What's the minimum amount of information needed to simulate a human brain ? Do we need the whole, complete map (known as a connectome) before we begin the (computer, obviously) simulation, or some lesser knowledge threshold from which everything else…
Eighty-two years ago, when a young and struggling painter named "Henri Cartier-Bresson":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/22/henri-cartier-bresson-the-father-of-street-photography-would-have-been-104-today--2 first saw Martin Munkacsi's photograph "…
The mighty VISTA infrared telscope has captured an image of unfathomable properties. The beast of an image, weighing in at nine gigapixels (9,000 megapixels, which would print to about 23 x 30 feet) is "zoomable":http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1…
"A Winged Victory for the Sullen":http://www.awvfts.com/ is American composer Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, who normally forms one half of Stars of the Lid. The song, off of the duo's recent self-titled disc on Erased Tapes, is startlingly brie…
With ample space to prance around and puff their chests out, Obama and Romney got into it last night on Strong Island, where things got hot, quick. It was like Candy Crowley was emcee'ing a rap battle or something. We're talking Libya, gun violence,
What a relief it is that the xx, three years post-hype storm, has not become terrible. The extrapolation of dance/club music to sultry, ubersparse night-drive pop feels as perfect now -- or even more honed -- as it did in 2009. And in this world of n…
Last night, if you were watching the Vice Presidential debate, which despite its contenders sitting in chairs, was infinitely more captivating than the standing debate between the two Presidential candidates last week in Colorado. If you weren't live…
Have you ever play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? You know, the one where you name an actor, and then all your friends put their heads together to try and connect that actor's career to Kevin Bacon in no more than six associations. This involves lots of…
Fashion Week was just getting underway in New York. George W. Bush went for an early morning jog in Florida. Iraq shot down a Predator drone. The weather was still summer and perfect. Until 8.46 AM, September 11, 2001 was another morning in America.
The bots that are meant to police sites like YouTube and Ustream for violations of copyright are on a rampage and stirring up trouble across the Internet. Over the course of the past month or so, the streaming of a number of major broadcast events ha…
Music video, new album teaser (out Oct. 1, again on Warp), short arthouse film, or whatever, ""Until the Quiet Comes"":http://flying-lotus.com/watch-until-the-quiet-comes-short-film/ also happens to be beautiful and inspiring in a totally unexpected
In May, 2011 director Kathryn Bigelow (_The Hurt Locker_, _Point Break_, _Strange Days)_ and screenwriter/journalist Mark Boal (_The Hurt Locker_, _In The Valley of Elah_) had just wrapped on a meticulously researched script about the 2001 siege of a…
Turn off that unstoppable strain of now fully-schlocked music (try "this":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPgwF3G5i4k instead) and see the linchpin that binds many of Stanley Kubrick's iconic shots in this "fan-made trailer":https://vimeo.com/kogonada…
Wow, you guys. Great news. You no longer have to go to the beach this holiday weekend. That's right, you can save people the trouble of commenting on your horrible posture and translucent skin; instead, take that satchel of grillables and drag it int…
Megan May Daalder is a young artist in Los Angeles who is responsible for the Mirrorbox, a hands-on piece that uses two-way mirrors and a lighting sequence to allow two participants to momentarily blend their faces together in a genuinely arresting i…
If a man in a white coat put a camera-equipped helmet on your head and told you to trust everything you saw as reality, wouldn't you feel a little funny? And then wouldn't you be a little tripped out when they took it off and try to distinguish what
Nestled in the Alps in a pair of nondescript clapboard houses marked only with a set of Mickey Mouse ears, Disney researchers are up to no good. This is the home of Disney's Zurich lab, one of six that the nearly 90-year-old company maintains around
Chris Marker, who just died at 91 in Paris, played with reality in his documentaries, but he could not be accused of fabulism or plagiarism. He didn't pretend to be accurate or fair. Even his name was fake -- Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve chan…
Flying, spinning, falling. Repeat. Going to space in the early days seems even less like some graceful parting ways with gravity and atmosphere than in launch/orbit footage we see now. It looks more like riding an old rickety roller coaster, but the
Tom Tykwer (_Run Lola Run_, _Perfume_), declared in 2009 that he and the Wachowskis (The Matrix Trilogy, _Bound_) were working on a screenplay to adapt the bestselling novel _Cloud Atlas_ by British author David Mitchell. Besides winning numerous lit…
"True Thrush"'s concept is easy enough to explain: "Dan Deacon":http://www.dandeacon.com/ and Wham City compatriot/filmmaker/comedian "Ben O'Brien":http://showbeast.net/ filmed a 13 second scene, featuring the two of them. They then showed that scene…
Forty three years ago, and forty two years before the Space Shuttle landed for the last time, three men would travel to the moon, set foot there, take a few photos, and come back. To get there, they used the only vehicle that’s ever brought humans pa…
Put away the bath salts and indulge in this cosmic, hypnotic, nearing-middle-age postcard from electronic duo Peaking Lights. Directed by LEGS, the video turns an ode to their young son into a trippy ‘70s fever dream, envisioning parenthood as a kind…
