The Velvet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vexations on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

in Music, Television | February 13th, 2017

Few of us today, in search of uncon­ven­tion­al artistry, would imag­ine mid-20th-cen­tu­ry CBS game shows as a promis­ing resource. But look­ing back, it turns out that Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion of that era — a time and place when more peo­ple were exposed to the very same media than any before or since — man­aged to bring a sur­pris­ing num­ber of gen­uine cre­ators before its main­stream-of-the-main­stream audi­ence. In 1960, for instance, exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er John Cage per­formed Water Walk, his piece for a bath­tub, pitch­er, and ice cubes, on I’ve Got a Secret.

Three years lat­er, Cage’s near-name­sake John Cale took the show’s stage to play Erik Satie’s “melan­cholic yet dead­pan, eccle­si­as­ti­cal yet demon­ic” Vex­a­tions. Though Cage did­n’t make a reap­pear­ance for the occa­sion, he did have a con­nec­tion to the music itself.

Dat­ing to 1893 or 1894 and unpub­lished dur­ing Satie’s life­time, Vex­a­tions’ score con­tains a note from the com­pos­er: “Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce motif, il sera bon de se pré­par­er au préal­able, et dans le plus grand silence, par des immo­bil­ités sérieuses,” tak­en by the piece’s inter­preters to mean that they should play it 840 times in a row.

Or at least that’s how Cage and col­lab­o­ra­tor Lewis Lloyd inter­pret­ed it when they staged its first pub­lic per­for­mance in 1963 at the Pock­et The­atre in Man­hat­tan. Its rotat­ing ros­ter of play­ers, under the ban­ner of the Pock­et The­atre Piano Relay Team, includ­ed a 21-year-old Cale. One week lat­er on I’ve Got a Secret, the young Welsh­man’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in this dar­ing per­for­mance con­sti­tut­ed the secret the play­ers had to guess. Hav­ing deter­mined that his achieve­ment has some­thing to do with music, one lady asks the crit­i­cal ques­tion: “Does it have any­thing to do with endurance?”

Yes, replies Cale, although the episode’s oth­er secret-bear­er, Karl Schen­z­er of the Liv­ing The­ater, may have per­formed the real act of endurance as the sole audi­ence mem­ber who stayed to watch the whole eigh­teen hours and forty min­utes. (He cer­tain­ly got a deal: Cage, believ­ing that “the more art you con­sume, the less it should cost,” gave each audi­ence mem­ber a five-cent refund for every twen­ty min­utes they stayed.) I’ve Got a Secret’s home view­ers then saw and heard Cale play Vex­a­tions, or at least 1/840th of it. They would hear from him again in his capac­i­ty as a found­ing mem­ber of the Vel­vet Under­ground — a band some of them would learn about a cou­ple years lat­er on the very same net­work’s Evening News with Wal­ter Cronkite.

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:

Nico, Lou Reed & John Cale Sing the Clas­sic Vel­vet Under­ground Song ‘Femme Fatale’ (Paris, 1972)

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

Watch William S. Bur­roughs’ Ah Pook is Here as an Ani­mat­ed Film, with Music By John Cale

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

A Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Min­utes of 20th Cen­tu­ry Art Music, Includ­ing Mod­ernism, Futur­ism, Dadaism & Beyond

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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Listen to a Marathon Reading of Elie Wiesel’s Night

in Audio Books, History, K-12, Letters, Life, Literature | February 13th, 2017

A cou­ple of weeks ago on Jan­u­ary 27, Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Day, a diverse group gath­ered for a marathon read­ing of Night, Nobel Prize win­ner, Elie Wiesel’s mem­oir of his youth­ful expe­ri­ences as a pris­on­er in Auschwitz and Buchen­wald.

The event was orga­nized in part by the Nation­al Yid­dish The­atre—fit­ting giv­en that Night was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Yid­dish, though first pub­lished in French. The theater’s artis­tic direc­tor and sev­er­al actors from past pro­duc­tions claimed sev­er­al of the read­ing slots, but left more than six­ty to be filled by par­tic­i­pants from an inten­tion­al­ly broad pool.

