This film, created by production agency +1 Amsterdam, conveys ‘The Rediscovery of Wonder’ – TED’s payoff. It will be used for TED2011. Last year, +1 created the leader for TEDxAmterdam. When Chris Anderson, international TED curator (and NOT the writer of The Long Tail), saw it, he asked the agency to make this year’s flagship conference leader. It’s not as ‘out of the box’ as we could have imagined it to be (especially when made for TED) but attractive and skillfully made nevertheless. In fact, it does make us look forward to some fresh TED juice.

According to Wikipedia ‘Arabesque’ is an Islamic “form of artistic surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils or plain lines.” This human version – made as an intro for the TEDx summit in Doha, Qatar where 700 TEDx organisers from 120 countries are coming together – is a follow up on the living brain that agency We Are Pi created last year. It is to show the power of X – or the power of multiplying. What’s special about it, is that it’s a non-CGI production. And that’s why, when you watch ‘the making of,’ this piece really starts to grow on you. The production was done by Big Productions Paris and the chereography by I could never be a dancer. The beautiful rhytmic music is by Yasmine Hamdan.

This film reminded us of the animation quite recently created by CCCP for the Scheepvaart museum. Both are similar styled, both promote a museum, and both use the same voice-over. Apart from that the film is of course making the museum look quite attractive. And we didn’t know that Naturalis owns one of the world largest collections of organisms; 37 million items! The animation also gives us a peak in the future; who needs to visit a physical museum, when you can make edcuational films like this – which is kind of ironic. Created by Plus One Amsterdam.

TEDxAmsterdam has a special ethos; ‘Ideas worth doing’ – instead of ‘Ideas worth spreading’. It inspired We Are Pi to create this living brain – using the pay-off ‘Ideas United’ – together with choreographer Ernst Meisner, the National Ballet and Nova Dance College. The striking version of the Hokey Cokey was performed by Rutger Hauer together with Pigeon Horse Sex Tennis, the band from We Are Pi creatives Rick Chant and Barney Hobson. So that’s what you get when ideas get united; what a beaut of a film! Here’s the poster distilled from the film and the making of. The film was directed by Bill Tanaka (328 Stories) and Dance2Film.

We didn’t even know Amsterdam had a museum that is called the Amsterdam Museum. Apparently there is. And it opened a new department, called Amsterdam DNA. There you can experience a 45-minute 3D journey that takes you through Amsterdam’s history – presented in 7 short films that each tell a small story that represents an era. The journey starts in the 13th century and ends in 2001, with the capital’s first gay marriage. This is the trailer. And it blew us away. All films were created by production studio +1.