Art
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Background: In the early 2020s, the appeal of short (< 1 minute) videos became widespread, with TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and other services vying for market share. (Surprisingly, the earliest major entrant into this genre, Vine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)), completely failed and was shut down in 2017). The Issue: Unfortunately, the popularity of “bite-sized” videos has…
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Background: Every year, tens of millions of coloring books are sold to children and adults alike. The Issue: Filling in a coloring book can be quite a time-consuming process. Even with frantic scribbling and thick markers, it’s a slow process to fully color even a single page in a coloring book (Figure 1). Proposal: Thanks…
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Background: Most musical instruments are capable of playing more than one note a time. This is typically referred to as a “chord.” The Issue: Unfortunately, the list of chords is relatively small and well-understood (Fig 1): once music students learn them, they won’t have any more aspirational chord-learning goals, and will surely become demoralized. Proposal:…
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Background: Thousands of hours of food-themed television shows exist. Not all of these are strictly utilitarian “how to cook” shows, either—many consist of a charismatic host going from country to country and describing the fine tastes of exotic foods. The issue: This is a bit strange, isn’t it? Television is completely incapable of conveying taste,…
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Background: In many movies and books, a financial amount is discussed at some point. For example, a character may remark that a heist “could be worth 100,000 florins” or “the estate had fallen on hard times, and now generated only 576 denarii annually.” The issue: Is the amount discussed above a lot of money? Or…
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Background: Art museums often display a wide variety of pieces. Some art pieces may be considered to be pretentious or otherwise without merit. Unfortunately, currently there is no way to express that displeasure in an actionable form. Proposal: Art museums should sell two categories of ticket: a regular-priced general admission ticket (Figure 1), and a…
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Background: Copyright laws are generally over 100 years from the creation of a work. For example, a book written in 2020 will not be part of the public domain until after the year 2120. The issue: But if extending copyright so long is good, why is it that we allow it to expire at all?…
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Background: People often don’t pay much attention to movies, preferring to play on their cell phones while the movie runs in the background. (After all, if you miss an important scene, you’ll can always rewind and watch it again.) The issue: This lack of dedication to the cinematic arts is a phenomenon that movie directors…
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Background: Looking out to sea from most coastal locations results in the same view: a featureless horizon of sky and sea. But we can fix that with modern construction techniques! Proposal: Let’s improve those boring ocean views by adding silhouettes of distant cities and monuments (Figure 1). This way, when you look out into the…
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Background: Something that is difficult to obtain tends to be appreciated more than something that is easy to obtain. For example, people rate the same wine more highly when it has an expensive price tag. We can use this information to design a new style of art museum that will be a huge hit with all…
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