Nomadic Artist Creates Solutions Art and AI — Parisa Golchoubian
About Parisa Golchoubian
Parisa Golchubian describes herself as a nomad, She uses art to create an artistic ecosystem in which to live and solve marine plastic pollution. We talk about her art, storytelling, AI, and creating an artistic ecosystem.
Building Businesses That Fuel the Art
Parisa was born in Iran and is now a resident of Canada. She left a corporate job in the field of engineering to search for work that felt more meaningful. That journey involves many artistic elements as well as business and engineering. She discusses the evolution of her multiple businesses. One supports her as an artist and with another she supports other artists, Parisa also has another designed to address marine plastic pollution. Rather than being overwhelmed with her responsibilities Parisa finds the work creates an artistic ecosystem that allows her to travel and fuels her passion.
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00:00:03 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I'm speaking with Parisa Golchoubian, an autonomous systems engineer who quit what she believed was her dream job to become her own boss. She travels the world fueling her creative fires. Parisa is an artist, assists other artists to sell their work, and founded and is CEO of a tech startup. She is an artist, assists other artists to sell their work, and founded and is CEO of a tech startup.
Parisa Golchoubian is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com. The podcast engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the water. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:00:55 Born in Iran and now a resident of Canada, Parisa has a master’s degree in systems design engineering. Parisa left a corporate job in search of something that felt more meaningful. That journey has taken her in many directions including creating her own art, helping others with their artistic journey, and starting a company in search of solutions to plastic pollution.
00:01:23 Welcome Parisa. Thanks for introducing yourself via LinkedIn. I’d like to begin by getting a better sense of who you are. Thanks for introducing yourself via LinkedIn. I’d like to begin by getting a better sense of who you are. Parisa, you use many labels to characterize yourself. Artist and nomad are two of the most commonly used labels. Is there something about your childhood that inspired your desire to travel the world to seek inspiration?
00:01:47 Parisa Golchoubian Well, thank you. Thank you for the lovely introduction, Pam. And I'm really excited to be here and chatting with you. As you mentioned, I grew up in Iran. My family moved to Canada when I was two years old for my dad to do his PhD in Canada. And after he finished his grad studies, we went back to Iran as he pursued a career. So very early on, I was introduced to two different worlds, two different ways of being. And it stood out to me. And from that very young age, I've always been very interested in different cultures, just getting to understand people. People really fascinate me. I am very interested to just understand how people think, how they live, how they see the world. And so travel has always been a passion of mine. Later on, when I spent a lot of my formative years in Iran, and then I came back to Canada for university. Since 2021, I've been a full-time nomad. So I gave up my apartment in 2021 in Toronto, and I have been traveling from place to place. At this point, I've lived and worked in 28 countries, and I stay at each location around a month or two, three months at this point. I just love connecting with people and learning about the world.
00:03:11 Parisa Golchoubian Art has been one of the things that I've been doing my whole life. I'm the type of person that growing up, I was always painting, crafting, doing something. And that has always found its way through my life as I've been progressing through my career in life. And while I travel, it's been a beautiful way into the culture and the community there. I love connecting with the art community anywhere I go. And so many beautiful projects have stemmed out of that that I'm so grateful for.
00:03:48 Pam Ferris-Olson So with your academic training as an engineer, when did you find time to develop your artistic skills?
00:03:56 Parisa Golchoubian Well, as I said, like growing up; art has just been one of the things that is art chooses me. If anything, I feel like it was one of those elements that I always just fall back on. It's been my way of making sense of the world, expressing myself and just processing life in general. I definitely have gone through phases where I create more and those are usually more difficult parts of my life that I just tend to fall back on it and just pour myself into art. And in hindsight, a lot of times I see messages in my art that I didn't even see at the time.
00:04:30 Parisa Golchoubian So it is a way definitely to express myself and process what I'm going through. So it's just been an ongoing passion. Definitely during times of my life where I've been busier, I find that I was less creating, but it always comes back in one shape or form. And for the past five years since I've been what I really call myself a full-time entrepreneur, art has just been like a very regular practice. I'm always creating. It's like journaling for me in a way.
00:05:02 Pam Ferris-Olson So where did you find the courage to leave a corporate job for which you had trained and pivot to making your way as an artist and nomad?
00:05:10 Parisa Golchoubian It was definitely not easy. I would say that much. I went to school for mechanical engineering as my undergrad, and then I did a grad master's degree in systems design engineering. And then shortly after I found what seemed like the perfect fit. It felt like this is exactly what I had worked towards. It was very aligned with my master's thesis. It was everything that I had hoped to achieve. I was at that role at the corporate world for two or three years, and I really didn't like it. It really wasn't a fit. There was so much of the corporate world that didn't sit well with me. Most importantly, I am a creative soul through and through. So the idea of giving me a tiny task and just asking me to stay in that and be creative in that just didn't sit well. I chose engineering as a degree because engineering, the perception I had and I wouldn't say it's a perception, it's true; it's just how careers are these days. I would do engineering. I would get tools to build. And as a creative, that sounded very appealing to me. I was like, “Oh my god. I would do this degree and I would learn all these tools that I can then build anything with.” And that's why I really liked mechanical engineering as well, because it's more hardware. You can really build stuff. And then through my degree, we did a lot of coding. I'm pretty well versed in a lot of domains in engineering in general. But then when you get a corporate job, it's very, you're kind of limited to a tiny part of the project that you're working on. And that really didn't, didn't satisfy my creative soul.
00:06:57 Parisa Golchoubian And there were other elements as well. Like the two weeks a year vacation time. I mean, I'm a full-time nomad so you can imagine how much I like traveling. That was not enough. So there was-- but it was really hard. It was one of the hardest things I've done, honestly - quitting. I tried a lot to stay. I switched roles. I went to the business side for a while. I really tried to make it work. But at the end of the day, I just realized that what I was feeling wasn't a matter of a company or a role or anything. It was much deeper. And I really needed to carve my own path. So I eventually just mustered up the courage to quit. It was really difficult. Thank God I had a little bit of saving to be able to fall back on. And I was, I really didn't know what to build or what to do next. So I started solo traveling for a few months and I went to Europe, I went to Mexico. And I met so many wonderful people on the road that were living this lifestyle of working and traveling and being nomads. And it was as if the world opened up to me. I saw opportunities, and I just realized, “Oh, my God, this is actually something that people do and it's viable and maybe I can do it as well.” And the types of businesses they were running, too, weren't necessarily the ones that I had seen or had exposure to in my previous world. They were all very creative and the way people were running them, like being location independent was part of the design of the business, which was really interesting to me. And so that really shifted my whole worldview. I came back to Toronto and I was so ready and pumped to start a business that would be location independent. And I had a bunch of ideas, but then COVID hit. COVID hit and nothing went according to plan.
00:09:01 Parisa Golchoubian And then one thing led to another. And then I went down this path of becoming an entrepreneur and selling artists. And to this day, I still sell my artwork, products of my art. I'm in the process of launching a collection of phone cases with marine animals right now at this current time. But there's all sorts of different projects I have my hands on when it comes to my art. And then from there, it kind of led to all the other businesses that I have today.
00:09:29 Pam Ferris-Olson That's marvelous. First of all, you had the courage and the inspiration for yourself not to get stuck in a rut that was going to make you unhappy. And then you open yourself to listening to others to find a way. You could have a podcast encouraging others how to do that. It's wonderful. So let's take a closer look at your art. You often combine travel with your art projects. For example, you visited Medellin in Colombia, South America, to paint a mural with somebody who was a local artist and community leader. How did you settle on that location and the project?
00:10:12 Parisa Golchoubian And Medellin, Colombia, was one of the places that I was called to visit for a long time. I heard there's an art scene there, and that's all I knew. So I just went to Medellin, which is the second biggest city in Colombia. There is, they call their neighborhoods communas, and there's this one communa, 13, which has this history of being one of the most dangerous places in all of Latin America. So this place is where a lot of the stories we hear from Colombia originated from with the shootings and all that. But around 2002, something happened. There's a whole history and without getting into too much details about it, essentially the whole neighborhood goes through a transformation and now it's not dangerous anymore. It's an art scene.
