Tomás Saraceno: Would you live in a floating city in the sky? (with English subtitles) | TED

124,541 views ・ 2017-09-20

TED


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Translator: Camille Martínez
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This is my favorite place on earth,
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Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
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And when it's covered in a thin layer of water,
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it reflects the clouds.
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There are days when you feel as if you're floating among the clouds.
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But there are days when the horizon disappears;
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there's no longer a top or a bottom.
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You feel immersed in something bigger.
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It was there that one night I woke up from a dream,
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and I saw that the stars were also reflected on the water.
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And that wasn't a dream.
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It was as if you could walk among the stars.
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With every step I took, the stars reverberated under my feet.
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It was like I was floating in the universe among clouds of galaxies.
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But what's floating there today are not just clouds of galaxies
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but also clouds of plastic.
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These are the footprints we're leaving on the planet.
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They're signs of an era
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in which the behavior of some humans is making a global impact
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on our ecosystems.
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This era is called the Anthropocene.
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There's also another type of toxic clouds that float in the air,
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like the ones that form from carbon dioxide emissions
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and from the burning of fossil fuels -- oil, carbon, gas --
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clouds that, when we see them,
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pollute our dreams.
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I don't know about all of you,
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but I've always dreamed of floating among the clouds.
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Maybe today we can imagine together other types of clouds,
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clouds we can live with.
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If you're wondering about that photo, I'll explain:
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it looks like a collage or photomontage -- something weird.
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No; it's reality.
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But sometimes I ask myself: What is reality?
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According to Alexander Kluge:
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"Human beings are not interested in reality.
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They can’t be; it’s part of the human essence.
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They have desires.
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These desires are totally opposed to any form of reality.
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They prefer to lie
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than to become divorced from their desires."
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But how can we learn to float among the clouds?
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As an artist, I thought we could start building a flying museum.
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You're probably wondering: With plastic bags?
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In 2007, with a community of people all over the world,
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we began to collect used plastic bags --
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not new ones.
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And we washed them,
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we cut them up,
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we glued them together,
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and we began to draw on them,
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creating a huge canvas.
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We made a collection of drawings,
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of personal stories
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and of friendships.
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And when you join them,
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bend them and fold them,
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it creates a space full of air.
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When the sun comes up from the horizon,
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the museum rises up to the sky.
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That's why we call it, "The Aero-Solar Museum."
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And from this simple idea,
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we learned how to float in the air in a radically new way,
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without using any type of fuel.
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The difference in temperature between the interior and the exterior
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is what makes us rise up.
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That way,
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we don't use fossil fuels or helium or hydrogen;
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we don't use solar panels
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or batteries or motors.
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We discovered a way that's simple, clean and accessible to the whole world
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to lift ourselves up.
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I remember when I was at NASA in 2009 with 120 engineers.
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You guys know, too, when you go up in a plane,
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the control panels are gigantic.
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And what we're doing is really complex,
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and when I started coming in with the plastic bags, saying,
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"But we have a different way ..."
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people had a hard time understanding the concept.
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Seeing the power of this idea,
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we started to initiate a new era;
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one that would leave behind the violence of the Anthropocene
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and give way to a new era,
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which we call the "Aerocene" --
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an era of ecological awareness,
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in which we learn to float together, live together in the air,
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and come to an ethical commitment
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with the atmosphere and with planet earth.
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That's why I've brought this backpack today.
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Let's see ...
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OK. This is a balloon that we also refer to as a sculpture.
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And if it's sunny out tomorrow, we can go out and fly --
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though, no, the weather in Vancouver isn't --
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(Laughter)
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it's not very ...
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very favorable.
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So, what other features does it have?
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It has sensors that, when it moves,
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make sort of drawings in the air.
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It also has other sensors.
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I always think that first you have to feel it,
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and then you can measure it;
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you need to hear the sounds of the atmosphere,
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of the climate, of the hot air,
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in order to then measure the ozone,
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the carbon dioxide.
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We're developing these sensors
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together with different communities all over the world
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in order to reconnect with the climate, the temperature and the environment,
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because there are other species in the air;
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in these excursions towards the atmosphere,
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we're not alone.
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The air is full of clouds of life.
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We live at the bottom of an ocean of air.
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And this same sculpture,
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this exact one in my hands,
