For four years, artist Naomi Natale’s social art practice, the One Million Bones project, has used education, hands-on artmaking and public art installation to raise awareness of ongoing genocide and mass atrocities. On June 8, Naomi and the One Million Bones team will be joined by thousands of volunteers to lay down the one million human “bones,” which participants have made by hand, on the National Mall in Washington, DC — creating a striking visual representation of conflicts we cannot continue to ignore.

Here, we chat with Natale about where the idea for this fascinating demonstration came from.

You’ve been working on the One Million Bones Project for a long time, and it has grown from an idea into massive, global art project. How did you get here?

My background is in art and photography, and I’m especially interested in the intersection of art and activism — particularly the ways art can be used to bring issues that are physically far away close to home on an emotional level. I am deeply committed to the issue of genocide and mass atrocities, and One Million Bones is my way of addressing that.

One Million Bones called for individuals all over the world to create an artistic representation of a human bone, which would then be installed on the National Mall as a visible petition and symbolic mass grave. The installation will be happening June 8 through the 10, 2013.

There have been years of activity leading up to this moment. Tell us about the grass-roots education effort involved.

One of the biggest elements of the project has been the educational component, because so many young people and adults simply don’t know what genocide is — let alone that it is happening today. My concern is, “How will we ever know or look for solutions to an issue if we don’t know what it is and that it is happening?”

We designed curriculum from preschool all the way up to high school so that educators can bring the material into their classrooms in an age-appropriate manner. At the younger age levels, we talk about issues like values, ethics and respect. We talk about virtues and how our bones are like our virtues: they make us who we are though we can’t see them.

For older age groups, we talk directly about genocide and how we can take responsibility as consumers and voters — that our voices matter. The bones they make becomes a symbol of our voices. We then direct students to other organizations that are working on these issues on a deeper level in hopes that this sparks an interest in future activism.

This is a really difficult issue to bring into a classroom. We’ve heard this time and time again, with all the schools that we’ve been working in. But the fact that there’s an activity at the end really opens a space where students can learn about the issues, process them, and then put the intention for change into a direct action. The action piece is really important with an issue this difficult, because otherwise people can be paralyzed by that information, feel completely overwhelmed and want to turn away.

Through the project, thousands of students were able to learn about these issues and connect to their peers abroad. One Million Bones had the amazing opportunity to partner with Students Rebuild to launch a challenge in which each bone made generated a $1 donation, up to $500,000, from the Bezos Family Foundation towards CARE’s work on the ground in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In April 2012, 50,000 bones were laid in Congo Square in New Orleans. Photo: One Million Bones

What is the project’s reach?

We have had over 100,000 participants in schools in all 50 states and 30 countries. It’s been a completely grassroots effort. We laid our first 50,000 bones down in New Mexico in August of 2010. That was a critical moment for us, because it was the first time we could ever see the bones laid out, and we were able to capture a lot of reflections of how people responded. As a result of that event, we launched The Road to Washington ten months later. Thirty-five installations were laid out in 35 state capitals, all on the same day, all community-driven and organized. It was a way for volunteers who were really moved and stirred by the project to galvanize their own communities to lay down bones.

We laid 50,000 bones down in Congo Square in New Orleans in April 2012 as well. In that city, we drew a natural connection between genocide and mass atrocities and the local violence experienced there — a lot of the discussions from the students drew from their personal experience. When they learned about the violence on the scale it is in Sudan and Congo, I think there was this very deep connection and empathy. Students in New Orleans continued to make thousands of bones and have done installations and educational programming since then, often seeing the bones as a way to find their individual voices. It can really be an empowering experience to realize you can do something, can contribute to a larger cause.

Is there always an exhibit of some kind when teachers use the curriculum?

Not always. Sometimes students just make bones and send them in. Sometimes the school or an arts center will host an installation. And sometimes an individual champions the project and decides they’re going to put an installation somewhere public and get a lot of other people involved. We help them from our end virtually, and do what we can to support that process.

In September 2012, with our partners Students Rebuild, we were able to bring on 40 state coordinators, each brining the project into their local communities. Our Colorado state coordinator, Marianne Beard, got over 60 schools in Colorado to work on the project and to make bones. And they produced an installation. That’s just one example of how the project has grown.

How did you become interested in genocide as a topic for art and activism?

The journey began with a book I read in 2003: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, which was about the Rwandan genocide. I didn’t learn about the Rwandan genocide until long after it happened and, when I did, I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of it.

It’s hard to wrap your head around how 800,000 people were killed in 90 days predominantly by machetes. You think about the intimacy of killing somebody through a method that takes a lot of power and human energy. The international community absolutely knew what was happening, and we didn’t do anything. There were things that we could have done that wouldn’t have even required us to go in, and we failed to do even that. But it was reading about what happened in Rwanda, plus knowing there was genocide happening in Sudan as well as a conflict ongoing in Congo for years made me want to make Philip’s words come to life and bring it into my part of the world so that others could see it.

The One Million Bones project focuses on Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Somalia. These conflicts have been going on for such a long time. Little attention has been paid to them. Next to no action has been taken.

Participant carrying bones for a bone laying installation. Photo: Joanne Teasdale

It was 10 years ago last month that the government of Sudan began a genocidal campaign against its civilians in Darfur. Over 300,000 people have died, and over two-and-a-half million people are displaced. It’s pretty inconceivable that President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court with crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and yet his regime still stands. In 2004, for the first time ever, the US government recognized a genocide in Sudan while it was happening, and we still failed to take any effective action to intervene.

I think that set an incredibly dangerous precedent because before, we wouldn’t call it genocide and we didn’t take action. But to actually call it a genocide and not take action — I don’t know how we can carry on and say “never again.” When we talk to students about this, it becomes something they want to learn more about, and they want to be more active and aware. So it’s so important to be able to have an opportunity to connect with our youth about these issues, as well as everyone else.

What are the bones made of?

Some are made out of clay. Some are made out of plaster gauze, which is really beautiful to do because it’s like bandaging bones. Some of them are made out of wood. Some of them are glass, metal, paper, and tape — all different materials.

I have to say, when they’re all together, when they’re all laid out, they’re quite striking and really, really beautiful. The main parameter is we ask that they are created in neutral colors. Some people have inscribed their names or prayers or thoughts on their bones as well.

And why a bone?

The bone was chosen as a symbol to attest to the gravity of these issues. But more significantly, it was chosen as a symbol and as a reminder that we belong to each other and that we’re responsible to one another. And that’s important: we’ve gotten a lot of pushback because it’s ultimately pretty out there to have kids making bones to address such an intense issue. But when we were able to explain the project to educators, walk them through it, and talk them through how these bones are ultimately about why we should take care of each other, they were able to embrace it. It’s very provocative, having a lot of children ultimately creating a mass grave on the National Mall. But it sends a message that’s much higher than that.

Bones made in Tallahassee, Florida. Photo: Jane McPherson

Are the bones in Washington DC all those that have been created through the program?

Yes, and they’ve been stored in hubs around the country. A lot of them were sent to our base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now for the last haul, they’re sending them to DC.

What will happen in DC?

On June 8, we will lay all the bones out on the National Mall, an action performed as a ceremony, starting at 3rd Street, which is the closest street to the Capitol. We ask people to come dressed in white. And we will lay the bones out right on the Mall. Our goal is to have 4,000 people to lay the bones out that day. That’s an incredible amount of people to organize in a city you haven’t had much time in. But we’ve done a lot of community outreach in the DC area, and we know people are coming in from all over. There’s a class of 20 kids from Tennessee who are making the trek for the entire weekend. We have a group of 60 people from the Great Lakes region who are coming out, from Tallahassee, from Boston — from everywhere. But it’s a call to everyone — so we want as many people there as possible to participate and witness. Anyone can just turn up, but we highly recommend that you register.

You were an inaugural Fellow from the TEDGlobal class of 2009. How has the fellowship had an impact on your work?

It’s been incredible. Hands down, this project would not have been able to evolve or carry on without the support and encouragement the TED community gave. It was such an out-there idea from the beginning, and the fact that the TED Fellows team really believed in it and in me was really huge and important. So I definitely feel that, as the project culminates, they’re all there for certain in their support. The people that I’ve met — the other fellows who are some of my dearest friends — have been extraordinary and so inspirational. And some of OMB partners have been made through the Fellows community, and that’s been extraordinary.

After the event at the National Mall, what’s next?

In the process of this project, our project manager Susan McAllister and I co-founded an organization called the Art of Revolution that is dedicated to creating works at the intersection of art and activism. Our hope is to continue to do these types of projects. We have no ideas confirmed, but we know that we really love working in this space and we want to continue to do that. And so we have a website called TheArtofRevolution.org, and we’ll just continue from here.

Will the One Million Bones website continue?

We’ve heard from a lot of different groups who work on these issues that they’d like to continue use the curriculum and educational tools. So it’s very possible that people will continue to make bones in the process of learning about these issues. We will keep the website up and see where that goes organically. In terms of where the bones are going afterwards, our goal is to create a permanent installation. We’ll wait to see how the event goes in DC and to see if we’re able to do that afterwards.

