browser, we get the revenue and we can try to plant the trees. But anyhow, the project is a little late and open source which we we have tried to build on both on a Firefox and we are trying someone on a Chrome. So this is the hurdle which we are having finding few teammates. And like no, a tech developer who can actually build plus a some funding on to this case. This is me this. Thanks for
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Aneesh. I'm not sure I understood the question the nature of the question. So were you asking like how I find people to work with in different countries with different laws?
Yeah, this was the question. And again, the thing was like, how did you manage to like know complete, your goal is to you would have already planned some goals like this are the goals which I have actually tried to plan? And then try to, like know, completed? So how were you able to manage it? This is the thing which I wanted to ask about all the projects, which you started to work on and the hustles into it?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's never a guarantee that you're going to like things are going to be completed, you can, you can sort of make these calculated Gamble's or guesses, but I will say that, you know, so I'm just one person. I'm one artist that goes around the world, and I collaborate with people, but every project has hundreds of people that come into play. And and of course, I'm not there making 100 Friends manually, one at a time and vetting people and trying to figure out who's the right person. But what it always boils down to is finding one or two key local partners that are well connected, well respected, that understand what you're trying to do, and also care about the thing as much as if not more than you. And so it really comes down to always finding those key partnerships, those key individuals, those key organizations, who you can trust, who you vet, and then from there, the rest of it spirals. I think very often we think about having to do everything alone. But But But nothing great happens alone. If you find if you find folks who have done the work consistently, and who have the contacts and you can actually go so much farther, if you just build trust with them first. And so maybe it's less a question of of trying to build a big team, but really just finding the right person that can help you find the team.
Great, the next time and then Bev and then Michael. Sure. Great. Thanks, John.
And this is great. Ben, I hadn't been exposed to your work before this. And so I just did some searches. And wow. And I guess my question for you is that, you know, I have a science background. So I can read about the science of something and become convinced to change how I work. And maybe with your mining background, you feel the same way, you know, cost of producing meat Gee, one needs to have a plant based diet. But a lot of the world's not like, right, other people have different backgrounds, different things, convinced them to change their mind. And so I'm kind of curious, you're operating this other space. And so for example, in the mermaids, hate plastic mermaids are mythical creatures. And, you know, they're not a real thing and whether they came from manatees or what they came from, but I'm just kind of curious what your thought is on that. Is that, does that reach more people to read it reach into mythology, not just, I mean, obviously, your whole thing is art. But But some things are mythological, some things are less. I'm just kind of curious what you think about that just mythology versus changing people's behavior to kind of follow science in some ways, right? Climate change, in some ways is a science thing.
Yeah, no, absolutely, man. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the kind words with regards to the mermaids itself, you know, that was a really funny one because it's, it's like I almost felt like we needed to see something from our childhood getting destroyed in a beautiful, yet poetically tragic way to really feel something that was a little bit more visceral than otherwise you wouldn't have felt. Is it something that is like oh, we should take all of our childhood memories and corrupt them with the problems of today. In order to raise awareness for different issues I like I'm Not sure that's like a universal strategy to be applied. But, but But I think, you know, with art, art is always going to be a dance. And I think artists know that, right? There's the there's what you intend to do as the artists. And then there's what actually happens as it is received by the viewer. And I think scientists don't have that same belief, right? Scientists are just like, well, here are the facts. And I do believe that. And I think that is probably to their detriment, because humans are not really rational creatures, right? We don't, we don't we don't do things rationally, all the time, we don't make absolutely rational decisions with most of our decisions. And coming to terms with that is probably going to be much sooner rather than later is actually going to be helpful. I think the most effective thing is when you marry both the arts and the sciences together. And you try not to be so much so attached to the outcome of it. I think, when we think of change, and maybe this is, you know, once again, as a scientist, there's something that I've had to let go of, when we think of change as like going from zero to one, like going from ice to water, right? That is a state change. But but but I think the the change to also recognize that is happening is, is when when when maybe we go from negative 35 degrees to negative 30 degrees, right, that that is a change in temperature, but it's a non visible state change, but it's getting us closer to where we need to get to. And so the way I like to think about my work is it's all about nudging people in the right direction and being part of all the other people that are also equally nudging, whether it is through science, whether it's just through stories, it doesn't really matter. As long as those nudges are happening. And if it happens in a high enough frequency even change actually happens, right? Because that's that's that's what behavioral science tells us. And so I don't think one is superior to another. I think they each have a role to play. I try as much as possible to marry both together, because I think that the fantasy is actually stronger when you when you attach some some factoids to it at the same time. Great answer. Thanks
so much. Cheers, freak.
Dez. Welcome a question from you.
Yes, question for Ben. Are you familiar with the artist Christo? Hypertech?
I don't think so.
He goes by the name Christo, only his first name, which is his given first name, I believe, if you look him up, he did. He's older now. But he and his wife, Sean plod, and I don't remember if her name last name was Hava tech or not. They created a lot of installations. You may remember this now. They they were that His thing was wrapping things. He did he wrapped the Reichstag and yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Now, don't you know?
Yeah, I got it. I just didn't know it was I because I I've always heard of them referred to as a couple, not just as Christo alone.
