I began this assignment by looking on the TED Talks site and found an interesting list of the 20 most frequently viewed TED talks, which you can see here: http://blog.ted.com/2011/06/27/the-20-most-watched-tedtalks-so-far/ Since there are so many options, I decided to use the filter and just look for something that struck me at interesting and inspiring. I found this one very interesting.
Title and presenter:
Janet Echelman: Taking imagination seriously
This was filmed in March 2011 and it was posted June 2011
I thought that was interesting because this woman who is an artist worked a number of years on creating an inspirational and astonishing structure, using the origins and concepts of a craft that has been around for hundreds of years, net-making. Her very first work was titled “My hips” but from there she created multi-million dollar masterpieces. She went back to India where she worked with fishermen on the design. She searched the world for a material that would be able to withstand hurricanes and then developed a net-making industrial machines to be able to build this in massive size that had always been an ancient handmade craft.
The structures can share the wonder of ideas and imaginations by inspiring others through countless concepts. The structures are soft and constantly changing in the winds. She created projects that were installed at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics as well as many cities around the world and dreams of continuing this work.
I hope that others can be inspired by Janet’s works.
A. Shigley 