Before I get started: I'm really excited to be here to just actually watch what's going to happen, from here.
So with that said, we're going to start with: What is one of our greatest needs, one of our greatest needs for our brain?
And instead of telling you, I want to show you.
In fact, I want you to feel it.
There's a lot I want you to feel in the next 14 minutes.
So, if we could all stand up.
We're all going to conduct a piece of Strauss together.
Alright?
And you all know it.
Alright.
Are you ready?
Audience: Yeah!
Beau Lotto: Alright.
Ready, one, two, three!
It's just the end.
(Music: Richard Strauss "Also Sprach Zarathustra") Right?
You know where it's going.
(Music) Oh, it's coming!
(Music stops abruptly) Oh!
(Laughter) Right?
Collective coitus interruptus.
OK, you can all sit down.
(Laughter) We have a fundamental need for closure.
(Laughter) We love closure.
(Applause) I was told the story that Mozart, just before he'd go to bed, he'd go to the piano and go, "da-da-da-da-da."
His father, who was already in bed, would think, "Argh."
He'd have to get up and hit the final note to the chord before he could go back to sleep.
(Laughter) So the need for closure leads us to thinking about: What is our greatest fear?
Think -- what is our greatest fear growing up, even now?
And it's the fear of the dark.
We hate uncertainty.
We hate to not know.
We hate it.
Think about horror films.
Horror films are always shot in the dark, in the forest, at night, in the depths of the sea, the blackness of space.
And the reason is because dying was easy during evolution.
If you weren't sure that was a predator, it was too late.
Your brain evolved to predict.
And if you couldn't predict, you died.
And the way your brain predicts is by encoding the bias and assumptions that were useful in the past.
But those assumptions just don't stay inside your brain.
You project them out into the world.
There is no bird there.
You're projecting the meaning onto the screen.
Everything I'm saying to you right now is literally meaningless.
(Laughter) You're creating the meaning and projecting it onto me.
And what's true for objects is true for other people.
While you can measure their "what" and their "when," you can never measure their "why."
So we color other people.
We project a meaning onto them based on our biases and our experience.
Which is why the best of design is almost always about decreasing uncertainty.
So when we step into uncertainty, our bodies respond physiologically and mentally.
Your immune system will start deteriorating.
Your brain cells wither and even die.
Your creativity and intelligence decrease.
We often go from fear to anger, almost too often.
Why?
Because fear is a state of certainty.
You become morally judgmental.
You become an extreme version of yourself.
If you're a conservative, you become more conservative.
If you're a liberal, you become more liberal.
Because you go to a place of familiarity.
The problem is that the world changes.
And we have to adapt or die.
And if you want to shift from A to B, the first step is not B.
The first step is to go from A to not A -- to let go of your bias and assumptions; to step into the very place that our brain evolved to avoid; to step into the place of the unknown.
But it's so essential that we go to this place that our brain gave us a solution.
Evolution gave us a solution.
And it's possibly one of the most profound perceptual experiences.
And it's the experience of awe.
(Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Cheers) (Applause) Beau Lotto: Ah, how wonderful, right?
So right now, you're probably all feeling, at some level or another, awe.
Right?
So what's happening inside your brain right now?
And for thousands of years, we've been thinking and writing and experiencing awe, and we know so little about it.
And so to try to understand what is it and what does it do, my Lab of Misfits had just the wonderful opportunity and the pleasure to work with who are some of the greatest creators of awe that we know: the writers, the creators, the directors, the accountants, the people who are Cirque Du Soleil.
And so we went to Las Vegas, and we recorded the brain activity of people while they're watching the performance, over 10 performances of "O," which is iconic Cirque performance.
And we also measured the behavior before the performance, as well as a different group after the performance.
And so we had over 200 people involved.
So what is awe?
What is happening inside your brain right now?
It's a brain state.
OK?
The front part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for your executive function, your attentional control, is now being downregulated.
The part of your brain called the DMN, default mode network, which is the interaction between multiple areas in your brain, which is active during, sort of, ideation, creative thinking in terms of divergent thinking and daydreaming, is now being upregulated.
And right about now, the activity in your prefrontal cortex is changing.
It's becoming asymmetrical in its activity, biased towards the right, which is highly correlated when people step forward into the world, as opposed to step back.
In fact, the activity across the brains of all these people was so correlated that we're able to train an artificial neural network to predict whether or not people are experiencing awe to an accuracy of 75 percent on average, with a maximum of 83 percent.
So what does this brain state do?
Well, others have demonstrated, for instance, Professors Haidt and Keltner, have told us that people feel small but connected to the world.
