Watch Luis von Ahn’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

“The Uncle Phone” by Pors & Rao. Photo by Jorge Martín Muñoz.

At TEDGlobal 2011, Aparna Rao showed a glimpse of the high-tech, often humorous art she creates with collaborator Søren Pors. We followed up with the TED Fellow to talk about her artistic approach and projects in progress.

You use some pretty sophisticated technology to bring your creations to life. What’s the most challenging thing you’ve learned, technologically, for a project?

The first thing I should mention is neither Søren nor I have any engineering background, neither is the technology we have used so far very cutting-edge. Most of it existed at least 50 years ago, but that does not make it less challenging to work with. The most important thing for us has been finding the right mentor and collaborators. A very experienced hands-on robotics scientist is mentoring us, and this helps us foresee technical challenges at the outset of a project.

Even though the technologies we use are simple, combining them together with the added constraints of time, budget, customized requirements, etc. usually adds several layers of complexity. We have learned most technical challenges can be overcome, but not without perseverance and belief that it is somehow possible — that we will somehow unearth the resources or find a new perspective to help us unravel the solution. It is always a struggle on some level, but so far we have never given up, even if it means years and years of trying. When we finally crack it, of course, the challenge seems fully worthwhile.

While your artwork is tech-rich, it invites (and often requires) human interaction. What interests you about the interplay between art, people and technology?

We are really curious to see how other people respond to the work — what behavioral mechanisms and thoughts they trigger. It is quite satisfying if other people connect to something we also feel deeply connected to, but of course our personal investment in creating these objects has more selfish motives. Our interest lies mostly in the discovery of the thing or “being” that is inside our head and in creating it as accurately as possible. That is what we obsess about. Technology or ideas of responsiveness are never starting points for us. On the contrary, we often try to limit the use of technology and interaction, and to simplify it as much as possible. We find technology quite tricky to work with; without firm or nuanced control, it can easily distract from the essence of the artwork.

Why do you use humor in your art, and for a given project, how do you decide where to add humor?

Many of the things we do have some kind of humorous side, and we really enjoy that. But again, humor is not a deliberate ingredient in our work. We think of it as one of many facets we hope our works can encapsulate. We like to think different ways of experiencing can co-exist in the same object, and one of them is humor. We want the objects we make to somehow posses the same kind of complexity we experience in the world, but in a very simple form.

What are you working on right now?

We have received a commission from the Metamatic Research Initiative, a nonprofit art foundation in Amsterdam, to do a project we have been wanting to do for a long time. It explores the idea of a small mischievous creature having invaded a TV set, and how that affects the broadcast and the viewer. It is a kind of audiovisual trick-or-treat. We also just completed putting together material for our website (porsandrao.com); it is currently up.

Watch Aparna Rao’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

Watch Guy-Philippe Goldstein’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

Media pioneer Pat Mitchell hosts Session 8: Embracing Otherness: “I suspect all of us have at one point or another have been the other.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Actor Thandie Newton: “The key to my success as an actor is the very lack of self that used to make me feel so anxious and insecure.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Chinese media mogul Yang Lan: “With barriers stacked against Chinese youth who have a social media voice, change is afoot 140 characters at a time.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Nadia Al-Sakkaf of the Yemen Times: “In times of revolution, one message to the West: It’s very important for YOU to listen to OUR voice.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Filmmaker Jarreth Merz: “Ghana found itself in the same place as the US in 2000. But Ghana honored democracy.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

The Vertigo Dance Company delivers a wonderfully creative performance. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College says: “Look for solutions within, and listen to people. They have all the solutions in the world.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Movement expert Daniel Wolpert on the relationship between brain and body: “Our brains map our own body’s motions and correct our perception. That’s why you can’t tickle yourself.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Sheril Kirshenbaum talks about the science behind an ancient behavior, kissing: “We’re interpreting the world through our mouths more than we realize.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Hosain Rahman introduces UP, a wrist band that uses sophisticated sensor technology to track sleep and nutrition — and enables the data to be shared online. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Roboticist Péter Fankhauser demos Rezero, a highly agile robot that balances atop a ball. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Techno-illusionist Marco Tempest brings stick figures to life in a custom-designed interactive performance. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Jae Rhim Lee “trains” mushrooms to eat bodies after they’re buried. In her work she aims to shift culture toward “a radical acceptance of death and decomposition.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Forceful soul singer Alice Russell launches into a stunning rendition of “Citizens.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Underworld investigator Misha Glenny: “There are two types of companies in the world: those that know they’ve been hacked and those that don’t.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen advocates for an “Internetpol” — an Interpol for the net. He says: “In the vast majority of online attacks, we don’t even know which continent they’re coming from.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