Yeah. Got it. It's Chris Cristo and John Claude. Yeah. Okay. So I was wondering what you may have clarified this, what you're saying about getting a team and and I realized, when you were talking about getting a few people here was, here's what happened to me. I would 1976 I was working in a law firm here in my home in Northern California. And my boss picked up who later became my husband and my grandchildren. Now my father, my grandfather, and the father of my children. Anyway, at that point in time, he picked he fielded a call from Cristo, who was oh, it was probably from John Claude, actually, because she set up everything. And she was calling our law firm, because she was looking for an attorney to represent a her and her husband in an effort they were doing here in Sonoma County, California, which is was known as work called the running fence. And they were not new in their career, but it was not later in their career. That was before the Reichstag before they did the canyon. Let's see they put a curtain across the canyon in the United States. They also the latest one he did I think after her death, he did the light letters. One is called the lakes and I think that's in Italy. And they also right before her death, they did the Central Park. They did something in Central Park in New York City. Anyway. My boss at the time feel that a call from her and decided to turn that over the next day to his partner who would be more likely to deal without at Andersen. And what happened is, we got we they came out and interviewed and Anderson and Enders, Ed Anderson was very personable guy well known. And what they what they did with their work, they would spend first of all Cristo would have an idea of isn't something that he wants to do and he probably has had several he's still living he probably had several and Going forward, and then she, they would come, they would, they would figure out how they were going to get it done. And it was these big installations, were going to take hundreds of people. And in this case, the running fence was going to stretch from area was, I think it's about was about 30 miles long. And it had to go it because it was going to be a zen like looking thing it was going to be like this, as if you put this large of fence like figure, but it was actually made out of a fabric that would go from pole to pole. And it would run all the way down from an area more in the interior of Sonoma County down to the coast. And where he wanted to go would have to go over lands of many, many people. It wasn't going to you know, we could put on public highway that's not wasn't a division. So you hired Ed Anderson came out, they came here from I think they were based in New York, and they came here and interviewed ed ed got behind it, just like you're saying was taken by the fancy of the things completely out of the out of the realm of they were out of the realm of art, my husband and his best friend, Ed Anderson. And they went and talked to especially at Anderson went and Charmed, he could do it charm, all of these crusty old farmers that had owned this land, these these people had owned this land for generations. And they were the farthest people you can imagine, from wanting to have some crazy artists from New York, and only that they they both came from Europe, my god to allow this on their land. And they did that one at a time they held, they tuck those people into it one at a time. And then they they eventually got the installation done. It was up I believe, for two weeks may have been longer and oh, just 1000s 1000 people came to see it. And then what what they would do, and and perhaps I'm sure what Cristo does now, but not so effectively, probably without Sean Claude is that
he, during heat funded it by you'd start with the vision. And then you start with drawings. And you start with all of these all this prep work. And then he makes a record of all of that, and it would be a beautiful record, you know, you'd have beautiful renditions of the stuff and all of this, and then you'd have the actual event happen. And these are these are only in place these for for something like two weeks, or three weeks, and then there would be a cut entire book that's made afterwards of it. And it funds the whole thing. And it that introduced me to that concept. And like you said, getting those getting those key people in place at the location who can can do it. So I that was my question whether or not you, you know, Cristo and and if that's useful and not to you? I don't know. It sounds like it may or may not be the the the process that was gone through? Thank you for letting me speak.
Yeah, thanks for sharing. But I did not know that. That's how they funded their projects. It's super interesting to think about. So I take like, copious amounts of photos. With every unique project that I do, are we talking like dozens, if not hundreds of photographs, that document the process of how it was created. Usually, there's like a blog post and a video and all this stuff. But I just throw it online. And I give it away for free. Because because I like giving things away for free because and so but hearing, hearing how they're using that to fundraise for things is an interesting strategy. I wonder, especially today in a world where anyone can self publish a book. Could that could that be an interesting, viable strategy to celebrate the launch of something or the creation of something that people may or may not relate to? It also gives people agency and an opportunity to participate. So it was really interesting to hear that story. Thanks for sharing.
Great, Michael, do you have a question?
Hello, yes, I'm just wondering, like, a new like, what are your struggles with fundraising? And assuming a lot of challenges outside of the US, but what about within the US? Like what are the challenge in promoting sustainability, especially to the public when it comes to financing?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I do a lot of my work with American based companies, but not exclusively, but mostly, I think Americans like to spend money on things to show off, more so than other cultures has. Generally, I'm Canadian. And so, you know, it's odd because I've done barely any projects with Canada and I've done a lot more project with American. So I do think there is an advantage to being mobile and to going to the US. I think there's an eagerness for the most part of many companies to talk about how sustainable they are. I would almost say that the biggest challenge these days is to differentiate between what is I wouldn't even say greenwashing, maybe green wishing is a better word where everyone wishes that what they were doing was actually meaningful and significant, but in reality, isn't quite. And I don't know, for me, this is something that I've had to reconciliate as a, you know, an activist that also, you know, lives in a capitalist consumerist society, I think that corporations are going to be spending money every quarter with or without you. And so if you can, if you can take that money and put it to better or good use, than it would be used otherwise. And that's a good use of capital when it comes to but but that being said, like I have received many requests from other places from Asian countries, just as much. And I do think that there is a wave of interest that is coming. And I think that the climate story, especially over plastics is an even harder story to tell. And so if you can position yourself as a storyteller, or a person that's able to properly explain why something is important, why something is unique, why something is exciting, in a way that others are not able to do, I do think that there is a unique opportunity to do that. I've always operated on the premise of trying to draw people to me via cool rather than push, meaning that I don't like pitch myself and throw myself at people with saying like, hey, work with me work with me. I'm awesome. I tried to do it the opposite way, which is just do great things, figure out how to make them seen by a combination of outreach and being in the right place at the right time. And so far, that strategy has worked fairly well. It can look like speaking at conferences, it can look like being introduced to friends of friends or being a part of smaller gatherings. Generally speaking, I you know, yes, it is a crowded world. But I do think that there is always going to be opportunity for those that are able to get get get the message out there despite the fact that it's crowded. And I think that if you're able to prove that you're able to do something like that, regardless of the challenges, then people will respect you more for it.
When you were the early people on clubhouse, you're such a visual storyteller. I do think there's a place for social audio at a time when snapchat and facebook chapters in social media are so dominated by the visual. I'm curious, what is your experience been with social audio? And with clubhouse? And where where do you think it's come from? And where do you think it's heading.
