Download Sigmund Freud’s Great Works as Free eBooks & Free Audio Books: A Digital Celebration on His 160th Birthday

in Psychology | May 6th, 2016

free freud ebooks and audiobooks

Image by Max Hal­ber­stadt via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Any­one with a pass­ing famil­iar­i­ty with the work of Sig­mund Freud—which is just about everyone—knows at least a hand­ful of things about his famous psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry: Ego, Super-ego, and Id, sex and death dri­ves, Oedi­pal com­plex, “Freudi­an slip,” “some­times a cig­ar is just a cig­ar”… (a quote that didn’t come from Freud). Most of these terms, except that cig­ar thing, orig­i­nate from Freud’s lat­er period—from about 1920 to his death in 1939—perhaps his most pro­duc­tive from a lit­er­ary stand­point, start­ing with Beyond the Plea­sure Prin­ci­ple, in which he began to devel­op his well-known struc­tur­al mod­el of the mind.

Dur­ing these lat­er years Freud built on ideas from 1913’s Totem and Taboo and ful­ly expand­ed his psy­cho­log­i­cal analy­sis into a philo­soph­i­cal and cul­tur­al the­o­ry in books like The Future of an Illu­sion, Civ­i­liza­tion and its Dis­con­tents, and Moses and Monothe­ism. For those who have pri­mar­i­ly encoun­tered Freud in intro to psych class­es, these works can seem strange indeed, giv­en the sweep­ing spec­u­la­tive claims the Vien­nese doc­tor makes about reli­gion, war, ancient his­to­ry, and even pre­his­to­ry. Though pep­pered with ter­mi­nol­o­gy from psy­cho­analy­sis, Freud’s more philo­soph­i­cal works roam far afield of his med­ical spe­cial­iza­tions and direct obser­va­tions.

When and how did Freud’s psy­chi­a­try become phi­los­o­phy, and what pos­sessed him to apply his psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries to analy­ses of broad social and his­tor­i­cal dynam­ics? We see hints of Freud the philoso­pher through­out his career, but it’s dur­ing his mid­dle period—when his tri­par­tite mod­el of the psy­che still con­sist­ed of the con­scious, pre­con­scious, and unconscious—that he began to move more ful­ly from case stud­ies of indi­vid­ual psy­cho­sex­u­al devel­op­ment and inter­pre­ta­tions of dreams to stud­ies of human devel­op­ment writ large. These books are almost Dar­win­ian expan­sions of what Freud called “metapsychology”—which includ­ed his the­o­ries of Oedi­pal neu­roses, nar­cis­sism, and sado­masochism.

From 1914 to 1915, after his break with Jung, Freud worked on a series of papers on “metapsy­chol­o­gy,” intend­ed, he wrote “to clar­i­fy and car­ry deep­er the the­o­ret­i­cal assump­tions on which a psy­cho-ana­lyt­ic sys­tem could be found­ed.” Sev­en of the man­u­scripts from this peri­od van­ished, seem­ing­ly lost for­ev­er. In 1983, psy­cho­an­a­lyst Ilse Gru­bich-Simi­tis dis­cov­ered one of these essays in an old trunk belong­ing to a friend and col­league of Freud. Pub­lished as A Phy­lo­ge­net­ic Fan­ta­sy, this fas­ci­nat­ing, unfin­ished work points the way for­ward for Freud, pro­vid­ing some con­nec­tive tis­sue between his “ontoge­ny,” the devel­op­ment of the indi­vid­ual, and “phy­loge­ny,” the devel­op­ment of the species.

It is here, his trans­la­tors write in their intro­duc­tion to this rare work, that Freud “con­cludes that each indi­vid­ual con­tains some­where with­in him­self or her­self the his­to­ry of all mankind; fur­ther, that men­tal ill­ness can use­ful­ly be under­stood as a ves­tige of respons­es once nec­es­sary and high­ly adap­tive to the exi­gen­cies of each era. Accord­ing­ly, men­tal ill­ness can be under­stood as a set of for­mer­ly adap­tive respons­es that have become mal­adap­tive as the cli­mat­ic and soci­o­log­i­cal threats to the sur­vival of mankind have changed.”