Having lived with the issue for so long, what have you learned about genocide and what it says about human nature?

Its definitely something very daunting to consider. We’ve known it to happen over and over again. I think about Raphael Lemkin who is the man who coined the phrase. He gave his entire life so that we would have a word that would describe this crime. Without it, we couldn’t create the Geneva Convention or an international response of law. Unfortunately, the real causes of genocide are very complex. Each country, each issue, each place is very different. Those are things that I don’t feel I have the capacity to change. What I have to offer is questioning how we as a world allow it to happen without our attention or concern.

Above: Watch a video made for the One Million Bones Albuquerque event on August 28th, 2011.

TEDGlobal 2013 guest curators Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gomez-Mont share how they created the session, “The World on Its Head,” which will make you rethink the global order.

Session 6 of TEDGlobal 2013 has a captivating title: “The World on its Head.” Guest curated by Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gómez-Mont — both from the inaugural class of TEDGlobal 2009 Fellows — the session will be a chance to turn our conceptions of the Middle East and Latin America upside down, and to rethink staid assumptions about politics, religion, art, architecture, peacemaking and more. 

Here, the TED Blog asks Assefi and Gómez-Mont to share what inspired the session and how they went about picking speakers.

Where did the theme “The World on Its Head” come from?

Nassim Assefi: Gabriella and I brainstormed, trying to tie together our two regions. What is the zeigeist in each of our regions? The undercurrents? What do they have in common? How have they been underestimated? Misunderstood? What is their hidden potential? We settled on “The World On Its Head” after viewing a wonderful map of the world with the South facing upward. That visual became a metaphor for rethinking deeply held assumptions and views of the world and sitting with the discomfort of a new idea until the brain adjusts.

Gabriella Gómez-Mont: For me, the idea of “The World on Its Head” rings strongly and intimately with moments in life when I had to truly rethink important things so deeply that the former map no longer works, no longer matches the new reality. That moment, pause, gap, chaos of no longer understanding anything because one fundamental part of understanding crumbles — it’s one of the most enigmatic and profoundly human moments one can go through.

It is both so strangely beautiful and tremendously brutal to rethink once unshakable truths. No wonder all of us, collectively and individually, try to make the world sit still and force maps to remain the same for centuries even when they no longer work. But in the end, that moment of confusion is a fundamental part of every transformation, adventure, and reconstitution — a pure turbulent threshold between paradigms. And then many new possibilities surface after finding one’s footing again in an upside-down world.

How did the guest curation come about?

Assefi: I had been pitching speaker ideas to [TEDGlobal curator] Bruno Giussani since the moment I met him, and many of those suggestions have made it to the TED stage. I play that role at TEDMED, too. In August 2012, we received a marvelous email invitation out of the blue from Bruno to guest curate/host a session at TEDGlobal. There are more than 300 TED Fellows from around the world, each doing amazing work, and no TED Fellow had ever guest curated a session at TED, so this is an incredible honor.

Gabriella and I were chosen in part because we work in, and come from, distinct regions of the world — I represent the Middle East/Central Asia, and Gabriella Latin America. I’m an internist and global women’s health specialist (most recently tackling maternal mortality in Afghanistan). I also write novels, work on civic peace-oriented projects in the Middle East, defend human rights from a medical angle, and am a feminist activist, a single mom, and a diehard TEDhead. Gabriella is an artist, a documentary filmmaker, a curator for the arts in Latin America, and now head of a civic think tank/laboratory for Mexico City.

I represent the sciences/health, literature, and global politics; she is the arts expert, the design/architecture person, a cultural force. We have different styles of working, but in reality, we overlap quite a bit. I speak Spanish and have worked in Central America. She has traveled in the Middle East. We’re both polyglots, crazy dancers, and global citizens, though we have strong predilections for our regions of origin.

The map that inspired the session, “The World on its Head.”

What’s the thrust of the session?

Assefi: It’s about discarding assumptions about the Middle East, Latin America, and the way you think the world works in exchange for groundbreaking ideas that will hopefully inspire you to rethink politics, religion, art, peacemaking, the role of sports, underestimated economies and architecture, and even toxic environments.

Gómez-Mont: Exactly, that is a great description. I was interested in reformulating and rethinking certain gray areas we take for granted, and I wanted to focus on Latin America, on certain places and subjects that could be explored more thoroughly. We sought to make our speakers complement each other, understand how we could weave certain threads among individual narratives, regions and diverse disciplines. And diversity — of age, country of origin, religion, and so on — was important to us.

Can you describe your speakers?

Assefi: All are global citizens/multicultural. Each of them has taken on courageous work. The lineup include: architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz; explorer, writer and filmmaker Holly Morris; economic policy innovator Juan Pardinas; historian/political scientist Trita Parsi; performance artist Tania Bruguera; accidental theologist Lesley Hazleton; and founder of the Beirut Marathon, May El-Khalil.

We found our musician through two other TEDFellows, Meklit Hadero and Esra’a al Shafei. Dina el Wedidi is one of Meklit’s Nile Music artists and is featured in Esra’a’s MidEastTunes app. Through the Rolex Mentor and Protegee Arts Program, Dina has been paired with the famous Brazilian musician, Gilberto Gil. Dina seemed like a poetic fit for our session — the TED Fellow-link to discovering this brazen, beautiful, young woman singer-songwriter from the Middle East, who found her audience during the Arab Spring and is being influenced and mentored by a legendary Latin American musical force.

But we don’t want to give away our speakers’ topics. It’s more fun if you are surprised by our session. At a TED conference, one generally doesn’t know what each speaker’s idea worth spreading will be until show time!

Which speakers do you think are going to knock our socks off? Why?

Assefi: That’s a cruel question, like asking a mother to choose the favorite between her children! The truth is, if curated well, different speakers will wow different people. It depends on what’s happening in your life, what you’ve been thinking about lately, and how open you are to certain ideas. Of the four I’ve chosen, I can imagine each one of them blowing you away. I predict Gabriella feels the same.

Gómez-Mont: I feel the same. And one never knows until that fateful day when the crowd goes silent and the curtain goes up what will happen in that space between those words on paper and the voice on stage — between the careful planning and the happily reckless, often serendipitous, many times shifting, sometimes accomplice or sometimes trickster — reality.

TED Global, themed “Think Again,” kicks off on June 10 in Edinburgh, Scotland. See the full list of speakers, and get lots more information about attending at the conference website. And stay tuned to the TED Blog where we will be bringing you live coverage of the conference.

Five years ago, the non-profit tech company Ushahidi exploited existing technology to create a powerful platform that allowed users to crowdsource crisis information sent over SMS. Now the Kenyan company is set to do the same with the BRCK, a wireless, rugged, battery-powered modem ready for any environment. As the BRCK’s Kickstarter campaign gathers steam, Ushahidi co-founder and TED Fellow Erik Hersman tells us his vision for the BRCK and how it could change how we connect — in Africa and beyond.

It sounds like the BRCK could be a pretty groundbreaking device.

Yes. It’s always hard for people in the West to understand, just the same as it was hard for technologist to understand Ushahidi. They looked at it and said, “Yeah, what’s special about that?” To be honest, technologically there’s nothing special, and there wasn’t even five years ago. It was that we were just using technology differently to solve a certain type of problem.

Same thing with the BRCK. It actually uses a 15-year-old technology. Modems and routers are not new — it’s the way we’re putting them together into a package that makes it really valuable. So sure, you can tether your phone. Sure, you could buy a wifi device. Those will each last two hours and can be shared with five people. Ours lasts 8 to 12 hours and can be shared with 20 people. Ours is made to deal with power on/power off all the time.

Then there’s a cloud backend. You can go to our site and get into your own devices from anywhere in the world, and write software for it from that level. There’s also a hardware side where you can basically plug anything into it, and the devices stack like bricks. So you can plug in extra batteries, maybe a water sensor. Maybe you want connect a Raspberry Pi CPU to it and make a little server. Fine — you can do all that and actually control that anywhere in the world. So layer two is how the BRCK becomes this bridge between the cloud and the internet of things.

Who are the intended users?
At the moment, I think there are two kinds of users for the BRCK. In Africa, it’s will be anybody who needs to connect to the Web often, and who feel the pain of power outages and the less-than-stellar ISP activity that we have in Kenya or in Nigeria or wherever you are. Small businesses across Africa will use it for connectivity.

In the West, I think the user type are the people who travel, who go camping, who go backpacking or hiking and want some type of internet connectivity in a rugged case. We’re happy if it gets picked up in the US and Europe, but we are much more interested in providing a device that works for people like us here in Africa.

But I’m guessing there are many other possible applications we haven’t even thought of yet.

Where did the idea for the BRCK come from?

It came to mind as a product during a meeting with some colleagues in South Africa. On the plane back, I pulled out my notebook and started writing down the different things that would make a router/modem for Africa really work. At that time, it was just a fun idea.

