0:17 we're in
0:19 trouble global
0:22 warming species
0:25 Extinction water scarcity the list goes
0:28 on and on we know the list what can we
0:30 do about it
0:34 uh I'm an artist and so I decided to
0:37 start working on these crises by
0:39 developing a sustainable Art Studio
0:41 practice because an artist studio
0:43 practice is actually like a small
0:46 manufacturing Enterprise we purchase raw
0:48 and component materials in the case of a
0:50 painter these might be paints brushes
0:53 and canvases and from these we actually
0:55 develop an item that will be for
0:57 distribution or sale say like a painting
1:00 you know there's a lot of different ways
1:01 is that you can actually create a
1:03 sustainable art practice you can
1:06 conserve water you can Source your
1:09 electricity from Green energy and you
1:11 can also purchase um carbon offset
1:13 credits to offset the greenhouse gases
1:17 that are produced from your practice so
1:19 an offset a carbon offset is essentially
1:23 a reduction in emissions over here that
1:25 offsets the emissions of carbon over
1:28 here creating a balance and therefore a
1:30 carbon neutral situation
1:32 so I actually worked with carbonfund.org
1:34 and we created a rubric that would make
1:35 it very simple for artists to click a
1:38 button and carbon offset their art
1:40 practice to make it
1:44 neutral so okay so uh one of the other
1:46 things I did uh which is maybe not as
1:47 serious but certainly a lot of fun for
1:51 me is um I actually offset the Mona Lisa
1:55 um so a lot of art historians who asked
1:57 me not to use their names uh because
1:58 they didn't want their reputations
2:00 ruined by this highly speculative
2:03 Endeavor but um we got a lot of
2:05 information about how Leonardo worked
2:06 while he was making the Mona Lisa we
2:08 made an estimation of how much
2:10 greenhouse gas he produced and then we
2:14 purchased um carbon offset credits and
2:16 so I sent a letter to the lou actually
2:18 congratulating them on the carbon
2:20 neutral status of their Mona Lisa
2:24 and you I did didn't hear back just
2:26 saying um
2:29 so I've always been an environmentalist
2:31 but this push towards sustainability
2:33 itself really came about because of a
2:35 large art installation project that I
2:37 was working on titled
2:39 scale um and in scale I worked with an
2:42 incredible array of people in a large
2:44 collaborative team there were dozens of
2:47 artists students and uh community
2:49 members that were helping us this is one
2:51 of the pieces from that this is actually
2:53 a drawing that's 26 MERS by 3 meters
2:55 high it was handmade out of charcoal of
2:56 the Milky Way
2:59 galaxy so the purpose of scale was to
3:01 actually demonstr demate how infantes
3:05 small humankind is versus the expanse of
3:08 the universe uh the goal there was to
3:11 actually reveal the Ridiculousness of
3:13 our petty differences and I may have
3:15 been like slightly over ambitious but
3:17 you know I really wanted to go after it
3:19 but in order to be accurate about the
3:20 scale of humans and the Scale of the
3:23 Universe I needed the help of some
3:25 astrophysicists now I had just recently
3:27 moved to Athens Ohio where I accepted a
3:29 position as a professor of art at Ohio
3:31 University University and I didn't know
3:33 anybody but I found two scientists who
3:36 were willing to meet me and just before
3:38 I go to the meeting my wife said don't scare
3:39 scare
3:42 them and it's totally it's totally valid
3:45 warning because artists you know we oh
3:47 you know we've got a reputation um and
3:50 it's it's totally like warranted so I go
3:52 to the meeting very calmly not to scare
3:54 the scientists you know and uh it was
3:57 amazing because artists who think
3:59 they're passionate need to start hanging
4:01 out with some scientists because you're
4:03 going to have to up your
4:05 game I found really Kindred Spirits in
4:07 the form of Dr mongala Sharma who's
4:09 there in the teal dress on the left and
4:11 Dr Tom Statler who's in the cool leather
4:13 jacket um they're talking by the way to
4:15 Dr Seth shostak who's the senior
