An Animated Reconstruction of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Virtually-Recreated Streets

There are numer­ous ancient sto­ries illus­trat­ing the gar­gan­tu­an ego of the Emper­or Nero. Some of these may rise to the lev­el of his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion. Nero did not, for exam­ple, fid­dle while Rome burned. For one thing, the fid­dle did not exist. For anoth­er, as the his­to­ri­an Tac­i­tus records, although the emper­or was miles away at his vil­la in Antium when the fires began, it’s said he returned to Rome and led relief efforts, pay­ing for many of them out of his own pock­et and hous­ing the new­ly home­less in his gar­den.

But the sto­ry may have been rewrit­ten to bur­nish Nero’s rep­u­ta­tion. After the mass­es blamed him for start­ing the fire, he turned around and blamed the city’s Chris­tians, Tac­i­tus reports, stag­ing elab­o­rate spec­ta­cles of tor­ture, burn­ing, and dis­mem­ber­ment. Sue­to­nius does record him as giv­ing some sort of musi­cal per­for­mance dur­ing the fires of 64 A.D., a rumor that had appar­ent­ly tak­en hold among the peo­ple. What­ev­er part he played, and what­ev­er truth there is to charges that he mur­dered the son of Claudius, one of his wives, and even his own moth­er, Nero clear­ly felt a press­ing need to leave a dif­fer­ent impres­sion of himself—as a tow­er­ing, bronze god-like fig­ure near­ly 100 feet high.

In the same year as the fires, he com­mis­sioned a colos­sal stat­ue of him­self as the sun god, inspired by the Colos­sus of Rhodes. The mas­sive Nero held a rud­der perched atop a globe, sug­gest­ing that his rule steered the course of the whole world. Nero killed him­self before the stat­ue was com­plet­ed, but Pliny the Elder writes of see­ing its cre­ation in the stu­dio of the sculp­tor, Zen­odor­us. It arose tow­er­ing above his palace, the Domus Aurea, in 72 A.D., and in 127, Hadri­an moved it near the Amphithe­atrum Flav­i­um, which sub­se­quent­ly became known in the statue’s hon­or as the Colos­se­um. It took up to 24 ele­phants to do the job, or so it’s said.

For the next few hun­dred years, until at least the sack of Rome by Alar­ic in 410 and a sub­se­quent series of earth­quakes, res­i­dents and vis­i­tors to the city walked beneath the loom­ing Nero/Helios/Apollo stat­ue, just fifty feet shy of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. It was depict­ed on medal­lions and gems. Now the stat­ue is com­plete­ly van­ished, with noth­ing but a rem­nant of its pedestal remain­ing. But you can see it recon­struct­ed, along with 27 oth­er ancient Roman mon­u­ments, tem­ples, baths, mau­soleums, amphithe­aters, are­nas, etc.—many of them as grandiose and sto­ried as the Colossus—in the thir­ty-minute video above.

No, it’s not like strolling the streets of ancient Rome. The block­i­ly-ren­dered CGI recre­ations appear over con­tem­po­rary video of the city, full of con­tem­po­rary traf­fic and con­tem­po­rary fash­ions. As in every his­tor­i­cal recre­ation of antiq­ui­ty, for which the sources are few and con­tra­dic­to­ry, we have to use our imag­i­na­tions. The exer­cise is infi­nite­ly rich­er the more you learn about the van­ished or ruined struc­tures that once dom­i­nat­ed the city. See the full list of ancient build­ings and sculp­tures below.

