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 programs are produced by Maria Finn, who designs menus and immersive culinary experiences that illuminate the stories of riversheds, upwellings, fertile voids, fungal networks and intertidal zones among other natural systems.
Daylighting & Upwelling
Napa, di Rosa Center for the Arts
Across cities and towns, buried streams—known as “ghost rivers”—run beneath asphalt and buildings, boxed into culverts and forced out of sight. This attempt to confine nature is increasingly backfiring: these hidden waterways worsen flooding as sea levels rise. “Daylighting” restores them by removing the cement coverings, widening floodplains, and returning ecological integrity to communities. The Napa River is one of the most successful examples, where restoring riparian habitat and replacing levees with marshes transformed the city’s flood resilience, revitalized biodiversity, and catalyzed major economic renewal.
Daylighting & Upwelling was an immersive event that explored how rivers, wetlands, and estuaries can become living systems again—supporting ecological health and community prosperity. Produced in conjunction with the exhibition Second Nature, featuring Northern California artists Annette Goodfriend, Ruth Tabancay, and Esther Traugot, the event bridged art and science to reimagine how we live with water.
The night included a musical performance by Kitka Trio, offering a repertoire of water-based songs inspired by global river and ocean traditions; talks by Dr. Amber Mace, Managing Director/Chief Strategy Officer at the California Academy of Sciences, and civil engineer Dennis Rinehart, who discussed river restoration, community planning, and the future of climate-adaptive water systems.
The experience began with a culinary menu by Maria Finn, telling the story of intertidal zones, estuaries, and upwelling through regenerative ingredients from land and sea.
Love, Grief & Octopuses
Moss Landing, Elkhorn Slough Yacht Club
Moss Landing, Elkhorn Slough Yacht Club How do we hold climate grief and our love for extraordinary coastal places at the same time? This immersive evening explored the Monterey Bay Canyon through science, art, music, and food. Beginning at Elkhorn Slough and stretching 292 miles, this submarine canyon is as long and deep as the Grand Canyon. It shapes the entire Monterey Bay ecosystem, yet remains largely unknown.
Dr. Christine Huffard, octopus researcher at the Monterey Bay Research Institute, offered an overview of the canyon, its influence on our coastline, and its role as a nexus of deep-sea discovery—including the remarkable “Octopus Garden,” where over 20,000 brooding octopuses have been documented.
Dr. Gul Dolen, pioneering neuroscientist, discussed shared neural mechanisms between humans and octopuses, critical learning periods, and how reopening them may expand our understanding of social behavior, fear, and adaptability.
The event also featured Santa Cruz artist Kalie Granier, whose films—2 Feet and A’ai—bridge art, science, and language to explore the vitality of underwater kelp forests. Singer-songwriter Brian Wood Capobianchi performed a musical set inspired by ocean life and coastal geography.A discussion on eco-grief and psychedelics, led by Luke Pustejovsky of Tactogen, invited reflection on the emotional dimensions of environmental change and resilience. The evening began with a menu by Maria Finn, featuring Monterey Bay seafood—black cod, seaweed chowder, and squid-harissa flatbreads—culinary stories that echoed the richness and mystery of the canyon itself.
AI and The Ocean
Spaulding Marine Works, Sausalito – AI and the Ocean
This event explored how rapidly advancing AI can deepen our understanding of ocean life, from phytoplankton to whales, and reshape our relationship with the sea through science, storytelling, and art.
Peter Molnar, co-founder of the Ocean Genome Atlas Project (OGAP), shared insights from expeditions gathering genomic data across marine species to build a public atlas of ocean biodiversity. His work with neuroscientists and biologists highlights how phytoplankton may illuminate neural networks, longevity, and evolutionary processes.
Sara Keen, Senior Research Scientist in Behavioral Ecology and AI at the Earth Species Project, discussed efforts to decode non-human language, especially whale communication. If we can understand what animals are saying, our relationships with marine life and conservation strategies could transform.
Adrien Segal, interdisciplinary artist, presented installations that translate environmental data—water, sea ice, wildfires, diatoms—into sculptural forms that bridge scientific precision with human emotion. She shared how she turns ecological measurements into large-scale immersive artworks.
Maria Finn's menu celebrated regenerative seafood from our coastline, like seaweed and anchovy butter served with sourdough bread and local seafood-saffron stew.
The evening invited participants to imagine a future where science, AI, and art converge to reveal the mysteries of our ocean and deepen our care for the planet.
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 read from her works that explore uncertainty and not knowing.
Maria Finn's menu based on the fertile void included herring bottarga pasta, fiddlehead fern and morels with burrata, and a galaxy cake that was later learned to be scientifically accurate.
