Common Senses: Collection 048

By Levi Brooks on

Sight

The Age of the Instagram Face How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.

The Elusive Concept of Ugliness Considering the relativity of beauty in human history

Deep Looking, With Vija Celmins A ravishing retrospective of art, both intimate and cosmic, is at the Met Breuer. Bring your nose close. Let it slow you down.

Sound

What Do Authority and Curiosity Sound Like on the Radio? From nasal New York accents to vocal fry, NPR’s anchors and reporters have long inflamed debates about whose voices should represent the nation — or just be heard by it.

Touch

How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real Midway through his career, the inventor of “cyberspace” turned his attention to a strange new world: the present.

Exoskeletons and the Elderly Exoskeletons aren’t just for super soldiers, automotive assembly workers and the paralyzed — they can assist the elderly in everyday tasks as well.

Taste

Food Brands Went Fully Off the Rails in 2019 — and Profited From Popeyes sandwich mania to brand Twitter accounts run amok, the dream of slow food seems farther away than ever before.

DNA-Sequenced Fungi in Our Food “But there’s nothing magic about milk or cows, there’s got to be something in milk that gives it the ability to make a million different things."

Smell

Maps of What Our Cities Actually Smell Like A group of brave people is sniffing their way around several global cities in order to create a series of "city smell maps."

hand drawing