Adrian Belew Presents the Fine Art of Making Guitar Noise — Past, Present, and Future

in Music | March 18th, 2013

Since 1989, the Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val has been “devot­ed to mak­ing the human­i­ties a vital and vibrant ingre­di­ent of dai­ly life.” A quick perusal of their site should con­vince you of their seri­ous­ness. The most recent line­up fea­tures a lec­ture on Josephine Bak­er and Eva Per­on, a his­to­ry of the ban­jo, and three Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois pro­fes­sors dis­cussing the first book-length aca­d­e­m­ic study of Mad Men.

But while the focus of CHF may be schol­ar­ly, the fes­ti­val is not all lec­ture-based. In the sum­mer of 2011, gui­tarist Adri­an Belew appeared on a pan­el enti­tled “The His­to­ry and Future of Gui­tar Noise.” Musi­cians out there will like­ly know Belew’s name, but for those who don’t, he was an inte­gral part of prog-rock giants King Crim­son, played with Frank Zap­pa, the Talk­ing Heads, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, and has made a name for him­self as one of the most unique elec­tric play­ers of the past sev­er­al decades (ref­er­ence his solo below, for exam­ple, at 2:20, in a 1978 live per­for­mance of Bowie’s “Jean Genie”).

In the video at the top of the page, see Belew in con­ver­sa­tion with host Stu­art Flack and a live audi­ence. He talks the his­to­ry of Fend­er guitars—his instru­ments of choice until he start­ed play­ing the Park­er Fly he holds on stage. He dis­cuss­es his cur­rent effects set­up, and the influ­ence of effects pio­neer Jimi Hen­drix on his play­ing. But more than just gui­tar noise, Belew talks about, and demon­strates, the phys­i­cal­i­ty of his play­ing, and the ways that he adapt­ed the instru­ment as an exten­sion of his body.

Belew’s phys­i­cal own­er­ship of the gui­tar makes him a fas­ci­nat­ing play­er to watch, and lis­ten to. He respects the shred­ders who prac­tice six­teen hours a day in their bed­rooms, and yet Belew’s affec­tion lies with play­ers like Jeff Beck, “the guys who make it sound like a voice.” Whomev­er he’s played with, and what­ev­er tech he uses, Belew makes gui­tars sing, in weird elec­tric tones no voice could match. The con­ver­sa­tion above is a treat, but if you’re anx­ious to hear what Belew sounds like late­ly, watch his instru­men­tal per­for­mance of “Dri­ve” (below), a com­po­si­tion built of lay­ers upon lay­ers of looped “noise” and Belew’s indi­vid­ual chordal phras­ing, bends, fin­ger tap­ping, and vibra­to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Watch Phish Play the Entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light(1996)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Free: Download Dan Brown’s Bestseller, The DaVinci Code, Until March 24

in Books, e-books | March 18th, 2013

DaVinciCodeI’ll be the first one to admit it, The DaVin­ci Code isn’t exact­ly an easy fit on a site that promis­es to talk about “the best cul­tur­al media” out there. But Dan Brown’s 2003 mys­tery nov­el has sold north of 80 mil­lion copies and now finds itself trans­lat­ed into 44 lan­guages. And the Lou­vre fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the book’s plot. That gives it some cul­tur­al cred, no? Okay, maybe not! Any­way, to cel­e­brate the 10th anniver­sary of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion, Dou­ble­day has decid­ed to give away copies of the best­seller through March 24, mak­ing the book avail­able as a free down­load on mul­ti­ple ebook plat­forms: Ama­zon, Apple iBook­store, Barnes & Noble, Google, Sony Read­er, and Kobo. Accord­ing to Gal­l­ey­cat, the down­load will include “the pro­logue and first chap­ter of Infer­no, Brown’s upcom­ing nov­el.”

Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a weight­i­er read, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks for the Kin­dle, iPad and Nook

H/T Medi­a­bistro

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The Rise of Webcomics: PBS’ Off Book Series Explores the Emergence of New Popular Art Form

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | March 18th, 2013

I’m a paper loy­al­ist by age and incli­na­tion. I don’t begrudge those who do the bulk of their read­ing dig­i­tal­ly, I just pre­fer the famil­iar­i­ty and object-ness of the print­ed page. As a lover of comics and graph­ic nov­els, my brick and mor­tar needs are more than met by the com­par­a­tive wealth of indie shops and fes­ti­vals here in New York City, as well as its belea­guered pub­lic library sys­tem.

I could­n’t help notic­ing, though, that many of the new­er titles I favor got their start online. The pro­po­nents of the form who dis­cuss the Rise of Web­comics for PBS’ Off Book series make a com­pelling case for explor­ing that realm a bit more ful­some­ly.

Many artists who put their stuff up on the web ben­e­fit from the imme­di­a­cy of the act and the—theoretically—larger audi­ence. But pub­lish­ing in this for­mat also opens it up for Sam Brown and Andrew Hussie to cre­ate a large body of work based on read­er sug­ges­tions. Hussie takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti plat­form pos­si­bil­i­ties. Lucy Knis­ley, no stranger to edi­to­r­i­al refine­ment in a more tra­di­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion mod­el, gives her mon­sters of the id free rein online. And Nick Gure­witch’s Per­ry Bible Fel­low­ship (though he yanked a cou­ple of them offline to “make the book more spe­cial”) is the ves­sel into which his tor­rent of hilar­i­ous, dis­so­cia­tive ideas flows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Gold­en Age Comics

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

The Art of Illus­tra­tion: Four Illus­tra­tors Intro­duce You to the Awe-Inspir­ing State of Their Art

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite web­com­ic (until now the only one she read) remains Hyper­bole and a Half.

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Are You Ready for the Return of Lost Species?: Stewart Brand on the Dawn of De-Extinction

in Biology, TED Talks | March 18th, 2013

The Earth is los­ing life forms at a dis­turb­ing rate. The biol­o­gist Edward O. Wil­son has esti­mat­ed that at least 27,000 species per year are dis­ap­pear­ing from our plan­et. That’s an aver­age of 74 species a day, or three every hour. Researchers warn that if we stay on this track, the Earth will enter its sixth mass extinc­tion–the first since the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

With ani­mal and plant habi­tats being crowd­ed out by a human pop­u­la­tion that has passed the 7 bil­lion mark and is grow­ing at a rate of 70 mil­lion peo­ple per year, sci­en­tists attempt­ing to stem the tide of extinc­tion have their work cut out for them. The vast major­i­ty of efforts, of course, are aimed at pre­serv­ing endan­gered species and mak­ing sure more species do not become endan­gered. But one man is spear­head­ing a bold project to actu­al­ly bring back species we have already lost.

Stew­art Brand first came to noto­ri­ety in the 1960s, as one of Ken Kesey’s Mer­ry Pranksters and as the cre­ator of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log. In 1996 he co-found­ed the Long Now Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to fos­ter­ing long-term think­ing in our accel­er­at­ing cul­ture, with its “patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span.” One of Brand’s pet projects at Long Now is Revive & Restore, a pro­gram to coor­di­nate genet­ic research into bring­ing back present­ly extinct species. Brand spoke about the project (see above) on Feb­ru­ary 27 at a TED con­fer­ence in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia.

Revive & Restore’s first project is to bring back the pas­sen­ger pigeon, a bird that died off in 1914 but was once so abun­dant that migra­to­ry flocks in North Amer­i­ca would dark­en the sky. The pas­sen­ger pigeon was cho­sen as the ini­tial project because it is bet­ter-known than many extinct species and because the bird’s DNA (tak­en from muse­um spec­i­mens) has already been sequenced. But Brand promis­es that the pas­sen­ger pigeon is only the begin­ning. “The fact is,” he says, “humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. We have the abil­i­ty now, and maybe the moral oblig­a­tion, to repair some of the dam­age.”

