[Music]
[Applause]
one of my all-time favorite humans Carl
Sagan said that we are Stardust
pondering the Stars he also said that we
are a billion billion billion atoms
contemplating the evolution of atoms
isn’t that beautiful
whenever I hear stuff like that I just
feel so precious and so insignificant
simultaneously and the same thing
happens when I see images like this what
we’re seeing here at the top corner is
neurons in a brain the next image we
recognize it’s a tree with its
hierarchical structure we have our roots
the branches the leaves and the veins
then from there we have the Midwest at
night from a satellite the next two
images on the bottom row are artists
depictions of dark matter in the
universe and a map of the internet today
and the last one maybe my most favorite
is a recent discovery these are
mushrooms that connect trees in the
forest so when you drive by the woods
you’re actually driving by a network and
as a tree is attacked or it’s dying it
sends its warning signals to all the
other trees around it through that
mushroom or it’ll send its nutrients in
chemical form to all the other trees
next to it as it starts to die that’s
amazing that’s so cool and so I want to
talk about this idea of these systems
and what they’ve been teaching me lately
specifically these structures if you
notice they all look really similar
they’re all information systems that are
shuttling energy data information me and
you from point to point
humans are clever and we’ve found a way
to take that energy and turn it
– well binary code and so that means
that if energy is present it’s
represented as a one and if it’s not
present it’s represented as a zero most
of us know this we also know that we’ve
found a way and we can continue to find
ways to shuttle that information through
a processor at unfathomable speeds and
this is a bit of my origin story this
idea of recognizing that this language
that we have universally adopted across
the entire world this binary code is
something that takes data turns it into
information and then we can turn it into
experiences so a little story here last
summer my lovely partner started working
with the astrophysics department here at
UWM and I’m looking at VR in my studio
vr is that virtual reality where you put
goggles on and you can like look around
and everywhere you look you’re seeing
something so I said in front of a couple
of professors that wouldn’t be cool if
like when we were kids we had these view
masters and everywhere we looked we had
like a pocket planetarium and what I
didn’t realize is that saying these kind
of things around dr. Kaplan and dr. herb
it just happens it’s going to happen now
so we was teamed up in the studio and
what they did is effectively took data
from a spreadsheet you know for them
it’s probably beautiful but they were
able to take that data and inject it
into a file egg yolk into shell and
before I knew it this is what the first
example of what that data looked like
and it hit me I was like oh my gosh I
can take data turn it into information
and then have an experience and that
hailed me as an artist I always have to
pay attention to what hails me and this
was a moment so I started the immersive
Media Lab here at UWM and it’s this idea
that we are immersing ourselves in the
data that we’re creating every day we
have our fitbit’s and our iPhones and
we’re publishing and tweeting and now I
want to take some of that data
and embody it and use it and stick my
head directly into it so that’s what
this first test with this pocket
planetarium was and for me it was
interesting but when I started allowing
other people to try it out that’s when
the next level hit me so little kids
right they get into these goggles and
they immediately go wherever I want to
take them and they start pointing at
things grabbing stuff because they’re
their brains are ready for a new
language and that hit me I realized that
this this little girl in ten years she’s
gonna want to have a place to go and
play with this and so I thought well
okay I need to learn everything I
possibly can I don’t know anything about
this stuff I’ve been playing with it now
I want to get there and so I want to
show you what it sounds like
as people start entering into this
information space as we start to
experience new technologies we start to
latch on to our prior experiences and we
start to think okay well what if I added
this and added that and brought it all
together so listen closely this first
one the first time someone gets their
hands inside a computer so he’s inside
the immersive Media Lab this is Marvin
and he’s actually able to grab data with
his hands this little boy is in
google.maps and I want you to notice how
he’s not quite sure where where to step
he’s on what we call the portal so he
knows that he’s safe but also look at
the screen just like all children he
understands almost already how to
navigate that space now listen very
closely for this
mark is is literally gone he has no idea
that I’m watching him and he’s just
shooting him up his brain is somewhere
else and that to me is powerful we’re
literally taking data and turning it
into experiences but this tech is tech
that makes you feel feelings and before
Bailey had said that I am a professor
that teaches at the intersection of art
and culture and technology what does
that mean what I’m doing is I’m helping
creatives artists designers by looking
at pieces of our culture and teaching
them how to use technology to then go
and make messages that go right back
