Confluence

-Art and science are forms of expression and inquiry.

And, actually, the doors into them are pretty similar.

-The relationship between art and technology is so rich and so longstanding.

-In our culture, we like to put things into boxes.

We very much like to say, "This is art, and this is science."

You know, left brain, right brain.

But this is not really the truth.

My dream is that we will just break down the walls between these classrooms.

-How strange is it of me to like both things that are artistic and scientific?

It's only as an adult that I've had to make a choice.

[ Screaming ] -Creativity can be mournful.

It can be joyful.

-[Harmonizing] -[ Grunts ] -It can be despairing.

It can be celebratory.

Sometimes, even all at the same time.

[ Violin plays ] [ Classical music plays ] [ Indistinct conversations ] -Something about our modern world meant that we went a long way, perhaps, too far in the direction of overspecializing.

You know, the old saying that we contain multitudes.

And indeed, I think we contain the capabilities of a scientist and an artist.

They're all in there in each of us.

If we're allowed to explore things in the right way...

If we're left alone to follow our muse a bit more...

I think, we'd enrich the kinds of things we can produce as a society.

-What I do is convergence of art, science, and technology.

I do believe it's always a part of the, you know, journey for artists.

Like, when we look at Da Vinci or many other artists who have been exploring cutting-edge imagination.

I think, we always find this triangle of art, science, and technology.

The name of my exhibition is "Unsupervised."

It's truly the idea of using a real-time AI algorithm trained on an entire MoMA archive of almost 200 years of collection.

There's a data that represents 138,000 incredible artworks.

So, we took this data, like the name of the artist, the type of the art, the size of the canvas and the materials.

Then, AI learned from this information and try to imagine new ways of seeing this data.

We are not trying to mimic the artists in the MoMA archive.

We were trying to imagine new ways of seeing that incredible archive of pioneers across centuries.

[ Ambient music plays ] [ Indistinct conversations continue ] I think, in my work there are two layers.

The surface is where you feel esthetics and beauty, but there's depth, where you can learn about AI, data, practice, process.

My guess is the artwork is kind of finding this language of humanity that maybe exist, but we didn't discover yet.

-Growing up in a household of music and technology and code, was definitely a privilege.

And in that way, they became both vehicles of my own expression, my own way of navigating the world.

This hybridity is really at the center of so much of what I do.

This alternative approach to dualistic thinking with art and technology, like, not human versus machine, but human and machine trying to really blur those lines, approaching them as this already interconnected configuration.

I think, what gets people really excited is hearing that I draw with robots, and they always say, "No, wait a robot draws for you?"

And I'm like, "No, no, no.

I create a collaborative setting for my robotic units to draw with me."

The robotic unit sees through different types of visual data.

How I'm drawing on a canvas, the position of my mark, the speed of my mark.

And it interprets that input data based on two decades of my drawings that I've fed into the recurrent neural network.

Artists have always used technologies of the day to create the images that resonate with them.

The paint brush and painting techniques, those are technologies.

They're just not digital technologies.

So, for me, there's no real difference in that.

It's just a evolution, or maybe an inheritance of that -- that legacy, I guess.

-Once upon a time, there was no distinction between art and science.

You go back to the Renaissance.

Science was a new subject, which didn't yet have a name.

So, in a sense, the inquiring mind is the kind of the underlying quality.

And so, there is no separation.

It's just different parts of the brain doing different jobs.

There's an overlap between art and science.

For me, it's definitely very strong, because of my own background, and the fact that I have all this skill set, which I really, you know, it gives me a kick to use it.

I like to be able to write code and get something new out of writing my code.

This piece is lit with a special kind of light I developed.

I call it chromastrobic light.

The light is changing speed faster than the human eye can see, up to 10,000 times a second.

So, it's breaking up the pattern into different regions, which have different colors, and that makes it easier for the eye to take in the complex forms.

As a scientific artist, I'm just fascinated by waves.

There are quite a few different kinds of waves, aren't there?

Waves on the sea.

Oh, yes, sound waves.

But to a physicist, maybe, everything is waves?

Like, matter is waves?

This is an idea that's been rolling around now for a hundred years, and we still don't really understand it.

I love the enigma.

Both artists and scientists are drawn towards... That which cannot be comprehended.

That I can use my logical skills to solve problems that are going to be used in this process of artistic invention.

The two are completely overlapping.

And you do have to trust your intuition.

I'm thinking, "A-ha.

I think, I'm going to step outside reality in this direction and see where it leads me."

-Science is art.

Art is science.

Certainly, there were times in our history that the two were very closely connected.

You couldn't really be a scientist unless you knew how to draw.

And therefore, learning how to draw was part of your development and your training.

As time has gone on, however, these two disciplines have become more separated.

And what I see now is an interest in -- They becoming more related again.

[ Jazz music plays ] -In my education growing up... the arts and music track was segregated from the science and math track.

As a theoretical physicist, I look at the current laws as it exists to explain the physical world.

Look for where they fail and explain in phenomena and try to improve those theories, and sometimes, we use mathematics and sometimes, I actually use my music.

[ Saxophone plays ] Really great physicists can, like, use artistic devices, right, to actually solve problems in a very concrete way.

If you look back in the past, like Kepler and Galileo, they also had a musical training.

And they use that musical training, actually, as tools of inquiry in their sciences.

Kepler came up with his laws of planetary motion by actually writing down musical notes associated with the velocities of the planets.

So, I think like, you know, there's a lot of opportunity to sort of break down some of those stereotypical boundaries and educational dichotomies that exist.

When I'm improvising, there's a beginning note and a target note.

The first time I started to think about the music science-connection, the music-physics connection was when I heard John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."

[ "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane plays ] I had this idea that Coltrane was exploring more than just jazz patterns and scales and chords, right?

I had this intuition that this -- There was something mathematical, something beautiful, something about him trying to create a new structure in music informed by physics.

I did discover that Coltrane was highly influenced by Albert Einstein, and explored some of the principles, such as the symmetry principles that Einstein used to formulate his theories of relativity.

And so, the same way I would look at my physical theories as an object of theorizing -- [Speaks indistinctly ] -- I started to look at music that way, and especially, jazz improvisation.

The band I belong to is called God Particle.

This is me, Melvin Gibbs, and Will Calhoun.

The particle physicist Leon Lederman, when he was frustrated to find the Higgs particle, he called it, the "Goddamn Particle."

[ Drums play ] So, we decided to play on that and call ourselves The God Particle.

-I find drummers, especially, the way they play, very...

The way they think about it is very similar to some of the ideas that are inherently in quantum physics.

Like, how they think about the fragments and the language just translates back and forth and that's kind of what happens here.

[ Drums play ] [ Jazz music plays ] -What I love about Stephon's angle is he wants us to know and listen and understand his point of view.

Yeah, he'll call me, and he'll say, "Hey, man.

There's something about this theory."

And I'm like, "Um... Is this a class?

Is this an assignment?

Do I have to turn it in by Friday?

What's going on here?"

And he'll go, "Well, man... I-I have something.

I have this idea, man.

I want to get your opinion on it."

But he's serious about it.

And that's the difference in working together as God Particle is how Stephon brings his theory and concepts to the band.

-All the songs we wrote actually have an element of science embedded in the song.

For example, the song "Instanton" is based on a quantum mechanical thing.

-The instanton is a weird particle, because it's a flash of the existence of something in time.

It's an entity, a particle.

But it's everywhere at the same time.

-Wow, so, tell me that again, every -- it's -- It's an instantaneous point that's everywhere?

-Yeah.

The same way a regular particle, like a subatomic particle, right?

Is, um, localized, meaning that it occupies a, you know, a local area in space, a local region of space.

-Yeah.

-The instanton is a particle that's actually...

It exists for a moment in time.

But it exists everywhere at the same time.

-Oh... -So, that's why it's called an instanton.

-Instanton.

-Yeah.

[ Jazz music plays ] Playing jazz for me trains me to not get too attached to a concept, because you're going to be wrong, you got to do something about it.

And that way of basically making a mistake, trying new things and learning from that.

That flexibility, that fluidity, maybe.