It wasn’t until last summer that we got serious about it. We got a prototype level and said, “Oh, this might actually work.” We got a guy that came on part-time and would do the prototyping with us, and it kept accelerating. Rapid prototyping is very hard to do in Kenya, because you don’t have all the tools you would have elsewhere and you can’t overnight components that you might need, if you bought the wrong ones — which we did. But when we realized this was at a very serious point, we hired two people, one with expertise in actual product prototyping in manufacturing, and a firmware guy who’s really deep into the IO side of firmware design, which is difficult stuff.

Everybody says you can’t do hardware in Africa, and we’re like, well, let’s try before we just say you can’t. And what we’ve found is that they’re wrong. You can do it, it’s just harder.

Will the BRCK come with a network connection?

It’s made just like your normal everyday router. So you can plug an ethernet cord into it and just use it that way, or of course use it over a wifi network. We want it to come with a SIM card in it. We’re still trying to figure out who will be our global partner on that – we’re talking to various providers right now. Either way, you can just pop any SIM card into it for 3G connectivity. It’s unlocked, so you don’t have to worry about that. That automatically creates a wifi hotspot that you can move anywhere. And if you have more than 20 people, you can put more BRCKs around, and they automatically mesh, so it makes it easy to expand.

What about battery time?

Our minimum requirement is that, if the power goes out, you’ll still have a full eight-hour work day’s worth of connectivity. We’re trying to make sure that it can take almost any type of input as well. You can plug an extra battery pack, for example. It has this micro USB slot, but underneath it is also has a GPIO port, which allows you to plug in any type of sensor.

The BRCK can take anything from four to 15 volts, so you could plug in any solar kit. You can plug it into your car charger. If you want something seriously off-grid for a long time, then grab a car battery and that will last you, with full-time usage, probably 10 to 20 days. It doesn’t have a huge drawing power, but it does decrease depending on the amount of people on the device.

It has 16GB of on board storage as well, so you can make a DropBox sync right there if you want, or you can make the whole device into a BPN, that kind of thing.

I can imagine this will be a godsend for rural communities, boat communities, photojournalists, and other off-grid folks.

Yes, I think there will be many people we didn’t expect who will need what the BRCK will provide. In fact, what I want to know from the TED community is: What other circles of people or communities be interested in the BRCK and should know about the Kickstarter campaign? Are there other niche communities — or even big communities — that this would make sense for? I think we’re closing in on $90,000 of the $125,000 we need. We need at least that amount to get to our minimum production run to get our economies of scale on certain components.

How does the BRCK fit in with your vision at Ushahidi?

At Ushahidi, we believe that older technology is not fully utilized. Where in the West people move to a new technology really quickly, in Africa we don’t. So there’s a reason why USSD and SMS are still really big things on mobile phones here. It’s why we think Ushahidi worked — this idea that you don’t have to throw away the old right away, you can actually use it for other things. And sometimes the problem sets that you’re solving for aren’t going to come from places that look like Cambridge or Camden; they’re going to look more like Nairobi or New Delhi. And these neighborhoods and communities are sometimes using technology that isn’t made for them. They’re trying to shoehorn in a newer technology.

Part of our job at Ushahidi is taking a look at those things and questioning the very nature of where they are and why they stand there. And then if possible — if it has something to do with increasing information flow from ordinary people, we’ll look at it. That’s why the BRCK is something that Ushahidi is interested in doing as well.

TED Fellow Kellee Santiago has won numerous awards for the video game, “Journey.” Here, we talk to her about her craft.

In recent months, That Game Company’s downloadable PS3 game Journey has swept up an armload of awards — the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year and BAFTA Video Game Award for Best Game Design, to name just two — not to mention a Grammy nomination for Best Original Soundtrack. Company co-founder and TED Fellow Kellee Santiago tells us why she believes this remarkable game is touching so many people’s lives, what it might mean for the future of gaming. Bonus: we ask what’s next on her own horizon.

This is a lot of awards  at once, isn’t it? How does it feel?

It’s been totally amazing. We did have a good feeling about Journey: the responses we got last year just from our players was totally overwhelming — people really felt they were able to have personal catharsis through it.

By December, which marks the beginning of game awards season, we’d already been getting so much good attention already — people doing costume plays of the characters, making videos, playing the music on YouTube. So we suspected Journey might get nominated as a stand-out game of the year, just as Flow and Flower, our previous titles, had. But amazingly, it also started showing up in best game of the year categories, as well as best story and best soundtrack and graphics, which put Journey in the same category as what’s known as triple-A games — the video equivalent of blockbuster movies — the high-budget disc titles like Halo 4 and Mass Effect 3, Borderlands 2 and Dishonored. Seeing Journey in along with them was amazing. Then we started winning, which was really unbelievable.

I think it really speaks to a shift happening in the games industry around the idea of who can make a quality game, and what defines a quality game experience. The emphasis wasn’t on hours of gameplay or weapon-changing abilities, but on personal, deep experiences.

Tell us about the game experience.

In the game, the player is a robed figure. You wake up in the desert, and you see this giant mountain in front of you. The goal of the game is to go on this journey to the mountaintop — very much inspired by Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey structure.

On each level you’re exploring what appears to be a ruined civilization. You’re in this long robe, and when you encounter pieces of cloth, they can give you energy. And that energy you can use to fly, not infinitely, just for short periods. And you can build upon your ability to fly. But the idea is that cloth is really the only living thing in this desert environment. And as you move through the world, you encounter more complex life forms of cloth, and you start to learn more and understand more about this civilization and what happened there.

It takes about 90 minutes, maybe two hours, to play. We wanted to allow people to play through in one sitting.

How does the multiplayer aspect work?

As you’re going on this journey through different environments to the mountaintop, you can encounter another robed figure like yourself, and that is another real person. We don’t have an AI system, as some people think. It is always just a one-on-one connection, to give you this feeling like you’re in this vast world. So when you happen upon another person, it’s very significant.

One of the goals was to make an online console title that actually made you feel connected to another person, as opposed to the traditional online console gaming experience in which you start up a competitive, usually fighting or shooting game, and get yelled at by people from across the world.

In Journey, there’s actually no language, no voice chat system, and no in-game messaging. You’re also totally anonymous — you don’t have a user ID or a name, nothing that could take you out of the world that we were creating, which also leaves it totally open to players of any age and also from anywhere in the world. Because we don’t rely on language, we can actually have a global server, so you could be playing with someone who doesn’t even speak the same language as you. Yet you share the experience.

Then do you have to play the game together?

You don’t have to. People have different play styles: I could be really into exploration, and they just want to go around and collect everything — then we’d naturally separate and be disconnected and left open to connect with someone else. This offers an organic way of players finding players who are similar to them.

How do the players communicate?

The only way of communicating is through a shout or call system. When you press a button on the controller, you’ll make either a tiny shout or a large call. It can act as a way of saying “Hey, I’m over here!” if you’re in the level but can’t see each other very well. But when two people initially find each other, they “speak” in lots of short chirps. It’s amazing how much actually people can communicate this way. It gets enough across, I guess.

Is there no way they can ever find each other in the real world?

We’ve struggled with this, because from a game design stance, it can be very powerful to allow people to invite friends to play. But we felt the anonymity was really important, because the game is about humanity in general, not the specifics of this particular person. But if you play through the entire game, it’ll take you back to where you started again. At that moment, it will show you the other journeyers you encountered along the way, so people have connected to one another through the Playstation network messaging system afterwards.

There’s also a Tumblr blog actually called Journey Stories, where people post their experiences of playing and try and find each other if they’ve had a particularly moving experience with someone.

But it’s funny to think about how originally it was really just a theory when 13 of us were developing the game. We really felt that simply moving through these environments with another person would be something really compelling to share online. I guess it turned out that we weren’t alone.

Is it meant to be played again and again?

Yes. There are collectibles that you can go and get through multiple playthroughs. But mainly people play again because the environments are beautiful and it’s a really interesting place to be — and you can always encounter another person. That really does change your experience every time.

So even though you know what you’re going to encounter at the end, it’s still worth exploring and making contact with somebody else.

Yeah. A metaphor we used a lot during development was hiking — especially that feeling like we can pass each other on a busy street in an urban environment, we don’t even recognize each other. But when you’re out hiking somewhere, when you see another person, you feel a connection to them. And everyone’s pretty nice usually when you go out hiking. I’ve hiked in Griffith Park on some of the same trails many, many times now because I live right here, but it’s still a beautiful place to explore. I’ll still go back to it.

You’re no longer with That Game Company. What happened, and what are you up to now?

We pretty much disbanded after Journey was shipped, about a year ago. It had been six years, and myself and co-founder Jenova Chen and the other people that had been there for a while, we had just really grown and changed. Your art imitates your life, and it was true for every single one of our games, and Journey was no exception. Jenova said in the acceptance speech that he gave at GDC that, if you played through Journey, you’d understand our own struggles as well. It reflects everything we were going through.

So when it was over, it was time for us to hit the start-a-new-journey button, like we have in the game. I didn’t know what was next. In games, I love the practice of game development and game design, but I’m also passionate about empowering different voices in game development to be successful so that we can have a wider variety of experiences in games. I’m interested in how our business model can impact that. Because the games industry is relatively young, there’s still much room to change that and switch it up. I’ve been doing that also with an angel investment fund called Indie Fund, which I co-founded in the beginning of 2010.

