From our 2016 release "BLACKERFACE x BLACKERFACE"

The first billiard balls that weren't made of ivory were made by John and Isaiah Hyatt, ca. 1869. The first billiard balls that weren't made of ivory were made of Parkesine, hardened nitrocellulose; if you've worked as a projectionist, or seen the 5th act of Inglorious Basterds, you probably know why that was not a good idea.

If neither of those conditions obtain, then I'll give it to you quick: With a slight injection of kinetic energy--say, transmitted by one billiard ball barreling into another--Parkesine explodes, in a restrained but spectacular fashion. Supposedly, the Hyatts received a letter from a barkeep in some city in Colorado, an account of how the barkeep didn't mind the constant alarming peals. However, he was perturbed by how his patrons would react, reflexively drawing arms, dozens of sights set on the same innocuous object.

And he gave the account of how we would struggle to reconfigure each of the busted balls, each into two spheres, each with volume and mass equal to the original ball. We four bodies, occupying the same perilous position, downsight, ironsights forming a circumference around the point where we stand: Blackerface. Despite the futility of the act and the dangers presented, we grin, we are content in our purpose and our sense of purpose, and the only thing that could set us over the edge and spinning off into ecstasy is if you gathered round, beyond the gunners, outside the lines of fire, and just stood by.