Björk Takes Us Inside Her Creative Process and Explains How She Writes a Song

in Life, Music, Podcasts | January 11th, 2016

Some songs are so straight­for­ward there’s no need to debate their mean­ings with friends and Red­dit users. Oth­ers remain opaque, despite fans’ best attempts to crack lyri­cal codes.

“Stone­milk­er,” the first track on Björk’s self-described “com­plete heart­break album” Vul­ni­cu­ra, seems to fall into the for­mer cat­e­go­ry:

Show me emo­tion­al respect, oh respect, oh respect

And I have emo­tion­al needs, oh needs, oh ooh

I wish to syn­chro­nize our feel­ings, our feel­ings, oh ooh

“Prob­a­bly the most obvi­ous lyrics I’ve ever writ­ten” she remarks in her above appear­ance on Hrishikesh Hir­way’s Song Exploder, a pod­cast where­in musi­cians decon­struct a song’s mean­ing, ori­gin, and record­ing process.

Björk was walk­ing on a beach when the sim­ple lyrics of “Stone­milk­er” popped into her head. She quick­ly real­ized that she should steer clear of the impulse to make them more clever, and chose the pri­mal over the poet­ic.

As to its inspi­ra­tion, she diplo­mat­i­cal­ly refrains from nam­ing her ex-hus­band, film­mak­er Matthew Bar­ney, on the pod­cast, say­ing only that “Stonemilker”’s nar­ra­tor has achieved emo­tion­al clar­i­ty, unlike “the per­son” to whom she is singing, some­one who prefers for things to stay fog­gy and com­plex.

She strove for arrange­ments that would sup­port that feel­ing of clar­i­ty, wait­ing for the right micro­phone, ham­mer­ing out every beat with pro­duc­er Ale­jan­dro “Arca” Gher­si, and releas­ing a sec­ond, strings only ver­sion.

“I decid­ed to become a vio­lin nerd,” she told Pitch­fork:

 I had like twen­ty tech­no­log­i­cal threads of things I could have done, but the album couldn’t be futur­is­tic. It had to be singer/songwriter. Old-school. It had to be blunt. I was sort of going into the Bergman movies with Liv Ull­mann when it gets real­ly self-pity­ing and psy­cho­log­i­cal, where you’re kind of per­form­ing surgery on your­self, like, What went wrong? 

The accom­pa­ny­ing 360-degree vir­tu­al real­i­ty music video, above, can now be viewed online as well as with Ocu­lus Rift. Every instru­ment was miked and if you can’t get clear on an Ice­landic beach, well then…

As for those plain­tive, crys­talline vocals, Björk inten­tion­al­ly held off, wait­ing for the sort of day when impul­sive­ness reigns. (I know she’s a clas­si­cal­ly trained musi­cian, but isn’t that pret­ty much every day when you’re Björk?)

Hav­ing some insights into what the artist was aim­ing for can guide lis­ten­ers toward deep­er appre­ci­a­tion. Björk oblig­ing­ly offers Song Exploder lis­ten­ers a vast buf­fet. Sure­ly some­thing will res­onate:

A tow­er of equi­lib­ri­um…

Smooth cream-like per­fec­tion…

A net…

A cra­dle…

Com­pare those sim­ple goals to Fla­vor­wire’s Moze Halperin’s analy­sis of  what he calls “Vulnicura’s most trag­ic track — and per­haps the sad­dest Björk has ever writ­ten”:

“Stone­milk­er” has the grandiose sound of hav­ing been sung in a cathe­dral, but like one tiny per­son con­front­ed by the large­ness of ideas of God or the archi­tec­tur­al com­plex­i­ty of one such struc­ture, Björk’s voice sounds dis­tant, echo­ing, fight­ing not to get sucked in by the threat of a vast abyss. When, in the com­ing songs, she actu­al­ly con­fronts the abyss, her voice becomes stronger. The crush­ing sad­ness of this song is that it’s the begin­ning of the end, and in lis­ten­ing to it, we feel at once clos­est to the love that was recent­ly lost, while also being aware of the tur­moil ahead.