00:11:07 Parisa Golchoubian You walk through the neighborhood, and there's murals everywhere. There's people doing hip hop. Everybody visits the communa because of its art. And that transformation was very, very inspiring to me. You know, I love hearing stories of how art can really change a whole place. And I took a tour there when I was there and I was just blown away by all of that, what I was seeing. So I just connected with the art community there and I proposed that I really want to do a mural there. They are, they were very welcoming. They always loved doing international collaborations and I presented a few of my ideas. My ideas are usually environmental, so I wanted to do something environmental. Talking, bringing forward conversations about an important environmental topic in a place that has a history of healing and
transformation through art just seemed very aligned for me. So I brought up the idea of this mural painting, this underwater scene. At first glance, you just see what you're used to but the closer you look, the more you see the reality of our oceans. So at first you come across this mural, it looks like something from out of Finding Nemo or Little Mermaid. But then once you start looking at the coral, you start seeing plastic. You start seeing debris.
00:12:36 Parisa Golchoubian You start seeing what is unfortunately the reality of our oceans. And that, I wanted to use that as a conversation starter in that whole community. Again, this is like a very touristic place in Medellin. So we had tour guides coming and bringing people and then talking about the mural. And everybody started having conversations. What are we doing? What's the mission? And then it just brought up so many conversations about plastic pollution in the ocean.
00:13:04 Parisa Golchoubian It's a type of community that also there's children around. There's always children in the streets playing. They would ask questions. “Why is that fish in a plastic bag?” Like, you know, “What is happening?” And then we would talk to the children and educate them. At some point, people were so interested. I did what was like a call for anyone who wants to contribute to the mural and come and join us. So we had two days where anyone could come and they could paint their own garbage on the mural or their own piece of coral on the mural. And that made everyone feel like the mural was theirs. That was one of the best things I did, I think. Because after that, people would just point to that piece. They would walk by and be like, “Yeah, I painted that little thing on the mural.” And it just really made them feel like it was their mural. And that was amazing, because that was the ultimate goal of the mural. It was supposed to bring people in and have conversations.
00:14:01 Pam Ferris-Olson For the moment, let's look at another one of your projects. This one is titled Plastic Evolution: Ghost of the Ocean. It's an AI-generated art collection that imagines the ocean filled with plastic-based art forms. Have you encountered any pushback from artists or critics who were concerned with your use of AI to generate art?
00:14:25 Parisa Golchoubian That's a really good question. So, I mean, you can imagine that as someone who's an artist and engineer, I have an ocean tech startup which we're using AI to build tools to clean the oceans. And I also have a creative studio and I work with artists so much. When it comes to AI and art, there are so many conversations I'm part of. There's so much,
what I would say, fear of how this AI is going to really impact the art community and everything honestly but especially the art community. I personally see AI as a tool like any other tool. And I think like, I mean, at the least there's no running away from it at this point. It's like, it's really not much we can do. But also it's just a tool like any other tool. Because I do see the main value of art as the storytelling element of it. And so when it came to that particular collection, I wanted to, I kind of wanted to play on the idea that how through evolution we have got to a place where humans have been the most developed species but now with our own actions how we are impacting the ecosystem. That is eventually probably gonna result in our cells being extinct at some point. And really we are making these plastic debris in the ocean that is in a way substituting the real life. And I wanted to really kind of play with that narrative and bring forth that story and make people think. And I used AI as a tool. And to me, that doesn't take away anything from the story that I was trying to tell. If anything, it empowered me to make them really realistic, because I don't think I would have had the same impact if I had tried to draw it or paint it or something.
00:16:19 Pam Ferris-Olson I was really impressed by the images that you made and I will show them on the website and encourage people to look at the video podcast because they really are evocative of life and raises conversations about what is going on. One of the ones that just sucked me in was a fish, but it's not. It's a plastic bag that looks like a fish. I agree with you. It definitely invites the conversation.
00:16:48 Pam Ferris-Olson So this conversation needs to look at what you've mentioned several times now. You have a tech startup called Retide. And as you said, it's an AI and robotic startup with a goal to end ghost and plastic pollution. Now, I've had a number of people on who are focused on trying to do something about plastic pollution. Rather than sharing with us the secrets of what you're trying to do [I’d like to know] How long do you imagine it's going to be before the technology that you're coming up with is going to be ready for, shall we say, prime time?
00:17:32 Parisa Golchoubian So the ultimate goal of Retide is really building autonomous robotic systems that can go into the ocean and collect debris. But we're going about it in phases. And one of the first things you need to do when you are building a robot is to give it a map and a navigation system. Otherwise the robot doesn't know what to do. So what we're doing right now is that we are building what we call the plastic map of our oceans. So we're using satellite imagery and then we're using AI to identify what is plastic and what is not plastic. And we're doing this over time. Again, we're using AI to predict as well as where the plastic's gonna go next.
