On Jan. 11, the UC system began investigating Dominguez’s use of just under $5,000 of grant money to fund the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a GPS-enabled Motorola cell phone meant to aid immigrants crossing the border by providing information about water caches in the desert and offering moral support in the form of streaming bilingual poetry.

Critics, most notably Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, say TBT helps facilitate illegal entry across the U.S.-Mexico border and therefore should not have been funded by taxpayer money.

“The investigation came to an end on July 21,” a relieved-looking Dominguez told CityBeat. “Now, the funny thing about this is that everybody was copied on the e-mail, all the major players, except us and my lawyers. So, it was only by accident that I discovered that on July 21—this was only a couple of days ago that I discovered this—that the final report came out. And, basically, after all this sort of stuff,” Dominguez said, pausing and leaning toward his laptop to read from the e-mail, “‘The final conclusion is based on our review procedures. We concluded that neither the university funds nor effort were used inappropriately during the development of TBT or the project.’ So, that’s one victory for artwork.”

But Dominguez isn’t completely off the hook.

He’s still paying legal fees to fight yet another university investigation and audit of his actions and involvement in what he calls “electronic civil disobedience,” which is the title of one of the classes he teaches at UCSD. In May, Dominguez spearheaded a virtual sit-in to protest UC policy changes. He and his students flooded UC system president Mark G. Yudof’s website, forcing it offline.

Dominguez said that shortly after the virtual protest, he was informed that the UC system would be looking into possible criminal charges and revocation of his tenure.

While that investigation continues, Dominguez said the good news is that TBT has been chosen to be showcased in several national and international art shows. A few TBT prototypes are currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s Here Not There: San Diego Art Now exhibition and the piece has also been accepted into the 2010 California Biennial, plus a few exhibitions in Europe.

“It legitimizes it for the legal teams,” Dominguez said, explaining that investigators did not look at TBT as an art project until curators at contemporary-art museums recognized it as one.

via UCSD arts professor cleared in at least one investigation « Last Blog On Earth.

by yoko ono

to the pebble people: start your own campaign!

A butterfly is hopping from flower to flower. Oh, good. I think. The butterfly is busybodying as usual.

We are like butterflies. We busybody ourselves every day for our survival as we think we know how. But the difference with us, is that we know we are not as innocent as the butterflies. We are about to ruin this planet we call ours through our stupidity.

Luckily, there are so many of us in the world, who are now awakened, ready to act to save our world.

So let’s work together to save this planet. Since destiny is created by first imaging what destiny we want for ourselves, we should IMAGINE PEACE in a big way with total conviction. In the old days, gurus sat and meditated day and night. That was pretty powerful. But we live in a different world. Time is so precious to us now. A million kids can be killed in one second as we are wondering what to do. So we can’t just sit and meditate. We should IMAGINE PEACE day and night, as we go about our daily lives.

Yes. One thing that is interesting is you cannot be violent while you are imagining peace.
 If all of us in the world imagined peace at all times, there will be no dis-ease (disease) in the world. In fact, dis-ease will disappear from this planet altogether.

We should focus on healing the world we have destroyed, by asking our healing power to come out.
 Our intent of healing will start to show it’s power by just asking for it.
 When all of us ask the world to be healed, it will be.

Know that it is that simple.
 We are all connected.
 We affect each other right away.
 We affect each other even when we are in fear, confusion, anger, wanting to destroy the world.
 That’s how strongly connected we are.

Let’s start thinking what you can do, knowing that we are standing in the midst of an incredible disaster created by us, the human race. It is so bad that the farmers, who are providing what we eat, are being bankrupted for not complying to the ways of greedy corporate needs, losing their ancestral lands…some of them even committing suicide. The saddest thing is that so many children are sexually abused, sold for human parts and die or perish before their teens.

Please take a good look at what is happening around you. It may seem hopeless. But it is not. It is not difficult to change your down feeling to pure energy of getting the work done with love. Is that possible? Yes, it is.

The Universe will be affected immediately as you start to want to think the right way and correct the disease in our world. Since, disease is only a dis-ease, a condition created by our confused minds.

Send your message through the internet of how you love life and why. Because the people on the internet are also your family. 
If you keep meditating in your mind – not giving yourself the luxury of making a special sit-in meditation, but doing what you can do to change the world, if you did that for three months you will see the difference in your life and even a difference in our planet. Thus, we will be making a quiet revolution together.

Just do what you can do. Nothing more. 
By that, you will be starting the wheels of goodness to turn.

Something especially wonderful was told to me just recently. Two scientists who were researching the effect of waves in the ocean for two years, came to the conclusion that the smallest stimulus to the water be it a drop of a pebble, or a child splashing the water at the shore, affects the whole ocean, each time. Well, I thought we do affect each other on land, but I hadn’t realized that that was true in the ocean as well! What a blessing! Nature is making things so easy for us!

So now I call ourselves the small pebble people. Send small pebbles to the world. Don’t make big splashes with large stones. That will attract people and the wrong people as well. Our quiet revolution will not make announcements, but one day will be accepted by all people as the norm of life. The human race has done that with many things. Like we wanted to fly, and invented aeroplanes. We wanted to see the other side of the moon, and we have. This time, we want to heal our planet, and bring peace to this world. We will.

I am now starting to miss the butterflies. Where are they now? Once there were so many.

It’s time for you to start your own campaign today. You will see that it spreads and covers the world very fast, and meanwhile it will make you one of the small pebble people. Small pebble people are people who know that small pebbles, when they’re dropped in the ocean, will immediately affect the ocean of the whole wide world. Again, don’t throw big stones. It scares people and creates repercussions.

So we’ll just keep dropping small pebbles. Together. That’s how we will change the world. We change, and the world changes. Have trust in what you can do. Have trust in how fast we can change our world for the better. Why? Because we have to.

I would like to share an affirmation with you. Now say it in your mind with the firm belief that we are one, and together. We’ll make it.

In the name of Truth, Peace and Love: Our Planet is healthy and whole.

We, the People of Earth, See clearly, Hear clearly, Think clearly, Make the right Judgement, right Decision and the right Move For the benefit of Us, our Planet and the Universe.

We are now bathing in the light of dawn, Standing in the Heaven we have created together on this Planet.

We wish to share this age of Joy with all lives on Earth, As We are One, United with Infinite and Eternal Love.

For the highest good of all concerned, So be it.

Activist Questionnaire Results

This is an attempt at a summary of the results of questionnaires, interviews and a focus group at the Dublin Grassroots Gathering in June 2008 on the theme of what is winning in horizontal activism. This was done to hopefully be part of a broader movement discussion on goals, strategies, and visions. Thanks again to everyone who participated. Long may the experiments continue! Queries and comments welcome. Thanks again!

At the Grassroots Gathering in June 2008 30 people filled in a questionnaire, 12 attended a focus group and 7 were interviewed on the topic what is winning? The question about what winning is was intended to be a way to focus in on activists and their groups’ long and short-term goals, strategy, obstacles and current optimism or lack of optimism. I also wanted to know if people would propose specific alternatives what these might be. This question also turned out to fit into a broader movement discussion as the journal Turbulence (see www.turbulence.org) had brought out a thought-provoking issue on the topic of what it means to win, in June 2007.

The Grassroots Gathering (see grassrootsgathering.wordpress.com) was a good place for this study both because the question of winning fitted in with the focus of the Gathering on horizontally organized social movements, including goals and strategy, and because the Gathering generally attracts people who are or want to get involved with such movements. A Grassroots Gathering is both more specific than a Social Forum, for example, in that people are involved in horizontal-organizing which is what I wanted to look at, and less specific than a conference organized by a particular political group. In other words there was likely to be a spectrum of people involved in horizontally-organized activism attending.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer these questions! The dedication to you reads: ‘In particular a big thank you to all of the people who participated in this study who continually experiment in entertaining ways with the change they want to see. You are everywhere and you are an oasis.’ Sorry for the delay in getting this out but was sick of the sight of my thesis by the time I handed it in 5 minutes before the deadline in September. The other disclaimer is I think or hope that I talk more clearly than I write so if this makes little sense feel free to ask

What is winning for you?