That's one place, I think, that my practice as a jazz musician informs how I do my physics.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Art and science are absolutely magical.

And to mix them together, to create creative collisions, is recreating the magic of existence, I think.

And it creates new ways of understanding and encountering our world.

-It's all about finding our way in the world, understanding our place in the world, figuring out how things work.

[ Upbeat music plays ] When you find the right way in and the right aspects of it that resonates with you.

It's a wonderful thing.

-I had tried out so many different jobs.

I was a journalist, and then, I worked at a daycare.

And then, I was an MMA reporter, and then, I was an editor for Sweden's official website.

And then, I studied physics for a year, and then, I went to advertising school for a year, like, I just tried on -- It felt like trying on all these different pants and being like, "Oh, yeah.

I guess, I could do this."

But once I started making things, it was just like, "Yeah, this is it."

[ Alarm clock ringing, slaps landing ] I still don't know how to explain it.

I am an inventor, and I make videos about things I build.

[ Laughs ] People on the internet started referring to me as the -- Which I embrace.

I think it was, uh -- It was said in a loving way.

Why is there smoke?

When we grow up, we become so guarded around our time.

You have to really have a good reason why you want to do something.

It's just like, I think, this is worthwhile.

It's doing something for the sake of doing it, it doesn't have to have a good reason.

Here's a googly-eye shirt that I built for my TED talk, because I wanted to look at back at the audience as much as they looked at me.

What if I could have safety glasses incorporated into the brim of my hat, and then, I could just fold them down, but it just looks -- I mean.

Here's a keyboard that I made where you can play these teeth.

One of the most empowering feelings is having this idea in your head, and then, suddenly, it exists in real life.

It's -- That process just never ceases to be magical.

It's just...

It's the best feeling.

I still feel guilty sometimes when I'm building something that I don't have a clear end goal with.

But those have been some of my best projects that I've ever done, and often when I stumble on something new, it's just kind of following that curiosity.

I think, honestly, of it, I always felt like I had to finish the build as quickly as possible.

I didn't really have time to think of a smarter or more elegant solution.

And now, I've really given myself the time... to just play.

[ Uplifting music plays, power tool whirring ] That actually feels a lot better than I expected it to.

It is really just a series of problems.

But the problems get smaller and smaller, every iteration, ideally.

So, you kind of get to a point where there's problems you can live with.

It's all about trying to see things differently and trying to see it in a new way.

-You wanna check that?

-Yeah.

One aspect of being twins is that you always have somebody to externalize your ideas to and bounce them off of.

And that's gone back to since the time we were born.

-One of the interesting things about Oakes twins.

They have been having a conversation... with each other... -Okay, that's level.

-...about the nature of what it's like to see with two eyes.

They have been having this conversation since the age of 2.

Their mother told me once that she came upon them in a shrub woods outside their house.

And they were sitting on stumps 20 feet apart at the age of 10, having a conversation about what the depth perception of a dragon with eyes that far apart would be like.

[ Laughing ] It's not the kind of thing that most 10-year-olds are doing.

-The well-tempered artist is open to the intersection of art and science.

And I think the Oakes twins are working in that terrain.

They are interested in portraying the world.

But more interested in portraying how we see the world and how the eye works.

This is a drawing and painting instrument that we built, which essentially facilitates capturing a very realistic image.

Typically, the image making has taken place on a flat plane.

And for that part, mostly a flat rectangle.

And this is like...

The flat paradigm and the spherical paradigm are really different.

-Yeah, they don't mix.

-They almost don't fit together.

-They don't mix.

-The discrepancy plays out in map projections.

A spherical globe is unrolled onto a flat map, and either there's gaps, or things are stretched.

You can't merge a sphere onto a flat plane.

And we have elected to use a spherical imaging surface to keep the picture plane in harmony with the spherical paradigm.

This device is keeping the eye still at the center of the spherical curvature.

So, the eye's kind of like at the core of the Earth.

This whole endeavor was seeded by an observation, a sort of aha moment, if you will.

That really launched us into this entire space of dealing with realism and dealing with how things look to the eye.

So, if you try an experiment, raise your finger, and then, look past your finger.

Or, yeah.

A pencil or some object.

And you look past that object into the distance.

You can see that it appears to divide into two versions of itself, and each one is kind of optically transparent.

-The real one would remain touching the page.

But its second ghost image would appear to float next to the page.

And you could then literally trace the proportions and location of objects onto the canvas.

-Essentially, it's a recording device.

Normally, we have been painting up along the Hudson River, capturing the mountains with the river in the foreground.

And now, we've come down here to Brooklyn.

And we're looking out across the East River to Manhattan in the distance.

[ Indistinct conversations ] So, we basically are catching a swath of the city, which goes from the Brooklyn Bridge... -Yeah.

-...all the way to the Statue of Liberty.

-Great.

-And then, the Brooklyn Bridge exits with the sort of swoosh of the suspension cables carrying us off of our canvas.

The piece will take 11 days.

And for each day, we're going to try to complete one vertical strip.

[ Indistinct conversations ] The idea with this piece is that we're capturing time as well as space.

The way we're capturing time is by representing 1 day per vertical section of the painting.

So, both clouds and water are both constantly moving, representing a sort of daily passage of time.

Whereas, space, especially the solid objects within space endure through time and don't change it as much.

-So, with these pieces, we're hoping to talk about the relative permanence of space versus the transience of time.

-Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And over the course of the painting, we don't know what weather is coming, but we will paint whatever we get.

Rain or shine.

[ Rain pattering, upbeat music playing ] -Do you have a name for the device?

-So, we call it our "concave easel."

-[Chuckles] Awesome.

You know -- -Patent pending.

[ Chuckles ] -It's actually patented.

-Awesome.

[Laughs] This device falls in a lineage of other optical tools, which have been used throughout history.

They are the concave mirror lens, 1400s, which can be used to project an image.

And then, the camera obscura in the 1600s.

That's similar to our modern-day camera.

And then, the camera lucida, which is like a little prism that kind of refracts an image, in the 1800s.

It's interesting that our method was invented in the early-2000s.

So, we had yet another 200-year gap and another optical tool.

It's really all about keeping things still.

-Right.

-So, like keeping him still.

-Folks have said things like... "Oh, I never would have noticed that there's that many variations within the weather."

People have also said that they see the world differently.

It's always a nice feeling to have made an impact on someone's perception of the world.

-When these paintings are started, it feels a bit like reading a suspense novel.

[ Birds chirping, gentle music plays ] -With each new strip, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

Eventually, the picture starts to emerge.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -I am most interested in science when it is approaching what we would ordinarily think of as art.

And I am most interested in art when it's approaching what we normally think of as science.

That comes back to this great line of Nabokov's -- "The true master... melds the precision of the poet and the imagination of a scientist."

[ Instrumental music plays, mechanical arm whirring ] Deep learning got really, really good around 2017 or '18.

And that's when machines began to do something very similar to dreaming... something very similar to imagining and being creative.

So, it makes me think a lot about, you know, how much of the creative process is an algorithm.

This robot will complete entire paintings with no input from me, just based on what I've trained it to do.

And some are quite dramatic and beautiful.

Like, I think that one there was completely machine-done.

But can I show them the painting you did?

When you were really young?

So, Corinne did a drawing, and then, the robot finished her drawing up like this.

And this is when you were around 3 or 4.

Scott, I'll show you where the code is for where you're going to be putting the images.

You know, that the kids are going to be tracing.

Right here.

-I'm a neurologist, right?

So, I deal with kids with spinal cord injuries or kids with neuromuscular diseases that are very creative but simply don't have the strength to paint.

Like, is there a way we could use the robot to help with painting?

We named it "Spikelangelo."

Because in the EEG world, we talk about spikes, spike and waves.

And so, we were trying to come up with a name that was related to neurology.

I'm learning about all these special needs, like, for example, like, these patients, which are being put on these strict regimens, and have to do stuff constantly.

-Okay, now, he's gonna watch you get your medicine, okay?

-I've learned through my experience here that choice is really important for them because this -- When they're doing art therapy, that's the only time they have choice.

