The Confluence of Technology, Traditional Painting, and Interactive Art

A conversation at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club

In a rich conversation with Professor Hugh Leeman, author and new media artist Scott Snibbe shares the history of his pioneering use of new technology and his exploration of traditional art forms. In his latest work, Snibbe draws from centuries-old Tibetan thangka painting techniques he studied in Nepal, which inspired him to explore the intersections of digital media and ancient craftsmanship. At the confluence of technology, traditional painting, and interactive design, Snibbe creates participatory experiences that push the boundaries of contemporary art and invite audiences to engage with it in new and unexpected ways.

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hugh Leeman: Thank you to the Commonwealth Club for hosting this series for more than a year now that's brought together great thinkers, creators, and technologists alike to spark civic discourse around the big ideas that are having a massive impact on the social landscape.

Before bringing Scott on stage, I wanna give a bit of a context to the incredible career that he has had as an artist. Over the last nearly 30 years he has shown his artwork at leading institutions around the world. He's shown his artwork at New York MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the London Institute of Contemporary Art, the Tokyo Intercommunication Center, and the list goes on and on.

Beyond that, further testament to his creative prowess is his ability to collaborate across creative disciplines. He's collaborated with world renowned filmmaker James Cameron of Avatar and Aliens. He's collaborated with Björk, multi-platinum award-winning artist, on the first app album ever. He so too collaborated with Beck, who is a Grammy award-winning recording artist and composer Philip Glass.

More recently, he wrote a book in common language, introducing the lay audience to ideas and foundations of Buddhism and meditation. So approachable and so inspiring was the book that the Dalai Lama himself wrote the introduction to the book. Here tonight to tell us about these seemingly disparate ideas and pull those threads together for ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, with a round of applause, please welcome to the stage, Scott Snibbe. Thank you, Scott. Thank as yours.

Scott Snibbe: That is a very good introduction. I think it's better than my bio. Can you turn on the presentation? This is kind of a cute picture. I always love computers. I found this picture recently a friend of mine took that picture exactly 30 years ago.

It was the very first time that I showed my art publicly at a conference called Siggraph, Siggraph 1995 Computer Graphics Conference. And it surprisingly matches a picture taken last year of me working.

So why do I love computers? I think a lot of people hate computers now. And the reason I do is that I found a computer, especially computer programming, to be the closest thing I ever found to mind -to the way that the mind works.

It's invisible, it's immaterial, it's continuous, it's changing, it's interactive and has infinite possibilities. And I still feel that way despite how many bad deeds have been done by computers since then.

It's my 30 year anniversary of showing my first work publicly. So it's kind of neat to do this talk at that time.

I wish I had a picture of myself in 1980 with my first computer, an Apple II. But you know, people didn't take as many pictures back then.

This was that artwork that I showed. This was the first artwork that I showed. You can see that strapping young gentlemen. By the way, that's about $30,000 worth of equipment this is running on.

But this was the piece, it's called Motion phone. And this is what fascinated me from the beginning was the connection of the body to abstraction. And so this is a piece that takes the movements of your body and then turns it into abstract animation, abstract movement.

What I noticed in the computer, I was trying to figure out how you make art within the computer feel really alive. And one day I just started staring at my cursor and I realized, oh, that's it, that everybody moves in a unique and different and quite beautiful way. And so I made a piece that took some of my inspirations in abstract cinema and translated it to this instrument that's like jazz, where you can improvise abstract animation with other people.

It was networked also.

Once I showed my work in a gallery in a space, I really wanted the way that people interact with my work to move from just your fingertip to your whole body, to use your whole body. And this piece called Boundary Functions was that first installation.

This is 1998. A lot of people look at this and say, you couldn't do that back then.

So what this piece does is people walk onto a floor and it projects lines between them. And those lines have a very specific mathematical and natural relationship in that they encircle all of the space that's closer to you than to anybody else. And a really interesting thing about this artwork is- you see there's a person there and nothing happens If you go on the floor by yourself, nothing happens.

So it's a social work of art. There has to be more than one person for this to function. And in many ways it gets better the more people are there.

And what I was trying to show was the idea that we call that space around you your personal space, but you only have it when other people are around and it changes without your control.

And so I meant it to be, to point toward this idea of interdependence: that really the things that we think are our own are entirely dependent on others. Over the years- I'm just giving a very short overview of some of my work, before the series I'm talking about, but I was quite interested in these patterns and right after that I started making some kind of visual musical instruments.

This one was called the Bubble Harp. It was very influenced by John Cage, Brian Eno's tape loop experiments, the idea of generative music that comes from the body and the laws of nature.

(This I just recorded this afternoon, by the way, just off the screen.)

So it draws that same diagram around the points that come out of your body as you move the mouse. And then it plays a note proportional to the length of the line that's formed.

And then also recently, this is just work i'm working on in my studio right now. Now it's possible to make these pieces large and social.

So that's just me and my wife in the studio working with a large scale version of this. The other thing Hugh alluded to, another part of the work that I've been privileged to be involved in, was looking at the app as an artistic medium.

