Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.
This morning the people of Port au Prince woke up to portraits of their own – locals and members of the Haitian diaspora – plastered around the city. From Cité Soleil to Petion-Ville, over 500 images, taken by Haitian photographers and printed by JR’s Inside Out Project, celebrate the resilience of the Haitian people and visualizing a country being reborn.
At TED last February, Chris told the audience that without a White Knight stepping up to support my SETI observing program on the Allen Telescope Array, the antennas would soon be put into a safe hibernation mode in preparation for shutting down the array. That’s because our University of California Berkeley partner was no longer able to find federal and state funds to pay for operations of the Hat Creek Observatory where the array was built. No White Knight materialized; hibernation commenced April 15th.
Since April, the cryogenics have been kept running to protect the delicate low noise amplifiers in the innovative feed/receiver systems on the antennas, physical security has been maintained, our extraordinary computing equipment has been stored in our Mountain View lab for safekeeping, but the weeds on site grew unchecked, and no data were taken from the sky. Recovery was a 3-part process: first work with UCB to forestall the immediate site remediation activities that would be required at the cessation of the US Forest Service land use permit, second find a new task for the array and a partner to maintain and operate it while sharing time with SETI, and third find support for my SETI team to restore our observing capabilities and once again begin exploring the sky. It hasn’t been easy, and the future is still a bit uncertain, but as of September 1st, we were back on site, greasing antenna bearings, reinstalling computers, rewriting software to accommodate new modes of operating, fixing a frozen compressor on the old HVAC system, and yes, mowing down the weeds. We have a short-term contract to assess the utility of the ATA as part of the US Air Force important space situational awareness mission, and we hope this will turn into a long-term partnership. We are working with the USFS to have the land use permit transferred. We also experimented with crowdfunding to raise the money needed for my team to do the work and get the array and our SonATA signal detection system up and running again – thousands of wonderful SETI Stars from around the world came to our aid on SETIStars.org, meeting the 40 day funding challenge we set for them – WOW!
In a delightful coincidence, we were finally ready to relaunch our SETI exploration of the 1235 exoplanet candidates announced last February by the Kepler mission (the worlds that we had been targeting prior to hibernation), and the date of our relaunch was yesterday; the opening day of the First Kepler Science Conference! We started observing again and the Kepler team announced the discovery of Kepler 22b, the first Earth-size planet in orbit within the habitable zone around a star like our Sun – not quite Earth 2.0, but getting close. And by the way, they also gave us another 1000+ exoplanet candidates to explore.
So for the next two years or so, we know exactly what we need to do, and where we want to look. Planets are real, planets are plentiful, and some of the systems are starting to look a bit familiar. What a great time to be doing SETI! Federal and institutional funding sources have brought the search for life elsewhere in the galaxy to an exciting threshold – my astrobiology colleagues will be trying to search for biosignatures from exoplanets circling other stars, and at the Center for SETI Research we are moving forward with the public’s quest to know whether there is any intelligent, technological life on these worlds. As always, the funding for the SETI effort needs to be found: about $100,000 a month, every month, every year. We are going to repurpose and evolve SETIStars.org to allow supporters to more closely follow our progress, to interact with us in ways that keep them involved and motivated. The setiQuest community that launched as part of my 2009 TED Wish is already helping us with the technical challenges of our work. This is humanity’s search, and we cannot do it without global support – some of which I hope will come from the TED community.
This year, the TED Prize is going in an exciting and different direction. Rather than granting the Prize to a single person, we’re giving it to an idea: the City 2.0.
Last year we challenged the artist JR to make a wish to change the world, and with his Inside Out Project he’s doing just that.
This year, we’re challenging everyone in the TED Community to embrace radical collaboration on one of the most pressing issues we face: how to build sustainable, vibrant, working cities.
Why the new direction for the TED Prize, and how can you help?
When we launched our search for the next TED Prize winner, we kept running into the same question over and again: how do we build our future cities in a way that reduces energy use, grows the global economy, protects the environment, and improves the quality of life for people around the world?
By tapping the brain trust of the remarkable TED community, we can engage the world in identifying new and innovative platforms around urbanization.
The TED Prize winner, the City 2.0, to us means the city of the future – one in which more than ten billion people must somehow live sustainably.
It is not a utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade that harnesses the globe’s collective wisdom. We’re looking to you to help the TED Prize promote innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.
How? You’ll have to wait until February 29, 2012 for the TED Conference in Long Beach, California when the TED Prize winner – the City 2.0 – makes its wish live from the stage.
Intrigued? Baffled? Eager to help? Mark your calendars for leap year to watch the TED Prize session, and we’ll tell you how to engage.
Genevieve Tran has organized several Inside Out Project group actions in Tokyo. We spoke with her about her experience as a group leader. Interview edited for grammar.
IOP: Was this your first foray into exhibiting your art on the street?
GT: Perhaps, when I was really young, some sidewalk chalk might have happened. But as a grown member of society, I have only ever exhibited my “art” via socially accepted / “safe” channels such as over dinner to my captive audience of friends, who like everything I share anyway (or feign kind interest, at least). Galleries can also be rented for a small arm. In Tokyo, street art is not really something that anyone with a job and rent payments wants to get involved with because there is an unpredictable spate of arrests in Japan depending on your nationality and the superiority complex issues of individual cops. As well, the last train ending at around midnight puts the kibosh on night adventures for non-drivers like me.
What was the pasting experience like for your team?
It was a giddy experience to unfurl those giant faces to participants in the posters. It is such a weird prop to have of yourself –oversized and those eyes staring! We’ve made a point of organizing the people in the posters to paste themselves up for each of our 3 campaigns. The parents of the Babies were happy to be active because it’s an important social message to increase the declining birthrate in Japan and it is the giant faces of their own babies, after all. No one has really thought twice about “illegal” or “illicit”– which we thought might happen in a very well-behaved society like Japan. It has been just natural and fun every time we’ve done a paste up. The babies in particular, who were a little older than their poster photos, were really enchanted by their own images and kept stroking their own big face!
What inspired you to get involved in The Inside Out Project?
I’m a big TED nerd and have lurked around watching, I’m not kidding, probably half of the 900 or so videos. I’m always been interested in the TED Prize winner and what his/her message is. I am a huge fan of Jaime Oliver, a past TED Prize winner, and his series on Channel 4 in Britain. So his successor, JR had to be great. And when I watched JR’s talk, it really was incredible and inspirational. I truly appreciate that he is a powerful public speaker because that helped sell the idea for me. As well, I already was a big admirer of other social/street artists, in particular Banksy, and all kinds of old guerilla propaganda art. Finally, as an elementary school teacher, I’ve organized large-scale murals with teams of kids before–so I know the transformative power of group action and art. But bottom line, I believed in JR’s ambition and simplicity about art changing the world. We were also lucky that TedxTokyo was quick to support us with funds for paste-up materials, and donating to the Sapling Foundation on our behalf, so there was NO excuse not to do it!
How did you determine what statement to make?
In Japan, it was really hard to distill what messages would matter–this year, of all years, it’s a mess. But, rebuilding and the future were the big ideas. We thought: what concepts would REALLY help rebuild the Japan for the future? So, we thought of preventing a declining population with Babies; Volunteerism (as not to wait around for this creaky government); and Anti-Bullying because bullying psychologically damages individuals who could be our next leaders or even just taxpayers. We’re pretty practical.
How did you recruit people to participate?
I went on Facebook primarily and banged a pan there. I also tried Flickr photographer groups and even put out ads on Tokyo’s Craigslist! But Facebook did the trick fast.
Did it take a lot of time and effort to find the right walls? To get permission?
In Tokyo, permission is crucial in order NOT to get arrested or hassled. But, being a non-native Japanese person, speaking in rapid confused English helps to get out of sticky situations, I have to admit! So, that is *one way* to get a wall. The next is to ask architects who do a lot of construction and put up walls for months. I’ve spent billions of Amish hours, no joke, using a 3-D sketching program to show architects how this poster project would look on their walls. The issue is, we have about 10 posters in each series which we want to keep together for impact, so if we’re offered a tiny wall, it is an amazing offer, but it doesn’t work.
What was the community’s reaction to your action?
Our Facebook page is “liked” by a majority of people no one on our team has ever met. We get 20-30 new people a week from all over the world. For a local project in Tokyo to be liked by someone from Croatia or Ecuador, that almost makes no sense, but it’s amazing! They are all supportive and have chosen to be updated on our news. How weird is that? I love it. When we did the paste-ups, people walking by were shocked that we would have faces of people who were bullied speak out against bullying–who does that in Japan? And as for the participants, the volunteers in our posters have gotten the due attention they deserve every time we talk to the local media, come interview or make paste-up films of them. They are flattered and hopefully, more purposeful in what they are doing because they know we saw, and appreciated them.
