Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure

TED speaker Paul Bloom makes a compelling case against empathy, arguing that empathy alone is not sufficient to uphold morality — and may even work against it. [The New Yorker]

42 truly stunning photos from the 2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. [The Atlantic]

Would you be friends with Humbert Humbert? Authors weigh in on whether fictional characters ought to be likable. [New Yorker blog]

Damon Horowitz: Philosophy in prison

The most popular way to spend time at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia is … reading Tolstoy? [The Washington Post] Watch a talk on philosophy in prisons »

Scientists show an electronic jolt to the brain can improve mental arithmetic skills in the long-term, and without negative side-effects. [New Scientist]

Chris Hadfield alights from space with another social media masterpiece, a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” along with a full-length music video. Shot in the International Space Station. [YouTube] Watch a TED Blog playlist we published to welcome him home »

Raghava KK: My 5 lives as an artist

And a brief congrats to TED speaker Raghava KK, who was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer this week, and TED Fellows Skylar Tibbits and Marc Fornes, who were both awarded the 2013 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers.

Why is this process called 4D printing?

The reason we call it 4D is because the object changes over time. So whereas 3D printing simply creates an object,Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing" the 4D-printed object is printed using smart materials that are activated by various sources — like heat, water, current, sound, pressure, and so on.

Objects are printed with the multi-material printer using a combination of smart material and standard 3D printing material — currently, Stratasys’ Connex highly precise multi-material 3D printers can print two materials — in whatever shape you want. Then when you activate the object, it changes: swells or contracts or moves.

Right now the material we’re using is a polymer-based water-absorbing material that expands 150%. For the non-4D material, Stratasys has a whole line, everything from soft rubber to plastic. Right now we use their hard black plastic, just a standard plastic material, alongside the 4D material as the activator.

So the expanding material does one thing and the rigid material holds the shape, is that right?

Right. The rigid material gives it structure and constraints. If you have two pieces and you want them to fold, how do you make it go the right direction? That way or another way? Well, you put a very thin piece of rigid material on the side you want to fold. So that means that the expanding material is going to expand, and that super thin material is going to bend. And so this basically creates a force. But then the question is, how do you make it so that the bend stops at the correct angle? So you add rigid limiters. You also use the lengths of the segments to achieve the shape you want. The rigid material is the code, and the expanding material is the energy.

It’s just become a really elegant process from start to finish, where my hands are out of it the whole time. I build intent, but the object is manufactured as a streamlined piece. You dip it in water and it goes by itself.

Video above: A demonstration of 4D Printing, the “MIT” self-folding strand in action.

The first time you saw the test object fold by itself in water, were you incredibly excited?

I had one surprising moment. I set it in water, and I had my camera set up doing a time-lapse — the process is so slow you can’t see it moving in real time. A few hours later I came back and it was folded. And I thought, “Oh, cool. It folded. It works.” But then I looked at the time-lapse and went, “Whoa!” — because it looks like a live worm. It’s not just click, click — MIT. It takes weird dynamic forms to get there. So that was cool.

How did you originally connect with Stratasys?

It’s actually a funny story. I was at a coffee shop, in Cambridge, right across from MIT, and the person across from me had a shirt on that said Objet — the 3D printing company that later merged with and became Stratasys. We started talking, and I introduced her to the department of architecture at MIT. I showed her the work I’m doing, saying, “I wish there was a way we could print this stuff so that we could embed the energy directly into it.” She connected me with their materials science division, which was developing this material that expands in water. Together we realized this wasn’t just a weird material that we don’t know what to do with, but a new paradigm for what you can print.

You are the only person working on designs for this material and this particular process. So do you get all the credit for 4D?

Well, Stratasys developed the materials and the machine, so this wouldn’t be possible without them. I had the vision of how this would be a real change in the game of 3D printing. This only became a reality once we produced the prototypes and demonstrated that it is possible. But I think 4D printing is something that in the future anyone can do. If the materials were on the market, everyone would be 4D printing tomorrow.

But you need the design knowledge.

That’s true. There’s the whole democratizing-design world, and they’re trying to make it so anyone can 3D print anything. This falls into that realm. It’s a little bit more complex because you need to be smart enough to figure out, say, if you want to make a fairly complex and intricate shape, you need to then be able to figure out what’s the pattern for it to go from here to here — and that’s not always easy. Going from a line to a circle is pretty straightforward. You can make a strip, and you can make a standard interval, and it will curl uniformly. But if you want to make something more intricate, you need to have the tools to be able to do that. So we started to collaborate with Autodesk to help develop new design tools for this — tools that allow you design around self-assembly principles as well as simulate and optimize the folding patterns.

Video above: A demonstration of a self-folding sheet, created at the MIT Self-Assembly Lab.

So what now? Are you thinking up ways to apply this technology to designs?

Yes. So far we’ve demonstrated that a one-dimensional form folds into a three-dimensional form. One goal is to go as complex as possible. I’m trying to do a 50-foot long strand that folds into eight inches: it’s called the Hilbert curve — a mathematical curve. So that would demonstrate that we can do highly simple first parts that lead to very complex other structures. And it also may have implications for studying protein folding, how they can go from one configuration to another, how they don’t tangle, and what design parameters are essential. But I also want to demonstrate all of the other low-hanging fruit — a flat 2D sheet that folds into a rigid 3D structure. A 3D object like a cube that turns into a sphere. We know we can do it — we just haven’t. There are a ton of these.

After we’ve proved we can build complex things and we can do all geometric transformations, then we can start to use the technology for more real-world applications. Then we will need to push the materials further and make sure we have the right properties so that it is scalable. Part of me is just fascinated by pushing the boundaries of what we know, what’s possible, what materials can do, and how much information you can embed. But I also want to make large-scale things and solve real-world problems with them.

You’ve talked to us about applying self-assembly technology to adaptable infrastructure like piping and bridges, low-energy manufacturing, and passive energy construction techniques. What about potential applications for space?

We have been working with Shackleton Energy as a design advisor to help build space infrastructure systems using these principles. They are looking to build a whole pipeline space infrastructure for fueling and energy extraction. The idea is to provide an infrastructure for all of the private space companies, so that they don’t have to keep going back and forth, but stay in space longer. So they need an energy supply chain, module components and smart ways they can connect to one another.

The opposite paradigm is the International Space Station: it comprises extremely complex and expensive technology made all around the world, coming together in complex ways. Nearly no module is the same. In contrast, we want to develop simple systems that can be shipped, then expand in orbit and are reconfigurable. These would be standard components that come together in many, many ways, so you have massive design possibility with a minimum number of components.

Adaptable infrastructure: pipes that expand and contract according to need. Photo: MIT Self-Assembly Lab

Why is 4D — and self-assembly — necessary?

The short answer is that I don’t like manual labor. People always comment that my work reduces energy consumption. But I never say that; I say it uses alternative energy sources like heat, shaking, and so on. The extra energy required to make smarter parts that self-assemble could be offset by reducing the expensive and huge amount of energy used in construction.

Well, 4D radically modifies that argument, because the manufacturing side would also be streamlined. There isn’t excessive labor to make the parts “smart”: I don’t have to embed magnets in every single piece, for example. It goes right from design to reality — and it doesn’t stop at reality. Smart materials can even continue to adapt — changing shape or texture. But the manufacturing process is streamlined.

How did you become interested in self-assembly in the first place?

Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?It all began in 2007, when I was in architecture school, as an undergrad in Philly. I was building these huge sculptures and breaking my back.

Were you originally an artist?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. I was always drawing, and also making stuff. And I was into photography in middle school and high school. But somehow I thought architecture was a lucrative art form. Architecture was all software-based, but at a certain point, you get to the limits of software. I started learning how to write code. And the code is what led to the sculptures.

Generative art was a brand-new field at the time. At the same time, digital fabrication began. It was all brand new: fab labs were popping up, architecture schools were getting robotic fabrication machines, and laser cutters and 3D printers. Suddenly there was this code explosion, which meant that people like me could make stuff that no one else could make. It was the students that were pumped about this new technology. “Wow, we have all these crazy design tools and digital fabrication tools. Now we can build stuff that hadn’t been possible before — and with one percent of the budget.”

Tibbits’ first installation, “Flat Panel Quadrilateral Tessellations,” 2008.

What was your big break?

I got a huge opportunity to do an exhibition in Philly in 2007, at the Real World house in this old bank. It’s two floors, balcony. They offered me the whole space. I pitched to do something called “Scripted by Purpose,” which was a collaboration with TED Fellow Marc Fornes. The idea was using scripted processes for design. And so we brought anyone from around the world that we knew that was doing generative design at the time.

We had architects, but we also had Vito Acconci there, Marius Watz and Francois Roche, and other well-known architects, artists and designers. We were the first ones in the design world to put together such an exhibition, so people started inviting us to do exhibitions around the world. For us, it was an opportunity to make stuff in ways that people weren’t making before. And we could compete. Big architects were doing wild projects with billions of dollars. We could do wild geometries in smarter ways, because we could write code and run machines ourselves — for little money. But it was manual labor — people fabricating, assembling, connecting things, finishing the parts. Eventually the labor side of it made me realize that there had to be a better way. Not just code to design stuff, not just code to make stuff, but code to assemble stuff as well.

Somewhere in there, I joined MIT Design Computation Group and started working on programmable matter and robotics, artificial intelligence, and eventually the biology stuff crept in. That showed me possibilities of construction at other length-scales that used computational processes and embedded assembly information. That led to the research on self-assembly!

So you did ultimately get to be an artist.

Yes, I am an artist, but I also think of myself as an architect. My art was always trying to prove an architectural point. My first installation was called “Flat Panel Quadrilateral Tessellations.” It basically said that we can make complex, doubly curved surfaces, out of flat pieces of material. So it’s super cheap and super easy to build, all through code and coded machines.

For me, the most exciting challenge is not to do the same thing ever again, or to keep critiquing myself each time: how could it be smarter, how could this thing be more streamlined or do things that we didn’t expect? Each time I start something new, I want to do something I couldn’t have imagined was possible.

How has the TED Fellowship had an impact on your life and work so far?

The TED Fellowship has given me the opportunity, network and confidence to start my own lab at MIT, the Self-Assembly Lab. I likely wouldn’t have been able to take that trajectory otherwise. TED has also really been a research testbed and an opportunity to experiment. I’ve been fortunate enough to exhibit work during three of the four conferences that I’ve attended — putting the work out there, getting feedback, getting exposure and using it as a stage for development. I think this has really been a unique experience, much more tangible and direct than I could have imagined.

Video above: Watch Tibbits’ recently posted TED-Ed animation: “Self-assembly: The power of organizing the unorganized.”

A part on the outside of a spaceship that morphs, rather than requiring an astronaut to perform a risky maneuver. Plumbing pipes able to bend and flex based on the needs of the water flowing through them. Furniture that assembles itself, no screwdriver required. Buildings with the ability to repair themselves when something goes awry.

Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing"These are just some potential applications of research being done at TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits’ Self Assembly Lab at MIT. In this lab, designers, scientists and engineers come together to work on new ways to make disordered parts become ordered — on their own, since the programming is part of the object itself.

In today’s talk, give at TED University at TED2013, Tibbits introduces us to one of his most fascinating nascent ideas — what he calls “4D printing.” A collaboration between the Self-Assembly Lab and 3D printing giant Stratasys, 4D printing allows for the printing of objects that — when they have an energy force (say, touch or submersion in water) applied — transform themselves. Watch this intriguing talk to see exactly what this means.

And below, see some very cool projects from Tibbits and his teams.

This black strand was 3D-printed to lie flat. But when submerged in water, it folds itself into a square. Directly off the printer bed, this object has transformation embedded into it.

This 3D-printed object looks like a black necklace. But when tugged, it folds to form the letters MIT.

This flat, white matrix looks like it could be a potholder. But at a touch of its corners, it folds inward, as if it were alive.

In this giant tumbler, the bent hexagonal pieces of a stool find each other and assemble themselves. A very cool demo from TED2012, using a model demonstrated on the microscale by the polio virus.

Skylar Tibbits shows off his Biomolecular Self-Assembly kit. Revealed at TEDGlobal 2012, these flasks contain mock molecules, broken into components. As the flask is shaken, magnets allow the pieces to find their mates and become one molecule.

In this demo, a pliable black substance is made to harden—then brought back to its original state.

Protein strands have the ability to fold themselves. This object mimics that process.  When kinetic force is applied — i.e. when it’s thrown in the air — it folds in much the same way.

Watch as this MacroBot transforms before your eyes.

And here, the DeciBot.

Skylar Tibbits demonstrates self-assembly technology at TEDU. Photo: Ryan Lash

We’ve all heard of 3D printing. But what the heck is 4D printing? During TED Senior Fellow’s Skylar Tibbits’ talk at TED University on Thursday, he unveiled the concept — 3D printed objects that seamlessly continue to expand, fold and harden into different forms (see video below). The talk has gotten a lot of attention. We spoke to Skylar about the experience and asked more about what he’s up to with his newly founded MIT Self-Assembly Lab.

How are you feeling about all the attention, and why do you think there has been such a strong response from the public?

It is exciting and a bit hard to believe. This is my third Long Beach conference, and the amount of press this year has completely trumped anything that was written in the past two. I think it’s mostly due to the provocation of using the words “4D printing.” We fully believe in this technology and that it truly is 4D — meaning parts transform on their own over time. But at the end of the day, the most excitement is probably just from the name. Hopefully the technology that Stratasys developed, the demonstrations we showed and the continual development of this research will emphasize that it is truly a paradigm shift in how we think of materials and making today.

In your talk you spoke about applications for space. Can you tell us more?

We’ve recently submitted for a NASA solicitation and are hoping to continue designing and developing new methods for full reconfiguration and self-assembly of highly functional space systems. We are interested in the opposite methodology of the international space station (or space construction today), in other words, complex structures made in expensive and complex ways that come together in even more complex ways — often requiring astronaut construction and costly energy sources. How can we develop simple systems that can be shipped compactly, that then expand and become fully functional on demand while in orbit, that can be fully reconfigurable to various other highly functional systems, completely on their own and triggered by activation energies naturally found in the space environment — such as pressure, light and temperature change?

Tell us more about the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT. How did it come about? What are your hopes for it in terms of research and practical application?

The lab is just starting and really an exciting time. We recently were offered space at a great place at MIT called The International Design Center, and we’re currently fundraising, grant writing and collaborating with various industry partners to kickstart the lab for the upcoming year. We are interested in developing near-term applications that can make a more adaptive and resilient environment, as well as very far-term design for the future of “making” and lifelike materials at the macro scale. Near-term projects in clued adaptable infrastructure such as piping and bridges, self-assembly for low-energy manufacturing, and passive energy construction techniques. Some of our long-term projects include developing programmable matter to be recyclable or evolvable, toolsets for a new generation of matter programmers (as distinct from computer programmers), and systems that converge natural/physical with synthetic/digital worlds.

Your work seems to reflect a real trend in using technologies inspired by nature — not only in the design, which has happened on and off for centuries, but in the way you produce and fabricate the things you make.

Skylar Tibbits: From my perspective, it is not about inspiration from Nature, and in many cases, we probably shouldn’t take inspiration from nature. Rather, nature is a good example of the systems we are exploring — but there are many non-natural systems that demonstrate similar principles.

My work really started from the architecture side, then got pulled towards computer science when I was at MIT. I took lessons from self-replicating systems, self-regulating, digital information/majority voting, redundancy and some of the fundamental ideas introduced by Turing/Von Neumann, and so on. The link to nature — proteins, cellular replication/DNA — really only came after the fact, when I realized that the systems I was producing were incredibly close to those found in nature.

There is obviously a huge trend at the moment for bio-inspired design and biomimicry, but I believe many of these proposals have fundamentals flaws. Natural systems evolved for very specific reasons, over millions of years, with very specific parameters, scale-lengths, forces, and so on, and the process of translating these phenomena to other scales, function and human desires does not come naturally or directly. We should not simply assume that systems working at nanoscales can easily be translated to large scales. And if we do, why not change the parameters — why would the translation have to be entirely direct?

The second flaw is the tendency to use nature as a source for aesthetic inspiration — the assumption that if it looks like nature then it is or works like nature. Finally, I see our tendency to look past the facts of evolution and why systems have specifically evolved in a particular direction. Many — maybe all — natural systems took some path of evolution where each mutation was built upon the last, and decisions along this journey were arbitrary and extremely specific to its time, place, climate and scale. So natural systems work very well for some things, and in other cases don’t work at all for what we are looking for.

That said, I think there are a number of very interesting developments in science, engineering and design that are not only taking inspiration from nature — they are literally using nature — such as DNA origami (or self-assembly of DNA strands to build 2D and 3D shapes at the nano-scale). Biological processes are far more complex, efficient, precise, adaptive then nearly any manmade process or machine we have today, so it makes perfect sense to use biological processes for what they are good at, or manipulate specific variables within them to achieve something they could never have arrived at themselves. This points to Suzanne’s incredible work with cellulose. The cellulose doesn’t naturally want to build clothing per say, but we can harness its natural abilities with our own knowledge of the process to achieve something higher.

Top: Skylar Tibbits shares how self-assembly works. Above: A kimono made of Lee’s microbial cellulose. Photo: BioCouture

Suzanne Lee: Skylar’s quite right — bacteria aren’t desperate to generate dresses! The emergent field of synthetic biology enables us to have the best of both worlds. We can harness the best bits of biological systems to design and build entirely new organisms that better fit our needs. This is not without complex ethical issues, however, and hopefully an internationally agreed and robust ethical code will develop simultaneously with the potential engineering advances.

My work isn’t really inspired by nature. It IS nature. I’m interested in exploiting living organisms to create biodegradable products. In my opinion, the design trend towards biomimicry is about putting the designer ego to one side and accepting that nature has already come up with so many inspirational design solutions. This doesn’t necessarily lead to design looking or feeling “naturalistic” though.

I do agree about the flaws inherent in directly translating from nature and how there can be issues relating to scale — I see this as both limitation AND opportunity. Understanding scale in a biological sense is still a challenge to me as a non-scientist! I find scientists are very happy jumping from discussion of proteins, to bacteria, to fibres to materials – daunting conceptual jumps from the nano to the macro scale.

How do your approaches differ?

Skylar: Our work comes from from different starting points and it’s applied at different scales. I am not working directly with natural processes, although I have started a few collaborations with molecular designers recently, working on DNA origami, that may prove to be fruitful in the coming months. I mainly look toward the natural processes as a resource manual, comparatively looking at how those processes work and how my designed/engineered processes function. How does DNA store discrete information, how is it so good at self-regulating and error correction, how do proteins store their assembly information? None of this is meant to be translated 1:1. Rather, it becomes another model or example where it happens and we can learn from it.

I have a lot of experience working with physical/building-scale materials (plastics, wood, metal, casting, “bricks” etc) — and these inherently become the material palette I work with. However, I try to focus on these “dead” materials and embed information directly into them to offer more “active” characteristics (usually without motors or electronics). I’m trying to discover how much information can they store, how can they replicate inherently, how can they move and assemble themselves, and so on. None of these properties are necessarily found within the materials themselves. Rather, it’s a different way of looking at the materials and at the way we build things.

Suzanne’s work came from a completely different direction and uses far different “materials” and applications, thus leading to the different aesthetic output.

