So a couple of years ago, I went through a pretty brutal breakup, and to keep myself distracted, I decided to set myself a ridiculous art challenge: o create the closest thing to a real-life time machine with very little technical experience and the bank account of a college graduate.
Now, I know this sounds crazy, but avoiding your feelings is a very powerful force. And I had a plan. You see, all I had to do was to spend an entire year wearing 3D cameras on my face, record my life in first person for 365 days, transfer that into a series of hard drives and then build a virtual reality simulation that will let me experience those memories in 3D. That's all I had to do. In other words, I was going to create a personal time machine, a virtual-reality invention that will let me go back in time and experience moments from my past. And building this was pretty insane. I had to learn a lot of technical skills in a really short span of time, and for an entire year, my Tinder profile looked like this.
(Laughter)
But in the end, it was all worth it because the final result was so much cooler than I could have ever imagined. So this is how it works. You put on a VR headset, you select a date and time you’d like to go back to, you pull a lever and then, bam. I got to see exactly what I saw at that given point in time. And in this case, I was eating a bagel in a tree, which was the thing that I used to do. And now I could go back in time and re-experience a past trip, try a meal again for the first time and even hang out with a friend who is no longer with us.
And the longer I spent with this time machine, the more I realized that I had accidentally built something that was much more meaningful than I initially imagined. Because this wasn't just an entirely new way for you to experience your memories. This was an entirely new way for you to understand yourself. As I used the time machine, I started to become hyper aware of how much of our lives we forget over the years and how important it is for us to enjoy the moments we have before our minds inevitably forget them. I learned to be kinder to myself, as watching myself wander through life in third person kind of taught me how much of a dick I am to myself when things get rough. And I even started to have an active friendship with myself, as in many of my recordings, you find me talking to future me, sending thoughts, hopes and feelings across time.
And this was really cool. And it was also really confusing. Because I was just trying to get over my ex with some art. But somehow by mixing art and technology, we ended up in a really interesting place. And the world agreed. The time machine went super viral, 50 million people saw it, and it even inspired people to start entire companies based off this concept.
So it seemed that by mixing art and tech, I created something innovative by accident. And because that made me feel pretty good, I was like, can we do that again? Could I just take emerging technology, you know, the stuff that's weird, the stuff that we don't understand, do some art and just accidentally innovate?
And so our journey begins. A couple of months go by, and ladies and gentlemen, I was back in the game. I had a new girlfriend. Her name was Max, and things were going well, and Valentine's Day was just around the corner. So me being me, I decided to gift her a little bit of an art project. So we're about to see is what I can see from my perspective. I'm wearing an AR headset that's tracking her body in real time. So here we go.
So love is a really abstract feeling. It's something we all feel but we can't see or hear. So I created this experience that turned the touch between two lovers into this visual and auditory symphony, basically transforming intimacy into visuals and sounds, which I thought was pretty cool. And Max got to play me too, which I think she liked.
But when I posted this online, people started telling me that I had built something completely different. And that is when I realized that by engaging in this artistic exploration of intimacy, I created a new kind of musical instrument, a particle synthesizer that lets you play complex sounds in midair like this.
(Music)
Pretty cool, right?
(Applause)
Wait, we're not done. Just for good measure, I took those instruments, and I attached them to a piece of clothing so I could now play my own clothes with my hand in mid-air, which is ridiculous. And I think it's the first example of interactive digital musical fashion. So for better or for worse, art took us to some really interesting ideas. And at this point, I thought I was onto something. But then I had another breakup.
Audience: Aww.
LR: But it’s OK because an artist can do what an artist does best, which is to turn heartbreak into art. So jokes aside, this was actually a really difficult time in my life because not only I was going through all of that emotional turmoil, I was also moving to an entirely new country. I was leaving my hometown from Brazil and moving into the United States, thousands of miles away from family, no friends, didn't know anybody. So it was probably the loneliest I've been in my entire life. So why not use this opportunity to take my misery and make something cool? What if we use VR to create an experience that's specifically designed to foster the connection that I needed to make me feel closer to strangers?
And that was the genesis of "Where Thoughts Go." So this is how it works. You enter these virtual worlds in which you're surrounded by these sleeping creatures. Each one of them is a voice message left by another user who was there before you were. If you raise your fingers and touch them gently, you can listen to the voice messages that people have left behind. And in each one of these worlds, you're asked a different personal question. So by playing this experience, you're essentially going down an intimacy funnel in which you're getting to learn about deeply intimate aspects of other people's lives. And of course, at the end of each one of these worlds, you can put your hands together, give birth to your own little creature, speak into it, and leave your messages behind for others to find. It was sweet, beautiful, anonymous. And people would say things in this experience that they wouldn't share with their closest friends. And when I was making this, everyone told me it was a horrible idea. People would tell me that trolls would destroy the entire app, that people would be mean to each other, they would make each other cry. And you know what? They weren't wrong.