The song’s near-non­cha­lant melan­choly — its false impres­sion that it can afford non­cha­lance because the lovers’ dis­con­nect is just a bump in the road — makes it more unbear­ably sad than the rest of the album. In this song, she car­ries all of her pre­vi­ous work on her back like arrows in a quiver, pulling ref­er­ences out one by one and shoot­ing them at lis­ten­ers to remind them of the man­i­fold ways she once doc­u­ment­ed the com­plex­i­ties of her love. For now, she’s about to doc­u­ment the com­plex­i­ties of its dis­ap­pear­ance. 

Basi­cal­ly, if you wind up feel­ing like you’re “lying at home in the moss look­ing at the sky,” Björk’s mis­sion has been accom­plished.

Want more? You can unpack oth­er artists’ defin­i­tive mean­ings and song mid­wifery by sub­scrib­ing to Song Exploder.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mush­room Death Suit to the Vir­tu­al Choir

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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103 Essential Films By Female Filmmakers: Clueless, Lost In Translation, Ishtar and More

in Film | January 11th, 2016

A great film, as we all know, is a great film, no mat­ter the age, nation­al­i­ty, or sex of its direc­tor. But as human beings, we also all know how much fun we get out of cat­e­go­riz­ing and list­mak­ing, espe­cial­ly when it comes to works of art and those who make them. And so today we give you Cin­e­ma Fanat­ic’s A Year with Women: 103 Essen­tial Films by Female Film­mak­ers, proof that, though the world of film may have pro­duced few­er female film­mak­ers than male film­mak­ers so far, their films, tak­en indi­vid­u­al­ly, hard­ly com­mand less of our inter­est.

“In an attempt to cre­ate a bet­ter, more inclu­sive list of great films by women,” writes the site’s author Marya E. Gates. “I polled over 500 crit­ics, film­mak­ers, blog­gers, his­to­ri­ans, pro­fes­sors and casu­al film view­ers, ask­ing them to tell me what films direct­ed (or co-direct­ed) by women are essen­tial view­ing. Some peo­ple only respond­ed with as lit­tle as five votes, oth­ers sub­mit­ted hun­dreds of films. In the end, I received over 7,000 votes for 1,100+ dif­fer­ent films. After tal­ly­ing up this data, with ties fac­tored in, I then had a list of 103 essen­tial films direct­ed by women.”

Gates presents her list in reverse order of votes earned, each with a still frame, a scrolling expe­ri­ence cer­tain­ly worth enjoy­ing in its entire­ty. But if you’d like to take a glance first at what end­ed up on the top ten, here you have it:

  1. Clue­less, 1995 (dir. Amy Heck­er­ling) – 147 votes
  2. Lost in Trans­la­tion, 2003 (dir. Sofia Cop­po­la) – 144 votes
  3. The Piano, 1993 (dir. Jane Cam­pi­on) – 120 votes
  4. Sel­ma, 2014 (dir. Ava DuVer­nay) – 118 votes
  5. Amer­i­can Psy­cho, 2000 (dir. Mary Har­ron) – 110 votes
  6. Cléo from 5 to 7, 1962 (dir. Agnès Var­da) – 93 votes
  7. The Hurt Lock­er, 2009 (dir. Kathryn Bigelow) – 92 votes
  8. Fish Tank, 2009 (dir. Andrea Arnold) – 84 votes
  9. The Vir­gin Sui­cides, 1999 (dir. Sofia Cop­po­la) – 84 votes
  10. Winter’s Bone, 2010 (dir. Debra Granik) – 75 votes

In the inter­view at the top of the post, Amy Heck­er­ling, direc­tor of Clue­less, the cham­pi­on of the list, talks about her career in Hol­ly­wood as the direc­tor of not just that epochal Bev­er­ly Hills teen com­e­dy but of the likes of Fast Times at Ridge­mont High and, more recent­ly, Vamps. In the clip below that, Sofia Cop­po­la and star Bill Mur­ray talk about their time mak­ing the close run­ner-up Lost in Trans­la­tion.

All these films could, of course, eas­i­ly appear on any crit­ic’s top-ten list, with or with­out a delib­er­ate focus on woman direc­tors — and most of them, in fact, won very lit­tle of their con­sid­er­able fame sim­ply by being woman-direct­ed. Chan­tal Aker­man’s Jeanne Diel­man, 23 Quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles would cer­tain­ly appear on mine, though the 103 Essen­tial Films by Female Film­mak­ers poll places it just below, at num­ber 11. And sure­ly the vig­or­ous piece of Hol­ly­wood cyber­punk Strange Days, which comes in last among the works of Kathryn Bigelow scat­tered across the list, mer­its a high­er rank­ing.

Kel­ly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cut­off and Wendy and Lucy make the list, but what of her Old Joy, sure­ly the most absorb­ing cin­e­mat­ic tale ever told of two semi-estranged bud­dies hik­ing in the woods, let alone told by a woman? And has­n’t the world come around on Elaine May’s Ishtar, which places a mere #102 but whose sta­tus as a mas­ter­work Richard Brody clar­i­fies in The New York­er video above? Then again, we don’t make these lists to agree, or even to con­vince; we make them to argue the movies, a pur­suit — to every cin­e­ma-lov­ing man, woman, and child — almost as fun as watch­ing them.

via Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Alice Guy-Blaché: The First Female Direc­tor & the Cin­e­mat­ic Trail­blaz­er You Like­ly Nev­er Heard Of

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Watch The Hitch-Hik­er by Ida Lupino (the Only Female Direc­tor of a 1950s Noir Film)

The First Fem­i­nist Film, Ger­maine Dulac’s The Smil­ing Madame Beudet (1922)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Performance, 2006

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2016

Note: This post was pub­lished on our site less than two weeks ago–December 29, 2015–when we had no idea that David Bowie was in the final days of an 18 month bat­tle with can­cer. In the post, Josh Jones won­dered whether the video fea­tured above would be Bowie’s last live per­for­mance. And, alas, tonight we dis­cov­er that it’s appar­ent­ly so. David Bowie’s offi­cial Twit­ter and Face­book accounts, not to men­tion major news­pa­pers, have just report­ed that David Bowie has died, only two days after his 69th birth­day and the release of his new album Black­star. We’ll have more to say about Bowie, a hero of ours, in the com­ing days. But, for now, we leave you with the sad news and this now his­toric per­for­mance caught on lam­en­ta­bly grainy video. –D.C

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

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

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Splendid Hand-Scroll Illustrations of The Tale of the Genjii, The First Novel Ever Written (Circa 1120)

in Art, Literature | January 9th, 2016

Genji Scroll 1

Ah, The Tale of Gen­ji — a ver­i­ta­ble Mount Ever­est for stu­dents of the Japan­ese lan­guage, and a fix­ture on so many read­ing lists drawn up by fans of world lit­er­a­ture in trans­la­tion as well. This for­mi­da­ble sto­ry of an emper­or’s son turned com­mon­er, writ­ten most­ly or entire­ly by Heian-peri­od noble­woman Murasa­ki Shik­ibu (also known as Lady Murasa­ki) in the ear­ly 11th cen­tu­ry, makes a cred­i­ble claim to the sta­tus of the very first nov­el (or, as more timid boost­ers might claim for it, the first psy­cho­log­i­cal nov­el, or the first “clas­sic” nov­el).

1200px-Genji_emaki_Yadorigi

It has thus had plen­ty of time to get adapt­ed into oth­er forms: trans­la­tions into mod­ern Japan­ese and oth­er cur­rent­ly under­stand­able lan­guages, anno­tat­ed ver­sions by lat­er gen­er­a­tions of writ­ers, live-action movies, and ani­ma­tion and com­ic books — ani­me and man­ga.

