Music is Steve Reich’s “Cello Counterpoint,” with video from Bill Morrison, then David Lang’s “World to Come,” with video by Irit Batsry.

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The founding cellist of the Bang on a Can All Stars, cellist Maya Beiser is a frequent collaborator with artists across the spectrum of creativity — visual artists such as Shirin Neshat, video artists such as Irit Batsry — to produce groundbreaking multimedia concerts.
Composers who write for her follow her passion for melding influences — Middle Eastern sounds, classic and modern tones. Her newest project, Elsewhere, is described as “a CELLoOpera.” Elsewhere is an imaginative retelling of the Biblical legend of Lot’s wife, created by the “dream team” of Maya, director Robert Woodruff, composers Missy Mazzoli and Eve Beglarian, writer Erin Cressida Wilson, and choreographer Karole Armitage

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From the artist:
“Imagining a solo cello concert, one would most likely think of Johann Sebastian Bach unaccompanied cello suites. As a child studying these eternal masterpieces, Bach’s music would intermingle with the singing voices of Muslim prayers from the neighboring Arab village of the northern Kibbutz in Israel where I grew up. Late at night, after hours of practicing, I would listen to Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday as the sounds of tango music would be creeping from my parents’ stereo. It all became music to me. I didn’t hear the boundaries.

When composers write music for me, I ask them to forget what they know about the cello. I hope to arrive at new territories to discover sounds I have never heard before. I want to create endless possibilities with this cello. I become the medium through which the music is being channeled, and in the process, when all is right, the music is transformed and so am I.”

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Madeleine Albright is one of America’s leading authorities on foreign affairs. Unanimously confirmed as the first female Secretary of State in 1997, she became the highest-ranking woman in U.S. government history. During her four-year tenure, Albright reinforced U.S. alliances, advocated for democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade, business, labor and environmental standards abroad.

Since then, Albright has continued her distinguished career as a businesswoman, political adviser and professor. She is chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, and Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. Albright also chairs the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute and the Center for a New American Security. She also teaches diplomacy at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

“Real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice.” – Madeleine Albright

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Sebastian Thrun is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the Stanford AI Lab. His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence. He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and which is exhibited in the Smithsonian.

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A charter city is a place where you start with uninhabited land, a charter that specifies the rules that will apply there and then a chance for people to opt in, to go live under those rules or not. – Paul Romer

Stanford economist Paul Romer believes in the power of ideas. He first studied how to speed up the discovery and implementation of new technologies. But to address the big problems we’ll face this century — insecurity, harm to the environment, global poverty — new technologies will not be enough. We must also speed up the discovery and implementation of new rules, of new ideas about how people interact.

Throughout human history, big improvements in systems of rules took place when new governments entered the scene. In today’s world, this process has been largely shut down. To bring it back to life, Romer proposes that we create new cities where people can go to escape from bad rules and opt in to new and better ones. With better rules, people can be safe, self-interest can protect the environment, and investment can bring families all the resources that the modern world has to offer.

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Caroline Casey has dedicated the past decade of her life to changing how global society views people with disabilities. In 2000, she rode 1,000 kilometers across India on an elephant to raise funds for Sight Savers. Then, as founding CEO of Kanchi in Dublin, she developed a set of best practices (based on ISO 9000 quality standards) for businesses, to help them see “disabled” workers as an asset as opposed to a liability. Hundreds of companies have adopted the standards, changing their policies and attitudes.

In 2004, Casey started the O2 Ability Awards to recognize Irish businesses for their inclusion of people with disabilities, both as employees and customers. The initiative has received international praise and, in 2010, a parallel program was launched in Spain.

“She is one of those people who, instead of just talking about changing the world, gets up and actually does it however tough the doing of it turns out to be. ” – The Irish Times

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Mick Ebeling is founder of The Ebeling Group, an international production company and creative think tank, representing some of the world’s leading design and directing collectives.

He and a team of programmers, hackers, artists and inventors developed the EyeWriter — a low-cost eye-tracking device that allows artists with the nerve disease ALS to draw using only their eyes.

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Working anonymously, pasting his giant images on buildings, trains, bridges, the often-guerrilla artist JR forces us to see each other. Traveling to distant, often dangerous places — the slums of Kenya, the favelas of Brazil — he infiltrates communities, befriending inhabitants and recruiting them as models and collaborators. He gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm wide-angle lens, resulting in portraits that are unguarded, funny, soulful, real, that capture the sprits of individuals who normally go unseen. The blown-up images pasted on urban surfaces – the sides of buildings, bridges, trains, buses, on rooftops — confront and engage audiences where they least expect it. Images of Parisian thugs are pasted up in bourgeois neighborhoods; photos of Israelis and Palestinians are posted together on both sides of the walls that separate them.

JR’s most recent project, “Women Are Heroes,” depicts women “dealing with the effects of war, poverty, violence, and oppression” from Rio de Janeiro, Phnom Penh, Delhi and several African cities. And his TED Prize wish opens an even wider lens on the world — asking us all to turn the world inside out. Visit insideoutproject.net …

“I would like to bring art to improbable places, create projects so huge with the community that they are forced to ask themselves questions.” – JR, Beaux Arts Magazine

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Eythor Bender is the CEO of Berkeley Bionics, which augments humans with wearable, powered and artificially intelligent devices called exoskeletons or “wearable robots.” User of the HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) can carry up to 200 pounds for hours and over all terrains. eLEGS, an exoskeleton for wheelchair users, powers paraplegics up to get them standing and walking.

Bender has fostered innovation with bionic and orthopedic technologies throughout his career, taking them from unconventional approaches to sustainable, FDA-approved products that help individuals participate in their community. Such was the case with the boomerang-shaped prosthesis Cheetah Flex-Foot by Ossur, worn by the history-making bilateral amputee Oscar Pistorius. Bender’s team fought for, and won, Pistorius’ right to compete in the Olympics.

“Seriously, everyone: a soldier just walked onto the #TED stage wearing a functional exoskeleton.”
@hodgman

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Declaring that, “We can lead self-sustaining lives without sacrificing our standard of living,” Marcin Jakubowski believes that only by opening the means of production can we achieve abundance for all. Though he has a Ph.D. in fusion physics, he became dissatisfied with its remoteness, and turned back to the earth as a farmer and social innovator.

He is the founder of Open Source Ecology, which is creating the Global Village Construction Set — the blueprints for simple fabrication of everything needed to start a self-sustaining village. At Factor e Farm in rural Missouri, he’s been successfully putting those ideas to the test.

“It’s not reinventing the wheel; it’s open-sourcing the wheel.”
Julia Valentine, farmer, in The Atlantic

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