Results varied from achieving concrete goals in single issue campaigns to radical systemic political, social and economic change. Responses were a mix of the personal and political. Here I’ll attempt to draw out any conclusions I can. Answers to the question what is winning for you were diverse and give an idea of the breadth of focus respondents had so here are all of them starting with one that encapsulates most of what was written and discussed:

‘The essence of radical politics is transforming general alignment in line with the best of people’s needs, aspirations and desires to action, successfully offering new directions in a crisis of neo-liberalism as against business as usual, formulating an alternative to a new world order from above and developing dual-power institutions to the point where old structures start to lose solid grip, defeating the inevitable backlash (war, criminalization etc.)’

• Knowing without a doubt that you have done your best.
• Sustainable development, protection of environment and archaeology, devolved business and financial structure at community level, re-route the M3.
• Saving forests, making people aware.
• Ultimate, evolving diversity, recognition of control of self, self-sufficiency, but also inter-dependency, stewardship-other species, the environment, other people, culture, education etc. Elimination of labels and jargon, prioritization of science and technology, examining and balancing people’s innate need to travel.
• Not an important question to me.
• Intentional community, hospitality to homeless people, Non-violent Direct Action to war and war preparation.
• People talking about feminism, small victories.
• Living loving awareness.
• Proper, free, factual information, readily available and the end of prosecution/persecution for all cannabis related crimes.
• Independent social centre & maintaining it in medium term.
• Libertarian Communism-a society organized on the principle that that people affected by a decision get to make the decision, people co-operate and society isn’t divided between order-takers and order-givers, direct democracy and true equality.
• Achieving the best I can do everyday-opening up opportunities for others to do the same & trying to work together.
• Anarcho-communism.
• Completing all goals.
• Making progress in your mission.
• Class struggle, overthrowing capitalism.
• Essence of radical politics is transforming general alignment with the best of people’s needs, aspirations, desires to action in line with that, successfully offering new directions in crisis of neo-lib as against business as usual and alternative to new world order from above, developing dual-power institutions to point where old structures start to lose solid grip, defeating the inevitable backlash (war, criminalization etc.)
• Achieving positive social change.
• End of social relation of property & exchange.
• The abolition of capital wage labour, the state etc etc.
• Success in local campaigns (social housing, playgrounds etc.) Getting an elected representative in government, getting publicity on TV in newspapers.
• Making a difference.
• There is no ultimate ‘winning’ it will remain an ongoing process, any general increases in justice and equality are to be welcomed.

What do you think social movements need to do now in order to win?

• Ni neart go cur le cheile
• Solidarity and networking
• Better communication, working together.
• Recognize diversity, try not to disengage too much from society, stay in contact with current events, locally and globally, that hold people’s attention. Create more interconnectedness between different ideas, see more solutions instead of problems, compromising may not be such a bad thing depending on the circumstances.
• Look at support for Bolivian government, look to Global South for what’s next, narrative strategies, confront synthetic biotechnology, resist techno-fixes for climate change.
• Community, non-violent resistance, acts of mercy to the oppressed.
• Co-ordinate, get organized.
• Evolve away from limiting beliefs.
• Connect, network, organize.
• Reach people, get more, people involved in working for a better world.
• Stronger, more organized.
• Develop parallel structures to the state, re-brand, organize immigrant and precarious workers better.
• Become the mainstream with our own newspapers, radio, tv stations etc.
• Focus on the process not the outcome- on how.
• Complete their goals.
• Join together & work together.
• Organise.
• Take ourselves seriously as maybe actually being able to win & not be trapped by our personal psychologies & identities or organizational & political traditions, creative alliance-building really learning from and listening to each other.
• Achieve positive social change.
• Continually re-engage with social needs & desires.
• Depends on the social movement(s).
• Join together, stand up to state oppression.
• Work together with different tactics for a common strategy.

Responses in the focus group and interviews were also varied to the question what is winning? Some themes emerged, however:

The questions discussed in the focus group were around what winning is, including what winning might look like if no current limits existed, and given current limitations what concrete achievable goals would the participants set. Answers were varied but some linked themes emerged namely: Environmental sustainability, combating consumerism and dependence, combating a service provision culture by promoting personal responsibility and combating disempowered citizenship and combating alienation and isolation by building a sense of community. The focus included living simply with less dependence, promoting the concept of enough and ‘anti-newness’ and sustainability including an appropriate sized population for the planet.

The idea of ever-widening de-commodification emerged strongly in the focus group in relation to both consumerism and social relations. This included the de-commodification of social relationships as well as undermining the logic and ethos of capitalism. Suggestions for de-commodification included doing things for free and giving things away for free, for example free shops and skills share workshops in social centres or other public places.

Some participants found it difficult to envisage ideal societies outside of capitalist power structures pointing out that such societies could not exist unilaterally as they would exist within a global system and that real autonomy was unlikely within the current system. Some participants focused on the effects of potential collapse due to a combination of peak oil, climate change and financial crises. It was suggested that in the case of a sudden collapse that left libertarians would not have ready made alternative parallel structures to replace current ones and that chaos surrounding a collapse could be as likely to lead to authoritarianism or fascism as to a horizontal society. However, another interviewee suggested that, as such a scenario would almost certainly bring actors into play that are currently uninvolved the results would be impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy.

Where ideal societies were envisaged themes were localization, sustainability and a lessening of dependence. One interviewee said that one of the challenges facing the organization he is involved in is the dependency culture that means that new participants have to change their expectations both of what organizations are and of what their roles are. Where there were proposed alternative societies these included localization and societal organization at community level, a cash free economy, free food, free energy and an end to wage labour, characterized as working when and if you want to.

Main Goals:

Questionnaire respondents’ or their groups’ main goals were really diverse ranging from single issues such as stopping the M3 motorway, establishing community gardens or legalizing marijuana to large scale political, economic and social change. The majority of goals were far reaching anti-systemic goals, however. 11 out of 24 goals were the replacement of capitalism, 6 of which were specifically the replacement of capitalism by anarchism. This result is significant from the point of view of social movement theory because anti-neoliberalism has been largely viewed as the ‘masterframe’ or unifying concept of the ‘anti-globalization movement’ and anti-capitalism has been considered a smaller component. An exception was a 2001 study on the Australian Anti-capitalist Movement by Tom bramble and John Minns which took the activists’ perspectives as a starting point and concluded that Anti-capitalism was a stronger unifying factor than more general goals such as global justice. I’ve also found little, though increasing, research on the effect of anarchism on a wider movement. Amory Starr’s research in 2000 showed a weak but growing influence of anarchism on the movement as a whole. A 2001 study on the Australian Anti-Capitalist movement concluded tha while in 2004 the Spanish Social Movement Theorist Castells wrote that the ‘movement’ was increasingly moving in two different directions that could be characterized as an insider or reforming track, tending to be NGO led and what he calls the People’s Global Action stream, which I’d call anti-systemic and broadly Left-Libertarian. Another difference between these responses and those of previous research is the strong link between environmentalism and anarchism which showed only weak links in Starr’s 2000 research.

Reasons for believing goals will be achieved:

The majority of respondents felt that they have made good progress on their groups’ short-term goals. ‘Short-term goals- doing far better than in 1998, probably in end phase of neo-lib institutions as 60s & 70s were end phase of Keynesian/organized capitalism, in terms of a just bottom-up global society , global movements & the poor stronger now than for many years- just & sustainable soc. A long, global process.’

The vast majority see achieving their goals as an ongoing process and take a long-term view. The main reason given for believing that goals would be achieved was ‘the necessity for alternatives’, with ‘ways of organizing’ being the second highest reason for optimism. Public support for groups’ goals at a national level was viewed as low by the majority of respondents with anti-systemic goals, with a slightly higher number for global support, and viewed as high by single issue groups. External crises such as financial or environmental crises were not considered reasons for achieving goals by the majority of respondents. This is interesting as optimism did not rest on perceived levels of support or on external factors, and as respondents were divided on whether or not capitalism is currently in crisis, a belief in achieving goals is not predicated on a crisis in capitalism but is viewed instead as a long-term ongoing process. Optimism rests largely on a belief in the necessity for alternatives based on horizontal organization. This implies that it is not so much that capitalism is perceived as not working or even as destructive in specific ways but that horizontal organization is embraced as a value in itself.

Obstacles to achieving goals:

The main internal obstacle to achieving group goals were listed as fear or lack of belief in ability to succeed, lack of resources or organization and lack of numbers. These also came up in the focus group. In terms of external obstacles capitalism was the highest listed followed by corporate power and state power. Interestingly corporate power rated higher than state power, corporate media and International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund despite the focus of summits on these and on the G8.

These results show a structural understanding whereby a system has been identified, in this case capitalism, which is a primary target, while perceived instruments of capitalism such as IFIs or the corporate media are viewed as secondary symptoms. Again this is interesting as much social movement theory puts a broad spectrum of activists together under the label of ‘Global Justice’ without looking at activists’ critiques and whether they are anti-systemic or not. This may partly be because ‘class-based’ activism fell out of favour after the 1960s when ‘New Social Movement’ theorists concluded that activism was primarily identity-based and not class-based and a backlash against Marxist theory ensued. Subsequent South American movements, including landless and indigenous movements undermined this identity-based theory and were quickly termed ‘popular movements’. These, along with the ‘Alternative Globalization Movement’ in the North, have caused even some NSM theorists to admit that ‘class-based activism is back with a vengeance’. ( Donatella della Porta). However, many of the theorists still manage to write about social movements without reference to power inequalities, class or capitalism. This is one of the reasons I did this study, as although these factors may appear blindingly obvious to activists they are not to all academics.

Who were the participants?

Almost a third of the 30 respondents to the questionnaire were not involved in a group or network. Of these a third was interested in getting involved. The remainder of respondents were involved in 32 different groups. The groups included anarchist, environmental, feminist, heritage and resource protection, independent media groups and NGOs, 2 political parties and 2 religious groups. Of a list of possibilities the highest category ticked for type of group was anarchist followed by anti-capitalist and environmental. 8 out of 30 respondents said their group didn’t have a specific political basis. Of those that did the majority was a form of Anarchist or Libertarian Communist or Anti-Capitalist.

Most people were involved in more than one group and most of the groups were of 10-30 regular participants. Where groups were of 100 or more they were generally international networks, but the majority of groups listed were national. 29 out of 30 questionnaire respondents saw themselves as part of a wider movement. Interestingly, despite the prevalence of names such as the Anti-Globalization Movement, Movement of Movements or Altermondialiste when asked what they would call a wider movement only 2 such commonly used terms were listed once each, Global Justice Movement and Movement of Movements. The majority were instead extensions of the groups people were in, such as Earth First!, or their main goals such as environmental justice. This was interesting as a question about who ‘we’ are. Broadly the majority of wider movements were characterized as environmental and/or anarchist or anti-capitalist. Some of the terms used were neither specific groups nor networks nor an extension of these but an entirely personal formulation such as ‘network of empathetic activists’ and ‘alternative culture.’

A third difference between the results of this study and some previous research was in ages and occupations of participants as the age range was wider and there were fewer students than in a 2001 study on the Anti-capitalist Movement in Australia. There were also similarities with other comparable studies, however, for example the vast majority of respondents had a very high level of education and the majority were male. In terms of nationality all were European, American or Australian. Of the people who listed a gender on the questionnaire 20 were male and 8 female. This was an interesting result as the male to female ratio of attendees of the Grassroots Gathering was definitely not as high as that, being much closer to 50-50, begging the question why did fewer women fill out the questionnaires? The focus group on what winning is was about two to one male to female. When asked about imbalances in their groups the highest number of respondents chose gender followed by class, occupation and ethnicity. These last categories drew a few comments: ‘In Ireland!’ and ‘This is circular-the problem with this society is that most people can’t be fully participating in ‘winning’ their world. The reasons are capitalism, particularly racial & labour divisions. There is inevitable unevenness in those who can become active in radical politics and avoidable divergences in different kinds of radical politics.’

Other possible explanations for lack of diversity in participants include lack of publicity, lack of access or lack of interest on the part of those sectors who did not attend, or lack of clear connection between the issues discussed and their lives. Equally research shows that word of mouth is decisive and that activists are generally brought into activism through friends which makes diversity more difficult. Lack of diversity and lack of numbers were addressed somewhat in responses to questions about strategy and short-term goals. Involvement in community-led campaigns, awareness raising, publicity, getting more people involved and using independent media were all emphasised. Strategy for achieving goals ranged from direct action and non-horizontal organizing to movement building, outreach and alliance building to magazines, leaflets and rallies to advocacy and lobbying, including of state institutions. These results were interesting as there was an overlap between strategies often viewed as ‘reformist’ such as lobbying or ‘radical’ strategies, such as direct action, depending on the perceived usefulness of a strategy to achieve a particular goal.

Overall, there was a mix of ideational or personal goals and ideological ones, a variety of strategies, in particular getting more people involved, a general agreement on main obstacles and main reasons for optimism about achieving goals and an agreement on what a wider movement would need to win, namely unity, solidarity, organization and a belief in winning. Specific proposed ideal societies were few but how one would be built was though horizontal organization.

via About / People | culture push.

“we actually wanted to give our work to the audience and let them play with it.”

At the time of our interview Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray were residents at Eyebeam, the art and technology center in New York. Their work has been featured in ArtNews, on the Discovery Channel, at the Venice Biennale, and the A+C gallery in Chicago. They own an interactive design agency in New York, Submersible Design.

The Meatrix was an animated movie, spoofing The Matrix while educating viewers about the problems with factory farming. It went viral, was translated into 30 languages, and directs viwers to a website where they can learn to become advocates of family farms. DrinkPee is a project about “the role our bodies play in larger ecosystems”and includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning urine into fertilizer. DrinkPee was featured in both ArtNews, and on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. R&D-I-Y is project designed to crowdsource solutions to environmental problems. It’s first project was the windowfarms project.

S&S: Tell us about a project you felt was effective.

Bray: I was working for a nonprofit concerned with food issues and factory farming. While trying to educate people we realized we were showing people all these horrific pictures of factory farms. We were telling people how horrible they were and nobody really wanted to hear it. Everybody was disturbed and they didn’t want to listen.

So, we realized that we needed another angle, and decided we could use humor – as strange as that seemed – to talk about factory farming. It was 2002 and we realized there could be a fun angle on this if we did an animation and based it on The Matrix because of the crazy parallels with this very strange, alternative world of agriculture. Working on that script, we had a lot of conversations about how we didn’t want to be preachy. It was difficult because coming from the nonprofit world there was a lot of preachiness. And there were also a lot of facts, you know, “how many facts can we get in?” It could have been very long and very preachy, but we managed to pair it back to something which was just getting basic information, but trying to bring characters into it, and some sort of personality and humor. That was the Meatrix. The first Meatrix was 3.5 minutes and we just started disseminating it online, and it was amazing. It was a million hits in the first month or something. It was crazy. We had tons of people all over the world who had never seen The Matrix and they still loved it.

I think it was so well received because it was refreshing. It wasn’t preachy but it wasn’t glossing over the issue. It was still disturbing, but it provided a kind of entry point for people. Also people could explain it in one sentence – and i think that’s really important. It’s really important to be able to describe something in one sentence because people can get ahold of it, remember it, and pass it on.

We also knew it was successful because we had so much feedback. People who wanted copies and wanted translations of it and things like that. And we had the web stats, so we knew it was successful in that way.

S&S: I remember seeing this at the time – it was huge. But factory farming isn’t really over is it?

The thing that’s different from my work now is that it was putting something out there, but it wasn’t providing a direct avenue for action. It wasn’t participatory.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTICIPATION

I think the work that we do, one of the things that we think of as being successful or is just integrated completely into our work, is that we want people to participate in it, and that’s crucial to what we do. It is not just about disseminating information.

