Culture

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.

When two chatbots discuss Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, it's Waiting for Godot meets the Turing test, in the stagecraft of Annie Dorsen. Video after the jump.

A story about cheating in middle-eastern camel racing�and by the way, the jockeys are robots. Buried lede, or simply a case of the unevenly-distributed future?

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.

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.

The bicycle rider always wants a car, Kevin Kelly reminds us in What Technology Wants. But the car won't make him happier�and if what technology wants is autonomy, it may be advised against the pursuit of happiness.

Nature as marketing campaign? That shit's fucked up. Video after the jump.

A hypnagogic animation of mathematical imagery prompts thoughts of spinning fractal symmetries and the history of life on Earth. Video after the jump.

A giant aircraft, a wandering writer's enigmatic death, and a cyborg with can-do spirit�today's hits in the history of science and technology.