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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Romanovs’ Last Spectacular Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)

in History, Photography | July 17th, 2019

In 1903, the Romanovs, Russia’s last and longest-reign­ing roy­al fam­i­ly, held a lav­ish cos­tume ball. It was to be their final blowout, and per­haps also the “last great roy­al ball” in Europe, writes the Vin­tage News. The par­ty took place at the Win­ter Palace in St. Peters­burg, 14 years before Czar Nicholas II’s abdi­ca­tion, on the 290th anniver­sary of Romanov rule. The Czar invit­ed 390 guests and the ball ranged over two days of fes­tiv­i­ties, with elab­o­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry boyar cos­tumes, includ­ing “38 orig­i­nal roy­al items of the 17th cen­tu­ry from the armory in Moscow.”

“The first day fea­tured feast­ing and danc­ing,” notes Rus­sia Beyond, “and a masked ball was held on the sec­ond. Every­thing was cap­tured in a pho­to album that con­tin­ues to inspire artists to this day.” The entire Romanov fam­i­ly gath­ered for a pho­to­graph on the stair­case of the Her­mitage the­ater, the last time they would all be pho­tographed togeth­er.

It is like see­ing two dif­fer­ent dead worlds super­im­posed on each other—the Romanovs’ play­act­ing their begin­ning while stand­ing on the thresh­old of their last days.

With the irony of hind­sight, we will always look upon these poised aris­to­crats as doomed to vio­lent death and exile. In a mor­bid turn of mind, I can’t help think­ing of the baroque goth­ic of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ry about a doomed aris­toc­ra­cy who seal them­selves inside a cos­tume ball while a con­ta­gion rav­ages the world out­side: “The exter­nal world could take care of itself,” Poe’s nar­ra­tor says. “In the mean­time it was fol­ly to grieve or to think. The prince had pro­vid­ed all the appli­ances of plea­sure…. It was a volup­tuous scene, that mas­quer­ade.”

Maybe in our imag­i­na­tion, the Romanovs and their friends seem haunt­ed by the weight of suf­fer­ing out­side their palace walls, in both their coun­try and around Europe as the old order fell apart. Or per­haps they just look haunt­ed the way every­one does in pho­tographs from over 100 years ago. Does the col­oriz­ing of these pho­tos by Russ­ian artist Klimbim—who has done sim­i­lar work with images of WW2 sol­diers and por­traits of Russ­ian poets and writ­ers—make them less ghost­ly?

It puts flesh on the pale mono­chro­mat­ic faces, gives the lav­ish cos­tum­ing and fur­ni­ture tex­ture and dimen­sion. Some of the images almost look like art nou­veau illus­tra­tions (and resem­ble those of some of the finest illus­tra­tors of Poe’s work) and the work of con­tem­po­rary painters like Gus­tav Klimt. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that unease lingers in the eyes of some subjects—Empress Alexan­dra Fedorov­na among them—a cer­tain vague and trou­bled appre­hen­sion.

In their book A Life­long Pas­sion, authors Andrei May­lu­nas and Sergei Miro­nenko quote the Grand Duke Alexan­der Mikhailovitch who remem­bered the event as “the last spec­tac­u­lar ball in the his­to­ry of the empire.” The Grand Duke also recalled that “a new and hos­tile Rus­sia glared though the large win­dows of the palace… while we danced, the work­ers were strik­ing and the clouds in the Far East were hang­ing dan­ger­ous­ly low.” As Rus­sia Beyond notes, soon after this cel­e­bra­tion, “The glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis marked the begin­ning of the end for the Russ­ian Empire, and the court ceased to hold balls.”

In 1904, the Rus­so-Japan­ese War began, a war Rus­sia was to lose the fol­low­ing year. Then the aristocracy’s pow­er was fur­ther weak­ened by the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1905, which Lenin would lat­er call the “Great Dress Rehearsal” for the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary takeover of 1917. While the aris­toc­ra­cy cos­tumed itself in the trap­pings of past glo­ry, armies amassed to force their reck­on­ing with the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Who knows what thoughts went through the mind of the tzar, tza­ri­na, and their heirs dur­ing those two days, and the minds of the almost 400 noble­men and women dressed in cos­tumes spe­cial­ly designed by artist Sergey Solomko, who drew from the work of sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans to make accu­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry recre­ations, while Peter Carl Fabergé chose the jew­el­ry, includ­ing, writes the Vin­tage News, the tzarina’s “pearls topped by a dia­mond and emer­ald-stud­ded crown” and an “enor­mous emer­ald” on her bro­cad­ed dress?

If the Romanovs had any inkling their almost 300-year dynasty was com­ing to its end and would take all of the Russ­ian aris­toc­ra­cy with it, they were, at least, deter­mined to go out with the high­est style; the fam­i­ly with “almost cer­tain­ly… the most abso­lutist pow­ers” would spare no expense to live in their past, no mat­ter what the future held for them. See the orig­i­nal, black and white pho­tos, includ­ing that last fam­i­ly por­trait, at His­to­ry Dai­ly and Rus­sia Beyond, and see sev­er­al more col­orized images at the Vin­tage News.

via The Vin­tage News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

How Obses­sive Artists Col­orize Old Pho­tographs & Restore the True Col­ors of the Past

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 26 ) |

When Neil Young & Devo Jammed Together: Watch Them Play “Hey Hey, My My” in a Clip from the 1982 Film Human Highway

in Film, Music | July 17th, 2019

It’s well known that in the 80s, Neil Young briefly went New Wave, first with 1981’s Re-ac-tor, then the fol­low­ing year’s Kraftwerk-inspired album Trans, which fea­tures such dance floor-friend­ly tracks as “Com­put­er Age” (see it live fur­ther down), “Trans­former Man,” and “Com­put­er Cow­boy (aka Syscrush­er).” This is a weird peri­od in Young’s career—one crit­ics tend to ignore or dis­miss, as William Ruhlmann writes at All­mu­sic, as “baf­fling.”

“Despite the crisp dance beats and syn­the­siz­ers,” Ruhlmann com­plains, Trans “sound­ed less like new Kraftwerk than like old Devo” (as though this were a bad thing). But the “old Devo” dig prob­a­bly would­n’t both­er Young. He jammed with the band them­selves in his bizarre 1982 film Human High­way. Devo not only star in the movie—as garbage men at a nuclear pow­er plant—they also play  a ver­sion of “Hey Hey, My My,” with Young on gui­tar and Mark Moth­ers­baugh on vocals.

Young wasn’t cash­ing in on Devo’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, rid­ing their New Wave coat­tails to bol­ster his hip­ster cred with a punk gen­er­a­tion. He began as a big fan before they even released their first album. “Young first saw Devo when they played the Star­wood Club in West Hol­ly­wood in 1977,” writes Andy Greene at Rolling Stone. “He was blown away by their wild, fre­net­ic stage show and decid­ed to cast them in his movie,” which began shoot­ing the fol­low­ing year.

The admi­ra­tion wasn’t mutu­al at first. Devo were “shocked by the atmos­phere on the set,” espe­cial­ly the stoned, drunk­en antics of Den­nis Hop­per and Dean Stock­well, and they weren’t total­ly dig­ging the song, either. The jam was “com­plete­ly unre­hearsed.” Says Devo’s Jer­ry Casale, “He told us the chord pro­gres­sion and that was that…. It was hip­pie style.” Moth­ers­baugh remem­bers, “I didn’t want to sing about John­ny Rot­ten. So we sang about John­ny Spud.”

Young, at work on songs for the clas­sic 1979 live album Rust Nev­er Sleeps, was push­ing his approach­es to per­for­mance and record­ing in new direc­tions. But when Human High­way start­ed shoot­ing in 1978, few fans would have pre­dict­ed that when it wrapped four years lat­er, he would be mak­ing synth-rock records. The film became a cult clas­sic, notable for bring­ing togeth­er a leg­endary cast of weirdos and serv­ing as Mark Mothersbaugh’s first ven­ture in film-scor­ing.

But we can also see this bizarre musi­cal com­e­dy as a con­cep­tu­al bridge between the jam-band “hip­pie style” rock of Crazy Horse and the slick, vocoder pop of Trans, an album that might make a lit­tle more sense if we think of it in part as Young’s trib­ute to Devo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

When Neil Young & Rick James Cre­at­ed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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

in Books, Design, Music | July 17th, 2019

What makes the Bea­t­les the best-known rock band in his­to­ry? None can deny that they com­posed songs of unsur­passed catch­i­ness, a qual­i­ty demon­strat­ed as soon as those songs hit the air­waves. But the past 55 or so years have shown us that they also pos­sess an endur­ing pow­er to inspire: how many begin­ning musi­cians, fired up by their enjoy­ment of the Bea­t­les, play their first notes each day? The trib­utes to the music of the Bea­t­les keep com­ing in non-musi­cal forms as well: take, for exam­ple, these Bea­t­les songs turned into vin­tage book cov­ers and mag­a­zine pages by screen­writer and self-described “graph­ic-arts prankster” Todd Alcott.

“ ‘Dri­ve My Car’ re-imag­ines the clas­sic 1965 Bea­t­les song as a clas­sic 1965 adver­tise­ment for an actu­al car,” Alcott writes of the work at the top of the post, “mash­ing up the image from an ad for a 1966 Chevro­let Cor­vair with the lyrics from the song.”

Below that, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” makes of that num­ber a mass-mar­ket book cov­er “in the style of Erich von Daniken’s clas­sic 1970s alien-vis­i­ta­tion book Char­i­ots of the Gods?” Below, Alcot­t’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” per­fect­ly re-cre­ates the look (and, with that vis­i­ble cov­er wear, the feel) of a heady 1960s sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el.

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows does sound like a plau­si­ble piece of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion from that era, but Alcott has made use of much more than these songs’ titles. Even casu­al Bea­t­les fans will notice how much of their lyri­cal con­tent he man­ages to work into his designs, for which the 1967 Nation­al Enquir­er cov­er pas­tiche he put togeth­er for the 1967 sin­gle “A Day in the Life” (“com­plete with pho­tos of Tory Browne, the Guin­ness heir about whom the song was writ­ten”) offered an espe­cial­ly rich oppor­tu­ni­ty. Just when the Bea­t­les broke up in real life, the era of the new-age self-help book began, and after see­ing what Alcott did with “Hel­lo Good­bye” using the dis­tinc­tive visu­al brand­ing of that pub­lish­ing trend, you’ll won­der why no one cashed in on such a com­bi­na­tion at the time.

You can see all of Alcot­t’s Bea­t­les book cov­er and mag­a­zine page designs, and buy prints of them in var­i­ous sizes, over at Etsy. Oth­er selec­tions include “Rocky Rac­coon” as an 1880s dime nov­el (pub­lish­ers of which includ­ed a firm named Bea­dles) and “Rev­o­lu­tion” as a Sovi­et his­to­ry book. Open Cul­ture read­ers will know Alcott from his pre­vi­ous for­ays into retro music-to-book graph­ic design, which took the songs of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radio­head and oth­ers and re-imag­ined them as sci-fi nov­els, pulp-fic­tion mag­a­zines, and oth­er arti­facts of print cul­ture from times past. In the case of the Bea­t­les, Alcot­t’s for­mi­da­ble skill at evok­ing a high­ly spe­cif­ic era of recent his­to­ry with an image under­scores, by con­trast, the time­less­ness of the songs that inspired them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

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

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

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Pulp Cov­ers for Clas­sic Detec­tive Nov­els by Dashiell Ham­mett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie & Ray­mond Chan­dler

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Alan Turing Will Be Featured on England’s New £50 Banknote

in Uncategorized | July 16th, 2019

This week, the Bank of Eng­land announced that it will fea­ture Alan Tur­ing on its £50 ban­knote, thus com­plet­ing the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Eng­lish math­e­mati­cian, com­put­er sci­en­tist and code break­er. The new note will go into cir­cu­la­tion in 2021. Find more at The Guardian.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Tur­ing Machine Hand­made Out of Wood

The Books on Young Alan Turing’s Read­ing List: From Lewis Car­roll to Mod­ern Chro­mat­ics

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Behold Fantastical Illustrations from the 13th Century Arabic Manuscript Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing

in Art, Books, History | July 16th, 2019

Reli­gion, his­to­ry, med­i­cine, poet­ry, ethnog­ra­phy, zool­o­gy, cos­mol­o­gy, polit­i­cal philosophy—in many a medieval text, these cat­e­gories all seem to melt togeth­er. Or rather, they don’t exist sep­a­rate­ly in the way we think of them, as labels on a library shelf and cours­es in a cat­a­logue. The same log­i­cal rules do not apply—the appeal to author­i­ty, for exam­ple is not a fal­la­cy so much as a pri­ma­ry method­ol­o­gy. If knowl­edge came from the right prophet, schol­ar, or sage, it could be trust­ed, a mode of think­ing that gave rise to mon­sters, phan­toms, and out­landish beings of all kinds.