These basic, yet rad­i­cal, ideas may be said to form a back­drop against which we might read so much of Freud’s mature work as a means for decod­ing what seems puz­zling, irra­tional, and down­right mad­den­ing about human behav­ior. Freud’s sci­en­tif­ic work has long been super­seded, and many of the specifics of his psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry deemed unwork­able, irrel­e­vant, or even dam­ag­ing. But there are very good rea­sons why his work has thrived in lit­er­ary the­o­ry and phi­los­o­phy. There is even a case to be made the Freud was the first evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist, rough­ly bring­ing Dar­win­ian con­cepts of adap­ta­tion to bear on the devel­op­ment of the human psy­che from pre­his­to­ry to moder­ni­ty.

For all the neg­a­tive crit­i­cism his work has endured, Freud dared to explain us to our­selves, draw­ing on every resource at his disposal—including our most foun­da­tion­al nar­ra­tives in mythol­o­gy and ancient poet­ry. For that rea­son, his rel­e­vance, writes Jane Cia­bat­tari, as a “the­o­ret­i­cal cat­a­lyst” in the 21st cen­tu­ry remains potent, and his work remains well worth read­ing and pon­der­ing, for any stu­dent of human behav­ior.

Today, on the 160th birth­day of the father of psy­cho­analy­sis, we bring you a col­lec­tion of Freud’s major works avail­able free to read online or down­load as ebooks in the links below. Fur­ther down, find a list of Freud audio­books to down­load as mp3s or stream.

Whether root­ed in clin­i­cal study and research, detec­tive-like case stud­ies, philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions, or poet­ic flights of fan­cy, Freud’s writ­ing draws us deep­er into strange, obses­sive, pro­found, and dis­turb­ing ways of think­ing about our uneasy rela­tion­ships with our­selves, our fam­i­lies, and our unsta­ble social order.

eBooks

Audio Books

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Sig­mund Freud’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Draw­ings Show How He First Visu­al­ized the Ego, Super­ego, Id & More

The Famous Let­ter Where Freud Breaks His Rela­tion­ship with Jung (1913)

Sig­mund Freud Appears in Rare, Sur­viv­ing Video & Audio Record­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

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

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Watch “Beer,” a Mind-Warping Animation of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 Poem Honoring His Favorite Drink

in Animation, Poetry | May 6th, 2016

Charles Bukows­ki could real­ly write. Charles Bukows­ki could real­ly drink. These two facts, sure­ly the best-known ones about the “lowlife lau­re­ate” of a poet and author of such nov­els as Post Office and Ham on Rye (as well as what we might call his lifestyle col­umn, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”), go togeth­er. Drink­ing pro­vid­ed enough of the sub­ject mat­ter of his prose and verse — and, in life, enough of the fuel for the exis­tence he observed on the page with such rough-edged evoca­tive artistry — that we can hard­ly imag­ine Bukowski’s writ­ing with­out his drink­ing, or his drink­ing with­out his writ­ing.

We would nat­u­ral­ly expect him, then, to have writ­ten an ode to beer, one of his drinks of choice. “Beer,” which appeared in Bukowski’s 1971 poet­ry col­lec­tion Love Is a Dog from Hell, pays trib­ute to the count­less bot­tles the man drank “while wait­ing for things to get bet­ter,” “after splits with women,” “wait­ing for the phone to ring,” “wait­ing for the sounds of foot­steps.”

The female, he writes, knows not to con­sume beer to excess in the male man­ner, as “she knows its bad for the fig­ure.” But Bukows­ki, fig­ure be damned, finds in this most work­ing-class of all drinks a kind of solace.

“Beer” comes to life in the ani­ma­tion above by NERDO. “The com­po­si­tion is a man­i­festo of the author’s way of life, this is why we decid­ed to go inside the author’s mind, and it is not a safe jour­ney,” say the accom­pa­ny­ing notes. “A brain solo with­out fil­ter, a tale of ordi­nary mad­ness, show­ing how much lone­li­ness and deca­dence can be hid­den inside a genius mind.” This wild ride pass­es what we now rec­og­nize as many visu­al sig­ni­fiers of the Bukowskian expe­ri­ence: neon signs, cig­a­rettes, decay­ing city blocks, tawdry Polaroids — and, of course, beer, lit­er­al­ly “rivers and seas of beer,” which no less a fel­low ani­mat­ed enthu­si­ast of the bev­er­age than Homer Simp­son once, just as elo­quent­ly, pro­nounced “the cause of, and solu­tion to, all of life’s prob­lems.”

