July 12-16, 2010
July 12-16, 2010
How did you start thinking about conflict in art?
I was interested in resonance and wave patterns and energetic exchanges as early as 1996, but I started making work directly about conflict in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq. I was sitting with my parents watching television and seeing the green hue of the night vision cameras, watching the pops of bombs falling on Baghdad. And it almost looked like fireworks or some sort of celestial asteroid shower. It looked so abstract and felt so distant. I felt a deep sense of complicity, but also a deep sense of distance and an inability to understand.
So I started making real-time memorials that connect to conflict zones using data feeds, to parse how I felt about this. The notion is to collapse spaces, create a portal between the site of the installation and the site of conflict, so that we can understand on some level what’s happening in that place and meditate on it, feel a deeper sense of connection and simultaneously a sense of disconnection or distance from that zone.
People are always talking about how technology brings us closer together. I think that’s true, but it can also be a way we can understand that we’re actually quite far apart. There’s a lot of nuance that’s lost through technology as well. So the work becomes a space to wrestle with complex topics such as conflict and loss, but also a way to maybe site all of that in a larger meta-narrative: we’re on this big, geologic, hot ball of gas and rock hurtling through space at the same time. We get stuck in these human dramas, but there’s also a much larger narrative in play. And that’s why I really like using data feeds like seismic activity, allowing the Earth’s biorhythms to create a natural resonance and compose the narrative of my installations.
Can you give us an example of how your pieces work?
Well, The Divine Strake Project robotically tolled a bell, signaling large concussive disturbances from the Nevada Test Site, the US’s foremost nuclear weapons testing ground. I worked with seismologists Joshua Stachnik from University of Wyoming and Glen Biasi from University of Nevada, Reno, to pull a real-time data stream from an array of seismometers out on the test site. The data controlled a large bell located in San Francisco, at California College of the Arts. The bell tolled based on what was happening on the test site, without drawing a distinction between latent seismic events and nuclear weapons tests. Large seismic disturbances in the magnitude range of weapons tests resulted in a heavy toll at the sound bow of the bell.
In The Nicholas Shadow, the data feed came from citizen journalists in Iraq, via the website iraqbodycount.org. I installed a bell inside a former confessional chapel in St Ignatius church in San Francisco that, again, robotically tolled hourly the civilian death toll for that day.
Why do you use bells?
We have a long history and bodily relationship with bells. The bell is the size of, essentially, a human core. The ones I select are about 42 inches high, so they become bodily surrogates, in a way. And in the church, you really felt the intense energy of the bell tolling in that confined space. It shook the whole building. I also find it interesting that bells are tolled both as a call to worship and the call to arms. During the US Civil War, bells were pulled from churches and melted down for bronze to cast cannons. When the war was over, the cannons were melted down and church bells were cast from gunmetal. So they are complex objects that have been historically used in our most spiritual and violent practices.
I borrow most of the bells from historical collections. In the case of Divine Strake, I borrowed the bell from Hastings College because they had one that was cast in one of the first weapons-production facilities in the United States, around the time of the Revolutionary War. I found it interesting that they cast bells out of the same alloy as cannons. So this bell was resonating in my mind with the sounds of Manifest Destiny, that this was all steeped into this object, this history.
What are you working on now?
It’s a piece called Pax Americana that uses seismic activity from conflict zones around the world to resonate, or vibrate, a 15-foot diameter pool of water — proportional to whatever’s going on in each one of the zones at that moment. Light will be bounced off the surface of the pool and reflect those wave disturbance patterns as reflections into the space. So if there’s a bomb explosion or a mortar attack in, say, Syria, you’ll see proportionally modeled shadow play on the walls that looks somewhat like an explosion, in real time.
The first iteration will be installed at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, a nonprofit installation space down on Market Street. Then I’d like to tour it internationally and domestically. I built this project to be sited, ideally, at the US Capitol rotunda, with the idea that politicians on their way to work would have a place to pause and reflect, so that they could see the resonance of their decisions in real time and have a moment to meditate — a complete feedback loop. I think a much more realistic and possible site would be the UN Plaza in New York. But any federal or public space where a lot of people who also make decisions shaping the world circulate is a good zone for it.
