A Touching Animated Documentary About the Rise, Fall & Second Coming of the 60s Psych-Folk Musician Richard Atkins

in Animation, Life, Music | November 17th, 2017

One won­ders what might have become of Richard Atkins’ musi­cal career had he come of age in this mil­len­ni­um, when young­sters suf­fer­ing from acute stage fright reg­u­lar­ly attract sta­di­um-sized fol­low­ings on Youtube.

This was most def­i­nite­ly not the case in 1968, when Atkins, aged 19, took the stage in a small Hol­ly­wood club filled with music indus­try brass, there specif­i­cal­ly to see him.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, tal­ent could only take him so far. Hav­ing learned to play gui­tar only a cou­ple of years ear­li­er in the wake of a dis­fig­ur­ing motor­cy­cle acci­dent, he and part­ner Richard Man­ning had record­ed an album, Richard Twice, for Mer­cury Records. The pres­ence on that record of sev­er­al mem­bers of the Wreck­ing Crew, an infor­mal, but leg­endary group of LA ses­sion musi­cians, con­ferred extra pop pedi­gree. The Acid Archives lat­er called it “a vir­tu­al­ly per­fect pop album, the kind of thing that would have ruled the charts if the wind had been blow­ing the right way that month.”

Alas, one tiny tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty at the start of the gig caused Man­ning to flee, leav­ing the freaked out and fright­en­ing­ly ill equipped Atkins to deal with the yawn­ing chasm that had opened between him and the audi­ence. The only fix that occurred to him was a Bugs Bun­ny-inspired soft shoe, a move that appar­ent­ly went over big with his Mom, pri­or to the acci­dent, when he had two legs and could bal­ance with­out a crutch.

As recount­ed in Matthew Salton’s ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary, above, this soul crush­ing moment is not with­out humor. Atkins, affa­bly nar­rat­ing his own sto­ry, has had 50 years to mull that night over, and real­izes that blown oppor­tu­ni­ties are prob­a­bly more uni­ver­sal than suc­cess­ful­ly snagged brass rings (Amer­i­can Idol, any­one?)

Over the ensu­ing years, Atkins found ful­fill­ment as a wood­work­er and fam­i­ly man, but music remained a painful what-if, addressed large­ly through avoid­ance.

Salton’s exu­ber­ant­ly scratchy ani­ma­tion comes as Atkins is tak­ing steps to con­quer his stage fright, per­form­ing out at small cafes, fes­ti­vals, and potluck sup­pers near his Pacif­ic North­west home.

He’s been post­ing old songs, gen­tly remind­ing lis­ten­ers, “before I’m judged too harsh­ly, remem­ber that I was 18 and liv­ing in North Hol­ly­wood, prob­a­bly rag­ing hor­mones and in the music busi­ness to boot!”

He’s also writ­ing and shar­ing new songs, includ­ing the touch­ing “Life Is A Roller­coast­er,” above.

Per­form­ing on Face­book Live in con­junc­tion with Salton’s New York Times Op-Doc essay, he tears up when the inter­view­er informs him that his daugh­ter has just post­ed an encour­ag­ing com­ment, and eager­ly con­firms his avail­abil­i­ty when anoth­er com­menter asks if he’d be up for a gig.

It’s only too late when you’re in the grave.

Trav­el back in time with a cou­ple more psych-folk cuts from Richard Twice, above, or buy the album in dig­i­tal form on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Syd Barrett’s “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Ani­ma­tion

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

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

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Watch Classical Music Come to Life in Artfully Animated Scores: Stravinsky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

in Animation, Music | November 16th, 2017

Stephen Mali­nows­ki has cul­ti­vat­ed his own patch of YouTube ground over the years with the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine, slow­ly scrolling visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of clas­si­cal music. The videos, like the one above, use shape and col­or to inter­pret pitch, dura­tion, and more recent­ly dynam­ics and inter­vals in a hyp­not­ic style that ref­er­ences both Oskar Fischinger and Gui­tar Hero.

Per­son­al­ly, I’ve been a fan for years and watched his style evolve from the basics of a “piano roll” scroll to these much more com­plex ani­ma­tions, just as sma­lin (his YouTube name) has gone from work­ing with solo piano works to the den­si­ty of Beethoven’s sym­pho­ny scores or the chaos of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Many music lovers who are not musi­cians but under­stand enough about com­po­si­tion will often fol­low a print­ed score when lis­ten­ing to clas­si­cal music; I would sug­gest that this is one bet­ter than the tra­di­tion­al nota­tion, as smalin’s method makes indi­vid­ual instru­ments in a quar­tet easy to fol­low; or show the inter­play between left and right hands in a Debussy piece; or lay out in visu­al terms the vari­a­tions on a theme or pat­tern (espe­cial­ly in Bach). For those who love but “don’t get” clas­si­cal music, these videos are a step towards clar­i­ty.

The Music Ani­ma­tion Machine start­ed long before the Inter­net. Mali­nows­ki (a grad­u­ate of my alma maters SBCC and UCSB!) dates the begin­ning to 1982, and the inspi­ra­tion came from a “hal­lu­ci­na­tion” he had while lis­ten­ing to Bach’s Sonatas and Par­ti­tas for Unac­com­pa­nied Vio­lin.

“As I lis­tened to the music, the notes on the page were danc­ing to the music — but at the same time, they were the music. It was so charm­ing and grace­ful — the flag of an eighth note extend­ing like a bal­let dancer’s arm; pairs of notes, mov­ing in par­al­lel thirds and sixths, like dancers step­ping hand-in-hand … I was delight­ed!”

The idea to ani­mate was sug­gest­ed by a friend and dove­tailed into the tech­nol­o­gy of the time, espe­cial­ly the birth of MIDI. Too self-crit­i­cal to be a per­former and too for­get­ful to be a com­pos­er, Mali­nows­ki turned to com­put­er pro­gram­ming and visu­al­iz­ing scores as the lis­ten­er, not the per­former, under­stands them. It’s been his life’s work. Explore his big col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tions and also his ani­ma­tion tech­niques.

Be wary, though. Watch­ing one isn’t enough–writing this arti­cle was a con­tin­u­al strug­gle between the dead­line and ani­mat­ed bliss. You just may find your­self sim­i­lar­ly and pleas­ant­ly lost.

Note: Here’s a list of Mali­nows­ki favorite and most pop­u­lar videos:

Grainger, Chil­dren’s March
Mozart, Sonata for Two Pianos, K 448, first move­ment
Bach, “Lit­tle” Fugue in G minor, Organ
Debussy, First Arabesque
Rim­sky-Kor­sakov, Flight of the Bum­ble­bee
Debussy, Pre­lude to ‘The After­noon of a Faun’
Beethoven, Sym­pho­ny 7, Alle­gret­to, mvt. 2
Stravin­sky, The Rite of Spring
Bach, Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D minor
Sousa, Sem­per Fidelis
Debussy, Syrinx
Ligeti, 6 Bagatelles, III. Alle­gro grazioso
Bach, Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to 4, 3rd mvt.

Relat­ed Posts:

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Hat­ed by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

Dis­cov­er the 1950s & 1960s Com­put­er & Cut-Up Ani­ma­tion of Pio­neer­ing Film­mak­er Stan Van­Der­Beek

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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Herbie Hancock Is Now Teaching His First Online Course on Jazz

in Music, Online Courses | November 16th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

A quick update to some­thing we first men­tioned last June. On Mas­ter­class, jazz leg­end Her­bie Han­cock is now teach­ing his first online course on jazz. In 25 video lessons, the 14-time Gram­my win­ner shares his approach to impro­vi­sa­tion, com­po­si­tion, and har­mo­ny, and gives stu­dents access to 10+ orig­i­nal piano tran­scrip­tions, includ­ing 5 exclu­sive solo per­for­mances. Plus there’s a down­load­able work­book.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

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 Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

What Miles Davis Taught Her­bie Han­cock: In Music, as in Life, There Are No Mis­takes, Just Chances to Impro­vise 

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

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An Interactive Map of Every Record Shop in the World

in Maps, Music | November 16th, 2017

Arriv­ing in a new city usu­al­ly means find­ing the near­est decent gro­cery, phar­ma­cy, cof­fee shop, book­store, laun­dry, etc. And before near­ly every musi­cal whim could be sat­is­fied with a few clicks, it also meant for many peo­ple find­ing the near­est record store. Even the local strip mall chain might hold a sur­prise or two. But the true finds appeared among the small pro­pri­etors, mer­chan­dis­ers of dusty LPs in wood­en bins and keep­ers of local music scene lore. Enter­ing a well-curat­ed music shop can feel like walk­ing into a medieval apothe­cary. What­ev­er ails you, you’re sure to find a rem­e­dy here. If it doesn’t work, there remains a cer­tain mag­ic in the trans­ac­tion. We con­tin­ue to believe in music even when it lets us down.

But have we lost faith in the record shop? I hope not. Online stream­ing and buy­ing has the regret­table effect of flat­ten­ing every­thing into the same two dimen­sions with­out the aura of phys­i­cal media and the musi­cal para­pher­na­lia we find in real life stores. Should you be among the unlucky who lack a local music store, fear not.

You can recov­er the romance by trav­el­ing to any one of the thou­sands of shops world­wide that are cat­a­logued and mapped on Vinyl­Hub, a crowd-sourced “endeav­or,” Ron Kretsch writes at Dan­ger­ous Minds, “to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive map of every brick-and-mor­tar record store on Earth, a per­fect resource for the world-trav­el­ing vinyl obses­sive.”

Brought to us by mas­ter­minds behind Discogs and their sim­i­lar spin-off online cat­a­logs for books, movies, etc., this project might get us out of our chairs—maybe even out of the country—and into new places to dig through the crates. But even if we’re not inclined to leave the house, Vinyl­Hub offers a wealth of fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion. “The sin­gle city with the largest den­si­ty of shops,” we learn, “is Tokyo,” though “had you asked me,” Kretsch writes, “I’d have prob­a­bly said Lon­don.” I’d have guessed New York, which comes in at a sur­pris­ing 7th place.

The most remote record store on Earth is a clus­ter of CD stalls above a pro­duce mar­ket in the tiny Pacif­ic Island King­dom of Ton­ga, but Vinyl Run, locat­ed on the tiny Indi­an Ocean island of Réu­nion, sure looks like a con­tender. The north­ern­most is in Alta, Nor­way; the south­ern­most is in Inver­cargill, New Zealand.

The UK is cur­rent­ly sec­ond in num­ber of shops by coun­try: 537, with .8443 shops per 100,000 inhab­i­tants. The Unit­ed States at num­ber one has almost triple that num­ber, but also over five times the pop­u­la­tion. These fig­ures are pro­vi­sion­al. Much of the world remains uncharted—at least as far as record shops are concerned—and Discogs mem­bers con­tin­ue to sub­mit new entries. Should you find a blank spot on the map that needs a lit­tle record icon, you can join for free and con­tribute to the Vinyl­Hub com­mu­ni­ty. While there’s noth­ing like a trip to a new music store, even if you’re only in it for the data, you’ll find much here to inspire.

Over at the Discogs blog, we learn sev­er­al more facts, such as the two shops that are far­thest apart (Madrid’s Citadel Records and Star Sec­ond-Hand Book-Music in Palmer­ston North, New Zealand: 19,978 km) and the loca­tion of that most remote shop (the mar­ket in Nuku’alofa in Ton­ga, address: “Upstairs of wet mar­ket”). VinylHub’s “Explor­er” map uti­lizes Google Maps fea­tures to give you unlim­it­ed access to every region in the world. Zoom in to see the num­bers by city and the indi­vid­ual loca­tions of each and every shop in the data­base. You can even find record stores list­ed in Pyongyang—or rather record sec­tions of sev­er­al hotel book­shops. I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rec­om­mend mak­ing the trip, but it’s inter­est­ing to imag­ine what odd trea­sures we might find there—or at any of the oth­er sev­er­al thou­sand shops from around the world.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Pro­fes­sion­al­ly Dig­i­tized & Stream­ing Online: A Trea­sure Trove of Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry Music

You Can Have Your Ash­es Turned Into a Playable Vinyl Record, When Your Day Comes

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

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

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Beautiful & Outlandish Color Illustrations Let Europeans See Exotic Fish for the First Time (1754)

in Books, History, Nature | November 16th, 2017

Whether in the tanks into which we gaze at the aquar­i­um or the CGI-inten­sive wildlife-based gagfests at which we gaze in the the­ater, most of us in the 21st cen­tu­ry have seen more than a few fun­ny fish. Eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Euro­peans could­n’t have said the same. The great major­i­ty passed their entire lives with­out so much as a glance at the form of even one live exot­ic crea­ture of the deep, and most of those who have a sense of what such a sight looked like prob­a­bly got it from an illus­tra­tion. But even so, some of the illus­trat­ed fish of the day must have proven unfor­get­table, espe­cial­ly the ones in Louis Renard’s Pois­sons, Ecreviss­es et Crabes.

First pub­lished in 1719 with a sec­ond edi­tion, seen here, in 1754, Renard’s book, whose full title trans­lates to Fish­es, Cray­fish­es, and Crabs, of Diverse Col­ors and Extra­or­di­nary Form, that Are Found Around the Islands of the Moluc­cas and on the Coasts of the South­ern Lands, showed its read­ers, in full col­or for the very first time, crea­tures the likes of which they’d nev­er have had occa­sion even to imag­ine. The book’s 460 hand-col­ored cop­per engrav­ings depict, accord­ing to the Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty Library, “415 fish­es, 41 crus­taceans, two stick insects, a dugong and a mer­maid.”

The spec­i­mens in the first part of the book tend toward the real­is­tic, while those of the sec­ond “verge on the sur­re­al,” many of which “bear no sim­i­lar­i­ty to any liv­ing crea­tures,” some of which bear “small human faces, suns, moons and stars” on their flanks and cara­paces, most pos­sessed of col­ors “applied in a rather arbi­trary fash­ion,” though bril­liant­ly so. In the short accom­pa­ny­ing texts, “sev­er­al of the fish” — pre­sum­ably not the mer­maid — “are assessed in terms of their edi­bil­i­ty and are accom­pa­nied by brief recipes.”

Renard him­self, who lived from 1678 to 1746, seems to have had a career as col­or­ful as the fish in his book. “As well as spend­ing some sev­en­teen years as a pub­lish­er and bookdeal­er,” he also “sold med­i­cines, bro­kered Eng­lish bonds and, more intrigu­ing­ly, act­ed as a spy for the British Crown, being employed by Queen Anne, George I and George II.” Far from keep­ing that part of his life a secret, “Renard used his sta­tus as an ‘agent’ to help adver­tise his books. This par­tic­u­lar work is actu­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to George I while the title-page describes the pub­lish­er as  ‘Louis Renard, Agent de Sa Majesté Bri­tan­nique.’ ”

You can behold more of Pois­sons, Ecreviss­es et Crabes at the Pub­lic Domain Review. “If the illus­tra­tions are breath­tak­ing to us now, with all the hours of David Atten­bor­ough doc­u­men­taries under our belts,” they write, “one can only imag­ine the impact this would have had on a Euro­pean audi­ence of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, to which the exot­ic ocean life of the East would have been vir­tu­al­ly unknown.”