There was one with Björk that's well known. This one's a little bit less well known, but it was with Philip Glass and Beck. And with this one was more a kind of music visualization, you know, how does music relate to the body? Well, you use your body to create music.

You know, music is a vibration. So really it's actually another form of movement. And so this piece both moves to the music and to your body as you touch these pieces.

So a lot of my work, even before I was Buddhist, I became a Buddhist 25 years ago. But even before then, you saw with Boundary Functions I was working with one of the most central ideas of Buddhism, which they call emptiness, but really is more easily described as interdependence: that everything, the things we think are our own, are actually completely intertwined with others.

And so, this is Buddhist art. This is the type of art that we use in our meditation practice. This is an image called a thangka painting of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, who lived 2,500 years ago. This is a very powerful body, an enlightened body, a body that has completely realized the potential of what it is to be a human being, a living being.

And something about this tradition that's really interesting is that it aligned what I always was trying to do with my interactive work, which is that the tradition of devotional Buddhist art was also primarily to evoke an experience in the viewer rather than necessarily to convey historical, cultural, even religious information.

The purpose is actually to make you have some experience in your mind that brings it to its better qualities: generosity, patience, kindness, and so on. It's about a thousand year old living tradition of painting that's still going on in Nepal, Tibet, so on.

And so I started studying this painting just as a way to get closer to the images. Anyone who's an artist, or who's drawn, knows that once you've drawn something, you understand it a lot better. It becomes part of you.

And so I studied thangka painting with someone named Tsherin Sherpa, who became a very well-known contemporary artist. But at the time he was a young thangka painter just teaching Buddhists how to paint and selling beautiful thangkas.

And so the very first thing I learned when I studied with him is that before you draw one of these images and then paint on top of it, you create a grid. The grid has very specific proportions. And they're different for every single figure. They're different for each of the- we call them deities- but really they're like people who became enlightened, enlightened beings. They're not like gods the way we think in western religion.

And so I always thought I would love to do something with that geometry. And a couple years ago, actually thanks to Jim Campbell, who's here, a friend of mine, we're in an art group together. He actually was encouraging me to do something very different.

I was talking about some new work, it was going to be kind of derivative, and he's like, no, try something really original. And so then I thought, oh, it's time to come back to these grids.

And so I started out in the computer, which is where I usually work, and I took that grid, like on the left is how the grid normally appears when you draw it. And I started trying to stretch it out so that it filled a rectangle and worked as an abstract composition. And so I did that also with a couple of different of these enlightened beings.

This is Tara, who's the deity of female power.

But very quickly I wanted to get out of the computer. I wanted to get back to natural materials, techniques using my body, much more of my body than my finger clicking the mouse.

And so I started making drawings and I took the same proportions and laid them out on clay. I decided to use the oldest types of materials. I really like this clay board as a material because it just comes out of a riverbed.

So I drew the diagrams on clay with ink. And then gradually I kept working on the software. This was the first finished piece, where what I'm doing is I'm taking that diagram and then filtering the colors of a very low-resolution sampled thangka through it.

What I was trying to do in this was convey what my meditation teacher taught me. Because they tell you, visualize that Buddha very precisely over your head. Every single detail they say, like every single hair of the Buddhist's head is turning to the right and so on. There's all these incredibly fine details.

But for someone like me, and most of us, what we see is something very vague, very amorphous. And my teacher said, that's perfectly fine. Because what you want is the feeling. You want to have the feeling of what that being you're envisioning evokes.

So I wanted to evoke that dynamic experience in your mind of the imperfect yogi meditating: something that's dynamic, something that's imperfect, and also something that conveys- there's an idea in Vajrayana Buddhism that there are these three bodies that are involved with these type of enlightened beings, and also with ourselves.

The first body is your mind. It's a completely immaterial body, that world of ideas and thoughts. The other body is your physical body, you know, matter. The third one is the one that connects them. We have a term for it called Sambhogakaya, which you don't need to remember. But that's the energy body, that's the body that connects the mind to the physical body.

And that body comes out in our speech, just like I'm speaking right now. It comes out in creativity. It comes out in music, in exercise, in sensuality.

And so that's what I was trying to convey in these pieces is that kind of dynamic process of mind to body that you get as a meditator.

 this is where I'm taking a thangka and then sampling it at a low resolution.

The first one I did was sort of handmade. I worked through a program called Blender, a free three, a 3D program. And I made this mapping where every pixel kind of has a different point of view, just like our own consciousness. They don't just nail straight down into the center of where they're sampling from, but they're all scattered around the surface.

I've made a few and I'll continue to make pieces in that series.

But I was happy enough with those that I went on to write my own program. I took that algorithm that I was just doing in my mind, and then I applied it in software to make my own program I call Buddha Grids.

This was the first one: a piece called Protector of the World. This one's particularly special because my wife's stepmother was instrumental in helping to resettle Tibetans in Minneapolis. She died 10 years ago. And at her memorial there was a Tibetan gentleman who gave a thangka of White Tara to my father-in-law- who's here.

That was a tribute to her compassion. I wanted to make this piece particularly in her honor. So I sampled that particular thangka and that is the basis for this one.

This is another one. You see, there's a lot of variation in how the sampling works. This one is much softer than some of the others you saw.

This is a lot closer to what I actually experienced in meditation myself. And then there's a lot of different variations on these as I sample different thangkas. The one in the middle in particular is where you sample a very large region and you get this kind of self similarity.

That relates a little bit, if anyone has heard this idea of Indra's net, which is a Hindu idea that the universe is made up of these individual points where each one is like a reflection of everything, where every point in the universe reflects everything else in the universe, which is actually how the universe works. Every point in the universe does feel the influence of every other point in the universe.

This is that program. I recorded this this afternoon just to show. Because this whole series is about process, i'd like to show my own process too. So this is the program that I use where you can offset the pieces. Then I can paint, you know, because actually it doesn't look that good like that. I actually have to hand adjust each one within the rules to make something that has those illusions of transparency and so on.

And if you go down to a point, you get flat imagery, which I don't find that pleasing. And then if you zoom way, way out, you get that Hindu idea of Indra's net. Also, the idea of a universe in every atom is a Buddhist way of saying it, that you find the universe in every atom is a beautiful quote from a text called The King of Prayers.

These are some of the pieces that are dynamic pieces mounted on the wall. That's a large screen that's framed like a painting. And each one is supposed to convey a specific type of meditation.

This one is a type of meditation kind of like mindfulness meditation, that people are familiar with, where you have focused, short two minute sessions.

This loop goes in about two minutes to strengthen your concentration. So this piece is kind of about concentration and the whole sequence repeats after two hours, which is about the duration of a session in retreat also.

This one, Conveying a totally different type of meditation, a type of meditation we call analytical meditation. So this is a type of meditation where you don't try to just focus on your breath, but you actually watch your thoughts as they come and go. And so I was trying to convey that with this piece as you gain a little distance in your mind, but you watch the thoughts as they pass through it.

Anyway, these all, they're meant actually that you can watch these for hours, but not today.

So the whole time, since 22 years ago, I really wanted to work with the original materials. You know, it's one of the oldest forms of painting that uses ground mineral pigments and glues that come from animal hides.

And I asked Tsherin Sherpa at that time whether I could do that, and he said, oh, no. He said, I only have enough materials for one lifetime, which I really like. For people who believe in multiple lifetimes, they talk about this one lifetime.

So I kind of gave up on it.

But then a friend of mine, a Japanese artist friend named Craig Nagasawa said, oh no, you can get them in Tokyo.

So there's the store. If you're ever in Tokyo, this is a very nice store to go to. Even if you're not an artist, it just feels amazing to go. I took that picture myself actually there. And so I ordered some pigments from this store. I was like, oh, great, I can start working with them.

So, I tried working on with them myself. this is a picture of me with a friend of mine named Raju Yonjan, who runs a studio in Nepal. I had commissioned some paintings from him and he came to visit me in Berkeley and I was working- I only show a little bit of this painting I made- and he kind of laughed at my painting and he said, you're never gonna figure this out on your own. But he said, come study with the masters at my studio in Nepal and we'll teach you how to do it.

So he runs a studio called Enlightenment Studio. What a nice name for an art studio. He's also a very deep Buddhist practitioner. I gave him a copy of my book. And so they invited me to Nepal and I had to take up that opportunity. That seemed like an extraordinary chance. This was last October.

So I went for a couple of weeks and I learned. On the left is the technique of preparing the canvas: one day learning how to prepare canvases with a very special stone from a special river. And specific techniques. It's more like a drum, you know, the way the canvas is stretched than the way we stretch them in the west.

And then I learned from the master painters, shaders, and so on.

And so this was the first painting I completed there that was based in all of the shading and the color from my algorithms, but executed by hand.

It's nice to see these in person because animal glue is very unique, medium because it pulls behind the pigment as it dries. It's the only medium where the pigment stays right on top of the canvas.

And you see like the atoms. That's what's so wonderful about it, is you're literally just seeing the atoms, the molecules, directly, of the pigment. It's very, very beautiful.

So I came back and I started working in my studio. This is the first one I completed late last year in my studio.

And something you can see here is that all those little marks around the edges, that's where you test the colors of the painting because. Because you're working with different natural pigments, sometimes they dry darker, sometimes they dry lighter. You can't predict it. And then when you mix them, forget about it.

So you have to test every color there. And when I mounted the pieces, I worked with a great studio in San Francisco called Small Works. They framed the first one like this because I wanted to preserve the marks on the side because the whole series is about process.

I actually ran the idea by my friends in Nepal and they said, oh, that's very nice if you leave the marks on the sides because the marks convey the "thoughts and feelings of the artist." They said that was in the tradition of the lineage.

To end, I just want to show you this last piece. This one I just finished a couple of weeks ago. This is based on that White Tara deity. This piece is very unique compared to the others because there's no repeat period.

What I did is I tied the piece to the rotation of the earth. So so when I turn it on, I never know what it's going to look like. This is actually a recording, but when we switch back to that one that's actually running off a computer here, you can switch it back if you like, actually and leave that up while we have our conversation.

And that one is, is kind of more like, in some ways when your meditation meets the world, you know, because your meditation's not meant to stay on the cushion. It's meant to come out with you to influence how you behave in the real world. This one's unpredictable.

So now we have a conversation with you, which I'm really looking forward to.

Thank you.

Hugh Leeman: So one of the things you, you just said that really stuck out to me is this is about process. And I think if we contrast that with some of what the world, if you stand back and look at the world and you say, okay, the world is very focused, if not obsessed with efficiency. And this idea of inefficiency then gets equated as a pejorative that if you're inefficient, this is bad.

But yet here you are, you go to Nepal, into the mountains to learn this practice, to learn this process. You're using a specific rock from the river. You're buying your pigments, you're grinding them by hand. I'm at your studio and I'm like, oh my God, I don't even want to be around these pigments because they could be toxic.

And you're going through all of this just so you can make these incredible things that could be made much more efficiently and marrying that process with what you just said about the importance of process. Clearly you find value in inefficiency in this. What can you tell the world about what is the value in inefficiency?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, the best things in life are inefficient. Like, would you like to have your dinner in one minute? Some people do. You know, there's this thing called Soylent, they invented about 10 years ago for people like hyper-efficient computer programmers. It's just like this gross white liquid. It's amazing people even pay for it. And they just sit there and just drink it and then keep programming.

No. You want your meal to last as long as possible and enjoy it. Do you want our conversation to be over as quickly as possible? Do you want your doctor to be efficient? Sadly, sometimes your doctor is very efficient and that is not very nice at all, is it?

So really we want, the inefficient things in life are the very best ones, right?

Hugh Leeman: Yeah. I think that there's something really fascinating about the interactivity in your work. If we go back 25, almost 30 years to this first work that you showed us this evening, one of the through lines, it's this sort of connective tissue, is this idea of interactivity.

And historically art in the Western canon has been a relatively static experience. I stand in front of a Michelangelo and I look at it and I think something, I feel something, or I do or I don't, and I walk away and that's it.

But you have really been dedicated to this idea of interactivity. What is the value that you find in interactivity for 21st century audience, audiences in the art world and in technology?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, the reason I wanted to make interactive art was actually realizing that all of our experience in life is interactive. You know, when we look at something- like when you're looking at a painting- there's no red in that painting. There's no texture in that painting. If you listen to a song, there's no sound in the music.

All of those are psychological phenomena. Everything. Our process right now, you know, of speaking, this is just vibrating, vibrating air is silent, but somehow it turns on to sound in our minds.

I was raised a Christian scientist, which is a very long story that we don't have to get into, but that religion says there's only mind.

And so I was raised with this idea, so naturally, it was easy to think that way, but I really wanted to share that idea with other people through my art that everything is constructed, you know, everything is constructed in our mind, psychologically, interactively, in real time. So really all art is interactive.

And it's so beautiful the way it's interactive. Nobody sees the same painting.

But by making actual interactive art, you make that very obvious, because the art's not even there until you engage with it. Like there's nothing, literally nothing there until you touch it, until you move in it and so on.

So that was the motivation. It's also just delightful. Like when you're doing things, when you're doing, you're generally not thinking. And I mean that in a good way, that actually you're present, you're engaged. And so I wanted to make art that was a total experience. And some people have that, of course, sitting in front of a painting.

But you know, people are distracted. Media has gotten very, very stimulating. So interactive art does have that way of being able to capture all your attention because it's novel, it's engaging, it's interactive in the way human beings are.

Hugh Leeman: Going to this idea of interaction, and not just with your artwork specifically, but we touch on the idea of your collaborations with multiple artists across different disciplines.

When you're going into those interactions, bringing in some of the concepts that I'm pulling from your book on the sense of self and Buddhism in a sort of leaving the self behind, if you will.

How do you go into these collaborations with some of these people and come out with something that's not me layering something on top of what you think you are and creating almost like this chimera, and you've created something incredibly beautiful.

How do you go into those and sort of put aside, I'm Scott Snibbe and I'm here to, to actually bring something new into this world that's not just my thought and how we should do this?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, I've thought about that a lot and then I've been part of collaborations, including with Björk, with someone who is a much stronger artist than I am.

So, one thing I think about collaborations, is that it's actually important for one person to be in charge, to be honest. And then that person should be very, very generous and patient and kind. And so I wanted to learn from Björk in particular how to collaborate. because all of her collaborations turn out better than the two of them combined.

You know, like she works with Lars von Trier and makes the best movie he ever made. So, I watched her really closely how she collaborates. And what I noticed is that she's very, very gentle, but always in charge.

And so I would show her something and sometimes she'd say, oh, beautiful. And her instructions were often, just do something great, you know?

And then I'd show her something and sometimes she'd say, "Oh, great." And then other times she'd say, "Hmm, let me think about that." And it took me a little while to realize, "Let me think about that." meant Hell no.

But, you know, being kind, like in Buddhism, being kind is the second pillar of ethics.

Not too many people talk about that These days. But it's particularly effective actually in getting things done . It's not just for kind of wimps or something. It's actually very effective in getting things done in the world, to be kind.

