If you sit down among hundreds of thousands of albatrosses in a field, pretty soon you'll be completely surrounded by them, as they come walking up toward us and nibble on our shoelaces and just look right at us out of curiosity.

Activating is about changing people's perceptions of overlooked or invisible spaces. A building can become an archetype, invisible, like for a New Yorker, for example, the Statue of Liberty. You look at it, and it disappears into the thousands of times you've already seen it.

I crave to be able to photograph the way a painter paints - in a loose, expressive way.

I find myself walking these lines. Like I might be an artist, but I also might be an activist. And I'm trying to be both in a way that honors both and doesn't stray too far into either.

And when you really think about the 9-11 event, the horrific attack on our land here in America and the death of three thousand of out loved ones, it was a defining moment.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation.

Too much comedy today is vulgar, not clever. I say that as a comedian and as a consumer.