I mean, I honestly John, like after we first connected on clubhouse, I didn't last that much longer than you, I'm actually super impressed to see that you, you're continuing to do this. For me. Social audio was extremely important in a time where I felt super trapped and super locked down, it was an opportunity to be exposed to different ideas from the comfort of my own house, which I was, you know, pretty much self self inflicted trapped there for over a year and a half. And I think like, these days, I find it really hard to tune into social audio, unless there's a specific thing, I'm looking to listen to a specific show a specific person that I'm trying to engage with. I'm actually finding myself avoiding to try and schedule things as much as possible. I gained the most joy from asymmetrical conversations, meaning if someone leaves me a voice message, and I can just listen to it on my own time and reply on my own time, I find that to be actually a far more convenient way of interacting with people. I think one of the things one of the reasons that clubhouse maybe has suffered is because Twitter, you know, Twitter has picked up their Twitter spaces and, and they're intricately tied to, you know, the ability to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. And I think that's something that clubhouse kind of fails to do. Because people are, I think, especially as the world opens up, and the desire to be outside of the house, you know, increases and grows as, as a lot of travel figures show. That is, you know, you get to pick where you want to have that serendipity Do you want to have serendipity in real life? Or do you want to try to create that serendipity in a virtual world and I don't think one is better than the other but I find myself these days increasingly gravitating more towards the real world. Yeah, but it's also hard because I'm, I'm constantly traveling and I'm constantly changing time zones at this moment. So you know, even booking this this room for me it was great because I happen I mean Silly right now. And I've been here for like, 14 days. And so I was oh, I was I was able to plan where it was going to be and to make time for this. But otherwise, if it was hopping on a plane going somewhere, staying with someone that I didn't know what their what the living situation was going to be like, it'd be a lot harder to make a kind of commitment.
I'm fascinated with your travel. I know, I think the UN recognized as 190 some odd countries. I'm wondering where have you been? That you want to go back to where Haven't you been that you want to go to? But I can wait on that question. Allison, have a question you want to jump in on with?
I'd love to hear the answer to that one? That's a great question.
I think the place that was the most unique that I probably want to go back to is Bhutan. I'm not sure if any of anyone has gone there. But like, it's one of the only Asian countries that has never been colonized before. And it shows like they have an intact monarchy, essentially, for 1000s of years. Like half the country is run. It's like a constitutional monarchy, half half the country is run by monks. And it's beautiful. It's over 80% agrarian still it's a carbon negative country like it eats up more carbon than it generates. They have they have some super strict environmental protection laws in place. And they have a like a low volume tourism strategy meaning you have to pay to you basically it's a kind of like North Korea and that you're, you're escorted by a tour guide everywhere you go. So you can't just go and backpack and travel alone. It's there's no low cost way of doing it. But but for those who have gone to Cuba and who kind of felt like they stepped into a time capsule, I think that going to Bhutan almost feels like entering a time capsule in a world where a Western nation never colonized China like what like catalyzed Asia like what what would the world look like? I just don't have
time. Georgie, Georgie starts with a D sailor, did a fellowship with me and she was the chief architect for Bhutan. And she was very involved in creating gross national happiness with the king. Fascinating spending a year doing a fellowship with her, there were 10 of us. And I learned so much and so much of what you just described. She conveyed with her stories.
That's amazing. Yeah, but I'd love to go back. I mean, there's something just so
well, I'm happy to connect you with her if you want to. You know, she's the chief architect. So a lot of historic preservation and thinks a lot about structure. So let's follow up on that.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you always have you knew, you know, the best people. So anytime you think someone wants to talk to me, I'm game. I love talking to new people and exploring new perspectives.
Okay, yeah. Other countries. You mentioned Cuba,
Cuba. I mean, I really love Cambodia. For some reason. I just I think there's something that energy just felt really exciting. So I guess I guess, you know, I've just mentioned three Asian countries. So I guess I tend to be attracted more to Asian countries and others. I mean, I've gone to Morocco. I was most recently in Kenya. I went to Peru. But before, yeah, and then most recently in Portugal, but I mean, I guess I'm always exploring and checking out new places. There's no, there's no other like that nothing else specifically to call out at this moment.
Hey, Cory, so we're talking to Ben Vaughn Huang. He's inspiration. I wish more like Ben, can you play something to honor this great man?
Absolutely, John, absolutely. In all these travels, I was wondering if you had gone to New Zealand, by the way, that's always been my favorite. I have.
I have it. That's why I That's why I jumped on. I was gonna say I wanted to point you to New Zealand, where I'm located for the last 10 years. And I wanted to also point you to the Edmund Hillary fellowship because they have these global impact VSAs where you can get a track to permanent residency here. So it's just a great way. I've got some friends coming over from Japan. Soon that got Yes, pod.
I mean, I met Todd on clubhouse. And so I was just like, it's got to be him.
He's got to be staying with me and August. He's coming over for the Edmund Hillary, welcome party for his cohort eight. And we're doing a project here in the Waikato region. I live 10 minutes from from Hobbiton. And so you know, this, this whole country is just a wonderful canvas. For you to draw on. Yeah,
yeah, you guys, you guys have an artist residency program let me know. Yeah,
definitely I've been looking around but I love your work. Thank you so much for joining us today just
give a hug to Todd for me when you see him
I certainly will.
Well, Cindy I'm gonna have to tell you some because yes even though I'm a very proud American and very proud Italian that of all the countries I've been to that is one I'd love to love to live in eventually at some point it's just the most amazing place and Alright, so let me do something and maybe more tropical here on the electric accordion won't exactly sound like an accordion as someone who might But.