into culture for us and it makes perfect
sense that I spend all of this time
thinking about culture and technology in
order to see where we’re going
but our biology Prime’s us and this this
new technology it’s an empathy machine
we feel it when we’re inside this space
so let’s see what this looks like this
is what empathy looks like these are
people that are hearing a story watching
a movie or seeing pictures and their
brain when an experience is something
starts sending out all these chemicals
and those chemicals cause the blood flow
on the surface of the skin to start to
react it’ll either speed up get warm or
slow down and get cold play a little
game which one up there looks like
depression I’ll give you a hint it’s
black and blue which one looks like
happiness so the top row is what they
say simple reactions to experiences in
the bottom row would be more complex
I’ll just point out shame for a second
look at the cheeks when you’re
embarrassed of something so I want to
talk about this happiness and its drive
towards technology so when I see two
people and they obviously don’t know
each other and one of them dropped
something
Falls and the other person rushes over
to help them I don’t immediately think
gross the heck are you doing no in fact
it’s quite the opposite when I see
humans getting all humankind with one
another I think to myself oh we’re gonna
make it as a tribe of people look our
bodies are primed to interact with one
another we’re gonna do a thing I’ll show
you what this feels like yourself I’m
gonna change a slide and when you see a
thing that pops up I would like you to
point at it nice nice okay that was it
some of you were too cool for school and
you’re like I’m not gonna point at that
thing but you still looked you still
followed our gaze that is something
that’s evolved into us you see when we
point at a thing we’re not just pointing
we’re pointing together we’re sharing
focus together and this is the basis of
language when I realize that pointing is
an ancestor to language realize that
language is a type of abstract pointing
and that I get to share things with
someone else by finding the right words
or the right images now realize that we
made this so language is a technology
and then that technology is evolving now
well I was putting this talk together I
realized that I literally point all the
time at my computers right and what does
it mean to share focus with a computer
well sure I share I’m sharing focus with
all of the information that is known to
us I spend most of my time looking at
cat memes but I share that information
but I’m also able to do something like
this this is a picture or a video that I
took while I was on vacation and I
wanted to point at that sunset with
people on the other side of the world so
I put it together and I shared it on
Facebook so not only are we pointing at
all the information available to us
using that digital language but we’re
also pointing at each other
and this isn’t a map this is from 2010
but this isn’t a map this is nothing
more than the connections that are made
on Facebook Kevin Kelley in his book the
inevitable says that we’re using the
Internet to stitch ourselves together
that’s beautiful
but I think it’s something more I feel
like we’re using this technology to
create a type of nervous system so that
we can understand what’s going on all
over the place faster than we’ve ever
been able to before so I want to now
distinguish what is born from what is
made that’s an important thing to
understand as we move into this next
step what is born has a storage problem
our genes the thing that carry
information from one generation to the
next have nothing to do with technology
and culture in fact they can only encode
for the organism and its maintenance so
humans were clever enough to
circumnavigate that problem and we
created cultures and technologies here’s
what I’m a menace
so evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins coined the term mean he wanted
it to sound like gene and so as
something happened in an environment
someone else saw it like the two people
who were falling right and what we do is
we copy what they’re doing and we
emulate that and then before you know it
someone else sees us doing what they
what we copied in this idea the concept
or the way that I’m using this tool is
spreading throughout all of culture so
this means that we can use these memes
to transfer ideas from one generation to
the next so let’s take the wheel as an
example we start with the wheel round we
can use human power to be able to push
really really heavy objects okay great
now give it a couple generations and
someone says what if I put an axle
between two smaller wheels put a board
on it put an animal in front and boom
I’ve got a chariot and I’m cruising
right a couple more generations and some
of this friction thing is a problem I’m
gonna put some track
down use this newfangled steam power and
now we’re gonna be able to halt and
change cultures that’s fascinating it
because as each one of these generations
experience the new technology they
attached their prior concepts to that
new technology in order to make
something new out of it but doesn’t stop
there
memes allow us to innovate from one
generation after the next so that we
don’t have to literally recreate the
wheel again I want to go back to that
happy feeling we get when we see other
people
so somebody Falls and someone helps them
out and you think wow next time somebody
Falls I want to help them too so I’m