00:18:08 Parisa Golchoubian So imagine we're building a map of plastic movement from historical, real-time, and predictive. You see on satellite imagery that an ocean, sorry, an island maybe is polluted. But then you can go and clean it and then the next day is gonna be the same story. So instead of constantly trying to go and clean the island, you can just look at what we're building and understand that most of it is coming from so-and-so river through the ocean current, and then you can go and tackle that river instead.
00:18:38 Parisa Golchoubian So there's multiple benefits of understanding the problem first before you actually go about cleaning it. So the launch of this quote unquote plastic map is happening actually in a few weeks. We've been working hard on it and we are launching it in a few locations and then hopefully from there over the next year we're going to expand into other locations and hopefully at some point cover the whole world. And then once we have this, we can, I mean by this map itself, we're hoping that we can enable NGOs but also governments. We're currently working with the Canadian government. We have a collaboration with them to be able to support policy making and making more effective decisions. We're also going about cleanups. And then from there, once we have all these in place, the robot can really focus more on areas where it's very difficult or impossible for people to clean.
00:19:35 Pam Ferris-Olson There are people who find it overwhelming to keep up with one business. How do you find the time and energy to do the work involved in all these separate ventures you have going?
00:19:48 Parisa Golchoubian First off, when it does stem so much from passion and alignment, it doesn't drain me really. If anything it fuels me. So I don't feel tired or drained necessarily from doing all of this. But at the end of the day, we are all human. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. And I do all this while traveling and while trying to maintain a personal life and all these things. So I think the main thing to note that most people don't realize is that, well first off, I didn't start all of these at the same time. I started one of them, automated as much as I could, and then moved on to the next.
00:20:22 Parisa Golchoubian At this point, I have four businesses. I have a web design agency that we work to support artists with their online selling. I have a creative studio called Artterra where we take on all sorts of creative projects and collaborations with other businesses to tell stories around impact, with impact. And then I have Retide. And while they're technically and, of course, there's my own art practice. And while technically there's four businesses there's a lot of overlap. And there's a lot of one of them kind of pouring into the other one. At this point, I really see it as growing an ecosystem. I see myself building an ecosystem that, for instance, when I do marketing for one of them, it also helps the other one. Like if I run an environmental campaign under Artterra it also raises awareness for Retide and all the ocean cleanup stuff that we're doing.
And there's so much of that in my own art. It's usually about the ocean anyway. So it's also raising awareness about all of it. So it's really a matter of like that. And there's obviously so much. I have a small but mighty team. And there's also a lot of automation and systems in place on the back end as well.
00:21:42 Pam Ferris-Olson So finally, at the end of every podcast, I ask my guests to offer tips for making positive differences for the ocean. How would you suggest that someone go about designing a project to tap into their own creative energy and make a difference?
00:22:00 Parisa Golchoubian I would say like everything, start with what you love doing and are passionate about. Projects like this, I don't think should feel draining. They should fuel you.
You should be excited about it. It should be something that when you're working on it, doesn't feel like another thing on top of your to-do list. It should be the thing that you're super excited about doing. And I think when it comes to activism, we can all play a role. And this is actually one of the things I'm super passionate about when I talk to artists about. I'm like, there's different levels of activism.
00:22:28 Parisa Golchoubian And I call myself an art activist. I try to use my art as a form of storytelling and raising awareness. And that could be very subtle. But we also have activists that do protests and much more, it's a different form of activism, I guess. But every one of us has a role and can play a role. It could just be educating people around us. It could be our family.
There's so many things that we can do. Depending on what your comfort level is, there's always something that you can come up with and there's always a role that you can play. And at this stage and where we are in the evolution of everything, when it comes to the environment we need everyone involved and everyone who cares to take action in some shape or form.
00:23:17 Pam Ferris-Olson Okay. Well, it's been very interesting and inspiring to talk with you.
I’d like remind listeners that I've been speaking with Parisa Golchoubian. Parisa is a multitalented, multifaceted and energetic individual who has traveled around the world nurturing her soul through creative pursuits and making statements about and seeking solutions to plastic pollution.
00:23:43 Parisa is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com and YouTube. An audio-only version and a transcript of this podcast is available on womenmindthewater.com, on iTunes, and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