The project now has a good deal of momentum and generous support from Boulder Real Time Technologies, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Phyllis C Wattis Foundation and the Fleishhacker Foundation — and I just found out that it will receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Now I need help getting the project to the UN Plaza and on to the Capitol rotunda.
What is the message you’re trying to get across that links your memorial pieces with the seismic pieces? Is it about creating a connection between forces that you don’t normally see?
I think it’s about creating a connection to things that we know about, that are in our psychic space, and maybe are mediated to us through traditional news media, but we have generally no access to, or we might never have been impacted by it directly. I’ve never been to a conflict zone, so a lot of this work is an attempt to connect to these spaces that I hear about every day, but have no direct relationship to. Obviously many do, but for those at a great distance, like myself, it’s about creating that sense of real time. The thing about news media is that we have these long latency periods where we hear about an event, but it gets distilled down to essentially a sound bite and some statistics about what happened. And there’s something lost in our kinesthetic awareness of what has just happened. There’s a disjuncture in time.
So the work is more asking questions than saying anything. And the questions are: How does it shape our perception of our presence in the world if we are signaled at the exact moment a violent event occurs? And how is it different from being present at the event versus watching the news versus monitoring it remotely from one of these installations? And if you don’t know much about it, but you experience something that physicalizes an event’s relative intensity — not even necessarily human loss, per se, or destruction — how does that change the way you make sense of it?
These are really questions about our current relationship with technologies that allow us to watch and act from a distance.
Have you seen any concrete changes that may have resulted from the narratives you’ve revealed in your work?
I don’t think I have seen any change that I could measure. I know that there have definitely been people who’ve had profound experiences with the work. And I personally have been profoundly moved through conversations with those people while the work was up. So it raised awareness or broadened consciousness, and that was why I did it.
At first the parishioners were pretty resistant to the Nicholas Shadow project, and the priests as well. They allowed it, but then they were kind of like, “Well, how long is this thing going to be here? It’s gonna interrupt all of our mass services. I think you should turn it off during weddings or funerals or masses” — basically any time anyone was in the church. So I made a case that, in order for it to be a powerful mechanism for dialogue, we should keep it going all the time. They still wanted it turned off. I decided to leave it on, interrupting a mass. One of the priests responded by giving a really moving talk about what it was, why it was there. He spoke about the complexity of loss, militarism and colonialism in the context of religion and spirituality. He brought up all these amazing ideas, and then they all agreed to leave it on permanently for the 66 days that it was installed.
It interrupted every ceremony from then on, in some cases for long periods. There was one day that 72 people died in a bomb attack in a marketplace in Baghdad, and the bell tolled for a really long time — around18 minutes of every hour. But it became a talking point in all of the following ceremonies that happened at the church. And then people started going to it and praying and spending time with it.
You described the bell piece as “disruptive and meditative.” Is that a quality you’d like to have in all of your pieces?
Yeah, definitely. The notion of meditation holds a pretty key role in my life. It’s something that I do quite often and that has been really helpful for me in terms of reconciling certain experiences. Or just as a moment to observe. And the impulse of my work is offering something that is, on some level, poetic and abstract and beautiful. But maybe within the context of that beautiful image or sound or whatever it happens to be, there’s something about loss that’s communicated. And I feel like to get into such complex territory as loss, we need to be in somewhat of a meditative or soothed or nourished space.
So I try to make it a palatable space. I try to make it something that’s comfortable and beautiful and ethereal and also extremely ephemeral. These works come and go.
Tell us about some of your collaborations with other Fellows.
I also work as a designer, and run a small organization called Brainvise. We do everything from apps to art and we work with clients having a big impact by doing good things in the world. Right now we’re collaborating with TED Senior Fellow Eric Berlow and his endeavor, TRU NORTH LABS.
Eric is an ecologist and complexity scientist, and he’s looking for a way to make complex problems more simple to understand. He does a mapping exercise where he essentially characterizes the ‘ecosystem’ of a problem by identifying how all the parts influence one another. Then from that ecosystem map, he identifies the key leverage points — the key issues or nodes with the most potential influence. Those are the places where creative solutions could have the most widespread positive impact on a problem.
Right now, Brainvise is working on videos, interactive infographics, and a website, and has built an app, TRU NORTH LABS MAPPR, that allows Eric to crowdsource data with which to make the problem-eco-maps. The one we’re working with right now is the Vibrant Data Project, sponsored by Intel. It’s about trying to understand what boons and barriers social entrepreneurs face as they develop social platforms, and what can be done that might augment what they’re already doing to enhance social justice, health care, economic opportunity, health and well-being. With the help of our collaborator Juliette Powell, we have more than 50 social entrepreneurs participating, including a bunch of TED Fellows (Sonaar Luthra, James Patten, Dominic Muren, Jon Gosier, Erik Hersman and Juliana Rotich from Ushahidi, Esra’a Al Shefei, Walid Al-Saqaf, Bre Pettis, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Jimmy Lin, Cesar Harada, Su Kahumbu, Faisal Chohan, Michael Karnjaprakorn and Jessica Green). Other folks participating include John Battelle and John Perry Barlow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
For me, it’s awesome because the creative side of my work gets to be expressed, but it also satisfies a deep desire to have an impact. Art works on a much longer timeline in its effects. But in terms of my work with Eric, I can see how my work directly augments the efforts of people who are trying to do good things.
What does iCow do?
The iCow application essentially reminds small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya of important periods in gestation. This was information farmers previously had to acquire by contacting veterinary offices or artificial insemination providers. Now, via SMS, farmers register, inputting information about their livestock, and iCow pushes information and instructions to them, prompting them on what to do during vital gestation days. It also offers tips and information on feeding practices, disease control, and so on. Much of this information is delivered over SMS, but farmers may also speak to a live person in our customer care centre. Our farmers will never trust something that is absolutely virtual — they like to know there’s a voice at the other end of the phone if they need it!
But iCow has already grown from when we launched it in June 2011 with two features — the gestation calendar and a search directory to help farmers find nearby vets and artificial inseminators. Literally — within two days — farmers started asking for more features. So we started building them, such as the iCow marketplace.
How does the marketplace work?
Many farmers in the dairy sector often upgrade or sell their animals. There’s as much interest in selling your in-calf heifers as there is in selling milk to processors. But while the processors have done a fairly good job of networking on developing milk-aggregating posts, not as much has been done where farmers can actually find other farmers who are selling animals. iCow allows farmers to post notices of animals for sale on the platform, and then farmers across the country can find them. If you’re looking for a specific breed within a particular distance, you can find out easily whether there’s one for sale.
Also, some products don’t have a very well-developed value chain — say, goat’s milk. iCow enables farmers who have only have few goats and therefore small amounts of milk to find each other and aggregate their product so that it can be taken to market. Farmers can post produce for direct sale on the platform as well, of course.
But the platform goes beyond serving farmers’ needs.
iCow is the last mile to the farmer. And that is very, very powerful. For many organizations, government ministries, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, the only way to get out to the farm is either by vehicle or working in small projects with us around the country. iCow essentially networks farmers that would otherwise be very difficult to access. Right now, iCow has 80 percent geographical penetration across the country. This enables all of the other stakeholders access to those farmers. iCow is already becoming a tool that’s not only used by farmers, but also by government and other agricultural industry stakeholders.
For example, the platform allows farmers to alert the system immediately when there are disease outbreaks, allowing everyone react to it very quickly. The local authorities can then broadcast this news to all farmers on the platform in the affected region, telling them where and when to find vaccination services. Other stakeholders are using it to advertise agricultural field days or exhibitions in certain locations, or to offer financial services, for example.
You’ve said that one of the reasons you came up with the idea for iCow was to engage youth in agriculture. Why is this so important?
iCow is actually a small part of a much larger original idea that’s still in development — mKulima, a voice-based agricultural encyclopedia accessible via mobile phone.
I originally got the idea because I realized it’s crucial to involve young people in farming. The average age of farmers all over the world is high — in Kenya, it’s 48; in the United States, it’s upwards of about 55 — and as farmers retire, there aren’t enough people interested in the industry to replace them. This is one of the reasons why food production is decreasing.
In Kenya, some of the younger farmers coming in don’t have the required knowledge, as they didn’t grow up in a farming environment. The original idea was to be able to disseminate information to young farmers to support their work. I figured that mobile phones were the most direct way of engaging youth, as it’s a technology they’re all familiar with.
We’re also developing agricultural education products in video, which you can see on the website. The general idea is to develop content using media formats that would engage any interested youth, taking the opportunity to deepen interest or educate. In the future, we may develop materials in print media. Comic strips could be used as well.
What’s the status of iCow now, and of mKulima?
We’re about to enroll Africans in a very big way. So far, we’ve done lots of work on the ground with farmer groups, and internet networking. We hold events and hand out information — word of mouth is important. The farmers are very responsive, they’re very interested.
We have about 5,000 users across 34 counties, but we’re planning a mass rollout across mobile networks soon, and are raising funds for that. We plan to have more than 1 million farmers on the platform within two years. That may seem a lot, but Kenya is a nation of 40 million people, of which 70 percent of the country are involved in agriculture. The mKulima concept is still being developed — and will of course include information on vegetable crops as well as livestock — but it will all be rolled out under the iCow brand.
We’re thrilled with what we have now, but in terms of product development and features, there’s much, much more I want to add. It will take about five years to create a superb package of new features and expand the functionality of the ones already available.
Part of this is a usability issue. If a product comes onto the market with 70 features, there would be information overload and nobody would take it up. You have start simply and work your way up — especially as our initial target group was older. Youth pick things up much faster, but the older people on the farms at the moment need these services the most. We need to work at their pace.
What’s been your biggest challenge?
It’s the pace of technology. I’m a very impatient person — so when I come up with an idea, I want it done tomorrow. With the pace of innovation and technology, it just doesn’t happen, especially where you’re blazing new frontiers. It just doesn’t happen. And that, for me, has got to be the most frustrating thing.
How has being a TED Fellow changed the way you work?
Being a TED Fellow opened a lot of doors for me. If you’re a professional entrepreneur who’s very heavily involved in your work, there’s often not a lot of media focus on what you’re doing. And most entrepreneurs don’t make a lot of money — impact is what satisfies them, as well as results and scalability. Being a TED Fellow has generated a lot of media interest and general awareness, and boosted my confidence. It’s driven great partners in my direction, funding from people who just love the idea and want to support it.
The mentorship TED offers is really incredible, as well. They not only help us fine-tune our projects, but ourselves. They’ve helped me discover very clearly my weaknesses and strengths, and how to harness them to better support my vision. My coach spends a lot of time telling me to let go of some things, that I’m an obsessive person. She says, “You know what, if you’d let go of stuff, you can be more.” Half the time she’s just trying to ground me in a good way so that I can focus better on the big picture.
Then there are the other Fellows. I think there’s a competitive streak in all of us, and we are all just in awe of each other. That helps inspire and push us.
There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level; what’s one piece of advice you would give them based on your own experience and successes?
If you’re developing a product, focus on getting a working prototype done. Getting people to believe in or even understand iCow was very difficult in the idea stage. The IT people didn’t understand agriculture, and the agriculture people didn’t understand IT. People in finance didn’t understand either! Sometimes you have to connect the dots just to explain what it is you’re doing. And the best way is to get a prototype out there and show people. And they’ll get it.
At TEDGlobal 2010 Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa introduced us to THE 99, a comic book and animated series featuring a team of 99 young superheroes inspired by the 99 attributes of Allah. These young characters are the world’s first superheroes based on Islamic culture. Earlier this year at TEDGlobal Al-Mutawa discussed the criticisms he received for his creation, both at home and abroad, and the continuing backlash he faces from those accusing him of “radicalizing” young people.
Tomorrow, Saturday, October 22, 2011, THE 99 will have its worldwide online premiere on PBS’ Independent Lens livestream channel, followed by a discussion with Al-Mutawa. Last week Independent Lens premiered a documentary called Wham! Bam! Islam! about the making of and motivations behind the controversial series. Filmmaker Isaac Solotaroff followed Al-Mutawa and his collaborators as they struggled to get — and keep — their show on the air. The film can be purchased and downloaded on iTunes.
