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The 9th-Century Islamic "Instrument Which Plays by Itself"
In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers in Baghdad designed a mechanical, hydraulic organ that was made to play endlessly by itself.
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Mining the Unknown in Julian Barnes and John Berger's Essays on Art
Underlying Julian Barnes's and John Berger's respective new collections on art, Keeping an Eye Open and Portraits, is the notion that we're still figuring out how to engage with and portray the past.
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A Portrait of Rochester, New York, in 1,000 Photographs
A phonebook is a collection of data that encapsulates a specific place at a specific time. It’s a complete historical record, a city in book form. Rochester 585/716 wonders whether a photo book can be the same.
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The Pitfalls and Possibilities of Ta-Nehisi Coates's 'Black Panther'
When it was announced last fall that Ta-Nehisi Coates would write an ongoing Black Panther series at Marvel, with art by Brian Stelfreeze, people beyond the confines of the comics industry got excited.
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Reader's Diary: Daniel Hoffman's ‘Next to Last Words’
On its last day of existence — or, more particularly, on a day after its last day, when it reopened just for this purpose — the St. Mark’s Bookshop sold off all of its remaining stock at $2 a copy.
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Uncovering a Manifesto in the Blog of Visionary Architect Lebbeus Woods
From 2007 to 2012, the late architect Lebbeus Woods kept a blog that offered a peek into the mind of one of our most visionary contemporary creators.
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A Collection of Creative Cartographers' Madcap Maps
Originally intended purely as tools for navigation, maps have long branched off from this practical function to become an unexpected medium for visual expression.
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Reader's Diary: Maurizio Lazzarato's ‘The Making of the Indebted Man’
Debt is the crux where economics and morality intersect.
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In His New Book, Daniel Clowes Explores Our Urge to Change the Past
Imagine confronting past versions of yourself — would you recognize your present self in them or feel completely alienated?
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Parsing Anselm Kiefer’s Digressive Notebooks
Anselm Kiefer bears a burdensome relationship to the written word.
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Marcel Broodthaers's Teeny-Tiny Atlas
The work of Marcel Broodthaers balances erudite postmodernism and a straightforwardness so literal that it borders on humorous.
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Bright Illustrations Interpret Arabic Tongue Twisters
A witty composition of lively geometrical shapes that turn the Arabic alphabet into a story-like puzzle, Tongue Twister was awarded for its “original attempt to give visual form to tongue twisters and the difficulty of pronouncing certain words very fast."