In 2015 I quit my job as a designer at Facebook, and left San Francisco in order to experience the world. At the time, I felt I needed to separate myself from humans fixated on the digital, and instead pursue the question of what it meant to live as the most human, human possible.

Upon reflection, I realized the main catalyst for my movement into the world was that I had been shown that there was a vast amount of space in my emotional range that I had previously ignored. A few years prior I experienced the extreme depths in the "graph" of my emotional range in response to the suicide of my brother Noah. The new low point that was created by this moment was so deep that it felt like the other peaks and valleys of my life experience thus far were flattened to a neutral line by comparison. Instead of finding this realization demoralizing, it instead inspired me. I knew intuitively that if there was such vast unexplored space in the lower areas of my "graph" this also meant that there existed positive emotions possible at much higher peaks than I had known.

I began to think of the purpose of my travel as "collecting feelings". I climbed mountains without trails while naked in Spain, studied dance in Israel, trekked for weeks in Nepal, practiced yoga, meditation, and other esoteric pursuits in India. During these explorations, it quickly became clear that I desired to guide others towards the feelings I had been collecting. I visualized a drawer. Similar to one containing pinned butterflies, but instead of insects, somehow feelings were captured, and then could be selected and experienced by a visitor. I felt that if this idea were somehow possible, humanity could greatly benefit through more moments in which one was enabled to feel.

This pursuit of direct transference of emotion eventually led me to live in Tokyo and to study Kinbaku, or traditional Japanese rope bondage as the apprentice to Kinoko Hajime, a master of the art-form. Kinbaku revealed a world of knowledge of what affects humans at their core. Rope bondage involves intensity, intimacy, fear, trust, lust, bodies, touch, smell, and became a way in which, over two years I intensely examined how stimulus to all senses affects humans.

As I gained mastery over the practice of tying itself, I became aware that the environment in which I was tying could serve to intensify the effect the ropes had. I began to shape the space in which I tied. My first intention was rather literal. To create a space where a visitor would feel the effect of being tied by entering it. This was a sort of "Natural High", a more intense version of how one feels after a massage, or yoga class. I experimented in my studio, galleries in Tokyo, and eventually at Burning Man 2017 with my first large-scale artwork "Shibari Sanctuary".

My desire to affect people via space overtook the desire to tie, and my focus shifted towards sculpture. At present, I think of my artwork as a series of experiments in collecting elements of what affects humans, those elements that make up the core of the human experience and combining these elements via sculpture to guide the visitor towards a moment of intensified consciousness. A moment, wherein its purest form, one feels as if their body and mind are operating at its highest potential and that the world forms naturally into collaboration with that potential. In service to this pursuit, I restrain my materials and visuals to those that are honest, as well as minimal. All of my recent works are interactive, and I consider the artwork to be not what one sees, but rather what one feels.

In the coming years, I intend to continue my series of experiments in collecting feelings. To guide as many people as possible towards moments in which they encounter themselves. Work more directly with land itself. As well as to widen the breadth of emotion that I expect to convey in my work.

Swinging Stone 1 is an interactive artwork in which the perpetually moving stone creates a void-space as it orbits. A distinct inside and outside space emerges. From outside visitors of the work are confronted with time. Time as a moment. A precise moment in which it is opportune to enter the created void. Once inside, the visitor's perception of time changes again. Time slows. Stillness takes over. Presence emerges. What will the visitor do with that moment? When will the moment expire? When will it be time to emerge from the safety of inside?

To learn more about Benjamin, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.

If you’d like to hear more about Benjamin’s 2019 Burning Man Honorarium project Stone 27 you can listen to this podcast episode from We Are From Dust and go to this website devoted exclusively to the piece.