Suzanne: I’ve personally come full circle from loving techno/sci-fi aesthetics and being excited by material innovations that build “smart” complexity into systems and surfaces to embracing nature’s “smart.” I’m now driven by the entire product life-cycle using renewable resources or ideally local waste streams to create biodegradable materials. By harnessing a living organism to manufacture for you the resulting material or product needn’t look “biological” or “organic.” But it does offer opportunities to build in biological functionality.

What issues around working with natural systems do you discuss between yourselves? What do you have in common, and what else are you thinking about and investigating together?

Suzanne: We both struggle with new notions of manufacturing processes and time. We share an interest in being “hands off” — allowing structures to self-generate, Sky by designing this into architecture so that they are “compelled” to organize, and my own work with living organisms that simply require the presence of nutrient to create material forms.

With each approach, the time it takes for construction may be longer OR shorter than a “traditional” method, challenging existing limits and opportunities. I’m always asked how long it takes to grow a garment (answer: approximately three weeks) — as though this were the only barrier to mass adoption. But it makes little sense to contrast this with the supply chain lead times for a comparable “conventional” garment because that never factors in the time it takes to obtain the fibre in the first place — cotton plant to t-shirt? petroleum to nylon jacket? grazing animal to leather handbag? For example, in a fermented process, product can be simultaneously formed as fibre is spun and dyed — multiple production stages condensed into one. A more useful comparison would include factors such as resource consumption, carbon footprint, end of use, and so on.

Skylar: I think an interesting point to discuss would be the scale of the application and how far we can push biological/natural processes outside of their comfort zone. Suzanne and I have talked a lot about how far could you push a biological process to the scale of a building. For example, could you produce cellulose or other materials to grow to extremely large-scales? How long would it take, how do you build a scaffolding etc). And how can you “seed” it’s growth, working hand-in-hand, giving it constraints, waiting for the reaction, giving further constraints?

Suzanne: Firstly you can engineer an organism to produce the attributes you desire (when to biodegrade), then arrange these into a particular structure (fibre alignment) and finally engineer the overarching parameters to respond to external stimuli (water resistance).

Aesthetically and practically, I’m not sure either of us has arrived at something that we suggest is perfected or finished. To date I’ve embraced the natural aesthetics that emerge from the process as it helps to explain a narrative (this is in stark contrast to how we normally approach fashion: fashion relishes artifice). Ultimately it’s not what I’m striving for, but for now it serves an illustrative purpose.

Regarding scale, I would argue that we both come from backgrounds which use the human body as starting point for considering scale: Vitruvian, Corbusier’s Modulor, Fibonacci, golden section, and so on. That’s why I struggle with suddenly zooming into the nanoscale! For me the challenge is to understand how by mastering what is happening at the nanoscale we might design the ideal macro qualities.

What interests me about what Skylar is doing is how he might bring biological attributes to large-scale structures, this may be with steel, wood or plastics. But I’m also intrigued to know if (biologically) living systems could play a role. We have no idea what new hybrid materials/fabrication techniques will emerge in future — rampant mutant algae that turn to concrete? It’s exciting to think the solutions could be located somewhere within the space between our respective work. I think we are entering a dynamic new era for design where, with scientific collaboration, we can explore all manner of material and manufacturing innovations.

Growing microbial cellulose. Photo: BioCouture

Chiral Self-Assembly: Autodesk Univ., Las Vegas 2012. Photo: SJET

Skylar: I totally agree — biological attributes at large-scales is extremely interesting. There is certainly a lot of work going into gradient density materials and adaptable performance in materials or building systems. An opportunity might be to utilize natural processes for their ability to respond to passive sources of energy, their natural tendency to “adapt,” and for their internal ability to have “desire.” Man-made systems lack the ability to have “desire,” this gets into the theories of artificial intelligence — and how can a system make decisions internally without external programs or command. How can a system write its own code, or where does the initial genetic code come from?

Natural systems obviously have this built in — the ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure, mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms.