“Beer” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

“Notes from a Dirty Old Man”: Charles Bukowski’s Lost Car­toons from the 60s and 70s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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 Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Saturday Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

in Comedy, Music | May 5th, 2016

Punk rock has a robust tra­di­tion of gross-out, offen­sive comedy—one car­ried into the present by bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly and Diar­rhea Plan­et, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unsta­ble L.A. band lead by an obnox­ious provo­ca­teur who goes by the name Lee Ving. Like fel­low L.A. punks the Germs, Cir­cle Jerks, and Black Flag, Fear gets cred­it for pio­neer­ing a Cal­i­for­nia punk sound known for ado­les­cent brat­ti­ness and a total lack of pre­ten­sion to any kind of art­ful­ness or cool.

Like many of their peers, Fear rose to promi­nence when Pene­lope Spheeris fea­tured them in her 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, Part I. But before that sem­i­nal film’s release, Fear was dis­cov­ered by John Belushi, who first caught the band on a local L.A. music show called New Wave The­atre in 1980. He tracked down Ving, who tells Rolling Stone, “we had a cou­ple of beers and became fast friends.” At the time, Belushi was at work on his com­e­dy Neigh­bors with Dan Aykroyd and con­tract­ed the band to record a song for the film (his last before his death in 1982).

The film’s pro­duc­ers, Rolling Stone writes, “were appalled” by the song “and refused to use it,” so to make it up to Ving and com­pa­ny, Belushi pushed to have the band booked on Sat­ur­day Night Live on Hal­loween, 1981. The result­ing per­for­mance has become leg­endary for what hap­pened, and what didn’t, and led to Fear becom­ing, says Ving, “one of the esteemed mem­bers of the per­ma­nent­ly banned.” You can watch a clip above of the band play­ing “Beef Boloney” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Sax­o­phones” above (intro­duced by Don­ald Pleas­ance), and just below see Ving in a clip from a recent inter­view show dis­cussing the ill-fat­ed gig.

Belushi stage man­aged the band’s appear­ance, striv­ing for authen­tic­i­ty by bring­ing into the stu­dio what Ving calls “an actu­al punk rock audi­ence rather than just Mr. and Mrs. Mis­souri.” (That audi­ence includ­ed now-leg­ends Ian MacK­aye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, mem­bers of New York hard­core band the Cro-Mags, and Tesco Vee of the Meat­men.)  The result­ing mosh pit was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary for the typ­i­cal punk show. But, unsur­pris­ing­ly, “the real audi­ence at Sat­ur­day Night Live was scared to death,” says Ving, “They didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with all the may­hem.”

Dur­ing the riotous pro­ceed­ings, SNL pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol “got hit in the chest with a pump­kin,” some equip­ment was dam­aged, and dur­ing the final song, “Let’s Have a War,” an audi­ence mem­ber grabbed the micro­phone and yelled out “F*ck New York!” The pro­fan­i­ty freaked out NBC, who cut the broad­cast short and shelved the footage for sev­er­al years. The New York Post lat­er quot­ed an unnamed NBC tech­ni­cian as say­ing, “This was a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing no one got killed.” The paper also quot­ed a fig­ure of $400,000 for dam­ages to the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter set.

But as Bill­board report­ed two weeks lat­er, the fig­ure was total­ly erro­neous (sup­plied to the Post by Ving as a prac­ti­cal joke, as he says above). “We had to pay $40 in labor penal­ties. That was the extent of it,” said SNL spokesman Peter Hamil­ton. As for the shock to view­ers, it seems the net­work received “all of 12 com­plaints” after the broad­cast. Ving him­self found the over­re­ac­tion ridicu­lous, and NBC’s long shelv­ing of the footage—only recent­ly made avail­able in a trun­cat­ed version—a humor­less mis­take. “They seem to be… los­ing the sense of humor about the whole idea,” he told Rolling Stone, “I had a sense of humor at the whole idea of start­ing Fear. It was extreme­ly humor­ous to me, and I think John saw that humor.”