Passenger Pigeon Audubon .jpg

Pas­sen­ger Pigeon (Ectopistes migra­to­rius) by John James Audubon, 1824. Water­col­or, pas­tel, graphite, gouache, black chalk and black ink on paper. The image depicts a behav­ior known as “billing,” in which one bird shares food by regur­gi­tat­ing it into the bill of anoth­er. The male, with it’s more col­or­ful plumage, is shown stand­ing on the low­er branch, with the female up above.

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The Life and Controversial Work of Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe Profiled in 1988 Documentary

in Photography, Television | March 18th, 2013

In March 1988, the BBC’s Are­na turned its lens toward pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. The tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series had already spent well over a decade cul­ti­vat­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for cov­er­ing every­thing—Super­man, Philip K. Dick, the fall­en Sovi­et empire, the Ford Cortina—but some view­ers must still have felt a bit star­tled by the choice of such a con­tro­ver­sial artist, let alone by how mild and non-threat­en­ing he ulti­mate­ly seems. Map­plethor­pe had made his name both in por­trai­ture, espe­cial­ly of musi­cians, and in high­ly charged erot­ic imagery. This lat­ter cur­rent in his work, did not, of course, please every­body. By the time the Are­na pro­file aired, Map­plethor­pe, suf­fer­ing from AIDS, would have only one year of life remain­ing, with the worst of the high-pro­file bat­tles over his artis­tic val­ue and/or “obscen­i­ty” still to come.

Though wary of extin­guish­ing the mys­tery of his pho­tographs by say­ing too much about them, Map­plethor­pe does reveal what sounds like an impor­tant ele­ment of his moti­va­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of the obscen­i­ty charges: “I want­ed to retain the for­bid­den feel­ing of pornog­ra­phy and make an art state­ment, to make some­thing unique­ly my own.” We see the man at work, and we hear a good deal more from him in an on-cam­era inter­view. Nov­el­ist Edmund White appears to pro­vide con­text and com­men­tary, as do sev­er­al of the peo­ple Map­plethor­pe pho­tographed, both those who sought fame and those who oth­er­wise avoid­ed it. Cov­er­ing Map­plethor­pe’s life as much as it does his work, the broad­cast nat­u­ral­ly includes a con­ver­sa­tion with Pat­ti Smith, not­ed rock­er and per­haps the pho­tog­ra­pher’s clos­est friend. For ide­al sup­ple­men­tary read­ing, have a look at Smith’s Map­plethor­pe-cen­tric mem­oir Just Kids, about which we’ve post­ed before.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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10 Free Stories by George Saunders, Author of Tenth of December, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

in e-books, Literature | March 18th, 2013

For writ­ers and seri­ous read­ers, George Saun­ders is any­thing but a new­com­er. Saun­ders pub­lished his first short sto­ry with The New York­er back in 1992, and his new sto­ries have reg­u­lar­ly debuted in the mag­a­zine’s Fic­tion sec­tion ever since. Over the years, he has gained the rep­u­ta­tion of being a “writer’s writer,” with authors like Tobias Wolff say­ing about Saun­ders: “He’s been one of the lumi­nous spots of our lit­er­a­ture for the past 20 years.” But despite his lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments, and despite win­ning the pres­ti­gious MacArthur award in 2006, George Saun­ders nev­er quite became a house­hold name until Jan­u­ary 6 of this year. On that day, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle with the title, “George Saun­ders Has Writ­ten the Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” a pret­ty bold dec­la­ra­tion giv­en that 2013 still had 359 days to go. Since then, Saun­ders has found him­self in the lime­light talk­ing about Tenth of Decem­ber, his new­ly-pub­lished col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. You can watch him give a read­ing at Google above, or make appear­ances on the PBS News Hour and The Col­bert Report.