4:17 astronomer at the SEI Institute which is
4:19 the search for extraterrestrial
4:21 intelligence and that's a fun guy to
4:24 talk to so what happened is that these
4:26 scientists who help me so much with that
4:27 introduced me to a group of
4:30 environmental scientists and these
4:32 environmental scientists began to show
4:35 me the fascinating history of natural
4:38 resource extraction in Southeast Ohio so
4:40 on one of the field trips we went to
4:43 some streams and in these streams there
4:45 was a strange orange sludge that went
4:47 through the streams and I learned from
4:50 them that this is caused by acid mine
4:53 drainage and that it kills the Aquatic
4:55 Life in over
5:00 1,300 streamed miles in Ohio alone
5:02 and so what happened is that in
5:04 Southeastern Ohio throughout the first
5:06 half of the 20th
5:09 century strip mining and coal mining
5:12 with room and pillar methods were very
5:14 commonplace and what they did is the
5:17 companies came in and they clear-cut the
5:19 forests and they extracted all the soil
5:22 out and then they dug tunnels to get the
5:26 coal now um there aren't that many mines
5:29 left in the area just a few and by the
5:31 1970s most of the mining companies had
5:33 moved on but what they left
5:37 behind was disturbed land abandoned
5:41 mines and basically inadequate
5:44 restoration so at this point much of the
5:47 forest has regrown but it's very young
5:49 but the underground mines continue to
5:51 leech toxic acid mine drainage into
5:58 Life and essentially I was looking at
6:00 these streams and some of them are
6:02 really incredible this is actually um at
6:06 TR toown Ohio and this one seep alone
6:09 pumps over a million gallons every
6:12 single day of toxic acid mine drainage
6:14 into Sunday Creek and this water has a
6:18 final P pH rather below two and it
6:21 carries over 2,000 pounds of iron every
6:23 single day it's like throwing a car in a
6:26 stream every single day so I'm out there
6:27 with these environmental scientists and
6:30 I see this you know iron orange sludge
6:34 and I was thinking like
6:36 well some of my paints are made from Iron
6:36 Iron
6:38 sludge you know I wonder if I could
6:41 paint with this stuff and as so often
6:44 happens basically I get a call from
6:46 somebody who said would you meet with an
6:47 engineering Professor they need an
6:49 artist's help and I said yeah sure you
6:53 know so I go to meet this guy for coffee
6:56 and it turns out that his name is Guy
6:58 this is Professor guy reefer who's an
7:00 engineering professor of Ohio University
7:03 um and he told me all about the fact
7:05 that these abandoned mines they fill
7:07 with water and when they fill with water
7:10 the water and the oxygen react with
7:13 minerals that have been buried for 300
7:15 million years and when sulfides are
7:17 present and these are common in
7:19 Appalachian coal deposits high
7:21 concentrations of sulfuric acid and iron
7:22 are produced and that's what causes the
7:25 aine drainage but I also wanted to show
7:27 you guy in his natural
7:31 habitat because as as a team member okay
7:33 so basically he's got this like hair
7:36 trigger Adventure bug so you can bait
7:38 him anytime just if you ever meet him
7:39 literally anytime day or night I'll be
7:40 there I could just this is me texting by
7:42 the way so I could just like text him be
7:45 like hey guy just thinking about going
7:47 to this haunted cold tunnel I heard a
7:50 boom guy's like already out front he's
7:51 got extra coffee and a pair of waiters
7:53 and he's like get in you know like
7:58 thanks Guy cool you know anyway so it
7:59 turns out that actually he was having
8:01 the exact same thoughts as me at the
8:03 same time and that's why he wanted my
8:05 help so he was starting to ask the
8:08 questions you know could we extract this
8:11 iron oxide as a valuable
8:12 valuable
8:16 resource rather than as a waste disposal
8:18 could treating pollution be an
8:21 entrepreneurial Endeavor rather than a
8:24 societal cost so here's the idea is that
8:26 we stop the acid mine drainage before it
8:28 gets to the stream we extract the iron oxide
8:30 oxide