Indeed he did, but Belushi’s appre­ci­a­tion for Fear’s antics was ahead of its time. Now we can see, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. And we can also final­ly hear the long-shelved sin­gle for Neigh­bors that Belushi record­ed with the band.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young John Belushi Imi­tates Tru­man Capote & Per­forms Live on Sec­ond City Stage (1972)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

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

 

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7 Tips for Reading More Books in a Year

in Books | May 5th, 2016

kleon reading tips

On Twit­ter, Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Cre­ative has served up 7 tips for achiev­ing the seem­ing­ly impossible–getting more books read in this age of con­stant dis­trac­tion. The tips are sim­ple and effective–effective enough to help Austin read 70+ books dur­ing a year, a new per­son­al record.

No doubt, you have your own strate­gies for spend­ing more time with books (and not just watch­ing them pile up, unread, on your shelves. There’s a word for that in Japan­ese folks. It’s called “Tsun­doku.”) If you care to share them, please put your best tips in the com­ments sec­tion below. We, and your fel­low read­ers, thank you in advance.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? (Speak­ing of an easy way to spend more time with books.) Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here. Also note that Audibooks.com has a very sim­i­lar offer that you can explore here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

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Artificial Intelligence Creativity Machine Learns to Play Beethoven in the Style of The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”

in Music, Technology | May 5th, 2016

It is the end of term this week and my film pro­duc­tion stu­dents asked me to name my favorite part of film­mak­ing. I told them it’s direct­ing, as it’s some­thing I so rarely get to do (com­pared to writ­ing) yet so involv­ing that an entire day goes by in a flash. Regard­less, I always pop out the oth­er side know­ing I was at my absolute cre­ative best. I was in the “zone” or as Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi called it in 1990, “the flow state.” And in a won­der­ful bit of syn­chronic­i­ty, not a lit­tle while lat­er, I have been charged with pre­sent­ing to you this exam­ple of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) cre­ativ­i­ty. It sim­i­lar­ly uses this under­stand­ing of the flow state to cre­ate.

In the above video, the Flow Machine devel­oped by François Pachet at Sony CSL-Paris has been fed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, and then asked to orches­trate “cov­er ver­sions” fol­low­ing the rules set down by a genre–say bossa nova or elec­tron­ic chill music–or a song itself, in this case being the Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane.”

Pre­vi­ous attempts to cre­ate ran­dom com­put­er music have result­ed in exact­ly that–random notes, drawn from a selec­tion deter­mined by a pro­gram­mer. But that isn’t how cre­ativ­i­ty works. When we cre­ate, we under­stand our para­me­ters already, sub­con­scious­ly, and not only that, we know what we and oth­ers have done before, what “push­es the enve­lope” com­pared to using a com­plete­ly wrong ele­ment, and what makes our own cre­ativ­i­ty unique. (If we dis­cov­er it and empha­size the lat­ter over and over, it’s called style.)

The Flow Machine project aims to under­stand style and treat it as a com­pu­ta­tion­al object through which oth­er infor­ma­tion can pass. That’s what we’re see­ing in the above video. For a more thor­ough expla­na­tion of Flow Machine, watch this video.

Sup­pos­ed­ly, this will help us poor human beings in the end, as it might (it’s nev­er explained how) help us get into our own flow state more read­i­ly.

But real­ly, that’s not what I’m think­ing about. I’m more imag­in­ing a night club some­time in the future where Bea­t­les androids play not just their hits, but the hits of oth­ers as if John, Paul, George and Ringo wrote them instead. (Yes, I know that has already been done. By humans.) And your local used record shop will have a lot of LPs full of clas­si­cal ver­sions of Bea­t­les hits.

It’s an inter­est­ing video, but I wouldn’t pack up your gui­tars yet folks!

via Tech Crunch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How Japanese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bamboo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

in Technology | May 5th, 2016

The Japan­ese term kaizen, which just means some­thing like “good change,” has come to sig­ni­fy in glob­al man­age­ment cul­ture a process of con­tin­u­ous small-scale improve­ment — an ele­ment of the “Japan­ese busi­ness phi­los­o­phy” so envi­ous­ly scru­ti­nized dur­ing that coun­try’s post­war eco­nom­ic boom. Toy­ota has done the most to asso­ciate them­selves with the idea of kaizen-as-con­tin­u­ous-improve­ment, but it has made its way to count­less oth­er busi­ness­es, includ­ing for­eign ones sell­ing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent prod­ucts; even the Amer­i­can gro­cery store Trad­er Joe’s has worked the word into their inter­nal cus­tomer-ser­vice lex­i­con.

