Culture

Animaloscope, cinnomonograph, katoptiikum, lobsterscope, mutoscope, phenakistoscope, vivrescope, xograph�just a few of the turn-of-the-last-century's names for a strange new medium.

Old-fashioned telephone handsets and film cameras: gadgets that redeem the present by way of obsolete technology.

Chris Beckman's short film "oops" stitches together appropriated camera-drop pratfalls from uploaded videos to suggest a network of serendipitous mishap. Video after the jump.

The music sequencer Isle of Tune is like a simple little city sim game�for a magical land of loopy, tuneful fancy.

A quiet and surprising short animation that catches the flickering, secret splendor of a colorblind world.

It's not an ancient computer reverse-engineered in plastic blocks, but this Lego-inspired spoof of Call of Duty: Black Ops is good fun. Video after the jump.

A political stunt threatens science funding with a misleading take on the nature of basic research. It's too bad that we can't send the responsible members of Congress to the corner until they learn to behave.

On October 7th, 1930 � slender and bright; like a string tense and silent in anticipation of the purpose of her note � Beatrice Warde was introduced to the British Typographer's Guild. The speech she gave would change the way people thought about type for the next fifty years... and should be burnt into the flesh of anyone who is making a gadget to this day.

Along with advances in telegraphy, weaponry, and medicine, the Civil War seems to have touched off a revolution in box-making.

An animated reverse-history of communications media that goes from apps to web to video to clay to slate and chalk. In six seconds.