My period of exploration vacillated between both. But I thought that in order to really impact the finances and the business model of the games industry, I would ultimately have to go work for one of the large studios or large console manufacturers and work my way up to being in a position of power. I got connected with Julie Uhrman, who’s the CEO and founder of Ouya, which I joined as Head of Developer Relations a month ago. Ouya made a lot of waves last year. They ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign: making $8.5 million dollars for a new console, which is crazy. It could have only worked on Kickstarter: investors were just laughing them out of the room. No one wanted to get into hardware manufacturing.

With Ouya, I really feel there is an opportunity to have all of the accessibility for development that mobile devices and PCs do, but in the living room — still have developers be able to develop a variety of gaming experiences, but with all the ease and openness of a platform that’s been provided through App Store and Google Play. That really excites me.

Any regrets?

That we lost the Grammy to Trent Reznor. But that’s OK.

An eight-story building named Rana Plaza in the Savar neighborhood on the outskirts of Dhaka collapsed at 9am on Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Hundreds of workers were killed, and many more were trapped for days under the rubble until rescued with severe injuries. Photo: Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

TED Senior Fellow and architect Mohammad Tauheed runs ArchSociety.com, a nonprofit community resource for architects and designers in developing nations. When the Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed last week, killing hundreds of garment factory workers, Tauheed supported the rescue efforts. Here, he tells us his experience of the disaster, how corruption and greed can quickly lead to tragedy, and what’s being done to prevent illegal building practices.

What happened?

The Savar tragedy is a matter of great sorrow and grief. The saddest reality of the whole thing is that it was avoidable. It is not a case of a plain accident. Cracks were detected in the building a day before the collapse. According to news sources, the tenants were advised to stop all activities in the building and to evacuate. That instruction was not followed, so TV reporters went there and interviewed the owner, Sohel Rana, a local politician, and asked why. He declared the cracks were nothing serious, that the building was safe. While a bank and shops in the first two floors were closed once the cracks were found, several garment factories on the upper floors of the building stayed open. The garment-factory managers forced their fearful workers to resume work the next day, and the building collapsed within a few seconds, with thousands of workers inside. It has taken more than 500 lives so far. There were around 2,500 survivors rescued alive from the debris, and many are still missing. The second phase of the rescue work is currently running. Heavy machinery is clearing the rubble, with no more hope of finding anyone alive. Days after the collapse, Sohel Rana was arrested.

What was your firsthand experience of the disaster?

I went there with medical supplies to deliver to the onsite health camp. It was an overwhelming experience. Thousands of people were waiting in tears to hear the news of their relatives among the victims, a private hospital nearby was dedicatedly busy round the clock to receive wounded survivors, frequent sirens of rushing ambulances and other emergency vehicles, many small voluntary booths giving away drinking water, snacks and free phone calls. In those few days, I’m sure everyone in Bangladesh thought and wished they could come to help in some way, wished they could contribute something to save a life. I was standing amid the crowd and crying.

I heard that the rescue workers needed light tools like cutters, drills, and so on to make holes in the concrete, so I called up architects and construction companies I knew, asked them to stop work for a day or two and send their equipment and men to the rescue site. Everybody responded positively and tried their best.

People from all walks of life did their best to help. General people, construction workers, unknown volunteers joined actively in the rescue work hand-to-hand with the firemen and a support team from the army. Their dedication, love for people and bravery were extraordinary. They risked their lives to go inside the rubble and take someone out alive. Hundreds of people donated blood in long queues in different camps in Dhaka. People sent support whatever and however they could. Social networks and news channels were busy with the live updates of ‘what is currently needed onsite’ messages. Hundreds of people actively collected those things and sent them to Savar — food, water, medical supplies, rescue equipment, tools and machinery, flashlights, canisters and cylinders of oxygen, funeral supplies for the deceased, cash, and so on were supplied mostly by the general public. And most often the amount of supply that came arbitrarily met the need. It was heartwarming and all the way an amazing effort that we saw from the citizens.

In your view, who is responsible?

The biggest thing that is responsible here is corruption. From my knowledge as an architect, I can tell you about the building construction-related law and its known flaws. To build in the Dhaka area — the boundary covers nearby suburbs and towns beyond Dhaka metropolitan, including the incident area of Savar — you need permission from the main authority RajUK (Capital Development Authority), as well as permits from 13 different organizations to get permission for construction and approval of architectural design (and, in the case of large projects, structural and other designs), including the municipality, environment department, fire service, electricity and gas distribution authorities, and so on. The approval process and construction are overseen by RajUK. When building a factory, you need to get additional approval from a factory-building construction-related authority, and if it’s a garment factory, you need a license and permission from the non-government organization BGMEA, an association of garment owners that regulates the industry in Bangladesh. If corruption plays any role at any point in this process, incidents like the collapse of Rana Plaza and fire at Tazreen Garments may happen any time. And many of these organizations are infamous for institutionalizing corruption. Allegedly, often this paperwork is done or overlooked by political influences and bribery.

In the case of Rana Plaza, the problem might have happened in a few different layers. Allegedly, the building was designed to be six stories, and the owner built an additional two floors without permission. There could be a fault in the structural design. Then there was the usage of the building: it was architecturally and structurally designed as a commercial complex, for small shops and offices. Counting the number of people per square foot and the weight of the heavy machinery, the dead load and live load of a garment factory is far higher than a commercial building. Even if the initial structural design was okay for commercial use, using the building for garment factories might have made the structure fail. It is difficult to tell what exactly happened without extensive engineering investigation. It was the responsibility of the architects and engineers involved in designing this building to check its legal status.

All the organizations that let the owner make this building without following the rules and let them use it for unapproved purposes are responsible. And along with the building owner, the owners of the garment factories are responsible for accepting the corruption. They are especially responsible for forcing workers to go inside that building that day.

The responsibility also falls upon the foreign companies – including Joe Fresh, Bonmarché, El Corte Ingles, Primark, Mango and Benetton – whose products were being made or had been made in those factories. They must take responsibility for checking the physical conditions, legal aspects and working environment of the factory buildings before they put an order to a third-party supplier. After all, their names and logos are all over the collapsed building, soaked in blood.

Is there any hope for conditions changing for the better? This is not the first time such a thing has happened in Bangladesh’s garment factories.

A few good things have happened recently with building codes and laws in the country. Bangladesh has a national building code, BNBC, first drafted in 1993. In 2006 it became mandatory to follow the code, with a penalty of seven years’ imprisonment. In 2006, a new construction law came out with the help of years’ worth of efforts by architects and related professionals. These codes and laws aren’t entirely perfect yet, but they are under constant practice, observation and development.

And following the Savar incident, the government has declared a few reforms to improve the situation of the garment industry in the country.

Why are the government and authorities not supportive of such changes?

Many of these ideas and proposals will cut corruption and the power of authority of different organizations. And no one wants to mess with the garment industry in Bangladesh, because it’s the highest foreign-currency-earning industry in the country, at more than $19 billion a year and supports the also highly lucrative real-estate industry. So any law that has the potential to reduce the profits in these two sectors will likely not get support.

This business is extraordinarily profitable – it makes people greedy and turns them into beings who can easily force their workers into a known death trap, because the stakes of shutting down a factory even for a few hours is huge in account of profit and loss. The factories are always desperate to keep running, as the supply of garments to Western countries is a highly time-sensitive business, for the frequent changes of fashion in seasons, special occasions and brand campaigns. Western fashion houses also should look into this issue of “time sensitivity” – which may cost human lives.

Of course, not all garment factories in Bangladesh are in bad condition. There are thousands of factories properly designed and maintained, and many foreign companies who procure their products from Bangladesh with commendable responsibility.

One great thing that has resulted from the West’s outsourcing of work to Bangladesh is that thousands of workers have pulled themselves out of extreme poverty. This flow must continue to produce more jobs and opportunities. With a little more responsibility and humane sensibility, we could save hundreds of lives and feed thousands more.

How does the work you do with your nonprofit ArchSociety prevent tragedies like this?

ArchSociety.com focuses on helping architects with open source resources and information. However, following the deadly fire at Tazreen Garments in November 2012, we started working on a new project: an information package that will contain easy-to-understand booklets, posters, stickers, and so on, with fire-safety information and instructions targeted for garment factories. Now it looks like we have to consider adding basic construction safety and law information to that package.

Thanks to the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights for use of their photo. Learn more about their work here.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Photographer Camille Seaman sees the personality in elements of nature. The TED Fellow thrilled us at TED2011 with her haunting photos of polar ice — some glaciers timid, others proud and defiant — and, at TED2013, shared stunning images of supercell clouds, which she characterizes as “lovely monsters.”

We are very excited that Seaman has been named a 2013-14 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow for the U.S., joining the eight international fellows named earlier this month. The Fellows participate in classes, lectures and symposiums at Stanford University, while working on an innovation proposal. Seaman’s project is, “A website that applies indigenous perspectives and wisdom to current environmental stories and issues.”

In other news, Seaman has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her ongoing storm-chasing photography project, “The Big Cloud.”

