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Spreading the Experimental Ethos

All Good Things: Reflections On Originality

I am not sure we all appreciate how unusually special are existence is and what a great fortune life is over never being born. As we all make ourselves busy with the minute obsessions of everyday living I think we tend to miss out on the pure awe of being here and being alive. It is a fascinating situation to say the least. But what strikes me the most when looking out over the world, is how creative yet conformable we all can be.

Last I checked – I do try to remind myself – life is incredibly short. Think of the age of the universe, the nearest star, planet: comparably, you are a fleeting spark, and in a century or less, who knows if anyone will remember you. Perhaps someone will remember at least your name and a few simple facts passed on through family. Still the endurance of a person’s legacy is often a reflection of the amount of creative energy a person puts outward in their lifetime. People are remembered for their commitment to their communities, their accomplishment of extraordinary feats, and the ingenuity expressed in their lives.

One thing that has always stood out to me in my small observations of the world is the seeming narrowness of living. We are creatures of habit, cultures of familiarity, and to reach outside of the comfortable norm and stake out a new vision of possibility takes a herculean effort. We are complex beings with brilliant minds and with human expression virtually limitless it feels somewhat dissatisfying to witness a tidy conformity and predictability ruling over life. Culture lays out a well designed script, allays us of anxiety, fills everyday life with meaning, but we shouldn’t forget that all that culturally “is” was once the product of choice and someone’s clever creation. As consumers we are naturally passive and we live comfortably in a world of regurgitation, but I am excited beyond anything else by expressions no matter how small or large of originality. It was once said, that “all good things are the fruits of originality.” The great experiences, works of art, film, and language, were all born out of the creative process. Every expression reflecting a rebellion against the ordinary and creating something fresh and new to offer. I don’t dream to transform the world by any vast measure, but I hope to breathe more life and excitement in to my own and perhaps a few others.

The Life Arts Laboratory is a space for me to carve out my own life masterpiece. To develop myself and to design new experiences and cultural moments. I started this project to experience the world and its fullness and I want to engage life in unique and refreshing ways. I’m here to view the world differently, invent novel interactions with the people around me and to share with fellow artists and imagineers.

Illuminating Choices: The Power of Experiments

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If you started every day by opening your eyes a little wider than usual would you be startled by the results? Even a little perspective altering can go a long way to ignite a new thought or direction. Old thoughts and habits can seem at times frozen or overly comfortable but our lives are a narrow variation of what is ultimately possible.

What reminds me most of life’s energy and possibility is the promise of experiments. Experiments are often thought of as the cold methods of science, but I think of experiments as the free play and exploration of creativity. Experiments are opportunities for cultural invention and trying out new ideas and possible moments. With experiments you can escape the familiar and create limitless interaction. If you think of the many cherished things and moments of your life you most likely can trace the experience back to a simple process of trial and error. Your favorite piece of music that might have changed your life, your favorite expression, or culinary masterpiece. Imagine a life without the great conventions you are used to and realize that they all were once unconventional inventions perhaps even laughed out of the room or met with criticism. Life experiments and creative thinking give birth to new artistic possibilities. Most importantly, experiments can offer a picture of life re-imagined that might uncover an alternative path of enhanced pleasure and happiness. You don’t have to live the way life is supposed to look or devote yourself to the obvious patterns that people follow. Existence is a great wide open field and our experiments can help us illuminate the many directions to walk.

Experiment of the Week: The One Day Rewind

You might have seen the movie Groundhog Day, a great movie where the main character relives the same day over and over again. This experiment plays off this idea with the one obvious drawback that time isn’t actually suspended or altered. With your next big holiday, preferably when you have experienced an awesome day exploring great things, enjoy the day from start to finish. The next day, set out to live as closely as possible to the way you did the day before. As best as your memory allows, wake up the same way, go to the same places, eat the same food, see the same people and see how doing almost exactly the same thing twice in two days can have potentially very different meaning. Take this even further by extending the continuous loop. Do this for a week or a month and enjoy the interesting, curious, and very strange results.

Experiment of the Week: Travel Plot Twisters

Plot twisters is an experiment built for two. When traveling with a companion, decide that at some point of the trip each one of you will take your travels a surprising direction. The timing will be uncertain and the surprise turn will be the secret of the plot twister (the person planning the trip’s next secret event). Start off in a base location–New York, Stockholm, Johannesburg, or wherever you chose. When the timing is right, the first assigned plot twister will disappear leaving only a note detailing the next destination or experience on the itinerary. The person could play the twist in the middle of the night, during a dinner, or at any time or place of interest. The plot twister leaves unexpectedly to get a head start and invite the person to chase them there. When you both arrive at the new destination you can enjoy the new place for a few days before the plot twister role switches and the other person decides the next surprising direction also in sneaky spur of the moment fashion. Take the journey and plot twisting rotation as long as you wish. Enjoy the surprising turns and direction. Keep your plans loose to begin with and let the whims of your companion take you to one surprising place after another. This is an awesome way to add the element of suspense to an otherwise ordinary vacation. Enjoy!