Through Wham! Bam! Islam! and continued exposure Al-Mutawa hopes that THE 99 will be able to fulfill its original goal of promoting the positive aspects of his religion to children of all origins and all faiths.
The PBS livestream of THE 99 will be available tomorrow in cities around the world. Note the time in your city >>
9 a.m. Los Angeles
12 p.m. New York
5 p.m. London
7 p.m. Kuwait City, Istanbul, Dublin
8 p.m. Dubai
11 p.m. Jakarta
12 a.m. Sydney, Hong Kong
Watch video >> Naif Al-Mutawa: Crossover comics: bridges or propaganda?
Exclusive video from TEDGlobal 2011! Following up on his TEDTalk last year, Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, creator of comic The99, talks about what happened after his Islam-inspired superheroes met the Justice League of America in a crossover comic. In the US, a backlash against the animated TV show kept it off the air. Critics accused The99 of radicalizing young children. Naif agrees: The99 will radicalize all children — to teach tolerance.
Watch and share and embed this talk, then plan to chat live with Dr. Naif on September 13 at 1pm Eastern time in TED Conversations. His question to you: Can fictional superheroes provide positive role models in children’s lives?
Join the conversation on September 13, 1pm Eastern >>
We’re welcoming two guest hosts to TEDGlobal 2011 — Pat Mitchell, from the Paley Center for Media, who hosts Session 8, and Matt Ridley, whose 2010 TEDTalk was memorably titled “When Ideas Have Sex,” and who’ll be hosting Session 5. We asked both hosts a few questions about their plans for their session of TED.
Here’s what TED’s Jenny Zurawell asked Matt Ridley:
The theme of your session is “Emerging Order.” What kinds of order will we hear about, and what message do you hope your speakers thread together over the course of the session?
We have trouble understanding that there are complex systems that can have nobody in charge of them and no central planner or architect. Yet they are all around us: bodies, cells, genomes, ecosystems, even economies. It was the peculiar genius of the Scottish enlightenment — exemplified by David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and later Charles Darwin (an Edinburgh student) — to recognise the existence of these bottom-up systems of emerging order and try to explain how increasing complexity and apparent design can happen without designers.
Each speaker’s work is largely grounded in biology or applying principles from biology to their respective field. Can you tell us a bit about this?
Svante Pääbo is a geneticist who analyses the evolution of genomes of extinct and extant species. Genes are mere sequences of chemicals, yet they achieve an incredible orchestration of ordered complexity without hierarchy or foresight. Mark Pagel is an evolutionary biologist who studies the emergence of languages, systems of ordered complexity that emerge by natural selection. Elizabeth Murchison studies what happens when a selfish rebellion — cancer — emerges in the teeming city of selfless cells that makes up a body. Cynthia Kenyon studies how the body defies decay of ageing and asks how long human bodies can maintain their emergent order. Joe Castillo is an artist who creates order and beauty out of grains of sand. And Karol Boudreaux is an economist who shows how people can come together to solve conservation problems by trial and error without putting somebody in charge.
How are you preparing the speakers in your session? Are you giving them advice from your experience speaking at TEDGlobal last year?
I am telling the speakers, from my experience last year, that they need to be lively, passionate, brief (!) and visual, but they also need to focus on what it is in their work that most excites them. The key thing, I learned, is to leave out extraneous things and get to the core of their idea. I also told them that TED is a great audience and that speaking at TED can open exciting conversations online.
The central idea of your TEDGlobal 2010 talk is when ideas meet and mate, human progress happens. How do you see your session on emerging order as being related to your TEDTalk, “When ideas have sex”?
The incredible complexity of human society, I argued last year, comes about not through people planning it bit by bit, but through ideas meeting, mating, mutating, recombining, replicating and selectively surviving. In other words, society evolves; its order is emergent, not ordained. This year I am thrilled to get a chance to invite some of the people that most excitingly demonstrate how complex systems emerge and evolve. I want TEDsters to realise that nobody is in charge; intelligence is collective; order is emergent; and the future is fascinating.
The Green School is hiring science and physics teachers. To learn more, visit the Green School website. And watch John Hardy’s TEDTalk from TEDGlobal last summer.