A conversation we had early on was about the colors.

You know, we're like, we want the rainbow for the kids, and he was like, "Yeah, the rainbow's, you know, kind of hard to work with, like, you know, that color doesn't really go well with that color."

And remember I said, I was like "Pindar, like, some kids put peaches in ranch dressing, like, they don't care if they go together, that's just what they want to do, so?"

-That's exactly what you said.

-That's what we're going to do.

Juan, my man.

-Yeah.

You ready?

-Hey, Juan.

How you doing?

-This is Pindar.

Pindar is the guy who... like, designed the robot to do all the stuff that you're going to do with it.

-What people most like is they like to pick color by numbers.

And you pick the color, you pick the color, and then, you just trace with your fingers.

And the robots gonna do everything you tell it to do.

It's going to paint along with you.

-Okay?

Sound good?

Questions?

-No.

-Go for it.

Do whatever you want.

And I think, for the kids, it's fun, you know?

I mean, you can only do so much occupational therapy before it gets kind of boring.

So like, what else can we do to make it interesting for them?

So, it's doing everything he does.

Anything he doesn't fill in himself, the robot sees what hasn't been painted, and then, fills in those spots and paints it in a similar way that he does.

The robot is basically doing an auto-complete, the same way Google's AI auto-completes our search terms.

This robot is going to take Juan's strokes and auto-complete his self-portrait.

You can put your initials on it.

-Hey.

No one signed it yet.

-Oh.

-Just take the darkest paint and just put two letters.

If you want to.

You don't have to.

Whatever you want.

-Oh.

There it is.

-Nice!

-What do you think?

You're happy with it?

Well, thanks for working with us today.

-Thank you so much.

-Okay?

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Look at you, you already know where you're going.

-It's not yet to your signature.

But it'll get there.

-Got a lot in his brain.

[ Laughter ] He's got a lot in his brain.

-It's going to look so awesome when it's done.

-Yeah.

-Of all the artistic things I do in all my art projects, this is the most relaxing of them.

'Cause there's no expectations.

The kids always love it.

There's never any complaints.

-Yeah.

-Up at the top?

-Yeah.

Oh.

-There's your initial.

-My initials.

-Awesome!

[ Mechanical arm whirrs ] [ Indistinct conversations, uplifting music plays ] -Are you ready?

-Yeah.

-Are you sure?

-Uh-huh.

-Ta-da!

-Oh.

Whoa.

I did not -- I did not expect it to look like this.

I like it.

-You did a pretty good job, huh?

-Yeah.

It's amazing.

-Show him that awesome work that you did.

-Okay.

-Ah!

-Good work.

And so, after all these days, you know, in the hospital and having to be treated and things you couldn't do because of, you know, whatever you're here for.

To be able to do those things, see a finished product, accomplish things, I think, that's really cool for them.

-That's super, super, super duper cool.

-I'm looking forward to what we don't know.

Like, for a kid to, like, start doing something, like, I didn't even think of doing that and that could be, you know, become a program in and of itself.

And that's gonna be really fun.

What does it feel like?

-Like a rock star.

[ Rubik's Cube shuffling ] -Yeah.

I'm Atlas, and this is my room.

I like solving puzzles.

For example, there is this algorithm.

If you repeat it 6 times, it solves itself.

-Creativity comes naturally with Atlas.

Show us the tail, look.

[Laughs] But it's crazy.

Sometimes, when his friends comes, like, three or four boys here.

Yeah, they just pour it off.

So, like, thousands of Legos scattered around, and then, you create something crazy.

But, you know, thanks to this bunch, we have the Lego guitar.

[ Lego guitar plays ] We call this Lego microtonal guitar.

And you can play microtones on it, so, microtones are any tones less than a semitone.

Let's put a microtone here.

-I saw my dad's fretboard, and I thought, like, "Oh, I'm bored.

So, I should make this."

[ Chuckles ] -So, 4 and a half years ago, he built this exact, I've been keeping it.

-Yeah.

This is a prototype.

-Yeah.

[ Both chuckle ] [ Speaking Turkish ] -I use existing technologies to improve the traditional knowledge, maybe, or method.