Read more on the TED Fellows blog »

]]> http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/30/camille-seaman-named-a-knight-fellow/feed/ 1 Camille-Seaman-at-TED2013 kateted Camille-Seaman-at-TED2013 http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/26/how-soon-is-now-fellows-friday-with-alicia-eggert/ http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/26/how-soon-is-now-fellows-friday-with-alicia-eggert/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:30:39 +0000 Karen Eng http://blog.ted.com/?p=75120 ]]> Conceptual artist Alicia Eggert uses words as found objects in her sculptural art — a body of work that serves as an ongoing investigation of time. Here, she tells us about taking her neon piece “You are (on) an island” to various locations in the world, shares how childhood experiences in South Africa sparked her fascination with time, and reveals how she thinks each person experiences time uniquely.

You live and work in Maine, but you recently toured a piece — which involves rather delicate neon sculpture — around the UK. How did this come about?

My collaborator Mike Fleming and I originally made “You are (on) an island (2011)” for an art festival called Sacred and Profane. The festival takes place on Peaks Island, which is off the coast of Portland, Maine. Every fall, on a weekend in October closest to the harvest moon, visitors take a ferry to the island to explore an abandoned World War II army battery, which artists completely take over with installations and performances. The battery doesn’t have any electricity, and people have to walk around and explore the dark, cavernous rooms by candlelight. So when Mike and I were brainstorming ideas for an installation, we started talking about using neon, and filling a whole room with light. We came up with the statement: “You are on an island” – with the word “on” blinking on and off, so it sometimes says, “You are an island.” We worked with Pat Boulduc of Beacon Neon to fabricate the text, and we installed the sign on construction scaffolding in the middle of a room that was completely flooded with water. It was pretty breathtaking.

We later posted documentation of the piece online, and an artist named Richard Wheater, who runs a gallery and workspace called Neon Workshops, in Wakefield, got wind of it. He wrote me an email out of the blue saying he thought it would be perfect for the UK, and he wanted us to bring it there.

But instead of just shipping the neon over and putting it on display in his gallery, Richard suggested that we take the sign on a guerilla sculpture tour, mount it on the back of a truck and drive it around Yorkshire, and take people by surprise on their daily commute to or from work. But neither of us had the money to pay for any of that, so we launched a Kickstarter campaign, and raised over $12,000. We shipped the neon to the UK in December and flew over in January to go on tour for two weeks.

“You are (on) an island” was originally made in 2011 for the Sacred and Profane art festival on Peaks Island, Maine. Eggert and her collaborator toured the sculpture around the UK on the back of a flatbed truck for two weeks in January 2013. The word ‘on’ blinks rhythmically on and off. For the moment that single word remains unilluminated, a new phrase with a different meaning emerges. Photo: Mike Fleming

Isn’t neon incredibly fragile, though? How did you manage to move it around?

Yes, it’s made out of glass tubes that are pumped, in this case, full of argon and a little bit of mercury. When the gas is electrified, it glows bright blue.

When we arrived in the UK we rented a flatbed truck, and spent the first few days erecting the sculpture’s wooden structure on the truck. We couldn’t always leave the glass letters attached to the structure, especially when we were driving long distances at 70 miles an hour on the motorway. So the neon was mounted to rails that could be lifted up and attached to the framework, but then brought back down to travel on foam in the truck bed when we were on motorways.

Our daily routine started with a trip to Neon Workshops, where we’d load the neon onto the truck. We would then drive to a certain location, unload a ladder and tools, lift the rails up onto the structure and attach them, and then wire everything up to a little generator. We’d try to do all that by dusk so we could get some really great sunset shots — also because you couldn’t see the neon very well during the day. We would then drive short distances around that area, and make photographs and videos in different locations. And then at the end of every day we would have to take the glass back down, drive back to Neon Workshops, store it in the gallery where we knew it would be safe, and then go to bed. It was quite a rigorous routine. But over the course of two weeks we drove all over West Yorkshire, drawing a circle around Wakefield, our home base. And we made a short weekend trip over to North Wales.

Any surprises?

We were surprised by how many CCTV cameras there are in the UK. There’s definitely way more CCTV there, and a lot of police vans. And since we were doing the project without permission, we were unsure of what we could get away with and what we couldn’t. But whenever we did encounter a police van or a policeman, they normally just seemed curious, but didn’t even stop to ask any questions. By the end of the trip, we were driving right up onto traffic islands and down pedestrian shopping streets.

How did the public respond?

A lot of people asked us what it was and what are we doing. We would explain by saying, “This is art,” basically. We would hand out postcards featuring an image of the sign, and explain that we were invited to the UK to do this project by a gallery in Wakefield. A lot of people would say things like, “Oh, man. You have to go to this part of Scotland. It’s really beautiful. It would make a great photograph.”

One time we were parked in the Bull Ring, in Wakefield, when a family walked by, and I could hear a little girl say, “We’re not on an island, are we?” I actually heard quite a few people ask that same question, which really surprised me. I realized that people in the UK don’t feel like they live on an island because they don’t feel isolated. If anything, it feels like it’s in the center of the world.

I think people who live there forget that it’s an island because they think of it as much bigger than it actually is.

Exactly. I’ve taken the same sculpture to Australia, and the response there was very different. People would see the sign and say, “Yes. This is perfect for us because we feel so isolated down here. And even though Australia is a continent, we feel like we’re on an island, and this sign describes exactly how it feels to live here.”

It was really surprising to me to see how people responded to the statement very differently in the UK than they did in Australia, or in Maine where it was first on display. As artists, we can’t really have expectations about how people will respond to work. I’m often intrigued by how everyone’s response to the same thing can be very different.

Video above: “The length of now”.

Video below: “Now”: This kinetic sculpture’s red acrylic line segments align to spell the word “NOW” approximately once every second. Made with help from Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

How did you get your start as an artist, and how you came to play with the themes of time and language?

My background is in architectural design, but I took a sculpture class during my very last semester of college, which introduced me to conceptual art. I literally cried to the professor at the end of the semester because I felt like I had just wasted four years of school studying the wrong thing. But I went to work at an architectural firm in New York for a few years after graduating, and I eventually went back to graduate school for sculpture.

I’ve always been very intrigued by time. I can’t really explain why. I think it’s just because it rules our lives in so many ways, but at the same time it’s so hard to define. It’s not a tangible thing, even though we see the tangible effects of time. We have very few words that we use to explain it, and words like “now” are very ambiguous.

When I was a kid, I lived in South Africa for a few years because my parents were missionaries there during apartheid. South Africans had three different ways they used the word “now.” A simple “now” was a really casual reference to the present; it lacked any sense of urgency. “Just now” was even more casual. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll get around to it.” And then “now now” was a more urgent expression, meaning “This is happening right at this very moment.”

I think I’ve always had an interest in how people regard and refer to the passing of time, and how the language we use to describe time also structures our understanding of it. Time is different, not just culturally, but for every single person. I really believe each person lives in a different time universe.

I think of words as found objects, and I play with their forms in the same way Duchamp played with urinals and bicycle wheels. I began by giving words like “now” a physical form, and asking questions like, “How long is now?” For instance, I wrote the word “now” with a piece of string and then pulled it taut into a line, so I could measure the length of now. That led to other projects that allow language to change over time. And projects like “You are (on) an island” demonstrate how one word, or the absence of it, can contain a whole world of meaning.

Would you consider doing something similar in the United States?

Definitely. But the ability to tell people in the UK we were invited there was really empowering. It would be very different if we were to just decide to take the sculpture on tour in New York City, without receiving an invitation first. So I’m waiting to see what happens next, because I feel there are many places, many islands, the sculpture could travel to. But I would really like to receive an invitation.

Does the location partly dictate the shape of the piece?

In some ways, yes and, in some ways, no. I really like to make work that I feel is universal. The initial idea was inspired by an island in Maine, but the phrase “You are an island” applies to everyone, because no one can really know what it feels like to be another person. Mike and I have also had discussions about whether or not it needs to be shown on legitimate “islands,” or if every land mass is an island — and if you zoom out far enough, the Earth is kind of an island in the solar system; and our solar system is an island in the universe.

Video above: “Pulse Machine”: This electromechanical sculpture was “born” in Nashville, Tennessee on 2 June 2012, at 6:18 PM. The sculpture will die once the counter reaches zero. Made in collaboration with Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

Tell me about other work you’ve made about time.

I’ve made quite a few things to illustrate the concept of “now.” “NOW (2012)” is a kinetic sculpture whose red acrylic line segments align to spell the word NOW approximately once every second. The lines that create it slow down ever so slightly as the word forms, but just like time itself, they never quite come to a complete stop.

I’ve also made a sculpture with a human lifespan, called “Pulse Machine (2012).” It was made in collaboration with an engineer named Alexander Reben. We programmed the sculpture to have the lifespan of a baby born in Tennessee in 2012 — which, if you average the male and female life expectancy rates together, it about 78 years. Surprisingly, that’s actually a little bit lower than the national average in the US.