But the nature of kaizen comes most clear­ly into view in the sys­tems of Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing. Japan has long pos­sessed a strong cul­ture of hand-crafts­man­ship, and, for almost as long, a strong cul­ture of automa­tion as well. You can see both at work in The Mak­ing, a series of videos from the Japan Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Agen­cy’s Sci­ence Chan­nel on Youtube. “There are from 2 to 150, and 151 to 309 videos to choose from,” writes Metafil­ter user arowe­of­shale, who high­lights the episodes on may­on­naise, “the mak­ing of steel balls (avail­able in Eng­lish), the con­struc­tion and test­ing of sewing machines, how rice crack­ers are made, a ther­mos fac­to­ry, the recy­cling of PET bot­tles, a matcha tea fac­to­ry and the cre­ation of bam­boo whisks.”

These mini-doc­u­men­taries take in-depth looks at the nuts and bolts (some­times lit­er­al­ly) of pro­duc­tion sys­tems that have evolved, small improve­ment after small improve­ment, over decades or indeed cen­turies. You can see in action every stage of these hybrid process­es of advanced and high­ly spe­cial­ized tech­nol­o­gy with skilled and some­times even arti­sanal human labor, some­how at once elab­o­rate and ele­gant. This goes for every prod­uct fea­tured, no mat­ter how impor­tant or triv­ial it may seem. (I got hooked myself after watch­ing one on chick­en-shaped sweets.)

Even non-Japan­ese-speak­ers can enjoy all of The Mak­ing’s clear and almost com­plete­ly visu­al-dri­ven episodes, but the JST has also made select ones avail­able with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles (see top playlist) in order to tell the world all about what it takes to make what it has come to see as quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese, like urban rail­road cars, steel balls (of many uses, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to pachinko machines), and Hina dolls.

Any Amer­i­can old-timer will tell you that, back in their day — a time when the Unit­ed States’ for­mer ene­my had yet to ful­ly rebuild its econ­o­my, let alone to become a tech­no­log­i­cal leader — the “made in Japan” stamp sig­ni­fied a piece of junk. These videos show us, in detail, what it took to refute that notion for good.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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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Watch Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue: The PBS American Masters Documentary That’s Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Film, Music | May 4th, 2016

A very quick heads up: Until the end of the month, you can stream free online Janis Joplin: Lit­tle Girl Blue, a new doc­u­men­tary from PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters series. Writes PBS:

The broad­cast fea­tures Amy Berg’s nev­er-before-seen extend­ed film cut with addi­tion­al archival per­for­mance footage and new inter­views with Jan­ice Joplin’s sis­ter Lau­ra Joplin and musi­cians influ­enced by Janis: Ale­cia Moore (a.k.a. Pink), Juli­ette Lewis, Melis­sa Etheridge and the film’s nar­ra­tor, Chan Mar­shall, who is best known as indie rock star Cat Pow­er.

The doc runs 102 min­utes, and just start­ed air­ing on tele­vi­sion on PBS this week. Enjoy.

h/t goes to Elana and Robin.

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:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Remem­ber­ing Janis Joplin: Some Clas­sic Live Per­for­mances and Pre­views of a New Joplin Musi­cal

Dick Cavett’s Epic Wood­stock Fes­ti­val Show (August, 1969)

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Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Printed Violin

in Music, Technology | May 4th, 2016

There is a per­pet­u­al argu­ment among stringed instru­ment afi­ciona­dos about the eso­teric val­ue of so-called “tonewoods.” Cer­tain­ly, to most dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears, the dif­fer­ences between an acoustic gui­tar, man­dolin, or vio­lin made of sol­id spruce or maple and one made of ply­wood seem son­i­cal­ly obvi­ous. When it comes to elec­tric gui­tars, the dis­tinc­tions between mate­ri­als can seem more neg­li­gi­ble. In blind tests many of us might have some dif­fi­cul­ty telling the dif­fer­ence between an elec­tric gui­tar made of the finest woods and one made of cheap bal­sa, lucite, or even an oil can. (Not that dif­fer­ences don’t exist!) It’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to point out that acoustic instru­ments depend upon their mate­ri­als and work­man­ship in ways elec­tric instru­ments don’t.