Great so that's Imagination in Action, and that was Cory was a musical interlude. Cindy, do you have a question for Ben? Oh, and Cory is a world champion, accordion player. He's the Elvis of accordion. He's a Tom Brady, Simone Biles of accordion. He's won championships all over the place. And he set the Guinness Book of World Records for playing the accordion for like over 32 hours and 14 minutes. I think he's remarkable. And thank you for celebrating Ben tonight. Cindy, do you have a question?
Oh, no, I was just he was talking about traveling. So I wanted to point him to New Zealand. selfish reasons, of course. But I did want to ask you about have you traveled to Antarctica then? Because an artist here Joseph. Michael went to Antarctica and he audio recorded various glaciers. And they all have a voice apparently. But it's a really powerful environmental statement in doing that. And I just wondered if you have ever had any desires to visit Antarctica?
I have not. But if anyone wants to take me I'm willing to go. Because I think that's generally the philosophy I have with just about everything. I'm down to do anything, but I don't. I try not to have too many like, pre desires. If that makes sense. I let I let sort of the opportunities that arise that feel present that feel possible to then sort of inform how far I can push things. So if an opportunity comes up, then I'm going to try to push it 10% More regardless of where it is or what it happens to be. Well, I think
the questions I'm sorry.
Would you say John?
Allison? Before I have some other questions, but do you want to
know over to you, John?
Yeah. So So Ben, what, what trends are you following in terms of sustainability? So much of your work is based on the knowledge that's out there. I'm just wondering, how do you get informed? And are there issues you want to be ahead of the curve on to raise awareness? Are you taking on issues that are or becoming mainstream and just trying to put an accent on them?
Hmm, that's interesting. I, you know, it's sort of hard to know where I am on the curve of knowledge relative to the rest of the world, because I'm not too sure what the, where the rest of the world is. But, um, I mean, I've been following a lot of like regenerative practices being particularly fascinated by how agriculture in particular seems to be experiencing somewhat of a renaissance, there's a whole new set of, you know, they're not really new, but almost like revisiting old practices on, you know, how to manage the land properly, so that the land can be put to use in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation, there's a lot of like new conversations around the circular economy on, you know, how we can make circularity and reuse systems, more attractive, more sexy, more compelling, more scalable, you know, folks like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are trying to do a lot of work in there. And of course, adoption is hard and slow. And so far, most of the innovation is fairly fringe, but that's kind of happening, that there's a whole kind of movement, at least in the disposable plastics world over to kind of biodegradable plastics, which, you know, part of me is really excited about it, because plastics is so terrible in the environment, the other half is sort of worried because if we produce, if we replace plastic by anything, let's say it was something that could become fish food, as an example. But we don't actually address the single use part of what we do and how we treat it, then we're going to completely unbalanced any ecosystem in which this volume of stuff is being thrown into the environment, right. So, you know, we, we may hold out and say, like, oh, it's going to be so great, we're going to come up with new materials that are going to solve it solve the problem, but then then they alone can't solve the problem. So sort of a little bit of both. I'm particularly interested in stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism, I have no idea how one really, like truly implements this. I know, there's a lot of different programs, like Co Op, business trips, business models that are starting to appear. There's like an organization that's great, called zebras unite. And they're called zebras, because in opposition of, of unicorns, the billion dollar unicorns, because, because for a single unicorn to exist, like, you know, 99 of them to fail and die on the way there. And these could be perfectly good companies that could have done perfectly well, if they weren't trying to scale 100x, you know, to take over the world, quote, unquote, to provide those outsized returns to venture. And so I think there's something really interesting there about, you know, slow managed growth, post growth, economics is also fairly interesting. It operates on the principle that, you know, if, you know, if we acknowledge that we live on a finite planet planet with finite resources with us, you know, and we're gonna cap out our population of give or take 10 billion, then, then, then we need to think about what like how, how do you measure the success or failure of a country without growth? Right? Like, what if you what if the GDP stops rising? What if population starts aging? How do we start valuing things that are enough, versus the constant need to acquire more and more and more within that frame of, there's also donut economics, which is sort of a little less radical, which talks about how capitalism is not all bad, so long as it exists within to the two limits about the outer, the outer ring of the donut would be the planetary boundaries? How do we make sure that whatever we build stays, you know, respectful of the ecosystem in which we exist? And then there's the inner societal boundaries? Like, how do we make sure that the businesses rerun, don't exist at the expense of other people? So I don't know those are just a couple of like, thoughts or themes or things that I've been looking into and
and there's one book that I'm reading lately that that I just I love because it's not trying to convince you of anything. It's just it's just a scientist written by a science journalist called Charles C man. And it's called the the the wizard and the Prophet and it basically just talks about the history of the modern day. The environmentalism movement, and shows how there's two different schools of thoughts there. There are those of us who believe that the world is going to end if we don't, if we if we don't slow our growth down and exceed the, the carrying capacity of the planet. And then there are like the Elon Musk's of the world that believe that we no matter what we'll always be able to innovate our way out of a situation as long as we don't slow down our rate of innovation. And it sort of studies these two schools of thoughts and compares them once one against the other. But through history through the 19th century, and how those two views have has shaped the world as we know it today, radically. So I think that's been a really interesting book that I've been paying attention to that, that gives me a fair bit of hope. And then maybe the final thing that is worth, I guess, mentioning, is just keeping a peripheral eyeball on all things that are happening in the artificial intelligence space. There as a creative, I feel that artificial intelligence is going to be a significantly disruptive force, the same way that social media was significantly disruptive, to all creatives of the of their generation. You know, for anyone who's who's who's looked at, like Google's Dali, that just recently came out, the ability to generate images that are amazing, out of pure words, the ability to generate songs out of words. You know, there's so much that's actually happening these days. And so I think we need to rethink our role as creatives relative to a world in which creativity is starting to become more and more accessible to everybody. And how that can unlock enable and power. Even more hopeful, accelerate more, more creation. And just being aware of all of that. So yeah.
Great thoughts, Alison, Europe.
That is such an incredible list. I'm just still thinking about it. I mean, just a couple that I'd love your views on that I would sort of add to the great list you had, which was amazing. I mean, one is I'm fascinated by the whole materials revolution, which you could tie to the circular economy. But it's this idea that, you know, maybe we can grow our own microbes or fertilizers, and we don't need to mined for everything. We don't need to pull it out of the ground. So I find that fascinating. I find Gen Z, bringing both in bio environmental angst or eco angst, but also just a real sense that, you know, the time is now and let's get going. And I'm always amazed. I'm a Boomer and I like to think of the boomers as progressive. But if you line Boomers, Gen, X, Y, and Z up, we kind of are laggards on our ability to sort of see the solutions that are coming next. So I just, I'd be fascinated, and then also 3d printing and the idea that maybe you could print a house and have a lot less waste. What do you think of some of those ideas?
Yeah, I mean, I think they're all great ideas. I think there are so many interesting and emerging technologies that are coming at us left and right. I think I worry more about like, the, the systems in which they're built, right, it's not the it's not the industries that exist in isolation. And so you know, when I was talking about stakeholder capitalism, as an example, you know, the intent the incentive structure is just the incentive is wrong. Shareholders are not necessarily people that are affected by the very companies that are that are now built to please them. And so as these companies get bigger, looking only on a short time horizon quarterly review, how do you ensure that they have humanity's best interests at heart from a multi generational perspective? So I would argue that it's not just about a singular technology but the entire system in which the technology exists that we need to really think about and consider and kind of wonder like how these larger scale systemic changes actually occur. Like what are the forcing functions like to bring them to fruition? I think I you know, I I think I'm naturally a little bit more of a cynic, even though like my work tends to be very hopeful and empowering. And yeah, I just, I don't really, I don't I don't know if it's just one technology that is going to solve any, any anything on its own. But the more complex and nuanced discussions we can have, the better it's going to be unlikely we need all generations the the x, y, z and Boomers to come together. and share their lessons. I mean, as you know, as motivated as a Gen Z, or as our, as with most people who are just young, they come with a certain element of like, oh, well, everything is simple, let's just let's just tear everything down and rebuild it without appreciating truly how hard it is to build up an entire society. And I think we see this in any government that's over, that's been overthrown, how hard it is, how much easier it is to overthrow something than it is to build it back up.
Hey, Ben, I'm curious on your, how you see the different generations, I get the feeling Gen Z and whatever it comes after it that there's going to be they're going to change even faster, like instead of a 10 year cycle, it'll be seven or five. And the different generations are going to react against each other. Does any of your work take into consideration how different generations might interpret it? Hmm.
I mean, I think my work eternally is designed for like the 15 to 25 year olds. It's just like, that's why they're so high energy, and they try to be as entertaining and thought provoking as possible. But also with a sense of empowerment I want, I think people just need to believe in their ability to make a difference. I think my greatest worry is, is that I feel like the trap of apathy only grows with every passing generation, as we become increasingly privileged with the ability to kind of turn away from problems without having to face them and hiding behind consumption rather
than creation. I don't I do
I do, I do feel that like, the key is to stay engaged. I think that when we are, you know, and maybe this is just my bias as an artist, but when we're when we're a mindset of creation, then we're constantly seeking and looking and learning course, when we're, when we're kind of consuming content, like when we're doing scrolling on a social feed as an example, then we're kind of on autopilot, and just letting ourselves be fed and be told what to think and how to be. Whereas I think creation comes with constant challenges that force you to interrogate what you do, why you do it, how you do it, what's right, what's wrong? How should you approach it? And so, you know, for all that said, about, like, maybe the shallowness of content creation, on Instagram, and everything like that, I do think there's, there's something that's very helpful in in doing that, and as long as we can hold on to that, the power of creativity of the creative process, and that will be a good thing, and however we get there doesn't really matter.
Great to Allison or Todd Michael? Oh, I see. Dr. Manolo Minneola isn't in the room. And if anyone else have a question for Ben, Ben Vaughn one?
Yeah, Ben, I can't resist trying to ask a question to tie several things together, you just you've obviously thought very deeply about a lot of these things. So you know, you talked about AI. And you know, that kind of, you know, computers are great at kind of imitating things, right? So you give a bunch of dollies are given a bunch of whatever, and we'll extract and produce more things. But there was the internet beauty contest, right? Where impartial computers were going to judge beauty. And they mostly pick Scandinavian blondes and the people. All sorry. Well, that's the pictures we fed from the magazine. So that's, that's a typical AI computer response garbage in garbage out is this computer people say? So that kind of one piece. And then there's also the passivity. I have kids who consume a lot more than that drive to create isn't there as much. So yeah, it's you've thought about these things. What What is your thought? How do you does the learning to use a brush or unique learning to you know, do aperture exposure on a camera or something like do these things? I think they lead to part of the creative process, the struggle to practice with the tools, and having somebody I do it quickly may bypass some of that deep thought. So what do you think?
I mean, so I have access to Dali, I've been playing around with it, just generating images and actually find it to be okay. Like, sure, it's great. This, this thing can draw way better than I ever could. If I put hours and hours of work, okay, that's, that's fine. So maybe I don't feel incentivized to draw anymore. But I never felt incentivized to draw and that's okay. But But what it's doing is, is enabling me so how would I normally seek reference images, as I'm sure if I'm trying to hunt for inspiration, I would have to go on Google images or Google search or, or kind of like, you know, manually go through this process. Whereas now I have just another tool at my disposal. So I think, you know, AI isn't telling you way to think it's showing me things, I'm sure there may be some biases in there. And if I just typed, I don't know, beautiful woman, maybe the AI would just spit out a white person, white female, likely, because that's just the data that's out there and how most of these models have been trained. That doesn't mean that I can't type indigenous beautiful woman in there and see what comes out there. Right. And so, you know, sure, these systems have biases, and there are a whole bunch of like, governance questions that are beyond my paygrade to figure out how to fix. But But, but but what's what's interesting is like, so the artists have as we play with these, and as we highlight these issues, and, you know, that's kind of the role that we have to play, right, like artists are all there to interrogate and challenge what they discover what's been really cool. So with Dali as as just a very, like the one data point that I know a little bit better than anything else, you know, the first thing they did to release this to the public, right, like right now, it's not openly available, but they they've sent it to hundreds of artists, first and foremost, not the scientists, not the academics, not the journalist who's sending it to the artists, so the artists can play and flag any issues and biases, or violent images, or any kind of, uh, things that we may have. And they've been very intentional about trying to find as many artists and people of color not from America, from different different parts of the world, to truly test the system. So I think, you know, the more of these papers that come out, the more guarded we become, the more the more concern we become. It's, you know, these are just simply the growing pains that that we we hear about. And I think there's just like human bias is human tendency of just remembering all these bad things that AI has done without acknowledging that there has been very, a lot of slow incremental progress progress, that just doesn't make the news. Because Because increments, slow, incremental progress is boring. It's a lot more exciting when something breaks or something drastic happens. So So I guess that's the first half of your question. I think AI is really going to serve as something to enable people rather than to really like sort of hinder them. But once again, maybe that's just my, you know, I'm also someone who lives in a Western country, and I'm privileged. And so you know, are we are we are the, the illustrators and designers and graphic folks working for $5 an hour out of Bangladesh, are they going to be deeply impacted by this most probably, but hopefully, they can, similar to how they, you know, got into the space through platforms like Fiverr. To overtake designers over here, maybe they'll find other ways to leverage this technology to their own benefit, too. And then with with regards to create creativity of your kids consuming, one thing that I've discovered as an artist is that there are just some things that I'm just not inspired to do, I am a lot less inspired to stay in front of a computer for long periods of time and create a loan, I need to interact with people to feel creative. And so I wanted to get into like 3d rendering and world building and character design. And I find it so cool. But then I sit down and I, and I try to get into it. And it just doesn't work. Like during the pandemic, I was like, Oh, this is my chance. This is my chance to learn like parametric modeling. I like I can just go through some tutorials and stuff. And I bought a bunch of courses. And I just, it's just like, I barely crawled my way through anything, because it was just not how I, I love to learn and love to create. And most recently, I just learned about like, miniature diorama is like these kind of tiny sets that you can build at like 1/10 or 1/100 of a scale. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is this is my thing. Like I can just sit here and play with miniatures all day long. And it's so much fun. And it's like, and I think maybe it's it's less a question of, you know, oh, they're not creating content on Instagram, but rather, you know, where do you see them most naturally creating it with twigs and sticks? Is it? Is it on a computer? Or is it on a TV? Is it is it is it? Are they creatively playing video games and coming up with all sorts of like interesting puzzle hacks that you wouldn't have thought otherwise. I think there's just so many facets to creativity. And if you can find a place where they can play and learn and grow, then you'll be able to tap into that same power
metaverse.
Or that or that.
No, what's your thoughts on it? What are your thoughts? Um,
well as someone who does not love being in front of a computer i i am not currently excited by the metaverse. But as it becomes increasingly interconnected, then sure I think the metaverse is probably great for the subset of people, probably growing subset of people who struggle with social interactions in the real world. And so for people who are just more comfortable, or maybe who are living in more rural areas that just don't get exposed to unique and interesting people the same way that I needed clubhouse while I was locked up in a room but no longer need clubhouse now that I'm free to roam the world. I think that the metaphor This can be a very exciting tool. And so I'm waiting for the day where the, you know, aspects of the metaverse can replace aspects of what I currently want, and look for in the real world, but for now, not quite there and, and while there's always the fear of, you know, missing the boat missing that wave, I don't think it justifies suffering to do something just so that you can potentially be ahead in the thing that you think is going to come next. Great. Well,
you were one of our TEDx speakers at TEDx Boston. I'm just curious, what was that experience, like, you've probably been to a bunch of Texas over the years.
I just love listening to people who have different perspectives. I mean, you, you know, the same way that what you do here at Imagination in Action, and I just love that you can do that in person. But then maybe more than more than just listening to the talk is engaging with people. And I think that's what you you don't really get on a digital interaction. It's a lot harder to kind of forge an informal relationship with people and, and to read all the cues, the informal interviews that happened from quality interactions. I'm not saying that it isn't valuable. I'm just saying, whenever I get the chance to go to one of these things I'll always say yes. So. Yeah, I mean, I think I think there's something magical about putting great people in a room and just watching what happens.
Great. Dr. Mineola, do you have a question?
It's Mina. Yeah. It's Mina though. Okay. It's
Hi, Mina Mina.
Yeah, Mina like as an Willamina. But just Mina don't have questions. You kind of brought up Metaverse, and he already answered it, because I was thinking of that implication of where we are. But I would even say, what's the our perspective in the metaverse with regards to K 12? Education? What would be your thoughts on that?
I think we're getting a little too specific and something I don't know enough about. I mean,
well, your child. So if you think about your perspective, that would be where I was thinking like, if you were in school right now, what would you want it to look like? What would you want the art world to look like?
I think I think I would love if, if whatever I discovered on the metaverse was something I could enact in the real world. I think the bridge between two worlds is where things get really, really exciting. It's the same thing like listening to a talk that has a bunch of cool factoids and listening to a talk where you have you can action it right away at the end. And so, you know, if if if something that I experienced in the metaverse was something that I could surprise and delight people in the real world, I think that would be infinitely more fun than something that that existed uniquely in the metaverse because the metaverse by sort of design is somewhat exclusionary to anyone who isn't a netizen of the metaverse, I think that's one of the things that's so weird about the NFT world where like only people who have the same sort of who are part of that same NFT ecosystem can share the joys and the jokes and the camaraderie, but everyone outside just goes like wait, what's going on, and it's sort of exclusionary and design. And so anything that can be inclusionary. And that can act as a bridge, to me is, is what I think I would have found most exciting as someone in K 12.
