Apply to Become an Archivist Overseeing Prince’s Artifacts & Archival Materials: Applications Are Being Accepted Now

in Archives, Music | April 24th, 2018

Image by Ann Alt­house, via Flickr Com­mons

If all of Prince’s offi­cial releas­es some­how dis­ap­peared from history—no Con­tro­ver­sy, 1999, Pur­ple Rain, Sign o’ the Times, Love­sexy—you could still make a case for him as a sin­gu­lar, if unheard, musi­cal genius based on his mas­sive trove of unre­leased mate­r­i­al alone. At least that’s my the­o­ry, but the evi­dence is some­what lack­ing since we’ve yet to hear much from the noto­ri­ous Pais­ley Park vault. We do know, as Rolling Stone report­ed in 2016, that it’s full of “thou­sands of hours of unheard live and stu­dio material—jams, ran­dom songs and entire albums”…enough mate­r­i­al, it seems, to recre­ate Prince should his career some­how get erased from the time­line.

One for­mer Pais­ley Park employ­ee, Scott LeG­ere, wit­nessed the Pur­ple One’s man­ic ener­gy dur­ing many a long record­ing ses­sion, as he churned out music at a super­hu­man rate, then rel­e­gat­ed much of it, for rea­sons known only to Prince, to the Vault—an actu­al base­ment bank vault “com­plete with a time lock and large spin­ning han­dle.” Only Prince knew the com­bi­na­tion. “At one point,” LeG­ere remem­bered, “I was hold­ing tapes and he would beck­on me to come in. I said, ‘Actu­al­ly, sir, I’d rather not. That is your space and your work.’” I don’t know about you, but I prob­a­bly would have gone in. Then again, I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly been to Pais­ley Park and expe­ri­enced what seems to have been a very hum­bling atmos­phere.

As you must have heard by now, the Vault is open, and unre­leased mate­r­i­al has begun to trick­le out, like the orig­i­nal stu­dio record­ing of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” above with pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased rehearsal footage of Prince and his band. He “record­ed every part him­self,” writes Jon Par­e­les, as was his cus­tom, “except some back­ing vocals (by Paul Peter­son and Susan­nah Melvoin) and a sax­o­phone solo (by Eric Leeds).” It is, with­out a doubt, “a crescen­do of heartache under­scored by every­day details, a fin­ished song.”

If you’re a Prince fan (and how could you not be?), you’ll have to wait until Sep­tem­ber for the first full album of songs from the Vault. But one lucky per­son with the rel­e­vant skills and expe­ri­ence in archival work and con­ser­va­tion will get the chance to work direct­ly with the mate­ri­als at Pais­ley Park, now a per­ma­nent muse­um, as the Archives Super­vi­sor report­ing to the Direc­tor of Archives. “Some knowl­edge of Prince is help­ful,” the job announce­ment—post­ed on April 12th—specifies.

You’ll have to be pre­pared to work week­ends, hol­i­days, evenings, and over­time. Ben­e­fits are not guar­an­teed but “may be be offered after suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a six­ty (60) day intro­duc­to­ry peri­od.” You must have a car and “adhere to a pescatar­i­an envi­ron­ment.” I can’t speak to how these con­di­tions com­pare to sim­i­lar kinds of employ­ment, but hey, for the chance to “work in a con­fi­den­tial work area,” includ­ing, we might assume, the mys­te­ri­ous Vault itself, some sac­ri­fices may be worth it. You’ll like­ly get to see and hear, before any­one else, the pro­fu­sion of unre­leased film and audio Prince left behind—a life­time’s worth of work that puts most oth­er musi­cians to shame, stashed away in the base­ment for future gen­er­a­tions to find. You can apply here.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince Gets an Offi­cial Pur­ple Pan­tone Col­or

Hear Prince’s Per­son­al Playlist of Par­ty Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Par­ty to Life

Watch Prince Play Jazz Piano & Coach His Band Through George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” in a Can­did, Behind-the-Scenes Moment (1990)

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

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Watch Life on the Streets of Tokyo in Footage Recorded in 1913: Caught Between the Traditional and the Modern

in Film, History | April 24th, 2018

What cities have, over the past cen­tu­ry, defined in our imag­i­na­tions the very con­cept of the city? Obvi­ous choic­es include New York and Lon­don, and here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured his­toric street-lev­el footage of both (New York in 1911, Lon­don between 1890 and 1920) that vivid­ly reveals how, even over a hun­dred years ago, they’d already matured as com­mer­cial­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, and demo­graph­i­cal­ly impres­sive metrop­o­lis­es. At the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the 6.5 mil­lion-strong Lon­don ranked as the most pop­u­lous city on Earth, and New York had over­tak­en it with­in a few decades. But by the mid-1960s, a new con­tender had sud­den­ly risen to the top spot: Tokyo.

