"Blue Lines" is built around samples, some quite long, of older soul, reggae, and funk records.
The live musicians were augmented by electronic beats and samples, some apparently trigged by the keyboardist, Dan Bitney.
Some looked at microscopic tissue samples, some examined photos and video, and others looked at bugs.
Real Art Ways in Hartford will be host to a timely group exhibition about religion, while the Aldrich Museum samples some contemporary Pakistani miniature painting.
The feathers or other bird parts submitted are compared against a library of 620,000 bird samples, some gathered by Darwin and Audubon.
Confusingly, the song samples some vocals from Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek," which are digitally processed, though not with Auto-Tune.
Across the hall is an office filled with hundreds of cataloged, multihued hair samples, some donated by volunteers.
Even when something unbearably goofy happens (when, say, after the lyric, "And what you gonna do with all that beast?" he samples some growling animal, making an already dopey metaphor infinitely more embarrassing) Timberlake's comportment remains un-self-serious.
Beats and hooks on vinyl were transformed by disc jockeys, who set off the experimentation and technological escalation that make most current hip-hop a computerized playground of programmed beats and samples — some repetitious, many ingenious.
At the open house, as parents peered into classrooms decorated with students' finger painting and writing samples, some remarked in hushed tones that the school "looks better than the private schools".
Mr. Brinkman charges his way through jokes, Biggie Smalls samples, some R-rated language, "turntablism" (by an onstage D.J. named Mr. Simmonds) and cheeky video projections.