And I feel like tonight, you've been an incredibly good sport, as John has given you his different entrepreneurial spheres for what he thinks your career would benefit from. And just to weigh in on this, it's probably a sign that we're just excited by what you're doing and kind of eager to see it grow. But it just occurs to me as you're talking that it'd be so incredible to have a curated group of climate artists, you know, who would some would be willing to go to events, some would be willing to, you know, their sculptors who did that great sculpture that you probably saw in Copenhagen of sort of moving well know the meeting and then being underwater. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it just strikes me that artists sort of all around the world are finding ways to try to respond to this. And John can tell you, I sort of started a very small little nonprofit event. And we got invited to Boston City Hall Plaza, which is a huge space, and we totally needed art to fill it. And it was incredibly hard. This was you know, quite a few years ago, but it was really hard to figure out like who are the artists who could take a space like that and do the type of thing that you can do and I don't know I just wonder maybe you guys all know each other. Maybe there's a federation somewhere, but it feels It could just I don't maybe it's as simple as a LinkedIn group. But I just feel like there's a lot of people who should know about your work and who would love to know about it.
Yeah, you know, if there's one like superpower I wish I had, but I don't have is the power of community building. So I have been very good at like, creating an audience. But an audience is not the same thing as a community. An audience is someone who maybe just tunes in and listens to something that's going on, or, you know, you, you kind of draw attention by doing something unexpected. But it's sort of this one time performance. But a community is sort of self powered itself generated, you may be simply create the container and the guidelines for people to kind of CO create and meet and follow a set of guidelines. And that's just something that I've been terrible at doing. And so, I am very interested in joining any kind of a collective that may exist virtual or otherwise, and being a part of other networks and amplifying and supporting or evangelizing. But I'm just not the person to build that thing. I think it's because I'm terribly irregular in my lifestyle, and being in the world. And, and I have this like attraction or addiction to novelty, which gives, which enables me to do the things that I do, but I just am so bad at community building. makes me very sad.
What will find you that person?
I mean, sign me up anytime. Anyone, anyone stumbling, well, anything like this.
And I mean, John is kind of the the Grand Master of community building. So it strikes me that there should be something there. But it's just it's so great to hear about it. And I really, really thank you for joining us tonight.
Thank you so much for having me. It's always I mean, you guys asked great, great, great, great questions. So I appreciate it.
Great. So usually, we do a full bore summary of tonight's show, I think for a bunch of reasons we're not going to, but the maybe let's go around, Allison. And Ben, what were some highlights from today's conversation? And the AHA has been anything you want to follow up with?
I mean, I just I don't know. I just, I like the conversation. I don't
I don't know if there's a specific Aha. I am excited John to see your which residencies do you manage to create? You build up these opportunities, don't hesitate to let me know
about. How about you, Alison, any any has,
I had a lot. It's funny. I met I'm sure I shouldn't admit this online, but among the companies on speaking to our mining companies and thinking about sustainability. So this is very, very evocative for me, and I love the image and that you went from Canadian mining engineer to environmental activist, I also just really applaud the fact that you've sort of found principles that allow you to stay at the cutting edge of creativity, I mean, being open to flow, trying to not do it yourself, but find the community, particularly since you're dealing in tons of materials, you know, figuring out like, where can you have marketing, artistic design and message but being open to success and some of those, if not all of those, and I just, it's fascinating, you are completely an edge Walker and manifesting these amazing visions. And I'm very excited that you're no longer an engineer working in a mine.
Me too. Me too. Yeah,
I think my aha is that you are, you're kind of like a mirage. Like when someone sees you, they're like, holy, holy crap. I've never seen anyone like that. But I think as as, as anxieties rise, about climate change, and what we're doing, you know, to be able to live on this planet. I think a lot of people with resources are going to want artists to raise awareness and to tell a story through art and, and I think that there are going to be people like you, who will be using AI and teaming up with technology to tell a provocative story, that the creative, there's gonna be more of a premium on the creative as everything gets kind of mechanized. And when I said, you know, we got to find you an artist in residency opportunity. And maybe it's actually with an orthogonal industry or maybe something on the other side of, of what you'd expect. But then we need to create disciples of people that that might want to follow in your footsteps because I think the world's Gonna need a lot more people like you, depending on people writing editorials and newspapers and and doing long form journalism in in like documentaries and video I think are not going to the short attention span Gen whatever's after Z, they're not going to consume it. Alpha. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think there's a place for anything you know, regardless of what, what what what kind of stories you want to tell what kind of art you want to create, there will be a place for you just need to poke and prod and play and explore and experiment and somewhere in there you can find that meaning and purpose and an ability to connect with people. There's something to be said, I think about creating from a place of deep desire or deep responsibility that I think will shine through this
summer, I wanted to just reach out to you as the recent joiner on the stage, just because you've spent so long thinking about these issues in the TED world and thinking about water. Do you have observations or a question for Ben?
I, I'd actually love like a first to check if my audio doesn't isn't terrible, because I wasn't actually playing to get on stage. But second to just hear quickly, like, a little more of a frame for for the topic, because I'm I'm fascinated by what I'm hearing, but want to want to make sure my comments are on point.
So with with regard to the title of this, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's actually built on the title of a TEDx talk that I gave at John's, most recently. And it was the insight that so much of the, so much of the reason I'm able to do the work that I do is a byproduct of feeling irrelevant and unimportant. And, and, and that is the shared desire of this shared fear of being irrelevant of being unimportant. But still trying anyways, that brings us closer and closer to collective action.