Hugh Leeman: This idea of kindness, let's go back to the first work you showed us this evening where you said, look, the piece hasn't really come into existence until someone else comes in, and then we start to see the self. And it's the division of space.

This was before, if I'm correct here, before you began to dig into ideas of Buddhism and meditation. Was there already some thinking on this? Because it seems incredibly coincidental, for lack of a better term. How did that come into being that you're thinking about this sense of self and the sense of our relationship to others once they're around us and this sense of self changes.

Scott Snibbe: I was just talking to Greg Niemeyer here, a professor at U.C. Berkeley, and I was just talking to his students about this. I'm lucky because my parents taught me to really trust your intuition. And if you love something, if something speaks to you don't really bother asking why, just continue with it.

So I saw those diagrams. I studied computer science. I got a computer science degree. I got a computer science master's degree. I hated studying computer science. It was awful. But I knew I wanted to program to make my art. And the only class I liked was computational geometry, where we learned that, how to do that diagram.

And I just found that diagram mind blowing for its mathematics and that it just resonated somehow. And then I realized, oh, it's cells, it's bubbles, dogs pee in those patterns, stars exert their gravitational attraction in those patterns. I thought, wow, this is something, the invisible aspects of reality are so profound. And if you can make them visible, there's so much truth to that diagram.

And so I just wanted to overlay that onto people because it relates to personal space; and in some ways see what happened. I wasn't really sure how people would behave or whether they would "get it." Or whether I would get it.

You know, my friend John Simon Jr. Is also a digital artist. I went to visit him recently, and he really emphasizes looking back at your work and reinterpreting it: that you learn from your own work.

And I did do that with that piece. Over time, I learned more and more about the piece by seeing other people interact with it. So. I think letting go of certainty. Like, embrace your passion and fascination, but let go of any certainty or even any ideas about what the work's about and let it unfold gradually. Time a really important ingredient in making anything good, I think.

Hugh Leeman: Two things. One, I want to come back to the idea of time: as it relates to what we're looking at here, but perhaps more importantly, this idea of reinterpreting. You go back to that very first piece. You've had this phenomenal career, 30 years of evolution with your own artwork. But clearly the technology has profoundly evolved over that same period of time when you, now, the person I'm sitting here with now looks back on that and the entirety of that career.

You said it was 30 years then that very first image you showed us. How do you see the evolution of your artwork and perhaps the role of the artist in the world today, and maybe more particularly you? How do you see Scott Snibbe's role today as an artist in this world?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, in the early days, just like the level of joy and enthusiasm, and also of being part of an in-crowd, kind of like the Dadaists at Cafe Voltaire, things like that. There were these tiny moments when a few people get together just when something is possible: surrealism, cubism, whatever.

And so part of it was like that, you know? So, that time's over, obviously. Those things go by very fast. But there was a time when the medium was evolving, the technology, projection art. I started doing it just when it was possible. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

So I think that time's over, obviously.

Also, when you turned on a computer, when I had my computer as a kid. It's very expensive. It would cost $10,000 now, a computer that was $3,000 in 1980. And then you turn it on and it's just a black screen with a flashing box. It doesn't do anything. And then it comes with a manual that teaches you how to program. That time's over too.

So, so that was a beautiful time. It was just the blank canvas, the discovery time. I mean, now we're in an era where it's kind of the opposite, where everybody thinks they know what computers are for. Oh, they're for social media, they're for getting your work done, they're for watching movies, for pornography, whatever.

I think to come back to that, that is certainly the purpose of my work, other people like Jim, anyone working with technological art is to open up people again and say, "No, this is a blank canvas and we're still at the very beginning." Like, what is possible? That's a blank canvas that has an infinite power of computation behind it in every color, almost infinite resolution.

So I think to come back to that for anybody, even if you're not an artist, and realize anything is possible on a computer screen, anything is possible with your phone. And there are some really awfully strong forces by billion dollar companies trying to tell you what the computer's about. But to try to open up your mind. And also use it for good, use it for what you find meaningful in life and try to really resist the patterns that have been pushed upon you by people who have an agenda for you to spend your time in a certain way.

We don't have to talk that much about that. I think you have a lot of programs about that here.

Hugh Leeman: Indeed, yeah.

Rotation of the earth. This is something that you spoke of regarding the piece that we're seeing on the screens to you and I's left and right, right now. And you know, just to reiterate, this is not a video, this is not a recording.

This is something that's connected to real time. Going back to my first question and the answer you gave, which is fantastic, this importance of inefficiency and the idea that you don't want them to be able to last one moment. And you could have made this where it was a video loop and it could have been a lot easier to do things in that way.

What is the importance of time as it relates to the rotation of the earth and it being pulled into this technological artwork that you've created?

Scott Snibbe: In some ways, i'm still kind of figuring that out, but it's really that it's more alive. You know, it's questionable whether time really exists, which we don't have to talk a lot about, but there's a great book by Carlo Rovelli called The Order of Time, and he said, even from a physics perspective, like Newton's idea of a linear time doesn't exist according to everything we know about physics.

But there is greater and lesser complexity. And so that's he they says, time is, is just the movement from greater complexity to less complex, kind of like a draining of complexity, some variant.

This is a high complexity situation we're in right now. And time moves faster when more interesting things are happening. Carlo Rovelli even says in interstellar space, time actually doesn't advance; that the way physics understands it, time's not advancing where nothing's happening.

So I just wanted to make something that ties more to the universe; and also to surprise, you know, that's what I notice whenever I turn that piece on is like, I'm surprised, because it's doing something I haven't seen before.

And so, I think it's closer to something that's alive on its own than any other work that I've done so far. Because my other work really demanded participation. This obviously isn't interactive, but it's interacting with the earth and with the progression of time. So yeah, I think surprise and connection, more connection to the universe.

Hugh Leeman: That idea of connection to the universe. So that's a macro perspective and we pull it way down to a micro perspective. The connection to the self. You know, preparing for you and I's discussion this evening, one of the things that you spoke about in a previous interview was introspective awareness.

And this is relational to some of the previous artworks that you've made. I think that's a beautiful idea, but it doesn't seem to be very common in general, frankly, but particularly in the tech world and the development of technological tools and the development of many of the things that we're seeing take place right now.

What might the world look like if that concept of introspective awareness was incorporated more into technology, more into creative practices?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, it would be a world where people were better connected to themselves. You know, that's where happiness comes from, is being connected to yourself, liking yourself, being your own best friend.

Introspective awareness, it's just the first path into a journey that's limitless in terms of figuring out how awesome it is just to be alive and to be yourself, and then, not to mention, to interact with everybody else and have all these beautiful relationships. Even difficult ones, start to look beautiful.

So that's what it would look like. You would have people not bombing Iran and fighting with one another, calling each other idiots, or making harmful products. I am a Buddhist, right? So in a Buddhist center, when we have a meeting, right before we have a meeting, we motivate and we say, "May this meeting benefit others."

I've worked at, you know, some major tech corporations. If they had that rule. If, before every meeting we said, "May our work benefit others," just that one sentence. I don't think people are so cynical that they could have made some of the decisions they made otherwise.

So I don't think it's that much. My daughter just got a Apple Watch and it has a mindful minute on it, which is actually really nice. She, she told me the other day, she's like, "I think I'm gonna take a mindful minute."

You know, so that's fantastic. Beautiful. So companies are trying. You know, they're not all evil. Apple did that, right? It's built into the product. But it's a tiny part. It should be obviously the most of the product. The product should tell you to put it down. You know, it's like, "Hey, leave me alone for the rest of the day. Go, go have some fun in the park."

Hugh Leeman: The idea that I really want to focus in on as we start moving towards some of the questions from the audience. And if you have not yet, it would be wonderful to have you start writing some of these questions down.

I am going through your podcast and I'm listening to interviews where you were conducting the interview, and then I stumbled upon one with someone who's really been inspiring to me as a world renowned artist, Laurie Anderson. I was like, Oh, wow, he did an interview with Laurie Anderson.

And I dig a little bit deeper and I find that there was you and she sitting down talking about your book and when the two of you, I believe it was taking place in New York, and you said it was really this moving conversation and indeed it was. The two of you were having this conversation and you begin to tell Laurie Anderson some of the most impactful books and experiences and artworks and ideas. I really think I can distill them into just one or two sentences.

Scott Snibbe: Oh, yes, she did that, yeah.

Hugh Leeman: And then you speak about how, "Oh, I've done something similar to this and my book," and you spoke about some of your mentors and how you cite them or quote them in your book.

So taking that concept of the distillation process, in this pure sense, this distillation process and say, Hey, what are the couple of sentences that you would like for us to know about what your artwork has meant to you?

Scott Snibbe: That's a hard one. You know, I actually had trouble when I talked to certain people in the art world because... You know, I interviewed for a job at U.C. Berkeley a long time ago. I think Greg, were you there when it happened? I think so, yeah. And I was a finalist for the job as a professor, but I didn't end up getting the job.

And I think this is why, because we had a meeting, a lunch, and one of the guys on the committee was kind of grilling me. He's like, "I don't understand your ideology, like what's your framework?" He's like, "Are you like Marxist or are you like..." And I said, "I'm Buddhist." I was like, I want my work to benefit others. That's the purpose of everything I do. As a Mahayana Buddhist, I just want my work to benefit others and to bring about joy in the world.

And that wasn't a satisfying answer for him, and I didn't get the job. At least that's what I like to say. I mean, there's probably some other factors, but that's what I like to say. It makes a good story.

But that's what I would still say today. May my work benefit others, all of us. If you think that when you wake up in the morning, may, whatever I do today benefit others, what a better day you have. Right?

Hugh Leeman: Yeah. That's beautiful.

Gerald has some questions from the audience. Oh yeah, Gerald.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Lemme get this first one 'cause it's one that's in the back of my mind as well. When you were describing your first interactive work, you mentioned it was like jazz.

Can you say more about the relationship of jazz improvisation and interactive art?

