UCIRA/UCR Palm Desert Luminous Green Open Space retreat

I recently participated in a joint residency between The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts and the U.C. Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center at the The Philip L. Boyd Deep Canyon Research Center. This reserve is one of 36 within the U.C. system mostly used for science research. The retreat brought faculty and graduate students from various campuses within the U.C. system to consider future desert ecologies, native desert knowledge systems, sustainable design strategies for a world without water, desert soundscapes, desert navigation, the new desert social order, desert food and waste cycles and all that connects them, including building and operating strategies for extreme and non-infrastructural environments.
Following from past Luminous Green events, the weekend was structured around Open Space principles which essentially rely on a self organizing model. It was a weekend full of productive conversations and I was especially grateful to learn more about the work of regional office, Marko Peljhan, Tapio Makela, Larry Bogad and Matt Biederman.
The end of the retreat was marked by a dash to the Salton Sea where Sierra Brown performed rather extremely!