[Music]
when I was a kid I used to dream about
traveling to space I used to imagine
myself flying between the stars stopping
off for planets and making new alien
friends as I continued my journey into
the unknown I was amazed by the infinite
possibilities that the universe had to
offer and I had a vivid imagination as a
kid something I still have to this day
well last year my dream kind of came
true
not in the way I would have thought but
I did spend 32 nights up in space I
found myself floating between the stars
visiting planets that previously did not
exist I was making them up in fact I was
painting them I painted every star in
the sky all 50,000 of them and I created
my own version of the universe in the
most unlikely of places a car park Carl
Sagan once said there are three blurs
contemplations of the cosmos stir us
like a faint tingling in the spine we
know we are approaching the greatest of
mysteries I think we spend our whole
lives trying to figure out our place in
the universe what is it that we can
offer that’s different to the next for
some of us we realize this from a very
young age for others it takes our whole
life if we ever get there at all for me
it took around 28 years before I was
able to figure this out and to take you
on this journey with me I need to go
back to when I was 14 years old and I
saw a music video playing in a record
store the bird looked a bit strange to
me they had long hair they wore t-shirts
have said things like the misfits and
the Vandals and at the time I had no
idea what this meant but their visual
language spoke to me the music was loud
it was angry
it seemed opinionated the musician
seemed
really believe in what they were saying
and lyrics like I’ll do what I want and
I do what I feel like and live like
there’s no tomorrow
spoke to me what I had unknowingly
stumbled across was punk music something
that would help shape my mental outlook
and define the person that it would
become for the rest of my life
what I would later learn is that this
music represented the anti-establishment
it was nonconformist it challenged the
status quo by asking questions about our
environment and this spoke to me
inevitably I began skateboarding and
skateboarding complimented punk music in
the sense that you would view your
environment in unconventional manner
things like ledges and rails and
staircases no longer served a
traditional function but instead became
obstacles for us to defeat and when we
did or if we did we felt like we were on
top of the world we embraced the DIY
ethic and the visual language of punk
music and of skateboarding so much so
that I’ll never forget the day that my
dad came home and so my brother and I
sitting on the sofa one of us had a
shaved head with a mohawk and the other
one had blue hair and you could see the
fear in his eyes as he began to question
where he went wrong something that he
would later embrace I guess what this
was doing to me was developing a culture
within me that began to stand against
society to challenge society I had an
issue with I guess walking in the
footsteps of others I didn’t like the
idea that I was following a
predetermined path and I began to
develop issues with the idea of school
University career and mortgage I knew
exactly where my life was headed and
where I’d be in 20 years from now and
that didn’t sit very well with me
University is a funny place if you’re
anything like me you’re a kid when you
go in and you’re a kid when you come out
my brother was proposed an idea to me
which came from Howard Bloom this was
the idea that a does not equal a
at first I didn’t understand what this
meant but the more I thought about it
the more I understood if I was to write
a on a piece of paper
and you were to write a on a piece of
paper those two A’s will never be the
same from the stroke of your hand
to the way the ink falls on the paper to
even the moment in time an AS 7:01 is
not the same as an A at 7:02 and this to
me became a fitting representation of us
as human beings we may be made up of the
same stuff but we all have something
unique that we can offer and I feel that
it’s up to us to explore this University
kind of felt like a game of survival of
the fittest everyone competing to be
better the next better than the next at
doing the same thing well I never really
felt like I was a fittest in fact I
never even felt like I was fit
Georgiy course proposed the principle of
competitive exclusion this idea that if
you have the masses all competing for
the same resources the inevitable
outcome is that they will try and find
their own niche well I was trying to
find my niche I didn’t use university as
a way to study my course but instead as
a way to study myself I spent my time
playing drums in a touring band and
visually communicating my frustrations
on paper but I was already part of the
problem I was lost I was trapped I’d
come out of university with a degree and
I began my corporate life I was part of
the problem that I had been discussing
my whole life unknowingly during my
career I stumbled across a philosophical
and a psychological project I began
making stickers of a cloud character
something that I would stick on my way
to work every day really it was a way
for me to cheer myself up I liked seeing
this character look back at me every day
I felt somewhat rebellious I felt like I
was doing something outside of the norm
over time this habit
obsession and I started getting off the
trainer stop earlier I stopped taking a
train altogether and I began cycling to
work so I could put more of these things
all around London and they became more
ambitious they became larger in scale
the stickers became posters and the
posters became sheets that were tiled
together and I couldn’t stop doing it
and then something interesting happened
people started to ask questions about it
what does it mean why are you doing it
up until that point I hadn’t asked those
questions I was doing it for myself I
was doing it as a way to vent once
people started asking these questions
and creating a dialogue with the work I
began asking questions about it and I
began to understand the power of a
symbol in a world that’s so heavily
saturated with the media and advertising
and political leaders religious leaders
even your parents trying to push you in
a certain direction you’re made to feel
that you have to accept in order to be
accepted and this didn’t sit well with
me this cloud was the exact opposite of
this it was purely subjective it existed
to exist and it was down to the viewer
to interpret it in their own way and
what this ended up doing was stimulating
curiosity about your environment to make
you look at it with a different eye the
Japanese philosophy called Shingen
Shingen is the idea that you use your
mind’s eye to evaluate your surroundings
not to blindly accept things not to see
something I think yes this is for me but
instead to think about things something
that I probably didn’t do in my teenage
years growing up aside from the
philosophical and psychological aspect
of the cloud I noticed an emotional
connection developing with it I noticed
I like minded community of people
connecting with it there was one
poignant moment in the evolution of the
cloud I stood out to me there was a
particular restaurant in London that was
notorious for having a queue outside
well one night we decided to skip the
queue and to have dinner at the bar we
made friends with the bartender and
after dinner I gave him a cloud sticker
and we moved on
a year later we came back to the same
bar we sat in the same seat and the same
bartender was there he looked at me and
I looked to him he kind of squinted as
he tried to figure out who I was but he
knew something was up when he realized
who I was
he disappeared behind the bar and came
running out waving his phone in the air
and on the back of the phone was that
same cloud sticker that had given him a
whole year ago and in this day and age
we pick up our phones hundreds of times
a day and he remembered this interaction
that we had had a whole year ago he came
around to my side of the bar gave me a
high-five and a hug give me a hug we had
a brief encounter a year before that and
he felt so close to me that he treated
me as a family member
immediately I knew there was something
powerful happening or something that I
needed to explore and so I quit my day
job I decided I’m going to give this my
full attention and I began evolving the
project even further this is the guy
once I dedicated myself full time to
this everything became a bit more
ambitious it became a bit more
large-scale and I began integrating my
work into the urban landscape and
changing the way things looked I began
showing people that what you may think
is impossible can actually be possible
and something as Extreme as painting the
side of a building or changing the
environment completely visually is a
possible thing to do when you see
something that exists that is not
supposed to be there that is uncommon
that stands against advertising you
begin to question it you begin to ask
why is that there and sometimes this
feeling is unnatural it’s unnatural
because we feel that everything has to
be financially motivated well this is
not the case with what I do it’s never
been the case and this was telling
people that things can exist purely to
exist to stimulate curiosity and to
stimulate thought what I really liked
about what I was doing was that there
no rules there was no textbook there was
no one way of doing things it was up to
me and I felt free to do it the way that
I wanted to do it but with anything like
that you have fear fear is a natural
cause but I used this fear I used it to
understand that I needed it in order to
feel alive if I wasn’t doing something
uncomfortable then I was just coasting
if everything was easy for me to do but
I wasn’t challenging myself and pushing
myself in a new direction
Elizabeth Newman proposed the idea of
the spiral of silence this is the idea
that if you have an opinion that differs
to the masses that you would feel
neglected and isolated and fearful to
share those opinions well everything I
was doing was standing in the face of
that even this TEDx talk when they first
asked me to do this talk my immediate
reaction was no why would I stand in
front of an audience and put myself in
that position
I’ve always hidden behind my work as
