What Happens When Artificial Intelligence Listens to John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space & Starts to Create Its Own Free Jazz

in Music, Technology | July 22nd, 2019

Some enjoy free jazz as soon as they first hear it; oth­ers think it sounds like music from an alien civ­i­liza­tion, a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence fit only for a jazz fan as high as a kite. But how about as high as a space probe? Out­er­he­lios, a 24/7 stream of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed free jazz, comes designed for broad­cast into out­er space by Dad­abots, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between musi­cians-turned-pro­gram­mers CJ Carr and Zack Zukows­ki (or, accord­ing to their about page, “a cross between a band, a hackathon team, and an ephemer­al research lab”). Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly built an AI-gen­er­at­ed death met­al stream (about whose cre­ation you can read in this com­put­er sci­ence paper), they’ve looked to the skies and trained their neur­al net­work on John Coltrane’s Inter­stel­lar Space.

“These duets between Coltrane on tenor (and bells) and Rashied Ali on drums sound like an annoy­ance until you con­cen­trate on them,” writes Robert Christ­gau in his orig­i­nal review of the 1974 album, “at which point the inter­ac­tions take on pace and shape.” The neur­al net­work “lis­tened to the album 16 times,” says the offi­cial Data­bots descrip­tion on the Out­er­he­lios stream, “then con­tin­ued to make music in the style.”

The project draws inspi­ra­tion from NASA’s probes Voy­ager 1 and 2, which “launched in 1977 car­ry­ing a mix­tape Carl Sagan made called The Sounds of Earth. It fea­tured Blind Willie John­son, Chuck Berry, record­ings of laugh­ter, Beethoven, Bach, Stravin­sky, along with dia­grams of human repro­duc­tive organs,” all “intend­ed for an audi­ence of intel­li­gent extrater­res­tri­al life­forms.”

Where­as The Sounds of Earth “used a sta­t­ic music for­mat pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed by peo­ple,” Out­er­he­lios fol­lows on Bri­an Eno’s ideas about gen­er­a­tive music by invent­ing a Coltrane album that nev­er sounds the same twice. “For a few min­utes, it’ll pro­duce plau­si­ble-sound­ing free jazz,” writes Futurism.com’s Jon Chris­t­ian. “Then the drums will segue into an inhu­man trill, or the horns will dis­in­te­grate into a cacoph­o­nous wash of sound. Let’s just say that it’s not your dad’s jazz” — even if your dad hap­pens to be John Coltrane, or indeed Bri­an Eno. But per­haps it will give NASA just the inspi­ra­tion it needs to get the next Voy­ager launched. The sound of the orig­i­nal Inter­stel­lar Space got Christ­gau think­ing beyond nations: “Euro­pean, Ori­en­tal, African — I don’t know. But amaz­ing.” Could the likes of Out­er­he­lios get us think­ing beyond the solar sytem?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Every Harrowing Second of the Apollo 11 Landing Revisited in a New NASA Video: It Took Place 50 Years Ago Today (July 20, 1969)

in History, Science | July 19th, 2019

The idea that human beings might not only fly to the moon, but land on its puck­ered sur­face and walk around, seemed like an absolute fan­ta­sy for near­ly all of human his­to­ry. In the exact­ly fifty years since that that very thing hap­pened, “moon shot” has become an almost com­mon­place ref­er­ence for grand, his­toric ges­tures. “Fifty years after Neil Arm­strong walked on the moon, plant­ed an Amer­i­can flag, and flew home,” writes Alex Davies at Wired, “the term moon shot has become short­hand for try­ing to do some­thing that’s real­ly hard and maybe a bit crazy.”

The prob­lem with this, Davies argues, is that the all-eggs-in-one-bas­ket approach does not apply today’s most press­ing, yet most neb­u­lous and glob­al, prob­lems. A “moon shot” cli­mate ini­tia­tive suf­fers from a lack of speci­fici­ty. What exact­ly would it tar­get? How would it mea­sure suc­cess or fail­ure in an unam­bigu­ous way when the prob­lem per­me­ates the econ­o­my, ener­gy, agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, gov­ern­ment…? A very dif­fer­ent kind of think­ing is required.

