Art
Sculptures of Light and Illusion
SAN FRANCISCO — In Stereo, an exhibition of new works by Bay Area-artist Chris Fraser at Highlight Gallery, plays with the ways our eyes perceive space.
AX Mina
AX Mina is an artist and culture writer exploring contemporary spirituality, technology and other sundry topics. She co-produces Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work, and economic justice, and serves on the board of the Rabkin Foundation.
Art
Import, Export, Art, and Asia
SAN FRANCISCO — Import/Export, currently on show at the Asia Art Museum, looks at Asia's impact on our everyday lives.
Opinion
Kung Fu Grandmas in Kenya
Kung Fu Grandma, a new short documentary by London-based director Jeong-One Park, explores a group of elderly Kenyan women who have studied kung fu to protect themselves from rapists.
Opinion
Instagram, Art, and Native American Narratives
On Twitter recently, #NotYourNarrative popped up, a series of hashtag statements largely from persons of color in the United States who wanted to challenge dominant media narratives.
Opinion
Walk Like an Octopus
"Octodad: Dadliest Catch" is a new video game coming out early this year that puts the player in the perspective of an octopus masquerading as a human.
News
British Library Releases 1M Images into the Public Domain
Earlier this month, Open Culture pointed to a big move from the British Library: the library is putting a million images into the public domain.
Opinion
Chat Bots and Big Data
OAKLAND, Calif. — With our data-driven lives, so much of what we do can be seen through the lens of algorithms.
Opinion
Keeping It Short: A Compilation of Telegraph Code Books
One of the fascinating aspects of studying the history of communications is how often we repeat the same strategies, and telegraph code is a great example of this.
Opinion
Traffic and the Human Condition
A few years ago, China's traffic jams of epic proportions started to make the news. Traffic on the ring roads in a city like Beijing is on par with, sometimes even worse than, that of Los Angeles's 405 or New York's BQE at rush hour. It seems to be an inevitable part of our lives, as this amazing co
Art
An Open Source Map for Conservation
LOS ANGELES — One of the loveliest sites on the web belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, a database of all of UNESCO's World Heritage sites, from famous locales like Australia's Great Barrier Reef to the lesser-known underground river of Puerto-Princesa, Philippines.
Opinion
Going Private: From WeChat to SnapChat
Around this time last year, Instagram caused a flurry after attempting to change its terms of service — what the Globe and Mail's Russell Smith called "an apparent move to appropriate and sell every user’s photos." Smith pondered how growing awareness of the public documentation of our private lives
Opinion
Curating African Art on Dynamic Africa's Tumblr
OAKLAND, Calif. — A few weeks ago, I looked at contemporary African photography thanks to a terrific series from Dynamic Africa, one of my new favorite blogs. A great example of Tumblr's possibilities as a site for curation, it is the work of Funke M., a culture curator and observer based in South A