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flew 375 miles -- 12 hours -- from Germany to Poland,
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on a fuel-free trip.
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But it wasn't free from crossing borders.
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The trip was much more complicated than what we imagined;
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air space is as regulated and militarized
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as land space.
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To fly using the winds, the heat of the sun
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and the radiant energy of the earth
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is complex and beautiful.
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But even more complex will be getting the permits
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to cross the air space of each of the different countries
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that we fly over using wind.
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At COP21, the Paris Climate Conference,
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we presented these spherical sculptures
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that could transport us all over the world.
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But how can we fly using the wind to arrive at our destination?
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Together with MIT, we developed a program
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that predicts how we can navigate the wind highways.
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For example, if I had to return to Berlin from Vancouver,
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the first thing I would need to do is choose an altitude.
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At different altitudes, there are different directions
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and different speeds.
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The red line is tomorrow and the orange, the day after tomorrow.
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And there it goes.
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You can see, the best day to fly back to Berlin --
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so now, traveling using only wind --
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is in six days.
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And we can get to 105 miles from the center of Berlin
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without burning a single drop of fuel,
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being transported only by wind currents.
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So we thought that these trajectories that we drew with the wind
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could become signatures, declaring "Independence from Fossil Fuels Day."
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More and more of us are experiencing the air
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in a different way.
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You're all familiar with Earth Day.
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We think we should also celebrate Air Day:
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it's a pact that we make with the earth,
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an ethical commitment to the atmosphere.
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But let's keep thinking and dreaming.
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We've learned that the bigger the sculptures are,
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the more weight they can lift.
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Remember,
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they rise up only with hot air that's been heated by the sun.
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Using this approach, we can learn to build gardens in the air.
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Could we one day live in a garden the size of the earth?
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Could we live in an ecosystem floating among the clouds?
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Answering these questions isn't just a technological challenge;
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it's a way to reexamine the freedom of movement between countries,
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and of overcoming the political, social, cultural and military restrictions
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of contemporary societies.
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Because in the end,
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the air belongs to everybody
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and doesn't answer to any government.
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(Applause)
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And like we said earlier,
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our imagination is the force that allows us to create these places.
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This is an installation I did
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at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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It asks the question:
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What might these transnational spaces be like?
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And once we inhabit those spaces, we need to learn how to move within them,
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to walk among the clouds,
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where every movement affects everyone else's movements;
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the body weight and proximity between people
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will cause the space to expand ...
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or contract.
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There we are, suspended 72 feet in the air.
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When two or more people get too close together,
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even those farthest away are affected --
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everyone falls to the same spot.
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These are fragile ecosystems.
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And it's between these spheres that we build nets that connect us.
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There are moments when we have to face the void,
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and fear can paralyze us.
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One of the most beautiful things about this exhibit
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is the sense of solidarity generated
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when we face these new "aero-graphs."
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Finally,
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let me tell you one last story.
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On July 16, 1945,
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on the White Sands of New Mexico,
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an atomic bomb was detonated for the first time.
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As a result of this explosion,
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a cloud of radioactive particles disseminated all over the earth,
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marking the beginning of the Anthropocene era.
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Seventy years later, on November 8, 2015,
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in the same place,
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another event occurred.
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For the first time in history,
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we lifted a person into the air using only the sun,
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without burning any fossil fuels.
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As the sun rose up above the horizon,
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we rose up, too,
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silently,
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slowly,
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with no explosions.
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We felt as if gravity had been inverted;
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it wasn't pulling us toward the center of the earth,
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but toward the universe.
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If Neil Armstrong said, when he walked on the moon,
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"That's one small step for man,
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one giant leap for mankind,"
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perhaps what we ought to ask ourselves is:
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What steps do we need to take today?
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In the Aerocene era,
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our steps are much smaller, but radically different;
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they're steps that began with a bag full of air and wishes,
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but that can carry us to independence from fossil fuels
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and the opportunity to celebrate Air Day;
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steps that won't leave footprints on other planets
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until we've learned to walk in the atmosphere of this one.
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The landscapes are tiny
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and the steps are tiny,
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but I hope we can take them together.
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And I'm sure that these steps will lead us much further than the moon,
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so we can learn to float with our feet on the ground.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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