And so that's, that's sort of the premise.
Oh, that's beautiful. I, I tend to really agree, I think, I think the the most singular moments I've had working in water, on some level have like, were the least least potent, because sometimes thinking that, it's very easy to believe in silver bullets. When you're acting as an individual, not really confronting, like the sheer size of like, what awaits us all. And I think these are moments when really potent ideas come to the surface, it was kind of interesting, because I was pondering what the title meant. And I was also thinking about a relevancy as like, when we discover things, the patterns or the modalities, or even the technologies that kind of run our lives suddenly are going to have to shift. It kind of allows us to be little less attached to the world around us. And, you know, so one of the driving things, for me, that's kind of a constant, like, theme lately is, is kind of that as our as our seasons, you know, start stop to have the boundaries that we typically assigned to them, that there are a lot of things that we assume are going to be continuing with year round that we're starting to kind of let go of. And I see those as really potent moments for kind of seeing where, you know, if, for instance, there were ways of just acknowledging times when people need emergency housing, you know, times when migration, like unnecessary times when water rationing is we're doing right now, you know, and WD in California is announcing, you know, major, major shortages because of the draft today. And I think all of these really cold less for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but more or less kind of an understanding that we were going to have to be a little more open to different rhythms to things that might not necessarily mean that like the drumbeat we want to march to is the IS is something we had to give up on. But something that like might have less resonance and kind of these larger themes that are surrounding us. I hope that wasn't too abstract. Hmm,
I mean, so So am I understanding correctly? And you're saying that basically, we as individuals need to get better at being uncomfortable? Yeah, I think that's open to trying new things and figuring out like without even knowing if they're the right thing to do.
Yeah, I think that's actually a good a pretty good synthesis. Have it. But, you know, it comes down to like, you know, we don't know if we can rely on great weather on July 4, the way that a lot of us spent a lot of our lives kind of thinking idyllically about. And there are just so many larger structures and themes and traditions and cultures that are built around, you know, just the rhythm that we apply to daily life and pandemic has really changed that. But on some level, if we, if we don't look at that as temporary, we kind of lean into that as a taste of like a cocoon that we're going to emerge from at some point, I think it's, it provides a little more inspiration for thinking creatively and not not not being as caught up in the grief of that. That makes sense.
That's interesting. I mean, I feel like if we think about climate action, or climate change, the world or the, you know, popular culture seems to be quite absorbed in, in how it's this, like, oh, you know, sea levels, rising kind of 1.53 to three degree change, or whatever it is, is like kind of a central focus. But what we have to worry about more than the gradual change of the temperature, the average change of the temperature is increase in volatility. And the volatility, which you're describing, of the seasons of the weather of temperature, is going to is going to force us to adapt, because it's just a combination of too much water or too little water, in greater frequencies that are going to actually drive us to have to change our habits. And so, you know, I think we're going to see a lot more of this discomfort.
I don't, I don't think it's a choice. I
think it's just, it's what's going to happen. It's already happening. The question is, how can we leverage that to do to create more of the action that we need to do rather than the one we want to hear about? And so I don't think it's even a choice to go back to normal, right? Even if you want to you can't you have, you have to look forward? And, and maybe it's just a question of figuring out how can we invite others along? And how can we enjoy that journey a little bit more? And how can we feel empowered and enabled by these changes? That we can we can introduce to others?
So I don't know.
Yeah, I guess yeah, there's a liberating quality to it, if you are, if you if you lean in and look at it. Yeah. Which is not to, which is not to gloss over that the terror that accompanies so much by any means. But really to say that we've spent a lot of time as a species dealing with more uncertainty than we're now accustomed to. And there's something very inspiring about reading about life in those ages right now. Because there were possibilities that we I think, oftentimes don't think about that we've cut ourselves off from and it I don't know if it's, if it's a if it's a, if it's a consolation, but it's certainly something that can be looked at and learned.
Yeah, I would actually be super curious to hear about what your reading list is, like.
Hugely reading list. Number one recommendation right now is the new post seamlessly published David Graeber. Book, the dawn of everything. Okay. The thing on climate Vette, it's it's such a crazy book. You know, I loved his book on debt, and you know, so many others. But this is, on some level, the most anthropological work I've read of his. And one of the themes that comes out of kind of, you know, the real question is just like, what, what has humankind have been doing for millions of years? Because we we are, what are we been doing since the dawn of humanity, because most of what is recorded is a very, very small sliver. There is more on the archaeological record, as suggested, and one of the coolest things, that questions that comes out of it is like, at what point did we really commit to agriculture. And it turns out that it wasn't this like, one way street, we flirted with it, we gave up on it, we moved on, we did other things. We experimented with different types of societies, like, you know, there were societies that would be totally democratic and communist in the summer and highly rigid and hierarchical in the winter. And those are those are actual, like, there's actual wisdom. It's not it's not obviously, like something to overly romanticize. But it's something to kind of understand that like, yes, like, if we're so committed to keeping certain types of, of rights in place in whether they be property rights or human rights like we do also have to adjust a different reality. is to see like, at times, like, people's right to water needs to outweigh the right to property. And, and maybe there's a way to rethink ways that those structures can be, you know, can actually exist on a continuum between like what's possible at that given moment. And, you know, maybe if we could learn from earlier patterns of being able to modulate between things that are more hierarchical and egalitarian, we could really produce some much more effective collective actions than is possible.
Gonna have to dive into that one.
So So you guys, this is long form journalism, and we keep these shows around two hours. We could go another two hours, but I think we won't tonight. But thank you all. And see you next week and Imagination in Action.
Thanks so much for having me, John. Thanks, everyone.
Always. It's always an honor to be in your presence. Bye bye. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Thanks. Awesome.