In her first TED Talk, three-time Grammy-winner Lizzo traces the history of twerking to a West African dance called mapouka, traditionally performed by women to celebrate joy, marriage or as religious worship. When it was transported to America by Black women during the transatlantic slave trade, its ties to Black culture were erased and co-opted. But in Black communities around the US, big butts continued …
Astounding and unprecedented, Ian Cheng’s exhibition Life After BOB, currently on view at NYC’s The Shed until 19 December, champions art at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. In fact, there’s no exhibit quite like it. On one side of The Shed’s fourth level, a 48-minute narrative animation, titled “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study,” built using the Unity video game engine, plays. …
Artist Dasha Plesen (aka Daria Fedorova) is a Moscow-based artist with a love of microbiological mapping. Her work—comprised of petri dishes that house a number of molds, spores and bacteria in addition to household objects—captures a multitude of textures, colors and compositions. These striking microcosms play with the organic and inorganic, exposing a profusion of infinitesimal worlds, the decomposition process and the beauty that lies …
