Author: Kate Welsh

Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Andy Cavatorta performed with punk bands in the early 1990s, has worked with Bjork and is a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab. His counterintuitive resume has led him to create these gigantic, aural structures — both meditative and comforting — which you can see here in a video the Lincoln Motor Company partnered with TED to produce.

After an exciting night of design-themed talks at TED@250, we unveiled this series of videos that profiles three artists who came to TEDActive 2013 to show their work: Aurora Robson, Andy Cavatorta, and Gilberto Esparza. The artists’ time at TED and the resulting short documentaries are part of the newly launched Lincoln Reimagine Project, which supports pioneering thinkers in the arts, design and innovation.

Why these three? Because they turn upside down the traditional ways we imagine music, sculpture and even recycling. At TEDActive, Robson, Cavatorta and Esparza showcased original works that disrupt cultural and environmental paradigms. The videos highlight their unique artistic philosophies.

Cavatorta, as he introduced himself to the audience, aptly philosophized: “I believe new instruments will lead the way to fertile and innovative territory, challenging composers to find new voices within new expressive dimensions and constraints… Because in an ever-changing world, sometimes the only way to say something true is to say something new. Or to say something old in a new way.”

Watch the following videos to see how Robson and Esparza have combined contemporary technology with formal constraints to give unique voice and shape to their respective work.

Polluted Art: Gilberto Esparza’s Fuel Cell Symphony
Gilberto creates a futuristic symphony made from plastic tubes, an iPad and bacteria.

Recycling Plastic into Art with Aurora Robson
Robson asked TED attendees to give her the plastic packaging from their gift bags, which she used as a medium to create an ethereal, floating sculpture.

TED@Intel brought together 18 speakers from within the tech company. Photo: Shawn D. Morgan

Last week, Intel hosted a unique event — an afternoon of TED Talks delivered by their very own resident innovators, thinkers and dreamers. Through a partnership with TED, they received guidance on event production and curation. The final product — TED@Intel, themed “the future in progress” — was a moment for the organization to celebrate and communicate their best ideas.

According to Intel staffer Jeremy Schulz, these are the five most intriguing ideas he heard from the event’s 18 speakers:

1) To create technology that truly enriches people’s lives, you have to ask users what they need and immerse yourself in their challenges. Then think: What can you make that would be most useful for them? Tony Salvador has spent 20 years as an ethnographer at Intel doing exactly that. As he shared in the talk, “The Importance of Listening,” you can’t bring preconceived ideas into the process or you’ll only “hear what [you] want to hear.”

2) Employees living outside the U.S. negotiate an important but delicate balancing act between Intel’s open — but U.S.-centric — culture and the local cultural norms. Makiko Eda, who leads marketing and branding for Asia Pacific, gave the talk “The Corporation as an Agent of Cultural Fusion,” explaining that the balancing act practiced by people on the ground is vital to connecting the global company to local cultures.

3) “A little bit of insurrection” is necessary to keep new ideas alive inside corporations. In Peter Biddle’s “straight-shooting” talk, called “Plucky Rebels: Being Agile in an Un-agile Place,” he gave these pithy tips:

• Make an attractive corpse: Projects get cancelled and plans change, but with an agile approach, your team will have built something and will have tangibles that at worst could go on a resume. “Worked for 2 years on 3-year project that got cancelled” is useless.
• Keep it secret—until you have something real to show: In a large company, lots of people will want to “help” you, but “don’t be afraid to go dark until you have something to show.” Then show it—don’t rely on PowerPoint.
• Find some users and make them happy: Anybody can create hockey-stick earnings charts, but “if you have people that are happy with what you’ve done, you’ve got superpower.” (See idea #1 again!)

4) Parents should act as shepherds to the online world, not gatekeepers. In the talk “Are You ‘Technically’ Fit to be a Parent?” McAfee CTO  and father Michael Fey shared how parents should negotiate the scary world of their children and the internet. He says that if you learn the ins and outs of the online community, “you can learn how to mitigate risk and prevent harm, and you can use technology to better connect with your child.”

5) If you tap into your community you will find “a fountain of creative and courageous people.” As Schulz wrote on Intel’s internal blog, “I came looking for ideas, but it was the people that left the greatest mark.”

Expedia’s remarkably moving short film, “Find Your Understanding,” tells the true story of man named Artie Goldstein and his journey to accept his daughter Jill Goldstein’s marriage to another woman, Nikki Weiss. As the world waits for the Supreme Court decision on the Defense Against Marriage Act, millions have viewed this socially-conscious ad online. But in a poignant twist of fate, the film has done more than just open the hearts of its viewers. This piece — which was named one of TED’s Ads Worth Spreading — has played a significant role in helping Nikki secure parental rights of her son, Adler.

According to an article on Creativity Online, Nikki and Jill had agreed to participate in the film because they wanted to set a positive example for families struggling to come to terms with their gay children. And while the film shows footage of the couple’s wedding in 2010, the pair were not legally married under federal law. So when Jill gave birth on their second wedding anniversary, Nikki had to convince a social worker to allow her to adopt her own son in order to be legally considered as his parent.

The meeting with the social worker did not begin warmly. While taking Nikki’s fingerprints, she grilled Nikki about her relationship to Jill, “when we’ve known each other since we were children,” Nikki tells Creativity. But when the social worker asked the Weiss-Goldsteins about how their families felt about their relationship, they played her Expedia’s film. The social worker broke down in tears, and, as Nikki said, “I don’t think there were any more questions after that.” Nikki’s adoption of Adler becomes final on April 17^th.

Sadly, Mr. Goldstein will not be able to see the impact of his eloquent and touching soliloquy on his path to acceptance of his daughter’s marriage. He passed away in January. But Nikki said that the Expedia film remains as a “love letter” from her father in law.

William Gelner, creative director at 180 LA, the agency behind the film, spoke to the TED Blog about “Find Your Understanding.” He says that it is proof that there needn’t be a “dividing line between doing good and [doing] business. Too rarely do we realize that, as advertising people, we have the ability to truly influence culture for the better.”

Gelner’s words embrace the spirit of Ads Worth Spreading, which TED created to recognize and award advertising that truly resonates with consumers. By boldly standing up for its values and talking to its audience like people rather than robotic purchasers, Expedia has gained new respect and a community of supporters.

As Gelner tells us, “[This ad] opened hearts, minds, and hopefully soon, the law books on the issue of marriage equality.”

Get to know more about Jill and Nikki, whose wedding was originally documented for an episode of The Real L Word, in the videos below: