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We’re in the middle of a small series of episodes right now on Buddhism and art, and this one is about, well, me. Not everyone who listens to this podcast or who’s read How to Train a Happy Mind knows that my main job for most of my life has been as an artist: one who works mostly with computer software and interactive installations. I often joke that I used to be a part-time Buddhist, and now I’m a full-time Buddhist, but I still spend about 25% of my time making art.

Earlier this year, I was invited to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club to give a talk and have a discussion with Hugh Leeman about my new series of work called Hidden Geometries. These new pieces reveal the hidden geometric diagrams that underlie the thousand-year-old tradition of devotional Buddhist paintings known as thangkas. In the talk, I also share a couple of the greatest hits from my career in interactive art.

Introduction to Scott Snibbe

Hugh Leeman: Thank you to the Commonwealth Club for hosting this series for over a year now, bringing together great thinkers, creators, and technologists to spark civic discourse around the big ideas that are having a massive impact on our social landscape.

Before bringing Scott on stage, I want to give a bit of context to the incredible career he’s had as an artist. Over the last nearly 30 years, he has shown his artwork at leading institutions around the world: New York’s MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the London Institute of Contemporary Art, the Tokyo Intercommunication Center—the list goes on.

Further testament to his creative prowess is his ability to collaborate across creative disciplines. He’s collaborated with world-renowned filmmaker James Cameron of Avatar and Aliens. He worked with Björk, the multi-platinum award-winning artist, on the first app album ever. He also collaborated with Beck, the Grammy Award-winning recording artist, and composer Philip Glass.

More recently, he wrote a book in common language, introducing a lay audience to the ideas and foundations of Buddhism and meditation. The book was so approachable and inspiring that the Dalai Lama himself wrote the introduction. Here tonight to tell us about these seemingly disparate ideas and to pull those threads together for us, ladies and gentlemen, with a round of applause, please welcome to the stage, Scott Snibbe. Thank you, Scott. The stage is yours.

Scott Snibbe’s art career

Scott Snibbe: That was a very good introduction, I think it’s better than my bio.

This is kind of a cute picture. I’ve always loved computers, and I found this photo recently, a friend of mine took it exactly 30 years ago. It was the very first time I showed my art publicly, at a conference called SIGGRAPH 1995, the computer graphics conference. And, surprisingly, it matches a picture taken last year of me working.

So why do I love computers? A lot of people hate computers now. But for me, computer programming has always felt like the closest thing to the mind, to the way the mind works. It’s invisible, immaterial, continuous, changing, interactive, and full of infinite possibilities.

And I still feel that way, despite how many bad deeds have been done with computers since then. It’s my 30-year anniversary of showing my first work publicly, so it’s kind of neat to be giving this talk at this time. I wish I had a picture of myself in 1980 with my first computer: an Apple II. But people didn’t take as many pictures back then.

This was the artwork I showed, the first artwork I ever showed, you can see that strapping young gentleman. By the way, that’s about $30,000 worth of equipment it’s running on. The piece is called Motion Phone, what fascinated me from the beginning was the connection between the body and abstraction. This piece takes the movements of your body and turns them into abstract animation, abstract movement. I was trying to figure out how to make art within the computer feel truly alive. One day, I started staring at my cursor and realized: everybody moves in a unique, different, and often quite beautiful way.

One day, I started staring at my cursor and realized: everybody moves in a unique, different, and often quite beautiful way.

So I made a piece inspired by abstract cinema, translating those ideas into an instrument that’s like jazz, where you can improvise abstract animation with other people. It was networked, too. Once I started showing my work in galleries, I wanted interaction to move beyond just the fingertips, I wanted people to use their whole bodies. The first installation that did this was called Boundary Functions.

This was in 1998. A lot of people see it now and say, “You couldn’t do that back then.” In this piece, people walk onto a floor and it projects lines between them. Those lines have a very specific mathematical and natural relationship, they encircle all the space that’s closer to you than to anyone else. A really interesting thing about this piece: if you go on the floor alone, nothing happens.

It’s a social artwork: it only functions when there’s more than one person, and it actually gets better the more people are there. What I wanted to express was the idea that we call that space around us our “personal space,” but we only have it when others are around, and it changes without our control. So the piece was meant to point toward the idea of interdependence: that the things we think of as our own are actually entirely dependent on others.

It’s a social artwork: it only functions when there’s more than one person, and it actually gets better the more people are there.

Over the years, I’m just giving a very short overview of some of my work before the series I’ll be talking about, I became really interested in these kinds of patterns. Right after that, I started making visual musical instruments.

This one was called The Bubble Harp. It was heavily influenced by John Cage, Brian Eno’s tape loop experiments, and the idea of generative music that comes from the body and the laws of nature. It draws that same kind of diagram around the points that come from your body as you move the mouse, and it plays a note proportional to the length of the line that’s formed. More recently, I’ve been working on this in my studio. Now it’s possible to make these pieces large and social. That’s just me and my wife in the studio, working with a large-scale version of it.

Another part of my work that Hugh alluded to, which I’ve been privileged to be involved in, is exploring the app as an artistic medium. There was one with Björk that’s fairly well known.

This one is a bit less known, it was with Philip Glass and Beck. It was more of a music visualization. The question was: how does music relate to the body? Well, you use your body to create music. Music is vibration, it’s actually another form of movement. So this piece moves both to the music and in response to your body as you touch it.

Music is vibration, it’s actually another form of movement.

A lot of my work, even before I was a Buddhist (I became a Buddhist 25 years ago) was exploring one of the central ideas of Buddhism. You saw it with Boundary Functions. That idea is what’s called “emptiness,” which is more easily understood as interdependence: that everything we think of as our own is actually completely intertwined with others.

Everything we think of as our own is actually completely intertwined with others.

Thangkas in Buddhism

So this is Buddhist art, this is the kind of art we use in our meditation practice. This is an image called a thangka painting of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha who lived 2,500 years ago. It’s a very powerful body, an enlightened body, one that has fully realized the potential of what it is to be a human being, a living being.

What’s interesting about this tradition is how closely it aligns with what I was always trying to do in my interactive work. The tradition of devotional Buddhist art was primarily about evoking an experience in the viewer, not necessarily conveying historical, cultural, or even religious information. The purpose is to bring about an experience in the mind that cultivates its better qualities: generosity, patience, kindness, and so on.

It’s a thousand-year-old living tradition of painting, still practiced today in Nepal, Tibet, and elsewhere. I started studying this painting as a way to get closer to the images. Anyone who’s an artist, or who’s drawn before, knows that once you’ve drawn something, you understand it a lot better, it becomes part of you.

I studied thangka painting with someone named Tsherin Sherpa, who later became a very well-known contemporary artist. At the time, though, he was a young thangka painter, just teaching Buddhists how to paint and selling beautiful thangkas. The very first thing I learned from him was that before you draw one of these images and paint on top of it, you create a grid.

The grid has very specific proportions, and they’re different for every single figure. They’re different for each of the beings we call deities—but really, they’re people who became enlightened, enlightened beings. They’re not like gods in the way we think of them in Western religion.

I always thought I’d love to do something with that geometry. A couple of years ago, thanks to Jim Campbell, who’s here, a friend of mine from our art group, this idea resurfaced. I was talking about some new work I was planning, which felt a little derivative, and he encouraged me to try something really original. That’s when I thought, it’s time to come back to these grids.

I started out in the computer, which is where I usually work. I took that grid, on the left is how it normally looks when you draw it, and started trying to stretch it out so it filled a rectangle and worked as an abstract composition. I did this with a few different enlightened beings.

This one is Tara, the deity of female power. But pretty quickly, I wanted to get out of the computer. I wanted to return to natural materials and techniques, something that used more of my body than just a finger clicking a mouse. I began making drawings and took those same proportions, laying them out on clay. I decided to use the oldest types of materials. I really like this clay board, it just comes straight out of a riverbed. So I drew the diagrams on clay with ink. At the same time, I kept developing the software.

This was the first finished piece. What I’m doing here is taking that diagram and filtering the colors of a very low-resolution sampled thangka through it. What I was trying to convey was something my meditation teacher taught me. They tell you to visualize the Buddha very precisely over your head, every single detail.

They’ll say things like, every hair on the Buddha’s head is curled to the right. There are all these incredibly fine details. But for someone like me (and really, for most of us) what we see in meditation is something very vague, very amorphous. And my teacher said, that’s perfectly fine. Because what you’re aiming for is the feeling. You want to connect with the feeling of what the being you’re envisioning evokes.

I wanted to evoke that dynamic experience in the mind of an imperfect yogi meditating, something that’s in motion, imperfect, but still deeply meaningful. In Vajrayana Buddhism, there’s this idea of the three bodies that relate to enlightened beings, and also to ourselves.

I wanted to evoke that dynamic experience in the mind of an imperfect yogi meditating, something that’s in motion, imperfect, but still deeply meaningful.

The first body is the mind: a completely immaterial body, the world of ideas and thoughts. The second is the physical body, just matter. The third is what connects the two. It’s called Sambhogakaya, though you don’t need to remember that term. It’s the energy body, the body that links mind and matter. That body expresses itself in our speech, like I’m doing now, it comes out through creativity, through music, exercise, sensuality. And that’s what I was trying to convey in these pieces, that dynamic process from mind to body, the kind of experience you get as a meditator.

