I am super curious what the L.A.B. (Living Art of Bonsai) project will produce when the design follows not the traditional tree > pot > stand order of priority. I was thinking though, why each of these three items need to be separate. What if pot and stand are one, and what if pot stand and tree are one single entity (a bonsai three), either by clever fabrication or more tantalizing still, the stand and tree (as well as potentially the pot but a little harder to envision) are made out of the same tree. I can imagine making an air layer but instead of cutting off the tree, using the entire lower section to sculpt the stand potentially even with a stable structure from existing branches under the air layer upon which a slab in two parts can be secured or a hard metal mesh for an entire “container” made of sphagnum moss can be built to house the new root system… just a thought.
Look forward to seeing it!! Thanks for thinking outside the box/ pot / container. 
I really like the ideabehind the LAB project. Not sure i understand the obsession with “ar but is it art”. Yes it is. It does not conform to say cubism, modernist art, abstractionism, pop art… but it also does in its own way. There is a constraint that bonsai is a living thing, the only living things in art are ephemeral art or land art, or things like the fly sculptures of Damien hurst.
I really like the idea of push the design from different directions to see what new ideas can develop. This also happens in art. Take for example pointalism by Surat… it created a way to produce pictures in a printed form with tri colour printing… i bet that was not on his list of aims. And cubism…
Ryan seemed to be very hard on himself, unnecessarily. It is tough to push into unkown areas, but lets see what will develop.
It reminds me of a poem or two by Murray lachlan young
Can onld find this one…
Also a poem “its cleaver but is it art” by Rudyard Kipling.
I think you are pursuing it in totally the right way, for what it’s worth…