TED Talks Daily
What will the future of art look like? A visual effects artist and a curator answer | Rob Bredow and Nora Atkinson
06 Sep 2025
How will AI and new technology change art? Visual effects artist Rob Bredow, known for his work on Star Wars, and curator Nora Atkinson, who brought Burning Man to the Smithsonian, dive deep into the future of creativity, trading behind-the-scenes stories that show how to blend stop‑motion, LED walls and algorithms in art — while still keeping the soul in the work. (This conversation is part of “TED Intersections,” a series featuring thought-provoking conversations between experts navigating the ideas shaping our world.)For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Our original series, TED Intersections, is back for a third season. The show features unscripted conversations between speakers and experts taking on subjects at the intersection of their expertise.
With the advent of AI and rapidly changing new technologies, what will the future of art look like? In this first Intersections conversation of season three, craft curator Nora Atkinson sits down with visual effects artist Rob Bredow to answer this question.
Rob, known for his work on fan-favorite movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and Nora, who brought Burning Man to the Smithsonian, dive deep into the future of creativity, their love of new tech, and how they keep the human soul in their work.
Most artists, I think, our first reaction, my first reaction was like, well, that seems like a really bad idea. I don't want a machine taking over my job. And then when you start using it, you realize like, oh, okay, I'm very safe. The machine can't do what I can do, but actually it does help me with this one part here. And then you start finding little parts of the workflow that it helps you.
Then it becomes a tool like, you know, a better paintbrush. At that point, we've achieved something that's actually can have a really nice benefit, I think. How do you see, like, in the space that you're in, in museums, in curation, how do you see art that has AI used as one of the tools in it? Do you see it making its way in?
Is it going to be 10 or 20 years down the line because it's going to be something that gets considered art much later in the scheme of things?
There's a lot of work being done that's using AI either as the main focus of the work or at least as part of the production of the work. And I think it's unfortunate right now that there are very few people who've made it into the public eye in that realm. Right. I hope that a lot more of those barriers get broken down.
I think in part there's also the sort of gloss of the new technology and people are using it the way it's supposed to be used. But all of my favorite work typically is when people get to the point with the technology that they start to try to break it. And that's what I'm really looking forward to seeing.
Yeah, that'll be really interesting. And our uses of AI tend to be more about trying to get it to do what we need it to do, right? Because our process is very artistic, but it's very commercial as well. We're doing a lot of work. We're doing a lot of shots in a row. We're telling a cohesive story. So we always need a lot of control.
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