though I had a responsibility I was
communicating with the public I was
creating a dialogue through my work and
I think it helped others by giving a
talk then I felt that this was my duty
punk music skateboarding the cloud is
the antithesis of everything to do with
fear it’s not being afraid to share your
opinion and it’s being it’s making
yourself willing to suffer for it
there was one punk show in particular
that I’ll never forget my friends and I
all had tickets for this show and sadly
enough for me I lost mine
but I wasn’t willing to accept defeat I
needed to go to the show and I needed to
figure out a way to get in so I decided
to take a risk I took one of my friends
tickets and after school I did a color
photo copy of it on an a4 piece of paper
I cut it out ripped off what should have
been the perforated edge I left it in my
pocket to breathe some life into it for
a few weeks
turning up to the venue and there was an
air of excitement in the queue something
I thought was for the band what actually
turned out was that it was all my
friends in the queue they knew exactly
what I was doing they knew that I was
about to challenge the system to do
something that was probably a bit stupid
but I felt that it was justified and I
was standing within my moral grounds
because I had paid for the ticket so to
me I justified it I remember walking up
the stairs and presenting this ticket to
the security guard I shrugged and looked
to him he looked to me and he assured me
in I had done it I felt like I had won I
walked into the venue to a huge round of
applause from everyone he knew that I
took such a risk and I believed in
something so much that I was willing to
do something like that now this doesn’t
mean that you should all go out and
start photocopying your tickets this
isn’t the point of the story the last
thing I want to see is hundreds of
students get inspired by TEDx talk get
arrested for photocopying tickets
however the point of the story is to
never accept defeat if you believe in
something enough then you should never
allow anyone to say no to you the name
of my project became known as mine in
yours and mine in yours was used or is
used as a tool of empowerment as a
reminder in a way I was speaking to my
younger self and telling myself that
everything is in the palm of your hands
and no one else has control of it it is
up to you what you do with it so before
you leave tonight pick up one of these
clouds use it to remember this story use
it to create your own story and
hopefully their story will remember you
thank you
[Applause]
when I was a kid I used to dream about
traveling to space I used to imagine
myself flying between the stars stopping
off for planets and making new alien
friends as I continued my journey into
the unknown I was amazed by the infinite
possibilities that the universe had to
offer and I had a vivid imagination as a
kid something I still have to this day
well last year my dream kind of came
true
not in the way I would have thought but
I did spend 32 nights up in space I
found myself floating between the stars
visiting planets that previously did not
exist I was making them up in fact I was
painting them I painted every star in
the sky all 50,000 of them and I created
my own version of the universe in the
most unlikely of places a car park Carl
Sagan once said there are three blurs
contemplations of the cosmos stir us
like a faint tingling in the spine we
know we are approaching the greatest of
mysteries I think we spend our whole
lives trying to figure out our place in
the universe what is it that we can
offer that’s different to the next for
some of us we realize this from a very
young age for others it takes our whole
life if we ever get there at all for me
it took around 28 years before I was
able to figure this out and to take you
on this journey with me I need to go
back to when I was 14 years old and I
saw a music video playing in a record
store the bird looked a bit strange to
me they had long hair they wore t-shirts
have said things like the misfits and
the Vandals and at the time I had no
idea what this meant but their visual
language spoke to me the music was loud
it was angry
it seemed opinionated the musician
seemed
really believe in what they were saying
and lyrics like I’ll do what I want and
I do what I feel like and live like
there’s no tomorrow
spoke to me what I had unknowingly
stumbled across was punk music something
that would help shape my mental outlook
and define the person that it would
become for the rest of my life
what I would later learn is that this
music represented the anti-establishment
it was nonconformist it challenged the
status quo by asking questions about our
environment and this spoke to me
inevitably I began skateboarding and
skateboarding complimented punk music in
the sense that you would view your
environment in unconventional manner
things like ledges and rails and
staircases no longer served a
traditional function but instead became
obstacles for us to defeat and when we
did or if we did we felt like we were on
top of the world we embraced the DIY
ethic and the visual language of punk
music and of skateboarding so much so
that I’ll never forget the day that my
dad came home and so my brother and I
sitting on the sofa one of us had a
shaved head with a mohawk and the other
one had blue hair and you could see the
fear in his eyes as he began to question
where he went wrong something that he
would later embrace I guess what this
was doing to me was developing a culture
within me that began to stand against
society to challenge society I had an
issue with I guess walking in the
footsteps of others I didn’t like the
idea that I was following a
predetermined path and I began to
develop issues with the idea of school
University career and mortgage I knew
exactly where my life was headed and
where I’d be in 20 years from now and
that didn’t sit very well with me
University is a funny place if you’re
anything like me you’re a kid when you
go in and you’re a kid when you come out
my brother was proposed an idea to me
which came from Howard Bloom this was
the idea that a does not equal a
at first I didn’t understand what this
meant but the more I thought about it
the more I understood if I was to write
a on a piece of paper
and you were to write a on a piece of
paper those two A’s will never be the
same from the stroke of your hand
to the way the ink falls on the paper to
even the moment in time an AS 7:01 is
not the same as an A at 7:02 and this to
me became a fitting representation of us
as human beings we may be made up of the
same stuff but we all have something
unique that we can offer and I feel that
it’s up to us to explore this University
kind of felt like a game of survival of
the fittest everyone competing to be
better the next better than the next at
doing the same thing well I never really
felt like I was a fittest in fact I
never even felt like I was fit
Georgiy course proposed the principle of
competitive exclusion this idea that if
you have the masses all competing for
the same resources the inevitable
outcome is that they will try and find
their own niche well I was trying to
find my niche I didn’t use university as
a way to study my course but instead as
a way to study myself I spent my time
playing drums in a touring band and
visually communicating my frustrations
on paper but I was already part of the
problem I was lost I was trapped I’d
come out of university with a degree and
I began my corporate life I was part of
the problem that I had been discussing
my whole life unknowingly during my
career I stumbled across a philosophical
and a psychological project I began
making stickers of a cloud character
something that I would stick on my way
to work every day really it was a way
for me to cheer myself up I liked seeing
this character look back at me every day
I felt somewhat rebellious I felt like I
was doing something outside of the norm
over time this habit
obsession and I started getting off the
trainer stop earlier I stopped taking a
train altogether and I began cycling to
work so I could put more of these things
all around London and they became more
ambitious they became larger in scale
the stickers became posters and the
posters became sheets that were tiled
together and I couldn’t stop doing it
and then something interesting happened
people started to ask questions about it
what does it mean why are you doing it
up until that point I hadn’t asked those
questions I was doing it for myself I
was doing it as a way to vent once
people started asking these questions
and creating a dialogue with the work I
began asking questions about it and I
began to understand the power of a
symbol in a world that’s so heavily
saturated with the media and advertising
and political leaders religious leaders
even your parents trying to push you in
a certain direction you’re made to feel
that you have to accept in order to be
accepted and this didn’t sit well with
me this cloud was the exact opposite of
this it was purely subjective it existed
to exist and it was down to the viewer
to interpret it in their own way and
what this ended up doing was stimulating
curiosity about your environment to make
you look at it with a different eye the
Japanese philosophy called Shingen
Shingen is the idea that you use your
mind’s eye to evaluate your surroundings
not to blindly accept things not to see
something I think yes this is for me but
instead to think about things something
that I probably didn’t do in my teenage
years growing up aside from the
philosophical and psychological aspect
of the cloud I noticed an emotional
connection developing with it I noticed
I like minded community of people
connecting with it there was one
poignant moment in the evolution of the
cloud I stood out to me there was a
particular restaurant in London that was
notorious for having a queue outside
well one night we decided to skip the
queue and to have dinner at the bar we
made friends with the bartender and
after dinner I gave him a cloud sticker
and we moved on
a year later we came back to the same
bar we sat in the same seat and the same
bartender was there he looked at me and
I looked to him he kind of squinted as
he tried to figure out who I was but he
knew something was up when he realized
who I was
he disappeared behind the bar and came
running out waving his phone in the air
and on the back of the phone was that
same cloud sticker that had given him a
whole year ago and in this day and age
we pick up our phones hundreds of times
a day and he remembered this interaction
that we had had a whole year ago he came
around to my side of the bar gave me a
high-five and a hug give me a hug we had
a brief encounter a year before that and
he felt so close to me that he treated
me as a family member
immediately I knew there was something
powerful happening or something that I
needed to explore and so I quit my day
job I decided I’m going to give this my
full attention and I began evolving the
project even further this is the guy
once I dedicated myself full time to
this everything became a bit more
ambitious it became a bit more
large-scale and I began integrating my
work into the urban landscape and
changing the way things looked I began
showing people that what you may think
is impossible can actually be possible
and something as Extreme as painting the
side of a building or changing the
environment completely visually is a
possible thing to do when you see
something that exists that is not
supposed to be there that is uncommon
that stands against advertising you
begin to question it you begin to ask
why is that there and sometimes this
feeling is unnatural it’s unnatural
because we feel that everything has to
be financially motivated well this is
not the case with what I do it’s never
been the case and this was telling
people that things can exist purely to
exist to stimulate curiosity and to
stimulate thought what I really liked
about what I was doing was that there
no rules there was no textbook there was
no one way of doing things it was up to
me and I felt free to do it the way that
I wanted to do it but with anything like
that you have fear fear is a natural
cause but I used this fear I used it to
understand that I needed it in order to
feel alive if I wasn’t doing something
uncomfortable then I was just coasting
if everything was easy for me to do but
I wasn’t challenging myself and pushing
myself in a new direction
Elizabeth Newman proposed the idea of
the spiral of silence this is the idea
that if you have an opinion that differs
to the masses that you would feel
neglected and isolated and fearful to
share those opinions well everything I
was doing was standing in the face of
that even this TEDx talk when they first
asked me to do this talk my immediate
reaction was no why would I stand in
front of an audience and put myself in
that position
I’ve always hidden behind my work as
though I had a responsibility I was
communicating with the public I was
creating a dialogue through my work and
I think it helped others by giving a
talk then I felt that this was my duty
punk music skateboarding the cloud is
the antithesis of everything to do with
fear it’s not being afraid to share your
opinion and it’s being it’s making
yourself willing to suffer for it
there was one punk show in particular
that I’ll never forget my friends and I
all had tickets for this show and sadly
enough for me I lost mine
but I wasn’t willing to accept defeat I
needed to go to the show and I needed to
figure out a way to get in so I decided
to take a risk I took one of my friends
tickets and after school I did a color
photo copy of it on an a4 piece of paper
I cut it out ripped off what should have
been the perforated edge I left it in my
pocket to breathe some life into it for
a few weeks
turning up to the venue and there was an
air of excitement in the queue something
I thought was for the band what actually
turned out was that it was all my
friends in the queue they knew exactly
what I was doing they knew that I was
about to challenge the system to do
something that was probably a bit stupid
but I felt that it was justified and I
was standing within my moral grounds
because I had paid for the ticket so to
me I justified it I remember walking up
the stairs and presenting this ticket to
the security guard I shrugged and looked
to him he looked to me and he assured me
in I had done it I felt like I had won I
walked into the venue to a huge round of
applause from everyone he knew that I
took such a risk and I believed in
something so much that I was willing to
do something like that now this doesn’t
mean that you should all go out and
start photocopying your tickets this
isn’t the point of the story the last
thing I want to see is hundreds of
students get inspired by TEDx talk get
arrested for photocopying tickets
however the point of the story is to
never accept defeat if you believe in
something enough then you should never
allow anyone to say no to you the name
of my project became known as mine in
yours and mine in yours was used or is
used as a tool of empowerment as a
reminder in a way I was speaking to my
younger self and telling myself that
everything is in the palm of your hands
and no one else has control of it it is
up to you what you do with it so before
you leave tonight pick up one of these
clouds use it to remember this story use
it to create your own story and
hopefully their story will remember you
thank you
[Applause]
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