Interactive WaPo story tests font legibility. AI will not disrupt books. “Possibilities of Paper” is an art installation featuring creative uses of paper. A tribute to the Zenith Space Command remote control. There is such a thing as “LiFi,” light-based wireless communication. VW is reintroducing its “magic bus” and it’s electric. Car owners are frustrated by the proliferation of technology in cars. Dang, we missed the National Week of Injection Molding. The James Webb Space Telescope spots a giant cosmic question mark. Why not participate in the annual Sheep to Shawl Competition? In “dip hop,” rappers lay down rhymes in sign language. Krispy Kreme has filled doughnuts with M&Ms, for some reason. All that and more in WhatTheyThink’s weekly miscellany.
Eric Standley in his studio. Photograph by Peter Means.
Artifacts that’s the word artist Eric Standley uses to describe his meticulously assembled layers of multicolor laser-cut paper. The designation is appropriate; Standley’s intricate artworks call to mind centuries-old global decorative motifs, from mandalas and the webbed arching of Gothic cathedrals, to Islamic prayer niches with organic, tangled carvings.
Eric Standley in his studio. Photograph by Peter Means.
These artifacts, which Standley draws, laser cuts, and assembles in his studio, seem to stem from the tradition of the great art historian Aby Warburg’s unfinished
Mnemosyne Atlas project, in which he sought to trace how ancient designs appeared and reappeared across cultures and epochs. With each line of paper first drawn by hand, the works are also an experiment in negative space, as each line creates a three-dimensional negative in the completed work.