video
Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
video
Art
Edward Hopper came of age with cinema. As an artist, he left a lasting mark on it
12 minutes
essay
Beauty and aesthetics
What does art do?
Good art, laced with irony, ambiguity and suspense, is not obviously political. That’s what makes it politically interesting
Vid Simoniti
essay
Subcultures
Life in the buff
Naturists believed nudity was profoundly beneficial to society. In order to spread the message, they took to photography
Annebella Pollen
video
Film and visual culture
With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy
9 minutes
essay
History
Freedom from liquor
Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering
Mark Lawrence Schrad
video
Film and visual culture
At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start
19 minutes
video
Art
Dizzying discs and obscene wordplay – revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 film debut
7 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Aristotle goes to Hollywood
Today, the ancient Greek storyteller would be winning Oscars. To learn how, turn to the Poetics, his masterwork on writing
Philip Freeman
video
Physics
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface
4 minutes
video
Physics
This is not an animation: the spectacular sight of magnets meeting a metallic liquid
5 minutes
essay
Film and visual culture
The problem with ‘han’ 한 恨
Korean culture is characterised by an untranslatably profound sorrow and regret. Or is that just another stereotype?
Minsoo Kang
video
Biology
How insects become airborne, slowed down to a speed the human eye can appreciate
8 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
The art of the plot twist
Some twists infuriate; others are brilliant. But they both use the surprise story as a self-exploding confidence game
Vera Tobin
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Who, exactly, authored this AI-generated spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo?
5 minutes
video
Biology
Peering into the eerie world of plankton reveals a variety of vital creatures
3 minutes
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Film and visual culture
A Palme d’Or-winning animation toys with the way our eyes perceive light
5 minutes
essay
Film and visual culture
Fear not
You might think that horror movies are a delicious, trashy pleasure. But watching them has surprisingly wholesome effects
Mathias Clasen
video
Biology
Witness the majesty of moths taking flight at 6,000 frames per second
5 minutes
video
Architecture
A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong’s high-rises is an awesome meditation on urbanity
9 minutes
video
History of technology
Remarkable historical footage is locked behind paywalls. It’s time to set it free
4 minutes
essay
History of technology
Pixel: a biography
An exact mathematical concept, pixels are the elementary particles of pictures, based on a subtle unpacking of infinity
Alvy Ray Smith
video
Film and visual culture
A series of animated illusions illustrates how we project depth on to flat surfaces
8 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Shoddy filmmaking meets the miracle of life in a police training film turned cult classic
11 minutes