0:10 Pala­tine Hill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatin…)

3:25 The Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_F…)

5:22 Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

7:18 Tem­ple of Ves­ta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

7:26 House of the Vestals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o…)

7:48 Tem­ple of Cas­tor and Pol­lux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:03 Tem­ple of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:13 Basil­i­ca Aemil­ia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

8:40 Basil­i­ca Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

9:17 Tem­ple of Sat­urn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

10:56 Curia Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_J…)

12:18 Forum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:05 Forum of Ner­va (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:47 Tra­jan’s Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%…)

14:54 Forum of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

15:29 Colos­se­um (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum)

17:42 Tem­ple of Venus and Roma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

18:59 Colos­sus of Nero and Meta Sudans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossu… -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Su…)

19:28 Baths of Cara­calla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_o…)

26:39 Pan­theon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheo…)

28:13 Sta­di­um of Domit­ian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium…)

29:23 Mau­soleum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausole…)

29:39 Cir­cus Max­imus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_…)

30:25 Sacred area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_d…)

31:21 The­atre of Pom­pey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

31:56 The­atre of Mar­cel­lus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

32:05 Tiber Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber_I…)

32:32 Mau­soleum of Hadri­an (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_…)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Ani­mat­ed Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Cir­ca 320 AD)

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

All the Roman Roads of Italy, Visu­al­ized as a Mod­ern Sub­way Map

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

How Talking Heads and Brian Eno Wrote “Once in a Lifetime”: Cutting Edge, Strange & Utterly Brilliant

Few albums of the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s have held up as well as those by Talk­ing Heads, but what to call the music record­ed on them? Rock? Pop? New Wave? In the dif­fi­cul­ty to pin it down lies its endur­ing appeal, and that dif­fi­cul­ty did­n’t come about by acci­dent: impa­tient with musi­cal cat­e­go­riza­tions and expec­ta­tions, front­man David Byrne and the rest of the band kept push­ing them­selves into new ter­ri­to­ries even after they’d begun to find suc­cess. When they set out to cre­ate their fourth album, 1980’s Remain in Light, “they were look­ing to change the way they made songs.” Instead of leav­ing the writ­ing to Byrne, “the band want­ed a more demo­c­ra­t­ic process. And so they tried some­thing they nev­er had before.”

So says the Poly­phon­ic video above on how the band wrote “Once in a Life­time,” sure­ly the most beloved song on Remain in Light and quite pos­si­bly the most beloved in Talk­ing Heads’ entire cat­a­log. “Inspired by Afrobeat leg­end Fela Kuti, the instru­men­tal­ists in the band record­ed a num­ber of jams,” such as the proto-“Once in a Life­time” out­take “Right Start” (which itself fol­lowed on “I Zim­bra” from Talk­ing Heads’ pre­vi­ous album, Fear of Music).

When bassist Tina Wey­mouth came up with a strik­ing bass line, the band “took that lick and extrap­o­lat­ed it, slow­ly build­ing a piece around it. After weeks of jam­ming, David Byrne and pro­duc­er Bri­an Eno came in to the stu­dio to start adding arrange­ments and lyrics to the music pieces.”

Eno count­ed the rhythm of the song dif­fer­ent­ly than every­one else did, result­ing in a dis­tinc­tive lay­er­ing of dif­fer­ent grooves all at once. On top of this came the lyrics, which Byrne devel­oped as he “sat down and lis­tened to tel­e­van­ge­list ser­mons, pulling phras­es from them and craft­ing them into lyrics.” Put togeth­er, “the song cre­ates a trance­like state, cap­tur­ing the man­ic monot­o­ny of mid­dle-class exis­tence” with both its cap­ti­vat­ing­ly repet­i­tive music (played by the band mem­bers act­ing as “human sam­plers”) and its words, as Byrne him­self inter­prets them, “about the uncon­scious, about how we oper­ate half-awake on autopi­lot.”

Like so many hits of the 1980s, “Once in a Life­time” launched into the zeit­geist from the plat­form of MTV — a net­work that did­n’t even exist when the song came out. “Made on a shoe­string bud­get, the video for ‘Once in a Life­time’ is one of the most mem­o­rable of its time.” Co-direct­ed by Toni Basil (of “Mick­ey” fame), it “played with blue­screen tech­nol­o­gy, com­pos­ing mul­ti­ple David Byrnes on top of a white back­ground or images of reli­gious cer­e­mo­ny.” Byrne and Basil “pored over film of preach­ers, peo­ple in trances, reli­gious sects, and much, much more. Some of these were put in the back­ground, but more impor­tant­ly, they were used as the basis for Byrne’s danc­ing.” When the con­tent-hun­gry MTV launched six months after “Once in a Life­time” came out, the video went right into heavy rota­tion. 37 years lat­er, we can look back at both it and the song as “the walk­ing embod­i­ment of all that the Talk­ing Heads were: it’s cut­ting-edge, it’s strange, and it’s utter­ly bril­liant.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

The Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks of the Talk­ing Heads’ “Once In A Life­time” Turn David Byrne into a Wild-Eyed Holy Preach­er

The Genius of Tina Wey­mouth: Break­ing Down the Style of Talk­ing Heads and Tom Tom Club’s Basslines

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Talk­ing Heads Fea­tured on The South Bank Show in 1979: How the Ground­break­ing New Wave Band Made Nor­mal­i­ty Strange Again

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

Michel Foucault Offers a Clear, Compelling Introduction to His Philosophical Project (1966)

The­o­rist Michel Fou­cault first “rose to promi­nence,” notes Aeon, “as exis­ten­tial­ism fell out of favor among French intel­lec­tu­als.” His first major work, The Order of Things: An Archae­ol­o­gy of the Human Sci­ences, pro­posed a new method­ol­o­gy based on the “dis­ap­pear­ance of Man” as a meta­phys­i­cal cat­e­go­ry. The ahis­tor­i­cal assump­tions that had plagued phi­los­o­phy made us too com­fort­able, he thought, with his­tor­i­cal sys­tems that impris­oned us. “I would like to con­sid­er our own cul­ture,” he says in the 1966 inter­view with Pierre Dumayet above, “to be some­thing as for­eign to us.”

The kind of estrange­ment Fou­cault induced in his eth­nolo­gies, genealo­gies, and his­to­ries of West­ern moder­ni­ty opened a space for cri­tiques of knowl­edge itself as a “for­eign phe­nom­e­non,” he says. Mad­ness and Civ­i­liza­tion, The Birth of the Clin­ic, The Order of Thingsand Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish exam­ine systems—the asy­lum, the med­ical pro­fes­sion, the sci­ences, and prisons—and allow us to see how ide­olo­gies are pro­duced by instru­men­tal uses of lan­guage and tech­nol­o­gy.

Fou­cault shift­ed his focus in the last peri­od of his career, after a 1975 LSD trip and sub­se­quent expe­ri­ences in Berke­ley changed his out­look. Yet he con­tin­ued, in his mon­u­men­tal, unfin­ished, mul­ti-vol­ume His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty to demon­strate how modes of philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic dis­course gave rise to cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na we take for grant­ed as nat­ur­al states. Fou­cault was a crit­ic of the way the psy­chi­a­try and med­i­cine pathol­o­gized human behav­ior and cre­at­ed sys­tems of exclu­sion and cor­rec­tion. In his final work, he exam­ined the clas­si­cal his­to­ry of eth­i­cal dis­ci­pline and self-improve­ment.

We might rec­og­nize the rem­nants of this his­to­ry in our con­tem­po­rary cul­ture when he writes, in The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Vol­ume 3, that “improve­ment, the per­fec­tion of the soul that one seeks in phi­los­o­phy…. Increas­ing­ly assumes a med­ical col­oration.” Fou­cault described the ways in which plea­sure and desire were high­ly cir­cum­scribed by util­i­tar­i­an sys­tems of con­trol and self-con­trol. It’s hard to say how much of this ear­ly inter­view the lat­er Fou­cault would have endorsed, but it’s yet anoth­er exam­ple of how lucid and per­cep­tive he was as a thinker, despite an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cul­ty and obscu­ri­ty.

He admits, how­ev­er, the inher­ent dif­fi­cul­ty of his project: the self-reflec­tive cri­tique of a mod­ern Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al, through the very cat­e­gories of thought that make up the Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion. But “after all,” he says, “how can we know our­selves if not with our own knowl­edge?” The endeav­or requires a “com­plete twist­ing of our rea­son on itself.” Few thinkers have been able to make such moves with as much clar­i­ty and schol­ar­ly rig­or as Fou­cault.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

Hear Hours of Lec­tures by Michel Fou­cault: Record­ed in Eng­lish & French Between 1961 and 1983

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Michel Fou­cault, “Philoso­pher of Pow­er”

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

Why Should We Read Flannery O’Connor? An Animated Video Makes the Case

Every time a sto­ry of mine appears in a Fresh­man anthol­o­gy, I have a vision of it, with its lit­tle organs laid open, like a frog in a bot­tle. –Flan­nery O’Connor, “A Rea­son­able Use of the Unrea­son­able”

Why did Flan­nery O’Connor write? To con­vert us? The devout Catholic was not immune to a cer­tain apolo­getic impulse, or a sense of her own pur­pose as a ves­sel for divine truth. Or did she, like Greek trage­di­ans, write to inspire pity and ter­ror? “I don’t have any pre­ten­sions,” she once demurred, “to being an Aeschy­lus or Sopho­cles and pro­vid­ing you in this sto­ry with a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence.” In any case, what drove her may be a less inter­est­ing ques­tion than what should dri­ve us to read her.

O’Connor wrote, as most great writ­ers do, because she was com­pelled to write. What we gain as read­ers is the deeply unset­tling, but also deeply plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing our own flawed human­i­ty in her vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive char­ac­ters, none of whom, some­how, are ever beyond redemp­tion. O’Connor’s autho­r­i­al voice does not judge or con­demn but expos­es to light the flaws that even, or espe­cial­ly, her most respectable char­ac­ters would rather hide from them­selves and oth­ers.

By use of what she called “a rea­son­able use of the unrea­son­able” she shows mur­der, con­tempt, and decep­tion as shock­ing­ly ordi­nary states of affairs, bely­ing the polite fic­tions of civil­i­ty and social nice­ness. Per­haps no set­ting could bet­ter illu­mi­nate the con­trasts than the pious­ly vio­lent seg­re­gat­ed mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can South. O’Connor’s “mas­tery of the grotesque,” notes the TED-Ed video above by Iseult Gille­spie, “and her explo­rations of the insu­lar­i­ty and super­sti­tions of the South led her to be clas­si­fied as a ‘South­ern Goth­ic’ writer.”

The label may fit super­fi­cial­ly, but “her work pushed beyond the pure­ly ridicu­lous and fright­en­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­at­ed with the genre to reveal the vari­ety and nuance of human char­ac­ter.” O’Connor her­self sug­gest­ed that what set her apart were “the assump­tions… of the cen­tral Chris­t­ian mys­ter­ies.” Though we need not read her work this way, she grants, there is “none oth­er by which it could have been writ­ten.” We might say that her com­mit­ted belief in the idea of uni­ver­sal human deprav­i­ty gave her unique insight into the mean­ing­less­ness of class and race dis­tinc­tions. Few writ­ers have tak­en the idea as seri­ous­ly, or approached it with more wicked play­ful­ness.

Why did she write? One rea­son is she “took plea­sure in chal­leng­ing her read­ers,” as the video explains. But it was plea­sure that she chiefly desired to share. We can vivi­sect her sto­ries, carve them up and seal them in jars labeled with pol­i­tics and the­olo­gies. Yet “prop­er­ly, you ana­lyze to enjoy,” she wrote. “It’s equal­ly true that to ana­lyze with any dis­crim­i­na­tion, you have to have enjoyed already, and I think that the best rea­son to hear a sto­ry read is that it should stim­u­late that pri­ma­ry enjoy­ment.” Lovers of O’Connor know the answer to the ques­tion of why we should read her. Because they take as much plea­sure in read­ing her sto­ries as she did in writ­ing them.