In the shade of the open-air bamboo warung (the Balinese equivalent of a small cafe), I listened to the buzz of the cicadas rather than the buzz of fluorescent bulbs, and sipped on a frozen strawberry lemonade drink made with fresh fruit and raw cane sugar grown just across the path. I watched as children rushed in to order a morning treat, which came atop a small basket of banana leaves (instead of paper napkins), swallowing down fresh fruit juice out of glass cups (instead of plastic). The morning went by slowly and gracefully; parents sat in the warung for hours, talking with each other and with me, eager and anxious to find human connections anywhere and everywhere.
The Green School, the soul-child of John and Cynthia Hardy, sits on 23 acres of lush, tropical landscape. The bamboo classrooms (which house pre-K through 11th grade) seem to nearly sprout right out of the ground. The Heart of School is the most stunning; currently the largest bamboo structure in the world, it comprises two swirling vortexes that collide to create a third, double vortex in the middle. The Heart of School houses the library, the administrative offices, and a few classrooms. As we take our tour, we walk by skilled Balinese men sitting cross-legged on the floor building lockers out of, you guessed it: bamboo. In fact everything is made of bamboo, from the shoe cubbies to the dry-erase boards to the beautiful beams engraved with names of the school’s supporters.
Delicious smells waft throughout the open-air building as the cooks throw delectable pieces of local meat onto the BBQ and prepare salads and potatoes from produce grown right there on the school’s land. Surrounding the Heart of School are gardens bursting with ripe, red tomatoes, shaggy heads of lettuce, fruits of all shapes and colors. In fact, every classroom is responsible for its own garden.
“The idea is that the gardens roll right up to the edge of everything,” explains John. “The Earth is here for one reason: that’s to produce food for people and for animals. If kids figure out that the Earth is for food, maybe then they’ll think twice about bulldozing it.” As we walk, John points out each tree as we walk by: banana, jackfruit, cacao, clove, tapioca, papaya. Suddenly we are surrounded by a soft cloud of dragonflies. “Proof that there aren’t any pesticides,” remarks Cynthia with a smile, for they’re eating the bugs that would otherwise be wiped out by farming chemicals.
But it’s not just food that excites John and Cynthia about this place. It’s the bamboo. “Bamboo is really magical,” John says lovingly. He references a Vietnamese proverb: When the bamboo is old, bamboo sprouts appear. And indeed, bamboo can grow forever.
We stop and speak to a woman who is splitting bamboo seedlings, and John and Cynthia explain their program to spread the growth of bamboo. This woman processes more than 400 seedlings a day, which can then be split again in a few months, reaping hundreds and thousands of tiny future shoots of bamboo. They take these seedlings to surrounding villages and give them to the farmers to plant, which allows the plant to suck up more CO2 and deliver more oxygen. “After 5 years when the bamboo is fully grown,” Cynthia points to a piece of bamboo wider than my thigh, “we’ll go back and buy the bamboo from them.”
Bamboo is also being used to help teach the students about their own effect on the environment. John and Cynthia seek to create a carbon-positive community. The students will look at their travel, the amount of gas they burn, and the amount of electricity they use to calculate their own carbon footprint. They can then understand how much bamboo they will need to plant to not just offset their carbon footprint, but to send their effect into the positive.
The real magic of the Green School, though, happens inside (and outside of) the classrooms. It is obvious to me, as Carina Hardy, their middle daughter, trots past us donning an enormous Monty Python costume, chanting silly words which explode into giggles, that these children are excited to be at school: they are alive, empowered and challenged by the idea that they can influence the world around them in a very profound way.
The school’s mission statement reads “Empowering global citizens and green innovators who are inspired to take responsibility for the sustainability of the world.” The administration is constantly finding new ways to incorporate new ways of thinking and seeing into the students’ curriculum. Not far on the horizon, Cynthia hopes to be able to incorporate more physical interaction with the land: “Kids will take responsibility over pieces of land,” Cynthia says. “They will work the land, cultivate seedlings, plant the seedlings, weed the rice fields. When the rice is fully grown, they will cut it, thresh it, take it to the mill. They will see brown rice and compare it to white rice. They will look at the weight, the cost, the world price versus the subsidized price, how many hours it took to make, how nutritious it is.” Students also learn how to make soap from coconuts, chairs and charcoal from other natural resources. This is the vision: a complete, sustainable and experiential learning experience that takes advantage of what’s been provided here on Earth, and using that to both create and conserve.
