Tag Archives: TED

Indian TED Conference (Photos)

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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?!?
Another shot of Kuala Lumpur Airport. Spectacular and pleasant – even the shopping – at every turn.
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Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover featured in new film

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Dan Ellsey, a young man with cerebral palsy whose life was transformed when he learned to compose music using Hyperscore, is the subject of a new documentary film, Music is My Voice. Hyperscore was developed by the Opera of the Future group at the M.I.T. Media Lab and featured in this TED Talk by Tod Machover, with a live performance by Dan. The new film, directed by Jesse Roesler, is a semi-finalist in the Focus/Forward contest. Congratulations! Here’s the trailer and a chance to vote!

Los Angeles Times on Tod Machover’s vision for personalized music

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Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed made the 90-minute drive up to Santa Barbara last week to attend Tod Machover’s talk on “Music, Mind and Health: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Well-being through Active Sound,” one of four lectures he gave recently at the university’s Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. In today’s issue, Swed reflects on the concept of music as therapy and a future in which each of us could have music that is tailored to our individual psyches. Tod’s new CD “…but not simpler…” gets a nice mention too!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Machover, an intriguing futurologist as well as an inventive composer, runs the departments in hyper-instruments (acoustical instruments given spiffy electronic features) and opera of the future at MIT‘s ultra-high-tech Media Lab…Music, Machover said, touches on just about every aspect of cognition. There are theories that music exists to exercise the mind and to help coordinate its separate functions. Music lovers intuitively know what researchers have verified, that music modulates our moods, helps us move, stimulates our language skills, strengthens our memories and can wondrously bring about emotional responses without their bothersome consequences…

“In an inspiring feedback loop, Machover and his MIT minions, which include some of the nation’s most forward-looking graduate students, are applying their musical gadgets to therapy. The process of making remarkable restorative advances is changing how they think about and make music. And that could affect how the rest of us might think about and make music in the not-so-distant future.”

Read the full article here: Musical therapy is making breakthroughs

Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover (credit MIT Media Lab)

Collaborating for a more creative society

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The new movie “Anonymous” shows that our culture is more obsessed than ever with celebrity and genius, and that we look for transcendent heroes capable of leading us through the darkness. On the other end, masses of people meet online as “friends” to share intimacies or to solve problems collectively. The truth is that the real power of invention lies in between these two extremes, where experts can collaborate as equals with everyone else, combining unique and broad perspectives for the benefit of all. Music provides an ideal test bed for this new mode of collaboration.

Tod Machover’s group at the MIT Media Lab has spent the last 25 years developing technologies to enhance the musical expression of virtuosi like Yo-Yo Ma, to open the expressive and creative musical potential for amateurs, children and the infirm, and to breakdown barriers between artist and audience. We are now entering a bold new phase of inter-skill collaboration, informed by the recent successes of Guitar Hero, Björk’s Biophilia, and RjDj’s mobile music apps. Through physical composing, sequenced sonic objects, morphing Mozart-to-merengue, and creating City Symphonies and Personal Operas, Tod believes that a more satisfying musical ecology can be forged which – in turn – will be a powerful inspiration for a more creative society.

Watch Tod’s recent TEDxNewEngland talk:

Music connects teens with Alzheimer patients

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Adam Boulanger,Adam Boulanger (right) works with student Joshua Worthing on a composition. Photo by Lucy Schaly.

Here’s a cool article and video from Adam Boulanger’s visit last week to Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland, PA. Twenty-one students from the school are being trained to teach Alzheimer’s patients to use a music composition tool. They are part of  a collaborative research study with the M.I.T. Media Lab, the Cleveland Clinic and the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute.

Adam, a postdoctoral researcher at the Media Lab, spent the day training students to compose music using Hyperscore. This graphical music composition tool was developed some years ago by Tod Machover’s Opera of the Future research group at the Media Lab, and has been used with great success around the world. Originally designed for children, it has been embraced by adults and has even shown powerful therapeutic benefits in people with physical and psychiatric disabilities (see Tod’s TED Talk).

Early next year, the students will teach 18 volunteer seniors to compose music using Hyperscore as part of a clinical trial.

Read the article in the Beaver County Times.

TEDx Video of Spheres and Splinters

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Bowers & Wilkins put up this post that gives you a chance to hear some of the music from Tod Machover’s most recent work, “Spheres and Splinters”, debuted in Aldeburgh and London last November. The video is a tad confusing because it mixes in footage from other performers and composers at TEDx Aldeburgh, but it provides an evocative record of a special event.

Classical Music Magazine on Aldeburgh project

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This week’s Classical Music Magazine features the “Spheres and Splinters” collaborative work that composer Tod Machover, cellist Peter Gregson, sound designer Ben Bloomerberg and artist collective UVA (UnitedVisualArtists) will be working on during their residency at TEDx Aldeburgh and Aldeburgh’s New Music New Media.

Here is the article (click to enlarge):