11 June 2009

Science and art, long-lost lovers, reunite for opening night of the World Science Festival

The second year of the World Science Festival got off to a spectacular start last night at New York's Lincoln Center, with a program star-studded from both science and the arts. We loved it here at TED, not just because it featured so many of our TED favorites -- physicist Brian Greene (who co-founded the Festival with partner Tracy Day), biologist E.O. Wilson, actor Anna Deavere Smith, Nobel winner James Watson, photographer Frans Lanting and cellist Yo-Yo Ma to name a few -- or because we share a lot of cross-disciplinary DNA with WSF, or because it was held in the new Alice Tully Hall (designed by TED speaker Liz Diller) but also for the its fresh, innovative approach and playful sense of fun.

The evening paid tribute to legendary biologist (and beloved TED Prize winner) E.O Wilson, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, but the program was really a love letter to science itself -- for its importance, yes, but also for the inspiration and wonder it offers, and for its deep but often-unacknowledged kinship with the arts.

"Tonight, science and art, long-lost lovers, reunite" Alan Alda said, as he opened the show. And that sensibility pervaded the program, as it blended science and the arts in innovative and unusual ways -- from a sequence of broadway musical stars singing light-hearted tributes to science (For example, a guided tour of the periodic table, set to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan's "I am the very model of a modern major general". Brilliant!) to an intellectual pas de deux, featuring Brian Greene waxing eloquent on the nature of the universe, and Joshua Bell performing lyrically on the violin.

The evening included several heartfelt odes to Wilson -- the transcendent cellist YoYo Ma performed playfully as young "ants" wiggle-danced around him (Wilson's career was built on his research on ants); Anna Deavere Smith impersonated Wilson as only she could. And Nobel winner James Watson (of Watson & Crick double-helix fame) paid homage in his own eccentric way: "When we first met, Ed thought I was the most unpleasant person he'd ever known," Watson explained to a chuckling audience. "And when I first met Ed, I didn't think there was any point in knowing him. Because everyone knew: Biology was the dumb part of science."

READ MORE: The NY premiere of Frans Lanting's LIFE, live performance of the Philip Glass score and Wilson's central message.

Photos: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSF

Posted by June Cohen | Permalink

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05 June 2009

The World Science Festival is next week in New York City

We are excited to report that the World Science Festival is returning for its second year next week in New York City. The five-day program of events is jam-packed with amazing sessions that explore intriguing subjects such as nothingness, the science of traffic, perception of the human face, the neural basis for our enjoyment of music and the nature of time.

The TED Blog covered the World Science Festival in 2008, and this year we'll be dispatching more of our staffers to the sure-to-be fascinating events. Many TEDsters will be participating in the programming: Hod Lipson, Emily Levine, Sylvia Earle and others. TEDster Brian Greene was a co-founder of the festival.

The events run from Wednesday, June 10th to Sunday, June 14th.

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01 June 2008

WSF report: Oliver Sacks, Abyssinian choir on music

Photo of Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, acknowledging Jim Gates and Stephon Alexander at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, as part of the World Science Festival, NYC. From entropybound's flickr set (and check out his blog).

TED's Marla Mitchnick reports from the Saturday night blockbuster "Music and the Brain," held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and hosted by the Rev. Calvin Butts III:

Many hundreds of people came out, on a rainy Saturday evening in Harlem, to hear the great Dr. Oliver Sacks speak on "Music and the Brain." We waited in a line that snaked all the way down 138th Street from the church, around the corner, and way down Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Though the event listing mentioned the location as The First Abyssinian Baptist Church, a historic Harlem landmark built in 1808, which is well known for its choir and its pastor, Calvin O. Butts III, and we all knew that gospel music was to be paired with Dr. Sacks' talk, no one was quite prepared for the multilayered experience that lay ahead.

A ferociously energetic church lady in a polka-dot dress was hawking CDs along the line, in a voice that demanded one's attention, and with an intensity that made me quake in my boots. To refuse her wares would take some courage! Thank god the line began to move.

Leaving the stairwell to enter the balcony, the space of the enormous church opened up in all its glory. Silvery pipe-organ pipes rose up everywhere -- in the balcony, at the back, the sides, up behind the altar area. I've never seen so many. But the church organ had some company: a concert grand piano, a full drum kit, a three-drum African skin-drum kit, and a freestanding jazz organ.

Sitting in the front row of the balcony, we were amongst a happy crowd of folks -- who seemed well enough behaved to my eye, but apparently not in the judgment of the large, bald, Abyssinian Baptist employee, wearing an OFFC T-shirt, who was overseeing our section, and who apparently felt we all fell quite short of the mark. Upon closer inspection, the large red letters OFFC on the front of his shirt were accompanied by some smaller yellow letters below, explaining the acronym: "On Fire For Christ!" The fire must have been pretty hot, to judge by the way this fellow made sure that no one put their feet upon the balcony rail, and generally acted like a cross between a stern master at a boys' school, and a security specialist on a far-off planet -- one where no one's even heard of laughter -- who took his job in deadly earnest.

Having recently edited the video for his 2005 TEDTalk on string theory, I recognized Brian Greene and trotted over to say hi to him before the show. When I asked him how the World Science Festival was going, his face lit up, and he said: "It could not be going any better, the events are sold out, they've been fantastic, and best of all: people are talking about science!"

There were running jokes throughout the evening, from Brian Greene and Oliver Sacks, both Jewish by birth, about being converted -- and all of us non-Baptists in the audience understood why. The Abyssinian Baptist Church is one that understands the powers of spectacle and ritual, and engages in these with dignity and stateliness, but without formality. The professional rigor of the choir is accompanied by natural talent, a general sense of vocal ease, and a straightforward joy in the act of singing for god.

There were ten items on the program before Oliver Sacks' talk -- starting with a gorgeous organ prelude, played by a young woman named Dina Marie Foster Osborne. Another notable experience was the solo African drumming which ushered in the entrance of the choir. Sadly his name was not on the program, but the big, happy, relaxed man who played the African drum set took three skin-drums and two sticks, and made a universe out of them -- he went from drumming with joyous intensity, all the way down to the softest beats imaginable, ones that you could hardly hear, and that your ears strained to catch because they were exquisite. Then the entrance of the 51-person choir, all traditionally bedecked, in dark red draping robes that were accessorized with stripey yellow and black African cloth about the neck and sleeves -- was awesome. They appeared out of nowhere, snaking their way like a rushing red river through all the aisles at once, and seen from the balcony above, it was glorious.

A number of musical numbers followed -- with soloists, all instruments, and a taste of the whole choir's sound -- all instruments were involved, and there were too many talented folks to list them all. When the music got going I looked down, and smiled when I saw that the fearsome lady in the polka-dot dress, the one who'd been hawking CDs outside, was gettin' down -- standing up in her pew and just dancing with abandon.

There was a very adorable moment when four first-graders from the Thurgood Marshall Academy lower school led a tribute to undercredited scientific ancestors, followed by an African libation ceremony for all those Americans who made a way out of no way...

Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, invited Brian Greene up to say a few words, and gave a generous intro to Dr. Sacks.

When Brian Greene began to speak, he quoted a great story from Sir Ken Robinson about a 7-year-old who followed her own drum in the quest for truth, and then said:

"I may be a Jewish physicist, but I'd be tickled silly if someday I was reincarnated as a Baptist minister!" And I believed it -- in speaking about his passion for science, for science education, and for the spreading of the explorational scientific spirit throughout popular culture -- his voice had all the cadences of a believing man aflame. He was wearing a very nice suit - but really he should have worn a T-shirt that said "OFFS:" On Fire For Science. He burned up the house with his passion.

Then Dr. Butts gave a warm and generous introduction to Oliver Sacks, and Dr. Sacks stepped up to speak. He spoke of the power of music to exalt us as individuals, and to bond us as a community. He spoke of the neurological differences in practicing musicians' brains vs. all others -- saying that if you looked at Einstein's brain scans, or at Brian Greene's, you'd have no notion that they were men of science -- but if you looked any any of the brain scans of the people in this choir you'd immediately think -- ah yes, I bet these are musicians!

But then he got into the nitty-gritty of the evening -- not just the power of music for all of us, but the power of music for people who are in serious trouble.

He went back to stories about the patients from Beth Abraham Hospital, original home of the case studies that made up his stories about how music could jump-start speech, general motor-movement, singing, and even dancing, in patients who'd been frozen in inert states, sometimes for years. He spoke of how the auditory-memory part of the brain is very close to the part of the brain that processes emotion, and that with patients suffering from Alzheimer's or acute dementia, even when all event-memory, and all personal identity memory is lost, that the ability to recognize familiar music never goes away. He spoke of how rhythm is, in some cases, far more essential than melody or words, and said that rhythm is at the very center of being a human being.

He spoke of aphasia, loss of speech, and how recent discoveries involving music therapy have shown -- in cases of severe damage to the left lobe/language center of the brain -- that patients can experience -- with much work -- the right side of the brain taking over the job, and becoming the vehicle for speech: an amazing transformation known as "cerebral plasticity."

Dr. Sacks spoke with compassion, humor, ease, and an obvious appreciation for the context of this extraordinary event. He ended with the words: "... We can not say that music is an art and not a science, no more than we can say that chemistry is a science and not an art. Science and art come together."