Hot Off the Press: A Book Less Ordinary

I am happy to announce the fresh release of my finished work, “Life Less Ordinary: A Book of Radical Everyday Experiments.” After many hours of creative labor and twisting my brain into knots, the book has finally arrived. It is the fullest collection to date of my own brand of everyday experiments. Over 100 ideas to help one embrace life’s wonders, challenges, and mysteries. Hope you will support my creative work and buy yourself a copy. Enjoy!

Experiment of the Week: The Dream Mural Project

My experiment of the week for Sept 7th 2018! The Dream Mural Project.

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The Dream Mural Project is one of my favorite experiments and can result in an awesome work of art. In a space close to where you sleep or in a safe place of your home drape a large sheet of canvas. With each new morning as you wake with images and characters from your dream paint an inspired image on the wall to carefully craft a dream mural. Add new images with each new day from the dream visions you have in your sleep. Create a beautiful collage of dream places, thoughts, images, bizarre or restrained. Complete the mural until every corner of the canvas has been used. If you haven’t had enough, recreate new murals as you complete old ones or combine your artistic abilities with others in a shared dream mural with friends. Have each person contribute their own personal dream images to the combined work. Keep a record of the images created as the painting evolves over time. To add another dimension, create a timelapse of the creative process and the life of its development. If you feel inspired share it with the world for others to enjoy.

For more experiments check out the Life Arts Experiments Portal !

Experiments in Action: The Experience Media Page

Aside from just writing about experiments, I also take on many of the experiments of my book in real life. And how great would it be to capture those moments and share them with you? The Experience Media page is my vehicle for that cause.

There you will find my digital self-archive and a growing series of personal tributes, reflections, and media embracing the imaginative space of life through creative experiments.

Much more to come!

The Life Arts Experiments Portal

Creativity in life adds tremendous color and meaning. Without it life would lack so much of its excitement and depth. My greatest pride of the Life Arts Lab is the many experiments that fill this website and my forthcoming book. There are many ways to make an average moment come to life with invention and a new perspective. I invite you to visit the experiments portal below to explore some of the many experiences life has to offer.

Yours,

Billy

“Questioning is the Piety of Thinking”: the Life Arts Frame of Mind

If you look up the word “genius” in the dictionary maybe one day you will find a picture of yourself. It is something to strive for at least if nothing else. I haven’t done anything remarkable enough deserving any high accolades, but it is a starry-eyed fantasy of mine to one day accomplish a feat of great significance. It does make for a good daydream on a long Sunday afternoon. Nevertheless, I have always had an attraction to the idea of genius. What is curious about the idea is how people think of geniuses. When they do, they often think of someone who is extremely brilliant, with an incredibly sharp mind, and awkward tufts of hair. Still I think it can be argued that most geniuses were people simply not willing to ignore a really good question. Moreover, geniuses are often inquisitors and people often obsessed with viewing a problem from a ridiculous number of angles. Looking back it seems most of the world’s brilliant achievements started with a very simple process of discovery and radical inquiry.

Questioning and inquiry are states of mind I have tried to cultivate in myself and encourage in others. To be inquisitive means for me to have a specific kind of attention towards the world. It means to gaze or wonder about life’s circumstances and to break out of habitual ways of seeing. If we view the facts of our lives and take meaning and purpose to be rigidly defined, we definitely have lost some value in our experience. I am of the position that as Heideggar once put it, “questioning is the piety of thinking.” To purely adopt beliefs without critically engaging them is to dash out opportunities for personal growth and deeper understanding. To exercise our natural power of introspection and to examine the world more intensely, opens up the opportunity to see with more complexity what is truly astonishing about it. The life arts laboratory thrives on this “sacred” idea of inquiry and radical attention.

All people have the immense power to think free and epic ideas. We are, by our very nature, designers of life and creators of anything culturally possible. My hope with this website is to share in a community that bravely carves out new experiential frontiers and is invested in the creation of culture over the passive consumption of it. What do you think? Are you with me? Are you with me? It’s never too late to join.

Experiments in Living: Project Purpose and Inspiration

Above all else the Life Arts Laboratory is a celebration of individuality and a gateway to life exploration. My hope is that the reading here inspires people to expand life into new territories and reach new discoveries.

One of the motivations that inspired this project is the concept of Experiments in Living. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher of the Victorian era, wrote extensively on the idea of liberty and individuality. In doing so, he described “experiments in living” as individuals’ unique means towards happiness which are experimental, creative and often challenge common assumptions. He described these as necessary means in society which represent varieties of character and give way to new conversations and possibilities. Experiments in living are exactly what they sound like and to me an endless fascination.

In one of my favorite quotes Mill once wrote:

“In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them…. It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in [ourselves], but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to.”

This might be the best celebration of individuality written in the English language and this passage is one that has struck me as long as I have been aware of it. Like the quote above, this website is a tribute to individual creativity and a tool for people seeking greater self-opening and exploration. The experiments and writing of this project speak to the artistic power of human beings and the miniature pursuits of happiness that depart from everyday predictability.

Feel free to peruse the many pages and layers of this website. Flip through the many experiments one can use to enrich their everyday life. Play, create, share, experiment and last but not least, say hello!