So how might dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears respond to an elec­tric, dig­i­tal­ly 3‑D print­ed acrylic vio­lin, based loose­ly on a real Stradi­var­ius? Can such an instru­ment repli­cate the sweet sus­tain of an acoustic vio­lin, Strad or oth­er­wise? You can judge for your­self in the demon­stra­tions here. Cre­at­ed by French engi­neer and musi­cian Lau­rent Bernadac, the “3Dvarius”—the world’s first 3‑D print­ed vio­lin—is per­haps, reports Wired, “a har­bin­ger of what’s to come for musi­cal instru­ments.” Crit­ics have shown how it falls far short of recre­at­ing the sound of a tra­di­tion­al instru­ment. (See vio­lin­ist Joan­na Wronko com­pare the two at a TEDx Ams­ter­dam talk here). And yes, the 3Dvarius may look “more like an avian skele­ton than a stringed instru­ment.” But it does have some advan­tages over tra­di­tion­al vio­lins made of wood.

For one thing, syn­thet­ic instru­ments are high­ly durable and light­weight (vio­lins and cel­los made of car­bon fiber have been on the mar­ket for sev­er­al years). For anoth­er, the 3Dvarius can indeed make some pret­ty sweet sounds when plugged into Bernadac’s rig, con­sist­ing of var­i­ous effects ped­als and loop­ers. At the top, see how he uses his set­up to cre­ate jazzy mul­ti-lay­ered, mul­ti-track arrange­ments of pop­u­lar songs with the 3Dvarius. And hear a few of those songs here, along with snazzy videos—including U2’s “With or With­out You,” the Game of Thrones and X‑Files themes, and “Se Bas­tasse Una Can­zone” by Ital­ian singer/songwriter Eros Ramaz­zot­ti. (See many more on Youtube.) The 3Dvarius web­site has a step-by-step expla­na­tion of how the instru­ment is made, from ini­tial design to sur­face treat­ment and final assem­bly.

Despite its name and inspi­ra­tion, the 3Dvarius does­n’t claim to actu­al­ly dupli­cate a Stradi­var­ius, a feat long thought impos­si­ble by even the finest mod­ern luthiers. Even com­put­er sci­en­tists admit: no mat­ter how good machines get at repli­ca­tion, replac­ing tra­di­tion­al, hand­made vio­lins with print­ed copies “would lead to dig­i­tal­ly cloned instru­ments,” writes Wired, “and the loss of son­ic char­ac­ter that makes music, well, music.” And it isn’t only son­ic char­ac­ter that mat­ters to musi­cians. Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, in blind tests, many vio­lin­ists can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a Stradi­var­ius and a high-qual­i­ty new­er mod­el vio­lin, but these find­ings do not dimin­ish the Stradi­var­ius mys­tique. The look and feel of an instru­ment and its make and pedi­gree mat­ter. As musi­cian and writer Clemen­cy Bur­ton-Hill points out, much of our fas­ci­na­tion with the Stradi­var­ius vio­lin has to do with the “sto­ry of Stradi­vari,” as well as those of the musi­cians who have owned and played his instru­ments.

And though it may be pos­si­ble to come close to their tones with cheap­er mod­ern copies and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, we still gush over Jimi Hen­drix’s Stra­to­cast­er or Jim­my Page’s Les Paul. The 3Dvarius, I’ll admit, is a very cool idea, but it’s hard to imag­ine a dig­i­tal­ly-pro­duced plas­tic arti­fact ever acquir­ing the same intan­gi­ble aura of not only the most famous instru­ments in the world, but also of unique, hand-craft­ed new instru­ments on their way to mak­ing his­to­ry. As Wal­ter Ben­jamin argued in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­ducibil­i­ty,” it’s the authen­tic­i­ty of “aura”—the spe­cif­ic traces of his­to­ry and the fin­ger­prints of artists and mas­ter craftsmen—that we trea­sure in art. These are qual­i­ties that elude the most advanced tech­no­log­i­cal process­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

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

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