There were rab­bis and Broad­way per­form­ers, a New York­er writer, the Con­sul Gen­er­al of Ger­many, and the Hun­gar­i­an Ambas­sador to the UN…

Stu­dents and edu­ca­tors…

A num­ber of Holo­caust sur­vivors…

Dr. Ruth Wes­t­heimer and Wiesel’s grown son, Elisha, who observed:

At a time when this coun­try is feel­ing so divid­ed, when so much neg­a­tiv­i­ty is cir­cu­lat­ing about those who are dif­fer­ent from our­selves — those who have dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ties, reli­gions or even dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal lean­ings — my father’s words are an impor­tant reminder of the dan­gers of the ‘us ver­sus them’ men­tal­i­ty.

It took the vol­un­teer read­ers a lit­tle over four hours to get through the slim vol­ume, which shows up on many Amer­i­can high schools’ required read­ing lists.

The free event was co-spon­sored by the Muse­um of Jew­ish Heritage—A Liv­ing Memo­r­i­al to the Holo­caust, whose loca­tion in low­er Man­hat­tan was quite con­ve­nient to anoth­er impor­tant event tak­ing place that day—an inter­faith ral­ly to protest Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s exec­u­tive order ban­ning immi­grants from 7 coun­tries, sus­pend­ing entry for all refugees for a peri­od of four months, and call­ing for “extreme vet­ting” screen­ings.

There may be times when we are pow­er­less to pre­vent injus­tice, but there must nev­er be a time when we fail to protest.

- Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Accep­tance Speech, Decem­ber, 1986

h/t Jeff N.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Hap­pens When We Die

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Yes, the Holo­caust Hap­pened, Even If a Top Google Search Result Says It Didn’t

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hear the First Jazz Record, Which Launched the Jazz Age: “Livery Stable Blues” (1917)

in Music | February 10th, 2017

Through turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca mean­dered blues, blue­grass, and “old time” music. Gospel hymns, waltzes, and march­es. Per­haps the first tru­ly nation­al musi­cal style, Rag­time took a lit­tle bit from all of these and fused them togeth­er, influ­enc­ing every­thing from the crud­est vaude­ville to the work of some of Europe’s most inno­v­a­tive com­posers, includ­ing Antonin Dvořák, Claude Debussy, and Erik Satie. But rag­time was still very much tied to the past, to its late 19th roots in min­strel­sy and march­es.

Then in 1917, a sound arrived that was so per­fect­ly in tune with the age that it became sin­gu­lar­ly evoca­tive of next decade to come. This was jazz, of course, or “jass,” as it was spelled on “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues,” the first record of such music ever released, com­posed and played by the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band. The music arrived with the force of the “garage rock of the 1960s…. It was sim­ple music played with so much irrev­er­ence that it proved irre­sistible” to Amer­i­cans caught up in the coun­try’s rapid urban­iza­tion and mod­ern­iz­ing.

The first jazz record was tran­si­tion­al music—not nec­es­sar­i­ly a jazz big bang moment; “loos­er and more spon­ta­neous than the rag­time that had swept the coun­try at the turn of the cen­tu­ry,” writes Geof­frey Himes at Smith­son­ian, “but lack­ing the impro­vised solos and elas­tic rhythm of jazz to come.” Just as in the emer­gence of rock and roll in the 1950s, most jazz fans first came to know white groups like the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band before they met the black New Orlea­ni­ans who invent­ed the music.

But imme­di­ate­ly after “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues” the mar­ket was awash with both “jass” and “jazz” releas­es, includ­ing the first by a black Amer­i­can jazz act, Wilbur Sweat­man and his Jass Band, and a jazz record from the leg­endary blues pio­neer W.C. Handy from Mem­phis. Between 1916 and 1917, jazz went nation­wide: New York, Chica­go, St. Louis, San Fran­cis­co, and just about every­where else in-between. As it spread its ori­gins became mud­dled. “Just how the Jazz Band orig­i­nat­ed and where it came from is very hard to say,” wrote the sleeve of one lat­er 1917 release.

Music his­to­ri­ans agree that jazz was born in the night­clubs and on the streets of New Orleans, the home town of the Orig­i­nal Dix­ieland ‘Jass’ Band. But “the ques­tion of who did what first,” writes Scott Alexan­der, “and what was rag­time and what was jazz is often a divi­sive ques­tion among those who are inter­est­ed in ear­ly jazz.” Yet when it comes to mak­ing pop his­to­ry, “Liv­ery Sta­ble Blues” had greater impact than some­what sim­i­lar-sound­ing records released around the same time. “The band was a sen­sa­tion” writes Himes. And almost overnight the sound of jazz became the sound of 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

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!

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

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

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Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

in Animation, K-12, Life, Music, TED Talks | February 10th, 2017

Remem­ber lis­ten­ing to Peter and the Wolf as a child, how the nar­ra­tor would explain that cer­tain instru­ments cor­re­spond to par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ters:  the duck — an oboe, the wolf — three horns, and so on?

In the above TED-Ed les­son (mem­o­rably ani­mat­ed by Com­pote Col­lec­tive), music his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Schwarm ful­fills much the same role for The Four Sea­sons by Anto­nio Vival­di. (Stream it here.)

Why are we so drawn to this Baroque con­cer­to? Is it because we asso­ciate it with brunch?

The hun­dreds of movies and com­mer­cials that have fea­tured it?

(Direc­tor Robert Ben­ton chose Vival­di rather than an orig­i­nal com­pos­er for the score of Kramer vs. Kramer, argu­ing that “Con­cer­to in C Major for Man­dolin & Strings” cap­tured the trou­bled Man­hat­tan couple’s refined lifestyle far bet­ter than the John Williams-esque bom­bast the ear asso­ciates with some many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic hits of the peri­od. The 1979 film’s suc­cess sent “The Four Sea­sons” to the top of the charts.)

These pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions no doubt account for some of our fond­ness, but Pro­fes­sor Schwarm posits that the sto­ries con­tained in the melodies are what real­ly reel us in.

Basi­cal­ly, we’re in the thrall of a musi­cal weath­er report, rev­el­ing in the way Vival­di man­ages to bring to life both the birdies’ sun­ny spring song and the sud­den thun­der­storm that dis­rupts it.

Sum­mer rolls out the mete­o­ro­log­i­cal big guns with a hail­storm.

Autumn’s cool­er night­time tem­per­a­tures keep the wine-flushed peas­ants from turn­ing their har­vest cel­e­bra­tions into a full-on bac­cha­nal.

Win­ter? Well per­haps you’re tucked up con­tent­ed­ly in front of the fire­place right now, grat­i­fied to be hear­ing your own com­fort echoed in the largo sec­tion.

Inspired by the land­scape paint­ings of artist, Mar­co Ric­ci, Vival­di penned four poems that dri­ve the move­ments of his most famous work. Their trans­la­tions, below, are nowhere near as elo­quent to the mod­ern listener’s ear, but you’ll find that read­ing them along with your favorite record­ing of the Four Sea­sons will cor­rob­o­rate Pro­fes­sor Schwarm’s the­sis.

Spring – Con­cer­to in E Major

Alle­gro

Spring­time is upon us.

The birds cel­e­brate her return with fes­tive song,

and mur­mur­ing streams are soft­ly caressed by the breezes.

Thun­der­storms, those her­alds of Spring, roar, cast­ing their dark man­tle over heav­en,

Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charm­ing songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn mead­ow, with leafy branch­es rustling over­head, the goat-herd sleeps, his faith­ful dog beside him.

Alle­gro

Led by the fes­tive sound of rus­tic bag­pipes, nymphs and shep­herds light­ly dance beneath the bril­liant canopy of spring.

Sum­mer – Con­cer­to in g‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Beneath the blaz­ing sun’s relent­less heat

men and flocks are swel­ter­ing,

pines are scorched.

We hear the cuck­oo’s voice; then sweet songs of the tur­tle dove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air….but threat­en­ing north wind sweeps them sud­den­ly aside. The shep­herd trem­bles, fear­ful of vio­lent storm and what may lie ahead.