The energy body expresses itself in our speech, it comes out through creativity, through music, exercise, sensuality.

This is where I’m taking a thangka and sampling it at a low resolution. The first one I made was sort of handmade. I used a program called Blender, it’s a free 3D tool, and I created a mapping where every pixel has a slightly different point of view, just like our own consciousness. The points don’t just look straight down at where they’re sampling from, they’re scattered around the surface. I’ve made a few of these and plan to continue the series.

I was happy enough with those that I decided to go further and write my own program. I took the algorithm I had been working out in my mind and implemented it in software. I call the program Buddha Grids.

This was the first piece in that series, called Protector of the World. It’s especially meaningful to me because my wife’s stepmother played a big role in helping resettle Tibetans in Minneapolis. She passed away ten years ago, and at her memorial, a Tibetan gentleman gave a thangka of White Tara to my father-in-law, who’s here tonight, as a tribute to her compassion. I created this piece in her honor, using that specific thangka as the basis.

This is another one. You can see there’s a lot of variation in how the sampling works. This one is much softer than some of the others. It’s actually a lot closer to what I experience in meditation myself. There are many different variations, depending on which thangka I’m sampling. The one in the middle, in particular, samples a very large region, and you get this quality of self-similarity.

That relates a bit to the idea of Indra’s Net, a concept from Hindu philosophy, that the universe is made up of these individual points, and each one reflects everything else. Every point in the universe reflects the whole. And that’s actually how the universe works: every point in space feels the influence of every other point.

Every point in space feels the influence of every other point.

With the program I use, I can offset the pieces. Then I paint, because the raw output doesn’t always look that good. I hand-adjust each piece, within the rules, to create effects like illusions of transparency. If you zoom in too far, you get flat imagery, which I don’t find that pleasing. But when you zoom way out, you get back to that idea of Indra’s Net. There’s also a Buddhist version of this idea, “a universe in every atom,” which comes from a beautiful text called The King of Prayers.

These are some of the dynamic pieces mounted on the wall. That’s a large screen, framed like a painting. Each one is meant to convey a specific type of meditation. This one reflects a meditation that’s similar to mindfulness: short, focused sessions. The loop here lasts about two minutes to help strengthen concentration. The entire sequence repeats after two hours, which is also the typical length of a retreat session.

Another piece conveys a very different type of meditation, what we call analytical meditation. Instead of focusing just on the breath, you actually observe your thoughts as they come and go. I tried to convey that in one of my pieces: gaining a little distance in your mind while watching thoughts pass through it.

These are meant to be watched for hours, but not today. For the past 22 years, I’ve really wanted to work with the original materials used in thangka painting. It’s one of the oldest forms of painting, using ground mineral pigments and glues made from animal hides.

I asked Tsherin Sherpa back then if I could work with those materials, and he said, “Oh no, I only have enough materials for one lifetime.” I really liked that. For people who believe in multiple lifetimes, they often talk about “this one lifetime” in that way. So I kind of gave up on the idea. But then a Japanese artist friend of mine, Craig Nagasawa, said, “No, you can actually get them in Tokyo.”

This is the store, if you’re ever in Tokyo, it’s a wonderful place to visit. Even if you’re not an artist, it just feels amazing to be there. I took that photo myself. So I ordered some pigments from the store and thought, great, I can finally start working with them. I tried it on my own. This is a picture of me with my friend Raju Yonjan, who runs a studio in Nepal. I had commissioned some paintings from him, and when he came to visit me in Berkeley, I showed him a little of what I’d painted. He kind of laughed and said, “You’re never going to figure this out on your own.”

But then he invited me to come study with the masters at his studio in Nepal. It’s called Enlightenment Studio, which is such a beautiful name for an art studio. Raju is also a deep Buddhist practitioner. I gave him a copy of my book, and he and the others invited me to study with them. It felt like an extraordinary opportunity. This was last October.

I went for a couple of weeks to learn. On the left, you can see the technique for preparing the canvas. We spent a day learning how to do that using a special stone from a specific river, and very specific techniques. The way the canvas is stretched is actually more like a drum than the way canvases are stretched in the West. I also learned from the master painters, how they do the shading and so on.

This was the first painting I completed there. It’s based on all the shading and color from my algorithmic work, but executed entirely by hand. It’s really something to see in person. Animal glue is a unique medium, it pulls behind the pigment as it dries. It’s the only medium where the pigment stays right on top of the canvas. And you can actually see the atoms, that’s what’s so wonderful about it. You’re literally seeing the atoms, the molecules, of the pigment. It’s very, very beautiful. When I came back, I started working in my studio.

