Indian TED Conference (Photos)

From Tod Machover’s Facebook, photos from INK Talks, Kochi, Kerala, India:

INK guests waiting in the Hotel Meridien lobby to be taken to evening banquet. Everyone had been asked to wear Indian traditional dress; about 50% did, and I was one of the few Westerners who wrapped myself (sort of) in a mundu. Whew!

Passenger building at the Kochi port last evening, with dance and drumming outside, banquet within.

A group of six men started out by looking was though they were doing some kind of gritty, synchronized yoga routine. Turned out they gave a real – and quite violent – martial arts demo with real sticks, swords and shields.

Drummers changing beats and circling with more and more intensity. Boy, was it hot and humid!

There were a few truly scary dance figures – not least because they kept picking people from the crowd to dance with them, kind of like a bad-trip one-on-one from Sleep No More:)

Taking pictures of dancers and drummers was addictive; all the dancers were male, the crazier ones on stilts.

Amazing drum corps with very quick beats and simple rhythms, except that bells were clashing in polyrhythm with the drums, so that beat patterns changed depending on what one concentrated on.

No, they’re not real, but they made a great impression in the hotel lobby:)

The INK Conference speaker board.

The very interesting artist Raghava KK on stage at the INK Conference with this year’s INK Fellows, a fascinating and talented group of young artists, entrepreneurs, and social interventionists, some of whom will be spending time at the MIT Media Lab.

The crowd at the INK Conference, which was supplemented by a “spill-over” room of ca. 500 people, several miles away.

MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito was all in Kochi for the INK Conference.

Yours truly at a truly amazing group drumming event at INK on Saturday evening. An “animateur” with a drum set in the center was supplemented with several other drummers circling the room. Just about everyone in the audience (except me, I guess:) was given a drum to bang on, and the whole place was soon rocking and booming in a kind of “internationally noisy” way.

Another enormous dance poster at Kochi Airport.

Would have liked to have met her, but alas, she was but a poster – albeit huge – in the lovely Kochi airport. In fact, they had about 30 larger-than-lifesize posters of this same dancer, each illustrating the emotion and meaning of the particular pose. Can you imagine THAT at JFK or LAX???

Loved this book display at Kochi Airport which basically has multiple editions of the Kama Sutra, punctuated by biographies of Steve Jobs and Mahatma Gandhi. Sort of sums up modern India:)

Flew through Kuala Lumpur on the way to Perth, Australia. Absolutely spectacular airport, more beautiful and modern than anything in the U.S. Who knew?!?