Ada­gio e piano — Presto e forte

His limbs are now awak­ened from their repose by fear of light­ning’s flash and thun­der’s roar, as gnats and flies buzz furi­ous­ly around.

Presto

Alas, his worst fears were jus­ti­fied, as the heav­ens roar and great hail­stones beat down upon the proud­ly stand­ing corn.

Autumn – Con­cer­to in F Major

Alle­gro

The peas­ant cel­e­brates with song and dance the har­vest safe­ly gath­ered in.

The cup of Bac­chus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slum­ber.

Ada­gio molto

The singing and the danc­ing die away

as cool­ing breezes fan the pleas­ant air,

invit­ing all to sleep

with­out a care.

Alle­gro

The hunters emerge at dawn,

ready for the chase,

with horns and dogs and cries.

Their quar­ry flees while they give chase.

Ter­ri­fied and wound­ed, the prey strug­gles on,

but, har­ried, dies

Win­ter – Con­cer­to in F‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Shiv­er­ing, frozen mid the frosty snow in bit­ing, sting­ing winds;

run­ning to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chat­ter­ing in the bit­ter chill.

Largo

To rest con­tent­ed­ly beside the hearth, while those out­side are drenched by pour­ing rain.

Alle­gro

We tread the icy path slow­ly and cau­tious­ly, for fear of trip­ping and falling.

Then turn abrupt­ly, slip, crash on the ground and, ris­ing, has­ten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolt­ed doors…

this is win­ter, which nonethe­less brings its own delights.

 


You can down­load the Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty Cham­ber Play­ers’ record­ing of Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons” for free here.

See how well you retained your TED-ED les­son with a mul­ti­ple choice quiz, then read more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in less than three weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Abstract: Netflix’s New Documentary Series About “the Art of Design” Premieres Today

in Design, Television | February 10th, 2017

All over the world, so many kids grow­ing up, stu­dents look­ing for a major, and even adults angling for a career change say they want to get into “design.” But what do they mean? The word encom­pass­es a bewil­der­ing­ly wide (and ever-expand­ing) range of dis­ci­plines, respect­ed and expe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­ers of eight of which the new Net­flix doc­u­men­tary series Abstract takes as its sub­jects: archi­tect Bjarke Ingels, illus­tra­tor Christoph Nie­mann, inte­ri­or design­er Ilse Craw­ford, stage design­er Es Devlin, graph­ic design­er Paula Sch­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Pla­ton, auto­mo­bile design­er Ralph Gilles, and shoe design­er Tin­ker Hat­field.

“I can guess what you’re think­ing, because I have watched a lot of design doc­u­men­taries,” writes Abstract cre­ator (and WIRED edi­tor-in-chief) Scott Dadich. “Restrained, pol­ished, pret­ty — so many of them look like a mov­ing ver­sion of a cof­fee table book. You’ve got soft­ly lit inter­views, eso­teric con­ver­sa­tions, and sub­tle track­ing shots of wide land­scapes beneath unob­tru­sive music. Most of it is clean, min­i­mal, and bor­ing as hell.”

Instead, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have matched each of the design­ers this series pro­files with a dif­fer­ent doc­u­men­tar­i­an with their own dis­tinct style: the direc­to­r­i­al ros­ter includes Mor­gan Neville (who made Best of Ene­mies, the recent doc­u­men­tary on Gore Vidal and William F. Buck­ley) and Bri­an Oakes (direc­tor of Jim: The James Foley Sto­ry).

Indiewire’s Liz Shan­non Miller describes the series as doc­u­ment­ing, among oth­er things, the work­spaces of these design­ers in a kind of detail “on the lev­el of MTV’s Cribs.” Though “per­son­al lives are kept rel­a­tive­ly out of the pic­ture, Abstract man­ages to get sur­pris­ing­ly inti­mate with the cre­ators at its cen­ter.” You can get a taste of that from the clip just above of Ingels’ episode in which he explains what his team want­ed to do with the game of “urban Tetris” that was build­ing the VM Hous­es in Copen­hagen. “It cre­at­ed a lot of noise,” he says of the hous­ing pro­jec­t’s dar­ing design, one that still catch­es the atten­tion of passers­by today.

