Imogen Heap’s live music performance rounded out Wednesday morning’s session.

I am having a hard time coming up with just the right description for my second day at TED. After the high of Day 1, I would liken today’s experience to being on a roller coaster ride where yesterday felt like I was at the highest point of the track and depending on how the rest of the week shapes up, Day 2 felt like somewhat of a dip. Not entirely disappointing but just not as fulfilling.

It was a jam-packed schedule starting with the first session, “Connected Consequences” at 8:30a. Being the grumpy, non-morning person that I am, I sadly missed the first three speakers of the day. However all was not lost when I experienced the magical performance of Imogen Heap. Imogen is a musical alchemist. She uses a variety of instruments, tools and processes to arrive at her unique and ethereal vocal creations. Heap shared an experience she recently had, where a promotional initiative she instigated to get her new song out to specific media outlets somehow ended up on eBay for sale. Instead of getting mad, Heap rallied her fans via Twitter to up the auction price so high that no one could possibly buy it. The result was an amount of ten millions POUNDS.

There were four sessions in all, the second “Nature’s Challenge”, the third “Hidden Algorithm” and the fourth, “Curious and Curiouser”, with yet again, varying speakers from predominantly scientific and technology related fields. Few as there were for me, there were still some excellent standout talks beginning with advertising guru Rory Sutherland. When a speaker starts out saying “I guess I should start out by saying that I am actually part of TED Evil” you know you are in for some good laughs. Most hilarious was an example he shared of a renewal campaign for a cereal company. The cereal was a square. By turning it on it’s side, they “renewed” the brand so that now you could get the diamond shaped cereal which was obviously ridiculous but pretty much summed up his closing statement. “Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new.” (And it happens to be an aphorism as well.)

Ad guru Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group got big laughs for renewal of the Shreddies brand.

Beau Lotto was another speaker whose talk about perception was not only entertaining but seemed to suggest a running theme at the conference that what we see is not always what we think we see. He put the audience through an exercise of circles, patterns and deciphering of images. The result not only surprised many, it’s one of those constant truths that we forget we knew.

The topic of perception continued with another one of the speakers whose profession as a cognitive neuroscientist, ellicits the type of reaction that makes one believe the topic about to be discussed could be likened to some predictably boring medical journal. But, I was WRONG! Imagine my surprise when the young, vibrant and dynamic Rebecca Saxe not only compelled us all with her presentation of “the false intent to harm” theory and how our perceptions (yes that word again) as humans can change dramatically when presented with varying consequences. But merely presenting the examples and its effects was just the beginning. Saxe further shared how a process she is studying at MIT called TMJ can now be used to stimulate a part of the brain called RFTP, where our perceptions can possibly be manipulated and altered by a machine. Scary but quite real. Imagine the implications if her study is successful. Would you like to have your thoughts and perception altered? When asked if she thinks this process and her research could possibly become a reality in the undetermined future, Saxe replied “I hope they do but I think they won’t. It’s not called the problem of consciousness for nothing.”

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto asked the audience to identify which dots were alike on the black and white boards.

Another interesting speaker of the day was Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician who explained the origins and properties of symmetry. Du Sautoy dramatically started his presentation with a gunshot sound and an image of Evariste Galois (1811-1832), the French mathematician who died in a gunfire duel. Before he died, Galois made sure to tell his brother that he has made a very important discovery and that he wanted to make sure his notes were not forgotten. Those notes were his discoveries about symmetry. Du Sautoy shared family photographs of a trip to The Alhambra castle in Granada where the Moors had created the castle in perfect symmetry. Even the tile work of the ceilings, the walls and the floors proved Galois’ discovery and symmetry’s inherent properties to be true.

Swiss singer Sophie Hunger’s performance was most powerful when she “unplugged”

Finally the last sweet highlight of the day was a live performance from emerging singer Sophie Hunger. The Swiss artist provided entertainment with her haunting vocals, a small tribute to Michael Jackson and even a little unplugged session. Overall, while uneven it was an interesting day, happy to report that Day 3 was tremendous, more on that shortly….

TED’s late night after party featured a performance by acclaimed pianist Eric Lewis and digital artist Scott Pagano