[ Lego guitar continues ] I'm really afraid about losing microtones.

Because it gives the emotions, and it gives the color of this culture.

So, it's precious.

[ Classical music plays ] -The route into science doesn't mean that you should no longer do art.

The route into the arts doesn't mean that you should no longer do science.

But we're taught these sorts of things, and we perpetuate certain myths.

And we keep producing these same divisions, in every generation, as a result.

-And, tap right.

Tap left.

Tap right, tap left.

-As a young person, I was obsessed with dance.

-One, two, three, four.

Six.

Window, door.

One more time.

-I did door, window.

-It's okay.

-And I also loved doing math problems for fun.

I remember when I was starting to apply for colleges.

Okay, what major am I gonna choose?

And it's very different to consider an engineering pathway and a dance pathway.

Right, center, left.

Center, left.

I had an aha moment where I got to see that, actually, I don't have to choose.

There is a world where these can intersect.

And not only can they intersect, but they can come together to create a positive impact in the world.

And one, two, three.

Four, five, six, seven -- STEM From Dance is all about capturing the joy, the beauty, the creativity that exists in STEM through the power of dance -- Five, six, seven, eight.

Good job, give yourself one.

[ Cheers and applause ] Let's go ahead and grab those laptops!

-Circuits are components, lots of components connected through something conductive.

And they allow electricity to flow.

They are making circuits to enhance their dance performance.

And they learn how to program the light, so, that it's interactive with their movement in some kind of way.

So, they're not just on stage dancing, but they're dancing with technology.

-We want to add more lights.

And in order to do that, we have to make our circuit a little more complicated.

So if you want things to go, like, really bright, like a flash, and then, be really dim for a section of your dance.

-When they actually get things to work... -[ Gasps ] -Whoa!

Whoa!

We did it.

-When lights turn on, and they're like, "Oh, it's doing exactly what I want!"

They get so excited, I think, because it feels really powerful.

-Mm-hm.

To create.

-Yeah.

-I'm really good at making choreographies.

But I think I'm mostly best at the coding, because I could remember how to do that.

Remember, we know how to code in games, now, we know how to code in music, we know how to code in for lights.

So, you know, like, we could be coders and stuff.

Like, I wanted to be the center of attention when I do my show stuff, so, I wanted my lights to be very bright.

Ooh, I should make a crown... -Think of STEM as like a toolbox, right?

It provides the tools that allow you to build your dreams and your ideas.

I think, it's so empowering to be able to have an idea and also be equipped with what it takes to create it.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Art and science are both ways of humans exploring the world.

-Great job -- -You create new dimensions of thinking, being, and of the imagination.

The role of the imagination in science is something which is a kind of hidden secret.

It's the way we go further than where we are at the moment.

I mean, it's the thing we have as humans.

Imagination is the key of what it is to be human.

And science does dream further, and then, enacts it.

[ Elevator dings ] [ Classical music plays ] -I think, robots will invariably move around in our lives.

[ Indistinct conversations ] My mother recently passed away.

And she had Parkinson's and several other ailments.

And every time, I picked up the phone with her.

I called her, she picked up the phone, she would -- very quickly, she didn't even ask me how it's going, she would just say "So, Hans Peter, where are the robots?"

And I'd say, "You know, well, it'll be a little while, but they're coming."

And she'd go, "Well, they better come soon!"

And with Parkinson's, you know, one of the things that happens is, you lose something on the floor, and you can't pick it up.

Very simple things.

You shuffle your feet and maybe kick over a carpet, which might, in turn cause you to stumble later and fall.

And these little things were big things for her.

And so, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to solve the little things.

The little things that make life smoother, better, easier, and for a wide range of people.

A mother or father with three children.

It could be a busy workplace.

An older person in an institution or assisted living or even trying to live at home.

So, I envision a world where robots help us.

-We have many, many decades of Hollywood movies that help inform the way we feel about robots.

And unfortunately, most of that narrative is based in fear.

Right, you've got "The Terminators" of the world.

But actually, I think, there is an opportunity to rewrite that narrative and to actually create robots that can be as useful in our daily physical lives as computers have been in our digital lives.

-We're building robots that are going to live amongst us.

And so, we put a lot of effort into creating a group of people here who come from very different walks of life.

And they ask different kinds of questions.

-We need anthropologists.

We need philosophers.

We need linguistics people.

We need bio engineers.

We need choreographers.

We've moved from a space where robots are going to be out in the real world, and in the wild, and they're going to be moving alongside people.

And the people who are true experts in how to create those movements, those really are choreographers.

-There are people that when we first brought Catie in that would come up to me and say, "What are you doing?

Like, why didn't we just bring in another engineer?

Don't waste our time, Denise."

-Typically with engineering, you have a very standard process that you're following in order to get good results.

You've got your, you know, requirements, gathering your architecture, your design, your reviews.

But with Catie, it was very much this ambiguous, amorphous challenge of, you know, "How do I collaborate with these robots?"

You have to be in your feelings more rather than in your data.

And a lot of us are not used to that.

And she did a workshop early on, on movement... and it was back in COVID days, right, so, everybody was on, you know, Google video chat.

And you had all these people who probably hadn't gotten up from their desk for days, right?

It was early COVID, we were all sitting there, and they were starting to move around and there was music and they were just, like, and I was sitting there and I was going, "Yes, that's exactly what we need."

-That was really, like, the icebreaker of, like, let's really get you out of your comfort zone and into this, like, creative thinking process.

[ Classical music plays ] And then, if I move, they should flock with me.

In the flock, we have robots that are running a navigation algorithm.

And that determines where all of the robots go in space.

And they can flock this direction.

-Catie is such a unique person, because you know she's a dancer, but she's also an engineer.

She's now doing a Ph.D. in robotics.

-And I felt like my sort of artistic skills had nothing to do with me being a roboticist, right?

They felt like, "Okay, here's my artistic life over here.

It's really inspired my interest in robotics, but it doesn't... provide value to my robotics skills."

That was my initial impression, and, I think, since then, I've really found that the two are quite integral.

And the way that I've really brought my dance and choreography training into robotics is through human-robot interaction.

One of my projects is about gesture.

So, for example, if I have a robot in my kitchen in the future, and I have my family and they're really loud and raucous.

Maybe, it's hard for the robot to hear me over all of that noise and shout a command to it.

And so, a movement-based interaction might be better.

I've got a hand up gesture.

So, if the robot sees a hand up gesture, they all spin in place.

So, they perform a abstract version of a pirouette.

Ah!

Okay.

Don't fall.

Okay.

This way.

This way.

Oh no, no, no, no.

Okay.

Oh.

[Laughs] -There's a lot of uncertainty.

-[Laughing] Okay, we lost some of our robots!

-And, um, being comfortable with uncertainty is part of the creative process.

We actually celebrate failure, because it's like that Edison quote, "I didn't fail.

I just tried 10,000 things that don't work."

And so, every time we fail at something, we learn something.

-Oh, we lost this one too.

-Failure is a tool.

Failure is a modality.

-Oh.

Can we timestamp that?

-Failure is something you have to embrace as a part of the process.

[ Indistinct conversations, mechanical arm whirrs ] Innovation is never a straight line.

Innovation is a bumpy ride.

And you try a bunch of things.

One of the things I learned was the arts, in general, and technology are really dance partners.

And that that ability to move fluidly between the questions and the challenges posed by art and the need for certainty and definition and clarity... which is the quest of building technology, was just a perfect push/pull, yin/yang, in terms of dance, a dance of these two forces -- opposing forces -- ultimately can create something really beautiful.

-Architecture is a wonderful example of this.

A successful piece of architecture does all of those things.

I don't think there's any pursuit in which art and science exist in such a harmonic balance as they do in architecture.

Every building has some combination of creativity and problem solving within it.

-I design, I make, I cause to be built large structures that shape cities.

How, when we come to an assignment as an architect, how do we start and what do we need to make our start?

The collection of buildings, of cultural accomplishments around you are formidable.

You're adding a chapter to a book in which the masters have worked.

And I would say, if I knew how important they were, I probably wouldn't dare do them.

-The essence of architecture is that it's about everything.

It's about how you live.

It's about what you want.

It's about aesthetics, but it's also about practicality.

It's rare, maybe, it's impossible, for a work of architecture to achieve perfect equilibrium, but every now and then, it happens.

[ Pencil sharpener whirrs ] So... [ Pencils shuffling ] Where shall we begin?

No architect really works with a completely blank slate, and yet, nobody constrains us in the very beginning.

A fresh project is a fresh piece of paper.

Thinking about the Tower of One Vanderbilt.

Our task was to -- and challenge -- was to connect one of Manhattan's most important transit centers, Grand Central Terminal.

So, that building, which is one of the great pieces of civic architecture, public architecture in the world, is itself a kind of closed stone box.

We wanted to complement that with a glassy lantern at the base of this building.

But we also knew that the building had to, in some sense, taper.

It had to follow the spirit of some kind of setback regulations.

Bigger setbacks at the base going to more and more vertical structure as we move to the top.

Because the whole point is to get light and air down to the street.

And it's not something we can think through from scratch with an intention to have everything work out.

There's a little bit of trial and error.

Some of my colleagues have likened the process of making architecture to playing jazz, because you're not sure where you're going with it, but you sort of feel the progress when you're making it.

And be very happy to take that sketch and... [ Drum plays ] For a building to be truly great, it has to give you as profound an esthetic experience as the greatest painting, the greatest novel, the greatest piece of music.

And yet at the same time, it has to solve functional problems that they don't have.

Architectural history is filled with collaborations between architects and engineers.

Engineers are necessary, either to enable an architect's imagination to be realized, or to show that it cannot be built, and then, encourage the architect to move in a different direction.

-I think, it's moving differently.

I'm Silvian Marcus, and I'm a structural engineer.

I had an uncle that he was a bridge engineer, so, initially, I wanted to be a bridge engineer, but in my mind, that bridges are too uniformed.

Buildings, they are not two of them identical.

Each one has particularities, each one has its own characteristics, its own demands.

-There's an engineering discipline for almost every aspect of a building.

Lighting engineers, soils engineers, curtain wall engineers, acoustical engineers.

Anything that works in a way that needs to be predictable has a component of engineering.

The architect's job is really to try to understand as much as possible of those disciplines in order to be a good partner.

-How we start?

With a blank piece of paper.

For when we are doing 432 Park... We tested with a wind tunnel testing.

We did many testing, and we couldn't get the proper response.

-The greatest force we have to contend with in designing a tall building is not the force of gravity, the vertical force, it's a lateral force.

And that's because when we get to this height and this aspect ratio of with the height, the building acts as a lever.

-How about, if we leave a couple of floors open, so, the wind can go through.

And if this to be repetitive a number of times throughout the height of the building, maybe, this will improve on the displacement of the building.

-There's a dialectic that goes back and forth and back and forth.

You're not sure who's teaching who or who's learning from whom.

-Some people say, what's the engineering?

Oh, if it's concrete, how many rebars are in the concrete?

It's incorrect, that's a detail.

Whoever's interested just in numbers cannot have a full perspective of life.

You were using the... A tennis match?

That, uh...

It's a good, uh... Analogy.

But I think that I have a better one.

-How about the dance?

-Dance, exactly.

-I knew you were a dancer.

-It's a dance between the architect and the engineer.

Working with somebody who is really a brilliant creative thinker of science and engineering.

I'm inspired by what he brings to the table.

The challenge is one of synthesis.

It's bringing together many topics, many subjects, many issues, and finding a solution that's beautiful in its simplicity while solving many complex problems.

-Science is about finding patterns and truths in nature.

Art is about interpreting the world in a more instinctive way.

But they inform each other.

They use each other.

They need each other.

They enrich each other.

Art and science are inevitably intertwined.

-This program is made possible by the Priem Family Foundation.

Since 1999, dedicated to fostering education and innovation, striving to spur research, technology, and creativity.

And helping to empower students to achieve bigger dreams for themselves and the world.

[ Classical music plays ]