Dis­cov­er this enjoy­ment on your own. Hear Studs Terkel read her sto­ry “Rev­e­la­tion,” hear Estelle Par­sons read “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge,” and hear O’Con­nor her­self read that 1959 clas­sic of her South­ern grotesque style, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a Rare Record­ing of Flan­nery O’Connor Read­ing “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Flan­nery O’Connor Ren­ders Her Ver­dict on Ayn Rand’s Fic­tion: It’s As “Low As You Can Get”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

Becoming: A Short Timelapse Film Shows a Single Cell Morphing Into a Complete, Complex Living Organism

From Jan van IJken comes “Becom­ing,” a short time­lapse film that doc­u­ments “the mirac­u­lous gen­e­sis of ani­mal life.” He writes:

In great micro­scop­ic detail, we see the ‘mak­ing of’ an Alpine Newt in its transparant egg from the first cell divi­sion to hatch­ing. A sin­gle cell is trans­formed into a com­plete, com­plex liv­ing organ­ism with a beat­ing heart and run­ning blood­stream.

The first stages of embry­on­ic devel­op­ment are rough­ly the same for all ani­mals, includ­ing humans. In the film, we can observe a uni­ver­sal process which nor­mal­ly is invis­i­ble: the very begin­ning of an ani­mal’s life.

“Becom­ing” has been “select­ed at more than 20 inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­vals and won the award for Best short doc­u­men­tary at Inns­bruck Nature Film Fes­ti­val 2018, Aus­tria.” Enjoy.

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 Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

The Map of Biol­o­gy: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Biol­o­gy Fit Togeth­er

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

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Dieter Rams Lists the 10 Timeless Principles of Good Design–Backed by Music by Brian Eno

Near­ly all of us have heard the dic­tum “Less, but bet­ter,” and near­ly all of us have used Braun prod­ucts. But how many of us know that both of those owe their con­sid­er­able pop­u­lar­i­ty to the same man? After study­ing archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, and car­pen­try, the Ger­man indus­tri­al design­er Dieter Rams spent 40 years at Braun, most of them as the com­pa­ny’s chief design offi­cer. There he cre­at­ed such hits as the 606 uni­ver­sal shelv­ing sys­tem, the SK61 record play­er, and the ET66 cal­cu­la­tor. That last pro­vid­ed the mod­el for the cal­cu­la­tor appli­ca­tion inter­face in Apple’s iOS 3, among oth­er homages Apple has paid to Rams.

Rams, in turn, has been com­pli­men­ta­ry to Apple, call­ing it one of the few com­pa­nies in exis­tence that designs prod­ucts accord­ing to his prin­ci­ples. Any­one can sense the affin­i­ty between the most endur­ing Apple prod­ucts and Rams-designed Braun prod­ucts, but what are those prin­ci­ples?

You can hear them laid out by the man him­self him­self in the trail­er above for Rams, last year’s doc­u­men­tary by Gary Hus­twit, he of Hel­veti­ca (the doc­u­men­tary about the font) and Objec­ti­fied (the doc­u­men­tary about indus­tri­al design that fea­tured Rams as an inter­vie­wee). The list is as fol­lows:

  1. Good design is inno­v­a­tive. “Design always comes about in con­nec­tion with inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy. How can design be good if the tech­nol­o­gy is not on the same lev­el?”
  2. Good design makes a prod­uct use­ful. “Good design opti­mizes use­ful­ness and ignores any­thing that does­n’t serve the pur­pose or works against it.”
  3. Good design is aes­thet­ic. “Objects you use dai­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly shape your sur­round­ings and your sense of well-being. Only some­thing that is well-made can be beau­ti­ful.”
  4. Good design makes a prod­uct under­stand­able. “It makes it easy to under­stand the struc­ture of the prod­uct. Even more, it can make the prod­uct ‘talk.’ Ide­al­ly, it explains itself best.”
  5. Good design is unob­tru­sive. “Prod­ucts that serve a pur­pose have the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a tool. Their design should be neu­tral and leave room for the user’s self-expres­sion.”
  6. Good design is hon­est. “Hon­est means not try­ing to make a prod­uct look more inno­v­a­tive, pow­er­ful, or valu­able than it real­ly is.”
  7. Good design is long-last­ing. “In con­trast to fash­ion­able design, it lasts many years even in our cur­rent throw­away soci­ety.”
  8. Good design is thor­ough down to the last detail. “Noth­ing should be arbi­trary or left to chance. Thor­ough­ness and pre­ci­sion are expres­sions of respect for the user.”
  9. Good design is envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. “Design makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to pre­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment. It con­serves resources and min­i­mizes phys­i­cal and visu­al pol­lu­tion.”
  10. Good design is as lit­tle design as pos­si­ble. “Back to sim­plic­i­ty. Back to puri­ty. Less, but bet­ter.”

