Non-Material Categories

Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, going through a long list of Ted talks to get podcasts for a 4.5 hour drive. So many of these talks were about science, engineering, technologies. I was seeing the main categories: technology, entertainment, design, business, science, global issues. I was in the mood for the non-material. Why weren't there categories like Nature, Spirituality, The Quantum, or Feelings? I wanted to hear talks about curiosity, playfulness, discovery, creativity, shifting paradigms or awe. There were some, and I was excited to download those.  It reminded me how I feel tired of the admiration of "being smart" and our obsession with the directly measurable and observable.  I chuckle when I hear  parents brag about how their kids can already read, or they can do addition, oh so young. I wonder how is the child relating to her environment and to others? Is she learning to love herself and all her own emotions and thoughts? Is she being encouraged to explore and express her emotions, ideas and  natural talents in a self-sourced inspired way that is not dictated by the connstructs of a book or a computer game? Are her/his emotions, desires, expressions, curiosites being acknowledged and reflected so she learns more deeply who s/he is?

Now I just looked at Ted Talks again and there are some amazing new talks listed: "The Surprising Need for Strangeness" (Can't Wait to Hear that!), How to Escape Education's Death Valley" (Could be Good), "The Why and How of Effective Altruism" (I heard it, I liked it!), "Every Kid Needs a Champion" (I need one too, I will watch it!).

I guess the categories they use are symbolic of a mindset and it it interesting that many of the talks they host don't actually fit into those categories they have created. Fascinating. The speakers are sort of ahead of the time... their time, Ted website's time. 

Here is a quote.

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

 

What does it say, that the categories are old 1984-oriented ideas, and not actually accomodating what the talks are actually about?  This may seem so minor and miniscule, but it is interesting to me to think about slow adoption of the accelerating changes in how people are thinking.  

Soil Landscape Art to Radiolab

I wrote a letter to Radiolab the other day... they wrote back saying the idea of patterns in nature is a good one and that the idea would be forwarded on. It was from a nice intern.  Here is my letter:

Hello RadioLab!

I am a spatial analyst, water science communicator, crafter, puppeteer and wetlands soils naturalist that has discovered amazing beauty in soil patterns at large spatial scales, by adding color and combining 2-dimensional layers of land descriptors in my computer system.

I can envision these beautiful images hanging in a big office lobby in San Francisco or Portland... or lined along a wall of my local organic-foods restaurant. I have made art with nature! But across many miles.

I realize: the mesmerizing patterns that I often notice in decaying leaves or on the tummies of turtles, are as beautiful across a watershed or several counties, knowable with color-coded aspects of soils; recognizable when looking at maps of patterns of characteristics of something that is under us all the time, though covered by lawn, pavement or forest. And the two must be related - patterns of the small with the patterns of the land. Is there a law about this, or just intuition?

It is fun to picture, the lone tawny soil scientist, who, maybe in the 1950s, worked days on end, traveling a region - auger in hand - to map what was under us: how fast it drained, the colors of the layers, the minerals and organics making up the soil. Who would have guessed that their interpolated curves and polygons would have yielded such colorable muralable art that speaks to my deep sense of natural harmony that I feel when I see so many patterns in life, that we emulate in on our socks, wallpapers and upholstery? Maybe my socks don’t have a river running through them as you see in these images attached.

I want to attract someone to the art of the image and when they are admiring the red-brown serpentine shapes, tell them about the ancient trace of a river that has disappeared.

I wrote to you because I think of you as someone who appreciates how science has so much art in it, especially in the form of patterns. Let me know if we can make a show about something like this. Or maybe you know of a site/community that would be into these kinds of images and linkages and the amazingness of patterns in nature at lots of scales.

Much admiration for your ideas and expression,

Kathleen McKee