Artist JR’s latest project turns the floor of the David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York City Ballet, into a swirl of bodies. For it, JR photographed the company’s dancers and assembled their portraits into a 6,500-square-foot mural that stretches the length of the lobby. Walking on the floor is surreal, as each dancer appears life-size...

Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But despite her nearly 20-year tenure at the museum, Antonelli remains resolutely disinterested in relying on the known or the obviously popular. She is always keen to challenge preconceptions of design's role in everyday life, even as she p...

Designer Ayse Birsel shares the everyday objects she loves. Since 2002, product designer Ayse Birsel has worked side-by-side with her husband Bibi Seck. Together they have refined a design process they call “Deconstruction:Reconstruction.” The process of deconstructing a product into the human needs it must fill  -- before leaping to design s...

As we crisscrossed the globe to find you fresh perspectives for TED2013 in our worldwide Talent Search, a common theme emerged: cultural heritage in the 21st century. The tangible, intangible and natural elements that define our ways of life touch every aspect of our existence — from language to landscapes to religion to architecture. And th...

Art so often seeks to capture the beauty of the natural world -- from cave drawings of animals, to paintings of landscapes, to sculptures of the human form in marble, bronze or wood. But in this playlist, find artists and designers who take this to the next level, making art based on the laws of nature and the invisible workings of biology i...

At TED2014, we asked speakers and attendees to riff off the conference's theme ("The Next Chapter") and tell us what might radically change society, life, technology and so on in the next 30 years. From funny and wry to deeply insightful, the answers will surprise you. "One of the things about learning how to read -- we have been doing a lot ...

In 1831, Michael Faraday stood in a lecture hall and demoed an idea that changed everything: electromagnetic induction. This work paved the way for widespread use of electricity. On September 29, 2015, in the same lecture hall, attendees gathered for TEDGlobal>London to hear more ideas with the potential to shift reality. Sixteen TED speak...

Looking for a few great talks to inspire you for a great year ahead? TED's content+editorial team staffers pick their favorites -- including some don't-miss talks you might have passed by in this busy year. To spark your curiosity ...  Fawn Qiu: Easy DIY projects for kid engineers Don't you hate it when an operating-system upgrade means...

Are your endless tweets, status updates and Instagrams robbing you of enjoying what’s special about the moments you’re trying to share? Damon Brown fears they may. In the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed With Documenting Our Lives Online, he lays out a compelling case for mindfully balancing your online presence with being presen...

Remember TED Talks by Joshua Prager, John McWhorter, Sleepy Man Banjo Boys and Hannah Brencher? All fantastic finds from previous talent searches. Now, we're running a similar event once again. Known as TED@NYC, the evening event will be held on October 8. It's a chance to find fresh voices to ring out on the TED main stage and be heard on t...

Daan Roosegaarde uses technology and creative thinking to produce imaginative, earth-friendly designs. He presents his latest projects -- from a bike path in Eindhoven, where he reinterpreted "The Starry Night" to get people thinking about green energy, to Beijing, where he developed a smog vacuum cleaner to purify the air in local parks, to a d...

  Super Cells is the new TED Book by Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim, who take us on an eye-popping tour of the tantalizing array of inventions already being created with nature’s elemental building block, the cell. They argue that we’re entering a new technological revolution, one in which we can create smarter technologies by making ce...

About this event: LIVE SIMULCAST (LIVE WEBCASTING) OF THE TED 2013 CONFERENCE (from Los Angeles, California) ‘The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered’. We will ONLY screen (LIVE, with Exclusive License and in English only), the Fourth and Fifth Session of the 27th line-up (the entire conference actually lasts 4 days but it is allowed to screen only the 27th): ‘DIS...

While Janet Echelman was at TED in March, she got word that she was being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. (And in fact, Echelman wasn't the only new Guggenheim winner speaking at TED -- her fellow Session 9 speaker Fiorenzo Omenetto also won the award). The award offers her a year of time off to think and explore. The TED Blog spoke to Jane...

Architecture + design entrepreneur

On March 6, TED welcomed its latest class to the TED Residency program. As an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas, Residents spend four months in the TED office with other exceptional people from all over the map. Each has a project that promises to make a significant contribution to the world, across several different fields. The new R...

Fashion designer and BioCouture founder Suzanne Lee harnesses the labor of microorganisms to grow clothing. Computational architect Skylar Tibbits -- who's setting up a lab at MIT focused on self-assembly technologies and programmable materials -- examines biological systems to develop his methods. We asked them to discuss the directions they're...

David Li is the founder of Shanghai-based hackerspace XinCheJian. He shares his take on life and work in the fast-paced Chinese city with Alex Gallafent. In 2005, at the start of my first visit to Shanghai, the city clothed itself in a growling thunderstorm. When dusk fell and neon began to score the sky, the city was more Blade Runner-y than...

As technology accelerates our lives, many of us feel an urgent need to slow down. One seductive solution: A secular sabbath. Pico Iyer makes the case, in this meditative excerpt from his new TED Book, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere The idea of going nowhere is as universal as the law of gravity; that’s why wise souls from eve...

The stage is set. The lights are on. The audience of more than 600 people who have traveled from all over the world to be inspired is ready. And ready or not, the speakers are thrust onto the stage, one by one. This is the first session of TEDGlobal 2017, themed “a new map,” a phrase that suggests that in these first talks, we will catch ...

In 2005, at the start of my first visit to Shanghai, the city clothed itself in a growling thunderstorm. When dusk fell and neon began to score the sky, the city was more Blade Runner-y than I thought a real place possible to be. I remember diving into a luxe spa for a post-train massage, slipping, mildly terrified, into an urgent slumber, i...

What does it take to make an everyday object -- say, a toaster -- from scratch? And does anyone know how to make it, all the way from mining for iron ore to plugging it into the electric grid? Those are the questions designer Thomas Thwaites sought to answer when he engaged in the Toaster Project. Last Tuesday, November 2, he shared his hilar...

Lars Jan, a TED Fellow, creates multimedia performances that probe the ubiquity of screens and propaganda in our culture. Today, his show ABACUS—billed as "a multimedia talking tour of our hyper-networked world to come"—opens at BAM's Fisher Fishman Space in Brooklyn, New York. It's a show delivered by his invented persona, Paul Abacus, abou...

Inventor + environmentalist

For Kellee Santiago, founder of thatgamecompany, video games are an interactive art form. Inspired by hiking, gazing at clouds, and even stories of religious conversion, her games invoke emotional responses, pushing the boundaries of video games as a communicative media. What was your first experience with video games? Well, I had played g...

First an immunologist, then a healthcare journalist and now a writer focusing on the Arab region, Shereen El Feki also serves on the UN's Global Commission on HIV and the Law. In addition to studying social change in the Arab region, Shereen works on development with a women's university in Saudi Arabia. Interactive Fellows Friday Feature! ...

Installation artist

Architect

Web entrepreneur

About this event: When local can mean everything from our solar system to your community, Your Backyard becomes a universe of amazing ideas. SPEAKERS STEVE DUNCAN urban spelunker and photographer As an urban historian and photographer, Steve tries to peel back the layers of a city to see what's underneath. From the tops of bridges to the depths of sewer ...