His­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, of course, the word “new” does­n’t quite apply to the Japan­ese cap­i­tal, since as a set­tled area it goes back to the third mil­len­ni­um BC. But Tokyo did­n’t become the cap­i­tal, effec­tive­ly, until 1869 (not that even today’s denizens of Kyoto, the coun­try’s pre­vi­ous cap­i­tal, seem ever to have ced­ed the dis­tinc­tion in their own minds), around the same time that the pre­vi­ous­ly closed-off island nation opened up to the rest of the world. Pro­vid­ed by Ams­ter­dam’s EYE Film­mu­se­um, the footage at the top of the post dates from less than half a cen­tu­ry there­after and con­veys some­thing of what it must have felt like to live in not just a coun­try zeal­ous­ly engaged in the project of mod­ern­iza­tion, but in the very cen­ter of that project.

These clips were shot on the streets of Tokyo in 1913 and 1915, just after the death of Emper­or Mei­ji, who since 1868 had presided over the so-called Mei­ji Restora­tion. That peri­od saw not just a re-con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er under the Emper­or, but an assim­i­la­tion of all things West­ern — or at least an assim­i­la­tion of all things West­ern that offi­cial Japan saw as advan­ta­geous in its mis­sion to “catch up” with the exist­ing world pow­ers. For the cit­i­zens of Tokyo, these, most benign­ly, includ­ed urban parks: “Japan­ese enjoy to the fullest the plea­sures afford­ed by the numer­ous parks of the Empire,” says one of the film’s title cards. “Uyeno Park, Tokio, is a very pop­u­lar place, espe­cial­ly on Sun­day after­noons.” But then, going by what we see in the footage, every place in Tokyo seems pop­u­lar.

On the brink of thor­ough­go­ing urban­iza­tion, the cityscape includes shrines, wood­block prints, signs and ban­ners filled to burst­ing with text (and pre­sum­ably col­or), and hand-paint­ed adver­tise­ments for the then-nov­el­ty of the motion pic­ture. The Toky­oites inhab­it­ing it wear tra­di­tion­al kimono as well as the occa­sion­al West­ern suit and hat. Young men pull rick­shaws and ride bicy­cles (those lat­ter hav­ing grown much more numer­ous since). Peri­patet­ic mer­chants sell their wares from enor­mous wood­en frames strapped to their backs. Count­less chil­dren, both in and out of school uni­form, stare curi­ous­ly at the cam­era. None, sure­ly, could imag­ine the destruc­tion soon to come with the 1923 Kan­to Earth­quake, let alone the fire­bomb­ing of World War II — nor the aston­ish­ing­ly fast devel­op­ment there­after that would, by the time of the reborn city’s 1964 Olympic Games, make it the largest in the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

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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Enter an Online Interactive Documentary on M.C. Escher’s Art & Life, Narrated By Peter Greenaway

in Art | April 23rd, 2018

Despite their enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty, the enig­mat­ic works of Dutch artist M.C. Esch­er have not, per­haps, received their due in the high art world. But he is beloved by col­lege-dorm-room-dec­o­ra­tors, Haight-Ash­bury hip­pies, math­e­mati­cians, doc­tors, and den­tists, who put his art on their walls, says Micky Pil­lar, for­mer cura­tor of the Esch­er Muse­um in The Hague, because “they think it’s a great way of get­ting peo­ple engaged and for­get­ting about real­i­ty.” Math­e­mat­i­cal giants Roger Pen­rose and HSM Cox­eter “were daz­zled by Escher’s work as stu­dents in 1954,” notes The Guardian’s Maev Kennedy. Mick Jag­ger was a huge fan, though Esch­er turned him down when asked to draw an album cov­er, annoyed at being addressed by his first name (Mau­rits).

Esch­er, says Ian Dejardin—director of the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gallery in London—“may have been the only per­son in the world who had nev­er heard of the Rolling Stones.” It wasn’t that he ignored the world around him, but that he focused his career on invent­ing anoth­er one, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion first from the Ital­ian coun­try­side and cityscapes, after set­tling in Rome, and lat­er turn­ing to what he called “men­tal imagery”: the para­dox­i­cal por­traits, fan­tas­ti­cal shift­ing shapes, and mind-bend­ing pat­terns, so absorb­ing that peo­ple in wait­ing rooms for­get their dis­com­fort and anx­i­ety when look­ing at them.

One of the most famous of such works, 1939’s Meta­mor­pho­sis II, owes its cre­ation to the his­tor­i­cal pres­sures of Ital­ian fas­cism and the geo­met­ric fas­ci­na­tions of Islam­ic art. After leav­ing Rome in 1935 as polit­i­cal ten­sions rose, Esch­er found him­self inspired by his sec­ond vis­it to The Alham­bra in Spain. Its “lav­ish tile work,” as the Nation­al Gallery of Art writes, “sug­gest­ed new direc­tions in the use of col­or and the flat­tened pat­tern­ing of inter­lock­ing forms.” So intri­cate and tech­ni­cal­ly daz­zling is the four-meter-long print that it mer­its an in-depth look at its con­text and com­po­si­tion.

That’s exact­ly what you’ll find at a new “inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary” on Meta­mor­pho­sis II, by the mak­ers of a sim­i­lar fea­ture on Hierony­mus Bosch’s Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The online resource lets users scroll across the print, zoom­ing in to an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of detail, or zoom­ing out to see how it tran­si­tions sec­tion by sec­tion, from the word “meta­mor­phose,” to a checker­board pat­tern, to lizards, hon­ey­combs, bees, hum­ming­birds, fish, etc.. Along the way, you can click on lit­tle col­ored hexa­gons (that trans­form into cubes) and bring up short arti­cles on Escher’s life and aspects of the work at hand. Each of these fea­turettes is nar­rat­ed (in the Eng­lish ver­sion) by British film­mak­er and artist Peter Green­away. Once you open one of these explana­to­ry win­dows, a nav­i­ga­tion tool (above) appears at the bot­tom of the screen.

We see how the var­i­ous ani­mals in Escher’s “sys­tem­at­ic tes­sel­la­tions,” as he called them, were cho­sen by virtue of their shape as well as Escher’s inter­est in their life cycles and meth­ods of orga­ni­za­tion. “Nature was a source of won­drous beau­ty for Esch­er,” the doc­u­men­tary explains. “In his jour­nals and let­ters, he often wrote about what sur­prised, amazed or moved him” in the nat­ur­al world. Some of the Meta­mor­pho­sis II sec­tions appeared in lat­er works like 1943’s Rep­tiles. Esch­er drew atten­tion both to the nat­ur­al world’s vari­ety and its genius for repeat­ed pat­terns. But the move­ment from one ani­mal to the next has noth­ing to do with zool­o­gy.

Esch­er delight­ed in play­ing “mind asso­ci­a­tion games.” We learn that as a child, “he would lie in bed and think of two sub­jects for which he had to cre­ate a log­i­cal con­nec­tion.” In one exam­ple he gave, he would attempt to find his way from “a tram con­duc­tor to a kitchen chair.” Meta­mor­pho­sis II gives us a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of such games, men­tal leaps that chal­lenge our sense of the order of things. The doc­u­men­tary sit­u­ates this fas­ci­nat­ing work in a his­tor­i­cal and aes­thet­ic con­text that allows us to make sense of it while adding to our appre­ci­a­tion for its strange­ness, offer­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways of approach­ing the work, as well as an invi­ta­tion to make your own.

