Today I bring to you some more TED & TEDx talks. I
watched all five of these in one sitting, and some of them were mind-blowingly awesome.
Enjoy them!
A rich life with less stuff | The Minimalists | TEDxWhitefish
This talk, by minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan
Nicodemus, was, as you may have guessed, about minimalism. During the talk,
Ryan explained how he came to find minimalism and the improvement it made in
his life.
An entertaining talk with a good introduction to what
minimalism is (and isn't). I found this talk via their blog,
theminimalists.com, along with a whole heap of articles which confirmed for me
that I could never be a minimalist, but reminded me I need to clear out some
stuff!
Beardyman: The
polyphonic me
Fascinating talk from Beardyman, a musical inventor. He demonstrates
not only his extraordinary talent in imitating sounds and instruments, but also
the machine he created that allows him to loop, layer, mix and manipulate
sounds made solely using his voice to create some amazing performances. Some of
it is pretty trippy but nonetheless awesome.
Kate Stone: DJ decks
made of...paper
'How on earth can you make DJ decks with paper?' I hear you
ask. I thought the same! But physicist Kate Stone has figured it out--and
plenty more besides. In this video she talks of her journey in manipulating
paper and technology into usable applications. Through use of electromagnetic
inks she has created interactive paper products that include musical posters, a
newspaper that can play audio, and of course, a DJ deck...all made of paper.
Really impressive talk; I would love to see what comes of
this technology in the future.
Hannah Brencher: Love
letters to strangers
A short talk (just under 5 minutes) in which Hannah Brencher
talks of the way her mother used to write her letters and that, when dealing
with depression, Hannah wrote love letters for strangers to find, which
eventually turned into a global initiative.
Inspiring video that proves it's possible to make something
positive out of a negative, even when you're feeling at your very worst. Three
cheers for Hannah!
Jay Silver: Hack a
banana, make a keyboard!
Alright, so this is the talk that I've been telling everyone about. Inventor Jay Silver
demonstrates how ordinary objects can be 'hacked' in order to give them a new
application--within the video you'll see pizza slices used as a slide show
controller, ketchup used to make music, and water running from a tap as a
theramin! Oh, not to mention the banana keyboard. Jay does most of this with
the MaKey MaKey, a little electronic kit that can be used to give a new
functionality to pretty much anything you can think of. This is seriously
awesome and I want to play with a MaKey MaKey too.
As mentioned in previous TED talk posts, all this watching
of inspiring and informative videos is towards a goal from The List:
062. Watch 100 TED/TEDx talks
This post brings me up to 15--still got some way to go!
Wow, those are really interesting talks! The music/sound-related technology ones were especially amazing because they're so simple, but clearly took a lot of science to develop :D There's so many fascinating projects, ideas, and people in the world aren't there?
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