music


One of my favorite talks and demonstrations from this years TED2011 conference came Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, of Handspring Puppet Company

“Puppets always have to try to be alive,” says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena’s subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage.

MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language — so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son’s life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch “gaaaa” slowly turn into “water.” Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn.


I don’t usually post on young Youtube singing sensations but this one had my eyes open for some time. Young singer, writer, and musician Heather Russell has been writing and singing since she was 8 years old (now 10) with the help of her parents who are also musicians. 2 years later her Youtube video finds itself in front of famed American Idol Judge Simon Cowell, who decides to sign here a contract with the help of Rob Fusan who was Lady Gaga’s former producer. Watch all of her videos on Youtube as it’s quite impressive, and her written songs stick in your head.

via gather


For those of you that could not make it to the DLD conference in Munich this year like myself, there is a livestream of their lectures all 3 days. Take a peek at their schedule then grab some food and watch the all day series of talks. Keep in mind the schedule is in Munich time, so I think about 5-6 hours ahead of EST.

*they also have a great archive of each video in that livestream url. Watch these anytime.


One of my favorite conferences to attend in the best location in Monterey CA is the EG conference happening April 7-9. It’s a very intimate gathering with 300 attendees and speakers for 3 days over lectures, conversations, and an assortment of entertainment ranging from discovery, music, technology, the mind, and amazing stories… or at Matt Groening of the Simpsons who also attends says “It’s like being a fish and analyzing your water…it’s too hard to describe the EG experience.”

I’d highly recommend anyone that can come to attend since I’ll be attending this year as well. it’ll be my 3rd year. Also, for those of you that might need a bit of help, if I can get 4 other readers to attend, I can get a pretty good discount off for each of you. If you are interested, throw me an email and I can send you more details.

Charity Tillemann was the opening act at TEDmed 2010 back in October. Watch the video, and don’t miss out on the amazing talk after her singing. It’s an unbelievable story and I don’t want to ruin anything so if you have 20 minutes, watch the video and be prepared to be amazed with her story. I got to have dinner with Charity later that night and she is quite a firecracker of a personality!

TEDmed


One of my favorite talks from his years poptech 2010:

“From crayfish hairs to monkey neurons, Radiolab host and producer Jad Abumrad shares examples of how sound has been used to make scientific strides. Along the way, he explains how audio can convey failure or express error.”

via vimeo poptech


A good friend of mine James Patten (MIT Medialab alumn) was visiting this week and showed me a new project of his, or at least it was new to me.  He took a bunch of translucent lcd films, tiled them, and made one huge transparent screen which can make the grid  translucent, black, or even gray tones for some pretty sweet effects. Watch the video above and watch out for the final project via his website pattenstudio.com.

“A prototype transparent LCD screen for an upcoming installation. 16×16 = 256 tiles. Eventual installation will be roughly 6000 tiles and 150′ in length. Project details private at the moment.”

youtube video

First came dancing down the wedding aisle, and now comes dancing down the airline aisle giving instructions. Along with some rapping on the intercom on an airline, our service world is becoming a musical. Imagine an airline ride being as entertaining as a Broadway show.  I love it!

All those video after the jump!

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I’ve been incredibly busy helping organize the TEDxCambridge event occurring May 16th at the MIT Stata Center. The theme “How do you eat”  is based off of this year TED prize winner Jamie Oliver in regards to Food and education. If you are in Boston May 16th, apply to get an invite and let me know. We can only invite 300 attendees and registration will close soon. You can learn more on tedxcambridge.com

Also, if you are in a position to sponsor any food, funding, or gifts for the event, please contact me asap. (now! =) ).
We will have 2 break sessions followed by an evening event in eating, drinking, and idea sharing!

Lots of awesome speakers in the line up!
– Wylie Dufresne: WD 50
– Chandler Burr: Times Scent critic
– Dan Ariely: Behavioral Economist
– Richard Chisolm: Filmmaker
– John Gertsen: Mixologist
–  many more!

update: Photos on flickr, via eddric(350),Tino(40), JB (60), millie(16)

I’m off to nyc for the rest of the week for the wonderful GEL (Good experience Live) conference.  Let me know if your there.

Right after that I’ll be scurrying off back to Boston for ROFLcon II for a rather fun 2nd day of the web in a room!
Several posts to follow, otherwise, lots of extra mini links on the facebook fanpage.