One fea­ture, the “Meta­mor­pho­sis Machine,” lets you choose from a selec­tion of start­ing and end­ing pat­terns. Then it fills in the trans­for­ma­tion in the mid­dle. The results are hard­ly Esch­er-qual­i­ty, but they are a fun and acces­si­ble way of under­stand­ing the work of an artist whose vision can seem for­bid­ding, with its impos­si­ble spaces and dis­ori­ent­ing trans­for­ma­tions. Enter the Meta­mor­pho­sis II inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

M.C. Esch­er Cov­er Art for Great Books by Ita­lo Calvi­no, George Orwell & Jorge Luis Borges

Watch M.C. Esch­er Make His Final Artis­tic Cre­ation in the 1971 Doc­u­men­tary Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

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

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Watch the Trailer for a Stunning New 70-Millimeter Print of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Released by Christopher Nolan on the Film’s 50th Anniversary

in Film | April 23rd, 2018

Sure, you’ve prob­a­bly seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. But have you expe­ri­enced 2001: A Space Odyssey? That par­tic­u­lar verb no doubt implies dif­fer­ent con­di­tions to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Maybe it means hav­ing seen the film dur­ing its ini­tial 1968 release. Maybe it means hav­ing seen it at a cer­tain… height of con­scious­ness. Maybe it means hav­ing seen it in the large-for­mat Cin­era­ma screen­ings that hap­pened again when it was re-released dur­ing the actu­al year 2001 — as I did, not hav­ing been born yet in 1968. Nei­ther was Christo­pher Nolan, who, per­haps for that rea­son, has struck a brand new 70-mil­lime­ter print of Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s sin­gu­lar vision of a human­i­ty thrust into pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able encoun­ters with intel­li­gences both extrater­res­tri­al and arti­fi­cial.

“The film took for grant­ed a broad cul­tur­al tol­er­ance, if not an appetite, for enig­ma, as well as the time and incli­na­tion for pars­ing inter­pre­tive mys­ter­ies,” writes Dan Chi­as­son in a recent New York­er piece on 2001’s 50th anniver­sary. “If the first wave of audi­ences was baf­fled, it might have been because 2001 had not yet cre­at­ed the taste it required to be appre­ci­at­ed. Like Ulysses, or The Waste Land, or count­less oth­er dif­fi­cult, ambigu­ous mod­ernist land­marks, 2001 forged its own con­text. You didn’t solve it by watch­ing it a sec­ond time, but you did set­tle into its mys­ter­ies.”

Half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, 2001 stands as one of the most firm­ly dri­ven pil­lars of cin­e­mat­ic cul­ture — a mono­lith, you might say — and one of the most suc­cess­ful film direc­tors alive has invit­ed us all to share in his wor­ship at its base.

“One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries of cin­e­ma is see­ing Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 70mm, at the Leices­ter Square The­atre in Lon­don with my father,” Nolan says in the press mate­ri­als for the release of the new print. “This is a true pho­to­chem­i­cal film recre­ation. There are no dig­i­tal tricks, remas­tered effects, or revi­sion­ist edits. This is the unre­stored film — that recre­ates the cin­e­mat­ic event that audi­ences expe­ri­enced fifty years ago. ” You can see its trail­er at the top of the post, and if you’ll hap­pen to be at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val next month, you might con­sid­er catch­ing its pre­miere screen­ing on May 12th. If not, its wider release begins in Amer­i­can the­aters on May 18th, so do keep an eye on your local art-house list­ings, espe­cial­ly for those art hous­es equipped to screen in 70-mil­lime­ter, a for­mat that makes “the ulti­mate trip,” as 2001’s late-60s posters hasti­ly re-brand­ed it, that much more so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets a Brand New Trail­er to Cel­e­brate Its Dig­i­tal Re-Release

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

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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Special David Bowie MetroCards Get Released in New York City

in Music | April 23rd, 2018

Some pret­ty famous faces ride the New York City sub­way. Was David Bowie’s ever among them?

If so, he suc­ceed­ed in dodg­ing the cam­eras of the curi­ous.

His home stop would have been SoHo’s Broadway/Lafayette—close to the Ange­li­ka Film Cen­ter, Hous­ing Works Book­store Cafe, and an upscale men’s cloth­ing store that opened on the sacred ground of CBGB, where Bowie and Bian­ca Jag­ger once arrived by lim­ou­sine to see Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

From there, it’s not exact­ly a straight shot to the David Bowie Is exhib­it at the Brook­lyn Muse­um, but the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty will get you there for the price of a sin­gle $2.75 sub­way fare.

Giv­en that the MTA stopped accept­ing tokens 15 years ago, you’ll also need to cough up $1 for a Metro­Card. You may want to even if you already own one.