The sculpture is made up of two parts. A kick-drum sits on the floor, beating a heartbeat rhythm, and a mechanical counter hangs on the wall nearby. The drum beats the sculpture’s pulse, and the mechanical counter uses flip digit numerals to count down the number of heartbeats remaining in the sculpture’s lifetime. And there’s a battery-operated internal clock that keeps track of the passing time even when the sculpture’s unplugged.

Every time you plug the sculpture back in, it goes through a series of steps to determine how much time has elapsed, and the numbers reset themselves to catch up to the present time. The sculpture will “die” when the counter reaches zero.

Creating art means creating objects that, if people deem them important, will be saved for posterity after you die. But a lot of the work that I like to make, which is new media art and kinetic art, has moving parts and electronics that need maintenance, like a car. Even if you diligently maintain it, it probably won’t be able to run forever. So I was excited to make a work of art that’s intended to die, as a way of challenging our desire for things to last forever.

Video above: “Eternity”: A wall-mounted sculpture made in collaboration with Mike Fleming. It employs 30 electric clock movements and 36 hour and minute hands. Once every 12 hours, the hands align to spell the word ETERNITY. This video shows the piece 45 minutes before and after ETERNITY at 300 times the actual speed. Video by Mike Fleming.

So you’re a conceptual kinetic artist.

Maybe, although I don’t only make things that are kinetic. The kinetic aspect comes from my interest in time. I like to allow the artwork to change in the same way that everything else in the world is changing all the time.

I’m constantly figuring out what I’m interested in. But I’ve realized that in order to be making, I need to be learning. I’m not the kind of artist who can go to my studio and sit there by myself and expect ideas to come into my imagination out of the blue. I get my inspiration out in the world, from other people. I’m inspired by other artists, and as a professor I’m inspired by my students and other disciplines. And I have a feeling my work will evolve as I keep absorbing new information and discovering new technologies.

How’s it been to be a TED Fellow so far?

Oh, man. The conference was probably the most inspiring experience of my life to date — not just the talks, but meeting the people that were there to attend the talks as well. So many great minds were gathered in one place. I feel like I went to the future and I got a glimpse of what it might be like, and I got to meet the people who have the potential to shape it.

In that environment, I really had this feeling that anything is possible, and that we can all work together to solve the world’s problems. When I got home, I realized that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t feel that same sense of empowerment. So it’s hard to maintain that level of inspiration. But the TED Fellows network is incredible. There are TED Fellows all over the world, doing great things in every imaginable discipline. And the opportunity to form relationships and learn from so many brilliant people is the best gift the Fellows program could have ever given me.

Squishy, vivid, frozen, frothy – architect and artist Antonio Torres’s wildly colorful and whimsical built spaces are often created using membranes filled with gases, liquids and organic materials, inviting people to crawl in, jump, touch and play.

Here, we ask him about his incredible works and where his inspiration comes from.

Tell me about yourself and how you became an artist – because, as I understand, you were originally trained as an architect.

Actually, the first time that anyone called me an artist was the TED Fellows team! I have always considered myself an architect, but after graduate school, my work became more multidisciplinary, bringing aspects of art into architecture and playing with it. So this is new for me.

Do you object?

No, not at all. I think it’s good when somebody describes you as an artist and you don’t have to call yourself one.

But I always knew I wanted to build things. It has been part of my life for a very long time. Most of my family is in construction and landscaping, so everyone has a pretty natural grasp of materials and how to put things together. I don’t know if that’s what got me involved in architecture, but it definitely is something that plays out right now. I was always around job sites, from when I was 13. At some point I was even thinking of doing civil engineering. That road would have probably been a big mistake! Now I’m trying to explore new architectural possibilities in unifying art, sculpture, soft and living materials and hilarious forms in the hope of finding different building blocks in architecture. I think I have a pretty good grasp of how to put traditional methods together – now it’s about trying to challenge what it means to build.

I grew up in a small village in the state of Michoacan until I was 12, and then my family moved to Chicago. That’s where I did my undergrad, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In my last year, I had the chance to study at the School of Architecture in Verailles, France – a pivotal moment for me. When I came back, I ended up doing a three-year master’s degree in architecture at UCLA, where I met my partner in crime, Michael Loverich, with whom I founded The Bittertang Farm, our design studio. Now I am back in Mexico and it has been very receptive to me and my work.

“Ice caves of the Polar Regions are a rare treat to those who travel there. Created by hundreds of years of accumulation and erosion, to enter an ice cave is to be immersed in color, color that only ice can create. Our Ice Palace attempts to get close to this intense environment by creating vertical thick walls of dyed ice.” Photo: Bittertang Farm

Your work is incredibly colorful and whimsical. How did begin?

The playfulness I think is embedded in both of our personalities, and it probably started to translate to our work at UCLA. I think Michael and I were probably the only ones really going all out with color there. Color in architecture is, unfortunately, not used that much. You’re beginning to see it now more and more, but I think architects tend to just default to white walls. So Michael and I started looking at how to design with color — not so much as an application or a technique, but a link to the visceral.

Actually, our early conversations about coloration were almost like girls thinking about how to apply makeup: How do you achieve depth where depth doesn’t really exist? Or how does color produce new features in surfaces, essentially creating new forms? So rather than just thinking about how to apply paint to a building or to a material, we were thinking about how we might actually transform that material into something more substantial. And so color is now one of our main themes. We really try to work with color as a material in every single project.

Was there a before-and-after moment when you went from being interested in more standard architecture to your aesthetic of exploration and play?

I would say that my interest in experimentation and curiosity probably developed pretty early on. I was always curious to look for alternative solutions to even simple problems. I don’t think I was ever interested in being traditional with anything, so I couldn’t let my work as an architect be standard. I had to play.

Then I met Michael, and he was kind of similar. We learned from the great designers we had as professors, but we often shifted our understanding of design and architecture. So our ideas became more formal: the projects we designed in graduate school were about understanding more complex ways of drawing, putting things together in a physical model. UCLA definitely allowed us to focus on more complexity in forms and techniques. We did a lot of physical models and some pretty huge ones — because that was the only way we would be able to convince people that the things that we were imagining were actually being put together in a cohesive way.

That is where The Bittertang Farm inadvertently got its start – a partnership at first sight. Actually, we finished our degrees at the same time. Then Michael went out to New York that same summer, and I stayed in LA, before cutting out in March. We both ended up in New York working at two separate offices. We never decided to catch up later on and create a partnership — it sort of just happened. So we worked in New York, and at the end of 2009, I dedicated myself full-time to Bittertang. We started making a project together as The Bittertang Farm in 2008.

The descriptions that you have on the website — “Our work explores multiple themes including pleasure, frothiness, biological matter, animal posturing, babies, sculpture and coloration all unified through bel composto” — are wildly poetic and florid. But what do you say when you have to explain what you do?

The website’s language is kind of geared towards the design and architecture community, which expects a certain level of abstraction. Those texts are also meant to challenge the visitor and their expectations of what architecture is, because they are immediately confronted with a nontraditional language, definitions, interpretations and yes — our diverse interest and themes. My favorite is ‘babies!’ Michael was able to write a hilarious article on babies in art and architecture from the research we did on that topic. Ultimately florid and funny is the goal with the writing on the Bittertang website.

At the TED conference, trying to explain to people in a very short amount of time what we do at Bittertang was challenging but fun. I couldn’t be like, “Oh we work with pleasure, froth, babies, animal posturing and color all unified through bel composto,” because they probably would’ve been like “Whaaat?” Instead, I had to boil it down to how we design spaces using gases and liquids and create new building blocks in architecture with the help of pressurized membranes. That is still a little bit wild, but it proved to be more specific. The interesting part is that most people are able to pick up on our interests after the they see the images and really like the work, while others just don’t care anymore. It is also helpful to have a historical reference, like the work done with inflatables in the ’60s and ’70s, and to explain that we have added something new to the research, in that our pressurized membranes are no longer limited to air or gases but can also hold liquids, gels, soft mediums and biological matter.

In some crowds, I  talk about a couple of our projects that were designed as a critique of how serious the profession of architecture has become, mainly advocating the importance of humor in architecture.

“In Big Bird, color is seen as a viscous material, it has the ability to move fluidly over space and emanate auras of reflected colors and particulate throughout space, thickening and extending boundaries.” Photo: Bittertang Farm

Question: What do you mean by ‘frothiness?’

Frothiness is something that always comes out in our projects — like color. Sometimes it’s as simple as creating material around predefined lines where you would expect to see a seam, but then you don’t necessarily see it because the material begins to froth — it erases straight edges with accumulation of matter. Frothiness can also be another way of creating texture and creating material that begins to bubble up, or materials that create sensations of being in clouds, or being immersed in froth.

We actually have a project that deals with literal froth, like foam. It’s a giant 320-square-meter sculpture that generates colorful foam of different colors. It actually becomes like a weather formation on a strange planet. The aesthetic aspect of frothiness comes from our interest in rococo and baroque architecture and art. They were the masters of froth. We’re just trying to figure out a way to get that into the conversation and materialize it in different ways where it’s not just made of plaster or stone, as it has been historically.

Do people come to you with commissions?

Our outlet so far has been winning competitions. Our first project for a competition was an aquaculture project, a fish farm. We answered the call for entries to a publication, and we were selected. That got us started. We started to experiment. And at first, we were more just researching, experimenting and playing around, just trying to see what was out there. In a year, we realized that we had five projects, and so we decided to apply for the Architectural League prize for young architects. We got the prize, which came with the opportunity to have an exhibition in New York and showcase the work.

Ultimately, we didn’t just show our portfolio, but instead we fabricated a new project just for the exhibition — we made a Succulent Piñata. It was the first time that we got some incentive to build something that wasn’t just for us, but for an exhibition. Immediately after that, we entered another competition with our first inflatable, and it was an international competition that we won. So yeah, most of our work right now is making projects in response to calls for submissions, but we carefully select the competitions we want to enter: they have to have our interests embedded in them.

Commissions are always welcome, though. We are ready!

How does the long-distance working relationship work? Does Michael come down to Mexico a lot?

It’s good. Obviously it’s not the same as when we’re together, but through Skype we get a lot of stuff done. There are lots of ways now to share your work and always have everything accessible for people. We have been doing this for over three years, now. Last year I was going a lot to New York as well. We do have strategic meetings where we meet physically every few months, depending on what’s going on.

“Blo Puff’s bloated body and furry innards acoustically, visually and olfactorally separates the pavilion’s interior from New York’s exuberance, allowing the naturalized interior atmosphere, views to the sky and the interior space to be enjoyed without distraction. The interior, protected by a thick envelope, becomes a place of relaxation, reading and eating, where visceral and cerebral can be enjoyed with equal pleasure.” Photo: Anna Ritch

When you make an installation together, do you just meet wherever you’re going to be and then put it together there? Doesn’t that pose technical difficulties?

Let me tell you about our first winning project, titled Blo Puff, a pavilion we built at Union Square in New York. When we were notified that we had won the competition, we had something like two and a half weeks to pull everything together. Turns out two and a half weeks to do something that you’ve never done before is not enough time. I started looking into finding the person who was going to make this inflatable, and every available manufacturer that we came across in that short amount of time proposed to built our project with qualities we didn’t want: all the options pointed towards us showing up at Union Square with a pavilion that would have looked like a jumping castle — obviously not an option for us!

We were very naïve at that point about how you make a transparent, translucent inflatable. The difficult part was that we knew it had to be airtight — meaning it couldn’t have a fan that would circulate air all the time. That’s the other advantage to the work that we’re doing with inflatables: before, they always needed a fan running. We found a company in Seattle that said, “Yeah. We’ve never done it, but we could probably figure it out — we have the air valves, the transparent membrane and the sealers.” We knew immediately this was our best chance. They didn’t do inflatables, but they had the right material and technology — they seam together different types of tarp material for various applications. All we had to do was teach them how to do it — which we were teaching ourselves by making small prototypes down here in Mexico.

So the project was designed between Guadalajara and New York, and then I had to go from Guadalajara to Seattle for a week to go to the factory. They gave me a team, and we had to train them how to cut the patterns and how to seam it. And then in the process, the competition people were like, “This museum in Tel Aviv really likes your project. They want to know if you can actually make a replica in Tel Aviv.” And at that point we didn’t know if we were going to have one done! But if we were going to figure out how to fabricate one, I guessed we could get two done.

Next thing we knew, I was flying out of Seattle at 11pm, and we’re packing two inflatables at 8:30pm. I went straight to JFK, and at that point Michael met me. He took off with one bag to Tel Aviv and I stayed in Brooklyn. So we had these two installations going on simultaneously around the world, and it all happened within three weeks.

We also had to find these other materials — natural materials, like eucalyptus leaves, Spanish moss, a custom-made net that Michael’s dad ended up fabricating for us because he’s an ocean engineer. Our projects take on a life of their own and help us figure out so much along the way, because nothing is really set.

Another example is Burble Bup, the summer pavilion we built in 2011, which was much bigger — it was the biggest structure we’d done to date. It was a similar process — Mexico, New York — but then more than 200 volunteers came to Governor’s Island, over a period of three weeks, to help us built this pavilion. Even the jury who chose our project didn’t really believe it could be done. It stayed up for four months and survived a hurricane, and more than 100 thousand people that visited the island that summer.

“Built of tactile materials, the Burple Bup pavilion is a place of touch, interaction, play, and humorous social engagement. Thin membranes hold air and wood chips in bizarre and colorful volumes, attracting people to play underneath its dangling canopy and engage with their environment and neighbors in strange and interesting new ways.” Photo: Bittertang Farm

Would you want to take these pieces and then try to get them staged around the world? What is your ideal trajectory for your work now?

We want to continue exploring and discovering new things about our work and ourselves. At the moment I am very excited with the range of materials that are planning on tackling so that we can continue to create engineering marvels and more fantasy experiences and dream spaces. We would love to parade our easily transportable projects around the world. At the end of last year, we actually proposed five projects in three different continents and that is great because we learn so much from the different environments with every proposal built or not. Commissions of course are very important for us and for our work to growth and to transform our current resources so that we can more effectively tackle the permanent and scale questions of pressurized membranes. Ideally we want to continue to build at all scales so that our work remains prolific and hopefully self-sustaining and profitable — so that we can continue to bring happiness and pleasure to our built world.

What about things that are more permanent? Do you see building with pressurized membranes, with gases and liquids, as something that’s a sustainable building material that could last over time?

It is a little bit difficult to  imagine that this could become advantageous for more permanent solutions, but I think there are a lot of ways this can actually be done. Right now we’re just experimenting with the basic kit, which is plastics. We understand plastics: some plastic membranes are easily wrecked. You can puncture them. But there are other materials out there that right now we don’t have the means to get at, but they can actually hold things very well — they can make architectural elements and structures more permanent. Building architecture out of soft elements is quite difficult, but our small-scale interventions have already begun to address that issue. We have so far built walls and canopies out of transient material — such as gases, liquids and biological matter — and we have been able produce strong and resilient building blocks.

We are also interested in making things that might be applicable in space. We’re always trying to redefine physics in our projects through poetic dream spaces and so on. But we’re also interested in what happens when you have to build under difficult constraints or under different physical laws; this work is applicable in that direction as well.

How serious are you about the sustainability angle of it?

I am very serious, but I think the word sustainability is so charged nowadays with so many different ideas and issues in architecture, it has made us try to figure out a way to talk about it without attaching ourselves to the sustainable movement in a traditional way. With our projects, we’d rather address biological matter and talk about how to shape our projects as living systems. For example, we’re trying to encourage our membranes to develop growth, interact with nature and allow the natural environment to take over, such as mushrooms that ended up growing out of the organic materials stuffed into our pavilion. It was great to meet people at TED that are doing such work already — people who are growing materials. Just in the TED Fellows community, Suzanne Lee grows her own clothes. Rachel Armstrong is developing a material to restructure Venice’s docks and foundations, and so on. Designing and building with biological matter is already a step towards a more serious and exciting sustainable future.

One of the fascinating things about your work is that it is so physically intimate. People are invited to crawl into, touch, jump on your built environments. It looks irresistible.

Yeah. It has to be! For some reason, we feel responsible for encouraging pleasure through our work and allowing people to engage our spaces in a more interactive and physical way than by just looking at it. We are always bringing pleasurable elements within the reach of people. That is something that I think is not achieved or is not in the interest of some of the mainstream architects and their buildings. Our goal is to also take the intimacy of physical space to a larger scale.

The visceral experience of our work is very important for us, and sometimes it’s very literal. Every time we get a chance to get people to interact with our projects, their responses are very rewarding to us. They come up with ways to engage with our spaces that we wouldn’t thought of. And the children — definitely our favorite clients!

Kids marvel at a moving shark, powered by littleBits, in the MoMA Design Store window. Photo: courtesy of Ayah Bdeir

If you pass a MoMA Design Store in New York City today, you’ll notice a slew of entrancing kinetic sculptures in their windows – a giant shark swimming after a lure and a cyclist powering a cardboard ferris wheel. Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teachEach of these sculptures is powered by littleBits, the Lego-like electronic toys created by TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir. LittleBits snap together with magnets to beep, light up and power motors. MoMA Stores have been carrying the educational toys since January.

Bdeir tells the TED Blog that her collaboration with MoMA actually began two years ago, when littleBits were featured in the MoMA exhibit, “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects.” When she heard the toys would be carried in the store, she quickly thought about fantastical window displays.

“We are huge fans of MoMA and the MoMA store,” she explains. “So we decided to pitch them an even bigger idea: what if we designed our own window display, entirely made with littleBits … Every single piece of the installation is made with littleBits — not a single external motor, or robotics platform, or programming whatsoever. The largest wheel and the smallest ‘lil guy are all animated with littleBits. It’s so mesmerizing.”

Watch a video of the making of these window displays »

LittleBits featured in the windows of the MoMA Design Store. Photo: courtesy of Ayah Bdeir

You’ve said that until recently, your family didn’t know about your art. What do they think you do?

My grandmother is always trying to find me a job. When you visit her, the first thing she’ll tell you is, “If you have an extra job, if you can get a job for my boy here, he needs one.” She doesn’t understand the meaning of art and being an artist.

