[0:05]So often you're looking at the data, and you just notice something. Maybe that brings to mind a question, you're like, wait, is that really what's going on? And I feel like in the social sciences and in in in linguistics, that that often the interesting questions come because we have really rich data. It's data about people and their interactions and, you know, we don't know going in exactly what's going to happen. We have a broad area of interest and the question kind of arises itself. In some sense, part of the joy of science is that we don't always need to have one single question we're going after. I often have in my mind, I would say more of a space that I want to explore, right? And as I explore that space, new questions come up. Questions are are a tool of the imagination, especially when you're dealing with pre-modern history where the sources are preserved haphazardly, sometimes, you know, in not very great quantities. Um, they're often very lumpy. You have kind of big gaps in your knowledge. You have to use quite a bit of imagination to figure out what you can't see, what the sources aren't showing you. Like what is it that the sources are not making visible to you? That's where imagination comes in, but you can't really get that imaginative process going until you ask questions. This question idea, I think I do prefer to James Baldwin. When he talks about the purpose of art, I should get the quote exactly right. And if you could find it, you could have it below this. But essentially, I interpreted what he said, the purpose of art is to excavate the question that's been buried by the answers. There's a park on the south side at Amsterdam and 63rd. Damn Ross Park, over time, it pretty much created a wall to San Juan Hill. Immediately when they say, we want to tear the walls now, my question is why is the wall there? And you see Moses, you know, early mid-century modernism coming up with these arguments for slums, labeling poor neighborhoods as blighted so that they can bring this new architecture there. And so, in a way, they were questioning, right, the city in a different way and interrogating in a different way. And so I'm just trying to flip the script on the other side and sort of from bottom up, what will be the questions I would ask? In my own research, I've found that you arrive at an answer, and you arrive at something original, and only then can you state the question. It's not as if you stated the question and then went and found the answer. You actually arrive at something novel, and then you can go back and and formulate a a novel question. If you shoot an arrow at the barn and then draw the target around the arrow, then you have, uh, discovered something, but perhaps not much. If you permit the results to inflect the question, um, then you're liable to produce false positives. Because of random patterns, which will just naturally occur. This is bad for science, but it struck me as I was hearing about this, that it's precisely what a poet does is to pe-hack the data, throwing out the outliers and concentrating on where the signal seems to be coming in. I think that's because the the claim on the poet is not to correspond in truth, but to emotional coherence. I think very often a question can be a defense mechanism. But the purpose of the question is to kind of like, giving a baby a pacifier so it will, you know, be quiet and get on with what it needs to do, so that in the background the larger unasked question can have its way. We know in principle if we can control our quantum mechanical systems well enough, we can make resources that will allow us to have better atomic clocks or better computers. And it's a it's a matter of, you know, there's a how question there, you know, how do we build the system that will let us do that. How do you break through the silos of power that were historically meant to exclude you? How do I reorganize myself to be empathetic to someone else? You normally ask a tree, okay, how can you provide shade for me? But we never ask a tree, how can you help me talk about indentured servitude? Or tree, how can you help me talk about desegregation? How do I build a work that is both beautiful because I love beauty. I love beauty, you know, I love the sublime. And at the same time, has a sort of critical underpinning that that hopefully assist the viewer in asking a set of questions about who they are in relationship to the power that is being revealed. You can tell when someone is, uh, has it.