In cel­e­bra­tion of all things Bowie, the MTA has teamed with Spo­ti­fy to cre­ate 5 lim­it­ed edi­tion Metro­Cards, avail­able in vend­ing machines through­out the sta­tion for a New York minute—about as long as it takes Bowie fans to descend en masse to snag the instant col­lectibles of their hero in some of his many guis­es:

Zig­gy Star­dust

Aladdin Sane

The Thin White Duke

Scary Mon­sters’ Pier­rot

and, most touch­ing­ly, the teenage David Jones, aka Bowie, sax­o­phon­ist for the Kon-Rads.

Under­ground Bowie mania extends way beyond Metro­Cards. Until Mother’s Day, the unusu­al­ly lofty sta­tion is fes­tooned with Bowie—everything from fan art to giant repro­duc­tions of pho­tos from the cur­rent exhi­bi­tion.

Many of the images are accom­pa­nied by a scannable Spo­ti­fy code to trans­port rid­ers to a rel­e­vant sound file, a nifty echo of the pro­gres­sive audio muse­um-goers expe­ri­ence through their head­phones.

The glob­al exhib­it has Lon­don roots, but the MTA is focused on Bowie’s ties to New York with pho­tos and video stills from such loca­tions as Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Madi­son Square Gar­den, and the late, lament­ed Mag­ic Shop stu­dio.

Civic pride is also on dis­play in the form of city-spe­cif­ic Bowie quotes post­ed through­out the sta­tion:

I have a great time here: we can go where we want, eat where we want, walk out with our child, go to the park, ride the sub­way, do the things that any fam­i­ly does.

Ah ha! So he did ride the sub­way here, as well as in Japan (below).

Accord­ing to a fan on Bow­ery Boo­gie, he also popped up at the New York Pub­lic Library’s Mul­ber­ry Street branch, just around the cor­ner from the subway’s entrance. To find your way there, con­sult the bright orange “Bowie’s Neigh­bor­hood Map” before leav­ing the sta­tion, where your loca­tion is denot­ed with a light­ning bolt.

See rid­ers’ pho­tos of the sub­way takeover here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

The Peri­od­ic Table of David Bowie: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Sem­i­nal Artist’s Influ­ence and Influ­ences

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Salvador Dalí Action Figure

in Art | April 23rd, 2018

First came the Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure, the Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure, and the Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, Com­plete with Detach­able Ear. And soon they can all pal around with the Sal­vador Dalí Action Fig­ure.

With six days to go, 693 back­ers have pledged $15,676 to a Kick­starter cam­paign that’s hop­ing to raise a total of $26,158. Should they reach that goal, a com­pa­ny called Today Is Art Day will put into pro­duc­tion a charm­ing Dali fig­ure. Stand­ing five inch­es tall, the fig­ure “comes with 3 sets of wacky inter­change­able mus­tach­es” and “deluxe mus­tach­es made of stain­less steel.” The Dalí fig­ure “holds his sig­na­ture melt­ing clock,” and there are five Dalí mas­ter­pieces to dis­play on a minia­ture easel. Appar­ent­ly endorsed by the Gala-Sal­vador Dalí Foun­da­tion, the fig­ure should go into pro­duc­tion this August. Help Kick­start things here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Librar­i­an Action Fig­ure: The Caped Cru­sad­er Who Fights Against Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Igno­rance & Cen­sor­ship Every­where

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

The Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, Com­plete with Detach­able Ear

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Immaculately Restored Film Lets You Revisit Life in New York City in 1911

in Film, History | April 20th, 2018


Oth­er than one or two of the world’s super­cente­nar­i­ans, nobody remem­bers New York in 1911. Plen­ty of liv­ing his­to­ri­ans and enthu­si­asts of the city have paid inten­sive atten­tion to that boom­ing time peri­od when the city’s pop­u­la­tion fast approached five mil­lion, but none expe­ri­enced it first-hand. They, and we, can get no clos­er to it than watch­ing the footage above, orig­i­nal­ly shot by a Swedish doc­u­men­tary team which set out to cap­ture the most cel­e­brat­ed places in the world at the time, a list also includ­ing Nia­gara Falls, Paris, Monte Car­lo, and Venice. The prac­ti­cal­ly immac­u­late con­di­tion of the film high­lights both the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the street life of New York over a cen­tu­ry ago and of New York today.