Genji Scroll 2

Many of those Gen­jis appeared in the past hun­dred years. Much clos­er to Murasak­i’s own time is the Gen­ji Mono­gatari Ema­ki, com­mon­ly called the Tale of Gen­ji Scroll, cre­at­ed about a cen­tu­ry after the Gen­ji itself, some­time around 1120 to 1140. Here you see pieces of the scrol­l’s sur­viv­ing sec­tions, thought to con­sti­tute only a small por­tion of the orig­i­nal work meant to depict and explain some of the events of the nov­el. Art his­to­ri­ans haven’t pinned down the iden­ti­ty of the artist, but they do know that the style of these images, cre­at­ed with the female-dom­i­nat­ed tsukuri‑e (or “man­u­fac­tured paint­ing” process), which involves lay­er­ing a draw­ing over pig­ment itself paint­ed over a first draw­ing, strong­ly sug­gests a woman artist.

Genji Scroll 3

The Gen­ji Mono­gatari Ema­ki fits into the longer Japan­ese tra­di­tion of pic­ture scrolls, which first com­bined images and text in a ground­break­ing way in the ninth or tenth cen­tu­ry and, one could argue, con­tin­ue to influ­ence Japan­ese art today.

tale of the genji--cap-39--12--secolo

That goes espe­cial­ly for pop­u­lar Japan­ese art: in Japan, where you can see thou­sands of com­ic book-read­ers of all ages on the trains each and every day, peo­ple take the union of words and images more seri­ous­ly than they do in the West — or at least West­ern com­ic art enthu­si­asts see it that way. So if these evoca­tive images from the Gen­ji Scroll make you want to pick up the nov­el, but you still don’t know if you can han­dle it straight, start with one of the man­ga adap­ta­tions, which, as you can see, have more his­tor­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy than we might have assumed.

Genji Scroll 4

It’s worth not­ing that Oxford has a site where you can down­load a com­plete Eng­lish trans­la­tion of The Tale of the Gen­ji. A new trans­la­tion by Den­nis Wash­burn also came out in the last six months.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Poet­ry of the Cher­ry Blos­soms Comes to Life in a One Minute Time Lapse Video

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

The (F)Art of War: Bawdy Japan­ese Art Scroll Depicts Wrench­ing Changes in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Memorial Service & Celebration of “Lemmy” Kilmister, Motörhead Frontman, is Now Streaming Live

in Music | January 9th, 2016

Note: Though the ser­vice came to an end ear­li­er today, it looks like you can now watch a record­ing of the farewell cer­e­mo­ny above. If you make it to the end, you’ll notice that there was an issue with the audio when Dave Grohl began speak­ing. You can hear a slight­ly touched-up ver­sion here.

Just a quick note: “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice is now stream­ing live on Youtube. Click play above. Ian Fras­er Kilmis­ter was an Eng­lish musi­cian, singer and song­writer who found­ed and front­ed the rock band Motör­head. He died on Decem­ber 29th, at the age of 70.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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The Feminist Theory of Simone de Beauvoir Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games (and More)

in Animation, Gender, Philosophy | January 9th, 2016

Simone de Beau­voir, exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher, fem­i­nist the­o­rist, author of The Sec­ond Sex, whose birth­day we cel­e­brate today.

Metroid, an action-adven­ture video game designed for the Nin­ten­do in 1986.

At first glance, they’re not an obvi­ous pair­ing. But in 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy, a web series that explains philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts by way of vin­tage video games, things kind of hang togeth­er.

Gamers remem­ber Metroid for being the first video game to fea­ture a strong female pro­tag­o­nist, a char­ac­ter who blew apart exist­ing female stereo­types, kicked some alien butt, and cre­at­ed new pos­si­bil­i­ties for women in the video gam­ing space. And that lets Metroid set the stage for talk­ing about the intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions of Simone de Beau­voir, who, back in the late 1940s, gave us new ways of think­ing about gen­der and gen­der-based hier­ar­chies in our soci­eties.