gonna emulate that activity and then I
emulate that activity and before you
know it someone starts to tell other
people about it using that whole
technology of language thing and then
someone starts to write it down using
another technology we invented and
before you know it that story turns into
a mythology and then it turns into
somebody’s a part of somebody’s overall
world belief and then it goes into all
of culture as something like the Good
Samaritan this is a colloquialism that
most of us know we understand what it
means to be a Good Samaritan
so these institutions churches colleges
they allow us to take the memes that are
in culture and perpetuate them they give
them a signal boost so that many many
people will see them and generation
after generation has the right memes so
that it can start attaching new concepts
so memes allow for cultures to evolve
what this means is that while I was
putting this talk together I realized
that culture is a technology we invented
it
that’s huge as I walked around I started
thinking to myself is that technology or
is that culture as well I usually call
technology nothing more than a device so
our technologies are allowing us to see
things differently as well what I’m
about to show you is an idea
flooding through the internet it’s sped
up but you can see the real-time
interaction of that down in the lower
left-hand corner this is coming from a
data visualization company out in San
Francisco called stamen and at first
it’s an explosion and then you see all
these little branches off of this idea
as it’s getting emulated and shared
throughout culture look that’s beautiful
and it looks an awful lot like the first
images that I showed you the connections
between these things are important and I
feel like I can learn from them and you
can – I’m using them in the immersive
Media Lab because now I can understand
putting myself into a system like this
and navigating similar structures but
it’s more than that I understand that
this little girl is going to grow up
into a world in 2027 that is the
evolution and product of our
technologies and our cultures and it’s
my job to put the right memes into
culture and show people how to use that
technology properly
you see the thing that I want you to
walk away with today is to understand
that what is born and what is made are
different but they are interconnected
the things that we make and the actions
that we take those are the things that
we need to understand are part of us
they change our biology they’re from our
biology so humans will always reach
farther we will constantly look for our
place in the stars
but what is born will always use what is
made to understand what’s at the other
end of its gaze thank you
you
[Applause]
[Applause]
one of my all-time favorite humans Carl
Sagan said that we are Stardust
pondering the Stars he also said that we
are a billion billion billion atoms
contemplating the evolution of atoms
isn’t that beautiful
whenever I hear stuff like that I just
feel so precious and so insignificant
simultaneously and the same thing
happens when I see images like this what
we’re seeing here at the top corner is
neurons in a brain the next image we
recognize it’s a tree with its
hierarchical structure we have our roots
the branches the leaves and the veins
then from there we have the Midwest at
night from a satellite the next two
images on the bottom row are artists
depictions of dark matter in the
universe and a map of the internet today
and the last one maybe my most favorite
is a recent discovery these are
mushrooms that connect trees in the
forest so when you drive by the woods
you’re actually driving by a network and
as a tree is attacked or it’s dying it
sends its warning signals to all the
other trees around it through that
mushroom or it’ll send its nutrients in
chemical form to all the other trees
next to it as it starts to die that’s
amazing that’s so cool and so I want to
talk about this idea of these systems
and what they’ve been teaching me lately
specifically these structures if you
notice they all look really similar
they’re all information systems that are
shuttling energy data information me and
you from point to point
humans are clever and we’ve found a way
to take that energy and turn it
– well binary code and so that means
that if energy is present it’s
represented as a one and if it’s not
present it’s represented as a zero most
of us know this we also know that we’ve
found a way and we can continue to find
ways to shuttle that information through
a processor at unfathomable speeds and
this is a bit of my origin story this
idea of recognizing that this language
that we have universally adopted across
the entire world this binary code is
something that takes data turns it into
information and then we can turn it into
experiences so a little story here last
summer my lovely partner started working
with the astrophysics department here at
UWM and I’m looking at VR in my studio
vr is that virtual reality where you put
goggles on and you can like look around
and everywhere you look you’re seeing
something so I said in front of a couple
of professors that wouldn’t be cool if
like when we were kids we had these view
masters and everywhere we looked we had
like a pocket planetarium and what I
didn’t realize is that saying these kind
of things around dr. Kaplan and dr. herb
it just happens it’s going to happen now
so we was teamed up in the studio and
what they did is effectively took data
from a spreadsheet you know for them
it’s probably beautiful but they were
able to take that data and inject it
into a file egg yolk into shell and
before I knew it this is what the first
example of what that data looked like
and it hit me I was like oh my gosh I
can take data turn it into information
and then have an experience and that
hailed me as an artist I always have to
pay attention to what hails me and this
was a moment so I started the immersive
Media Lab here at UWM and it’s this idea
that we are immersing ourselves in the
data that we’re creating every day we
have our fitbit’s and our iPhones and
we’re publishing and tweeting and now I
want to take some of that data
and embody it and use it and stick my
head directly into it so that’s what
this first test with this pocket
planetarium was and for me it was
interesting but when I started allowing
other people to try it out that’s when
the next level hit me so little kids
right they get into these goggles and
they immediately go wherever I want to
take them and they start pointing at
things grabbing stuff because they’re
their brains are ready for a new
language and that hit me I realized that
this this little girl in ten years she’s
gonna want to have a place to go and
play with this and so I thought well
okay I need to learn everything I
possibly can I don’t know anything about
this stuff I’ve been playing with it now
I want to get there and so I want to
show you what it sounds like
as people start entering into this
information space as we start to
experience new technologies we start to
latch on to our prior experiences and we
start to think okay well what if I added
this and added that and brought it all
together so listen closely this first
one the first time someone gets their
hands inside a computer so he’s inside
the immersive Media Lab this is Marvin
and he’s actually able to grab data with
his hands this little boy is in
google.maps and I want you to notice how
he’s not quite sure where where to step
he’s on what we call the portal so he
knows that he’s safe but also look at
the screen just like all children he
understands almost already how to
navigate that space now listen very
closely for this
mark is is literally gone he has no idea
that I’m watching him and he’s just
shooting him up his brain is somewhere
else and that to me is powerful we’re
literally taking data and turning it
into experiences but this tech is tech
that makes you feel feelings and before
Bailey had said that I am a professor
that teaches at the intersection of art
and culture and technology what does
that mean what I’m doing is I’m helping
creatives artists designers by looking
at pieces of our culture and teaching
them how to use technology to then go
and make messages that go right back
into culture for us and it makes perfect
sense that I spend all of this time
thinking about culture and technology in
order to see where we’re going
but our biology Prime’s us and this this
new technology it’s an empathy machine
we feel it when we’re inside this space
so let’s see what this looks like this
is what empathy looks like these are
people that are hearing a story watching
a movie or seeing pictures and their
brain when an experience is something
starts sending out all these chemicals
and those chemicals cause the blood flow
on the surface of the skin to start to
react it’ll either speed up get warm or
slow down and get cold play a little
game which one up there looks like
depression I’ll give you a hint it’s
black and blue which one looks like
happiness so the top row is what they
say simple reactions to experiences in
the bottom row would be more complex
I’ll just point out shame for a second
look at the cheeks when you’re
embarrassed of something so I want to
talk about this happiness and its drive
towards technology so when I see two
people and they obviously don’t know
each other and one of them dropped
something
Falls and the other person rushes over
to help them I don’t immediately think
gross the heck are you doing no in fact
it’s quite the opposite when I see
humans getting all humankind with one
another I think to myself oh we’re gonna
make it as a tribe of people look our
bodies are primed to interact with one
another we’re gonna do a thing I’ll show
you what this feels like yourself I’m
gonna change a slide and when you see a
thing that pops up I would like you to
point at it nice nice okay that was it
some of you were too cool for school and
you’re like I’m not gonna point at that
thing but you still looked you still
followed our gaze that is something
that’s evolved into us you see when we
point at a thing we’re not just pointing
we’re pointing together we’re sharing
focus together and this is the basis of
language when I realize that pointing is
an ancestor to language realize that
language is a type of abstract pointing
and that I get to share things with
someone else by finding the right words
or the right images now realize that we
made this so language is a technology
and then that technology is evolving now
well I was putting this talk together I
realized that I literally point all the
time at my computers right and what does
it mean to share focus with a computer
well sure I share I’m sharing focus with
all of the information that is known to
us I spend most of my time looking at
cat memes but I share that information
but I’m also able to do something like
this this is a picture or a video that I
took while I was on vacation and I
wanted to point at that sunset with
people on the other side of the world so