This was the first piece I completed late last year. One thing you’ll notice here are all the little marks around the edges. That’s where you test the colors for the painting. Because when you’re working with different natural pigments, some of them dry darker, some lighter, you can’t predict it. And once you start mixing them, it gets even more unpredictable.

So you have to test every color right there on the canvas. When I mounted the pieces, I worked with a great studio in San Francisco called Small Works. They framed this first one in a way that preserved those marks on the sides, because the whole series is about process. I actually ran the idea by my friends in Nepal, and they said, “Oh, that’s very nice if you leave the marks on the sides, because the marks convey the thoughts and feelings of the artist.” They told me that was part of the lineage tradition. To end, I just want to show you this last piece.

I finished it just a couple of weeks ago. It’s based on the White Tara deity. This one’s very different from the others because there’s no repeat period. What I did was tie the piece to the rotation of the Earth. So when I turn it on, I never know exactly what it’s going to look like. This is actually a recording, but when we switch back to the version running off the computer here, it will look different.

This piece is meant to reflect the way meditation meets the world. Your meditation isn’t meant to stay on the cushion, it’s meant to come with you, to influence how you behave in real life. This one’s unpredictable, like life itself. And now, we’re going to have a conversation with Hugh, which I’m really looking forward to.

Thank you.

Is there value in inefficiency?

Hugh Leeman: One of the things you just said that really stood out to me is that this is about process. And I think, if we contrast that with the way the world operates, if you step back and look at it, the world is very focused, if not obsessed, with efficiency. And inefficiency has become almost a pejorative term, as if being inefficient is inherently bad. But here you are, going to Nepal, into the mountains, to learn this practice and process.

You’re using a specific rock from a river, you’re buying pigments, grinding them by hand. I was at your studio thinking, Oh my God, I don’t even want to be around these pigments, they might be toxic! And you’re going through all of this, even though these incredible pieces could be made much more efficiently. You’re marrying that process with the importance of process itself. Clearly, you find value in inefficiency.

What can you tell the world about the value of inefficiency?

Scott Snibbe: I mean, the best things in life are inefficient. Would you want your dinner to be over in one minute? Some people do, there’s this thing called Soylent they invented about ten years ago for hyper-efficient computer programmers. It’s this gross white liquid. It’s amazing people actually pay for it. They just sit there and drink it so they can keep programming. No, you want your meal to last as long as possible, to enjoy it.

Do you want our conversation to be over as quickly as possible? Do you want your doctor to be efficient? Sadly, sometimes doctors are very efficient, and that’s not so nice, is it? So really, the inefficient things in life are the very best ones.

The value of interactivity in the art world and technology

Hugh Leeman: I think there’s something really fascinating about the interactivity in your work. If we go back 25, almost 30 years to that first piece you showed us tonight, there’s a through line, this connective tissue, around the idea of interactivity. Historically, art in the Western canon has been a relatively static experience. I stand in front of a Michelangelo, I look at it, maybe I think something, feel something, or maybe I don’t, and then I walk away. And that’s it. But you’ve really been dedicated to this idea of interactivity.

What value do you find in interactivity, for 21st-century audiences, both in the art world and in technology?

Scott Snibbe:
The reason I wanted to make interactive art is because I realized that all of our experience in life is interactive. Even when you’re looking at a painting, there’s no “red” in that painting, no texture in the painting. If you listen to a song, there’s no actual sound in the music. All of those things are psychological phenomena.

Even this conversation, our speaking right now, it’s just vibrating air. The air itself is silent. But somehow, it turns into sound in our minds. I was raised a Christian Scientist (which is a long story we don’t have to get into) but that religion teaches that there is only mind. So I was raised with that idea, and it made it natural for me to think that way. But I really wanted to share that idea with other people through my art: that everything is constructed.

Everything is constructed in our minds: psychologically, interactively, in real time. In that sense, all art is interactive. And it’s so beautiful, the way it’s interactive. Nobody sees the same painting. By making truly interactive art, you make that reality obvious, because the art isn’t even there until someone engages with it. There’s literally nothing there until you touch it, move with it, respond to it.

Everything is constructed in our minds: psychologically, interactively, in real time. In that sense, all art is interactive.

That was the motivation. And it’s also just delightful. When you’re doing something, when you’re really engaged, you’re generally not thinking. And I mean that in a good way. You’re present. You’re absorbed. I wanted to create art that was a total experience. Some people get that sitting in front of a painting, of course. But people are distracted. Media today is extremely stimulating. Interactive art has a way of fully capturing your attention because it’s novel, it’s engaging, it’s interactive, in the way human beings are.

Interactive art has a way of fully capturing your attention because it’s novel, it’s engaging, it’s interactive, in the way human beings are.