The trail­er illus­trates each of these prin­ci­ples with one of Rams’ designs, devel­oped at Braun or else­where: the T 1000 CD radio, the MPZ 21 cit­rus juicer, the 740 stool, the 620 chair. Though designed forty, fifty, even six­ty years ago, these gad­gets and pieces of fur­ni­ture have stood the test of time. Some have even made a return to the mar­ket in recent years of our both aes­thet­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious age. You can watch Rams on Vimeo on Demand, and if you do, you’ll not only get to enjoy its Bri­an Eno-com­posed score, you’ll learn much more about how Rams designed his most beloved prod­ucts — and about where he still sees ways to improve them. That holds true even for his design prin­ci­ples them­selves: “I always empha­sized that they weren’t meant to last for­ev­er,” he says. “They should be updat­ed.”

via Uncrate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

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

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

Neil Gaiman Reads His Manifesto on Making Art: Features the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

I think you’re absolute­ly allowed sev­er­al min­utes, pos­si­bly even half a day to feel very, very sor­ry for your­self indeed. And then just start mak­ing art. — Neil Gaiman

It’s a bit ear­ly in the year for com­mence­ment speech­es, but for­tu­nate­ly for life­long learn­ers who rely on a steady drip of inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment, author Neil Gaiman excels at putting old wine in new bot­tles.

He repur­posed his keynote address to Philadel­phi­a’s Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts’ Class of 2012 for Art Mat­ters: Because Your Imag­i­na­tion Can Change the World, a slim vol­ume with hand let­ter­ing and illus­tra­tions by Chris Rid­dell.

The above video cap­tures the fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tors appear­ing togeth­er last fall at the East Lon­don cul­tur­al cen­ter Evo­lu­tion­ary Arts Hack­ney in a fundrais­er for Eng­lish PEN, the found­ing branch of the world­wide lit­er­ary defense asso­ci­a­tion. While Gaiman reads aloud in his affa­ble, ever-engag­ing style, Rid­dell uses a brush pen to bang out 4 3/4 line draw­ings, riff­ing on Gaiman’s metaphors.

While the art-mak­ing “rules” Gaiman enu­mer­ates here­in have been extrap­o­lat­ed and wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed (includ­ing, nev­er fear, below), it’s worth hav­ing a look at why this event called for a live illus­tra­tor.

Leav­ing aside the fact that each tick­et pur­chas­er got a copy of Art Mat­ters, auto­graphed by both men, and a large signed print was auc­tioned off on behalf of Eng­lish PEN, Gaiman holds illus­tra­tions in high regard.

His work includes pic­ture books, graph­ic nov­els, and light­ly illus­trat­ed nov­els for teens and young adults, and as a mature read­er, he, too, delights in visu­als, sin­gling out Frank C. Papé’s draw­ings for the decid­ed­ly “adult” 1920s fan­ta­sy nov­els of James Branch Cabell. (1929’s Some­thing about Eve fea­tured a bux­om female char­ac­ter angri­ly fry­ing up her hus­band’s man­hood for din­ner and an erot­ic entry­way that would have thrilled Dr. Seuss.)

In an inter­view with Water­stones book­sellers upon the pub­li­ca­tion of Nev­er­where anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rid­dell, Gaiman mused:

…a good illus­tra­tor, for me, is like going to see a play. You are going to get some­thing brought to life for you by a spe­cif­ic cast in a spe­cif­ic place. That way of illus­trat­ing will nev­er hap­pen again. You know, some­body else could illus­trate it—there are hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent Alice in Won­der­lands.

Which we could cer­tain­ly take to mean that if Riddell’s style doesn’t grab you the way it grabs Gaiman (and the juries for sev­er­al pres­ti­gious awards) per­haps you should tear your eyes away from the screen and illus­trate what you hear in the speech.