If you’re not famil­iar with Saun­ders’ writ­ing, then we have you cov­ered. Below we’ve col­lect­ed 10 sto­ries by the author, all free to read online. Even bet­ter, the list fea­tures three sto­ries from Tenth of Decem­ber, includ­ing the sto­ry after which the book takes its name. All sto­ries from the new col­lec­tion have an aster­isk next to the title.

Relat­ed Con­tent

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

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The Zen Wisdom of Alan Watts Animated by the Creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone

in Animation, Life, Religion | March 17th, 2013

Alan Watts began pop­u­lar­iz­ing the teach­ings of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, and Tao­ism in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1950s. He taught at the Acad­e­my of Asian Stud­ies in San Fran­cis­co, wrote Way of Zen and oth­er best­selling books, gave talks on the radio (lis­ten here), and devel­oped TV pro­grams intro­duc­ing Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion. Don’t miss his 1960 TV pro­gram called “The Silent Mind.”

Watts died almost 40 years ago, but his lega­cy remains alive, part­ly thanks to his son, part­ly thanks to vin­tage videos cap­tured on YouTube, and part­ly thanks to peo­ple like Trey Park­er and Matt Stone — that’s right, the cre­ators of South Park. There’s not much infor­ma­tion known about them, but some­where back in 2007, Park­er and Stone pro­duced videos that ani­mat­ed (audio) lec­tures giv­en by Watts many moons ago. The top­ics deal with music, life, and philo­soph­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty types. Mean­while, the aes­thet­ic is dis­tinct­ly South Parkean, minus the out­ra­geous pot­ty humor, of course. The project is an old favorite of ours and today we decid­ed to bring it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

“The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet” by Robert Thur­man, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Added to the Phi­los­o­phy Sec­tion of our list of Free Online Cours­es

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

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A Gallery of Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs: Iconic Moments Briefly Animated

in Animation, Film, Technology, Web/Tech | March 16th, 2013

shining2_32677

Type “stu­pid ani­mat­ed gif”—or words to that effect—into your pre­ferred search engine and you’ll be reward­ed with an abun­dance of ger­mane mate­r­i­al.

Mean­while a search on “ani­mat­ed gif of Stan­ley Kubrick rolling in his grave” fails to yield any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.

Pity. I guess we’ll just have to imag­ine how the late per­fec­tion­ist and cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor would have react­ed to a gallery of his most icon­ic images, down­loaded and doc­tored into infi­nite­ly loop­ing, min­i­mal­ly ani­mat­ed snip­pets.

clockwork_27123

Per­haps I pre­sume. Per­haps he’d be pray­ing for some­one to rean­i­mate him, so he could haunt the realm of the late night cha­t­rooms, his every obser­va­tion and opin­ion punc­tu­at­ed with a lan­guid Sue Lyons lift­ing her head in Loli­ta, or a dia­bol­i­cal Clock­work Orange toast.

Admit­ted­ly, the longer one watch­es George C Scot­t’s Gen­er­al Turgid­son work­ing over a mouth­ful of gum, or Jack Nichol­son act­ing four kinds of crazy, the more tempt­ing it is to put togeth­er a cin­ema­graph of one’s own. That’s the high fly­ing term assigned to the form by artist Kevin Burg and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Beck who alleged­ly invent­ed (and lat­er trade­marked) it while cov­er­ing New York Fash­ion Week. To quote super­mod­el Coco Rocha, as they do on their web­site, “it’s more than a pho­to but not quite a video.”

Be fore­warned that it’s not a project for the Pho­to­shop new­bie. Maybe the instruc­tion­al video below just makes it seem so.  (Though if you’re look­ing for an instruc­tion­al video on how not to make an instruc­tion­al video, this is very instruc­tion­al indeed. If not, stick with a more straight for­ward, non-film-based how to. Stan­ley Kubrick, this guy ain’t.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cin­ema­graph: A Haunt­ing Photo/Video Hybrid

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Ayun Hal­l­i­day rec­om­mends Stan­ley Kubrick­’s “Paths of Glo­ry” in its orig­i­nal form.

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