Clock­ing in at just 3:45, the clip offers but a brief intro­duc­tion to de Beau­voir’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. For a longer intro­duc­tion, you could down­load this recent episode of In Our Time, host­ed by Melvyn Bragg and fea­tur­ing the com­men­tary of Christi­na How­ells (Oxford), Mar­garet Atack (Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds) and Ursu­la Tidd (Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter). You can also lis­ten to a 2015 episode of Phi­los­o­phy Talk, co-host­ed by Stan­ford pro­fes­sors John Per­ry and Ken Tay­lor.

Or, bet­ter yet, go to the source itself, and lis­ten to de Beau­voir talk in two lengthy inter­views, both fea­tured on Open Cul­ture in years past. They’re pret­ty remark­able his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Simone de Beau­voir & Jean-Paul Sartre Shoot­ing a Gun in Their First Pho­to Togeth­er (1929)

Pho­tos of Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Hang­ing with Che Gue­vara in Cuba (1960)

Edward Said Recalls His Depress­ing Meet­ing With Sartre, de Beau­voir & Fou­cault (1979)

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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The First Photo-Illustrated Book, Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae (1843)

in Biology, Books, Photography, Science | January 8th, 2016

algae cover (1)

Some of our favorite, and most pop­u­lar, posts at Open Cul­ture focus on book illus­tra­tion. From fine art to graph­ic design, from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous to the pure­ly tech­ni­cal, the art used to visu­al­ize beloved works of lit­er­a­ture and sci­en­tif­ic texts cap­ti­vates us. Per­haps that’s in part because we encounter illus­tra­tion so rarely these days, what with the tri­umph of pho­tog­ra­phy and, now, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal images, which are so easy to cre­ate and repro­duce that too few give suf­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion to aes­thet­ic essen­tials. Graph­ic nov­els and comics aside, the care­ful­ly hand-illus­trat­ed book or peri­od­i­cal has become some­thing of a nov­el­ty.

Atkins 2

But when we reach back to the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, it was pho­tog­ra­phy that was nov­el and graph­ic art the norm. So what was the sub­ject of the first book to use pho­to­graph­ic illus­tra­tion? Mon­u­ments? Land­scapes? Celebri­ties? No: algae.

Eng­lish botanist Anna Atkins—who is not only cred­it­ed as the first per­son to make a book illus­trat­ed with pho­tographs, but as the first woman to make a photograph—created her hand­made Pho­tographs of British Algae: Cyan­otype Impres­sions in 1843. And though the sub­ject may be less than thrilling, the images them­selves are aus­tere­ly beau­ti­ful.

Atkins 3

The sub­ti­tle of the book refers to the process Atkins used to make the images, a tech­nique devel­oped by Sir John Her­schel. “Ear­ly pho­tog­ra­phers,” writes Phil Edwards at Vox, “couldn’t eas­i­ly devel­op their pic­tures.” The tech­niques avail­able proved expen­sive, dan­ger­ous, and unsta­ble. “Her­schel came up with a solu­tion,” Edwards tells us, “using an iron pig­ment called ‘Pruss­ian Blue,’ he laid objects of pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives onto chem­i­cal­ly treat­ed paper, exposed them to sun­light for around 15 min­utes, and then washed the paper. The remain­ing image revealed pale blue objects on a dark blue back­ground.” The process, Jonathan Gibbs informs us at The Inde­pen­dent, “had pre­vi­ous­ly been used to repro­duce archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings and designs,” and is, in fact, the ori­gin of the word “blue­print.”

Atkins-4 (1)

Though “a capa­ble artist,” Edwards writes, Atkins real­ized that Herschel’s cyan­otypes “were a bet­ter way to cap­ture the intri­ca­cies of plant life and avoid the tedium—and error—involved with draw­ing.” British Algae, the BBC tells us, was Atkins’ “most valu­able work” as a nat­u­ral­ist. As the daugh­ter of a sci­en­tist and Roy­al Soci­ety Fel­low, Atkins had fre­quent con­tact with the most well-respect­ed sci­en­tists of the day, includ­ing Her­shel and pho­to­graph­ic pio­neer William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot. Her “first con­tri­bu­tion to sci­ence was her engrav­ings of shells, used to illus­trate her father’s trans­la­tion of Lamarck’s Gen­era of Shells” in 1823. After­ward, she became inter­est­ed in botany, and algae in par­tic­u­lar, and in the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy of pho­tog­ra­phy as a means of pre­serv­ing her obser­va­tions.

Atkins-5 (1)

Pho­tographs of British Algae was cir­cu­lat­ed pri­vate­ly, and Atkins “stopped pro­duc­ing it short­ly after her father died, though she con­tin­ued to make oth­er cyan­otype vol­umes, such as Cyan­otypes of British and For­eign Flow­er­ing Plants and Ferns in 1854. The first com­mer­cial­ly pub­lished book to use the cyan­otype tech­nique was Fox Tal­bot’s The Pen­cil of Nature in 1844. Yet, though Atkins may not have been well-known out­side her small cir­cle, nor her pub­li­ca­tion “regard­ed as a sem­i­nal work in botany,” she has received posthu­mous acclaim, includ­ing per­haps the ulti­mate mark of fame, a Google Doo­dle, in March of 2015 on her 216th birth­day. You can view and down­load in high res­o­lu­tion all of Atkins’ pio­neer­ing pho­to­graph­ic book at the New York Pub­lic Library’s exten­sive online archive — the same archive we fea­tured here yes­ter­day.

Atkins 6

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

See the First Known Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Old Book Illus­tra­tions: Free Archive Lets You Down­load Beau­ti­ful Images From the Gold­en Age of Book Illus­tra­tion

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

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Making Chocolate the Traditional Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

in Film, Food & Drink | January 8th, 2016

Chef turned restau­ra­teur Alain Ducasse has rather a lot to say on the sub­ject of choco­late.

On the web­site of Le Man­u­fac­ture, the small-batch choco­late fac­to­ry he found­ed in a for­mer Renault Garage, he wax­es poet­ic, shar­ing wide-eyed child­hood mem­o­ries of the “ter­ri­bly sen­su­al and bewitch­ing sub­stance.”

He’s a bit more mer­ce­nary in the pages of the The Wall Street Jour­nal and Har­vard Busi­ness Review, not­ing that the choco­late oper­a­tion grew out of his desire to con­trol the process from cacao beans to dessert plates in his numer­ous fine din­ing estab­lish­ments.

His involve­ment in the day-to-day oper­a­tions is like­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al, but in a choco­late mak­ing stint ear­ly in his career, he found the “olfac­to­ry uni­verse” plea­sur­able and “intox­i­cat­ing to the point of being dis­turb­ing.”

Take that, Her­sheys!

His fond­ness for vin­tage machin­ery and tra­di­tion­al meth­ods opens the door to some seri­ous cacao porn, above, star­ring for­mer exec­u­tive pas­try chef Nico­las Berg­er.

The word “metic­u­lous” comes up more than once in the voiceover nar­ra­tion. Hope­ful­ly, Sat­ur­day Night Live will take note. Tasked by Epi­cu­ri­ous to iden­ti­fy a guilty plea­sure on the order of choco­late or wine, Ducasse named BLT sand­wich­es, but he musters the req­ui­site, par­o­dy-wor­thy roman­ti­cism for direc­tor Simon Péno­chet:

Beyond gour­man­dise, we are seek­ing truth, a quest which is more pri­mal than orig­i­nal.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mar­velous Health Ben­e­fits of Choco­late: A Curi­ous Med­ical Essay from 1631

An Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmer Gets His Very First Taste of Choco­late

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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