A lovely meditation on we exquisite, enigmantic people serves to open Session 3 of TEDGlobal. Olivia Bolles, better known as Olivia Bee, is a 20-year-old American photographer from Portland, Oregon. At 14, her work was featured in an advertising campaign for Converse. Her work has since been used in campaigns for Nike, Hermes and Fiat. Watch her TEDx Talk, from TEDxWomenAmsterdam. Stewart Adams is an Amsterdam-based freelance editor who is originally from New Zealand.

Agency: WE ARE Pi
Director: Olivia Bee & Stewart Adams
Country: United States & New Zealand

Session-opening titles for TEDGlobal 2013 are curated by We Are Pi. The sprightly titles for Session 2 are directed by Sebastien Roux / Superdeux, with collaborators Friends of Mine and Junior Market.

They say: 3D robotic animation — these flying machines will soon take over the world. Until then, let’s have fun.

Agency: WE ARE Pi
Director: Sebastien Roux / Superdeux
Country: USA
URL: http://www.deux.me
Collaborators: Friends of Mine http://friendsofmine.tv/
Junior Market http://www.juniormarket.com
Description: No more no less, Deux is a magic number.
Tech/creative approach: 3D robotic animation, these flying machines will soon take over the world. Until then, let’s have fun.

Opening titles for TEDGlobal 2013 are curated by We Are Pi (the firm that created that gorgeous kaleidoscope video for TEDxSummit.) Each set of titles is in a different style, with great music, and we’re excited to share them! The titles for Session 1 are a collaboration with talented artist/illustrator Vasco Vicente. It was important to make the effect for real, so we used paint that glows under UV blacklight. Vasco painted the title and every speaker’s name with translucent UV paint.

Agency: WE ARE Pi
Director: Camille Herren
Country: Netherlands
URL: 
http://www.camilleherren.com

Collaborators: Vasco Vicente 
http://www.vascovicente.com

Description: Born and raised in Switzerland, Camille went to film school in New York and later Prague where he graduated with honors and won an award for Best Cinematography. He recently worked at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam as one of the six Kennedys and is now directing full time. His latest work includes spots for Sony, Asics and Amnesty Intl.

The bones were made over a period of years by artists, activists and schoolchildren and educators around the world. TED Fellows and photographers Teru Kuwayama and Camille Seaman are on hand to document the event — their images are featured below. The bones will be gathered up on Monday afternoon following a full program of activities. For more details on Naomi and the One Million Bones Project, read the TED Blog’s recent interview with her.

Naomi Natale, at the site of her One Million Bones installation on the National Mall in Washington DC. Photo: Teru Kuwayama

Naomi and crew among the bones. Photo: Camille Seaman

Buddhist monks attend the event. Photo: Teru Kuwayama

Participants at the One Million Bones installation on the National Mall in Washington DC. Photo: Teru Kuwayama

A close up of the bones. Photo: Camille Seaman

As an artist, I’m always interested in looking at the defining moments in our lives, understanding how these moments affect us and finding different ways to represent them.

Phil Hansen: Embrace the shakeWe all face limitations. I had the amazing opportunity to share my story at the TED conference this year. I came to do the art I do today not by a well-defined path, but by a defining moment in my life when I learned to “embrace the shake.”

Ever since I started preparing this talk last year, I thought a lot about the limitations we deal with and how they define us. It made me question why they sometimes hold us back and, at other times, push us forward. I became very curious about this process, and I wondered: if we looked at all our limitations collectively, what kind of patterns would we see? And what kind of insights would we have? When we hear other peoples’ stories, we often see reflections of our own struggles, triumphs, fears and hopes, which can give us new perspectives.

So, I had the idea to give out my phone number – it’s 651-321-4996 — and ask people to share a story about a limitation they’ve faced in their life. Many of these stories will be written to create a singular piece of art — based on the photograph below, which I took years ago in Seattle during a time when my limitation held me back from doing art. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of being rudderless and gives me a sense that life is always shifting in turbulent beauty.

Anyone is welcome to watch via the live feed (check it out below, or through my personal website) as each story is written onto the canvas. In the end, there’s a greater story to be told as we reflect on the stories of our lives. On that note, the second part of this project is to bring out the essence of this shared art experience by filming it, and putting together a short documentary. I’m asking people to back it through Kickstarter and, in the end, want to share it with all of you online.

I started the art for this project on Thursday, May 16. So far, it has given me the opportunity to connect with people from all walks of life. Occasionally, when I’m busy, someone will call me endlessly — 15 times or more — because they just need to get it out of their system. It’s a lot to juggle sometimes, between talking to people, making the art, and filming for the short documentary. But so far, it’s worth it. Here are a few stories people have told me so far:

“I was told that my learning disability would make it difficult to finish college. Now I’m having to decide between attending Stanford and Harvard — both universities fighting over me for grad school.”

“My limitation is simply myself. I always question whether I’m good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, artistic enough. I’m my own worst critic, and I struggle with it everyday.”

“Sometimes I lay awake at night wondering what will happen to make me willing to make the HUGE lifestyle change that would be required to lose over 200 pounds.”

There are a couple of really interesting elements that have already revealed themselves in this process. Many of the people I’ve talked to often feel completely alone in their experiences — like no one could have possibly gone through what they have. But then I will run into another story that is very similar to theirs. If you boil it down to just the limitation, with all the personal details removed, what you’ll see are all of our core human experiences.

I hope that people who share their stories can get a different perspective by seeing the limitation that seems so massive become so small on this huge canvas. In the end, I hope that when anybody looks at the final art piece, they can find a story that they connect with.

Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Andy Cavatorta performed with punk bands in the early 1990s, has worked with Bjork and is a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab. His counterintuitive resume has led him to create these gigantic, aural structures — both meditative and comforting — which you can see here in a video the Lincoln Motor Company partnered with TED to produce.

After an exciting night of design-themed talks at TED@250, we unveiled this series of videos that profiles three artists who came to TEDActive 2013 to show their work: Aurora Robson, Andy Cavatorta, and Gilberto Esparza. The artists’ time at TED and the resulting short documentaries are part of the newly launched Lincoln Reimagine Project, which supports pioneering thinkers in the arts, design and innovation.

Why these three? Because they turn upside down the traditional ways we imagine music, sculpture and even recycling. At TEDActive, Robson, Cavatorta and Esparza showcased original works that disrupt cultural and environmental paradigms. The videos highlight their unique artistic philosophies.

Cavatorta, as he introduced himself to the audience, aptly philosophized: “I believe new instruments will lead the way to fertile and innovative territory, challenging composers to find new voices within new expressive dimensions and constraints… Because in an ever-changing world, sometimes the only way to say something true is to say something new. Or to say something old in a new way.”

Watch the following videos to see how Robson and Esparza have combined contemporary technology with formal constraints to give unique voice and shape to their respective work.

Polluted Art: Gilberto Esparza’s Fuel Cell Symphony
Gilberto creates a futuristic symphony made from plastic tubes, an iPad and bacteria.

Recycling Plastic into Art with Aurora Robson
Robson asked TED attendees to give her the plastic packaging from their gift bags, which she used as a medium to create an ethereal, floating sculpture.

Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

I have so many questions — I’m a great admirer of your work. But let me begin with: why photography?

Photography came into my life when I was 29 — very late. When I finally began to take photographs, I discovered that photography is an incredible language. It was possible to move with my camera and capture with my camera, and to communicate with images. It was a language that didn’t need any translation because photography can be read in many languages. I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere.

Photography allowed me to see anything that I wished to see on this planet. Anything that hurts my heart, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that makes me happy, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that I think is beautiful enough to show, I show it. Photography became my life.

You started as a social activist before you were a photographer. Is that how you think of yourself still — as an activist?

No, I don’t believe that I’m an activist photographer. I was, when I was young, an activist — a leftist. I was a Marxist, very concerned for everything, and politics — activism — for me was very important. But when I started photography, it was quite a different thing. I did not make pictures just because I was an activist or because it was necessary to denounce something, I made pictures because it was my life, in the sense that it was how I expressed what was in my mind — my ideology, my ethics — through the language of photography. For me, it is much more than activism. It’s my way of life, photography.

You do these very large, long-term projects. Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start?

You know, before you do this kind of project, you must have a huge identification with the subject, because the project is going to be a very big part of your life. If you don’t have this identification, you won’t stay with it.

When I did workers, I did workers because for me, for many years, workers were the reason that I was active politically. I did studies of Marxism, and the base of Marxism is the working class. I saw that we were arriving at the end of the first big industrial revolution, where the role of the worker inside that model was changed. And I saw in this moment that many things would be changed in the worker’s world. And I made a decision to pay homage to the working class. And the name of my body of work was Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. Because they were becoming like archaeology; it was photographs of something that was disappearing, and that for me was very motivating. So that was my identification, and it was a pleasure to do this work. But I was conscious that the majority of the things that were photographed were also ending.

When I did another body of work, Migrations, I saw that a reorganization of all production systems was going on around the planet. We have my country, Brazil, that’s gone from an agricultural country to a huge industrial country — really huge. A few years ago, the most important export products were coffee and sugar. Today, they are cars and planes. When I was photographing the workers, I was looking at how this process of industrialization was modifying all the organizations of the human family.

Now we have incredible migrations. In Brazil, in 40 years, we have gone from a 92% rural population to, today, more than 93% urban population. In India today, more than 50% of the population is an urban population. That was close to 5%, 30 years ago. China, Japan … For many years of my life, I was a migrant. Then after that, I became a refugee. This is a story that was my story. I had a huge identification with it and I wanted for many years to do it.

My last project is Genesis. I started an environmental project in Brazil with my wife. We become so close to nature, we had such a huge pleasure in seeing trees growing there — to see birds coming, insects coming, mammals coming, life coming all around me. And I discovered one of the most fascinating things of our planet — nature.

I had an idea to do this for what I think will be my last project. I’ve become old — I’m 69 years old, close to 70. I had an idea to go and have a look at the planet and try to understand through this process — through pictures — the landscapes and how alive they are. To understand the vegetation of the planet, the trees; to understand the other animals, and to photograph us from the beginning, when we lived in equilibrium with nature. I organized a project, an eight-year project, to photograph Genesis. I talked about how you have to have identification for a project — you cannot hold on for eight years if you are not in love with the things that you are doing. That’s my life in photography.

When you do these large projects, how do you know when it is finished?

Well, I organize these projects like a guideline for a film — I write a project. For the start of Genesis, I did two years of research. When this project started to come into my mind, I started to look around more and more and, in a month, I knew 80% of the places that I’d be going and the way that we’d be organizing it. We needed to have organization for this kind of thing, so I organized a kind of unified structure. I organized a big group of magazines, foundations, companies, that all put money in this project. And that’s because it’s an expensive project — I was spending more than $1.5 million per year to photograph these things, to organize expeditions and many different things. And then I started the project. I changed a few things in between, but the base of the project was there.

Given the changes in digital media, if you were to start a new project now, do you think you’d still go through photography? Or would you try something different?

I would go to photography. One thing that is important is that you don’t just go to photography because you like photography. If you believe that you are a photographer, you must have some tools — without them it would be very complicated — and those tools are anthropology, sociology, economics, politics. These things you must learn a little bit and situate yourself inside the society that you live in, in order for your photography to become a real language of your society. This is the story that you are living. This is the most important thing.

In my moment, I live my moment. I’m older now, but young photographers must live their moment — this moment here — and stand in this society and look deeply at the striking points of this society. These pictures will become important because it’s not just pictures that are important — it’s important that you are in the moment of your society that your pictures show. If you understand this, there is no limit for you. I believe that is the point. As easy as this, and as complicated as this.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Photographer Camille Seaman sees the personality in elements of nature. The TED Fellow thrilled us at TED2011 with her haunting photos of polar ice — some glaciers timid, others proud and defiant — and, at TED2013, shared stunning images of supercell clouds, which she characterizes as “lovely monsters.”

