INTRA
This spectacular animation imagines "The White Hole Theory," where a black hole led to the Big Bang.
Video
A collection of 1272 issues
Autonomous weapons are coming soon.
A fictional video, suitably scary and real-seeming, suggests what's coming next: autonomous weapons, i.e., killer robots. It was produced by a group that wants them banned.
Anti-semitism, racism, and square dancing.
The popularity of square dancing in America is partially thanks to Henry Ford's vehement hatred of jazz and Jewish people.
All I want from Santa is a diminished seventh.
Songwriters use somewhat exotic harmonies and diminished chords to make their holiday songs sound catchier and more "classic."
Bach at the Bowl and more.
One of our favorite annual round-ups, "Notable Performances and Recordings" by Alex Ross is a great guide to the classical music we missed in 2017, like Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach cello suites in the Hollywood Hills. Since the death of Luciano Pavarotti, Ma has been the
Afrofuturist symbolism in a Belgian rap video.
A music video for a coffee break: "Capture" by Baloji, a Congolese artist who grew up in Belgium, where he's exploring his roots and a love for old technology. From an interview in FACT: What’s interesting is that ten years ago every continent was fascinated
Perspective
Building facades cut up and woven into mesmerizing patterns.
A short film for candle lovers.
Some oddly jazzy narration and soundtrack for a short 1963 British Pathé documentary on candlemaking. "The candle comes from the dimlit recesses of our ancestral memory, and see what lovely things we've done with it!"
End of the Endless Summer.
Surfing just lost its filmmaker: Bruce Brown, director of The Endless Summer, has died at 80. Brown never understood why the film caught on so widely. One of the surfers from the film told the Los Angeles Times in 1991, “In the Vietnam era, everybody needed something like that. God,
Schoenberg is your future funk.
Spotify just named "serialism" as one of the year's "biggest emerging genres." And we're a little surprised? That something so Schoenberg-loving is in there? Jean Barraqué's "Le Temps Restitué," excerpted in the video above, is an example