Sunday 7 November 2010

Tedx'd

I went to TedxAldeburgh yesterday. An independently organised (but sanctioned by Ted.com) event that will hopefully become an annual affair. Hosted by Thomas Dolby (who is Ted's musical director), it featured great talks from David Toop; founding member of the Flying Lizards and now a research fellow at LCC and journalist, who spoke lyrically about silence; Martyn Ware, ex Human League and Heaven 17, who talked about his visual 3D sound experiments with Vince Clark; and United Visual Artists, who gave a presentation about their interactive graphic installations for Massive Attack, the V&A Museum, and other private commissions. Other speakers included Sarah Nicolls on physical pianos, Nick Ryan on sound games for iPhones and an interview between Thomas Dolby and William Orbit, who was remarkably down to earth.

These were all punctuated with Ted clips that included an excellent talk from David Byrne on how venues have influenced the way music is written and performed, and Evelyn Glennie who spoke about music/sound and hearing impairment.

Unfortunately I missed Tim Exile and Imogen Heap, both of whom were due to run into the evening and my lift couldn't stay longer, but by then I was a bit over loaded anyway.

A great day all round, with plenty to think about, both from a visual and sound perspective. This is highly recommended if it does come around again next year. Keep a eye on the TedxAldeburgh blog and Facebook pages, links below.

Cheers for the lift and company Dave.


8 comments:

Steven Ball said...

A couple of factual errors about Toop, he's actually a Professor at LCC attached to CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) and he wasn't the founder of Flying Lizards, that was David Cunningham, who is also a member of CRISAP at LCC.

Steven Ball said...

Having said that the CRiSAP site says of Toop that "He is a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London, and Senior Research fellow at the Sound Arts and Design Department of the London College of Communication." which is odd I didn't know you could be both SRF and Prof in the same University!

Dubdog said...

The TEDxAldeburgh programme claims Toop, "as of 2001 was Visiting Research Fellow in the Media School at London College of Communication." No mention about CRISAP.

Dubdog said...

I assumed he was a founding member of FL but in rereading the programme, it only mentions he was a member.

Steven Ball said...

Yeah I just saw that, looks kind of like out of date info to me. Here's the CRiSAP:
http://www.crisap.org

Steven Ball said...

well I think in reality FL was just the name for a project of Cunningham's and had floating memebers

Dubdog said...

And floating 'e's in their members.

Steven Ball said...

indeed it was also a meme of sorts

Wikipedia describes it as a loose collective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Lizards

but fails to mention that DC formed it while still a student at Maidstone