The second day of TED2009 was somewhat more interesting. Oliver Sacks, probably most known (if at all) by the masses for his book Awakenings, upon which the synonymous movie was based. His presentation kickstarted the day focusing on syndromes that affect people with limited vision. One symptom is the creation or fusion of vision with imaginary constructs, sometimes geometric shapes, others tokens from one’s imagination or things that the person has experienced/seen recently.

The next talk was by Olafur Eliasson. To me, It was a bit of a disappointment: I found his presentation arrogant, fluffy and somewhat pretentious and his work since The Weather Project uninteresting.

Ed Ulbrich, from Digital Domain followed, talking about the work behind the recent movie (and specifically the protagonist) (The Curious Case Of) Benjamin Button. The work was good and I was impressed by how frank he came across regarding the deficiencies of his company in this field. I can’t say I was very impressed by the result, but it was a decent presentation. While watching Ed’s presentation I thought that the work presented in this video could more or less help in the automated creation of any actor’s face, somewhat simplifying the workflow process in the future. There’s clearly a lot to be done in the field and I’m sure that Digital Domain, along with others, will play their role in this.
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