Butt music: using AI to decode a Renaissance musical mystery | Em Blitstein | TEDxGreenville Salon
In her TEDxGreenville talk "Butt Music," Em Blitstein explores a bizarre detail in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights—sheet music etched onto a tormented figure’s buttocks. She uses this peculiar artifact to demonstrate how AI can assist in decoding historical mysteries. Blitstein trained a custom GPT model, “Butt Bot,” to interpret the music using historical context and geometry, ultimately creating strange, haunting soundscapes. Her talk blends humor, curiosity, and the creative power of human-AI collaboration. I believe in the power of creative content to shift perspectives and influence actions. My passion is helping businesses and individuals forge connections through clear, impactful narratives in a rapidly evolving world. With over a decade of experience in content marketing and strategy from the art world to the tech landscape, I now lead initiatives that integrate storytelling with AI and emerging technologies to foster meaningful engagement. As the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Sinch Mailgun, I leverage AI-driven strategies to enable authentic content and thought leadership. I thrive on writing, teaching and collaborating with forward-thinking businesses and creators. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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- 18:54Reimagining Economies through AI-Powered Innovation | Gary Shiffman | TEDxGreenville SalonIn his TEDxGreenville talk, Gary Shiffman explores the disconnect between Greenville’s impressive GDP growth and its lagging real wages, highlighting South Carolina’s rank near the bottom nationally. Analyzing over a century of economic plans, he reveals the city’s consistent prioritization of growth over wages. Shiffman warns that Greenville’s labor-driven economic path is outdated in an era of AI, where capital increasingly replaces labor. He urges local leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs to act now—by building innovation labs, launching startups, and recruiting AI firms. Greenville, he argues, is ideally positioned to lead the next generation of advanced manufacturing by focusing on building happy employees. I believe that small groups of creative and dedicated people change the world. I seek to work with and to empower others working to help make our communities freer and safer in a complex, coercive, and violent world. I have served in war and traveled the world, studied Economics human behavior, and worked at the pinnacles of power in government and in industry.I co-founded two AI companies when I saw an opportunity join behavioral science with AI innovations coming from computer science to empower those on the front lines of combatting coercion, fraud, and violence in the military, law enforcement, and in financial institutions.I love to teach, write, and engage with curious people. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
- 9:37We need ugly art — here’s why | MJ Chiao | TEDxUBCWhen we think academia, the comic book and comic form is usually overlooked as a piece of valuable literary scholarship. Comics are often presumed as not academic or critical enough to be a valid source of literary study, and if they are to be taken seriously only a certain kind of tragic, memoir style are considered worth analyzing. By arguing that ‘bad art’, ‘ugly comics’, or ‘juvenile fiction’ are necessary fragments of history to navigate the quickly developing world around us, MJ Chiao advocates for the comics form as a radical form of activism and social remembering. Ugly comics becomes survival. MJ Chiao is a fourth year English Literature student who is passionate about comics and graphic forms. With a love for teaching and writing, MJ wishes to challenge the status quo of English studies and academia to encompass the new medias and technologies of our everyday. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
