The Art of Time Travel

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

A tip from writer Kate Donnelly led us to Japanese photographer Chino Otsuka, who has seemingly done the impossible and traveled back in time. Her photo series, “Imagine Finding Me” (collected by museums from all over the world), inserts her present adult form into photos taken of her decades-younger self. The beauty comes from Otsuka’s expert Photoshop manipulation and different, natural poses that make the …

Bike Tracks

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

Julian Smith’s “Techno Jeep”—in which he and a group of friends performed a rhythmic jam live only using actual sounds from a Jeep—became a viral hit on YouTube in 2009. In a similar vein, composer Johnnyrandom kicks it up a notch by sampling sounds only from a bicycle, creating a more ambient, harmonic track titled “Bespoken.” From using an EBow on derailleur cables to hitting …

Twitter’s Literary Side

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

The ubiquitous social media platform Twitter is mostly known for short quips, the occasional gaffe or nugget of wisdom. However, author Teju Cole is bringing a more thoughtful, literary tone—all in under 140 characters—with his Twitter-based short story. Cole reached out to friends and followers for help, asking each person to tweet lines of the story, which he then chronologically retweeted to build the full …