DNA origami is one of the only examples where we are forced to use a process of self-assembly simply because there is no other way to build at that scale. If we want to build structures at extremely small scale-lengths, then we need to work within their arena, on their terms. DNA is an amazing building material because it has rather “simple” units and interconnections, it has a language or interface for design, i.e., programmability, and it has a process where it can transform based on energy.

I think that we will soon see applications that are extremely similar to DNA origami but at very large scales. Instances where we currently cannot build what we want simply because we don’t have the right materials or machines/processes — these are perfect applications for new types of methods in assembly and new processes for design. This is where collaborations between designers and natural systems can have powerful applications/implications.

Why the drive to look to to nature to innovate manufacturing processes in the first place? Why now?

Skylar: There are two possibilities: Are we at a place where we’ve pushed the limits of material properties to extreme possibilities and dexterity, developed wonderfully innovative solutions for fabricating these new materials and even beginning to find automated processes for assembly — yet the ever changing demands of society, economies, climates, technology and scale (large or small) are requiring adaptability at such dramatic scales and paces that our current modes of production don’t cut it, forcing us to find infused processes of Frankenstein bio-adaptive and manmade processes? Or are we just looking for new modes of inspiration, toolsets and mediums, and the natural tendency is to look at our biological counterparts for dialogue?

Suzanne: I think there’s both push and pull taking place. If we look to the history of design, radical innovation mostly occurs where ground-breaking materials or manufacturing techniques are introduced. Human creativity is constantly pursuing the new. At the same time, we do indeed face so many environmental, economic and societal challenges that current resource inefficiency and wastage has become obscene, driving the need for change. In both our work we also seem to be proposing very limited human intervention. We haven’t really discussed what this means for the workforce. Our workers seem to be robots, autonomous structures and biological organisms, but that’s a whole other discussion!

The New York Times doubled-down today on articles about TED Fellows, running stories on Camille Seaman’s portraits of icebergs as well as on Skylar Tibbits’ toys that assemble themselves.

The photography blog Lens turned its eye on Seaman’s work, marveling out how she captures the personalities of icebergs and glaciers in her stunning images.

“They are like humans in that each one reacts to its environment and its circumstances in its own way,” says Seaman, who has given a TEDTalk and been interviewed on the TED blog. “I’ve come across icebergs that were very stalwart and just refused to dissolve or break up. And there were others — massive, massive icebergs — that were like ‘I can’t take it anymore’ and in front of my eyes would just dissolve into the sea. There’s so many unique personalities. There’s a sadness to them.”

So why icebergs?

Seaman explains to Lens that, as a girl, her grandfather — a member of the Shinnecock tribe — would take her into the forest and show her how to appreciate a tree as an individual. But it was chance that brought her to ice — she traveled to the Bering Straight after being bumped from an Alaska Airlines flight and getting a free ticket as a consolation. In Alaska, Seaman walked on an ice bridge. “I understood that I was on my planet, that I was made of its material, and that in the scheme of things I meant nothing,” she says of the experience.

Meanwhile, the technology blog Bits found its way to MIT architecture researcher Tibbits, who has given a TEDTalk explaining his belief that, in the future, buildings will be self-assembling, self-replicating and self-repairing — just like a strand of DNA. But before he tackles skylines, Tibbits is demonstrating his concepts on a smaller scale — with toys inspired by the self-assembling seen in microbiology.

The Times describes a toy that Tibbits showed at TEDGlobal2012. The toy begins as a set of colored rocks in a flask. But as the flask is shaken, thanks to magnets, the pieces slowly assemble themselves into a pod. Tibbits is also bringing self-assembly to furniture, creating a stool that assembles itself when tumbled in a spinner.

So why is self-assembly so important?

“Construction at human scale is brute force,” Tibbits tells the Times. ”In extreme environments, we don’t know how to build things.”

Camille Seaman (left) and Skylar Tibbits (right)

In this video, TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits shows how a self-assembly line might work, by bouncing together parts that “want” to fit together in useful ways. It’s a future of making things — at both macro and micro scales. Video by Karen Eng