Maybe the dualisms of the Cold War made some things sim­pler, in a way. In 1961, John F. Kennedy’s famous artic­u­la­tion of “the goal,” as he put it, could not have been more clear: “land­ing a man on the moon and return­ing him safe­ly to Earth.” You either achieve this, or you don’t. There are no half-mea­sures, and no con­fu­sion about what con­sti­tutes suc­cess. Which brings us to anoth­er prob­lem with turn­ing “moon shot” into a cliché for doing some­thing hard. We for­get just how damned hard it actu­al­ly was.

Land­ing Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and pilot Michael Collins on the moon required an expen­di­ture unthink­able today: “NASA spent $25 bil­lion on the Apol­lo pro­gram,” Davies points out, “more than $150 bil­lion in today’s dol­lars.” The U.S. may spend almost sev­en times that on its mil­i­tary in a year, but it’s unthink­able that this nation, or any oth­er, would invest Apol­lo dol­lars in a com­plete­ly unsure thing, with no imme­di­ate poten­tial for con­trol or exploita­tion.

The same might be said of major cor­po­ra­tions. The space­far­ing ambi­tions of today’s titans seem con­ser­v­a­tive by 1961 stan­dards: “More than 400,000 Amer­i­cans worked on [Apol­lo 11] in some capac­i­ty, near­ly all of them in pri­vate indus­try,” writes Davies. The project absolute­ly depend­ed on this coor­di­nat­ed, col­lec­tive lev­el of human inge­nu­ity and exper­tise because the total com­put­ing pow­er of NASA was sev­er­al mil­lions of times less than that of a smart­phone.

From the human “com­put­ers” who plot­ted Apol­lo 11’s course, to the astro­nauts who flew the craft, humans not only designed, mon­i­tored, and exe­cut­ed the mis­sion, but they also had to impro­vise when things went wrong. And they did, in some ter­ri­fy­ing, life-threat­en­ing ways. “The prob­lems began imme­di­ate­ly upon sep­a­ra­tion from the Com­mand Mod­ule in which Arm­strong, Aldrin and Michael Collins had rid­den to the moon,” explains Rod Pyle at Space.com—but, so too did the prob­lem-solv­ing.

To get a bet­ter sense of why the endeav­or was so earth­shak­ing, and how it almost didn’t hap­pen, watch the video above, “Apol­lo 11: The Com­plete Descent.” Part of NASA’s Apol­lo Flight Jour­nal col­lec­tion, the 20-minute nar­rat­ed doc­u­men­tary of the descent and land­ing pro­vides a “detailed account of every sec­ond of the Apol­lo 11 descent and land­ing.” It “com­bines data from the onboard com­put­er for alti­tude and pitch angle, 16mm film that was shot through­out the descent at 6 frames per sec­ond,” and audio trans­mis­sions from the astro­nauts and mis­sion con­trol.

“Most peo­ple knew that going to the moon was risky,” Pyle writes, “but few, very few, knew the scope of the dan­gers that the crew faced.” Fifty years lat­er, we can almost—with only the devices in our pockets—see and hear the orig­i­nal moon shot the way those first few did.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Apol­lo 11 in Real Time: A New Web Site Lets You Take a Real-Time Jour­ney Through First Land­ing on the Moon

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Turn 50 This Month: Cel­e­brate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

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

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Alexis de Tocqueville’s Prediction of How American Democracy Could Lapse Into Despotism, Read by Michel Houellebecq

in Books, History, Politics | July 19th, 2019

Michel Houelle­bec­q’s third nov­el Plat­form, which involves a ter­ror­ist bomb­ing in south­east Asia, came out the year before a sim­i­lar real-life inci­dent occurred in Thai­land. His sev­enth nov­el Sub­mis­sion, about the con­ver­sion of France into a Mus­lim coun­try, came out the same day as the mas­sacre at the offices of Islam-pro­vok­ing satir­i­cal week­ly Char­lie Heb­do. His most recent nov­el Sero­tonin, in which farm­ers vio­lent­ly revolt against the French state, hap­pened to come out in the ear­ly stages of the pop­ulist “yel­low vest” move­ment. Houelle­becq has thus, even by some of his many detrac­tors, been cred­it­ed with a cer­tain pre­science about the social and polit­i­cal dan­gers of the world in which we live today.

