Perhaps the world’s most famous magician, David Copperfield has entertained his audiences for years with his fantastic magic tricks and thrilling illusions.     1    . How did he do that?

The Statue of Liberty

A live TV event was staged in April 1983. A huge audience sat on Liberty Island in New York Harbour facing the Statue of Liberty.     2     and the statue was visible between the two columns. A white screen was raised and the statue was hidden from view.     3    , and to the amazement of the audience, the statue had disappeared again.     4    . Then, as the stunned audience watched, the screen was raised again.     5     .

【推荐1】Adrian Limani, now based in Serbia(塞尔维亚), has produced a series of innovative photographs which he believes give the same effect as ships in a bottle.

The 21-year-old has even put the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in an image of two light bulbs, while another image shows two birds scrapping in mid-air in a bulb.

“I just took some shots of light bulbs, without any effects, just straight shots with the camera,” said Adrian, explaining how he was inspired(激励) to create these images. “Then I suddenly discovered that I really liked that kind of form. I will continue with the bulb ideas because I like being unique.”

To make a really great image, however, is not easy. “Because you need to have a lot of ideas, a lot of imagination and it’s better to be a unique style of work that you share,” Adrian added. The artist said his ideas or inspiration(灵感) usually came from music, movies, books and his everyday life.

To create the images, Adrian combines two or three photographs. “When I have free time, I go out and take a lot of shots, in different places and from different views, so that I’ll have more materials to make something really good,” he said. After making each combination(结合), he would do two or three different versions of colors and then choose the best one.

A self-taught photographer, the young man said his passion for photography started with browsing wonderful photographs on the Internet. He began to do serious photography when he was 17 and “it was a great feeling.”

“People say to me, ‘Just continue what you’ve started because you do great work,’ and I really try to do my best,” said Adrian.

Now and then, a painter like Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso comes along and turns the art world on its head. But could the next big shake-up be the work of a machine? Some experts are a little worried that not even our artists will be safe from being replaced (代替).

A team of researchers from Rutgers University and Facebook’s AI lab have designed (设计) an AI (artificial intelligence) model. Like common AI, it can produce art. But unlike other AI, it can also actually invent whole new aesthetic styles (艺术风格) . Much of its artwork has already been highly praised by the public.

The art was first produced by the AI system. And it was then presented to human judges together with human-produced art. People in the online survey were not told which was the AI’s work. They were asked to judge and score each artwork. To the researchers’ surprise, the AI’s art scored a little higher than humans’.

Kevin Walker thinks it really difficult to find out the differences between them. “Imagine having people over for a dinner party and they ask, ‘Who is that by?’ And you say, ‘Well, it’s a machine actually’. That would be an interesting conversation starter.”

Of course, machines can’t yet express meaning in the works like human artists. Maybe there is still a long way to go. Human artists can at least hang their hats in that field for now.

【推荐3】Photographs are everywhere. They decorate the walls of homes and are used in stores for sales of different goods. The news is often filled with pictures of fires, floods, and special events. Photos record the beauty of nature. They can also bring things close that are far away. Through photos, people can see wild animals, cities in foreign lands, and even the stars in outer space. Photos also tell stories.

Reporting the news through photos is called photojournalism. At times photojournalists tell their stories through a single picture. At other times, they use a group of pictures to tell a story. Each picture is like a chapter in a book, which can do more than record the facts. It can also be a strong force for social change.

Jacob Riis was among the first photojournalists. He took pictures of parts of New York City where the poor lived. Riis believed that poverty (贫穷) caused crime, and he used photos to help him prove his point. A few years later, the photos of small children working in factories by Lewis Hine shocked the public. Hine’s pictures helped bring about laws to protect such children.

Hundreds of pictures may have to be taken in order to get one or two really good photos. It takes science to have the photo come out clearly and art to make a photo that has a good design and expresses feelings. Photojournalists make anactual record of what they see. A photo, however, can be both a work of art and an actual record. It can record an important event as a beautiful or exciting picture.

As historical and artistic documents (文献), photos can become more important over time. Today photojournalists still have their pictures appear in newspapers and magazines. They also publish them in books and on the Internet.