And their prosocial behavior increases, because they feel an increased affinity towards others.
And we've also shown in this study that people have less need for cognitive control.
They're more comfortable with uncertainty without having closure.
And their appetite for risk also increases.
They actually seek risk, and they are better able at taking it.
And something that was really quite profound is that when we asked people, "Are you someone who has a propensity to experience awe?"
They were more likely to give a positive response after the performance than they were [before].
They literally redefined themselves and their history.
So, awe is possibly the perception that is bigger than us.
And in the words of Joseph Campbell, "Awe is what enables us to move forward."
Or in the words of a dear friend, probably one of our greatest photographers, still living photographers, Duane Michaels, he said to me just the other day that maybe it gives us the curiosity to overcome our cowardice.
So who cares?
Why should we care?
Well, consider conflict, which seems to be so omnipresent in our society at the moment.
If you and I are in conflict, it's as if we're at the opposite ends of the same line.
And my aim is to prove that you're wrong and to shift you towards me.
The problem is, you are doing exactly the same.
You're trying to prove that I'm wrong and shift me towards you.
Notice that conflict is the setup to win but not learn.
Your brain only learns if we move.
Life is movement.
So, what if we could use awe, not to get rid of conflict -- conflict is essential, conflict is how your brain expands, it's how your brain learns -- but rather, to enter conflict in a different way?
And what if awe could enable us to enter it in at least two different ways?
One, to give us the humility and courage to not know.
Right?
To enter conflict with a question instead of an answer.
What would happen then?
To enter the conflict with uncertainty instead of certainty.
And the second is, in entering conflict that way, to seek to understand, rather than convince.
Because everyone makes sense to themselves, right?
And to understand another person, is to understand the biases and assumptions that give rise to their behavior.
And we've actually initiated a pilot study to look to see whether we could use art-induced awe to facilitate toleration.
And the results are actually incredibly positive.
We can mitigate against anger and hate through the experience of awe generated by art.
So where can we find awe, given how important it is?
So, what if ...
A suggestion: that awe is not just to be found in the grandeur.
Awe is essential.
Often, it's scale -- the mountains, the sunscape.
But what if we could actually rescale ourselves and find the impossible in the simple?
And if this is true, and our data are right, then endeavors like science, adventure, art, ideas, love, a TED conference, performance, are not only inspired by awe, but could actually be our ladders into uncertainty to help us expand.
Thank you very much.
(Applause) Please, come up.
(Applause) (Cheers) (Applause)
"The Opposites Game" For Patricia Maisch This day my students and I play the Opposites Game with a line from Emily Dickinson.
My life had stood a loaded gun, it goes and I write it on the board, pausing so they can call out the antonyms – My Your Life Death Had stood ?
Will sit A Many Loaded Empty Gun ?
Gun.
For a moment, very much like the one between lightning and its sound, the children just stare at me, and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers – Flower, says one.
No, Book, says another.
That's stupid, cries a third, the opposite of a gun is a pillow.
Or maybe a hug, but not a book, no way is it a book.
With this, the others gather their thoughts and suddenly it’s a shouting match.
No one can agree, for every student there’s a final answer.
It's a song, a prayer, I mean a promise, like a wedding ring, and later a baby.
Or what’s that person who delivers babies?
A midwife?
Yes, a midwife.
No, that’s wrong.
You're so wrong you’ll never be right again.
It's a whisper, a star, it's saying I love you into your hand and then touching someone's ear.
Are you crazy?
Are you the president of Stupid-land?
You should be, When's the election?
It’s a teddy bear, a sword, a perfect, perfect peach.
Go back to the first one, it's a flower, a white rose.
When the bell rings, I reach for an eraser but a girl snatches it from my hand.
Nothing's decided, she says, We’re not done here.
I leave all the answers on the board.
The next day some of them have stopped talking to each other, they’ve taken sides.
There's a Flower club.
And a Kitten club.
And two boys calling themselves The Snowballs.
The rest have stuck with the original game, which was to try to write something like poetry.
It's a diamond, it's a dance, the opposite of a gun is a museum in France.
It's the moon, it's a mirror, it's the sound of a bell and the hearer.
The arguing starts again, more shouting, and finally a new club.
For the first time I dare to push them.
Maybe all of you are right, I say.
Well, maybe.
Maybe it's everything we said.
Maybe it’s everything we didn't say.
It's words and the spaces for words.
They're looking at each other now.
It's everything in this room and outside this room and down the street and in the sky.
It's everyone on campus and at the mall, and all the people waiting at the hospital.
And at the post office.
And, yeah, it's a flower, too.