We are very excited that Seaman has been named a 2013-14 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow for the U.S., joining the eight international fellows named earlier this month. The Fellows participate in classes, lectures and symposiums at Stanford University, while working on an innovation proposal. Seaman’s project is, “A website that applies indigenous perspectives and wisdom to current environmental stories and issues.”

In other news, Seaman has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her ongoing storm-chasing photography project, “The Big Cloud.”

Read more on the TED Fellows blog »

]]> http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/30/camille-seaman-named-a-knight-fellow/feed/ 1 Camille-Seaman-at-TED2013 kateted Camille-Seaman-at-TED2013 http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/26/turning-new-york-city-inside-out-volunteering-at-jrs-photo-truck/ http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/26/turning-new-york-city-inside-out-volunteering-at-jrs-photo-truck/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:00:06 +0000 Jamia Wilson http://blog.ted.com/?p=75157 ]]>

JR, the man behind the participatory global art project INSIDE OUT, has parked a photobooth truck in Times Square, from now until May 10. Photo: Instagram/newyorkermag

On an unseasonably chilly Monday evening in Manhattan, hundreds stood in line in Times Square for up to two hours. As a city-dweller for seven years, I’ve seen queues this long for big Broadway openings or on New Year’s Eve. But this line was formed for a very different purpose — for people to have their faces and stories featured in what JR describes as “the biggest art gallery in the world.”

JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside outIt’s been three years since TED Prize winner JR made the wish to turn the world INSIDE OUT with a global collaborative art project. As a documentary about the project premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend, JR decided to use his time in New York productively. He hatched the plan to park a truck with a photobooth on-board in the middle of Times Square, as he’s done in other cities before. As soon as I heard about this project, I knew that I wanted to be one of the volunteers for the truck’s inaugural night in my hometown.

When I arrived in Duffy Square (the northern triangle of Times Square), stunning rows of freshly pasted black and white portraits covered the ground. Smiling, smirking and winking visages of passersbys — with homes as diverse as the Bronx and Tokyo — replaced the usual bareness of the concrete. Throughout my shift, elders, painters, skateboarders, toddlers and even NYC’s infamous Naked Cowboy posed for INSIDE OUT’s camera, adding their photos to the street-side quilt of images that breathed life and humanity into the street.

As an INSIDE OUT volunteer, I learned how to capture and distribute large-scale portraits and make and apply wheat-paste. Over and over again, commuters interrupted their busy and purposeful strides and stopped to behold “the people’s art project.” Since I was adorned in INSIDE OUT’s trademark black and white spotted t-shirt, I was repeatedly asked about the origins of the project, how people could get involved, and how much it would cost to buy the portraits. Almost everyone eagerly jumped in line after learning that they could participate by giving their time, image and elbow-grease to help paste pictures.

Placing the faces of strangers side-by-side in a collective masterpiece created a powerful sense of community. People marveled at the process of taking their pictures in the speckled black and white photobooth and watched in awe as their likeness printed from the side of the truck. I spoke to one man who was so addicted to the practice of snapping and pasting his photo, that he has followed JR’s installation to three cities around the world, including Tokyo and New York.

As I walked away from Times Square, I thought of the thousands of people who have contributed 120,000 portraits to city walls, streets and countless other surfaces from Tunisia to South Dakota. I wondered if volunteers in the each of the 110 countries INSIDE OUT has touched experienced what I did. Did they see giggling children who were shorter than the portraits of their likeness dance blissfully with images of themselves? Did they witness a bride and groom take photos in their wedding finery and paste their pictures next to each other to symbolize their bond? Or, did they see what I repeatedly witnessed, a sense of recognition, pride and purpose in the eyes of folks who were given a moment to be truly seen – with big, bold, authentic, and honest emotion.

