Image Credit:
Karen Bystedt @kartenbystedt
Today we’d like to introduce you to David Booth Gardner.
David Booth, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My formative years were spent in upstate, New York. We lived in the country surrounded by woods, with a pond. I remember spending days looking for bullfrogs, snakes, and salamanders, and climbing trees to look at bird nests. Nature became my place of peace, contentment, and connection to the world around me. At the same time, my mother was involved with the arts, volunteering at museums wherever we lived. She forced me into art classes such as pottery, drawing, etc. (kicking and screaming, at the time, I’m sure.) There’s a purity I remember feeling to creating art for no other purpose – commercial, critical or otherwise – than just to make something.
Now, nature and art define the core of who I am – but it took some time for me to devote my career to both.
In high school, I caught the creative bug after a football injury took me from the field and into the theatre. I ended up majoring in theatre and economics in college, before driving across country to earn an MFA in theatre at UCLA. This move led to a varied career, which included theatre, sports publicity (representing Lance Armstrong when he rose to worldwide fame), and television production as a writer and producer (stints at the History Channel, NBC, CBS, NFL Network, BET, Revolt and others.)
Once I hit my forties, I felt dissatisfied with the lack of meaning in my work and sought to make a difference while expressing my own vision. I thought deeply about the unprecedented changes to our climate, rapid disappearance of vast ecosystems once thought infinite, and extinction threatening iconic species — and considered how our society (due to greed, ignorance, and arrogance) ignores the scientists, journalists, and activists out on the front lines fighting for a healthy planet. It’s total insanity – I mean, we need nature to survive, right?
So, despite not having any connections in the environmental space and while working full time in television, I rolled the dice to build a media platform to give our activists a voice outside of traditional media channels. After a false start or two, and much learning along the way, it eventually grew into Planet Experts thanks to some very talented, hard-working colleagues. Around the same time that I began conceiving of Planet Experts, the bell rang with another idea when a friend created a short animation (a GIF before there was such a thing) from one of his paintings. I played it non-stop on my flat screen, imagining that an entirely new form of art and distribution platform was possible. This was when Netflix was still shipping DVDs and streaming was years in the future.
When the technology caught up, I formed Likuid Art, a company that creates and distributes digital animated artworks inspired by paintings and photos from contemporary artists.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Struggles? Not a one! In truth, every step along the way has been a struggle and still is. Nothing comes easily, especially when creating something from scratch and trying to convince others to come along and contribute, whether as collaborators or investors.
The hardest part of the process is when you’re all alone with your vision. I realized a long time ago that I couldn’t live a fulfilled life unless I chased down something that came from my heart and that somehow affected change. But, as any entrepreneur or artist will admit, that comes with a price – because it’s a gamble. You’re giving up stability, risking money, time and embracing years of discomfort for an idea that may never come to fruition. Or if it does, it may not be to a degree that ever brings real satisfaction or financial success.
The best part, though, comes when people seemingly appear out of nowhere – random encounters, or an ad answered by the perfect person – to enter your life to help grow your idea into a viable enterprise. Call it law of attraction or whatever, but if certain people did not show up in my life when they did, I’d still be all alone with my visions going nowhere. And along the way, we’ve all created something unique.
But the struggles continue – and they are mostly about investments. The process of continually selling an idea, installation or project to raise funds is challenging, to say the least. Anybody doing it has heard the word “no” a hundred times. You just have to keep pushing, no matter what. Patience and persistence are the tools of the trade.
Planet Experts / Likuid Art – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Planet Experts:
We now have over 200 experts and NGOs on the platform and have published over 3,000 articles. We’ve since pulled back on publishing daily, as it’s not a business model that will attract investors — even the biggest digital media companies are having a tough go of it at the moment. We’re focused on multi-media content – VR, docs, & scripted and, eventually, a social app, which we’re developing – but we are very much in transition. I’ve been fortunate that my work has taken me around the world to direct two virtual reality films – one on orangutans and the other on rhinos – as well as a feature documentary (still in production and politically very sensitive) focused on a remote ecosystem being destroyed in the name of commerce and greed.
Likuid Art:
We now have a portfolio of over 40 digital artworks conceived by our creative team – led by our creative director Chris Saunders and brought to life by some of the top animators and designers in the world – all inspired by artists like Craola, Risk, Karen Bystedt, Hueman, Chris Saunders and many others. We’ve also created an immersive digital art dome show called Art Universe, featuring our artists, that has toured the world (which we built with a company called Fulldome Pro in Chiang Mai, Thailand of all places); exhibited our work at the famous TCL Chinese Theatre’s screens on Hollywood Blvd.; and been featured on five screens at the remodeled Mayfair Hotel downtown. It’s been a joy to collaborate with artists, designers, and animators to create these works. Our long term goal is to continue creating immersive installations and distributing our portfolio to homes and hotels.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
While we’ve accomplished a lot and done some notable work, we very much consider these companies to be in their early phases. We’ve done well to come this far but still have a long way to go. We’re shaping what we do every day.
For me, very simply, to be in the act of creation defines success. It’s what makes me happy. And, of course, having the companies earn money through contracts, partnerships & sales, so that we may continue to create.
A majority of being an entrepreneur is in the day to day routine of running a business and managing a team, which I’m happy to do. But there’s the aspect of constantly being in fundraising mode, which is not so enjoyable. You’re always raising money for the company and for projects the company is producing – installations, films, etc. But it’s all worth it to be immersed in the joy of creativity – conceptualizing, collaborating, executing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.planetexperts.com www.likuidart.com
- Instagram: @planetexperts @likuidart
Image Credit:
Adam Ravetch
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
