Today started oddly for me. Tired after too few hours sleep (I was on Can­berra time last night), the first ses­sion, while cer­tainly inter­est­ing didn’t feel like it resoonated with me quite so much as the pre­vi­ous day. I am nei­ther artist, sci­en­tist nor musi­cian and the morn­ing was dom­i­nated by these disciplines.

Don’t get me wrong, it was all deeply inter­est­ing, it just didn’t sing for me. That changed dra­mat­i­cally over the day, as I will explain in a fur­ther post.

Deepak Ram

One word. Haunting.

Oliver Sacks

  • we see with the eyes but we see with the brain as well
  • imag­i­na­tion and hal­lu­ci­na­tions — they are different
  • patient — Ros­alie, 95 years old, blind, no men­tal deterioration
  • began visual hallucinations
  • “It’s like a silent movie”
  • unre­lated to any­thing she was doing
  • no famil­iar components
  • Charles Bon­net Syn­drome — orig­i­nal­lly described in 18th Century
  • approx­i­mately 10% of Sacks’ patients have visual or audi­tory hallucinations
  • as vision decays, visual cen­ter of brain becomes hyperactive
  • less than 1% of patients with hal­lu­ci­na­tions acknowl­edge the condition
  • not the same as psy­chotic hal­lu­ci­na­tions which are fully interactive
  • tem­po­ral lobe hal­lu­ci­na­tions are rec­ol­lec­tive and involve all senses
  • Bon­net is very dif­fer­ent as you are an ousider — com­mon fac­tors of facial defor­ma­tion in char­ac­ters (large teeth and eyes) and see­ing cartoons
  • FMRI now pos­si­ble dur­ing hallucination
  • these issues need to be nor­malised as a condition
  • “The the­atre of the mind being gen­er­ated by the machin­ery of the brain”

Jo-​​ann Kuchera-​​Morin

  • at UCSB
  • the Allos­phere
  • imag­ine a giant micro­scope hooked to a supercomputer
  • fit 20 peo­ple on view­ing plat­form inside
  • mas­sive visu­al­i­sa­tions of any activ­ity at any scale
  • H atom par­ti­cle emis­sions mapped to sound output
  • lis­ten to the hydrogen

Dale Chi­huly

  • trained as inte­rior designer
  • melted some stained glass and changed his life
  • went fish­ing in Alaska to pay for his grad­u­ate study at U Wis­con­sin (only US glass blow­ing course at the time)
  • stud­ied in Venice

Ola­fur Eliasson

  • stu­dio is more like a lab
  • “What con­se­quences does it have when I take a step?”
  • is art about that?
  • works with space — has dimen­sion and tem­po­ral factors
  • Nego­tia­bil­ity
  • Tan­gi­bil­ity
  • Respon­si­bil­ity
  • Causal­ity
  • Con­se­quences
  • between think­ing and doing is experience
  • his stu­dents (aver­age 20yo) expected TED to be Tech­nol­ogy. Envi­ron­ment. Democracy.

Don Levy

  • Sony ani­ma­tion
  • mak­ing Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs
  • mas­sive labor intensity
  • com­put­ing power changes mean real­is­tic area rather than point light­ing now possible
  • also light bounce for surfaces
  • release will be Sep­tem­ber 2009

Ed Ulbrich

  • team worked on The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin Button
  • Ben­jamin is 100% CGI from the neck up for the first hour of the film
  • have we crossed the Uncanny Valley?
  • any­thing is pos­si­ble with enough time, money and resources
  • David Fincher insisted the char­ac­ter be played by a sin­gle actor
  • pros­thetic would not hold up
  • very high risk
  • beleived they had “a solid method­ol­ogy that might work”
  • sam­ple verion done in 2004
  • Ed threw up when they were green-​​lighted
  • 325 sfx shots in the first hour of the film
  • looked at marker-​​based motion cap­ture
  • needed the “between” data — skin behav­ior, mus­cle and bone
  • walked away from motion capture
  • now have a “tech­nol­ogy stew”
  • Facial Action Cod­ing Sys­tem (FACS) defined in early 70s has a set of core actions
  • cap­ture sur­face in 3D in real time
  • FACS library of Brad Pitt built, mapped against real­is­ti­cally aged maquettes
  • dig­i­tal pup­pet that Pitt could con­trol with his face — no ani­ma­tors needed
  • emotion cap­ture
  • 155 peo­ple took 2 years

Randy Glea­son

  • we have devel­oped a cul­ture of always-​​on availability
  • we have a pro­lif­er­a­tion of mobility
  • we have estab­lished an expec­ta­tion of availability
  • we are doc­u­ment­ing every­thing — to the detri­ment of engage­ment in the moment
  • there is a cor­re­la­tion between avail­abil­ity and a need for shared narrative
  • “I share there­fore I am”
  • we cre­ate tech­nol­ogy to build shared expe­ri­ence and there­for recre­ate our world
  • let’s cre­ate tech­nol­ogy that makes us more human, not less

Ray Zahab

  • just set world speed record for on foor to South Pole — 33d 23h 55m
  • towed own sleds
  • Also ran across Sahara in 111 days — most strong mem­ory is num­ber of peo­ple affected by lack of water
  • there has to be a rea­son for adventurers
  • use adven­ture to bring atten­tion to issues
  • for Antarc­tic trip had live updated web site
  • use it to tell the story re pol­lu­tion and ozone
  • answer ques­tions from school kids
  • solar pow­ered equip­ment — no batteries
  • inspire young peo­ple through web site and also being inspired by their interest
  • has only been run­ning 5 years — before that a pack a day smoker
  • “We can make the impos­si­ble possible”

Golan Levin

  • where is art on the iPhone store?
  • empower peo­ple through interactivity
  • “The mouse is the nar­row­est expe­ri­ence to suck the human expe­ri­ence through”
  • Remark sys­tem visu­alises the shape of sounds in the voice
  • phon­es­the­sia
  • Gaze sys­tem eye-​​tracks as a rela­tion­ship marker
  • videos at flong​.com
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