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The United States became a cauldron of creativity because it was a vast melting pot for different cultures. What we are becoming at Bonobo Hope is an even more effective melting pot for creativity. We are merging different species as well as different cultures. Our goal is to create a sanctuary for artists, bonobo and human artists – to create interspecies art, music, and object/habitat construction through interspecies communication.

Travel is an important part of the life of all primates. We humans have extended this feature of our lives to cars and boats, greatly enriching the feedback to the brain we produce through travel. Bonobos typically travel through the forest by means of walking – but here they also travel by boat, by car and by 4 trax. Each mode of human travel has a special effect on the developing perceptual system, because it forces the brain to make sense of the environmental sea of information through which it is passing.

Side by Side Paths

At the Bonobo Hope Sanctuary, bonobos and humans will travel on side-by-side on paths where they will encounter interactive sculpture and art. These paths will be “separate but equal” and each will become more creative as they observe the activities of the other.

Zoos have traditionally been one-sided. That is, they have always been places were “animals are looked at by the humans, but humans are not looked at back by the animals.” In the case of the Bonobo Hope humans will be traveling and doing things that are of interest to the bonobos. Each species can learn from the interaction and observation of the other. They will do this as they travel from place to place with various locations being specifically designed to foster various particular types of creativity and filled with interactive sculpture on both sides of the paths. Travel will be by various means and speeds, because this fosters creative “juices.”