S&S: Why did you guys make the decision to move from “well, we’ll just get the message out there, the facts…” Why isn’t information enough?

Riley: Let’s take our Drink Pee project – we love the ocean and we want to solve ocean pollution problems. We decided that we really want to come up with a solution that was not just “oh, here’s some information! And, over the next forty years, you people should change your ways.”

So, we looked at ways to solve the particular problem of urine, which comes from our bodies and makes it out to the ocean and the waterways and basically, the two major effects it has are: it overfeeds algae, because of the richness of the nutrients in urine and creates these harmful algae blooms in waterways; and the other thing that happens is the medicine from our bodies that goes undigested makes its way into waterways and starts showing up in our drinking water supply. We are actually being dosed by one another’s medicine from our drinking water.

So we set out to come up with a solution to this. First, we researched a lot of what was out there. The big science R&D environmental solutions to this, well, the one very popular one, is a big, separate, sewage treatment plant changed to capture only urine so that urine goes through a chemical reaction and becomes agricultural fertilizer. But the problem with the big R&D solutions is that they always have to take a big mass approach – they always have to fix the problem for everyone, and that inevitably requires a lot of infrastructure, which defeats the whole point of doing an environmental project if you’re just creating another environmental problem –

S&S: If the treatment plant ever gets built at all.

Riley: Yeah. So instead, we figured out essentially how to do this chemical reaction and we are disseminating that knowledge to people.

Bray: We did it through DIY kits so people can turn their own urine into fertilizer at home.

Riley: We also did a series of workshops. At one, fifty people showed up on a freezing cold New York City night and they had to do part of this project outside in the cold. They turned their pee into fertilizer. They were like smelling each other’s pee and asking, “Did it change? Do you think it changed? Yeah!” It was amazing.

S&S: We must of have missed that workshop….

Bray: And so in terms of success, it really became more than just the art project that’s sitting on the wall. It became something that people wanted to engage in and talk about the wider implications. For example we had a whole conversation about composting and food waste and that felt really insightful and successful because it went beyond people reacting to an art project and bringing their point of view and their own concerns to it.

S&S: It sounds like it worked pretty well, but what happens after the workshop is over?

Bray: This was one of the points when we realized what was unsuccessful about the project. A surprising number of people came back to us and were trying to give us ideas about how we should do it differently, or how we should start a business, or how they would want it done. And some of them were even excited about doing that themselves, but we noticed that they felt like they needed to ask our permission because it was “our project.” And that’s where we realized that it wasn’t successful – having it be totally dependent on us and branded as ours. If we were really interested in having an environmental solution, what we want to harness is those people’s interest and their ability to design something that they will use.

Bray: We realized, while people did want to do their own thing, they also wanted support and they wanted information. Because we’ve already done some research, we can provide starting points. From there, they can definitely go off in their own direction, and our research can inform them. So they want support and they also want to know that they are involved in something bigger. So, you know, “I’m not just tinkering in my garage by myself, but I’m contributing to a larger solution and helping other people do it as well.”

S&S: That’s exciting – in a way, you want to open up ownership of the project. Well, how do you do that?

Bray: We needed to create whole structures to collaborate and help people come up with a variety of solutions based on their own situation. So we built a social networking site where people can share information and processes and test out solutions. Also, when somebody discovers a question on the site, they are able to contribute relating to their own particular skill or interest. They are able to contribute by maybe answering one little question in part of this bigger problem. They are able to participate and see how their solution contributes to the whole.

S&S: You’re creating knowledge communities.

Bray: Not only knowledge, but actually leading to things and solutions.

Riley: We’re working on a crowd sourcing model for environmental research and development by total amateurs, but amateurs who know what they want and need and what works for their particular situations.

S&S: So success would be: people that you have not met with a sense of autonomy, participating in this group and out on their own.

Riley: Yes, and actually working together, so that it’s not just one person. I mean there are already places online where people come up with solutions and they post it, but that stuff is distributed all over the place. If you want to respond to something somebody started, you have to do it in the comments or go somewhere else. But it’s not really organized as a collaborative effort. Again, it’s about me and my project.

