TED Fellow Alicia Eggert is an artist making words into sculptures, often in the form of flashing neon signs.

Why you should listen

Alicia Eggert's work gives material form to language and time, the powerful but invisible forces that shape our realities. Her sculptures often co-opt the form and structure of commercial signs, drawing inspiration from physics and philosophy to communicate messages that spark reflection and wonder. 

Eggert creates flashing neon signs that both illuminate the way light travels across space and time and reveal the relationship between reality and possibility. They have been installed on building rooftops in Philadelphia, bridges in Amsterdam and uninhabited islands in Maine. Like navigational signs, Eggert's artwork asks us to recognize where we are now as individuals and as a society, to identify where we want to be in the future -- and to imagine the routes we can take to get there.

Alicia Eggert’s TED talk

More news and ideas from Alicia Eggert

Live from TEDSummit 2019

10 years of TED Fellows: Notes from the Fellows Session of TEDSummit 2019

July 22, 2019

The event: TEDSummit 2019, Fellows Session, hosted by Shoham Arad and Lily Whitsitt When and where: Monday, July 22, 2019, 9am BST, at the Edinburgh Convention Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland Speakers: Carl Joshua Ncube, Suzanne Lee, Sonaar Luthra, Jon Lowenstein, Alicia Eggert, Lauren Sallan, Laura Boykin Opening: A quick, witty performance from Carl Joshua Ncube, […]

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Art

Everything You Are Looking For: TED Fellows Ryan Holladay and Alicia Eggert have a conversation about their new exhibit

November 27, 2013

Alicia Eggert makes kinetic sculptures that investigate the nature of language and time. Meanwhile, Ryan Holladay is a musical artist who creates sound-specific installations and GPS compositions as part of the duo BLUEBRAIN. Just a week before TED2013, Eggert and Holladay made contact for the very first time. See, Holloday is a curator of new media at Artisphere. And he was […]

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Art

How soon is now?: Fellows Friday with Alicia Eggert

April 26, 2013

Conceptual artist Alicia Eggert uses words as found objects in her sculptural art — a body of work that serves as an ongoing investigation of time. Here, she tells us about taking her neon piece “You are (on) an island” to various locations in the world, shares how childhood experiences in South Africa sparked her […]

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