“The people’s art project” gave New Yorkers a chance to choose to remain anonymous while also being visible. By providing us with an opportunity to pause and be present together, INSIDE OUT created a humbling a sense of intimacy in the most populous city in the United States.

Help INSIDE OUT transform the city! If you live in New York City or will be visiting between now and May 10, email nyc@insideoutproject.net to volunteer by yourself or with a group.

Are you or someone you know interested in launching a worldwide project on the scale of Inside Out? Nominations for the 2014 TED Prize are open, from now until June 16 »

The artist himself examines the portraits tiled in Times Square. Photo: Anna Verghese

Pasting in progress. Photo: Instagram/JR

A bride and groom make their portraits kiss at the INSIDE OUT photo truck. Image: Instagram/JR

The bride snaps her portrait. Photo: Instagram/NewYorkerMag

A closer look at a section of portraits. Image: Anna Verghese

A view of the truck itself. Photo: Instagram/NewYorkerMag

Musician Pharrell Williams takes a moment to add his image to the mosaic. Photo: Instagram/JR

You live and work in Maine, but you recently toured a piece — which involves rather delicate neon sculpture — around the UK. How did this come about?

My collaborator Mike Fleming and I originally made “You are (on) an island (2011)” for an art festival called Sacred and Profane. The festival takes place on Peaks Island, which is off the coast of Portland, Maine. Every fall, on a weekend in October closest to the harvest moon, visitors take a ferry to the island to explore an abandoned World War II army battery, which artists completely take over with installations and performances. The battery doesn’t have any electricity, and people have to walk around and explore the dark, cavernous rooms by candlelight. So when Mike and I were brainstorming ideas for an installation, we started talking about using neon, and filling a whole room with light. We came up with the statement: “You are on an island” – with the word “on” blinking on and off, so it sometimes says, “You are an island.” We worked with Pat Boulduc of Beacon Neon to fabricate the text, and we installed the sign on construction scaffolding in the middle of a room that was completely flooded with water. It was pretty breathtaking.

We later posted documentation of the piece online, and an artist named Richard Wheater, who runs a gallery and workspace called Neon Workshops, in Wakefield, got wind of it. He wrote me an email out of the blue saying he thought it would be perfect for the UK, and he wanted us to bring it there.

But instead of just shipping the neon over and putting it on display in his gallery, Richard suggested that we take the sign on a guerilla sculpture tour, mount it on the back of a truck and drive it around Yorkshire, and take people by surprise on their daily commute to or from work. But neither of us had the money to pay for any of that, so we launched a Kickstarter campaign, and raised over $12,000. We shipped the neon to the UK in December and flew over in January to go on tour for two weeks.

“You are (on) an island” was originally made in 2011 for the Sacred and Profane art festival on Peaks Island, Maine. Eggert and her collaborator toured the sculpture around the UK on the back of a flatbed truck for two weeks in January 2013. The word ‘on’ blinks rhythmically on and off. For the moment that single word remains unilluminated, a new phrase with a different meaning emerges. Photo: Mike Fleming

Isn’t neon incredibly fragile, though? How did you manage to move it around?

Yes, it’s made out of glass tubes that are pumped, in this case, full of argon and a little bit of mercury. When the gas is electrified, it glows bright blue.

When we arrived in the UK we rented a flatbed truck, and spent the first few days erecting the sculpture’s wooden structure on the truck. We couldn’t always leave the glass letters attached to the structure, especially when we were driving long distances at 70 miles an hour on the motorway. So the neon was mounted to rails that could be lifted up and attached to the framework, but then brought back down to travel on foam in the truck bed when we were on motorways.

Our daily routine started with a trip to Neon Workshops, where we’d load the neon onto the truck. We would then drive to a certain location, unload a ladder and tools, lift the rails up onto the structure and attach them, and then wire everything up to a little generator. We’d try to do all that by dusk so we could get some really great sunset shots — also because you couldn’t see the neon very well during the day. We would then drive short distances around that area, and make photographs and videos in different locations. And then at the end of every day we would have to take the glass back down, drive back to Neon Workshops, store it in the gallery where we knew it would be safe, and then go to bed. It was quite a rigorous routine. But over the course of two weeks we drove all over West Yorkshire, drawing a circle around Wakefield, our home base. And we made a short weekend trip over to North Wales.

