What happens if, instead of trying to fill the space between two people, we leave it alone?
That question emerged unexpectedly during my conversation with Vanessa Younts on Humanity 2.0. Vanessa spent years traveling across the United States interviewing strangers about happiness. I spent years approaching strangers with three non-confrontational political questions through Triptych Dialogue. We came at the stranger from different directions, but we recognized something remarkably similar in what happened afterward: people stay with you.
Our conversation moved from political polarization and active listening to echo chambers, silence, grief, nature, artistic practice and the strange intimacy that can develop between two people who may never meet again. We talked about what happens when an interview ends, why listening is harder than it appears, and how a museum case at the Grand Canyon can become a way of thinking about the limits of our own worldview.
Eventually Vanessa asked me what feeling came to mind when I thought about humanity.
I saw a void.
Not an emptiness that needed fixing, but the space between us. Perhaps our instinct to constantly fill that space—with words, opinions, explanations and responses—is part of what prevents us from seeing what is already there.
Key Takeaways
Listening is something we practice, not something we automatically know how to do.
Triptych Dialogue began with political questions, but the experiment gradually became an examination of my own ability to remain present when someone's answers triggered me.
Commonality does not require agreement.
When political facts and opinions divide two people, the point of connection may instead be an emotion: anger, fear, frustration, uncertainty or something else both recognize.
A stranger can become part of your story remarkably quickly.
Vanessa described people leaving "an imprint just like fingerprints." Our separate experiences interviewing strangers had taught us both that brief encounters can continue long after the recording stops.
Changing the question can change the world we see.
Asking someone what democracy tastes or smells like deliberately moves a political concept away from familiar arguments and into another sensory and imaginative space.
Silence is not necessarily an absence.
Sometimes the urge to immediately respond prevents the other person, and ourselves, from going somewhere deeper.
The space between people does not always need to disappear.
One of the unexpected ideas of the conversation was that connection may not require eliminating difference. The space itself can be acknowledged and allowed to exist.
Detailed Exploration
I Thought I Was Listening. I Wasn't.
When I began asking strangers the same three political questions, I expected some diversity of opinion. I did not expect what those opinions would do to me.
Someone would say something and my mind would immediately start moving. I would disagree. I would anticipate where they were going. I would construct a response to something they had not finished saying. There was a tremendous amount of noise inside my head.
I was recording someone else's voice while listening to my own.
That became one of the more uncomfortable discoveries of Triptych Dialogue. I could create an artwork about political dialogue. I could invite strangers into it. I could ask perfectly non-confrontational questions. None of that meant I actually knew how to listen.
Vanessa recognized this immediately because she had experienced something similar while interviewing strangers across America. There is physical noise around an interview—the street, people passing, whatever is happening nearby—but there is another noise that comes from inside. Your mind wanders. Something triggers you. You disappear from the person standing in front of you.
Then you have to come back.
After years of these encounters, I became less interested in whether I agreed with someone's political opinion and more interested in whether I could remain there long enough to hear it. That shift sounds simple. It wasn't.
Sometimes Anger Is Enough
I originally imagined common ground as something almost factual. Surely, if two people talked long enough, we could locate the thing upon which we agreed.
That doesn't always happen.
If someone and I have fundamentally different political worldviews, searching for agreement can become another form of argument. I am still evaluating their facts against mine, their conclusions against mine, their version of the world against mine.
Eventually I began looking somewhere else.
If someone told me they were angry, I could recognize anger. Their reason for being angry might be completely different from mine. I could even disagree with nearly everything they had just told me. But the emotion itself was familiar.
That gave us somewhere to begin.
I could say, in effect: I disagree with you, but you're angry and I'm angry too.
That doesn't resolve the political disagreement. It isn't supposed to. The disagreement can remain right where it is. But for a moment, the person standing opposite me is no longer merely the political opponent. There is another human emotion in the room, and both of us recognize it.
Maybe common ground doesn't always have to be ground. Sometimes it is simply the recognition that the person standing on the other side is feeling something I have felt too.
What Does Democracy Taste Like?
At the end of my three political questions, I ask the person to compress everything they have just said into one word.
It is deliberately difficult.
I watch their eyes move. There is often a little silence while three complicated answers are pushed toward a single Word-Title. Maybe the word becomes democracy. Maybe something completely different.
Then I take those words elsewhere.
At another installation I might ask a stranger: What does democracy taste like?
It is an absurd question in the best possible way.
We are accustomed to discussing democracy through facts, arguments, images, speeches and screens. But what happens when I ask what it tastes like? Or smells like? Suddenly the familiar routes aren't particularly useful. Someone might say apple pie. Someone else might say a rotten apple.
For a few seconds, the political concept has moved.
I think of that as a small exit from the echo chamber. We haven't destroyed the chamber. We haven't escaped permanently. We have simply moved somewhere strange enough that our usual answers don't work very well.
That moment interests me.
Sometimes art doesn't need to provide another answer. It can simply make the old answer temporarily unavailable.
The Museum Case Is Bigger Than the Spice Jar. So What?
At the Grand Canyon, I placed a museum display case near the rim at Mather Point. Inside it was a small object representing a person.
People naturally wanted to know what was inside the case.
I was more interested in the case.
