Shared Ideas

This past week I shifted focus to extend my involvement in the design world by become familiar with individual designers in the field right now.  Two websites that are really helpful in finding these people are Pop!Tech and TED Talks.  Both of these organizations find individuals from any kind of profession who have captivating ideas; The organization just gives them a time frame and records them talking about whatever interests them.

Here are some of my finds from each website:

TED Talks-

Tony Robbins' discussion inspired me the most.  He discussed what makes the difference in the quality of people's lives, reasoning that the determining factor is not the possession or lack of resources but the resourcefulness of the individual.  He categorizes the human's desires into 6 basic needs: Certainty, Uncertainty, Significance, Connection/Love, Growth and Contribution Beyond Ourselves.  

Clifford Stoll's "18 Minutes with an Agile Mind" discussion was a frantic thought-driven dialogue.  Stoll seemed like he had a lot of cool things to share, but he had trouble sticking to one point which took away from his speaking.  He mentioned that to find out the future, we shouldn't ask the brilliant people of our time, but the kindergarten teachers who are constantly watching our future generations develop, I thought that was an interesting point.  He ended his presentation with a brief experiment that measured the speed of sound.

Beau Lotto had a really clever, interactive discussion about how optical illusions reveal how the mind and our sight work in interpreting colors and light.  I thought that his topic was really amazing; he decoded how our brain learns images and colors that can trick us to think we see something else because it would normally make sense. "The brain didn't evolve to see the world the way it is, but the way it is useful to see, continually redefining what is normal."

Pop!Tech-

In his short talk "Slow," Carl Honore commented on how so many people are focused on doing things as quickly as humanly possible and that we should shift gears to perform as well as possible rather than as fast as possible.

Davy Rothbart spoke about his magazine "Found" which is comprised of objects and text that were left or forgotten and then found by someone who submitted to the magazine.  I think that this continual art form is a really cool idea and i'm inspired to make my own collection! Check out the magazine's website here.

Choreographer Elizabeth Streb introduced her new form of movement art, which doesn't limit the dancer to gravity and instead uses the whole body to make physical relationships to the three possible reference points-earth, water and air.