8:32 turns it into pigment and then we take
8:33 the cleaned water and we return it to
8:37 the stream and um here's how that
8:39 works our team travels to some of the
8:41 worst acid mine drainage seeps in the
8:48 streams deceptively as the acid mine
8:50 drainage comes out of the mine it's
8:52 clear because the iron is still
8:55 dissolved and in a reduced
8:57 form we collect this water and take it
9:00 back to the lab where we will test the
9:02 process to turn this iron into
9:05 pigment the collected water goes into
9:07 our testing apparatus where we can
9:10 control things like temperature and
9:12 pH our first step in cleaning the water
9:14 is to neutralize the
9:17 pH we do this by adding a base which
9:19 initially turns the water green because
9:21 of a reaction with the reduced iron called
9:23 called
9:26 hydrolysis next to remove the iron we
9:28 bubble air through the solution this
9:31 oxidizes the iron turning it into an
9:34 orange slimy sludge which is typically
9:36 what we find in the polluted streams of Southeast
9:41 Ohio now that all of the dissolved iron has
9:42 has
9:45 precipitated we can then separate it
9:47 from the Water by settling by letting
9:50 the water sit still the solid particles
9:52 settle and you have clean treated water
9:55 on the top and concentrated iron
9:57 precipitate on the
10:00 bottom the clean water can be returned
10:01 to the stream where it will no longer
10:04 cause harm while the concentrated iron
10:06 on the bottom can be collected and
10:09 processed into pigment through a series
10:11 of dewatering and drying
10:13 steps at this point we've taken the
10:16 orange pollution from the stream and
10:20 converted it into a valuable pigment
10:22 pigment
10:25 so the basic chemistry itself is not
10:27 revolutionary but finding a way to
10:29 extract the iron oxide so that is
10:32 valuable product is and this is why guy
10:35 wanted my help what makes a good
10:39 pigment hue light fastness stability
10:41 feel and I told him that I can
10:43 definitely help them you know achieve
10:45 those qualities and I began to help to
10:47 do that but I also thought that what we
10:50 really needed was a sense of beauty that
10:53 we actually needed a visual expression
10:55 that would demonstrate the story of the
10:57 pigment um its
10:59 vitality and so I began to use the
11:01 pigment in a mix of other standard
11:02 artist colors to make paintings that
11:05 talked about the Sublimity of
11:08 nature as well as the fragility of our
11:11 current relationship with it so let me
11:13 explain this is essentially what my mind
11:16 looks like at any moment of any
11:18 day and these things are floating around
11:21 I don't sleep much and they're always
11:23 competing with each other for something
11:25 and they usually happens like this so
11:26 This is actually a picture of the Ring
11:28 Nebula it's one light year across which
11:30 is about 9 trillion kilometers
11:32 apparently and then I'll see this image
11:34 which is the grand prismatic spring at
11:37 Yellowstone it's about 300 met across
11:39 and then I'll see this image which is a
11:42 datom two microns across and my mind is like
11:44 like
11:46 dude what are the grand forces of the
11:50 universe trying to tell you man and
11:53 then I'll make a painting out of it so
11:55 this series of paintings are on aluminum
11:56 panels and they're about a meter by a
11:58 meter and they use the asmine drainage
12:01 pigment along with other water-based
12:03 pigments so again like I'm thinking
12:05 about maybe open source Mining and
12:08 chemical pollution and make a
12:10 painting or maybe I read about
12:13 constructal law you know and jet engines
12:16 and galaxies and things and make another
12:19 painting interestingly as the pigment
12:21 began to evolve in its qualities the
12:23 paintings also changed in their
12:26 qualities so initially we were only able
12:29 to get this color out of the iron oxide
12:32 which is perhaps best described in scatological
12:35 scatological
12:37 terms sorry about
12:40 that but we were able in a few months to
12:43 get it actually right off stream this
12:47 color far sexier you know and so the