Though received as a respectable sci­en­tif­ic work in its day — and even, as the Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty Library puts it, “a prod­uct of the Enlight­en­ment” — the book now stands as an enchant­i­ng trib­ute to the com­bi­na­tion of a lit­tle knowl­edge and a lot of human imag­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Aberdeen Bes­tiary, One of the Great Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts, Now Dig­i­tized in High Res­o­lu­tion & Made Avail­able Online

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Behold the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script: The 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Two Million Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

in Art, Biology, Books, Life, Photography, Science | November 15th, 2017

Are we tru­ly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an era of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to describe what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, author of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has found at least one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” But Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Until very recent­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. But astound­ing­ly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 per­cent of earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our live­stock, and our pets take up the remain­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… almost half of the earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs does not bode well for the mil­lions of remain­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We learn from extinc­tions past that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­able cat­a­stro­phe. Life real­ly does go on, though it may take mil­lions of years to recov­er. But the cur­rent forms of life may dis­ap­pear before their time. If we want to under­stand what is at stake besides our own frag­ile fos­sil-fuel based civ­i­liza­tions, we need to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly as well as intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Short of globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion in the earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we could hard­ly do bet­ter than immers­ing our­selves in the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, art, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open access dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for many years been mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to con­nect to nature through nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. In 2012, they announced the “suc­cess sto­ry” of their Flickr streams, both con­tain­ing thou­sands of illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs uploaded by the BHL staff and read­ers from their huge col­lec­tions of books.

The first stream, cur­rent­ly at 122,281 images, has been care­ful­ly curat­ed, and includes search­able gal­leries and albums divid­ed by book title or sub­ject, such as “Exot­ic botany illus­trat­ed,” “The Birds of Aus­tralia v.1,” and “Bats!” The sec­ond stream, con­sist­ing of over 2 mil­lion images, is a mas­sive grab-bag of pho­tos, ill­lus­tra­tions from nature, adver­tise­ments, and imag­i­na­tive ren­der­ings.

Though far less use­ful for the scholar—or the very pur­pose­ful user—this sec­ond pho­to­stream offers more poten­tial for chance dis­cov­ery, through the aim­less wan­der­ing that often leads to serendip­i­tous­ly sub­lime expe­ri­ences. The for­mal BHL stream does not dis­ap­point, though it may offer few­er sur­pris­es. Both of these image archives offer expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not only through sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but through the artis­tic record­ing of won­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

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

Down­load for Free 2.6 Mil­lion Images from Books Pub­lished Over Last 500 Years on Flickr

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

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Meet the 35-Year-Old British Man Who Lives Entirely in the Year 1946

in Life | November 15th, 2017

Ben San­sum is some­thing of a young fogey. He’s only 35 years old, but he lives in the year 1946. Entire­ly. The pic­tures on his wall in his Cam­bridgeshire home, the sup­plies in his cup­board, the music played on his turntable, the clothes he wears–everything comes from 1946 and the post WWII era. His moti­va­tion is part­ly aes­thet­ic. He likes liv­ing in a peri­od home, he tells us. But it also goes deep­er than that. As he notes, our mod­ern world moves so quick­ly, it some­times pays to hang onto old world charms.

via Coudal

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!

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Mona Lisa Selfie: A Montage of Social Media Photos Taken at the Louvre and Put on Instagram

in Art, Life | November 15th, 2017

“Over 6 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it the Mona Lisa at the Lou­vre each year. Many share their vis­it on social media.” Cre­at­ed by Daniel McK­ee, this dizzy­ing video gath­ers togeth­er hun­dreds of the pho­tos that get tak­en at the muse­um and then wind up on Insta­gram. Only a minute long, it’s a nice suc­cinct com­men­tary on our time…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490) Is Much Cool­er Than Yours

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

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