How do you sum up the essence of a two-day festival of ideas like Uncharted?
Festivalgoers were exposed to, and engaged in, such a wide range of conversations, covering the gamut from robotics to food movements, from aging to cloning, from technology to language, and from race to equality… that capturing the spirit of the event, which also included many inspiring musical performances, as well as dazzling bay views from the Uncharted party deck, is near-on impossible.
KQED Arts did a good job in a story published Wednesday, writing: “Uncharted gave … ideas … an ecumenical airing. In the parlance of [Uncharted speaker] Brian Christian, it was full duplex — open channel cross talk like in a bar — not the reductive half duplex talk of one-at-a-time messaging, which is what a robot can handle. In such as atmosphere, easy problems may still be hard … But hard problems are at least easy to talk about.”
One festivalgoer said simply that the experience of Uncharted reminded her why she loved to live in Berkeley, a city known for people who are curious, hungry for knowledge, and not afraid to challenge the status quo.
Here we present a visual record of the event, with stunning photographs by Pete Rosos and Nancy Rubin, two photographers whose work we are always honored to publish on Berkeleyside.
We will follow up shortly in a separate story with a selection of tweets and photos that were shared during the festival itself — an effective way to showcase some of the highlights and glean what festivalgoers and speakers were experiencing, and saying, as the event unfolded.
We also hope to share video and/or podcasts of the Uncharted 2014 conversations eventually so everyone can enjoy them.
See the full program and speaker bios of Uncharted 2014 at www.berkeleyideas.com.
Meanwhile, Berkeleyside, which organized the festival for the second year running, is already looking forward to Uncharted 2015. If you attended, help spread the word about your experience so even more people enjoy it in 2015. Give us your feedback by completing the quick post-event survey, so we can make it even better next year (and enter to win a copy of the beautiful “LOCAL” book by Uncharted speaker Douglas Gayeton).
Finally, you can stay connected to Uncharted by connecting with the festival on Facebook and Twitter, and by signing up for occasional Uncharted email updates.
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