TED Talks Thursday – Catarina Mota: Play with smart materials

According to ted.com: “Ink that conducts electricity; a window that turns from clear to opaque at the flip of a switch; a jelly that makes music. All this stuff exists, and Catarina Mota says: It’s time to play with it. Mota leads us on a tour of surprising and cool new materials, and suggests that the way we’ll figure out what they’re good for is to experiment, tinker and have fun.”

“A maker of things and open-source advocate, Catarina Mota is co-founder of openMaterials.org, a collaborative project dedicated to do-it-yourself experimentation with smart materials. This is a new class of materials that change in response to stimuli: conductive ink, shape-memory plastics, etc. Her goal is to encourage the making of things; to that end, she teaches hands-on workshops on high-tech materials and simple circuitry for both young people and adults–with a side benefit of encouraging interest in science, technology and knowledge-sharing.”

Intriguing! Enjoy.

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

Mandala Monday – The Hidden Sky: Fibonacci Movie from Cara Reichel

I found this beautiful video demonstrating the Fibonacci Sequence, one of the building blocks of the Universe. If you are unfamiliar with this aspect of sacred geometry you can fine material at Wikipedia to acquaint you with it. There is much material on the web explaining the mathematics of the Fibonacci Sequence and I will leave it to you to explore that if you are interested. What I find interesting about this video is that it was part of a play performed in 2010. The details of the play are below the video. I find it fascinating that sacred geometry found it’s way into a musical theater production.  The Fibonacci Sequence is truly all around us. Enjoy!

The Hidden Sky: Fibonacci Movie from Cara Reichel on Vimeo.

“THE HIDDEN SKY

Jan. 30 – Feb. 28, 2010

at the West End Theatre (263 West 86th St.) in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew

music and lyrics by Peter Foley

book by Kate Chisholm

based on the short story “The Masters” by Ursula K. Le Guin

directed by Kate Chisholm

Science and religion collide in this sophisticated and mythic new musical. At the center of the conflict is Ganil, a young woman whose passionate longing for knowledge leads her on a dangerous journey in pursuit of lost and forbidden truths. With an eclectic score featuring lush choral singing, this compelling tale of spiritual awakening illuminates the complex dialogue between faith and reason.”

“The power of Foley´s score effectively communicates the exhilaration of intellectual discovery… The melodic urgency, rhythmic variety, harmonic invention and orchestral sophistication of his music compel the attention. Foley acknowledges a range of influences from Sufi music to the rock band U2, yet what he has made of them is something uniquely his own.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

TED Talks Thursday – Rachel Sussman: The world’s oldest living things

According to ted.com: “Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture.”

“For the past five years, Rachel Sussman has traveled around the globe photographing organisms that have lived for more than 2,000 years. From 500,000-year-old actinobacteria in the Siberian permafrost a lone spruce standing on a mostly barren mountain in Sweden, her images capture both the robustness and fragility of life. While these organisms’ longevity dwarfs even that of human civilization, they all depend on ecosystems in fine balance — a balance thrown into question by human encroachment and climate change.”

Enjoy.

For those of you not familiar with TED Talks here is a brief summery from www.ted.com: “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize”

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I look forward to your thoughts and comments!