The Abyssinian Baptist choir followed Dr. Sacks' talk with many gospel tunes, each more rigorous, more passionate, and more beautiful than the last, proving his point completely.

I looked up and noticed that stern fellow, the one with the OFFC tee-shirt, guarding the balcony door. The choir was singing the rollicking number "Didn't my Lord Deliver Daniel!" Everyone was dancing in their seats, the harmonies were so surprising and the rhythm was potent. The guard held his body rigid, even in the midst of the swaying multitude, but wait -- was that a very subtle bob to his head? Yes -- it was almost imperceptible, but I definitely detected a subtle movement about the neck. Even he was not immune to "the impact of music..."

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29 May 2008

Brian Greene on leadership in science and tech

Physicist Brian Greene will talk today with Leonard Lopate on WNYC about how the US can regain its leadership in science and technology. It's an interesting time to be having this conversation -- funding of basic physics research is much in the news lately.

Yesterday, an anonymous donor gave $5 million to Fermilab, outside Chicago, which has been laying off staff after its budget was slashed by Congress. And in the Times of London this weekend, Neil Turok blasts the UK government for cutting funds that support basic research in the sciences. Turok is leaving Cambridge to take a job at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, a research center for theoretical physics founded by the inventor of the BlackBerry. (Update on 6/1/08: The week before Brian Greene gave this talk, Lawrence Berkeley Labs laid off more than 400 people, including physicists, engineers and chemists -- sparking more fears of a US "brain drain.")

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink

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28 May 2008

The World Science Festival starts tomorrow

Tomorrow, Thursday, May 29, begins the World Science Festival: a four-day celebration of scientific exploration and discovery in New York City created by TEDster Brian Greene. Members of the TED team will be liveblogging the event right here on the TED Blog, keeping you updated on the latest from many TEDTalks favorites who will be presenting there. A few events we plan to cover:

Illuminating Genius: Unlocking Creativity: Is creativity innate or learned? Does the innovative brain have distinct structural or chemical features? Can we enhance our creativity? Vilayanur Ramachandran will contribute to this session, along with Nancy Andreasen and David Eagleman.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives: Brian Cox will moderate a panel of physicists including Michio Kaku and Max Tegmark as they discuss the possibility of parallel worlds. The panel is to follow a screening of Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, a film about Hugh Everett, father of the "many-worlds interpretation" of quantum physics and the film's director, Mark Everett.

Science of Morality: Patricia Churchland, Antonio Damasio and Marc Houser join philosopher Dan Dennett in a discussion of the science of right and wrong: Why do we cooperate? Is altruism innate? How does morality arise from interactions among biological and social systems?

Looking for the Laws of Life: The forms that life could take seem endless -- at least in theory. Some scientists are on the verge of creating it in a lab. But are there universal laws of life, much like the fundamental laws of physics? This event features a vibrant discussion with leading astrobiologists Paul Davies, Steven Benner and Maggie Turnbull.

Faith & Science: Many scientists have found a way to accommodate both scientific inquiry and religious teaching in their belief systems. Other scientists are bringing science to bear on religion and spiritual belief. Actress Julia Sweeney contributes to this intimate look at what scientists have to say about their spirituality.

For more information about event schedules and to purchase tickets, visit the World Science Festival's website.

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24 April 2008

World Science Festival May 28-June 1 in New York City

The inaugural World Science Festival, a celebration of science and discovery, will take place May 28-June 1 in New York City. Organized by physicist Brian Greene, who explained string theory at TED2005, the event will bring together a range of speakers -- including many TEDTalks favorites such as philosopher Dan Dennett, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, mathemagician Arthur Benjamin, and rock-star physicist Brian Cox (whose TEDTalk from 2008 on the CERN supercollider will be posted next week). Many other fascinating people -- such as Michio Kaku, Maggie Turnbull, Patricia Churchland and Oliver Sacks -- will be speaking or presenting. Browse the list of speakers.

The festival also celebrates film, theater and storytelling about science. Look for the American premiere of Mark "E" Everett's film about his father, a much-misunderstood physicist. On that same evening further uptown, a roster of distinguished scientists will take the stage at Symphony Space to share stories of experiments gone wrong.

Events for kids and families include a science-themed street fair around Washington Square and an awesome-sounding roundup of cool jobs in science.

Visit the World Science Festival website >>

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23 April 2008

Superstring theory explained (really!): Brian Greene on TED.com

In clear, nontechnical language, string theorist Brian Greene explains how our understanding of the universe has evolved from Einstein's notions of gravity and space-time to superstring theory, where minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe. (This mind-bending theory may soon be put to the test at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.) (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:06.)

Watch Brian Greene's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.

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