All of Abstract’s episodes come out today, but before you binge on them (and if you don’t have a Net­flix mem­ber­ship, you can always sign up for their free one-month tri­al), you can read this Archi­tec­tur­al Digest inter­view on it with Ingels and Neville. “This show is about peo­ple who are intense­ly curi­ous and try­ing to under­stand, in a very prac­ti­cal way, how to make the world we live in a bet­ter place, whether it’s a more com­fort­able place or a more effi­cient place or a more egal­i­tar­i­an place,” says Neville. And what does that require? “Under­stand­ing that life is always evolv­ing, the world is always evolv­ing, and that means that yesterday’s answers might be the answers to a dif­fer­ent ques­tion than what the ques­tion is today,” says Ingels. “So it always starts with ask­ing ques­tions and refram­ing the ques­tion” — and of course, as you’ll wit­ness count­less times through­out the length of the show, ven­tur­ing an answer.

Abstract is a Rad­i­cal­Me­dia pro­duc­tion made in asso­ci­a­tion with Tremo­lo Pro­duc­tions. It was exec­u­tive pro­duced by Mor­gan Neville, Scott Dadich (Edi­tor in Chief of WIRED), and Dave O’Connor, Jon Kamen and Justin Wilkes.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Pow­ers of Ten: The 1968 Doc­u­men­tary by Leg­endary Design­ers Ray and Charles Eames

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

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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A Short Anti-LSD Horror Film Made by the Lockheed Corporation (1969)

in Random | February 10th, 2017

Dur­ing the late 1960s, the defense con­trac­tor Lock­heed Cor­po­ra­tion took a strange detour into film­mak­ing and spon­sored a series of short films, each exam­in­ing the per­ils of a par­tic­u­lar hard­core drug. Above, you can watch “Case Study: LSD,” a three-minute short doc­u­ment­ing a young wom­an’s acid trip. Every­thing seems pret­ty groovy, until the 18-year-old pro­tag­o­nist goes to eat a hot dog. That’s when things go hor­ri­bly wrong: the hot dog springs to life, claims it has a wife and sev­en kids to sup­port, and screams bloody mur­der as it gets mer­ci­less­ly ingest­ed. A hor­ror film, if I’ve ever seen one.

You can watch the three oth­er short films in the series here: Case Study: Hero­in, Case Study: Amphet­a­mines, and Case Study: Bar­bi­tu­rates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­toric LSD Debate at MIT: Tim­o­thy Leary v. Pro­fes­sor Jerome Lettvin (1967)

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Curi­ous Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Won­der­land That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

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Watch Tears In the Rain: A Blade Runner Short Film–A New, Unofficial Prequel to the Ridley Scott Film

in Film, Sci Fi | February 9th, 2017

Christo­pher Grant Har­vey spent the bet­ter part of five years mak­ing Tears In The Rain: A Blade Run­ner Short Film. Unwill­ing to set­tle for some­thing mere­ly aver­age, Har­vey labored away, espe­cial­ly in post-pro­duc­tion, “try­ing to get the per­fect orig­i­nal visu­al effects and [a] fit­ting score to bring the sto­ry to life.” Set in the world of Philip K. Dick­’s nov­el Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? (1968) and the motion pic­ture Blade Run­ner (1982), Tears In The Rain is a loose pre­quel to Rid­ley Scot­t’s motion pic­ture, and it’s also a “what if” sto­ry. It asks what “if a ‘Blade Run­ner’ retired a human by mis­take, what hap­pens then?”

Here’s more on the plot:

In a dystopi­an Los Ange­les future, repli­cants or genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered humanoids are cre­at­ed to work forced labour on off-world colonies. The lat­est gen­er­a­tion, the Nexus 3 series, begins to dis­play errat­ic and vio­lent behav­iour. Repli­cants were not designed to expe­ri­ence com­plex emo­tions or devel­op long-term mem­o­ries. In the wake of cor­po­rate scan­dals of the pre­vi­ous decade, the Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion qui­et­ly attempts to remove Nexus 3 from cir­cu­la­tion.

John Kampff (Sean Cameron Michael), a senior engi­neer, heads up the Tyrell Retire­ment Divi­sion. With the pri­ma­ry objec­tives, detect and remove Repli­cants, John has sus­pect­ed Nexus 3 Andy Smith (Rus­sel Savadier) firm­ly in his sights. As John soon learns, Repli­cant detec­tion is near­ly impos­si­ble with­out spe­cial­ist equip­ment. The Voight-Kampff, a poly­graph-like machine used by retire­ment engi­neers to help in the test­ing of an indi­vid­ual to learn if they are a repli­cant, is a dis­tant thought in John Kampf­f’s mind.

The 11-minute film was made at a cost of $1500. Not too shab­by. Find more infor­ma­tion about Tears In The Rain here.

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!

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

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Browse Every Art Exhibition Held at MoMA Since 1929 with the New “MoMA Exhibition Spelunker”

in Archives, Art | February 9th, 2017

More and more, muse­ums around the world are open­ing up their vast archives for free on the inter­net. We can browse broad col­lec­tions, or dig down deep into col­lec­tions and exam­ine indi­vid­ual works, or we can down­load hi-res­o­lu­tion jpgs of famous works and slap them on our new desk­top as wall­pa­per. (Dis­cus­sion: does this triv­i­al­ize a work or help us appre­ci­ate it?)

Indeed, Open­Cul­ture has linked to many of these and I’ve fol­lowed. And I’ve often returned over­whelmed or dis­ap­point­ed, not by the art, but by bad web design. Good inten­tions are one thing, but insti­tu­tions often turn to coders first, not design­ers. And there’s a dif­fer­ence.

Recent­ly we told you how the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has put most of its near­ly 90 years of exhi­bi­tions online. Our own Col­in Mar­shall said:

The archive offers, in the words of Chief of Archives Michelle Ellig­ott, “free and unprece­dent­ed access to The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s ever-evolv­ing exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry” in the form of “thou­sands of unique and vital mate­ri­als includ­ing instal­la­tion pho­tographs, out-of-print exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues, and more, begin­ning with MoMA’s very first exhi­bi­tion in 1929.”

Yet the inter­face is quite lack­ing, show­ing a blank search bar with no clue to how much lies beneath. Where to start, if you just want to browse?

Enter the data visu­al­iza­tion firm of Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle, who excel at pre­sent­ing archives in dif­fer­ent ways. Com­mis­sioned by MoMA to make some­thing from the data, the firm’s “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er” offers 60 years of exhi­bi­tion data that can then be searched by “cura­tors, arrangers, design­ers, artists, and oth­ers” with con­nec­tions avail­able at every lev­el.

For exam­ple, the sec­ond ever MoMA exhib­it, “Painters by 19 Liv­ing Amer­i­cans” (1929 — 1930), fea­tured Edward Hop­per. The offi­cial archive will show you the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­log and press release. But go spelunk­ing and we dis­cov­er that up until 1989 (the end of the archive for now), Hop­per was fea­tured in 61 exhi­bi­tions, includ­ing 1943 where he was fea­tured in four exhibits in one year. What were those exhibits? Well, down the rab­bit hole you go.

Coder (and, full dis­clo­sure, friend since high school) Phil Gyford spoke about his work on the page:
A spe­lunk­er, accord­ing to Cham­bers, is “a per­son who explores caves as a hob­by” and we aimed to explore MoMA’s raw data and make it more vis­i­ble and pen­e­tra­ble by every­one else. It’s hard to get a decent sense of the shape of lists of data so we set off to explore.

Good, Form & Spec­ta­cle have worked on oth­er sleek and min­i­mal sites, includ­ing a Net­flix rec­om­men­da­tion engine, a small­er spe­lunk­er for the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um, and a larg­er one for the British Muse­um.

But if you’re inter­est­ed in explor­ing a cen­tu­ry of exhi­bi­tions at MoMA, then spend as much time as you like with the “MoMA Exhi­bi­tion Spe­lunk­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Down­load 464 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Down­load 397 Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 65,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.