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April 11, 2014 Andy Cush

Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue Tunnel — touted as the world’s oldest subway tunnel — closed to the public in 1861. In the 1980s, a man named Bob Diamond rediscovered the former LIRR passageway and began giving tours, but in 2010, the FDNY declared it unsafe and barred people from entry. Since then, Diamond has advocated for the […]

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April 1, 2014 Marina Galperina

Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City is a real place. Judge Dredd, Total Recall, Blade Runner, etc… They all borrow from what is, essentially, the world’s biggest, most compact projects, which were finally demolished twenty years ago, after two failed attempts by the Chinese government in 1947 and 1963. Home to 40,000 people at its height, Kowloon Walled City was […]

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February 11, 2014 Andy Cush

It’s a pillow. Well, technically, the part that looks like a bag of weed is a pillowcase, but I’m sure there’s a pillow inside it. It’s called the Giant Stash Pillowcase, and it’s currently funding on Kickstarter. Take a look. It’s also got a very clever pitch video. “Awhile back I decided to make a […]

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February 5, 2014 Andy Cush

The brilliant acoustic guitarist Kaki King is taking to Kickstarter to fund her next project, an audiovisual performance that will turn her guitar into a canvas for vibrant projections. A technique called projection mapping — which displays images on a particularly shaped surface, and only that surface — turns King’s guitar into a luminous, reactive […]

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January 31, 2014 Andy Cush

The Ototo, a DIY synth kit currently funding on Kickstarter, promises to turn any conductive object into a keyboard. Just plug an alligator clip into Ototo on one end and an eggplant on the other, and touching the veggie produces sweet, sweet synthy vibes. Watch the Ototo pitch video below. There’s all kinds of customization […]

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January 14, 2014 Andy Cush

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology analyzed the linguistics of tens of thousands of Kickstarter proposals over the year 2012, to find whether the words people use in their pitches impact whether or not they’re successfully funded. Their findings? You’re more likely to convince people to give you their money if you’re not a […]

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October 8, 2013 Kyle Chayka

Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten‘s newest project focuses on the cultural and corporate wars between bikes and cars. The international doc focuses on commuters already relying on bicycles for their daily commute — like 40% of Copenhagen. The film investigates the world-wide automotive production business, tracking its evolution into a multi-billion dollar industry that relies on […]

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Andy Cush

2×1, a forthcoming documentary currently funding on Kickstarter, takes its name from two places: two miles by one mile, the dimensions of Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood where it’s set, and the two distinct communities–Caribbean people and Hasidic Jews–that make up the area’s one whole population. Filmmaker Mendy Seldowitz, a Crown Heights native, hoped to get away […]

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October 7, 2013 Andy Cush

The Violent Femmes’ excellently snotty, acerbic songwriting doesn’t exactly scream “showtunes,” but that isn’t deterring Matt Williams and Gregory Victor, who are taking to Kickstarter to fund Hitting the Ground, a musical built around the band’s songs. Here’s what it’s about: Hitting the Ground is about a group of strangers — a drug-addicted rocker, a beauty queen with a […]

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September 26, 2013 Kyle Chayka

No matter how far smartphone technology may progress, we are still left wanting something more, like being able to charge your phone in complete wilderness. We’ve all been there, with a phone battery dwindling at “less than 10%,” unable to take that very important photo or waiting to tweet that perfectly composed string of 140 […]

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