mary,

i couldn't figure out what is fascinating here, without the context of the original talks these seem like little more than doodles; form parading as content. and i also couldn't figure out what was "interactive" about it. is there some additional layer that i didn't see?

bob stein has a point - the BIGVIZ book is a great compendium of David and Ken's visual interpretations of the speakers at TED2008 but the "layer"that is missing is the ability to use the book as a user interface to audio/video clips from the TED archive.
Here is an example of the concept Thoughts Illustrated: MuralCasting - Improving ROA (Return on attention)

Great Idea, but I found it a little ugly... not so much the sketches, but the layout. I think there are some nice bits of ideas here... but PDFs tend to drive me insane after three minutes.... Something like this would be great if you could start to unfold it like origami or an advent calendar and photos/text/audio/video would be there when and if you wanted it... that way the drawings would act like a map of the event and you could skip all the dull parts of the trip and go straight to the talks you wanted to remember, or the ones you never saw... or a particular quote or concept as shown in the sketch... Amy Tan stating that a proximity to death might be helpful for creativity jumped out at me. I think I've heard her say that before, but I wouldn't mind hearing it again.

the video of how the pixel wall was made, points to something a lot more interesting than the thing that was made from it.
http://www.davidsibbet.com/david_sibbet/2008/03/audio-moblog.html