 With its U.S. base at Synergia Ranch in Santa Fe and U.K. headquarters at October Gallery in central London (an art gallery founded by IE in 1979 dedicated to the promotion of trans-cultural avant-garde art and artists), IE has organized international conferences focusing on emerging research in biospherics and space exploration.Guest speakers have included architect and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller and adventurer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl.In the early 1970s, in collaboration with TAP, IE constructed the ecological research vessel "Heraclitus" in Oakland, California, using a Chinese junk model.