The Institute for Ecosystem Based Living
Exploring How Humans Can Become a Keystone Species on Planet Earth
The Institute for Ecosystem Based Living explores the natural world through art, science, food and social practice with the goal of humans becoming keystone species on planet earth. By changing our systems, we can improve habitats for all other creatures. But first, we must change ourselves and find our way back to our role as earthlings. We are fractals of planet earth, part and parcel of this spinning orb and we can contribute to the health and well-being of all life on earth. We just need to adjust our systems to create their own self-generating, healthy habitats.
Earth shows us how to do it through biomimicry, but our unique humanness can craft a new future as well. Art engages our creativity, science ignites our sense of wonder, food is pleasure and a visceral connection with the earth, and community provides us safety and sociability and the increased capability for impact. Rapidly advancing technologies like robotics and AI can accelerate change for the better or for the worse – depending on the future we imagine for ourselves. We are faced with only two options – change or destroy our home. As frightening as change can be, it’s the only reasonable choice, and it can be a process filled with beauty, awe, pleasure and wonder.
These events have been produced by Maria Finn. who designed menus to tell help tell these stories from her cookbook, Forage. Gather. Feast.
Daylighting & Upwelling
Napa, di Rosa Center for the Arts
Under cities and towns there’s a hidden world of streams known as “ghost rivers” that have been boxed into culverts and cemented and asphalted over. This attempt to control nature is backfiring. These forgotten rivers contribute to flooding, particularly as sea levels rise. “Daylighting” is the act of removing the cement covering and constraining streams and restoring the health of rivers that then brings vitality back to the towns.
This process began on the Napa River in the 1970’s, when it was the most polluted waterway in the United States due to chemical run off. As part of the downtown Napa redevelopment, planners decided to expose the river trapped under the town. Still, because of its location at the base of Mt. St. Helena, the town of Napa suffered from frequent flash floods, and a major one in 1986 economically debilitated the town. The US Corp of Engineers proposed levees and cementing over the river, but the town rejected that plan. Groups in Napa came together and created a “Living River” plan that would create more city green space, a safe riverfront for businesses to thrive, and would restore the environmental integrity of the river.
They replaced floodwalls and levees with terraced marshes, wider wetland barriers, and restored riparian zones. Wineries and farms adopted fish friendly growing methods that helped stop agricultural run-off. Since 2000, the Napa plan has converted over 700 acres around the city into marshes, wetlands and mudflats. Since then, daylighting the Napa River has been a catalyst for $1 billion dollars for investment in hotels, shops, restaurants and office space.
In conjunction with the exhibition Second Nature which featured work by three Northern California artists: Annette Goodfriend, Ruth Tabancay, and Esther Traugot. Straddling the line between art and science, these artists craft dream-like representations of the natural world.
Musical performance from Kitka Trio of water-based songs
Talks by Dr. Amber Mace, Managing Director/Chief of Strategy, California Academy of Sciences. Dennis Rinehart, Civil Engineer with Friends of Napa River
Love, Grief & Octopuses
Elkhorn Slough Yacht Club
How do we hold climate grief and our love of beautiful places we call home at the same time? Are we destroying ecosystems before we even know they exist? In this event we’ll explore the Monterey Bay Canyon – through science, art and music. This massive fissure starts at the Elkhorn Slough and stretches 292 miles. It’s as long and deep as the Grand Canyon and plays a central part of the Monterey Bay ecosystem, and yet we know very little about it.
Dr. Gul Dolen is a pioneering neuroscientist who is leading research into the brain's "critical periods" finite windows of opportunity that enable more rapid learning. According to an article in the New York Times, She found that "humans and octopuses share parts of an ancient messaging system involved in social behaviors, one enhanced by the presence of MDMA in both animals. These shared lineages may have been conserved to reduce fear and enable social behaviors." By comparing solutions across human, mouse, and octopus nervous systems, Dolen hopes to better understand "why critical periods exist, why they close, and why they can be reopened."
Dr. Christine Huffard is an octopus researcher with the Monterey Bay Research Institute. She's going to give an overview of the Monterey Canyon and how it influences our coastline. She'll also talk about how it's become a nexus of deep-sea discovery, including the discovery of an "Octopus Garden" with over 20,000 brooding octopuses.
Artists
Santa Cruz artist Kalie Granier's film 2 Feet "sits at the intersection of art, science, and ecological conservation, depicting the life power of the underwater kelp forest through women’s prayer." And her newer film, A'ai is made entirely in Esselen language and also explores our relationship with kelps forests.
There will be a performance by singer songwriter Brian Wood Capobianchi.
AI and The Ocean
Spaulding Marine Works, Sausalito
Even though we belly crawled from the ocean some 555 million years ago, today, over 80% of our oceans - from single celled phytoplankton to giant whales and all the millions of creatures in-between - remain a mystery to us. AI is being put to good use as a tool to understand our oceans. Peter Molnar is founder and expedition leader The Ocean Genome Atlas Project (OGAP) , which aims to collect, classify, sequence and map the genomic information of organisms representing at least 80% of the extant marine species worldwide to develop a public atlas of functional biodiversity of our Blue Planet to scientists worldwide. He’ll speak about the expeditions he’s been leading with neuroscientists and biologists who believe phytoplankton have a lot of teach us about our neural networks, longevity, biodiversity, and evolution.
The largest animals in the ocean, whales, have whistles, clicks, and calls that are similar to our vowels. They also have huge brains and complex social structures and navigate far distances. By using AI, scientists, researchers and engineers are working to decode the language of animals, particularly whales. Sara Keen, Senior Research Scientist, Behavioral Ecology and AI, of The Earth Species Project will talk on their work decoding non-human language. Earth Species believes that If we know what the animals are saying, our relationship with nature could drastically strengthen conservation efforts.
Adrien Segal is an interdisciplinary artist who uses science, data, wood working and technology to bridge the gap between scientific rationality and the emotional nature of human experience. Her work has been commisioned for public installations about water rights, wildfire progression, sea ice, and diatoms (phytoplanktons). She'll talk about her process of taking environmental data collected by scientists and creating large scale art from it.
A Responsibility to Awe
Stochastic Labs, Berkeley
We breed enthusiasms, Honour our responsibility to awe
Rebecca Elson, We Astronomers from the collection, A Responsibility to Awe
The great galactic mystery of dark matter is the “invisible glue of the cosmos”. This, along with Dark Energy, which is expanding our universe, make up at least 95% of our universe, and yet we know very little about what they are. To explain the magnitude of what we don’t know, Frances Hellman, former professor of physics and Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at UC Berkley, musician, artist and former Scientist-in-Residence at the SF Exploratorium will explain Dark Matter and Dark Energy to lay people.
Faced with the enormity of our ignorance, we can take comfort in the potentiality uncertainty with Jane Hirshfield. Jane is a practicing Zen Buddist, and world renown poet, essayist, translator and speaker known for working at the intersection of poetry and the sciences. In an article, The Zen of Jane Hirshfield by Noelle Oxanhandler, wrote of Hirshfield’s invitation to the Nobel Prize Summit. On the summit’s website, Hirshfield was described as “one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for the biosphere,” and in her presentation she spoke on behalf of all those silent elements of the universe—the rivers, the mountains, the trees, the creatures—that can’t speak for themselves. “None of us ends at our own skin,” she said. “This is a truth of both poetry and science.” Jane will read from her works that explore uncertainty and not knowing.