Scott Snibbe: Oh, sure. Yeah. I'm a big jazz fan. I actually play jazz flute myself, which I just watched Anchorman, and they really made fun of that, kinda made me sad. But I mean, jazz in some ways is like the very highest form of musicianship because it's so technically unbelievable. Like it's technically impossible, like almost impossible.

And yet, the way that it involves thought and openness, you know the way it's supposed to. I mean, today people will memorize the solos and stuff, but the way you're supposed to do it is you totally internalize it. It's like in Buddhism, they have this wonderful saying, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."

It comes from a Donovan song too, if any of who ever heard it? It's like "first there is a mountain then..." I heard it when I was a kid. It's a very deep teaching in Buddhism, because first you just see the mountain there, then you study for a while. You're like, oh, you think you got it? You're like, oh, there's no mountain. Then you realize there is a mountain, but it's different than what you thought the mountain was, which would take a long time to talk about. And really you just have to experience.

But that's jazz. Any good jazz musician is on that third stage, they've totally digested the technique of music. Then they let it go. They don't even have to think about it. And then they get in there and really live spontaneously, continuously. So that's what that piece was like, and some of the others are meant to be, it's like a continuous experience. It's always different. And there's a certain mastery behind it, that underlies it.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Yeah. And that gets to my question related to your question. Miles Davis has a piece called Kind of Blue, and he chose this color blue, right? So when I saw your artwork with the music and the thing changing. I was thinking, well, wouldn't it be a great experience that, as you're listening to music, is simultaneously seeing a visual, you know, reaction, manifestation of the music as a joint thing? Have you ever thought about putting those two together? That the average consumer can just have one at home?

Scott Snibbe: Well, you know, that's music visualization and lots of people do that. And I did it with a number of other collaborators: with the Björk app, with that Beck, Philip Glass app. That's all dynamic. All of that is dynamically generated. It's a little bit different as it as it evolves.

So yeah, there's a big history of that as an art. There used to be something, I forget, Tim probably remembers what was that thing on the PC that had all those music visualizers built into it in the nineties?

Winamp. Yeah, it was called Winamp. So it was this thing that anyone could write a plugin for. It never got super popular, but there is a kind of scene, and VJ's, you know, people who do it constantly. Go to clubs in San Francisco, people still do it.

Scott Draves, a friend of mine is really good at that. So yeah, there's a whole subculture of that.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Here's another question: What is the equivalent of a paint test on the margins in code, and how could one manifest that in a screen-based work?

Scott Snibbe: These are really good questions. That's great. You know what that is, is all the intermediate results. When you're working on a program, you make a lot of mistakes. And the mistakes are often the best part. I would often save that version of the program somewhere because I liked the mistake. Or sometimes the mistakes inspire you to do something.

 I'm sure Jim has had this experience inspire you to do something completely different. So I think the analog is, for anyone who does do programming, especially as an art form, I think that a good tip is be very awake to the mistakes. Something you think is a mistake might be better than what you had planned to do.

Gerald Anthony Harris: But you think you can code it some kind of way or...?

Scott Snibbe: Well, it just comes naturally because you don't code perfectly. So as you're making the code, you're like off by one, for example, in connecting the lines. So instead of getting just this perfect grid, you get this thing that's scrambled, that looks gorgeous, and then you save that as something else.

Gerald Anthony Harris: One last question. This is, for me, it's about children, right? So when I saw the children on the big floor piece you had there and they were moving around and stuff, what should we be doing with all of this to help out children live more fun, more beautiful lives?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, ironically, it's actually just not being around technology. You know, the best thing you can do for your kids is to bring them out into nature, and to do things that are hard. Like we're going to Desolation Wilderness. You know, when we go into the wilderness, you have to bring like a hundred tiny things to make sure you survive. And there's gonna be a lot of mosquitoes. And it's amazing. It's the greatest thing you ever did in your life to see what life was like 30,000 years ago. That's what it's like if you go out there to immigrant wilderness desolation. So ironically, I think, you know, to be honest, the more time kids spend in nature without any devices, the better.

Gerald Anthony Harris: But you don't think they can still play with the devices and have fun?

Scott Snibbe: Oh, of course they can. In measure, in a measured way. What we tried to teach our daughter, my daughter's here, our 14-year-old daughter, is that technology's fantastic— as a tool— it's your tool to make things and to learn things. That's what technology's for. It's not to consume. Consumption is very, very limited. And ideally learning. If you're consuming, you should be learning something. You should be learning something you want to know, or something interesting about the world, or science, or something like that. But primarily to use technology for creating and learning, communicating a little bit too, but that we see, even that becomes a problem.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Great. I'll leave it to you to close and thank you so much. We have one. Oh yeah. One, one more. Okay. Why don't you read it? We'll allow you to read it.

Audience: Yeah. I can't read my writing. Oh. Um, how does your work intertwine with the young people in your life? I saw your daughter name.

Gerald Anthony Harris: How does your work intertwine with young people here?

