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Musical innovation tends to happen at the nexus of experimentation, play and happy accidents. As one Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student explains in this video, the overdriven guitar fuzz sound that’s become so familiar in rock and blues was ‘discovered’ via a tech malfunction. Taking viewers inside the Voxel Lab at MIT, where students can pursue almost any idea at the intersection of music and engineering imaginable, the short film surveys several projects being built in the space. With their creations ranging from a marble-powered ‘Rube Goldberg music maker’ to a spiked, sound-generating electronic glove, participants are given the rare freedom to build new instruments and generate novel sounds – and, just maybe, stumble upon the next big thing in music.
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Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
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History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
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Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes