Now in its third year, TEDxLSU returns to the LSU campus on Saturday with an impressive lineup of speakers. The theme of this year’s event is “connect,” or, as organizer Rebecca Burdette says, “how people and things interact or fail to interact.”
In the current issue of 225, the magazine looks at some of the notable TEDxLSU speakers. One is Cole Wiley, a sculptor who dreams—and builds—in digital. Based in New Orleans, Wiley has tapped into the creative potential of the Crescent City, launching a loose collective known as Makers of NO.
Wiley is bringing gesture-based controls, originally built for gaming, to the art world, and it has helped him discover new ways to manipulate and use technology and art in his own work.
“Bringing [technology and art] together has made both of them stronger in my work than they would be separately,” he says.
Other speakers featured by 225 include Brian Wolshon, a traffic engineer who will focus on how city planners can use that data to pinpoint problem areas that haven’t hit their radar yet. Also, botanist Karen McKee will share years of research about how ecosystems naturally respond to sea-level rise.
“I’ll be talking basically about what are the factors that go into determining how fast a coastal area becomes inundated by sea-level rise,” McKee says. “That leads into the differences between how naturally systems adapt versus how human communities respond to those same challenges.”
