Short Film “Syd Barrett’s First Trip” Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psychedelic Experimentation (1967)

in Music | January 3rd, 2014

Every musi­cal era has its cau­tion­ary tales, and its vision­ar­ies. The six­ties pro­duced its share of them all, but also a hand­ful of bril­liant mis­fits who were insep­a­ra­bly both, all of them psy­che­del­ic pio­neers. Skip Spence, for example—the bril­liant found­ing mem­ber of Jef­fer­son Air­plane, then Moby Grape, who effec­tive­ly end­ed his career attack­ing his band­mates with a fire axe. Then of course, there’s the found­ing singer/songwriter of Pink Floyd, Syd Bar­rett, whose decline found him onstage, almost cata­ton­ic, with a can of Bryl­creem and a crushed bot­tle of pills called Man­drax drip­ping down his face. When Bar­rett passed away in 2006, most of the reaction—after the shock of learn­ing he’d still been alive—centered on the sequence of psy­chot­ic break­downs dur­ing 1967 that would leave Bar­rett changed for­ev­er. Spence and sev­er­al oth­er, more obscure fig­ures, had sim­i­lar­ly dra­mat­ic, and per­ma­nent, shifts in con­scious­ness, and of all of them the same ques­tion gets asked: was it the drugs?

Of course we’re ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the men­tal ill­ness­es or just exac­er­bat­ed the inevitable, but we’re also ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the music. It’s a worth­while, if some­what uncom­fort­able, inquiry that’s prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to answer. But I must admit, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the first incar­na­tion of Pink Floyd with­out Barrett’s heavy exper­i­men­ta­tion. The short film above implies a direct con­nec­tion and takes us to Syd’s psy­che­del­ic incep­tion. Sim­ply titled Syd Barrett’s First Trip, the first part of the film, “Gog Magog Hills,” fol­lows a clean-cut Bar­rett and sev­er­al com­pan­ions as they frol­ic in a field on LSD. As you prob­a­bly gath­ered, it’s his first time. Then the film cuts abrupt­ly to “Abbey Road Stu­dios,” to footage doc­u­ment­ing Pink Floyd in Lon­don after hav­ing just signed their first con­tract with EMI in 1967. It’s the begin­ning of the end for Barrett’s career and men­tal health, but the inau­gu­ra­tion of the band as mass-mar­ket phe­nom­e­non.

Accord­ing to the film­mak­er, Nigel Lesmoir-Gor­don, the film “just hap­pened…. It is an unself­con­scious film. It was not planned.” Of the ’66 footage, shot by his wife Jen­ny, he writes on the film’s IMDB page:

I shared the flat with some close friends from Cam­bridge, includ­ing Syd Bar­rett, who was busy becom­ing a rock star with Pink Floyd. A few hun­dred yards down the street at 101 Cromwell Road, our preter­nat­u­ral­ly cool friend Nigel was run­ning the hip­ster equiv­a­lent of an arty salon. Between our place and his, there passed the cream of Lon­don alter­na­tive society–poets, painters, film-mak­ers, char­la­tans, activists, bores and self-styled vision­ar­ies.

These are the char­ac­ters in Syd’s entourage in this “raw, unedit­ed footage,” which was orig­i­nal­ly silent, though many peo­ple have added music such as the new age‑y ambi­ent sound­scape in the ver­sion above. I hap­pen to think it’s a nice com­ple­ment, but if you find it intru­sive, turn the vol­ume off. The images, as the film­mak­er admits, are still “stun­ning.”

Via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

 

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Two Peter Gabriel Albums ‘Scratch My Back … And I’ll Scratch Yours,’ Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

garbriel sampler

Peter Gabriel’s cov­er album, Scratch My Back, came out in ear­ly 2010, and it fea­tured Gabriel’s quite orig­i­nal remakes of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Regi­na Spek­tor and oth­er major artists. Now comes the fol­low-up: Set to be released on Jan­u­ary 6, the new album,  And I’ll Scratch Yours, flips the con­cept of the pre­vi­ous album. This time around, artists like Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Paul Simon and Feist record some of Peter Gabriel’s biggest hits — songs like “Games With­out Fron­tiers,” “Mer­cy Street” and “Biko.” The albums can be pur­chased togeth­er here, but, hap­pi­ly, you can stream them online for free — but only for a a lim­it­ed time — on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Con­cert in Mod­e­na, Italy (1994)

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

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Chaos Cinema: A Breakdown of How 21st-Century Action Films Became Incoherent

in Film | January 2nd, 2014

If you read Open Cul­ture, you prob­a­bly love watch­ing movies. I’d wager, how­ev­er, that you don’t love watch­ing action movies. I don’t mean that you oper­ate at an intel­lec­tu­al lev­el far above any such pal­try enter­tain­ments; I mean that the craft of action film­mak­ing has itself declined. You’ve sure­ly felt that today’s big-bud­get spec­ta­cles of chase, fight, and explo­sion — Trans­form­ers, the Jason Bourne films, last few Bonds, the lat­est Bat­man tril­o­gy — don’t thrill you as did those of decades past — Hard Boiled, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Wild Bunch, Die Hard — but per­haps you can’t pin down quite why. Have action movies changed, you may won­der, or have I? Ger­man-born, UCLA-based film schol­ar Matthias Stork argues for the for­mer, break­ing down the cor­rup­tion of mod­ern action film­mak­ing in his video essay Chaos Cin­e­ma. “Through­out the first cen­tu­ry of moviemak­ing, the default style of com­mer­cial cin­e­ma was clas­si­cal,” he begins. “It was metic­u­lous and patient. In the­o­ry, at least, every com­po­si­tion and cam­era move had a mean­ing, a pur­pose, and movies did not cut with­out good rea­son.”

No longer. Where action film­mak­ers once “prid­ed them­selves on keep­ing the view­er well-ori­ent­ed” in time and space, they now throw dis­parate images togeth­er hap­haz­ard­ly, enslaved to “rapid edit­ing, close fram­ings, bipo­lar lens lengths, and promis­cu­ous cam­era move­ment,” trad­ing “visu­al intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty for sen­so­ry over­load,” leav­ing it to the sound­track to pro­vide a sem­blance of con­ti­nu­ity. Stork exam­ines the qual­i­ties and effects of this new style of “chaos cin­e­ma” in three parts. The first cov­ers the visu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of action sequences them­selves; the sec­ond cov­ers the defi­cien­cy’s pen­e­tra­tion even into scenes of dia­logue and music and the emer­gence of the “shaky-cam”; the third sum­ma­rizes and engages respons­es to the first two parts. Whether or not main­stream com­mer­cial film­mak­ing will ever cure itself and return to con­vinc­ing, coher­ent action rather than the impres­sion­is­tic “gen­er­al idea of action,” we now have a fas­ci­nat­ing diag­no­sis of the dis­ease. (For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Chaos Cin­e­ma, con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to Stork’s appear­ance on Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion, a favorite film pod­cast of mine.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

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

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Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Sing Country Versions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Levee Breaks”

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

They make an unlike­ly duo—the one­time lead singer of the hard­est-par­ty­ing rock band in the world and the soft-voiced con­tem­po­rary blue­grass singer and fid­dler. And yet some­how, the pair­ing of Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss makes per­fect sense, if not on paper then cer­tain­ly on the stage and in the stu­dio. They’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing for years and won five Gram­mies for their 2007 album Rais­ing Sand, which appeared on some of the most promi­nent crit­i­cal best-of lists that year. And Plant has gone on record say­ing that his work with Krauss per­ma­nent­ly altered his musi­cal direc­tion and helped him recon­nect with his own Eng­lish coun­try music back­ground.

Both Krauss and Plant get to explore sev­er­al Amer­i­can roots avenues in Rais­ing Sand, an album of songs by such lumi­nar­ies as Sam Philips, the Ever­ly Broth­ers, Townes Van Zandt, and Doc Wat­son. But in the videos above, the pair—backed by a coun­try band—mosey through two old Led Zep­pelin songs renowned for their thun­der­ous loud­ness and sweep­ing gui­tars. “Black Dog” (orig­i­nal here) begins with Jim­my Page’s unmis­tak­able intro riff picked out on a ban­jo while Plant goofs around and attempts a two-step. It feels like we’re in for a nov­el­ty act, but when the two start singing har­monies, the strength of their musi­cal bond is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent, even in what some might con­sid­er a butcher­ing of an icon­ic tune. Krauss takes the lead vocal in “When the Lev­ee Breaks” (orig­i­nal here) while Plant hangs back and strums a gui­tar. She turns the song into straight coun­try, and most­ly sells it, save the band’s thin, unin­spired instru­men­tal break­downs and gui­tar solos that only vague­ly recall the orig­i­nal. All-in-all it’s an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment in genre trans­po­si­tion, though I think we’re lucky to have been spared an album of Plant and Krauss re-invent­ing clas­sic Zep­pelin as con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­cana.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Milton Friedman & John Kenneth Galbraith’s Present Their Opposing Economic Philosophies on Two TV Series (1977–1980)

in Economics, Television | January 2nd, 2014

Do Mil­ton Fried­man and John Ken­neth Gal­braith debate in that great eco­nom­ics depart­ment in the sky? Both men died in 2006, after remark­ably long and dis­tin­guished careers as two of the most wide­ly read econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, yet I can only with great dif­fi­cul­ty imag­ine them ever agree­ing. Fried­man, founder of the free mar­ket-ori­ent­ed Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go “school” of eco­nom­ics, scru­ti­nized the world’s economies and found that a only min­i­mum of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion makes for a max­i­mum of free­dom. The Cana­di­an-born Gal­braith, who served on Har­vard’s fac­ul­ty as well as under four U.S. Pres­i­dents, saw things dif­fer­ent­ly, believ­ing in the neces­si­ty of a strong state to ensure sta­bil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and equal­i­ty. Both spent a great deal of time and ener­gy com­mu­ni­cat­ing direct­ly with the pub­lic, not just with pop­u­lar books and com­men­taries on eco­nom­ic issues of the day, but with tele­vi­sion pro­grams too. You can watch Gal­braith’s The Age of Uncer­tain­ty, which first aired on the BBC in 1977, above. Fried­man’s “response” Free to Choose, broad­cast on PBS in 1980, appears below.

The fif­teen-episode Age of Uncer­tain­ty and the ten-episode Free to Choose both come down to the teach­ings of their star econ­o­mists; you might think of them as extend­ed lec­tures, with quite dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions, on the caus­es and effects of cap­i­tal­ism. But both expand upon this base of con­tent with rich imagery, from a vari­ety of cre­ative visu­al­iza­tions (up to and includ­ing his­tor­i­cal drama­ti­za­tion) of Gal­braith’s words to Fried­man’s trav­els far and wide, from his mon­ey-dri­ven birth­place of New York City to the “haven for peo­ple who sought to make the most of their own abil­i­ties” of Hong Kong in search of real exam­ples of the free mar­ket in action. The styles of dress may look dat­ed, but the pro­duc­tion val­ue holds up, and the eco­nom­ic issues dis­cussed have only grown more rel­e­vant with time. Whether you believe the gov­ern­ment should keep a help­ing hand on the econ­o­my or keep its grub­by mitts off it, both series have a wealth, as it were, of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion in store for you. As bit­ter­ly as Gal­braithi­an sta­tists and Fried­man­ite lib­er­tar­i­ans may argue, sure­ly they can agree on the enjoy­a­bil­i­ty of qual­i­ty tele­vi­sion.

The Age of Uncer­tain­ty

  1. The Prophets and Promise of Clas­si­cal Cap­i­tal­ism
  2. The Man­ners and Morals of High Cap­i­tal­ism
  3. The Dis­sent of Karl Marx
  4. The Colo­nial Idea
  5. Lenin and the Great Unglu­ing
  6. The Rise and Fall of Mon­ey
  7. The Man­darin Rev­o­lu­tion
  8. The Fatal Com­pe­ti­tion
  9. The Big Cor­po­ra­tion
  10. Land and Peo­ple
  11. The Metrop­o­lis
  12. Democ­ra­cy, Lead­er­ship, Com­mit­ment
  13. Week­end in Ver­mont (part one, part two, part three)

