Featured Founder: Oceanix’s Marc Collins Chen and Itai Madamombe

This month, we sat down with Oceanix Co-founders Marc Collins Chen and Itai Madamombe to discover what excites them the most about Oceanix and what books have inspired them recently.

If you were stuck on a remote island with one choice for each of the following categories, what would they be?

• Book: Itai: The Anthology of Hafiz (Divan). Shams-od-din Muhammad Hafiz was a Persian poet in the sufi mystic tradition. He was born in 1315, yet his message remains urgent today — hold on to your sense of wonder and find the magic in every circumstance. Marc: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller
• Song: Itai: Dangurangu, a traditional mbira song from Zimbabwe. Perfect for contemplation on an Island with its cyclical rhythmic structure, interwoven with incongruous melodic lines… yet this giant complexity melds into a serene oneness. It’s played at ceremonies to access alternative realms of consciousness. Immersion in this music can rival psychedelics (I read it somewhere!). Marc: Sinnerman by Nina Simone.
• Food: Itai: I can’t think of a food item that I couldn’t do without. I put too much salt in everything (yes doctor, very bad, I know, I just need one more pinch)! If anything, salt would be it. Marc: Coffee. I can pretty much survive on any protein, vegetable and starch sources, but I know I would miss coffee!
• Survival Tool: Itai: A retro manual brass firelighter. Practical for cooking, heating, and lighting. Doubles as a play gadget and masquerades as artwork. Marc: My ancestors, the wayfaring Polynesian voyagers that populated thousands of uninhabited islands throughout the Pacific over millennia, relied solely on their creativity and deep understanding of nature to not only survive but thrive. So my survival tool would be to keep a sharp mind (coffee will help!), no matter the situation.

What feature are you most excited about for an Oceanix floating community?

Itai: Reconfigurability. Floating cities are living organisms capable of responding to the changing needs of the community. On land, once built, the structure is stuck. You can rearrange floating platforms as desired. And, if you are unhappy with your community or just looking for a new adventure, you can simply detach and float where your heart takes you. Marc: The ability to reimagine humanity’s relationship to the environment, on an unprecedented scale. We discovered agriculture 10,000 years ago, which led to the creation of permanent human settlements. Will the next chapter, the next 10,000 years, be one of humanity moving to the ocean and letting nature flourish again, on land as well as in the seas?

What have you read recently that you would recommend?

Itai: “The Book of Embraces” by Eduardo Galeano, one of the most profound writers out of Latin America. The blurb aptly captures the book: “Parable, paradox, anecdote, dream and autobiography blend into an exuberant world view and affirmation of human possibility”. Marc: “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson.