Kung Fu Fighting, watercolour crystals, data visualisations of ancient texts and a geometric pattern font, right here in this edition.
Audio: Where did the stereotypical Asian riff come from?
Everyone knows that Kung Fu Fighting riff – nine notes and you're transported straight to stereotyped Asia – but it's not so clear where it came. NPR explores the origin story of the tune and how those nine notes became associated with China.
Art: Crystals painted in watercolour by Karina Eibatova
Austrian-based Russian artist and illustrator Karina Eibatova has published a series of finely detailed watercolour paintings of crystals, featuring an almost pencil-like quality in the renderings. I was similarly struck, unaware they came from the same artist, by her bird illustrations that are being turned into a deck of playing cards.
Big data: Sefaria connects and visualises ancient Jewish texts
Kind of, but not exactly, like a Google Books for Jewish law, Sefaria is a project that aims to index and catalogue the texts of the Tanach – the Hebrew Bible – and the Talmud – the Jewish oral law – which form the basis of Jewish law and tradition. It's a fascinating project aimed at enabling scholars and developers collaborate and explore new ways of teaching, learning and discovering the connections between these and other religious texts. It's especially fascinating to explore the interactive visualisation of the texts, which enables you to see which tractate of law draws on which books and chapters the most, and drill down to the actual texts.
Design: Ildikó Valicsek's modular patterns
For her master's graduation project, Budapest textile designer Ildikó Valicsek developed a modular system for geometric textile patterns, by layering combinations of five base modules. The results are a little too homogeneous for my liking, but her technique of building the modules into a font for layering is a nice touch.