The extraordinary Eddi Reader sings the haunting “Semiprecious” as a theme for Session 6: The Dark Side. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

“Everyone lies,” says lie detector Pamela Meyer. “Lying is an attempt to bridge our wishes for what we want to be with what we really are.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Ben Goldacre launches in on the misrepresentation of science and the “536,731 ways the evidence can be distorted.” He says: “We can’t make decisions based on lack of information.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Anti-torture activist Karen Tse: “We think of torture as a political tool, but 95% is for people who live in broken down political systems.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED

For the first time at TEDGlobal, a small group of TED Translators came together to present ideas and talk about the future of the Open Translation Project. Discussions centered around how to better collaborate, communicate and capture knowledge amongst the TED translator community, as well as playing subtitled TEDTalks in schools and engaging with the TED community at large. Addressing the workshop attendees, TED’s June Cohen said, “Translators are knit into the fabric of what TED is — and what it’s becoming. Not only have you taken the TED mission farther than we imagined, but we’ve learned from you.”

Armenian translator Kristine Sargsyan presented on bringing translated TEDTalks into schools. Spanish translator Lidia Cámara de la Fuente talked about universal Spanish — that is, reconciling the language variations across Spanish-speaking countries. Kaloyana Milinova shared her story of collaboration with the MaYoMo translation team and TEDx in Bulgaria. Katja Tongucer, a German translator, explored how to improve translation quality through knowledge sharing.

Polish translator Krystian Aparta talked about translating terminology, telling the story of how he tracked down the perfect translation for a term in Janna Levin’s talk. Els De Keyser, a Dutch, French and Italian translator, connected online to talk about regionalism — and how translators and reviewers can work together to bridge differences by finding a mutually acceptable word. Serbian translator Ivana Korom talked about community building among the Serbian translators, and proposed the idea of regional translator workshops. And Jenny Yang, a Chinese translator, talked about how she noticed 3 different tribes of translators — and how and why they translate for TED.

Norwegian translator Martin Hassel brainstorms with TED engineers at the TED Translator Workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photos: James Duncan Davidson / TED

We’re welcoming two guest hosts to TEDGlobal 2011 — Pat Mitchell, from the Paley Center for Media, who hosts Session 8, and Matt Ridley, whose 2010 TEDTalk was memorably titled “When Ideas Have Sex,” and who’ll be hosting Session 5. We asked both hosts a few questions about their plans for their session of TED.

Here’s what TED’s Jenny Zurawell asked Matt Ridley:

The theme of your session is “Emerging Order.” What kinds of order will we hear about, and what message do you hope your speakers thread together over the course of the session?

We have trouble understanding that there are complex systems that can have nobody in charge of them and no central planner or architect. Yet they are all around us: bodies, cells, genomes, ecosystems, even economies. It was the peculiar genius of the Scottish enlightenment — exemplified by David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and later Charles Darwin (an Edinburgh student) — to recognise the existence of these bottom-up systems of emerging order and try to explain how increasing complexity and apparent design can happen without designers.

Each speaker’s work is largely grounded in biology or applying principles from biology to their respective field. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Svante Pääbo is a geneticist who analyses the evolution of genomes of extinct and extant species. Genes are mere sequences of chemicals, yet they achieve an incredible orchestration of ordered complexity without hierarchy or foresight. Mark Pagel is an evolutionary biologist who studies the emergence of languages, systems of ordered complexity that emerge by natural selection. Elizabeth Murchison studies what happens when a selfish rebellion — cancer — emerges in the teeming city of selfless cells that makes up a body. Cynthia Kenyon studies how the body defies decay of ageing and asks how long human bodies can maintain their emergent order. Joe Castillo is an artist who creates order and beauty out of grains of sand. And Karol Boudreaux is an economist who shows how people can come together to solve conservation problems by trial and error without putting somebody in charge.

How are you preparing the speakers in your session? Are you giving them advice from your experience speaking at TEDGlobal last year?

I am telling the speakers, from my experience last year, that they need to be lively, passionate, brief (!) and visual, but they also need to focus on what it is in their work that most excites them. The key thing, I learned, is to leave out extraneous things and get to the core of their idea. I also told them that TED is a great audience and that speaking at TED can open exciting conversations online.

The central idea of your TEDGlobal 2010 talk is when ideas meet and mate, human progress happens. How do you see your session on emerging order as being related to your TEDTalk, “When ideas have sex”?

The incredible complexity of human society, I argued last year, comes about not through people planning it bit by bit, but through ideas meeting, mating, mutating, recombining, replicating and selectively surviving. In other words, society evolves; its order is emergent, not ordained. This year I am thrilled to get a chance to invite some of the people that most excitingly demonstrate how complex systems emerge and evolve. I want TEDsters to realise that nobody is in charge; intelligence is collective; order is emergent; and the future is fascinating.

In the US:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
A free, 24-hour hotline available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Your call will be routed to the nearest crisis center to you.

The Trevor Project
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/localresources
866 4-U-TREVOR
The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life-saving and life-affirming resources including a nationwide, 24/7 crisis intervention lifeline, digital community and advocacy/educational programs that create a safe, supportive and positive environment for everyone.

Samaritans USA
http://www.samaritansusa.org/
Samaritans centers provide volunteer-staffed hotlines and professional and volunteer-run public education programs, “suicide survivor” support groups and many other crisis response, outreach and advocacy activities.

ULifeline
http://ulifeline.org/page/main/StudentLogin.html
An anonymous online resource where you can learn about suicide  prevention and campus-specific resources.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:
http://www.afsp.org/
A national nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research, education and advocacy, and to reaching out to people impacted by suicide.

YouSpoke
http://www.youspoke.org/
A nonprofit organization that cultivates a community for those deeply affected by suicide by offering them a creative outlet to share their story.

Mental Health First Aid USA
http://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/
A public education program that  helps the public identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.

SAVE.org
A national nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide through public awareness and education.

International:

International Association for Suicide Prevention
http://www.iasp.info/
IASP now includes professionals and volunteers from more than fifty different countries. IASP is a Non-Governmental Organization in official relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO) concerned with suicide prevention.

Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention
A resource for survivors as well as anyone in suicidal distress.
To find the nearest crisis center: http://www.casp-acps.ca/crisiscentres.asp
To find the nearest support group: http://www.casp-acps.ca/supportgroups.asp

Centro de Asistencia del Suicida Bs. As. (Argentina)
línea gratuita 135
http://www.casbuenosaires.org.ar/

Asociación Argentina de Prevención del Suicidio (AAPS)
www.suicidologia.org.ar
aaps@suicidologia.org.ar
(011) 4795-9519 o (011) 4982-3299

Centro de Atención al Familiar del Suicida (Argentina)
http://www.familiardesuicida.com.ar/
(011) 4758-2554

Centro de Valorização da Vida (Brazil)
http://www.cvv.org.br/
Tel: 141

Sociedade Portuguesa de Suicidologia (Portugal)
http://www.spsuicidologia.pt/

http://www.hulpmix.nl/ (Netherlands)

Befrienders Helplines (Italy)
http://www.befrienders.org/helplines/helplines.asp?c2=Italy

Suicide Ecoute (France)
http://www.suicide-ecoute.fr/

PHARE (France)
http://www.phare.org/

한국자살예방협회 (Korean Association for Suicide Prevention)
http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/

한국자살협회 사이버 상담실 (Korean Suicide Prevention Cyber Counseling)
http://www.counselling.or.kr/

Hjälplinjen (Sweden)
http://www.hjalplinjen.se/

If you know of good resources available where you live, please add them to the comments section of this post.