A new statistical study of 8,000 musical compositions suggests that there really is a difference between music and noise: time-irreversibility. From The Smithsonian: Noise can sound the same played forwards or backward in time, but composed music sounds dramatically different in those two time directions.Compared with systems made of millions of . . .   Read More

Musicologist Phil Ford, co-host of the Weird Studies podcast, makes an eloquent argument for the preservation of the “Chants to Minimalism” Western Music History survey—the standard academic curriculum for musicology students, akin to the “fish, frogs, lizards, birds” evolutionary spiral taught in bio classes—in an age of . . .   Read More

.Long Now co-founder Brian Eno on time, music, and contextuality in a recent interview, rhyming on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information as “a difference that makes a difference” . .   Read More

Amazing wildlife photography by Kathryn Cooper reveals the brushwork of birds and their flocks through sky, hidden by the quickness of the human eye. . .   Read More

Slow clocks are growing in popularity, perhaps as a tonic for or revolt against the historical trend of ever-faster timekeeping mechanisms. . . .   Read More

As Vittoria Traverso writes for Atlas Obscura, Isabella Dalla Ragione brings art and nature together in her search for the forgotten fruits of Northern Italy. By combing through clues in ancient paintings and manuscripts, Ragione has revealed . . .   Read More

Artist and professor, Dornith Doherty, has traveled to Svalbard, Norway and to Sussex, England, among others, to document the ethereal nature of the seeds stored in these sub zero temperature vaults. The Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex now contains more than 2.3 billion seeds, spanning more than 40,000 different species. As reported . . .   Read More

Nathaniel Stern’s exhibition “The World After Us: Imaging Techno-Aesthetic Futures” invites us to fast forward to the future. Stern, a professor of art, design, and engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, started this project as an exploration into the technological eventualities of a post-human world. What happens to our devices . . .   Read More

Fred Lyon is a time traveler with a camera and tales to tell. At 95-years-old, this former LIFE magazine photographer and fourth generation San Franciscan has an eye for the city and stories to match. We showed photos from Fred’s books San Francisco, Portrait of a City: 1940-1960 and . . .   Read More

Sara Barnes has recently written a piece for My Modern Met detailing an immersive art installation, which explores human history through a sculptural narrative detailing humanity’s greatest paradigm shifts. The installation, entitled Memory Palaces, was created by artist and stage designer Es Devlin, as a chronological landscape of the evolution of human . . .   Read More