John and Cynthia’s daughters have embraced the greater responsibility and entrepreneurial spirit that comes with being a student at The Green School. Their youngest daughter, Chiara, recognized a need for new computers at the school and kickstarted an “Ice Cream for iPads” program in which she sells cups of gelato during breaks and lunchtime for 20,000 rupiah (a little less than $2.50). So far, Chiara’s initiative has put 4 iPads in the library! 15-year-old Carina Hardy takes on leadership positions of all kinds as well; as a sophomore she is now co-directing the school’s spring play, The Wizard of Oz. John’s eldest daughter, Elora, was never a student at the Green School, but she shares her father’s passion for change and runs Ibuku, a design firm responsible for the sustainable design and construction of both the Green School and their newest pursuit, Green Village, a community of staggering open-air homes made entirely from bamboo.
As we finish our tour, we walk by the initial model for the Heart of School. “This is how it started,” says Cynthia. “It started as a sketch, and then it became little sticks glued together, and then it became this.” She gestures around her. “It is the product of our collective imagination.” Indeed, as my eyes wandered from the tiny model building to the giant swirling weave of bamboo above my head, I could feel the reality of the place. There’s no theory or proposal here: this is the real deal. Things are happening quickly, thoughtfully and profoundly.
John expresses his gratitude for TED as we leave. “When they published my talk, everything at this school took off like a rocket ship.” John referenced a student body of 120 in his TEDTalk last summer; since then that number has doubled, as has the number of countries represented by the students. Their new challenge: finding teachers who are committed to teaching the most basic of concepts in the most exciting of ways.
Photos by Benny Haddad and Rachel Tobias.
In this reel, TED recaps an amazing year of talks from three conferences, a bunch of smaller TED events — and a powerful year of TEDx. Dive in, and then follow up with talks that intrigue you … You’ll see, in order of appearance: The LXD, Chris Anderson and Julian Assange, Bill Gates, Chip Conley, Naomi Klein, John Underkoffler, Marcel Dicke, Van Jones, Deborah Rhodes, Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, Brian Cox, Diane Laufenberg, Clay Shirky, Hillary Clinton, Craig Venter, Laurie Santos, Raghava KK, Jamie Oliver, Hans Rosling, Miwa Matreyek, Rory Sutherland, John Kasaona, Sheena Iyengar, Michael Specter, Sir Ken Robinson, Barry Schwartz, Jacqueline Novogratz, Jody Williams, and Beverly and Dereck Joubert.
Facial surgeon Iain Hutchison works with people whose faces have been severely disfigured. By pushing to improve surgical techniques, he helps to improve their lives; and by commissioning their portraits, he celebrates their humanity. NOTE: This talk contains images of disfigured and badly injured faces that may be disturbing — and Hutchison provides thoughtful answers as to why a disfigured face can shock us so deeply. Squeamish? Hide your screen from 12:10 – 13:19, but do keep listening. Portraits shown in this talk come from Mark Gilbert. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2010, in Oxford, UK. Duration: 15:54)
Watch Iain Hutchison’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 800+ TEDTalks.
The new issue of design mind has a great Q&A with today’s TEDTalks speaker, Marcel Dicke, in which he shares his first bug-eating experience:
design mind: What were the first insects you ever tried?
Marcel Dicke: It was dried, fried termites that Arnold van Huis brought back from Africa, where he’d been working. We were traveling by train, and someone sitting in our compartment looked at us as if we were completely nuts. He packed up and left in such a hurry he forgot his coat!
Read the full interview, conducted by Karen Eng of Tunza magazine, in design mind >>
Online, the story is paired with an endearing interview with Heribert Watzke, who studies the brain in our guts. Watch Heribert’s TEDTalk and then read this Q&A with design mind‘s editor, Sam Martin.
Marcel Dicke makes an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone’s diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor, nutrition and eco-friendliness. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 16:35)
Watch Marcel Dicke’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 800+ TEDTalks.