(Laughter)
So when I started testing "Where Thoughts Go" with the first couple of hundred users, I found out that roughly 20 percent of them were crying at least once per session. This is what I like to call "Where Thoughts Go's" cry rate. But people weren't crying because they were being bullied. People were crying because they were feeling emotionally moved by the messages of others. We had created a system that instilled a deep sense of empathy and connection in a really short span of time. And by making this, not only I was able to get the connection that I was craving, but I was able to give it to others as well. And because of how this experience was designed, there were virtually zero trolls in the system. It's like people were walking into a church and instinctively knew to lower their voices, treat each other respectfully and treat the space they were in as sacred, which is a cool thing you can only do in VR.
And when I put things that way, it's clear that there's something interesting here. Some innovative ideas that could be used, designs and lessons and approach that could be applied towards the entire internet. But at this point, you might go like, Lucas, you're not really innovating anymore. There's a lot of thought behind this. And yes, but no, because a year after I launched this, medical doctors contacted me and told me I invented a new form of group therapy. And now this art piece is being used in a medical trial as an anxiety treatment tool. And shortly after that, I got to collaborate with SpaceX and St Jude's to make a version of this that astronauts could use so they could emotionally connect with kids on Earth. This is not what I was trying to do.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
But that's when it started to make sense. And it's really simple. When you take technology that we don't understand and you approach it as an artist, you do things that the conventional engineer would never think of doing. And when you do that in a space brimming with possibility, like emerging tech, it's only a matter of time before you stumble upon something of value. That is why mixing art and tech is a great way to accidentally innovate. It takes you off the beaten path, it removes creative constraints, and it allows you to approach technology in a way that's unique to you, that leverages your passions and your interests and your life events and breakups. And all of this just comes together and gives you a unique angle of approach. And that unique angle is everything.
Because here's the thing about emerging technology, and this applies to everything, VR, AI, brain computers and whatever’s next. No one knows what they're doing. Everyone is just following blind hunches. It's too early in a technology's life cycle for anyone to have a comprehensive view of what it's good for. And in a world where no one knows what they're doing, just following your gut is a really great thing to do. Because what we have here is unlimited creative potential. It's the ability to create impossible objects out of thin air at no carbon costs, the ability to connect people in ways never possible before. And it's the ability to create technology that changes how we look at ourselves and the world around us.
We have all the tools we need to create a future that's beautiful and human and exciting. And the only thing that threatens this is if we have a massive lapse of imagination.
So ... Today I’m working on a new project called “Pillow,” and I'm trying to turn your bed, the most comfortable place in your home, into a mixed reality playground of wellness, play and human connection. And this is an early prototype, but look how beautiful this is. We're using mixed reality to connect two beds together and give people a way to engage that's never been possible before. And even though this is early, there's so much that we're learning about how to create meaningful connections between people and virtual environments, how to use artificial intelligence to create immersive experiences that really feel personal and how to approach products with accessibility in mind from the get-go. Things that work just as well lying down on a couch as they do in a hospital bed. And I don't know where this is going to go, but it's going to be somewhere interesting.
And when I look at this, I just don't see art. I see research. I see things that could be turned into products and companies. And I want more artists to start tech companies. We need more artists in technology, but we also just need more technologists to think a little bit like artists. Because some of the world's most important ideas, you really can't stumble upon them by just trying to chase the highest valuation. Sometimes you only stumble upon them when you approach technology from a place of truth. When you build things just because you need to make them and you don't know where you're going, but if you follow your gut, you will be rewarded. And I don't know how or when, like with anything else that I told you about today, but you will be rewarded. We will all be rewarded. And being true to yourself is just a really good long-term strategy.
Technology gives us the tools, but art shows us the way. It's always been like this. It's hard to find a single futuristic startup that hasn't been deeply inspired by some kind of science fiction material. Engineers have always followed the imaginations of artists, and that's not going to change anytime soon. But what is changing is that technology is becoming easier to use. I didn't know how to do any of this five years ago. Artists don't have to be in the background anymore. We can get our hands dirty and build science nonfiction instead to create projects and companies that challenge the engineer-dominated visions of technology and propose something new, something a little weirder with a little more heart. And I think in the process, we can unlock new realities that not only we are excited to live in, but that we're excited to see our children grow up in.
For the longest time in technology artists imagine so engineers can build. But I think engineers build, so artists can imagine. So if you have a crazy project in your back pocket, something you always wanted to do but never got around to, you should go for it. You will never know what you're going to find on the other side.
Thank you.
(Applause and cheers)