12:50 paintings changed to accommodate that
12:51 and then in the LA just in the last
12:53 couple of months we've been able to get
12:55 even more color variety by firing the
12:57 pigments at high temperatures for short
12:59 periods of time so
13:01 this is what the pigment looks like raw
13:03 we've extracted it from the toxic acid
13:06 mine drainage and we've dried it and
13:07 processed it and this is what the raw
13:09 pigment looks like and this is what a
13:11 painting looks like made with those
13:14 pigments but when we fire those same raw
13:17 pigments at 500 degrees
13:21 C we get this color there brilliant
13:25 burgundy and so the paintings reflect
13:29 that and we also fired it at a th000
13:32 degre C and it turned to this the same
13:34 pigment turned to this amazing unnatural
13:37 Violet and let me tell you that is fun
13:38 to paint
13:41 with I sent a sample of this last batch
13:44 to um a large Paint Company gambling
13:46 artist colors in Portland Oregon and
13:49 they've agreed to produce a 500 tube
13:52 batch of our pigment as oil paints and
13:53 these 500 tubes of oil paint are going
13:56 to be distributed to artists around the
13:58 world their resulting artworks are going
13:59 to be curated in into a touring
14:01 exhibition so that we can broaden the
14:03 discourse on
14:06 sustainability so basically with little
14:09 funding and lots of Skeptics we've begun
14:11 to refine a process that can
14:14 continuously treat acid mine drainage
14:17 restore the watersheds for Aquatic
14:22 Life collect sustainably sourced iron
14:24 oxide pigment that can be
14:27 sold to pay for the cost of cleaning up
14:30 the streams I
14:31 I
14:35 know so we're hopeful that maybe in the
14:37 next few years we will have started a
14:40 whole new industry in Southeastern Ohio
14:41 and based on our best estimates we
14:43 should be able to create a few jobs and
14:46 actually produce a small profit all
14:53 Source when I was putting all this
14:55 together I was actually thinking and I
14:59 realized that that my first art science
15:02 relationship actually began a long time
15:06 ago uh when I was in trouble I was
15:09 barely a teenager and I was given a
15:12 choice between juvenile
15:17 Corrections or counseling and I chose
15:19 counseling not only because I couldn't
15:23 punch my way out of a wet paper bag but
15:25 it was an unusual kind of counseling
15:27 essentially once a week I had to travel
15:29 to the local University and I had to
15:30 meet with a chemistry professor so that
15:34 I could learn the true dangers of my own experiments
15:35 experiments [Music]
15:36 [Music]
15:38 um I
15:42 know super proud of that
15:45 one but fortunately Dr Carl bicker
15:46 actually could tell that I was just
15:47 trying to find my place in the world I
15:49 was you I was just lost in the bigness
15:51 of the universe and trying to figure out
15:54 why I mattered so instead you know he
15:57 introduced me to black holes and
16:01 infinity quantum entanglement and
16:03 relativity and it's it's these base
16:05 Mysteries of the universe that still
16:07 drive my paintings today so it was
16:09 actually a scientist that helped me
16:14 artist and I can tell you that artists
16:16 and scientist share two
16:20 things we share curiosity and
16:24 failure our curiosity drives us to
16:26 pursue the most unlikely of
16:29 paths and those Pursuits often fall far
16:32 short but in those failures we pick up
16:35 one clue that drives us to pick up the chase
16:36 chase
16:39 again and we do not do this work in
16:42 isolation we are incredibly grateful to
16:44 the amazing variety of people from all
16:47 walks of life who have lent their labor
16:56 endeavors if we are going to create a
16:59 sustainable future for all
17:02 I can tell you from experience that
17:05 retreating from those different from us
17:08 and building walls are not
17:11 options we need everyone
17:14 involved we're going to have to cross
17:17 disciplines Specialties
17:20 communities so have a cup with an artist
17:23 with a coal miner with a scientist it
17:26 changed my life forever for better it'll
Chrome Extension