Ecosystem engineers are organisms that modify their physical environment - their habitat - in ways that impact the survival of other organisms. Beavers gnaw down trees and build dams that alter the flow of rivers and streams, changing the livable space and resources available for fish and aquatic plants. Coral reefs provide structure in which a great diversity of marine life breeds, hides, and finds food. A tiny barnacle that was carried in the ballast water of shipping vessels to the windswept, rocky shores of coastal Patagonia shelters a marine snail - called a limpet - from wind and sun, providing surface area for its food to grow. This allows the limpets to venture and survive higher out of the water than they would on uninhabited rocks. These barnacles’ introduction to the area was accidental and incidental on the human scale, but for the limpets, the barnacles have changed everything.
Ecosystem engineering effects can inspire us to look differently and to pay closer attention to the creative process. Creativity can be considered not just in terms of its direct outputs - the painting or the poem or the software program - but also in terms of the conceptual surface area, the space for new ideas. Human creativity is typically not incidental like the introduction of the barnacle to a new ecosystem, and necessarily not so. As sentient and moral beings, ever-growing in the awareness of our impacts and limitations, we can and should plan and seek to reduce harm and to increase wellbeing with our creations. Projects may be driven by the creator’s personal understanding of and relationship to the world around them or by broader societal needs. But even the most intentional of creative endeavors contain and reveal unknowns and uncontrollable elements. Here, ecosystem engineers can remind us that the things we create and, importantly, how we go about creating them can have significant effects on the shape of the world around us. This is in the zeitgeist as the advent of AI unfurls new processes everywhere, but similar conceptual ecosystem engineering takes place on all scales; scientific research inspires artwork, lesson plans spark untethered classroom discussions, coffee with a friend yields a novel collaboration. Paying close attention, with openness, to the creative process, it becomes apparent that just the act of gathering, writing, opening a space, making - anything that brings newness into being - modifies the habitat where something or someone else can thrive.
In this blog I’ll explore themes of creativity, ecology, and perspective. I’m excited to see what else, yet unpredicted, it creates space for.