OK Go Delivers TED Talk: How To Find A Wonderful Idea, Band To Tour North America This Summer

Last month, OK Go delivered a TED Talk at the prestigious conference in Vancouver, BC. Singer/director Damian Kulash, Jr. explained the band's unique creative approach, shedding light on the process behind their extraordinarily innovative music videos.

Eschewing the traditional slideshow format, the talk itself embodied the infectious spirit of OK Go, and was bookended by the band playing acoustic renditions of "This Too Shall Pass" and "The One Moment" in synch with the songs' iconic video clips, the first featuring an enormous Rube Goldberg Machine, and the second a mind-blowing slow motion choreography. The talk earned a rare standing ovation from the packed opening-night audience, and curator Chris Anderson joined the band on stage to exclaim, "You've reinvented the TED talk!"

On Friday, the 18-minute talk, "How To Find a Wonderful Idea," was posted on the TED's website (watch it HERE), and over the weekend it quickly spread globally, racking up nearly 100,000 views per day.

OK Go shared the 2017 TED stage with an ultra-elite group of luminaries, including Elon Musk, Serena Williams, and Pope Francis (by satellite), and the band gave their unusual performance at the conference's highly-anticipated opening night event, which was simultaneously broadcast to cinemas in 20 countries as part of TED Cinema Experience.

This summer, OK Go will hit the road for a run of North American live dates and festival appearances, including, Firefly Music Festival, ID1OT, and Tinnabulation Music Festival. A complete list of live dates and ticket information can be found HERE.

In February, OK Go was honored with their third Grammy® Award nomination, one in a string of awards the band has earned for their most recent videos. The latest clip, "The One Moment" (see it HERE), captures, in mind-bending slow motion, over 300 events which occurred in a mere 4.2 seconds of real time. The clip, directed by the band's singer Damian Kulash, Jr. was recently honored with the UK's most prestigious design honor, a D&AD Award.

The preceding video, a choreography shot in zero gravity for the song "Upside Down & Inside Out" (see it HERE), received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Visual Art, was nominated for the Grammy® for Best Video, and received multiple nods at the 2016 Cannes Lions Awards, including Silver in Film and Bronze in Film Craft. The clip was directed by Damian Kulash, Jr. and Trish Sie.

Both songs are from the band's latest album, Hungry Ghosts (Paracadute/BMG).

About OK Go

Singer and video director Damian Kulash, Jr. and bassist Tim Nordwind met at summer camp in 1987, and a decade later they formed OK Go. With Dan Konopka as drummer and Andy Ross as guitarist and resident computer programmer, they've built a unique career at the intersection of music, visual art, technology, and science, emerging at the forefront of a class of artists whose 21st-century brand of experimental creativity dissolves the traditional boundaries between disciplines.

"When our band started, music and art were actually different things," says Kulash. "Musicians made plastic discs and artists made objects for galleries. Now we all make ones and zeros, so the categorical distinctions don't make much sense anymore."

OK Go have collaborated with dance companies and tech giants, cosmonauts and Muppets, scientists and entrepreneurs. Their videos have been encoded on strands of actual DNA. They've penned New York Times op-eds and testified before the US Congress, and they were President Obama's selection to perform at his 50th birthday party.

OK Go received The Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Visual Art, and they've been honored with a Grammy, three MTV Video Music Awards, eleven Cannes Lions, a CLIO, three UK Music Video Awards, two Webby Awards, and have had their work presented at The Guggenheim, MoCA, LACMA, The Hirschhorn, The Hammer Museum, and Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture.

To post a comment, you must register and login.