Why This Work

We are living through volatile times. The confluence of new technologies are, for better and worse, amplifying inherited ideologies. Our culture has decoupled from nature to such a degree that some aspects of our civilization have become outmoded, maladaptive, and existentially fragile. 

Recent social-scale experiments conducted by media and technology corporations show how vested interests are willing to deploy their inventions to serve their own short-term goals. Anyone paying attention can feel the effects of their algorithmic interventions showing up in our political divisions, economic disparities, daily lives, and states of mind. These same forces have now given us an accidental preview of the asymmetric power of their next experimental treatment, the so-called Artificial Intelligence. 

How will the unprecedented power of attention manipulation combined with seemingly insatiable monetary incentive play out in our already anxious and fragile cultural mindscape?

My proposal is to restore our deep connection to nature’s intelligence in order to withstand the windstorm that is picking up speed.

My work is an attempt to reconnect human beings with a grounded source of ecological intelligence I call Oika. My hope is that by reminding people of the original source of human intelligence - nature - we might rediscover the creative continuity that has always bound us together. By contemplating and feeling our shared experiences and embodiments, we might also realize our shared origins and fates.

I believe nature holds deep wisdoms and shares them with the organisms that are willing to listen, imbibe, and take co-creative risks with this intelligence. My work is about sharing this belief with others,  helping them cultivate it in themselves, and collaborating into a beautiful future.

The future is beautiful...or there isn't one.