Free to Choose

  1. The Pow­er of the Mar­ket
  2. The Tyran­ny of Con­trol
  3. Anato­my of a Cri­sis
  4. From Cra­dle to Grave
  5. Cre­at­ed Equal
  6. What’s Wrong with Our Schools?
  7. Who Pro­tects the Con­sumer?
  8. Who Pro­tects the Work­er?
  9. How to Cure Infla­tion
  10. How to Stay Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Fried­man on Greed

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in a Free Online Course

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Eco­nom­ics: Free Online Cours­es

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

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The Story of Einstein’s Brain: A Japanese Professor Tracks Down the Organ in a Bizarre Documentary

in Film, Physics | January 2nd, 2014

The 1994 doc­u­men­tary above, Einstein’s Brain, is a curi­ous arti­fact about an even stranger rel­ic, the brain of the great physi­cist, extract­ed from his body hours after he died in 1955. The brain was dis­sect­ed, then embarked on a con­vo­lut­ed mis­ad­ven­ture, in sev­er­al pieces, across the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. Before Ein­stein’s Brain tells this sto­ry, it intro­duces us to our guide, Japan­ese schol­ar Ken­ji Sug­i­mo­to, who imme­di­ate­ly emerges as an eccen­tric fig­ure, wob­bling in and out of view, mum­bling awed phras­es in Japan­ese. We encounter him in a dark­ened cathe­dral, star­ing up at a back­lit stained-glass cleresto­ry, pray­ing, per­haps, though if he’s pray­ing to any­one, it’s prob­a­bly Albert Ein­stein. His first words in heav­i­ly accent­ed Eng­lish express a deep rev­er­ence for Ein­stein alone. “I love Albert Ein­stein,” he says, with reli­gious con­vic­tion, gaz­ing at a stained-glass win­dow por­trait of the sci­en­tist.

Sugimoto’s devo­tion per­fect­ly illus­trates what a Physics World arti­cle described as the cul­tur­al ele­va­tion of Ein­stein to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Sug­i­mo­to’s zeal, and the rather implau­si­ble events that fol­low this open­ing, have prompt­ed many peo­ple to ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of his film and to accuse him of per­pe­trat­ing a hoax. Some of those crit­ics may mis­take Sugimoto’s social awk­ward­ness and wide-eyed enthu­si­asm for cred­u­lous­ness and unpro­fes­sion­al­ism, but it is worth not­ing that he is expe­ri­enced and cre­den­tialed as a pro­fes­sor in math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence his­to­ry at the Kin­ki Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan and, accord­ing to a title card, he “spent thir­ty years doc­u­ment­ing Einstein’s life and per­son.”

EinsteinsBrain

For a full eval­u­a­tion, see a poor­ly proof­read but very well-sourced arti­cle at “bad sci­ence blog” Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um that tells the com­plete sto­ry of Einstein’s brain, and sup­ports Sugimoto’s tale by ref­er­ence to sev­er­al accounts. Of the doc­u­men­tary, we’re told that “based on all avail­able data, the basic premise and the events shown in the doc­u­men­tary are indeed true.” In the film, Sug­i­mo­to trav­els across the U.S. in search of Dr. Thomas Har­vey, the man who orig­i­nal­ly removed Einstein’s brain at Prince­ton. (See one of the orig­i­nal pathol­o­gy pho­tos, with added labels, of the brain above). Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um con­tin­ues to set the scene as fol­lows:

Even­tu­al­ly, Sug­i­mo­to tracks down Thomas Har­vey at his home in Kansas. When he requests to see the brain, Har­vey brings out two glass jars con­tain­ing the pieces. At this point, Sug­i­mo­to makes a shock­ing request: he asks Har­vey if he could have a small piece of the brain to keep as a per­son­al memen­to. Har­vey says “I don’t see any rea­son why not” and pro­ceeds to retrieve a carv­ing knife and a cut­ting board from his kitchen. He cuts a small sec­tion from a sam­ple he iden­ti­fies as being part of Einstein’s brain stem and cere­bel­lum and gives it to Sug­i­mo­to in a small con­tain­er. In the final scene, Sug­i­mo­to cel­e­brates by tak­ing his piece of the brain to a local kereoke [sic] bar and singing a favorite Japan­ese song.