[5:43]Uh, you can tell when someone has this inner question that belongs to them and no other, that hasn't been grafted onto them from the outside. It's something that, uh, you ponder over in your mind. What are they doing? What is this quality? What is this devotion? How much does a question ring almost and shakes your soul? And how much would you, how far would you go to pursue it? It's very personal, but I think something that early on we don't share because it almost feels like science is some kind of a system. You come in someplace, you graduate, you arrive and you're given a class of questions or what is allowed and not allowed, and I think that's that's really is broken. You know, trying to blur that boundary and especially making sure that questions people are pursuing are deeply meaningful to them. Not because of society at large, but just deeply meaningful to them is something that I've been thinking a lot about. that questions need to be your questions. Yes, questions need to be relevant for others, but I think it's really important to own those questions and really be care about them. That's why it's um, a creative act to to have the questions, but it's also something that will continue to drive you through your career and continue to make you motivated to find answers. Because it needs to come from inside you. What is your purpose? What is the courage of the question that you are asking and what it could mean for the world? I often have an idea that's in the back of my mind for a long time, and it's sort of developing in my subconscious over years and years until somehow I get to the point where there's that right combination of it's the right time and the right people are there to actually make that project happen. Our contemporary world does not lend itself well to to giving questions space or where they're not, they're not like under the pressure of a deadline. where you can muddle with them a little bit more, so I think that's something I have to keep relearning for myself about questions because the outside pressure is so much about like, finish this, finish this, or what are you doing, what are you doing? So you have to protect that space. I think that's why artists have studios among many other reasons, it's kind of a a space you can hide with your questions from from other people, which I love about being an artist. Artists are not always reliable sources when it comes to what their work is really about. Because sometimes it's really hard to admit these things to yourself, much less someone else. A lot of what happens in interviews is like a frantic deflection. And so you're frantically trying to, it's like you've got this little candle flame and you're standing in a hurricane and you're being like, trying to protect protect the flame. If you're constructing a question based on some things that you know, or some things that you might really wish to be true. That's not productive, but if you're asking questions because you're experiencing what Carlo Ginsberg calls the euphoria of ignorance, those are generative questions. There's a kind of, you know, just state of humility and like objection, um, before the the vast mysteries of how human beings have lived in the past. And unless you're allowing that kind of euphoria of ignorance to to really like, you know, touch you and and mess with your mind. You're sort of not like, you know, you're not going there, like you're not you're not playing the game. The general scope of my work is is begins with not knowing. What am I going to do next? It's been a lifetime of not being sure. That leads for this examination, this constant evolution, to to be insecure maybe. The condition of being in uncertainty, the condition of being comfortable with that. Not feeling that you have to have a position on every damn thing. Trying to remain radically open is, I think, necessary for a poet. For a president, no, but for artists, I think you need that. And that's the interrogative mode for sure. It's almost curiosity, if you want to call it that, it's a state rather than a question. Although questions can bloom from it, can scatter from it, can be precipitated out of it is a better way of putting it. Spending time at sea was an incredibly transformative experience personally for me. In terms of just learning how to think about the ocean by being on the ocean. I felt going back to the ocean has allowed me to think a lot more about going back in time, even visually, that I couldn't do otherwise. Because I'm starting to find and see stability in these ecosystems that potentially could have been there for almost 40, 50 million years if not longer. When Pat and I answer questions, we do it through making things. Making a dress, making a shoe, editing our footage. Figuring out what's in the background, we do it by making things piece by piece. When the overall film is finished, then we will find out what we were asking. Questions are creativity. I mean, the kind of question question about the world is is kind of imposing a a perspective and a and a theory and a about about what the problems are that are interesting. And and so I think as a scientist if you're asking questions, that's certainly a creative process and a question sort of exposes things you didn't know. Creativity does not come uh, from a blank sheet of paper. Creativity strikes when you have some constraints, they could be disciplinary constraints, they could be the context you're working in. The architectural challenge is, you know, really like, how do you get all these people that were working in all these different areas? What are the commonalities and and how do you bring them together so that they can work interdisciplinary and effectively and also just feel that they have a home together? It is the essence of creativity. That you ask yourself a certain set of things and ideas and questions that you want to probe. And you spend your life trying to answer them. I'm never happy with anything I do. And it's intrinsic because you've seen further and you feel there is so much more to go. And I think that frustration definitely is an engine for creativity. I don't know that that you ever answer questions, if you're really creative. I feel like each question just ends up with more questions.