My mother and father don’t know my art, but when I left Nairobi to come here to TED, they all wanted to know why. So they Googled me, saw my work, and said, “OK, so this is what he does.” In our family, they don’t bother with art, except for my brother. He encourages me.

Wait – your family didn’t know that you were an artist until you came here to TED?

They know that I’m an artist, but they never bothered about what kind of art I do. They didn’t know my artwork until this week. My sister has a Facebook page, but we’ve never been “friends.” Today she sent a friend request, and said, “Oh Cyrus, congrats. I saw your work. Keep it up.” So she discovered it today.

C-STUNNERS: African mask

I live very far, far away from my family. It takes two hours from my father’s place to mine, driving.My mom and dad, they live at the eastern edge of Nairobi, and I live at the northern edge. I used to visit them every weekend. But now I visit them every two months.

Being an artist, for me, was that I was a rebel — I was a bit rude to everyone. I don’t care. I don’t follow what people want — I follow what I want. I don’t really like people. I want to go my own way. So I do everything the opposite to others, and they feel this guy is a bit of a rebel. When I was a little boy, grownups thought I was a bad example. They used to tell their kids, “Work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be like Cyrus.” I was very different. I was always in my house, doing art, painting and making sculptures, and no one understood what I was doing. I didn’t study, I wore shaggy clothes. To them it was a bit weird. I didn’t know Sunday, I didn’t know Monday, I didn’t know.

In Africa, we live in a package.

What do you mean?

Monday you need to go to work up to Friday. Saturday you need to wash your clothes, you need to prepare for Sunday and Saturday. Sunday you need to go to church. You need to walk around in town and see friends. But me, I don’t have Sunday or Monday or Saturday. So if it’s visiting people, I visit any day, any time. I didn’t do homework, I didn’t study, I didn’t do exams.

But you didn’t fail at school?

All my classmates used to be much more clever than me. So they used to do homework for me. I’d pay them with artwork. “You do the exam for me, I’ll pay you in a sketch, sculpture, glasses, anything you want.”

You’ve been making glasses since you were a child?

Yeah. My dad is the one who wanted me to make the glasses: he challenged me to make them. He used to have real glasses when he was young. And one day, he messed with them and crushed them by accident. He was beaten by my grandmother because of this. So he hid the glasses from that day. And I used to admire wearing glasses when I was young. He used to say, “Cyrus, if you want to wear the glasses, maybe make your own glasses.” And that’s how I started making my own glasses. I was about seven years old.

So I think I did only one exam in my life. My dad used to be angry with me because of that. He knew. And I never performed well. After I finished high school, he said he wanted me to go to college to do electronic engineering. And I refused to join. I don’t like reading. Even after I finished high school, he used to say, “Cyrus, you know, I feel ashamed when I meet friends.” “Why?” “Because they keep asking the grades you got, your performance. And I feel ashamed to tell them.” And I was like, “Don’t listen to them. It’s my life.” And he said, “Okay.”

But then he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that “I want to do what I do: art.” And he told me to get into art school, and he’d pay for me.

I told him, “No, I don’t want to study. I want to do what I’m doing. Because if I got to school I’ll follow teachers. But I have my own art. I have my own way. So if I follow a teacher, I’ll follow his way.” He said, “Cyrus, if you refuse even to go to art college, go and start your life in another place. Go do what you want.”

C-STUNNERS: fingerprints

He only wanted me to have a certificate. We believe much, in Africa, in a certificate. We believe that if you have one, that’s the life. As I told you, we live in a package. You study, you finish school, you go to college, you marry, you start your own life, you get kids — as many as you can — that’s the end of life. You go around like that. So if you miss one of those things, you look like you’re not normal. So when you miss a step — maybe you’re late getting married — you look abnormal.

So my dad told me that if I wouldn’t go to college, to walk out of his house. And that’s what I did. I started my own life.

How old were you?

This was six years ago, I think. But he was right, because he never supported me. I think if I relied much on him, it was a bit impossible for me to reach where I am. I think he did the right thing — to show me that I need to be myself. And I remember, I moved from his house with around 3,000 shillings — that’s around $40 — with a mattress and a stove. But the lucky thing is that I have this thing of finding money anywhere, collecting money.

You find money on the ground?

Yeah.

You’re just lucky that way?

Yeah. That’s how I survived to reach where I am. My studio used to be nine kilometers from where I live. Sometimes I used to walk every day. I remember, one day I was supposed to pay rent, and I only had 20 shillings — less than one dollar. I was supposed to pay $40. I remember, I crossed the road and in the road, I found exactly the money I needed to pay it.And one day, I went with a matatu — a bus — without any money. The conductor came to get the money. I pretended I was looking for it in my empty wallet. But I couldn’t find it and turned to look for it, and I found 500 shillings in my seat.

Has this always happened?

Yeah, it’s always happened. Every week I find money. Even most of my friends don’t believe me. They they ask, “Cyrus, there is something that you are doing to get the money.” When I walk with my friends in a group, they joke, but when they walk with me they find it too. When they collect money they laugh: “Cyrus, this was your money, but it’s now mine.”

Bird from the African nature sculpture series.

Where did you practice art before you moved?

I used to work at my dad’s home. And one of my grandmothers, who used to live in Nairobi, sometimes would go to rural areas and leave me her house, which I’d use as a studio. When I moved, I moved with my art and I rented a studio somewhere. It’s in the Yaya Centre. That’s how I started my life on my own, walking long distances to work, to the studio.

Was it on your walks that you found the objects to make your art?

Yes, when I walk, I get inspired by the things that I find in the street. So I’m just walking and collecting. I don’t have high-class friends. Because they know me: I’m the person who just collects everything on the street. People feel ashamed when they are with me. When you collect in the street, you look like a street boy or madman.

You use so many materials in your art, it seems like you would spend a lot of time collecting it. You also find very beautiful things.

Yeah. And even my studio now, the place I work, it’s like a museum. Everyone takes photos of the place because it’s half very beautiful junk, and I can’t work without it.

Do you think much about the problem of waste and reuse? Or is it really simply free material for you?

The place where I grew up faced the Nairobi dump site. All the trash, all the waste of Nairobi, used to be dumped in my neighborhood. So whenever I woke up, the first thing I saw was garbage. I used to tell my dad I would like to give trash a second chance. I would like to work with trash. And that’s why, up to now, that’s what I’ve done.

I also make sculpture with rubbish. They’re fun too — and made of recycled bottle tops, wire, plastics. I have sculpture series of street musicians and wildlife.

From the Street Musician sculpture series.

What else are you working on?

Right now I have a project called Outreach. I travel in Kenya to different places, like rural areas, showing them how to work with the materials they have. Most recently I was in a deforested arid region, plagued by famine and drought. I targeted the older generation of a community known for their sculpture, because in Africa we believe much in older people. I know if I want to make an impact, the older generation will teach their youth. I went to show them how to work with alternative materials, such as plastic, wire. And I did a workshop there for two weeks, for 30 people. I showed them how to recycle Western materials as a resource for art.

Do you sell your work in Kenya? Are you well known as an artist in Nairobi?

I sell to the people who visit Kenya, mostly. Locally, people don’t understand my work.

How do your clients find you?

I’m doing well on the internet. Most of the people find me when they visit Kenya and just Google good places to visit. Sometimes they Google and get my name, and come visit my studio. The internet is helping me much. Galleries in Kenya don’t deal with anyone who isn’t from an established artist family. In my family, we’ve never had an artist, so I’m an unestablished artist to them. Two years ago, I put together an exhibition called Established Artists, whereby I gathered the artists who believe that they are unknown.

But I think now things are changing. Because, as I told you, having grown up as a bad example, I’m changing, and I’m now a good example to the community.

When I was growing up, I used to have a group of youths who used to follow my life, how I live. They used to admire me. If I had long hair or nails, all of the boys in the area did too. One day the parents told me, “Cyrus, cut your nails, because our children are now refusing to cut theirs.”And now I’m trying to help whoever follows me. One lady told me, “Cyrus, I think you changed my son’s life, because he used to follow your lifestyle. In our family we never studied, but you encouraged him to finish school and he is now finished.” Being a role model came with responsibility. For example, I don’t party. I used to fear partying because kids, they’d follow what I do. If I got drunk, they got drunk. If I smoked, they smoked. I couldn’t walk with ladies in public. That’s another reason I moved away.

But I don’t encourage anyone to be an artist. I try to encourage them to follow their own dreams. Being an artist, for me, is a bit of a hard life, and I can’t encourage someone to be an artist, because he’ll suffer. I’ve suffered a lot. Growing up, we were six, plus my mom and my dad. We grew up in two small rooms for eight people. One room was my mom and my dad’s bedroom, and the remaining room was kitchen, dining room, and kids’ bedroom. So I used to admire living a good life.

You think you have that now?

Maybe, almost. I’m trying to live now the life I used to admire.

But you’re going to keep doing what you’re doing, right?

Yeah. I can’t live without doing what I am doing. No art, no life.

Painting: “Rock ‘n’ roll”