Joseph O'Connell
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And in art. We had spent so much time worrying about what would happen if there was a hurricane. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I had, as a child, a lot of connection to Thomas Edison. My grandfather had played with Edison's youngest son, and he was always bringing home lab notebooks and motors and gizmos, some of which had Edison's writings in the margins. This was in New Jersey, where O'Connell grew up. Of course, I never met Edison.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
But the next best thing happened when I was in my early 20s and I started my studio creative machines, just myself. And just by happenstance, the landlord, the man whose building I was renting, had been Thomas Edison's last shop foreman. It was his job to direct the work every day and report back to Edison.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I had heard that phrase, I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways not to build the light bulb, and of course that led to the success.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
We won the commission in the spring of 2016, and it had to be installed in downtown Houston in time for Super Bowl 51, which was February 2017. It was going to be what's, by some measures, the world's largest freestanding outdoor kinetic sculpture in an active fountain. And it all had to be done in a few months. Houston is a city of immigration and migration.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
It's the number one city from which people coming from South and Central America get their first foothold in the United States. They have an economy that is welcoming. They have established communities. It's also an extremely welcoming city to bird migration. Houston and the Gulf of Mexico-Houston interface is where birds on the Central American Flyway stop after they've flown over the Gulf.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And so the concept for this art is to give tribute to when a bird or a human is in a difficult spot and doesn't have a place to land and rest. They just have to fly days and days without rest. So the idea was this giant set of wings that has this sine wave that moves through it along two axes and the wings are continuously beating over the fountain, wings over water, if you will.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
In an effort to be completely metaphorically true to Houston, it is moved by a large hydraulic motor that turns a crankshaft, and the wings are supported by, I think it's 32 pushrods that look like oil derricks rising and falling. So things were installed. It ran for the Super Bowl. People love it. It's the backdrop for countless social media photos.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And in the Super Bowl, between plays, there's some footage of it. Then three things happened. We had Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston, but didn't damage the sculpture. It was a pretty mild impact on the actual downtown. We had planned for hurricanes.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
It also went through COVID during a period of time when we know that the plaza was not policed and we'd heard that kids were kind of getting in the fountain and messing around. In any event, COVID's over, we're reopening to the public, and the sculpture's operating. What got us was we were not prepared for the big Texas freeze.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
For one to two weeks, the temperature was around 10, 20 degrees, and pipes froze and broke all over Houston. So the main helix that drives Wings Over Water is itself a pipe. And as it dips in and out of the fountain, it accumulates water. And we had never anticipated—we had gotten environmental data, and we had anticipated an ice storm coating the sculpture, and we did the calculations for that.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
But nothing in our assumptions led us to calculate two weeks of how much water expands when it gets down well below 20 degrees. Right. So it went through the ice storm and there was no visible damage. And then cracks started to develop in one part of the helix. So the first thing we do is we immobilize it. We replace that part with an identical part.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
And then right next to it, additional cracks developed. So we stopped operating it again. And what they decided to do as of last November was to say, you know, I think we're just going to leave the sculpture off as a static sculpture. And that's the current position. And so we took that, well, it's theirs, you know. We took that judgment a little harshly.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
It's the feeling you get when you've prepared for problems A, B, C, D, E, and F, and something like G or M comes out of the blue and smacks you. We had spent so much time worrying about what would happen if there was a hurricane? You know, what if somebody got hurt building it? Nobody ever got hurt building it, and the sculpture eventually made it through Hurricane Harvey.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
But I think this particular incident highlights one of the problems with projects and complexity. It would probably take a million dollars to totally redo the bottom part of Wings Over Water. And I still hold out the thought that that would be a wonderful future second act for Wings Over Water, if just a relatively small amount of money by municipal standards could be raised.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I will tell you one thing about Edison. He wasn't driven by money. He was passionate about inventing the next thing. He was driven by the beauty of the things he was making. And I feel like I have that too. And that sets you up for disappointment, for failure, because you can't stop investing in what you're doing.