Culture

This making-of reel from effects producer Digital Domain shows how richly we've blurred the difference between reality and image-making.

Another advertisement from the Land of People Who Want to Be Toys. Video after the jump.

A laboratory in Montana that limns the bases of avian flight; a tumblr that collects evidence of our airborne technological fantasies.

The strenuous outsider scholarship of underground intellectual Steve Duncan charts the history of New York public transit, surreptitiously. Video after the jump.

Depicting skiers as gadgets of a kind, a resort's promotion reminds us of the clockwork appeal of toys, models, and virtual worlds.

Newsweek gives Julian Assange's "mansion arrest" the Martha Stewart treatment.

Gaming culture meets graffiti meets vernacular video insanity. Video after the jump.

In place of the brave new world of design fiction, artists like Olafur Eliasson invite us to enter the instant Utopia of our own imaginations.

Charlie Stross figures we're ready for a pendulum swing back in the direction of Sir Thomas More.

At five dollars for 99 pieces of the Darkest Classical Music ever written, it's easy to get into a symphonically nasty post-holiday funk.