As part of TEDxAmsterdam, newspaper NRC Next hosted a special challenge. Readers could enter their own idea for a 3-minute TED talk, and the winner was invited to speak on the TEDxAmsterdam main stage.
Architect Gaston Peer won the challenge and presented his vision for Icon Beach on the TEDxAmsterdam stage.
TEDxAmsterdam took place on November 20, in the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. The Royal Tropical Institute aims to contribute to sustainable economic development, health, poverty alleviation, sharing knowledge, cultural preservation and cultural exchange. The Institute’s President Jan Donner explains.
For more information on the Royal Tropical Institute see their website.
As part of TEDxAmsterdam, Folia, the newspaper of the University of Amsterdam, hosted a special challenge. Students could enter their own idea for a 3-minute TED talk, and the winner was invited to speak on the TEDxAmsterdam main stage.
Emma Bruns, a medical intern at the AMC Academic hospital won with an idea worth sharing: why don’t we memorize important procedures with music?
Rafaël Redczus is one of the founders of yellowBird, a company specialized in 3D video recordings. Yellowbird technology allows for a totally interactive 3D view. Together with co-founder Marc Groothelm, Redczus explained the technology. and they also made a 3D movie of TEDxAmsterdam. The result can be seen below – in it you see Redczus on stage followed by an impression of the event, and a few moments of the musical performance by composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven. Read the full article…
aWoW (Alpha World of Warcraft) is an application that extracts your state of mind and applies this information in the actual game. By means of relaxing or agitating yourself you are able to control the shape of your character in World of Warcraft, you will change from elf to bear depending on what is measured on your head.
The demo was reported on in Wired UK: “A team from the University of Twente showed how it was possible to play World of Warcraft using one’s mind to change the avatar: the stress level of the human guinea pig caused his avatar to change from pig to wizard, adding an extra modality to the game.”
The Wattcher is a product that displays the electricity consumption in the home allowing you to monitor and curb energy use. Dtuch designer Marcel Wanders designed the Wattcher with the thinking that it could become ‘the heart of the home’. The Wattcher is more than just a product: it is a strategy that stimulates awareness.
Gernout Erens is a product developer at Innovaders in Amsterdam, the company that developed the Wattcher. Read the full article…
Composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven is most known by the remarkable projects he creates, connecting styles, cultures but first of all people. Twaalfhovens intention is to bridge worlds of contrast, and to mix unusual elements to a new unity. In his TEDxAmsterdam talk, he suggests that art needs to be reconnected to society to open the art world for new audiences.
Or as he says on his own website,
“‘Strictly speaking, I am not interested in adding more and more new art to the existing arsenal, but want to investigate ways to refine the perception of the visitor and open their senses. I think contemporary, innovative art should be placed in the great open world and not only in the laboratory – or museum-like environment of theaters, concert rooms and cultural institutions. By taking art out of its setting of the existing expectations and behavior patterns of the audience, I would like them to look at experience at hand in a new and refreshed way. I do not wish to mark art by its boundaries, but instead melt it with commonplace matters and the space around it.”‘ Read the full article…
3D range cameras produce thousands of distance measures in one picture, and produce up to 100 pictures per second. The result is an animated point cloud, where the shape of the filmed object is easily recognized. Normally, these point clouds are used for measuring the deformations of tunnels, analyzing the structures of trees, or documenting shape changes, for instance after breast implants.
At TEdxAmsterdam, scientist Alexander Bucksch and designer Daniel Berio explored a different use of 3D video.
Alexander Buksch is a Researcher at Delft University of Technology, at the Optical and Laser remote Sensing department, and he documents his work on his personal website; Daniel Berio is an designer/programmer, you can find his work at Enist
Claire Boonstra is co-founder of the “Layar Reality Browser”, which displays real time digital information on top of reality in the camera screen of the mobile phone. While looking through the phone’s camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, tourist information, play a live game, etcetera. Boonstra presented Layar in one of the short “Tech demos”, that were part of the TEDxAmsterdam program, and amongst others showed the new 3D application that Layar launched shortly after the event. Read the full article…
Tony DiSanto is President of Programming and Development at MTV in New York in the United States. In his TEDxAmsterdam talk he explores the way we tell stories in a digital age. DiSanto developed several reality shows and was executive producer of hit series Run’s House, The Hills, The City, Paris Hilton, My New BFF and Made. In 1998 DiSanto co-founded very popular shows like Total Request Live (“TRL”) with Carson Daly and Say What? Karaoke. DiSanto studied at the NYU Film School and worked as a director of music videos, shorts and commercials before he joined MTV in the nineties.