What conversation do you hope results from your group action?
There are serious, growing crises in Japan. This year, we had a devastating physical tsunami. But, in the future, with a blessed aged population—the longest living in the world—it will be our curse not to realize that without addressing the declining population; we will be sentencing our future young people to bear this social weight disproportionately. This stands to be the future economic tsunami, which will devastate Japan, the oldest in the world. All of our projects aim to address the question: What can I do to help make the future of our country better? It is serious.
Why do you feel art, and particularly the Inside Out Project, was the best way to express your statement?
Showcasing the faces of individuals matters in a society like Japan where group consensus rules and there is a sea of racially and socio-economically homogenous people. This particular project highlighted individuals with tiny stories to tell, blown up big. The dichotomy of scale is exactly what is needed to focus on personal, social messages. Have you ever been to Tokyo? All messages are corporate–bland slogans that just spam the horizon to whomever, whatever casts a lazy gaze over to it–very impersonal and decreasingly effective.
What piece of advice would you give to someone else who wants to organize a group action?
Are you making excuses as to why you
a) don’t have the time
b) don’t think anyone will really care
c) are not sure what you will get out of it?
Because you don’t need to. This project is so simple: meaning it’s easy to do and there are no complexities really to it. And there is no pressure for it to work or not. It could be on as daring or minute a scale as you want. You are the architect of your own message. We don’t all have to be JR. JR can be JR. We can be us and share our pictures and messages any way we want. Also, it’s cheap, fun and a great way to engage people in your community you never would have otherwise.
Do you think art can change the world? Why?
No, not a piece of art itself because one person’s treasure is another’s trash, surely. However, the passion, conviction and single-mindedness to realize something that all great art represents CAN change the world. We limit the idea of art to paintings etc., but it is also action, movement and any beautiful realization of a concept that was once nothing. Once that concept is breathed into the ether, the universe is irrevocably changed. So, breathe something sincere and beautiful.
Did you know that a kid who drinks two flavored milks in school a day is consuming an extra 5-8 tablespoons of sugar everyday? Does this concern you?
Next week, Food Revolutionaries around the US will participate in the Flavored Milk Week of Action to help spread knowledge like this. The goal is to educate the school community (parents, kids and officials) about the hidden forms of sugar and additives in flavored milk and to ask for the elimination of sweetened, flavored milk from regular school meals starting this school year.
The Food Revolution team has created a lot of cool tools to help parents and teachers participate in the week of action. From a Flavored Milk Calculator to sample flyers and letters, everything you need to turn from an interested bystander to an engaged participant is at your finger tips.
Congratulations to the first class of admitted students at AIMS Senegal, the newest AIMS center and the latest achievement from cosmologist and TED Prize winner Neil Turok and his NextEinstein Initiative.
In 2008 Turok wished for the TED community to help “unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes we are celebrating an African Einstein.” This proposal is known as the NextEinstein Initiative, Turok’s vision to expand his groundbreaking postgrad program, the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), founded in South Africa in 2003, to a network of 15 centers across Africa. In Turok’s recent talk from Google Zeitgeist, he tells us about his vision for AIMS: “There are plenty of spaces for much more innovative educational centers in the world, and frankly that’s where I think the future will go. It willl go to enterprise. Enterprise should be attached to education and science.”
Since Turok’s 2008 talk AIMS-NEI has made tremendous strides. The second AIMS program launched in Abuja, Nigeria in July 2008, and last month AIMS Senegal welcomed its first class. In the next two years AIMS-NEI anticipates the addition of two new centers in Ghana and Ethiopia. By 2013 all five centers will be fully operating, and the world will be on its way to meeting its first African Einstein.
JR started exploring his artistic side when he was a teenager. And he has been at it ever since. Recently he spoke with Do Something about the importance of art in a young person’s life in general and arts education specifically.
Do Something is currently running a campaign, Make Art, Save Art, aimed at mobilizing young artists across the US to advocate for the arts by submitting artwork and testimonials on the importance of arts education. The top 10 artists with the most shares through social media networks are entered into a finalist pool, and one artist will be selected by a panel of expert judges. The winner will receive a $5,000 grant for their school art program and a $1,000 college scholarship.
Earlier this year JOANA SOARES, ANA SANTOS and MAFALDA JACINTO organized a group action in Lisbon, Portugal. We interviewed them to gain insight into their process and experience. Interview was edited by author for grammar.
