TED Announces 2019 Fellows

Inventive, creative and inspirational people chosen for this year's program

Celebrating its 10th class, the 2019 TED Fellows program welcomes a fleet of artists, inventors and entrepreneurs from a dozen countries and four continents. The honorees work across several industries and mediums, ranging from documentary photography and investigative journalism to urban astrophysics and space environmentalism—they come in to the program with work in progress and unanswered questions and bring the TED community along for their journeys. …

NASA Enlisted Artists to Envision the Future

In 1975, NASA began to conceptualize living conditions in space—hiring freelance illustrator Rick Guidice to bring the ideas to life. The resulting works actively shaped the public perception of life off Earth, and do so to this day. Guidice’s illustrations influenced synth-drenched soundscapes, runway shows and popular film—all while being quite literal guides for NASA’s potential population relocation plans (which could house nearly one million people). …

Why We Fixate on the Time Artists Spend on Their Work

Collectors, viewers and members of the press have long been fascinated with how long artists spend on each piece they create. Whether related to our obsession with the myth of the artist’s struggle, how we put a monetary value on a piece, or beyond, “it’s easier to value intensive physical labor over conceptual rigor when an artist’s thought process can feel so intangible and impossible to …