All the flowers.
The whole garden.
The opposite of a gun is wherever you point it.
Don’t write that on the board, they say.
Just say poem.
Your death will sit through many empty poems.
(Applause) (Applause) I am a papercutter.
(Laughter) I cut stories.
So my process is very straightforward.
I take a piece of paper, I visualize my story, sometimes I sketch, sometimes I don't.
And as my image is already inside the paper, I just have to remove what's not from that story.
So I didn't come to papercutting in a straight line.
In fact, I see it more as a spiral.
I was not born with a blade in my hand.
And I don't remember papercutting as a child.
As a teenager, I was sketching, drawing, and I wanted to be an artist.
But I was also a rebel.
And I left everything and went for a long series of odd jobs.
So among them, I have been a shepherdess, a truck driver, a factory worker, a cleaning lady.
I worked in tourism for one year in Mexico, one year in Egypt.
I moved for two years in Taiwan.
And then I settled in New York where I became a tour guide.
And I still worked as a tour leader, traveled back and forth in China, Tibet and Central Asia.
So of course, it took time, and I was nearly 40, and I decided it's time to start as an artist.
(Applause) I chose papercutting because paper is cheap, it's light, and you can use it in a lot of different ways.
And I chose the language of silhouette because graphically it's very efficient.
And it's also just getting to the essential of things.
So the word "silhouette" comes from a minister of finance, Etienne de Silhouette.
And he slashed so many budgets that people said they couldn't afford paintings anymore, and they needed to have their portrait "a la silhouette."
(Laughter) So I made series of images, cuttings, and I assembled them in portfolios.
And people told me -- like these 36 views of the Empire State building -- they told me, "You're making artist books."
So artist books have a lot of definitions.
They come in a lot of different shapes.
But to me, they are fascinating objects to visually narrate a story.
They can be with words or without words.
And I have a passion for images and for words.
I love pun and the relation to the unconscious.
I love oddities of languages.
And everywhere I lived, I learned the languages, but never mastered them.
So I'm always looking for the false cognates or identical words in different languages.
So as you can guess, my mother tongue is French.
And my daily language is English.
So I did a series of work where it was identical words in French and in English.
So one of these works is the "Spelling Spider."
So the Spelling Spider is a cousin of the spelling bee.
(Laughter) But it's much more connected to the Web.
(Laughter) And this spider spins a bilingual alphabet.
So you can read "architecture active" or "active architecture."
So this spider goes through the whole alphabet with identical adjectives and substantives.
So if you don't know one of these languages, it's instant learning.
And one ancient form of the book is scrolls.
So scrolls are very convenient, because you can create a large image on a very small table.
So the unexpected consequences of that is that you only see one part of your image, so it makes a very freestyle architecture.
And I'm making all those kinds of windows.
So it's to look beyond the surface.
It's to have a look at different worlds.
And very often I've been an outsider.
So I want to see how things work and what's happening.
So each window is an image and is a world that I often revisit.
And I revisit this world thinking about the image or cliché about what we want to do, and what are the words, colloquialisms, that we have with the expressions.
It's all if.
So what if we were living in balloon houses?
It would make a very uplifting world.
And we would leave a very low footprint on the planet.
It would be so light.
So sometimes I view from the inside, like EgoCentriCity and the inner circles.
Sometimes it's a global view, to see our common roots and how we can use them to catch dreams.
And we can use them also as a safety net.
And my inspirations are very eclectic.
I'm influenced by everything I read, everything I see.
I have some stories that are humorous, like "Dead Beats."
(Laughter) Other ones are historical.
Here it's "CandyCity."
It's a non-sugar-coated history of sugar.
It goes from slave trade to over-consumption of sugar with some sweet moments in between.
And sometimes I have an emotional response to news, such as the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
Other times, it's not even my stories.
People tell me their lives, their memories, their aspirations, and I create a mindscape.
I channel their history [so that] they have a place to go back to look at their life and its possibilities.
I call them Freudian cities.
I cannot speak for all my images, so I'll just go through a few of my worlds just with the title.
"ModiCity."
"ElectriCity."
"MAD Growth on Columbus Circle."
"ReefCity."
"A Web of Time."
"Chaos City."
"Daily Battles."
"FeliCity."
"Floating Islands."
And at one point, I had to do "The Whole Nine Yards."
So it's actually a papercut that's nine yards long.
(Laughter) So in life and in papercutting, everything is connected.
One story leads to another.
I was also interested in the physicality of this format, because you have to walk to see it.
And parallel to my cutting is my running.
I started with small images, I started with a few miles.
Larger images, I started to run marathons.