Take a look at the tai­lored or tai­lored-look­ing cloth­ing on near­ly every­one, even the one-legged man mak­ing his delib­er­ate way past the Chi­nese gro­cery. Then as now, most New York­ers got around on foot, and since the city’s first sub­way line had opened just sev­en years before, the dom­i­nant pub­lic tran­sit options remained street­cars and ele­vat­ed trains.

In the realm of pri­vate vehi­cles, horse-drawn car­riages had only just begun to give way to motor­cars. (Since 1911 was still the age of silent film, the ambi­ent sound of all this was added lat­er.) “Take note of the sur­pris­ing and remark­ably time­less expres­sion of bore­dom exhib­it­ed by a young girl filmed as she was chauf­feured along Broad­way in the front seat of a con­vert­ible lim­ou­sine,” says the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s notes.

MoMA, which exhib­it­ed the footage last year, also points out famil­iar land­marks: “Open­ing and clos­ing with shots of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the film also includes New York Har­bor; Bat­tery Park and the John Eric­s­son stat­ue; the ele­vat­ed rail­ways at Bow­ery and Worth Streets; Broad­way sights like Grace Church and Mark Cross; the Flat­iron Build­ing on Fifth Avenue; and Madi­son Avenue.” Any mod­ern New York­er halfway inter­est­ed in the city will know all those places, and even if the city has changed in count­less oth­er ways, they’ll sense the very same char­ac­ter­is­tic vital­i­ty in these clips that they feel there today. Will New York­ers of the future have the same reac­tion, to, say, the Japan­ese high-def­i­n­i­tion video demo footage shot on those very same streets in the 1990s? It’ll take about eighty years to find out. We prob­a­bly won’t be here by then, but New York cer­tain­ly will.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1905 Video Shows New York City Sub­way Trav­el­ing From 14th St. to 42nd Street

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

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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Download an Archive of 16,000 Sound Effects from the BBC: A Fascinating History of the 20th Century in Sound

in Archives | April 20th, 2018

I was crate dig­ging at my local used vinyl empo­ri­um a lit­tle while ago and came across some sound effects records from the ear­ly ‘60s. Noth­ing amaz­ing, until I checked the track list and noticed “Sounds of Foot­ball Match — ‘Block that Kick!’”

If you’re a Bea­t­les fan like me, you’ll know what I sus­pect­ed and then found to be true: I was hold­ing the source of not just one, but sev­er­al of the sound effects used in “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” as well as the bird effects heard on “Across the Uni­verse” and “Black­bird.” Appar­ent­ly this must have been a pop­u­lar disc at Abbey Road.

Now I men­tion this as a pre­am­ble to this amaz­ing web­site by the BBC, in which they’ve opened their archive of 16,000 (tech­ni­cal­ly 16,016) sound effects, many of which have sure­ly been used over and over on var­i­ous radio plays. (For the Amer­i­cans out there, yes, BBC Radio still pro­duces radio plays!)

The sounds, each of which you can down­load, are being released under a non-com­mer­cial use license as part of their RemArc pro­gram, which is “designed to help trig­ger mem­o­ries in peo­ple with demen­tia using BBC Archive mate­r­i­al as stim­u­la­tion.”

The archives run from the night­mar­ish “South Amer­i­can par­rot talk­ing and screech­ing” which I actu­al­ly nev­er want to hear again:

to “Zep­pelin bomb-drop mech­a­nism. (Com­e­dy Spot Effect),” which doesn’t *sound* fun­ny, but who knows how it was used:

There’s also sounds of the 1966 F.A. Cup Final between Ever­ton and Sheffield Wednes­day:

Plen­ty of these sound effects were rel­e­vant at the time. How­ev­er, a lot of them are now rem­nants of a time long past, from sounds of offices–noisy then, dead silent now–to high streets (much less music). How many kids would rec­og­nize a dial tone or a busy sig­nal, let alone the majes­tic alien weird­ness of a Creed Machine oper­at­ing:

Back to my open­ing mus­ing. I would sus­pect those sound effects also found their way into any num­ber of tele­vi­sion shows.

Could we assume, then, that Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Gilliam raid­ed these archives for his ani­ma­tions? Or David Attenborough’s crew for any num­ber of nature doc­u­men­taries? Sound detec­tives, start dig­ging. Enter the BBC Sound Effects Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

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

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

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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