Do you need to know how to draw as well as he does? The rules, below, sug­gest not. We’d love to take a peek inside your sketch­book after.

  1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.

  2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.

  3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.

  4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.

  5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.

  6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.

  7. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.

  8. Enjoy the ride. Don’t fret it all away. (That one comes com­pli­ments of Stephen King.)

  9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.

  10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

Read a com­plete tran­script of the speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beau­ti­ful, Pro­found Poem by Ursu­la K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birth­day

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City tonight as host of The­ater of the Apes’ month­ly  book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Historic Manuscript Filled with Beautiful Illustrations of Cuban Flowers & Plants Is Now Online (1826 )

The inter­net has become an essen­tial back up sys­tem for thou­sands of pieces of his­tor­i­cal art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture, and also for a spe­cial­ized kind of text incor­po­rat­ing them all in degrees: the illus­trat­ed nat­ur­al sci­ence book, from the gold­en ages of book illus­tra­tion and philo­soph­i­cal nat­u­ral­ism in Europe and the Amer­i­c­as. We’ve seen some fine dig­i­tal repro­duc­tions of the illus­trat­ed Nomen­cla­ture of Col­ors by Abra­ham Got­t­lob Wern­er, for example—a book that accom­pa­nied Dar­win on his Bea­gle voy­age.

The same source has also brought us a won­der­ful­ly illus­trat­ed, influ­en­tial 1847 edi­tion of Euclid’s Ele­ments, with a sem­a­phore-like design that col­or-codes and delin­eates each axiom. And we’ve seen Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s 1903 Col­or Prob­lems: a Prac­ti­cal Man­u­al for the Lay Stu­dent of Col­or come online (and back in print), a study whose ideas would lat­er show up in the work of mod­ern min­i­mal­ists like Josef Albers.

Above and below, you can see just a frac­tion of the illus­tra­tions from anoth­er exam­ple of a remark­able illus­trat­ed sci­en­tif­ic book, also by a woman on the edge of being for­got­ten: Nan­cy Anne Kings­bury Woll­stonecraft’s 1826 Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba.

This study of Cuban plant life might nev­er have seen the light of day were it not for the new online edi­tion from the HathiTrust dig­i­tal library, “by way of Cor­nell University’s Library Divi­sion of Rare and Man­u­script Col­lec­tions,” notes Atlas Obscu­ra. The book is notable for more than its obscu­ri­ty, how­ev­er. It is, says schol­ar of Cuban his­to­ry and cul­ture Emilio Cue­to, “the most impor­tant cor­pus of plant illus­tra­tions in Cuba’s colo­nial his­to­ry.” Its author first began work when she moved to the island after her hus­band, Charles Woll­stonecraft (broth­er of Mary and uncle of Mary Shel­ley) died in 1817.

She began doc­u­ment­ing the plant life in the region of Matan­zas through the 1820s. That research became Spec­i­mens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba, a metic­u­lous study, full of Wollstonecraft’s vibrant, strik­ing water­col­ors. After mak­ing sev­er­al attempts at pub­li­ca­tion, she died in 1828, and the man­u­script nev­er appeared in pub­lic. Now, almost two cen­turies lat­er, all three vol­umes are avail­able to read online and down­load in PDF. They had been dor­mant at the Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Library, and few peo­ple knew very much about them. Cue­to, the schol­ar most famil­iar with the man­u­scrip­t’s place in his­to­ry, had him­self searched for it for 20 years before find­ing it hid­den away at Cor­nell in 2018.

Now it is freely avail­able to any­one and every­one online, part of an expand­ing, shared online archive of fas­ci­nat­ing works by non-pro­fes­sion­al sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians whose work was painstak­ing­ly inter­pret­ed by artists for the ben­e­fit of a lay read­er­ship. In the case of Woll­stonecraft, as with Goethe and many oth­er con­tem­po­rary schol­ar-artists, we have the two in one. View and down­load her 220-page work, with its 121 illus­trat­ed plates at the HathiTrust Dig­i­tal Library.

via Cor­nell/Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

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

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

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

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