I put it together and I shared it on
Facebook so not only are we pointing at
all the information available to us
using that digital language but we’re
also pointing at each other
and this isn’t a map this is from 2010
but this isn’t a map this is nothing
more than the connections that are made
on Facebook Kevin Kelley in his book the
inevitable says that we’re using the
Internet to stitch ourselves together
that’s beautiful
but I think it’s something more I feel
like we’re using this technology to
create a type of nervous system so that
we can understand what’s going on all
over the place faster than we’ve ever
been able to before so I want to now
distinguish what is born from what is
made that’s an important thing to
understand as we move into this next
step what is born has a storage problem
our genes the thing that carry
information from one generation to the
next have nothing to do with technology
and culture in fact they can only encode
for the organism and its maintenance so
humans were clever enough to
circumnavigate that problem and we
created cultures and technologies here’s
what I’m a menace
so evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins coined the term mean he wanted
it to sound like gene and so as
something happened in an environment
someone else saw it like the two people
who were falling right and what we do is
we copy what they’re doing and we
emulate that and then before you know it
someone else sees us doing what they
what we copied in this idea the concept
or the way that I’m using this tool is
spreading throughout all of culture so
this means that we can use these memes
to transfer ideas from one generation to
the next so let’s take the wheel as an
example we start with the wheel round we
can use human power to be able to push
really really heavy objects okay great
now give it a couple generations and
someone says what if I put an axle
between two smaller wheels put a board
on it put an animal in front and boom
I’ve got a chariot and I’m cruising
right a couple more generations and some
of this friction thing is a problem I’m
gonna put some track
down use this newfangled steam power and
now we’re gonna be able to halt and
change cultures that’s fascinating it
because as each one of these generations
experience the new technology they
attached their prior concepts to that
new technology in order to make
something new out of it but doesn’t stop
there
memes allow us to innovate from one
generation after the next so that we
don’t have to literally recreate the
wheel again I want to go back to that
happy feeling we get when we see other
people
so somebody Falls and someone helps them
out and you think wow next time somebody
Falls I want to help them too so I’m
gonna emulate that activity and then I
emulate that activity and before you
know it someone starts to tell other
people about it using that whole
technology of language thing and then
someone starts to write it down using
another technology we invented and
before you know it that story turns into
a mythology and then it turns into
somebody’s a part of somebody’s overall
world belief and then it goes into all
of culture as something like the Good
Samaritan this is a colloquialism that
most of us know we understand what it
means to be a Good Samaritan
so these institutions churches colleges
they allow us to take the memes that are
in culture and perpetuate them they give
them a signal boost so that many many
people will see them and generation
after generation has the right memes so
that it can start attaching new concepts
so memes allow for cultures to evolve
what this means is that while I was
putting this talk together I realized
that culture is a technology we invented
it
that’s huge as I walked around I started
thinking to myself is that technology or
is that culture as well I usually call
technology nothing more than a device so
our technologies are allowing us to see
things differently as well what I’m
about to show you is an idea
flooding through the internet it’s sped
up but you can see the real-time
interaction of that down in the lower
left-hand corner this is coming from a
data visualization company out in San
Francisco called stamen and at first
it’s an explosion and then you see all
these little branches off of this idea
as it’s getting emulated and shared
throughout culture look that’s beautiful
and it looks an awful lot like the first
images that I showed you the connections
between these things are important and I
feel like I can learn from them and you
can – I’m using them in the immersive
Media Lab because now I can understand
putting myself into a system like this
and navigating similar structures but
it’s more than that I understand that
this little girl is going to grow up
into a world in 2027 that is the
evolution and product of our
technologies and our cultures and it’s
my job to put the right memes into
culture and show people how to use that
technology properly
you see the thing that I want you to
walk away with today is to understand
that what is born and what is made are
different but they are interconnected
the things that we make and the actions
that we take those are the things that
we need to understand are part of us
they change our biology they’re from our
biology so humans will always reach
farther we will constantly look for our
place in the stars
but what is born will always use what is
made to understand what’s at the other
end of its gaze thank you
you
[Applause]
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