Kindness is the key to collaboration

Hugh Leeman: Building on that idea of interaction, not just with your artwork, but also your collaborations with artists across disciplines, how do you approach those interactions? I’m thinking about what you write in your book, particularly around the sense of self in Buddhism and the idea of letting go of the self.

How do you enter those collaborations without just layering yourself over the other person’s work, without creating a kind of chimera? How do you actually come together and create something new, something beautiful, that’s not just your thought on how it should be?

Scott Snibbe: I’ve thought about that a lot. I’ve been part of many collaborations, including with Björk, with someone who is a much stronger artist than I am. One thing I’ve come to believe about collaboration is that it’s actually important for one person to be in charge, to be honest. And that person should be incredibly generous, patient, and kind.

I wanted to learn from Björk in particular how to collaborate, because all of her collaborations end up being better than what either person could have created alone. She worked with Lars von Trier and made the best movie he ever made. So I watched her closely, how she collaborates. And what I noticed is that she’s very, very gentle, but always in charge.

I’d show her something and sometimes she’d say, “Oh, beautiful.” And then I’d show her something else and she’d say, “Hmm… let me think about that.” It took me a while to realize that “Let me think about that” actually meant “Hell no.” But in Buddhism, kindness is actually the second pillar of ethics. Not many people talk about that these days. But it’s incredibly effective. It’s not just something soft or sentimental, it’s actually a powerful way to get things done in the world.

But in Buddhism, kindness is actually the second pillar of ethics.

Using art as a form of connection

Hugh Leeman: This idea of kindness brings me back to the first piece you showed us tonight, where you said the work doesn’t really exist until someone else enters the space, until someone interacts with it. Then, we start to see the self emerge, through the division of space. That piece came before your deep dive into Buddhism and meditation, right? Was there already some thinking along those lines? Because it feels incredibly coincidental, how you were already dealing with the sense of self and its relationship to others. How did that come about?

Scott Snibbe: I was just talking to Greg Niemeyer, a professor at UC Berkeley, and his students about this. I feel lucky because my parents taught me to really trust my intuition. If you love something, if something speaks to you, don’t worry too much about why. Just keep following it.

So I saw those diagrams while studying computer science. I actually got a master’s degree in it, even though I hated it. It was awful. But I knew I needed programming to make my art. And the only class I actually liked was computational geometry, where we learned how to make that diagram. I found it completely mind-blowing, mathematically, and just intuitively. It resonated deeply. Then I realized: it’s cells, it’s bubbles, dogs pee in those patterns, stars exert gravity in those patterns. I thought, Wow. The invisible structures of reality are so profound. If you can make them visible, they reveal something deeply true.

So I wanted to overlay that onto people, because it relates to personal space. And in some ways, I just wanted to see what would happen. I didn’t know how people would behave, or if they would even “get it.” I didn’t know if I would get it. My friend John Simon Jr., another digital artist, emphasizes looking back at your own work and reinterpreting it. That you can learn from your own work. I’ve done that with that piece. Over time, I’ve learned more about it just by watching others interact with it.

Letting go of certainty is important. Embrace your passion and fascination, but let go of any fixed ideas about what the work means. Let it unfold gradually. Time is a really important ingredient in making anything good.

Letting go of certainty is important. Embrace your passion and fascination, but let go of any fixed ideas about what the work means.

What is Scott’s role in the world as an artist, today?

Hugh Leeman: Two things. First, I want to return to the idea of time in relation to what we’re looking at here. But perhaps more importantly, this idea of reinterpretation. You go back to that very first piece you showed us. You’ve had a phenomenal career, 30 years of evolving artwork. And clearly, the technology has evolved profoundly over that same time.

Now, as the person I’m sitting here with today, looking back at that full arc, how do you see the evolution of your artwork? And perhaps, how do you see the role of the artist in the world today? More specifically, how do you see Scott Snibbe’s role in the world today, as an artist?

Scott Snibbe: In the early days, it was all about joy and enthusiasm, and also, honestly, being part of an in-crowd. Kind of like the Dadaists at Café Voltaire. There are these moments in history when a few people come together just as something new becomes possible: surrealism, cubism, whatever it is. So it was like that. That time’s over, of course. Those moments pass quickly.

But for a while, the medium itself was evolving, projection art, digital tools, and I happened to be there right when it became possible. Right place, right time. That time is over now, too. When I was a kid and got my first computer, it was really expensive, about $3,000 back then, which would be over $10,000 now. And when you turned it on, it was just a black screen with a blinking cursor. It didn’t do anything. But it came with a manual that taught you how to program.

