Ideas worth spreading

Imaginative sculptures that explore how we perceive reality

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Alicia Eggert |

TEDSummit 2019

• July 2019

TED Fellow Alicia Eggert takes us on a visual tour of her work -- from a giant sculpture on an uninhabited island in Maine to an installation that inflates only when people hold hands to complete an electric current. Her work explores the power of art to inspire wonder and foster hope in dark times. As she puts it: "A brighter, more sustainable, more equitable future depends first on our ability to imagine it."

TED Fellow Alicia Eggert takes us on a visual tour of her work -- from a giant sculpture on an uninhabited island in Maine to an installation that inflates only when people hold hands to complete an electric current. Her work explores the power of art to inspire wonder and foster hope in dark times. As she puts it: "A brighter, more sustainable, more equitable future depends first on our ability to imagine it."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Alicia Eggert

Interdisciplinary artist

See speaker profile

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

Jesse Prinz | Aeon, 2013 | Article

"How Wonder Works"

This article talks about how wonder is the most human of emotions, and it's also what science, religion and art all have in common. Wonder is both cognitive and spiritual. It's the curiosity that drives us to learn new things about the world around us, but it's also the feeling we get when we encounter things that are beyond our understanding.

Dennis Overbye | New York Times, 2016 | Article

"Don't Let Them Tell You You're Not at the Center of the Universe"

This article inspired my neon sign "All the Light You See." I love how Overbye makes Einstein's theory of relativity so easy to understand, almost palpable, especially when he talks about the time it takes the light from the sun to reach our skin. It's amazing to think that the further out in space we look, the further back in time we see, and that our eye are basically like little time machines.

Stewart Brand | Basic Books, 2000 | Book

The Clock of the Long Now

In this book, Stewart Brand explains his reasons for starting the Long Now Foundation (of which I am a member). The projects they are working on, like a mechanical clock that will keep track of time in 10,000-year increments, aim to foster long-term thinking and responsibility at a time when "now" seems to be getting smaller every day and our short-term thinking is having detrimental effects on the planet. This book has influenced the way I perceive and think about time. Recently, I was given permission from Stewart Brand to use a quote from the book to create my most recent neon sign, which says, "This present moment used to be the unimaginable future."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.