The notion that the bulk of Ein­stein’s brain would have end­ed up in a clos­et in Kansas seems strange enough. And as for Har­vey: the pathol­o­gist shopped the brain around for decades—if not for prof­it, then for notoriety—even dri­ving across the coun­try with jour­nal­ist Michael Pater­ni­ti in 1997 to deliv­er a large por­tion of the brain to Dr. San­dra Witel­son of McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Ontario. Pater­ni­ti doc­u­ment­ed the road trip in his book Dri­ving Mr. Albert, which appears to cor­rob­o­rate much of Sugimoto’s nar­ra­tive, though the trip may itself have been a pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

In addi­tion to the brain, Einstein’s eyes were also removed, with­out autho­riza­tion, by his oph­thal­mol­o­gist, who kept them in a safe­ty deposit box (where they pre­sum­ably remain). The entire sto­ry of Ein­stein’s remains is grue­some­ly out­landish, though one might con­sid­er it a mod­ern celebri­ty exam­ple of the cen­turies-old prac­tice of body snatch­ing. If some or all of this intrigues you, you’ll appre­ci­ate Sugimoto’s doc­u­men­tary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the video upload is rough. It was record­ed from Swedish tele­vi­sion, has Swedish sub­ti­tles, and is gen­er­al­ly pret­ty low-res. How­ev­er, as a title card at the open­ing tells us, “due to the extreme­ly lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of this doc­u­men­tary, this will have to suf­fice until a copy of high­er qual­i­ty ris­es to the sur­face.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Books, Movies, Songs & Paintings Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

in Art, Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2014

2014whatcouldhavebeencollage

Every year, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain high­lights major works that would have entered the pub­lic domain had the copy­right law that pre­vailed until 1978 still remained in effect today. That law (estab­lished in 1909) allowed works to remain under copy­right for a max­i­mum of 56 years — which means that 2014 would have wel­comed into the pub­lic domain works first pub­lished in 1957. Some high­lights (from the longer list) include:

Books

  • Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  • Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas and The Cat in the Hat
  • Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
  • Ian Flem­ing, From Rus­sia, with Love

Movies

  • 12 Angry Men (Hen­ry Fon­da, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klug­man, Ed Beg­ley, and more)
  • A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hud­son and Jen­nifer Jones)
  • Jail­house Rock (Elvis Pres­ley)
  • The Sev­enth Seal (writ­ten and direct­ed by Ing­mar Bergman and star­ring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
  • Fun­ny Face (Audrey Hep­burn and Fred Astaire)
  • Gun­fight at the O.K. Cor­ral (Burt Lan­cast­er and Kirk Dou­glas)

Music

  • “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peg­gy Sue” (Bud­dy Hol­ly, Jer­ry Alli­son, and Nor­man Pet­ty)
  • “Great Balls of Fire” (Otis Black­well and Jack Ham­mer)
  • “Wake Up, Lit­tle Susie” (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant)
  • Elvis Presley’s hits: “All Shook Up” (Otis Black­well and Elvis Pres­ley) and “Jail­house Rock” (Jer­ry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
  • The musi­cal “West Side Sto­ry” (music by Leonard Bern­stein, lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, and book by Arthur Lau­rents)

Art

  • Dali’s “Celes­tial Ride” and “Music: the Red Orches­tra”
  • Edward Hopper’s “West­ern Motel”
  • Picasso’s “Las Meni­nas” set of paint­ings

Under the cur­rent copy­right regime, you’ll have to wait anoth­er 39 years — until 2053 — before these works hit the com­mons.

You can find a longer list of 1957 works still under copy­right on Duke’s web­site.