That time is gone, too. It was a beautiful time: a blank canvas, a moment of discovery. Now we’re in an era that’s kind of the opposite. Everyone thinks they know what computers are for: social media, productivity, streaming, pornography, whatever it is. I think that’s certainly the purpose of my work, and of others like Jim, and anyone working with technological art: to reopen that sense of possibility and say, “No, this is still a blank canvas. We’re at the very beginning.”

What’s possible? This is a blank canvas with the infinite power of computation behind it, with nearly infinite color and resolution. So I think for anyone, even if you’re not an artist, it’s worth realizing that anything is still possible on a computer screen, on your phone. And there are incredibly strong forces, backed by billion-dollar companies, trying to tell you what computers are for. But you can push back. Open your mind. Use these tools for good, for what you find meaningful in life.

Try to resist the patterns that have been pushed on you by people with an agenda for how you should spend your time. We don’t have to go too far into that, I know you have a lot of programs on that here.

The importance of time

Hugh Leeman: Indeed, yes. You mentioned the rotation of the Earth earlier, and just to reiterate for the audience: this isn’t a video or a recording. It’s connected to real time. Going back to my first question and your answer about the importance of inefficiency, you could have made this a looping video. That would have been much easier.

What’s the importance of time, especially tying it to the rotation of the Earth and pulling that into this technological artwork?

Scott Snibbe: In some ways, I’m still figuring that out. But at the heart of it, it makes the piece feel more alive. There’s actually a question about whether time even exists, which we don’t have to go deep into. But there’s a great book by Carlo Rovelli called The Order of Time. He argues that Newton’s idea of linear time doesn’t hold up under modern physics.

Instead, Rovelli says time is just a movement from greater complexity to less complexity, like a draining of complexity. Right now, we’re in a high-complexity moment. Time feels like it’s moving faster because there’s more going on. Rovelli even says that in interstellar space, time doesn’t really advance at all. In the absence of change or complexity, time doesn’t really function the same way.

In the absence of change or complexity, time doesn’t really function the same way.

So, I wanted to make something that ties more deeply into the universe. And also into surprise. Every time I turn this piece on, I’m surprised, it’s doing something I haven’t seen before. This piece feels closer to being alive than anything I’ve made so far. My previous works demanded human interaction. This one isn’t interactive in that sense, but it interacts with the Earth and with the progression of time. For me, it’s about surprise and connection, more connection to the universe.

Introspective awarness in technology

Hugh Leeman: That idea of connection to the universe, that’s the macro view. But what about the micro view, connection to the self? In preparing for our conversation tonight, I came across something you said in a previous interview about introspective awareness. It’s a beautiful idea, but not one that seems common, especially in the tech world or in the development of most of today’s tools.

What might the world look like if introspective awareness were more integrated into technology and into creative practices?

Scott Snibbe: It would be a world where people are more connected to themselves. That’s really where happiness comes from, being connected to yourself, liking yourself, being your own best friend. Introspective awareness is just the first step in a limitless journey, realizing how awesome it is just to be alive, to be you. And from there, to connect with others and build beautiful relationships. Even the difficult ones start to look beautiful.

So, that’s what it would look like: people not bombing Iran, not fighting, not calling each other idiots, not making harmful products. As a Buddhist, when we hold meetings at the center, we start by saying, “May this meeting benefit others.” I’ve worked at major tech corporations. If they had that one rule, if before every meeting someone said, “May our work benefit others,” I don’t think people could make some of the decisions they end up making.

I don’t think it takes much. My daughter just got an Apple Watch. It has a “mindful minute” feature, which is actually quite nice. The other day she told me, “I think I’m going to take a mindful minute.” That’s fantastic. Beautiful. So, companies are trying. They’re not all evil—Apple did that, right? It’s built into the product. But it’s such a tiny part. It should obviously be most of the product. The product should be saying, “Hey, put me down. Go have some fun in the park. Leave me alone for the rest of the day.

What to take away from Scott’s artwork

Hugh Leeman: As we start to move toward questions from the audience, and if you haven’t yet, now would be a great time to write yours down, I want to focus in on something. I was going through your podcast, listening to interviews you’ve done. Then I stumbled upon one with someone who’s been incredibly inspiring to me: Laurie Anderson. I thought, Wow, he interviewed Laurie Anderson.

And then I dug deeper and realized it was actually a conversation between the two of you, about your book. I believe it took place in New York, and you described it as a moving conversation. And it really was. The two of you talked about books, artworks, and ideas that had deeply impacted you. At one point, Laurie said something like, “I can distill the most important experiences down into just one or two sentences.” And you responded that you’d done something similar in your book—quoting mentors and distilling their impact.

With that spirit of distillation, what are one or two sentences you would want us to take away about what your artwork has meant to you?

Scott Snibbe:
That’s a hard one.

I actually ran into trouble with that once. I interviewed for a job at UC Berkeley a long time ago. Greg, were you there? I think so. I was a finalist for a professor position, but I didn’t get the job. And I think this might be why.

We had a lunch meeting with the committee, and one of the guys started grilling me: “I don’t understand your ideology. What’s your framework? Are you a Marxist? Are you a…?” I said, “I’m Buddhist.” I told him, “I want my work to benefit others. That’s the purpose of everything I do.” As a Mahayana Buddhist, that’s my core motivation: for my work to benefit others and bring joy into the world.

That wasn’t a satisfying answer for him, and I didn’t get the job. At least, that’s how I like to tell the story. I’m sure there were other factors—but it makes a good story. And that’s still what I’d say today: May my work benefit others. If you wake up in the morning and think, May whatever I do today benefit others, what a better day you have.

The relationship between jazz improvisation and interactive art

Gerald Anthony Harris:
Let me ask the first audience question, because it’s been in the back of my mind, too. When you were describing your first interactive work, you said it was like jazz. Can you say more about the relationship between jazz improvisation and interactive art?

Scott Snibbe: Sure. I’m a big jazz fan. I actually play jazz flute myself, which, by the way, I just watched Anchorman, and they really made fun of that. Kinda made me sad. But seriously, jazz is, in many ways, the highest form of musicianship. It’s so technically difficult, it’s almost impossible. And yet it also requires openness, presence, and spontaneity.

The way jazz is supposed to be played, not just memorizing solos, like some do now, but truly internalizing everything so deeply that you can let go. In Buddhism, there’s a wonderful saying: “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”

“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”

It’s in a Donovan song, too, I remember hearing it as a kid. It’s a very deep teaching in Buddhism. First, you see the mountain as it is. Then, through study and insight, you realize it’s not what you thought: it’s empty. Then eventually, you return to seeing the mountain, but in a new way, a more profound way.

That’s jazz. Any good jazz musician is in that third stage. They’ve completely digested the technique, let it go, and are now living in the music: spontaneously, continuously. That’s what that piece was like. And some of my other works are meant to be like that, too: continuous experiences, always different, with a certain mastery behind them.

Visual manifestation of music

Gerald Anthony Harris:
That leads to my next question. Miles Davis has a piece called Kind of Blue, and he chose that particular shade of blue intentionally. So when I saw your artwork with the music and the changing visuals, I thought: wouldn’t it be great to have an experience where, as you’re listening to music, you’re simultaneously seeing a visual manifestation of it?

Have you ever thought about creating something like that, for people to have at home?

Scott Snibbe: Well, that’s music visualization, and lots of people do that. I’ve done it with a number of collaborators: the Björk app, the Beck and Philip Glass app, those were all dynamic. They evolve in real time. So yeah, there’s a long history of that as an art form. There used to be something, Tim probably remembers, on the PC that had all those music visualizers built in during the ’90s.

Audience member: Winamp!

Scott Snibbe: Right, Winamp! It let anyone write a plugin. It never got super popular, but it had its own scene. And VJs, people still do this in clubs, especially around San Francisco. My friend Scott Draves is really good at that. So yes, there’s definitely a whole subculture around it.

What’s the equivalent of a paint test in code?

Gerald Anthony Harris: Here’s another question: What’s the equivalent of a paint test on the margins in code? And how could one manifest that in a screen-based work?

Scott Snibbe: That’s a really good question. The equivalent would be all the intermediate results. When you’re working on a program, you make a lot of mistakes, and often, the mistakes are the best part. I’ve saved versions of programs just because I liked the mistake. Sometimes the mistake even inspires you to go in a completely new direction.

I’m sure Jim has had that experience. So for anyone doing programming as an art form, my tip is: be awake to the mistakes. Something you think is wrong might actually be more beautiful than what you had planned.

For anyone doing programming as an art form, my tip is, be awake to the mistakes. Something you think is wrong might actually be more beautiful than what you had planned.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Could you code that in somehow?

Scott Snibbe: Well, it sort of happens naturally because no one codes perfectly. For example, you might be off by one when connecting lines, and instead of a perfect grid, you get this scrambled, gorgeous pattern. And then you save that as something else entirely.

Raising happy kids in the modern-day world

Gerald Anthony Harris: Last question, this one’s about children. When I saw the kids on that big floor piece you showed, running around and playing, it made me wonder: What should we be doing with all this, to help kids live more fun, more beautiful lives?

Scott Snibbe: Ironically, it’s actually about not being around technology. The best thing you can do for your kids is take them into nature, and to do hard things. We go out to Desolation Wilderness. When you’re out there, you need a hundred tiny things just to survive. There are mosquitoes. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s amazing. It’s one of the greatest experiences, to feel what life was like 30,000 years ago. So honestly, the more time kids spend in nature without devices, the better.

The more time kids spend in nature without devices, the better.

Gerald Anthony Harris: But they can still play with devices, right?

Scott Snibbe: Of course, in moderation. What we try to teach our daughter, who’s here tonight, is that technology is fantastic as a tool. It’s for making things. It’s for learning things. But it’s not primarily for consuming. Consumption is very limited. If you are consuming, it should be something you really want to learn, about the world, or science, or something meaningful. But ideally, you’re using technology to create or to learn. A little communication too, but even that can become a problem if it’s not balanced.

Ideally, you’re using technology to create or to learn.

Gerald Anthony Harris: Great. I’ll leave it to you to close. Thank you so much.

How Scott’s work intertwines with the young people in his life

Audience Member: Oh, one more! Okay, how does your work intertwine with the young people in your life? I saw your daughter’s name mentioned… how does your work intertwine with young people?

Scott Snibbe: Well, my daughter’s my biggest fan. She gives me a lot of ideas. A lot of my work has also been shown in science museums. In fact, I just got an email today from one in Germany, they’ve had Boundary Functions for 20 years, in this beautiful Zaha Hadid building, and they want to get it working again.

Kids love this kind of work. It’s odd, in a way, for a child to experience something not interactive. We evolved to be interactive, the world is interactive. So when things aren’t, it feels strange to kids. I had a piece at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts once, about breath, I didn’t show it tonight. As part of that, we went to a high school in San Francisco for a conversation. And high school students are a tough audience.

To warm them up, we asked, “What is sculpture?” One kid raised his hand and said, “It’s something you could touch if the guards would let you.” So that’s the thing for kids, they want to touch things. My daughter gets so frustrated when she can’t touch things. I just feel lucky to have a wonderful, creative daughter.

Is there a difference between art, spirituality, and body practices?

Gerald Anthony Harris: We’ve got one question from the back. What’s the difference (or is there a difference) between an art practice, spiritual practice, and body practice? Just to help define the value system of spirituality.

Scott Snibbe: That’s a really big question. But I think the point of all those practices is the same: to connect with yourself. And that’s the very thing technology today tends to destroy, your ability to connect with yourself. So that’s the commonality. They all operate within that middle body I mentioned earlier, the energy body, the connector between mind and matter.

We often put the body last, but when you’re connecting with your body (whether it’s stretching, exercise, or yoga) that’s a direct way in. Most of what I do now is teach meditation, and people always ask me, “What’s the one thing?” I even wrote a book like that. So I’ll give you the one thing: when you wake up in the morning, don’t touch your phone. Instead, do anything to connect with yourself.

When you wake up in the morning, don’t touch your phone. Instead, do anything to connect with yourself.

That could be a body practice: stretching, yoga, walking. Or something creative: drawing, writing whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about punctuation. You’ll be amazed what comes out. Or it could be your spiritual practice, meditating, praying, anything that brings you inward.

If you do any of those for just five minutes, first thing in the morning, you’ll have a much better day. The way you begin something really shapes how the whole thing goes. It’s like a drawing, if you’ve ever done collaborative drawing, the person who makes the first mark sets the tone for the whole image. So that first act of the day (whatever it is) defines the shape of your experience. All three of those practices are ways to connect with yourself. Great question.

How to fund creative projects

Gerald Anthony Harris: Okay, here’s our last question: How do you fund your creative projects?

Scott Snibbe: Here’s what I tell art students: you don’t make money as an artist, you lose money as an artist. Look at musicians: they do a gig, it costs them 200 bucks, and they get some free beers. Even successful artists often continue to lose money. So you have to find a way. One way? Marry well, honestly. I know people who’ve done that. Another option: have a second job, often teaching or being a professor. Or just be wealthy in the first place. And you’ll probably know if you are.

You don’t make money as an artist, you lose money as an artist.

Historically, that’s how it worked. Why were so many famous artists able to do what they did? Because they had the chance. It’s a privilege to be wealthy. And if you’re a wealthy person here tonight (or listening) don’t waste it. Don’t spend your life on something silly, like a ridiculous wedding in a bubble bath while your country’s bombing others. Use your life meaningfully. Ask yourself: How can I make this life benefit others? How can I make it meaningful before I die?

Because you will die. How do you want to feel about your life on your deathbed? Are you going to look back and say, “Ah, that bubble bath… that was the highlight”? No. You’ll probably think, “I wish I had done more. I wish I had thought more about what happens next.” You need to spend time on the spiritual side of life. Sorry, got a little carried away there.

Hugh Leeman: I think it’s wonderful. Thank you all very much.

Scott Snibbe: Thank you.

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