So too has a coun­try­man of Houelle­bec­q’s who did his writ­ing more than 150 years ear­li­er: Alex­is de Toc­queville, author of Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca, the endur­ing study of that then-new coun­try and its dar­ing­ly exper­i­men­tal polit­i­cal sys­tem. And what does per­haps France’s best-known liv­ing man of let­ters think of Toc­queville, one of his best-known pre­de­ces­sors? “I read him for the first time long ago and real­ly found it a bit bor­ing,” Houelle­becq says in the inter­view clip above, with a flat­ness rem­i­nis­cent of his nov­els’ dis­af­fect­ed nar­ra­tors. “Then I tried again two years ago and I was thun­der­struck.”

As an exam­ple of Toc­queville’s clear-eyed assess­ment of democ­ra­cy, Houelle­becq reads aloud this pas­sage about its poten­tial to turn into despo­tism:

I seek to trace the nov­el fea­tures under which despo­tism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the obser­va­tion is an innu­mer­able mul­ti­tude of men, all equal and alike, inces­sant­ly endeav­or­ing to pro­cure the pet­ty and pal­try plea­sures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, liv­ing apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his chil­dren and his pri­vate friends con­sti­tute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fel­low cit­i­zens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touch­es them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in him­self and for him­self alone; and if his kin­dred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his coun­try.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tute­lary pow­er, which takes upon itself alone to secure their grat­i­fi­ca­tions and to watch over their fate. That pow­er is absolute, minute, reg­u­lar, prov­i­dent, and mild. It would be like the author­i­ty of a par­ent if, like that author­i­ty, its object was to pre­pare men for man­hood; but it seeks, on the con­trary, to keep them in per­pet­u­al child­hood: it is well con­tent that the peo­ple should rejoice, pro­vid­ed they think of noth­ing but rejoic­ing. For their hap­pi­ness such a gov­ern­ment will­ing­ly labors, but it choos­es to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that hap­pi­ness; it pro­vides for their secu­ri­ty, fore­sees and sup­plies their neces­si­ties, facil­i­tates their plea­sures, man­ages their prin­ci­pal con­cerns, directs their indus­try, reg­u­lates the descent of prop­er­ty, and sub­di­vides their inher­i­tances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of think­ing and all the trou­ble of liv­ing?

Being a writer, Houelle­becq nat­u­ral­ly points out the deft­ness of Toc­queville’s style: “It’s mag­nif­i­cent­ly punc­tu­at­ed. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of colons and semi­colons in the sec­tions is mag­nif­i­cent.” But he also has com­ments on the pas­sage’s phi­los­o­phy, pro­nounc­ing that it “con­tains Niet­zsche, only bet­ter.” The oper­a­tive Niet­zschean con­cept here is the “last man,” described in Thus Spoke Zarathus­tra as the pre­sum­able end point of mod­ern soci­ety. If con­di­tions con­tin­ue to progress in the way they have been, each and every human being will become this last man, a weak, com­fort­able, com­pla­cent indi­vid­ual with noth­ing left to fight for, who desires noth­ing more than his small plea­sure for the day, his small plea­sure for the night, and a good sleep.

Safe to say that nei­ther Niet­zsche nor Toc­queville looked for­ward, nor does Houelle­becq look for­ward, to the world of ener­vat­ed last men into which democ­ra­cy could deliv­er us. Houelle­becq also reads aloud anoth­er pas­sage from Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca, one that now appears on the Wikipedia page for soft despo­tism, describ­ing how a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment might gain absolute pow­er over its peo­ple with­out the peo­ple even notic­ing:

After hav­ing thus suc­ces­sive­ly tak­en each mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty in its pow­er­ful grasp and fash­ioned him at will, the supreme pow­er then extends its arm over the whole com­mu­ni­ty. It cov­ers the sur­face of soci­ety with a net­work of small com­pli­cat­ed rules, minute and uni­form, through which the most orig­i­nal minds and the most ener­getic char­ac­ters can­not pen­e­trate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shat­tered, but soft­ened, bent, and guid­ed; men are sel­dom forced by it to act, but they are con­stant­ly restrained from act­ing. Such a pow­er does not destroy, but it pre­vents exis­tence; it does not tyr­an­nize, but it com­press­es, ener­vates, extin­guish­es, and stu­pe­fies a peo­ple, till each nation is reduced to noth­ing bet­ter than a flock of timid and indus­tri­ous ani­mals, of which the gov­ern­ment is the shep­herd.

“A lot of what I’ve writ­ten could be sit­u­at­ed with­in this sce­nario,” Houelle­becq says, adding that in his gen­er­a­tion the “defin­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion of soci­ety into indi­vid­u­als” has been more com­plete than Toc­queville or Niet­zsche would have imag­ined.

In addi­tion to lack­ing a fam­i­ly, Houelle­becq (whose sec­ond nov­el was titled Atom­ized) also men­tions hav­ing “the impres­sion of being caught up in a net­work of com­pli­cat­ed, minute, and stu­pid rules” as well as “of being herd­ed toward a uni­form kind of hap­pi­ness, toward a hap­pi­ness which does­n’t real­ly make me hap­py.” In the end, adds Houelle­becq, the aris­to­crat­ic Toc­queville “is in favor of the devel­op­ment of democ­ra­cy and equal­i­ty, while being more aware than any­one else of its dan­gers.” That the 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca Toc­queville knew avoid­ed them he cred­it­ed to the “habits of the heart” of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We cit­i­zens of demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries, whichev­er demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try we live in, would do well to ask where the habits of our own hearts will lead us next.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alex­is De Tocqueville’s Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Insight­ful Study of Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy

How to Know if Your Coun­try Is Head­ing Toward Despo­tism: An Edu­ca­tion­al Film from 1946

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Is Mod­ern Soci­ety Steal­ing What Makes Us Human?: A Glimpse Into Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathus­tra by The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life

The His­to­ry of West­ern Social The­o­ry, by Alan Mac­Far­lane, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets in a Gun­fight with His Neigh­bor & Dis­pens­es Polit­i­cal Wis­dom: “In a Democ­ra­cy, You Have to Be a Play­er”

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers & Vintage Movie Posters

in Comedy, Design, Film, Music | July 19th, 2019

I wish I had more sense of humor

Keep­ing the sad­ness at bay

Throw­ing the light­ness on these things

Laugh­ing it all away 

                           — Joni Mitchell, “Peo­ple’s Par­ties”

Joni Mitchell has been show­ered with trib­utes of late, many of them con­nect­ed to her all-star 75th birth­day con­cert last Novem­ber.

The silky voiced Seal, who cred­its Mitchell with inspir­ing him to become a musi­cian, soar­ing toward heav­en on “Both Sides Now”…

“A Case Of You” as a duet for fel­low New­port Folk Fes­ti­val alums Kris Kristof­fer­son and Bran­di Carlile….

Cha­ka Khan inject­ing a bit of funk into “Help Me,” a tune she’s been cov­er­ing for 20 some years…

They’re mov­ing and beau­ti­ful and sen­si­tive, but giv­en that Mitchel­l’s the one behind the immor­tal lyric “laugh­ing and cry­ing, you know it’s the same release…,” shouldn’t some­one aim for the fun­ny bone? Mix things up a lit­tle?

Enter Todd Alcott, who’s been delight­ing us all year with his “mid-cen­tu­ry mashups,” an irre­sistible com­bi­na­tion of vin­tage paper­back cov­ers, celebri­ty per­son­ae, and icon­ic lyrics from the annals of rock and pop.

His homage to “Help Me,” above, is decid­ed­ly on brand. The lurid 1950s EC hor­ror com­ic-style graph­ics con­fer a dishy naugh­ti­ness that was—no disrespect—rather lack­ing in the orig­i­nal.

Per­haps Mitchell would approve of these mon­keyshines?

A 1991 inter­view with Rolling Stone’s David Wild sug­gests that she would have at some point in her life:

When I was a kid, I was a real good-time Char­lie. As a mat­ter of fact, that was my nick­name. So when I first start­ed mak­ing all this sen­si­tive music, my old friends back home could not believe it. They didn’t know – where did this depressed per­son come from? Along the way, I had gone through some pret­ty hard deals, and it did intro­vert me. But it just so hap­pened that my most intro­vert­ed peri­od coin­cid­ed with the peak of my suc­cess.

Alcott hon­ors the intro­vert by ren­der­ing “Both Sides Now” as an angsty-look­ing vol­ume of 60s-era poet­ry from the imag­i­nary pub­lish­ing house Clouds.

“Big Yel­low Taxi” car­ries Alcott from the book­shelf to the realm of the movie poster.

The lyrics are def­i­nite­ly the star here, but it’s fun to note just how much mileage he gets out of the float­ing text box­es that were a strange­ly ran­dom-feel­ing fea­ture of the orig­i­nal.

Also “Ladies of the Canyon” is a great pro­duc­er’s cred­it. Giv­en Alcott’s own screen­writ­ing cred­its on IMDB, per­haps we could con­vince him to mash a bit of Joni’s sen­si­bil­i­ty into some of Paul Schrader’s grimmest Taxi Dri­ver scenes…

That said, it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Alcot­t’s cre­ations are lov­ing trib­utes to the artists who mat­ter most to him. As he told Open Cul­ture:

Joni Mitchell is one of the most crim­i­nal­ly under­val­ued Amer­i­can song­writ­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and that now that I live in LA, every time I dri­ve through Lau­rel Canyon I think about her and that whole absurd­ly fer­tile scene in the late 1960s, when artists could afford to live in Lau­rel Canyon and Joni Mitchell was hang­ing out with Neil Young and Charles Man­son.

See all of Todd Alcott’s work here. (Please note that this is his offi­cial sales site… beware of imposters sell­ing quick­ie knock-offs of his designs on eBay and Face­book.) Find oth­er posts fea­tur­ing his work in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

Bea­t­les Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers and Mag­a­zine Pages: “Dri­ve My Car,” “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” & More

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for a new sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Richard Feynman’s Technique for Learning Something New: An Animated Introduction

in Education, Physics, Science | July 18th, 2019

I some­times won­der: why do peo­ple post ama­teur repair videos, made with smart­phones in kitchens and garages, with no obvi­ous com­mer­cial val­ue and, often, a lev­el of exper­tise just min­i­mal­ly above that of their view­ers? Then I remem­ber Richard Feyn­man’s prac­ti­cal advice for how to learn some­thing new—prepare to teach it to some­body else.

The extra account­abil­i­ty of mak­ing a pub­lic record might pro­vide added moti­va­tion, though not near­ly to the degree of mak­ing teach­ing one’s pro­fes­sion. Nobel-win­ning physi­cist Feyn­man spent the first half of his aca­d­e­m­ic career work­ing on the Man­hat­tan Project, dodg­ing J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI at the begin­ning of the Cold War, and mak­ing major break­throughs in quan­tum mechan­ics.

But he has become as well-known for his teach­ing as for his his­toric sci­en­tif­ic role, thanks to the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar series of physics lec­tures he devel­oped at Cal­tech; his fun­ny, acces­si­ble, best-sell­ing books of essays and mem­oirs; and his will­ing­ness to be an avun­cu­lar pub­lic face for sci­ence, with a knack for explain­ing things in terms any­one can grasp.

Feyn­man revealed that he him­self learned through what he called a “note­book tech­nique,” an exer­cise con­duct­ed pri­mar­i­ly on paper. Yet the method came out of his ped­a­gogy, essen­tial­ly a means of prepar­ing lec­ture notes for an audi­ence who know about as much about the sub­ject as you did when you start­ed study­ing it. In order to explain it to anoth­er, you must both under­stand the sub­ject your­self, and under­stand what it’s like not to under­stand it.

Learn Feynman’s method for learn­ing in the short ani­mat­ed video above. You do not actu­al­ly need to teach, only pre­tend as if you’re going to—though prepar­ing for an actu­al audi­ence will keep you on your toes. In brief, the video sum­ma­rizes Feynman’s method in a three-step process:

  1. Choose a top­ic you want to under­stand and start study­ing it.
  2. Pre­tend you’re teach­ing the idea to some­one else. Write out an expla­na­tion on the paper…. When­ev­er you get stuck, go back and study.
  3. Final­ly do it again, but now sim­pli­fy your lan­guage or use an anal­o­gy to make the point.

Get ready to start your YouTube chan­nel with home­made lan­guage lessons, restora­tion projects, and/or cook­ing videos. You may not—nor should you, perhaps—become an online author­i­ty, but accord­ing to Fey­man, who learned more in his life­time than most of us could in two, you’ll come away great­ly enriched in oth­er ways.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Draw­ings & Paint­ings of Richard Feyn­man: Art Express­es a Dra­mat­ic “Feel­ing of Awe”

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

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Introducing Pretty Much Pop (A Culture Podcast): Episode 1 — Pop Culture vs. High Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | July 18th, 2019

What is pop cul­ture? Does it make sense to dis­tin­guish it from high cul­ture, or can some­thing be both?

Open Cul­ture is pleased to curate a new pod­cast cov­er­ing all things enter­tain­ment: TV, movies, music, nov­els, video games, comics, nov­els, com­e­dy, the­ater, pod­casts, and more. Pret­ty Much Pop is the inven­tion of Mark Lin­sen­may­er (aka musi­cian Mark Lint), cre­ator of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Mark is joined by co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres, an actor and musi­cian who’s appeared on Broad­way and plays clas­si­cal and blue­grass vio­lin, and Bri­an Hirt, a sci­ence-fic­tion writer/linguistics major who col­lab­o­rates with his broth­er on the Con­stel­lary Tales mag­a­zine and pod­cast. For this intro­duc­to­ry dis­cus­sion touch­ing on opera, The Bea­t­les, Fort­nite, 50 Shades of Grey, real­i­ty TV, and more, our hosts are joined by the pod­cast’s audio edi­tor Tyler His­lop, aka Sac­ri­fice MC.

Some of the arti­cles brought in the dis­cus­sion are:

“The Long War Between High­brow and Low­brow” by Noah Berlatsky from the Pacif­ic Stan­dard (2017)

“Pop Cul­ture’s Progress Toward Tragedy” by Titus Techera from the Nation­al Review (2019)

Read more about the 1895 silent film that fea­tured a train com­ing right out of the screen, send­ing peo­ple scream­ing in ter­ror. Here’s more about the open­ing of Stravin­sky’s “Rite of Spring” at which spec­ta­tors riot­ed. You may also enjoy episode 137 of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life about the tastes of social class­es that ana­lyzes Pierre Bour­dieu. Also see episode 193 on lib­er­al edu­ca­tion and the idea of a “canon” of essen­tial, high-cul­ture works. The open­ing music is by Mark (gui­tars, cel­los, djem­be) and Eri­ca (vio­lins). The pod­cast logo is by Ken Ger­ber.

The end­ing song was writ­ten by Mark just for this episode. It’s called “High Rollin’ Cult,” and fea­tures Eri­ca on vio­lin and har­monies.

For more infor­ma­tion on the pod­cast, vis­it prettymuchpop.com or look for the pod­cast soon on Apple Pod­casts. To sup­port this effort (and imme­di­ate­ly get access to four episodes plus bonus con­tent), make a small, recur­ring dona­tion at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 

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An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges

in Books, Literature | July 18th, 2019

“Read­ing the work of Jorge Luis Borges for the first time is like dis­cov­er­ing a new let­ter in the alpha­bet, or a new note in the musi­cal scale,” writes the BBC’s Jane Cia­bat­tari. Borges’ essay-like works of fic­tion are “filled with pri­vate jokes and eso­ter­i­ca, his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and sar­don­ic foot­notes. They are brief, often with abrupt begin­nings.” His “use of labyrinths, mir­rors, chess games and detec­tive sto­ries cre­ates a com­plex intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, yet his lan­guage is clear, with iron­ic under­tones. He presents the most fan­tas­tic of scenes in sim­ple terms, seduc­ing us into the fork­ing path­way of his seem­ing­ly infi­nite imag­i­na­tion.”

If that sounds like your idea of good read, look a lit­tle deep­er into the work of Argenti­na’s most famous lit­er­ary fig­ure through the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. Mex­i­can writer and crit­ic Ilan Sta­vans, the lesson’s cre­ator, begins his intro­duc­tion to Borges by describ­ing a man who “not only remem­bers every­thing he has ever seen, but every time he has seen it in per­fect detail.” Many of you will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Funes the Mem­o­ri­ous, the star of Borges’ 1942 sto­ry of the same name — and those who don’t will sure­ly want to know more about him.

Sta­vans goes on to describe a library “built out of count­less iden­ti­cal rooms, each con­tain­ing the same num­ber of books of the same length,” that as a whole “con­tains every pos­si­ble vari­a­tion of text.” He also men­tions a rumored “lost labyrinth” that turns out to be “not a phys­i­cal maze but a nov­el,” and a nov­el that reveals the iden­ti­ty of the real labyrinth: time itself. Borges enthu­si­asts know which places Sta­vans is talk­ing about, mean­ing they know in which of Borges’ sto­ries — which their author, stick­ing to a word from his native Span­ish, referred to as fic­ciones — they orig­i­nate.

But though “The Library of Babel” (which in recent years has tak­en a dig­i­tal form online) and “The Gar­den Fork­ing Paths” count as two par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ples of what Sta­vans calls “Borges’ many explo­rations of infin­i­ty,” he found so many ways to explore that sub­ject through­out his writ­ing career that his lit­er­ary out­put func­tions as a con­scious­ness-alter­ing sub­stance. It does to the right read­ers, that is, a group that includes such oth­er mind-bend­ing writ­ers as Umber­to Eco, Rober­to Bolaño, and William Gib­son, none of whom were quite the same after they dis­cov­ered the fic­ciones. Behold Borges’ mir­rors, mazes, tigers, and chess games your­self — there­by catch­ing a glimpse of infin­i­ty — and you, too, will nev­er be able to return to the read­er you once were. Not that you’d want to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Explains The Task of Art

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

Why Should You Read James Joyce’s Ulysses?: A New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Why You Should Read The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Bulgakov’s Rol­lick­ing Sovi­et Satire

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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There’s a Tiny Art Museum on the Moon That Features the Art of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschenberg

in Art | July 18th, 2019

This week is the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing, and though we have yet to send an artist into space (pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael Naj­jar is appar­ent­ly still train­ing to become the first), there is a tiny art muse­um on the moon, and it’s been there since Novem­ber 1969, four months after man set foot on the lunar ser­vice, and in the after­glow of that amaz­ing sum­mer.

Don’t expect a walk­a­ble gallery, how­ev­er. The muse­um is actu­al­ly a ceram­ic wafer the size of a postage stamp, but what an impres­sive list: John Cham­ber­lain, For­rest Myers, David Novros, Claes Old­en­burg, Robert Rauschen­berg and Andy Warhol.

As you can see, the six kept it min­i­mal. Rauschen­berg drew a sin­gle line. Abstract artist Novros cre­at­ed a black square with inter­sect­ing white lines that look like a cir­cuit board. Sculp­tor Cham­ber­lain also cre­at­ed a geo­met­ric shape like cir­cuit­ry. Old­en­burg left his sig­na­ture, which at the time resem­bled an old Mick­ey Mouse. Myers, who ini­ti­at­ed the project, drew a “linked sym­bol.” And Andy Warhol drew a “styl­ized sig­na­ture” but let’s be hon­est, it’s a penis. Yes, Warhol put a dick pic on the moon.

The muse­um was not an offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned project. It had to be smug­gled onto the Apol­lo 12 lunar lan­der. This took some doing and it start­ed with Myers.

He might not be as well known as his fel­lows, but Myers was one of the forces behind the Soho art scene in the ‘60s, who saw the indus­tri­al area blos­som with artists look­ing for cheap rents and large spaces.

Myers had been think­ing about putting art on the moon, but all his entreaties to NASA were met with silence–neither a no nor a yes. It would have to be smug­gled on board, he decid­ed, but for such an oper­a­tion, he’d need some­one on the inside.

For­tu­nate­ly, there was a non-prof­it that was help­ing con­nect artists with engi­neers, called Exper­i­ments in Art and Tech­nol­o­gy (E.A.T.) and Rauschen­berg was one of its founders. Through E.A.T., Myers met Bell Labs’ Fred Wald­hauer who loved the moon muse­um project, and came up with the idea of the small wafers. Six­teen wafers were pro­duced (oth­er accounts say 20), one to go on Apol­lo 12, the oth­ers to go back to the artists (one now resides in MOMA’s col­lec­tion). Wald­hauer knew an engi­neer with Grum­man who was work­ing on the Apol­lo 12, and he agreed to sneak the ceram­ic wafer on board. But how would they know this ultra secret mis­sion was accom­plished?

Two days before the Apol­lo launch, Myers received a telegram from Cape Canaver­al:
“YOUR ON’ A.O.K. ALL SYSTEMS GO.
JOHN F.”

The art­work was not the only object sent to the moon on that mis­sion. Engi­neers placed per­son­al pho­tos in the same place: in between the gold ther­mal insu­la­tion pads that would be shed when the lan­der left the moon’s sur­face.

Only when Apol­lo 12’s re-entry cap­sule was on its way back to earth did Myers reveal to the press his suc­cess­ful stunt. How­ev­er, unless we sent astro­nauts back to the exact same spot we don’t real­ly know if the muse­um ever made its way there. Maybe it land­ed the wrong way up? Maybe oth­er wafers moved in through gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, raised rents, and the moon muse­um had to move to Mars. We’ll nev­er find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Apol­lo 11 in Real Time: A New Web Site Lets You Take a Real-Time Jour­ney Through First Land­ing on the Moon

David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Turn 50 This Month: Cel­e­brate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

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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