Note: If you’re won­der­ing how many works of art entered the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is sim­ple: 0. As the Duke site notes, “Not a sin­gle pub­lished work” is enter­ing the pub­lic domain in 2014. “In fact, in the Unit­ed States, no pub­li­ca­tion will enter the pub­lic domain until 2019.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

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Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today

in Sci Fi | January 1st, 2014

asimov-culture-of-ignorance

Paint­ing of Asi­mov on his throne by Rowe­na Morill, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When New York City host­ed The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asi­mov, the pro­lif­ic sci-fi author and pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to won­der what the world would look like 50 years hence — assum­ing the world sur­vived the nuclear threats of the Cold War. Writ­ing in The New York Times, Asi­mov imag­ined a world that you might part­ly rec­og­nize today, a world where:

  • “Gad­getry will con­tin­ue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will pre­pare ‘automeals,’ heat­ing water and con­vert­ing it to cof­fee; toast­ing bread; fry­ing, poach­ing or scram­bling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Break­fasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a spec­i­fied hour the next morn­ing.”
  • “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the per­son you tele­phone. The screen can be used not only to see the peo­ple you call but also for study­ing doc­u­ments and pho­tographs and read­ing pas­sages from books. Syn­chro­nous satel­lites, hov­er­ing in space will make it pos­si­ble for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, includ­ing the weath­er sta­tions in Antarc­ti­ca.”
  • “[M]en will con­tin­ue to with­draw from nature in order to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that will suit them bet­ter. By 2014, elec­tro­lu­mi­nes­cent pan­els will be in com­mon use. Ceil­ings and walls will glow soft­ly, and in a vari­ety of col­ors that will change at the touch of a push but­ton.”
  • “Robots will nei­ther be com­mon nor very good in 2014, but they will be in exis­tence.”
  • “The appli­ances of 2014 will have no elec­tric cords, of course, for they will be pow­ered by long- lived bat­ter­ies run­ning on radioiso­topes.”
  • “[H]ighways … in the more advanced sec­tions of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increas­ing empha­sis on trans­porta­tion that makes the least pos­si­ble con­tact with the sur­face. There will be air­craft, of course, but even ground trav­el will increas­ing­ly take to the air a foot or two off the ground.”
  • “[V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tions … that will then pro­ceed there with­out inter­fer­ence by the slow reflex­es of a human dri­ver.”
  • “[W]all screens will have replaced the ordi­nary set; but trans­par­ent cubes will be mak­ing their appear­ance in which three-dimen­sion­al view­ing will be pos­si­ble.”
  • “[T]he world pop­u­la­tion will be 6,500,000,000 and the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States will be 350,000,000.” And lat­er he warns that if the pop­u­la­tion growth con­tin­ues unchecked, “All earth will be a sin­gle choked Man­hat­tan by A.D. 2450 and soci­ety will col­lapse long before that!” As a result, “There will, there­fore, be a world­wide pro­pa­gan­da dri­ve in favor of birth con­trol by ratio­nal and humane meth­ods and, by 2014, it will undoubt­ed­ly have tak­en seri­ous effect.” [See our Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Plan­ning car­toon from ear­li­er this week.]
  • “Ordi­nary agri­cul­ture will keep up with great dif­fi­cul­ty and there will be ‘farms’ turn­ing to the more effi­cient micro-organ­isms. Processed yeast and algae prod­ucts will be avail­able in a vari­ety of fla­vors.”
  • “The world of A.D. 2014 will have few rou­tine jobs that can­not be done bet­ter by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will there­fore have become large­ly a race of machine ten­ders. Schools will have to be ori­ent­ed in this direc­tion.… All the high-school stu­dents will be taught the fun­da­men­tals of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy will become pro­fi­cient in bina­ry arith­metic and will be trained to per­fec­tion in the use of the com­put­er lan­guages that will have devel­oped out of those like the con­tem­po­rary “For­tran.”
  • “[M]ankind will suf­fer bad­ly from the dis­ease of bore­dom, a dis­ease spread­ing more wide­ly each year and grow­ing in inten­si­ty. This will have seri­ous men­tal, emo­tion­al and soci­o­log­i­cal con­se­quences, and I dare say that psy­chi­a­try will be far and away the most impor­tant med­ical spe­cial­ty in 2014.”
  •  “[T]he most glo­ri­ous sin­gle word in the vocab­u­lary will have become work!” in our “a soci­ety of enforced leisure.”

Isaac Asi­mov was­n’t the only per­son dur­ing the 60s who peered into the future in a fair­ly pre­scient way. You can find a few more on-the-mark pre­dic­tions from con­tem­po­raries below:

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Open Cul­ture last August. If there was ever a time to show it again, it’s today. So, with your indul­gence, we’re giv­ing it an encore per­for­mance. 

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

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