Then I went to run 50K, then 60K.
Then I ran 50 miles -- ultramarathons.
And I still feel I'm running, it's just the training to become a long-distance papercutter.
(Laughter) And running gives me a lot of energy.
Here is a three-week papercutting marathon at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.
The result is "Hells and Heavens."
It's two panels 13 ft. high.
They were installed in the museum on two floors, but in fact, it's a continuous image.
And I call it "Hells and Heavens" because it's daily hells and daily heavens.
There is no border in between.
Some people are born in hells, and against all odds, they make it to heavens.
Other people make the opposite trip.
That's the border.
You have sweatshops in hells.
You have people renting their wings in the heavens.
And then you have all those individual stories where sometimes we even have the same action, and the result puts you in hells or in heavens.
So the whole "Hells and Heavens" is about free will and determinism.
And in papercutting, you have the drawing as the structure itself.
So you can take it off the wall.
Here it's an artist book installation called "Identity Project."
It's not autobiographical identities.
They are more our social identities.
And then you can just walk behind them and try them on.
So it's like the different layers of what we are made of and what we present to the world as an identity.
That's another artist book project.
In fact, in the picture, you have two of them.
It's one I'm wearing and one that's on exhibition at the Center for Books Arts in New York City.
Why do I call it a book?
It's called "Fashion Statement," and there are quotes about fashion, so you can read it, and also, because the definition of artist book is very generous.
So artist books, you take them off the wall.
You take them for a walk.
You can also install them as public art.
Here it's in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it's called "Floating Memories."
So it's regional memories, and they are just randomly moved by the wind.
I love public art.
And I entered competitions for a long time.
After eight years of rejection, I was thrilled to get my first commission with the Percent for Art in New York City.
It was for a merger station for emergency workers and firemen.
I made an artist book that's in stainless steel instead of paper.
I called it "Working in the Same Direction."
But I added weathervanes on both sides to show that they cover all directions.
With public art, I could also make cut glass.
Here it's faceted glass in the Bronx.
And each time I make public art, I want something that's really relevant to the place it's installed.
So for the subway in New York, I saw a correspondence between riding the subway and reading.
It is travel in time, travel on time.
And Bronx literature, it's all about Bronx writers and their stories.
Another glass project is in a public library in San Jose, California.
So I made a vegetable point of view of the growth of San Jose.
So I started in the center with the acorn for the Ohlone Indian civilization.
Then I have the fruit from Europe for the ranchers.
And then the fruit of the world for Silicon Valley today.
And it's still growing.
So the technique, it's cut, sandblasted, etched and printed glass into architectural glass.
And outside the library, I wanted to make a place to cultivate your mind.
I took library material that had fruit in their title and I used them to make an orchard walk with these fruits of knowledge.
I also planted the bibliotree.
So it's a tree, and in its trunk you have the roots of languages.
And it's all about international writing systems.
And on the branches you have library material growing.
You can also have function and form with public art.
So in Aurora, Colorado it's a bench.
But you have a bonus with this bench.
Because if you sit a long time in summer in shorts, you will walk away with temporary branding of the story element on your thighs.
(Laughter) Another functional work, it's in the south side of Chicago for a subway station.
And it's called "Seeds of the Future are Planted Today."
It's a story about transformation and connections.
So it acts as a screen to protect the rail and the commuter, and not to have objects falling on the rails.
To be able to change fences and window guards into flowers, it's fantastic.
And here I've been working for the last three years with a South Bronx developer to bring art to life to low-income buildings and affordable housing.
So each building has its own personality.
And sometimes it's about a legacy of the neighborhood, like in Morrisania, about the jazz history.
And for other projects, like in Paris, it's about the name of the street.
It's called Rue des Prairies -- Prairie Street.
So I brought back the rabbit, the dragonfly, to stay in that street.
And in 2009, I was asked to make a poster to be placed in the subway cars in New York City for a year.
So that was a very captive audience.
And I wanted to give them an escape.
I created "All Around Town."
It is a papercutting, and then after, I added color on the computer.
So I can call it techno-crafted.
And along the way, I'm kind of making papercuttings and adding other techniques.
But the result is always to have stories.
So the stories, they have a lot of possibilities.
They have a lot of scenarios.
I don't know the stories.
I take images from our global imagination, from cliché, from things we are thinking about, from history.
And everybody's a narrator, because everybody has a story to tell.
But more important is everybody has to make a story to make sense of the world.
And in all these universes, it's like imagination is the vehicle to be transported with, but the destination is our minds and how we can reconnect with the essential and with the magic.
And it's what story cutting is all about.
(Applause)