IOP: Was this your first foray into exhibiting your art on the street?
JS, AS, & MJ: Yes, it was.
What was the pasting experience like for your team?
It was a very fullfiling experience for each one of us. We felt we were doing something different and very bold, outrageous. For instance, all of the places we’ve decided to paste the posters were non-authorized places, so we pasted them during the night, and we always felt some kind of rush while pasting them; we were afraid to get caught. But that’s also what made the whole experience worthwhile. At the end we were just so proud for our endless effort, and its recognition.
What inspired you to get involved in the Inside Out Project?
One of our group members already knew about JR’s art, and she showed us a couple of videos of his art work. Upon seeing his speech at TED, the idea of following the Inside Out Project just seemed to pop up automatically. First we just wanted to work on a project to present to an university subject: we thought about presenting JR’s art to our class, not doing it ourselves. But the moment the idea came up, of pasting ourselves in photos on the streets, we got so excited. We couldn’t let the idea go. And that’s how we’ve managed to succeed.
How did you determine what statement to make?
We decided very easily what we wanted to paste in the streets. It had to be a common and actual social problem in Portugal. Therefore we thought about poverty, a very evident social reality in Lisbon. We have a lot of homeless people in Lisbon for several reasons: some because of drug addiction, others because of mental problems, others because of alcohol, others just because they want to live in the streets, and some because they really donʼt have anywhere else to go. Either way, our statement meant essentially that most people tend to ignore the presence of homeless people in the streets. They don’t look. They turn their faces away, “If I don’t see them, they don’t exist, so I don’t have to give them money.”
With their pictures in the streets people would be forced to see them and to see them just like a normal human being (to many of the homeless people, we asked them to make silly faces, just like JR did). Ultimately we wanted to call attention to the lack of social systems capable of dealing with poverty and homeless reality.
How did you recruit people to participate?
Before starting the field work we selected a zone of Lisbon where we could find a lot of homeless people and beggars in the street. Then we went there and gently talked to them and asked them to participate in our project. Surprisingly their feedback was really good and their collaboration was immediate. At first our photographer was afraid to come close enough to take the close-up photographs of their faces. But soon we realized that they easily joined the fun and grimaced for the camera.
Did it take a lot of time and effort to find the right walls? To get permission?
No, it didnʼt. Right away, we decided to use the walls of our faculty/university because our project was inserted in faculty work. Secondly, we thought of pasting in downtown Lisbon, on one of the busiest avenues of Lisbon, the “Avenida da Liberdade”. We didnʼt ask for permission to use any of the walls we used because we knew it would not be that easy and also because we wanted to catch people by surprise, even our teachers and colleagues.
What was the community’s reaction to your action?
In general the communityʼs reaction was good. Most people stopped walking and stared at the pictures at least for a few seconds. Some others didnʼt even look. But we think that it was a minority. We were attentive to the communityʼs reaction and recorded it with our camera lenses. This element was in fact a major part of our project/study. We went to the people that looked at our photos and asked them why they had looked, what they thought about those photos… Almost everyone said that those types of photographs – close-up faces in black and white, with a small inscription with homeless peopleʼs name and the number of years in the streets – forced people to look and pay attention to those social issues.
What conversation do you hope results from your group action?
The expectations concerning this action were partially fulfilled. As we didnʼt have much money we made artisanal glue and printed the low quality photos to be less expensive. There were some complications with some of the glue we made, which produced a slightly opaque layer over the photos. In spite of those problems we managed to achieve some positive results. Most people were gladly surprised with our initiative and supported us. We are happy if we can make people stop, look and think, even if only for a second. And we hope to gather a lot of seconds.
Our next step is to enlarge the action, which means to photograph more citizens, to paste the photos around more places and to touch increasingly more people.
Why do you feel art, and particularly the Inside Out Project, was the best way to express your statement?
We don’t think there are many alternatives to art when it comes to expressing ourselves.
To express something always demands a way through words (writing and acting, playing and singing) and images (drawing, painting, photographing, filming). Art is expression. And expression is, most of the times, art.
Curiously, in this case, it was art that drove us to expression – it was finding out about the Inside Out Project that we started thinking what we wanted to express. Of course we did not force ourselves to find a pity social theme in order to do a project. Both sides completed each other – the need of doing something that had a meaning (our statement) and the existence of an art project that would help us to make it real (the Inside Out Project).
Inside Out Project and JR’s work caught our attention specifically for the way he photographs and the scale and boldness of his exhibitions. It fascinates us how doing something we are passionate about can help – even if just a little – to change something.
What piece of advice would you give to someone else who wants to organize a group action?
1: Believe in your project, but be realistic.
We were always too dreamy about our project, but at the same time we were very very skeptical about it. We were dreaming big things, but never really believed in their achievement. Those extremes balance kind of blocked us from doing a better project, of taking better pictures, of talking to more people, of shooting everything, of preparing things more professionally.
2: Be passionate about what you’re doing.
Our group has very different people. We don’t listen to the same music, we don’t see the same films, we don’t read the same books, we don’t dress the same, we don’t like the same colors, we have different ideas about happiness and melancholy, about politics and football. But we really wanted to do this project, we were really passionate and totally devoted to its accomplishment. And that’s why it worked.
3: Nothing’s perfect.
We were a little disappointed with a part of our project – some posters were too dark and one of the buckets of glue didn’t work very well, so a part of our ideas turned a bit into failure. One thing we realised: it’s never going to be exactly as you were planning. We are pretty sure that next time we do something like this, things will work out much better.
Each time will be better and better. And mistakes will always develop (y)our creativity!
Do you think art can change the world? Why?
Some days, yes. Other days, no. It depends on the mood we wake up! But, mainly, it is just not a straight answer.
Nothing can really change the world like pim!-magic-change. Things have to be cultivated, have to grow, have to be taken care of, have to become strong, have to create roots, in order to make a change. And this, beyond the idea itself, depends on whoʼs responsible for planting it.
We think art as a way of expression is a good ground for planting seeds. When an idea transmitted through music, a film, a play, a book, a painting, a photograph, is strong enough it can start to grow and spread its seeds through the people who listen, read, feel, see it. That will allow some change to begin little by little, being it political, social or cultural.
We donʼt think art can radically change the world. But we know it can allow ideas to flow, questions to be asked, answers to be pursued. It makes us think. And just by thinking can we change the world.
JRʼs projects are making a lot of people think about common problems of the world. But itʼs not only art that is allowing JR to make his statement. Itʼs the way he uses art, getting it out of its usual places and bringing it to the world.
So we believe art can change the world, depending on the farmer, the seedʼs strength and the spot where it is planted. Which means: art can change the world if the artistʼs idea and the way he develops it are strong enough to make people think, question and act.
99 faces. 99 stories. 99 reasons why they are the 99%.
Late last week, a group of everyday American citizens used art and the Inside Out Project platform to stand up and declare that they are the 99%. Occupy. Inside. Out. is an effort to document the people behind the Occupy movement and to share their stories; an opportunity to paint a positive portrait of the face of change.
Just as the Occupy movement is spreading across the country and world, the organizers of this action hope other supports of the movement will also use art and Inside Out to stand with the 99%.
Take portraits. Upload them to Inside Out. Get your posters. Contact the organizers of Occupy. Inside. Out to let them know what you are doing. Simple as that.
The exhibition at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery will feature large-scale works from Burtynsky’s newest series Dryland Farming. Shot in the remote Monegros region of northeastern Spain, the photographs capture the vibrant topography of a landscape in flux. This hilly, arid terrain is both desolate and fertile, with farmland carved from the gypsum foothills. Despite a scarcity of water, generations of farmers have attempted to tame this wilderness, growing cereal grains, such as wheat, barley, and corn, and creating the undulating patchwork seen today. Burtynsky trains his lens on these constructed landscapes, which are a juxtaposition of nature’s unspoiled beauty with man’s endeavor to harness the power and bounty within it.
Burtynsky photographed these patterned crop fields from a 2,000 foot aerial view, resulting in his most abstract works to date. The twisted lines and bold patches of color and texture create forms that are powerfully rich and painterly. Viewing these works conjures the energy of Abstract Expressionism, and the evocative styles of Kandinsky, Miro, and Dubuffet, as well as primitive art and cave drawings.
The concurrent exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery will present a retrospective that spans Burtynsky’s career. These images explore the complex relationship between industry and nature, constructed brilliance and unspoiled earth, and represent Burtynsky’s ongoing examination of humanity’s growing ecological footprint.
An opening reception will take place at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery on Wednesday, October 26, 6-8pm. A second opening reception will take place Thursday, October 27, 6:30-8:30pm at Howard Greenberg Gallery.
