We’d accomplish one thing, then say, ‘What’s the new challenge?’ He was forever upping the ante.” And frankly, he was a very charismatic guy. “He had a great feel for both ecology and theatre. “He was a ball of energy,” says Nelson, who joined Allen’s troupe around that time, when he was 22. Richard Buckminster Fuller’s concept of synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergia Ranch, named after the great architect In 1969, Allen’s troupe relocated to New Mexico and founded
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They didn’t actually know how to do any of it, save for staging somewhat freeform performances, but “learn by doing” was Allen’s philosophy – and it took them surprisingly far. Art? Business? Ecology? Technology? In classic counterculture fashion, they decided: “Let’s do all of it!” As the name suggests, they wanted to change the world but weren’t sure where to start. He founded an idealistic performance group called the Theatre of All Possibilities. Already in his 40s by then, Allen was something of a renaissance man: a Harvard graduate, a metallurgist, a union organiser, a beat poet, and a traveller studying indigenous cultures. We built it to find out what we didn’t know.”īiosphere 2’s origins lie in late-1960s San Francisco, and a man named John P Allen. “I like to say we built it not because we had the answers. Far from a failure, he regards Biosphere 2 as an unsung achievement in human exploration, as do many others. Mark Nelson, one of the original eight “biospherians”. “Just the fact that the same number of people came out as went in is a triumph,” says
Looking back, it’s amazing that Biosphere 2 even happened at all, not least because the people behind it started out as a hippy theatre group. However, as the new documentary Spaceship Earth shows, the escapade is a cautionary tale, now that the outside world – Biosphere 1, if you prefer – is itself coming to resemble an apocalyptic sci-fi world. Running from 1991 to 1993, it is remembered as a failure, if it is remembered at all – a hubristic, pseudo-scientific experiment that was never going to accomplish its mission. They end up starving, gasping for air and at each other’s throats – while the world’s media looks on.īut the Biosphere 2 experiment really did happen. Eight volunteers wearing snazzy red jumpsuits seal themselves into a hi-tech glasshouse that’s meant to perfectly replicate Earth’s ecosystems.
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It sounds like a sci-fi movie, or the weirdest series of Big Brother ever.
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