I began describing it as a representation of a worldview—an echo chamber. When we are inside our own worldview, it can seem enormous. We look outward and imagine we are seeing everything. But there is still a boundary around us, even when we cannot see it.
Then I would pull out an ordinary spice jar containing another small figure.
Now there were two echo chambers.
One appeared much narrower than the other. But that immediately produced another question: how does the person inside the spice jar enter the worldview represented by the museum case? And perhaps more importantly, why should they?
That question generated more questions. Do I have an echo chamber? Does everyone? Should I try to enter someone else's? What happens when two worldviews touch? Is enlarging an echo chamber the same thing as escaping it?
I didn't need to answer those questions.
The museum case and spice jar had done what I wanted the artwork to do. They had become an excuse for two strangers to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and think together about something neither of us could actually see.
Strangers Leave Fingerprints
Vanessa said something during our conversation that stayed with me: people leave an imprint "just like fingerprints."
I knew exactly what she meant.
After one of my Grand Canyon installations, I spent five days backpacking below the rim. I had just spent three days listening to strangers and would return for another three days afterward. The canyon in between gave me somewhere to carry those conversations.
I don't simply finish recording someone and erase the encounter. Their words become part of whatever comes afterward. Some are easy to carry. Others are sticky. They remain in the mind and require time before I understand what they have done there.
Vanessa had experienced the same phenomenon interviewing strangers about happiness. People she expected to answer one way surprised her. Conversations continued after the camera stopped. Years later, particular faces and stories remained.
This may be one reason I continue to return to the stranger.
We often imagine strangers as temporary people. They cross our path and disappear. But that isn't entirely true. Sometimes someone can occupy only a few minutes of our life and still become one of its building blocks.
The Void Between Us
Near the end of the conversation, Vanessa asked what feeling or story came to mind when I heard the word humanity.
I saw a void.
I don't mean emptiness or loneliness. I mean the space between us.
My instinct was not to fill it.
That surprised me because so much of Triptych Dialogue appears to be about bridging divides. A bridge seems to imply eliminating distance. But perhaps that isn't quite what I have been doing.
There is a space between two people because they are two people.
We have different experiences, memories, bodies, fears, histories and ways of seeing the world. Maybe the objective isn't to collapse those differences into agreement. Maybe we can acknowledge the space and still be together.
Vanessa connected this immediately to interviewing. One of the techniques she learned was to remain silent after someone finished speaking. Most of us become uncomfortable with that empty moment. We rush to fill it.
But if the interviewer remains quiet, something sometimes happens.
The person speaks again.
And what comes after the silence may be the thing they had not yet realized they wanted to say.
At the very end, Vanessa asked what message I would give humanity.
I answered with three seconds of silence.
There wasn't anything missing.
That was the message.
Related Projects
Three Non-Confrontational Political Questions
The three questions provide the framework David uses to invite strangers into political conversations without beginning with debate.
The conversation explores how David's understanding of listening changed as he learned to remain present with people whose political views triggered him.
Word-Titles
Participants distill their three political responses into a single word, which can then become material for later sensory experiments and installations.
National Park Art Installations
David's Grand Canyon museum-case installation turns the abstract idea of an echo chamber into a physical object around which strangers can think and talk.
Inclusive Artivism
The episode illustrates the larger Triptych Dialogue approach of using art to create opportunities for participation and dialogue rather than simply communicating the artist's political position.
From the Conversation
> "I see humanity more in our interactions than in our scrolling." — David Deighton
> "What does democracy taste like?" — David Deighton
> "People... leave an imprint just like fingerprints." — Vanessa Younts
> "It's a void that does not need to be filled." — David Deighton
> "There's a big buffet of stuff out there and we're just eating cake." — David Deighton
FAQ
What is active listening in Triptych Dialogue?
Active listening in Triptych Dialogue means attempting to remain present with another person's response without immediately debating, correcting or preparing a counterargument. David describes this as something he had to learn through repeated encounters with strangers, particularly when their political opinions triggered strong reactions in him.
What are the three non-confrontational political questions used in Triptych Dialogue?
Triptych Dialogue asks strangers the same three questions: How would you describe the political system of the United States of America? Describe your feelings or reactions to the current state of U.S. politics. And, "Politics in the United States..." with the participant completing the sentence. Participants are then asked to distill their responses into a single Word-Title.
What are Word-Titles?
Word-Titles are words participants choose to bring together their responses to the three Triptych Dialogue questions. David later carries these words into other artworks and sensory experiments, sometimes asking another person what a political Word-Title such as "democracy" might taste or smell like.
How does Triptych Dialogue explore echo chambers?
Rather than treating an echo chamber only as a media concept, Triptych Dialogue turns it into something physical. In one Grand Canyon installation, David used a museum display case and a small spice jar as different-sized representations of worldviews, then asked strangers how the people represented inside those separate spaces might enter one another's echo chambers.
Can people find common ground without agreeing politically?
That possibility is central to David's experiment. The conversation suggests that commonality does not always have to be found in facts or political opinions. Two people who disagree may still recognize a shared emotion, experience or reaction without pretending their political differences have disappeared.
About the Host
About the Host: Vanessa Younts (Vanessa The Vivacious) is a filmmaker, visual journalist and host of Humanity 2.0, a podcast centered on stories, human connection and what it means to be human.