Scott Snibbe: Well, I mean, my daughter's my biggest fan. She gives me a lot of ideas. I don't know, you know, a lot of my work was in science museums also. In fact, I just got an email today from one with a 20-year-old art Bound Functions. They have it in Germany in this beautiful Zaha Hadid building, and they'd like to get it working again.

So yeah, children do love this type of work because it's very odd for a child to have something not be interactive. You know, we evolved to be interactive, the world's interactive, so it's very strange for children when things aren't interactive. I, I had a piece at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts once about breath that I didn't show tonight.

And as part of it, we went to a high school in San Francisco and had a conversation. And it's hard. High school students are a really hard audience, you know, so to warm them up, we asked this question, what is sculpture?

One kid lifts his hand. Okay. What is sculpture? He says, "It's something you could touch if the guards would let you."

So I think that's the thing for kids, you know, you need to be able to touch things. My daughter's so frustrated when she can't touch things. But I don't know. I'm lucky to have a wonderful creative daughter.

Hugh Leeman: Yeah, I think she, you have a question?

Gerald Anthony Harris: We got one last question in the back too.

What's the difference or is there a difference between an art practice, spiritual practice, body practice? Just to define the value system of spirituality.

Scott Snibbe: I mean, that's a really, really big question. I mean, again, I think the point of all of those things is to connect with yourself, right? And it's the thing again that technology today just destroys is your ability to connect with yourself. So I think that's the commonality. They're all that middle body I was talking about, like that energy body right there.

I mean, you used to put the body at the end, but when you're connecting with your body, like most of what I do now is teaching meditation and so on. And people are like, what's the one thing? You know, I wrote a book like that and people say, what's the one? Everyone wants to distill it. What's the one thing?

But I will say the one thing, which is that when you wake up in the morning, don't touch your phone. When you wake up, do anything to connect with yourself. And so all of those things are good examples of way to do that. Do something with your body, you know, stretching, exercise, yoga, do something with art: draw, write, but just write whatever comes to your mind. Don't worry about punctuation. It's amazing what comes out. Or, what was the last one? Art, body, art, spirituality, or meditate, or pray, or your spiritual practice.

If you do any of those things for five minutes, just five minutes, first thing in the morning, you'll have a much better day, like a fantastic day. You know, the way you begin something, if you notice, it really affects the way the whole thing goes.

Like if you're doing a drawing, if you ever did a collaborative drawing, you notice the person who made the first mark really defines the whole image.

So the first thing you do in the day totally defines the way your day is going to live out. So do anything to connect with yourself. It's a great question. All three of those things are really good ways to connect with yourself.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Okay, here's our last question. How do you fund your creative projects?

Scott Snibbe: I'll tell you what I tell art students over the years, you don't make money as an artist. You lose money as an artist. Look at musicians, right? They do a gig and it costs them like 200 bucks and they get some free beers. So I think it's really important to say, and I know very successful artists who continue to lose money. You don't make money as an artist. So somehow you have to find a way.

What I would say is, marry well is one way, honestly. No, I know many people like that. Have another job, often a professor or teacher. Or be wealthy in the first place. I mean, you'll know it, you'll know if you are. but in history, that's how it works, right?

Like, why did all these wealthy people, why, why was the Marie Cassat or whatever? Why, why? Well, they had the chance. It's a great privilege to be wealthy. And if you're a wealthy person here, if you're a wealthy person listening, make the most of your life. You know, don't waste it on, you know, a silly wedding like Jeff Bezos is having where he is in a big bubble bath with his girlfriend while they're bombing Iran.

You know, we don't have to do those things. Like make your life really meaningful and purposeful every day. Like, how can I make this life of benefit to others? How can I make it meaningful before I die? I'm going to die. How would I like to feel about my life on my deathbed?

Like, is he gonna look back? Ooh, that bubble bath. That was really the highlight on my life. No. He'll probably be like, well, you know, I wish I had done some more. Maybe I should have done... what happens when I die? Where am I going? What comes next? You know, you need to spend some time on the spiritual aspects of life. Sorry.

Hugh Leeman: I think this is wonderful. Before we sign off for the evening, we're all gonna go over here and continue this conversation in the library. Where can people learn more? Because you do so much between the book, your art, your teaching, and your podcast. Can you share some of that this evening so that people continue to listen and learn from you? You have so much to share.

Scott Snibbe: Oh. Just like where are those things? The book is called How to Train A Happy Mind and you can get it anywhere. The podcast is the same name now, and we meet every Sunday at 9:00 a.m. live on Zoom. If you want to meditate together, free or by donation. That's a nice, a nice community. And you know, I have a mailing list. Snibbe is my last name. It's quite unique, so snibbe.com - it's okay to laugh at it. One of my friends said it's like an expletive, it's a word you want to yell at the top of your lungs, Snibbe! So you can remember that: snibbe.com.

Hugh Leeman: Scott, thank you. It's beautiful to see your work and to see you doing things from such a positive perspective. It's not such an obsessively "me first" trying to extract, it's really contributing.

And going back to what you said, my goal in many ways is to bring joy to people. You've done that for myself. Thank you very much. I appreciate you.

Scott Snibbe: Likewise.

Hugh Leeman: Thank you all very much.