Bray: It also becomes more product oriented than process oriented. We are interested in revealing the process and making it transparent so that people can step in, learn from what was done before, and fork off it.

S&S: What do you call this?

Bray: It’s R&DIY– research and develop it yourself.

THINKING ABOUT THE AUDIENCE

S&S: It sounds like, more than most people we’ve talked to, you are thinking your audience and how they engage with your work. It’s really an essential part of your projects. What do you think about that?

Bray: What happened through the DrinkPee project is that we relealized we wanted to think more about the audience and we actually wanted to give our work to the audience and let them play with it. It’s so much about spreading something and having people bring it into their own space and make it their own, so it’s not about us owning something and presenting it to people.

Riley: When we were really dealing with the actual chemistry of this reaction that turns your pee into fertilizer, we got so psyched about the particular chemicals and stuff like that, but you have to realize that someone who is just coming to this process is not going to be able to be there with you yet. So being able to pull ourselves away from our own attachment and bring it back to the audience is this constant revision process that we are going through every time we present work to somebody else.

Bray: And we increasingly meet with our brain trust – our friends and colleagues who we ask to just have dinner with us and we ask if we’re crazy.

Riley: And sometimes they tell us we are.

S&S: So this thing about audience and the brain trust and testing, where did you learn that? When you were painters at art school, did they tell you: “Think about audience, think about who’s looking at this.” I mean, I don’t know if you were painters, but were you taught this?

Bray: No

S&S: Were you painters?

Bray & Riley: No.

Bray: The art training that I got in undergrad was pretty traditional – video and multimedia – but there was nothing about the user, it was all about the internal processes of the artist. I don’t know why that is.

S&S: So where did you learn to to think about the user?

Bray: Certainly at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Progam. You’re constantly doing quick iterations and prototypes and presenting them to people and collaborating a lot. Now I tell my students, and they are probably sick of hearing it, “You have to do user testing at the very beginning for your concept.”

Riley: Yeah, we are totally influenced by software development and the fact that every good piece of webware these days goes through so many iterations. The fact that people are used to the terms alpha and beta has given us a lot of permission to take that approach in our own work.

S&S: Are you ever worried that you might err too far the other way and think too much like a software engineer thinking about “the user” and their hoped for experience?

Bray: It’s something that we talked about, especially while we were working on DrinkPee and when we worked in the science aspects. When DrinkPee went to the museum space, we thought, “Is this getting too much to be like a science exhibition?” But as artists we were separating ourselves from that, we felt like we had more freedom. When it’s art, there’s more freedom for our interpretation and also for our personality, in that we were able to bring ourselves to it and also leave questions unanswered. It’s the same thing with R&DIY. We are interested in pushing for more questions, and I think of that as a creative process, a good role for artists, to find the questions and compel people to look at it and ask questions themselves.

Contrast that with a scientist’s approach. Maybe you do come out with questions in the end, like, “What still needs to be tested?” But you’re not asking the public what needs to be questioned. And you know, science is very elitist and very much trapped within in its own sphere. I think of art as being something that approaches the public and reaches out to them.

Riley: That’s basically what we’re wrestling with right now. We are going to be looking more at how we collaborate with others and how we structure or don’t structure things. How much are we going to present to people, and how much we’re just going to say, “figure it out yourselves.”

Carol Tavris describes dissonance theory and how self-justification and self-deception often keep people from changing their minds even in the light of compelling contrary evidence, because the evidence is often dissonant with one’s self-image. She details the implications of dissonance theory for the persistence of psychic charlatans and other peddlers of the paranormal, and how it may explain how someone like Sylvia Brown can live with herself, and also how it may explain how believers remain so gullible about such unsupportable claims. She describes confirmation bias as a component of dissonance theory. She talks about how dissonance theory applies to the skeptic movement, both in terms of suggesting the best strategies for engaging the credulous, and in terms of fostering skepticism about one’s own skeptical views. And she argues that skepticism should be affirmative rather than destructive in its approach, and focused on both critical thinking and creative thinking alike.

via Carol Tavris – Mistakes Were Made | For Good Reason.