TEDGlobal Highlights: Day 3

Hip hop for peace, hot air balloons, and stereotypes.

Day 3 of TEDGlobal in images and soundbites, plus a glimpse of an electrifying surprise performance at the afterparty. For full blow-by-blow coverage, skim our live Twitter feed from the event.

Photographer Taryn Simon probes the frightening side of the unseen in her fascinating book, An American Index of The Hidden and Unfamiliar.

The phenomenal Emmanuel Jal, a hip-hop artist with a message of peace, who raised the TED audience to its feet for a dance and a standing ovation. Later that day, a handful of TEDsters won €10,000 from the Dutch Postal Lottery and decided to donate it to Jal's education initiative -- the TED touch in action.

The importance of education for me is what I’m willing to die for, because I know what it can do for my people. You’re killing a whole generation by just giving aid. If you want to help, give education. ~ Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal, paying tribute to Emma McCue -- the courageous aid worker who saved hundreds of child soldiers, including Emmanuel himself, and started an ambitious education initiative.

Lydia Kavina with the Radio Science Orchestra.

Virtuosa Lydia Kavina playing the theremin, a magnificent but little-understood instrument.

Iconic designer Ross Lovegrove shows some of his work, which he calls ruthlessly economic.

Nick Veasey's stunning X-ray photography

Eric Giler showcases WiTricity, a technology that allows the wireless powering of devices. Here, Giler charges a smartphone simply through proximity to a TV.

Professional ballooner Bertrand Piccard urges us to throw environmental fundamentalism overboard. He took a hot air balloon trip around the world, which started with several tons of fuels and ended with nothing but 40 kilos left. Piccard is dreaming up his next trip, completely unreliant fossil fuel.

International relations expert Parag Khanna likens pipelines to silk roads in that they connote independence and trust.

Geoff Mulgan on social innovation and systemic change, asserting that times of crisis necessitate a reboot that sparks innovation.

Felix Thorn is a master of synesthesia. Under Felix's Machine, he performs on a fascinating instrument made from household objects like candle holders and a shower caddy. His experimental music plays with synchronized light and sound, aiming to remove the human performer.

James Balog shows images from his incredible time-lapse record of climate change, Extreme Ice Survey. Here, the retraction and deflation of polar ice over just a short period of time.

I hope we have the angels of our better nature rise to the occasion and do the right thing. ~James Balog

Nigerian storyteller Chimamanda Adichie on stereotypes and how Western literature creates a flat, narrow view of Africa as one catastrophe-plagued country.

The problem with stereotypes isn’t that they’re untrue, it’s that they are incomplete and make one story the only story. ~Chimamanda Adichie

In a surprising impromptu performance, crowd favorite Emmanuel Jal kicked up the afterparty with an electrifying act that transformed TEDsters into a mosh pit of dancers doing Jal's signature dance in sync and singing his chorus for a phenomenal collective experience.

...and again...

...and again. The energy in the room could've powered a hot air balloon.

Stay tuned for highlights from the final day of TED, coming sometime between the sleep deprivation therapy and the infamous TED crash.

Photography Spotlight: Things

The cultural anthropology of things, or what Hitler’s head has to do with Barbie.

It’s fascinating how we all use things — objects, products, trinkets, stuff — to define ourselves and make sense of the world. This is the backbone of consumer culture, but also a precious piece of cultural anthropology from a historical perspective.

Polish photographer Andrzej Kramarz explores both in Things.

The series, inspired by the horror vacui style of folk art, captures “portraits” of objects from the past, laid out on the ground into densely packed displays.

A typical sight in Eastern European antique street markets, the objects — old, worn-out souvenirs of the past — are of little monetary worth, but offer an incredible glimpse of eras gone by.

In a word: that, which is left of a previous life; that, which used to live, now leads a life after life, sometimes an imagined existence.

From war paraphernalia to antique jewelry to vintage hardware tools, the images read like powerful visual chapters from a textbook on sociocultural and political history.

Explore Things in its entirety over at Lens Culture, and think about what a portrait of your own trinkets-laden past would look like.

Artist Spotlight: Stephan Zirwes Aerial Photography

Soccer field species, abstracting nature, and why you aren’t nearly as big as you think.

We’re aware we don’t go easy on superlatives here. But German photographer Stephan Zirwes is of the most deserving kind — words like incredible, phenomenal and fantastic are all but an understatement of his unlike-anything-else aerial magic.

One series, fields, explores the diverse “species” of soccer fields.

Leisure takes a look at the landscape of our free time.

Industry puts into perspective the vast scale of our man-made environment through geometric images that are aesthetically stunning, but somehow unsettling at the same time.

In construction, Zirwes takes a birds-eye look at the making of said man-made scale.

Leisure II presents a curious intersection of the above series — the unusual places people choose as oases of relaxation and recreation. If you look very closely at each image, you’ll find someone sprawling on a beach towel amidst the industrial clutter.

But perhaps our favorite series of his is titled snow — it abstracts nature with such simplicity and beauty that each image is more akin to a textured art canvas than a photograph.

There’s something incredibly humbling about seeing ourselves, from 10,000 feet, as the tiny figurines on a miniature set of life — a potent antidote to our grandeur-obsessed culture.

For the full Stephan Zirwes experience, we recommend fullscreen immersion.

via VSL

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