Arts & Design

"Baba Yetu," the opening theme song from 'Civilization IV,' became the first song to be composed for a video game to win a Grammy at last night's Grammy Awards.

Ancient fissures left by long-absent water coursing over the Cydonian Plains of Mars? Dessicating petroglyph in Lascaux's trove of Paleolithic cave art? Or paint drying on an old board? Answer after the jump.

Want to know what the future of Vimeo is? Look at the Dick Van Dyke show. Bruce Sterling shows how to think about the future: start with the past. He's not the first to say it, but he puts it together with as much brio and precision as anybody.

Jonah Lehrer asks what happens in the brain to give music the kind of unique, uncanny power that Ton Koopman's organ performance exudes in spades. Video and quotes after the jump.

Trapped in a tiny infinity, unaware of its extent, the protagonist of math doodler Vi Hart's drawn dilemma faces a struggle as existential as it is mathematical. Video after the jump.

Tearing down tens of thousands of horoscopes, David McCandless seeks the heart of the Zodiac not in the stars, but in the word-clouds.

Reverse the polarity on sneaker piracy and globalization, and you get something like Chinese sneakers hacked into hover shoes. Video after the jump.

Video projection extends its pseudopods into the real world in the inspired work of the "anti-VJ" Aalto; video after the jump.

Enda O'Donoghue's oil paintings of digital snapshots explore the mixture of intense self-regard and ephemerality that characterizes imagery in the Facebook era�and even the process of painting them looks like a glitchy upload. Video after the jump.

"EACH FLUID OUNCE CONTAINS THE VIRTUES OF TWO OUNCES OF FRESH BEEF WITH ONE OUNCE SHERRY WINE." From the design blog codex99, a collection of early twentieth-century tonic labels illustrates the fickle nature of pharmaceutical progress.