Any surprises?

We were surprised by how many CCTV cameras there are in the UK. There’s definitely way more CCTV there, and a lot of police vans. And since we were doing the project without permission, we were unsure of what we could get away with and what we couldn’t. But whenever we did encounter a police van or a policeman, they normally just seemed curious, but didn’t even stop to ask any questions. By the end of the trip, we were driving right up onto traffic islands and down pedestrian shopping streets.

How did the public respond?

A lot of people asked us what it was and what are we doing. We would explain by saying, “This is art,” basically. We would hand out postcards featuring an image of the sign, and explain that we were invited to the UK to do this project by a gallery in Wakefield. A lot of people would say things like, “Oh, man. You have to go to this part of Scotland. It’s really beautiful. It would make a great photograph.”

One time we were parked in the Bull Ring, in Wakefield, when a family walked by, and I could hear a little girl say, “We’re not on an island, are we?” I actually heard quite a few people ask that same question, which really surprised me. I realized that people in the UK don’t feel like they live on an island because they don’t feel isolated. If anything, it feels like it’s in the center of the world.

I think people who live there forget that it’s an island because they think of it as much bigger than it actually is.

Exactly. I’ve taken the same sculpture to Australia, and the response there was very different. People would see the sign and say, “Yes. This is perfect for us because we feel so isolated down here. And even though Australia is a continent, we feel like we’re on an island, and this sign describes exactly how it feels to live here.”

It was really surprising to me to see how people responded to the statement very differently in the UK than they did in Australia, or in Maine where it was first on display. As artists, we can’t really have expectations about how people will respond to work. I’m often intrigued by how everyone’s response to the same thing can be very different.

Video above: “The length of now”.

Video below: “Now”: This kinetic sculpture’s red acrylic line segments align to spell the word “NOW” approximately once every second. Made with help from Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

How did you get your start as an artist, and how you came to play with the themes of time and language?

My background is in architectural design, but I took a sculpture class during my very last semester of college, which introduced me to conceptual art. I literally cried to the professor at the end of the semester because I felt like I had just wasted four years of school studying the wrong thing. But I went to work at an architectural firm in New York for a few years after graduating, and I eventually went back to graduate school for sculpture.

I’ve always been very intrigued by time. I can’t really explain why. I think it’s just because it rules our lives in so many ways, but at the same time it’s so hard to define. It’s not a tangible thing, even though we see the tangible effects of time. We have very few words that we use to explain it, and words like “now” are very ambiguous.

When I was a kid, I lived in South Africa for a few years because my parents were missionaries there during apartheid. South Africans had three different ways they used the word “now.” A simple “now” was a really casual reference to the present; it lacked any sense of urgency. “Just now” was even more casual. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll get around to it.” And then “now now” was a more urgent expression, meaning “This is happening right at this very moment.”

I think I’ve always had an interest in how people regard and refer to the passing of time, and how the language we use to describe time also structures our understanding of it. Time is different, not just culturally, but for every single person. I really believe each person lives in a different time universe.

I think of words as found objects, and I play with their forms in the same way Duchamp played with urinals and bicycle wheels. I began by giving words like “now” a physical form, and asking questions like, “How long is now?” For instance, I wrote the word “now” with a piece of string and then pulled it taut into a line, so I could measure the length of now. That led to other projects that allow language to change over time. And projects like “You are (on) an island” demonstrate how one word, or the absence of it, can contain a whole world of meaning.

Would you consider doing something similar in the United States?

Definitely. But the ability to tell people in the UK we were invited there was really empowering. It would be very different if we were to just decide to take the sculpture on tour in New York City, without receiving an invitation first. So I’m waiting to see what happens next, because I feel there are many places, many islands, the sculpture could travel to. But I would really like to receive an invitation.

Does the location partly dictate the shape of the piece?

In some ways, yes and, in some ways, no. I really like to make work that I feel is universal. The initial idea was inspired by an island in Maine, but the phrase “You are an island” applies to everyone, because no one can really know what it feels like to be another person. Mike and I have also had discussions about whether or not it needs to be shown on legitimate “islands,” or if every land mass is an island — and if you zoom out far enough, the Earth is kind of an island in the solar system; and our solar system is an island in the universe.

Video above: “Pulse Machine”: This electromechanical sculpture was “born” in Nashville, Tennessee on 2 June 2012, at 6:18 PM. The sculpture will die once the counter reaches zero. Made in collaboration with Alexander Reben. Video by David Meiklejohn.

Tell me about other work you’ve made about time.

I’ve made quite a few things to illustrate the concept of “now.” “NOW (2012)” is a kinetic sculpture whose red acrylic line segments align to spell the word NOW approximately once every second. The lines that create it slow down ever so slightly as the word forms, but just like time itself, they never quite come to a complete stop.

I’ve also made a sculpture with a human lifespan, called “Pulse Machine (2012).” It was made in collaboration with an engineer named Alexander Reben. We programmed the sculpture to have the lifespan of a baby born in Tennessee in 2012 — which, if you average the male and female life expectancy rates together, it about 78 years. Surprisingly, that’s actually a little bit lower than the national average in the US.

The sculpture is made up of two parts. A kick-drum sits on the floor, beating a heartbeat rhythm, and a mechanical counter hangs on the wall nearby. The drum beats the sculpture’s pulse, and the mechanical counter uses flip digit numerals to count down the number of heartbeats remaining in the sculpture’s lifetime. And there’s a battery-operated internal clock that keeps track of the passing time even when the sculpture’s unplugged.

Every time you plug the sculpture back in, it goes through a series of steps to determine how much time has elapsed, and the numbers reset themselves to catch up to the present time. The sculpture will “die” when the counter reaches zero.

Creating art means creating objects that, if people deem them important, will be saved for posterity after you die. But a lot of the work that I like to make, which is new media art and kinetic art, has moving parts and electronics that need maintenance, like a car. Even if you diligently maintain it, it probably won’t be able to run forever. So I was excited to make a work of art that’s intended to die, as a way of challenging our desire for things to last forever.

Video above: “Eternity”: A wall-mounted sculpture made in collaboration with Mike Fleming. It employs 30 electric clock movements and 36 hour and minute hands. Once every 12 hours, the hands align to spell the word ETERNITY. This video shows the piece 45 minutes before and after ETERNITY at 300 times the actual speed. Video by Mike Fleming.

So you’re a conceptual kinetic artist.

Maybe, although I don’t only make things that are kinetic. The kinetic aspect comes from my interest in time. I like to allow the artwork to change in the same way that everything else in the world is changing all the time.

I’m constantly figuring out what I’m interested in. But I’ve realized that in order to be making, I need to be learning. I’m not the kind of artist who can go to my studio and sit there by myself and expect ideas to come into my imagination out of the blue. I get my inspiration out in the world, from other people. I’m inspired by other artists, and as a professor I’m inspired by my students and other disciplines. And I have a feeling my work will evolve as I keep absorbing new information and discovering new technologies.

How’s it been to be a TED Fellow so far?

Oh, man. The conference was probably the most inspiring experience of my life to date — not just the talks, but meeting the people that were there to attend the talks as well. So many great minds were gathered in one place. I feel like I went to the future and I got a glimpse of what it might be like, and I got to meet the people who have the potential to shape it.

In that environment, I really had this feeling that anything is possible, and that we can all work together to solve the world’s problems. When I got home, I realized that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t feel that same sense of empowerment. So it’s hard to maintain that level of inspiration. But the TED Fellows network is incredible. There are TED Fellows all over the world, doing great things in every imaginable discipline. And the opportunity to form relationships and learn from so many brilliant people is the best gift the Fellows program could have ever given me.