Changing Matter The multiple Earths on this catalog’s cover were envisioned by a machi- ne asked to imagine what the Earth looks like. No two are exactly alike. Every shifting cloud and continent depicts a different iteration of how the Earth could be. The ways we build our world each day are similarly dynamic. Every de- cision made, no matter how trivial, branches into endless potential paths. More possibilities exist for our Earth’s future than any one person could come up with alone. Some paths will lead us to a world ruled by love and dignity, where life flourishes. Other worlds will differ still. Some will see us separate into opposing sides and destroy ourselves, while others will see us work together, ready to explore the cosmos. Many more future worlds remain dormant, until we bring them to life. Which world will you choose to help create? Trained on 14,142 images from https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ using StyleGAN. With special thanks to Gene Kogan. Changing Matter a catalog of ideas for whole-systems transformation The roots of Changing Matter Life and lessons leading up to this catalog 2 The roots of Changing Matter Our studio, PCH Innovations, emerged from my belief in intersecting exploratory curiosity, rebel- We humans are all lious deviance, and creative invention with incumbent systems across industries, institutions, and ‘under construction’… disciplines. I pretty much wanted to turn everything around me upside down. This was an impulse that started for me at the age of five (sorry mum, sorry dad, sorry sisters). The Unknown is where Back in 1996, when I had the honor to participate in BMW’s iconic stealth project ‘Deep the magic is… Truth Blue’, some people in our crazy project team started to realize that, in the age of per- can be found in an manent disruption, it is not assets we need to leverage any more (sorry BMW), but rather very informal and highly disruptive, experimental networks of people, institu- indeterminate world with tions, collectives, and organizations. After months of researching, some emails (were still rare back in the time), letters, and phone calls, we started our travels into the infinite possibilities… unknown, where we had the privilege to meet, visit, live, learn, and dream with and about a lot of unique companies, institutions, phenomena, and people including: — Seiji Tsutsumi, founder of Muji — Tatsuhiko, founder (and back then, creative director) of Medicom Toy — Honda’s robotic unit, which worked on the Asimo, which was shown to the public in 2000 — Some many-generations-old ceramic and metal craftsmen families in Japan — Larry Harvey and John Law, founders of Burning Man in San Francisco — Some former team members from the original Skunkworks crew in LA — Some former Mission Control members of Apollo 13 across the US — Paolo Soleri, the founder of Arcosanti in Arizona — Some astrologers and ‘Quantum Healers’ in Sedona — Cliff Haven, a uncompromising off-grid in-cave-living-community in Utah — Lockheed Martin’s advanced research group — 3M’s adhesive advanced research group — JPL’s research team, which focused on the search for life in and the nature and evolution of the universe — Tom & David Kelley, the founders of (back then, a freshly formed) Ideo — Barry Katz, one of the founders of the Stanford D-School — Alchemy, the first automotive digital design studio of its time — John Underkoffler, former MIT Media Lab professor and CEO of Oblong Industries — Syd Mead, an industrial designer who was the ‘visual futurist’ for Blade Runner (1982), and some of his set builders — Charles Pelly, a genius designer and professor at Pasadena Art Center and the founder of Designworks (now BMW Group) — The Automotive faculty at Pasadena Art Center — Various Material Science and Digital Labs at MIT — Several (mostly illegal and sometimes not so nice) street and drag racing groups in LA, Miami, and Atlanta — Theo Janson, the inventor of the famous ‘strandbeasts’ — My all time hero, Burt Rutan — Many museums and historical sites in the US and Japan — and many more We also got to work on an oil drilling rig in the middle of the Pacific, to spend a week with the Munich Philharmonic orchestra, to visit California state prison San Quentin, and to learn from the tough patterns and drills of a Cedars-Sinai Hospital surgery team. We ideated under the star-sparkling skies of Southern California, or in a house-sized wine barrel in Sonoma, or in a hot-air balloon at 5am over the Northern Californian vineyards. We raced prototypes, concept and fantasy cars through Death Valley, on Willow Springs, Laguna Seca, and Atlanta Speedway. We visited Edwards Air Force Base, spent a profound week with Native Americans in the Appalachian Mountains. And yes, for over 18 months we worked out of a Malibu Beach House (where some of us slept in the bath tub) — thank you BMW and Deep Blue. 3 During this almost two-year-long project, search, quest, and pilgrimage, we started to recognize a pattern across all these brilliant minds, teams, and collectives, scientists, entrepreneurs, engi- neers, designers, alternative solution dreamers, and outlaws: A lot of them worked and lived in total stealth mode, and reset their lives along the same set of some extreme principles, which impressed and confused me/ us at the same time: Some of the people I mentioned above dropped everything they knew and had. They went off-grid and into almost ascetically sustainable modes — to broaden their viewpoints to understand the full scope of future possibilities and to dedicate themselves to finding and developing alternative solutions to fight the noticeable rising climate challenges, the obvious sufferings of capitalism, the societal gaps, the decreasing quality of life in growing cities, the downfall of values in cooperations and politics, etc. On the other hand, these people saw the impact of inventions like micro-processors, software, computers, and other tech- nological leapfrogs. And they strived to repair and leverage up-and-coming phenomena without any compromise. These people and collectives also left behind the established comfort of a normal home, access to available energy, healthcare, and education (they had to pay for). Beyond going off-grid, they turned to home-schooling their kids, started tinkering and putting the first solar cells together, drilled wells, captured rain water, built their own hemp homes, herb gardens, grew veg- etables and fruits, started soldering together their first networks following the footprints of Tim Berners-Lee, Ari Luotonen, and Henrik Frystyk Nielsen. They quietly connected with one another to discuss new futures, to explore new realms of consciousness, and experimented with psyche- delics to open up new pathways of thought. These mavericks switched their priorities because they could see that we might soon live in times of scarcity, apathy, and zero trust across all cultures and businesses. Out of this urge to change, they slowly founded a vulnerable web of parallel micro-societies to reinvent the ideals, principles, logics, and key mechanisms behind our political, economic, ecological, and societal systems. The main trigger for them was the mi- cro-computing revolution in the 1970s, the following technological disruptions, the impact of “Reaganomics” in the 1980s, and the first signs of a poisoned capitalistic world where the point of no return had already been surpassed for a long time. And they obviously could already feel a significant societal impact of all these cumulating hype-cycles (the stages a technology goes through, from conception, to maturity, and widespread adoption; a branded tool by Gartner) in their personal lives. They went on their very own hero-journeys and abandoned the old patriarchal power rules, which were already deeply embedded in global cultures and institutions. They started to transition from the existing hierarchical and conditioned governance to self-governed models; you could call those liquid and liberated democratic models—to turn everybody into a ‘leader’, a maker, a creator… which isn’t at all anarchy, it’s quite the opposite. Truly new orders, logics, and solutions are always and maybe only born in the shadows, in free-of-rules, informal, or even in parallel worlds (more on that later). And often, people who participate in counter-cultures are called renegades, eccentrics, or even outlaws, underdogs, or misfits. I was called a misfit since I was six years old, by my family, my friends, my teachers— even people I’ve never really known called me that or gave me that look. It was true, I didn’t quite fit in any given institutional framework. I felt squeezed, tortured, not heard, not seen, and also not felt (beside the fact that I couldn’t feel myself until quite late in my life). And I suffered under it, big time. I got slowly traumatized without know- ing (like many kids and adults do). But I slowly got out of this condition and view that I needed to be saved or rescued from what was around me. I started getting to know my own power and also how to access it. But I needed a lot of teachers to do so. One of my best and also toughest teachers (Chris Bangle, former Chief of Design at BMW and my boss) once said: “If you ask me to describe Stefan I simply do it with this sen- tence: “If you don’t redline once in a while you cannot win the race”… Redlighting means stepping out of the norm, running away from the cops, breaking the rules, etc. 4 The roots of Changing Matter And man, I redlighted the hell out of everything and everybody… and way more than anyone should… which hurts… badly… yourself and your loved ones.