TED Talks
How a strong creative industry helps economies thrive | Mehret Mandefro
When global leaders think about which industries can fuel economic growth, the arts are often overlooked. But filmmaker Mehret Mandefro says the creative sector actually has the power to grow economies -- while also helping safeguard...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Michelle Brown: What is a butt tuba and why is it in medieval art?
A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. These bizarre images, painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns and urban...
TED Talks
Rayma Suprani: Dictators hate political cartoons -- so I keep drawing them
"A political cartoon is a barometer of freedom," says Rayma Suprani, who was exiled from her native Venezuela for publishing work critical of the government. "That's why dictators hate cartoonists." In a talk illustrated with highlights...
TED Talks
Ravin Agrawal: 10 young Indian artists to watch
Collector Ravin Agrawal delivers a glowing introduction to 10 of India's most exciting young contemporary artists. Working in a variety of media, each draws on their local culture for inspiration.
TED Talks
TED: Stories of photographing monumental people -- from Michelle Obama to Stephen Hawking | Platon
With his art, photographer Platon seeks to strip away assumptions and leave viewers with a window into his subject's character, filling our eyes with wonder and curiosity. Sharing extraordinary stories of what it's like to photograph...
TED Talks
Jiabao Li: Art that reveals how technology frames reality
In a talk that could change how you see things, designer and artist Jiabao Li introduces her conceptual projects that expose the inherent bias of digital media. From a helmet that makes you "allergic" to the color red to a browser...
TED Talks
Matthew A. Wilson: The health benefits of clowning around
As a medical clown, TED Resident Matthew A. Wilson takes the old adage that laughter is the best medicine very seriously. In this heartwarming talk, he shares glimpses of how clowning around can help patients (and medical staff) navigate...
TED Talks
TED: How art can shape America's conversation about freedom | Dread Scott
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. In this quick talk, visual artist Dread Scott tells the story of one of his most transgressive art installations,...
TED Talks
TED: How computers are learning to be creative | Blaise Aguera y Arcas
We're on the edge of a new frontier in art and creativity -- and it's not human. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, principal scientist at Google, works with deep neural networks for machine perception and distributed learning. In this captivating...
TED Talks
James Geary: Metaphorically speaking
Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says.
TED Talks
TED: The magic of Khmer classical dance | Prumsodun Ok
For more than 1,000 years, Khmer dancers in Cambodia have been seen as living bridges between heaven and earth. In this graceful dance-talk hybrid, artist Prumsodun Ok -- founder of Cambodia's first all-male and gay-identified dance...
TED Talks
Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math of coral
Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician -- celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying...
TED Talks
TED: Intelligent floating machines inspired by nature | Anicka Yi
Taking cues from soft robotics and the natural world, conceptual artist Anicka Yi builds lighter-than-air machines that roam and react like autonomous life forms. Her floating "aerobes" inspire us to think about new ways of living with...
TED Talks
Amanda Williams: Why I turned Chicago's abandoned homes into art
Amanda Williams shares her lifelong fascination with the complexity of color: from her experiences with race and redlining to her discovery of color theory to her work as a visual artist. Journey with Williams to Chicago's South Side and...
TED Talks
TED: How to revive a neighborhood: with imagination, beauty and art - Theaster Gates
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Theaster Gates, a potter by training and a social activist by calling, wanted to do something about the sorry state...
TED Talks
William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes
How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the...
TED Talks
TED: An architect's subversive reimagining of the US-Mexico border wall | Ronald Rael
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. What is a border? It's a line on a map, a place where cultures mix and merge in beautiful, sometimes violent and...
TED Talks
Kate Hartman: The art of wearable communication
Artist Kate Hartman uses wearable electronics to explore how we communicate, with ourselves and with the world. In this quirky and thought-provoking talk, she shows the "Talk to Yourself Hat", the "Inflatable Heart", the "Glacier...
TED Talks
TED: The mind-bending art of deep time | Katie Paterson
Short-sightedness may be the greatest threat to humanity, says conceptual artist Katie Paterson, whose work engages with deep time -- an idea that describes the history of the Earth over a time span of millions of years. In this lively...
TED Talks
Robert Lang: The math and magic of origami
Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami -- using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.
TED Talks
Maurizio Seracini: The secret lives of paintings
Art history is far from set in stone. Engineer Maurizio Seracini spent 30 years searching for Leonardo da Vinci's lost fresco "The Battle of Anghiari," and in the process discovered that many paintings have layers of history hidden...
TED Talks
David Merrill: Toy tiles that talk to each other
MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on...
TED Talks
Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?
Venice is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The dark history of Mount Rushmore | Ned Blackhawk and Jeffrey D. Means
Between 1927 and 1941, workers blasted 450,000 tons of rock from a mountainside using chisels, jackhammers, and dynamite. Gradually, they carved out Mount Rushmore. Today, the monument draws nearly 3 million people to South Dakota's...