It’s easy to call these meth­ods prim­i­tive, but so-called medieval ways of think­ing are still very much with us, and thinkers hun­dreds and thou­sands of years ago have had sur­pris­ing­ly sci­en­tif­ic approach­es, despite lim­it­ed resources and tech­nolo­gies.

We find both the fan­tas­ti­cal and the sci­en­tif­ic woven togeth­er in medieval man­u­scripts, illu­mi­nat­ing and com­ment­ing on each oth­er. And we find exact­ly that in the works of Abu Yahya Zakariya’ ibn Muham­mad al-Qazwi­ni, Per­sian writer, physi­cian, astronomer, geo­g­ra­ph­er, and author of a 13th cen­tu­ry trea­tise called ‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt, or Mar­vels of Things Cre­at­ed and Mirac­u­lous Aspects of Things Exist­ing.

This work is “the most well-known exam­ple,” writes the Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine, “of a genre of clas­si­cal Islam­ic lit­er­a­ture that was con­cerned with ‘mirabil­ia’ or won­ders of cre­ation.” Draw­ing on 50 dif­fer­ent authors, includ­ing sev­er­al ancient Islam­ic geo­g­ra­phers and his­to­ri­ans, Qazwi­ni weaves myth, leg­end, and sci­ence, tying them togeth­er with sto­ries and poet­ry. The Qur’an and hadith are sig­nif­i­cant sources—for a sec­tion on “angelol­o­gy,” for exam­ple. When the cos­mog­ra­phy comes down to earth, mov­ing down through the ranks of humans, beasts, plants, and min­er­als, all sorts of weird, folk­loric ter­res­tri­al crea­tures show up.

The phoenix (or Simurgh), for exam­ple, and the Homa, or par­adise bird—which lands on someone’s head and instant­ly makes them king—sit com­fort­ably next to eagles, vul­tures, and ostrich­es, all of which are con­strued as mar­velous or mirac­u­lous in some way.

The trea­tise cov­ered all the won­ders of the world, and the vari­ety of the sub­ject mat­ter (humans and their anato­my, plants, ani­mals, strange crea­tures at the edges of the inhab­it­ed world, con­stel­la­tions of stars, zodi­a­cal signs, angels, and demons) pro­vid­ed great scope for the artist.

First writ­ten in Ara­bic in the late 1200s and ded­i­cat­ed to the gov­er­nor of Bagh­dad, the man­u­script was “immense­ly pop­u­lar” in the Islam­ic world. It was trans­lat­ed into Per­sian and Turk­ish and copied out in rich­ly illus­trat­ed edi­tions for cen­turies. The images here come from a Per­sian trans­la­tion, “thought to hail from 17th-cen­tu­ry Mughal India,” writes The Pub­lic Domain Review, and the art vivid­ly dis­plays the “eclec­tic mix of top­ics” in al-Qazwini’s book. These were sub­jects that “chal­lenged understanding”—often because they con­cerned things that do not exist, and often because they described nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non that could not yet be explained.

“From humans and their anato­my to strange myth­i­cal crea­tures; from plants and ani­mals to con­stel­la­tions of stars and zodi­a­cal signs,” The Pub­lic Domain Review explains, the trea­tise pur­port­ed to sur­vey all the “known” world. Al-Qazwi­ni embell­ished his explo­rations for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es, but he also cre­at­ed exten­sive tax­onomies and described prac­ti­cal sci­ence like the use of “a type of pitch or tar that we today know as asphalt,” San Francisco’s Asian Art Muse­um notes in their cat­a­logue descrip­tion of anoth­er illus­trat­ed man­u­script, in Ara­bic, from 1650. For al-Qazwi­ni and his read­ers, as for oth­er 13th-cen­tu­ry schol­ars, writ­ers, and read­ers around the world, the bound­aries between faith, fact, and fic­tion were per­me­able, and imag­i­na­tion some­times seems to have been the ulti­mate author­i­ty.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Learn Islam­ic & Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy with 107 Episodes of the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Piano Played with 16 Increasing Levels of Complexity: From Easy to Very Complex

in Creativity, Music | July 16th, 2019

Remem­ber the feel­ing of accom­plish­ment as a child, pick­ing out a sim­ple tune after your first piano les­son?

Then the day you begin to play with both hands? So grown up.

Even­tu­al­ly you start using more than two fin­gers.

And then comes the par­ty where a proud par­ent, pos­si­bly with a drink or two in him, com­mands you to play for the guests, who indulge your efforts with applause and the sug­ges­tion that per­haps their child, a con­tem­po­rary of yours, take a turn at the key­board.

Mozart.

Beethoven.

Max­i­mum humil­i­a­tion.

How soon can you bail on those damn piano lessons?

I flashed on that uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence whilst lis­ten­ing to pianist and com­pos­er Nahre Sol demon­strate the “end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties” of piano com­po­si­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion by sub­ject­ing “Hap­py Birth­day” to six­teen lev­els of increas­ing com­plex­i­ty.

‘Round about lev­el five is where our respec­tive tal­ents began to part ways.

After a lot of prac­tice and false starts, I can some­times man­age a sim­ple arpeg­gio.

That’s greasy kid stuff to Nahre, whose YouTube chan­nel abounds with expert advice on how to sound like var­i­ous clas­si­cal com­posers and robust inves­ti­ga­tions of gen­res—fla­men­co, rag­time, Bossa nova, the Blues…

Now I know what made the vis­i­tors’ kid so much more advanced than me—broken octaves, glis­san­dos, great mus­cu­lar spans, a con­fi­dent com­mand of har­monies and rhythm…

Sol blows that per­for­mance out of the water, with seem­ing­ly very lit­tle effort, breezi­ly explain­ing what she’s doing each time she takes things up a notch, cul­mi­nat­ing in lev­el 16, which encom­pass­es all pre­vi­ous steps.

As home­less­ricegum observes in the com­ment sec­tion of the video, “Lev­el 17: you will now need your third hand.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­cept of Musi­cal Har­mo­ny Explained in Five Lev­els of Dif­fi­cul­ty, Start­ing with a Child & End­ing with Her­bie Han­cock

Learn How to Read Sheet Music: A Quick, Fun, Tongue-in-Cheek Intro­duc­tion

A Vin­tage Grand Piano Gets Reengi­neered to Play 20 Dif­fer­ent Instru­ments with a Push of Its Keys

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Principles for Success by Entrepreneur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Animated Primer

in Life, Philosophy | July 16th, 2019

Investor and hedge fund man­ag­er Ray Dalio has a net worth of $18.4 bil­lion. That alone would per­suade a great many of us to lis­ten to any and all advice he has to offer, but unlike many mul­ti-bil­lion­aires, he’s also put no small amount of thought into just what advice to give and how to give it. One rea­son is that the pieces of advice he doles out pub­licly began as pieces of advice for him­self, dis­cov­ered through tri­al and error and refined into a set of prin­ci­ples. These he lays out in his book Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, the con­tent of which he has also dis­tilled into the ani­mat­ed video above, “Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Ray Dalio.”

Dalio breaks down his own jour­ney to suc­cess as the con­tin­ued rep­e­ti­tion of a five-step process:

  1. Know your goals and run after them
  2. Encounter the prob­lems that stand in the way of get­ting to your goals
  3. Diag­nose these prob­lems to get at their root caus­es
  4. Design a plan to elim­i­nate the prob­lems
  5. Exe­cute those designs

This frame­work already sets Dalio apart from oth­er suc­cess­ful advice-givers, some of whom offer noth­ing more than broad plat­i­tudes about believ­ing in your­self and nev­er giv­ing up hope, and oth­ers of whom fall back on cyn­i­cal cracks about doing unto oth­ers before they do unto you. Dalio, for his part, endors­es a mind­set he calls “hyper­re­al­ism,” the adop­tion of which demands putting the truth before all else. And the hyper­re­al­ist first exam­ines the truth about him­self, assess­ing as objec­tive­ly as pos­si­ble his weak­ness­es as well as his strengths and reg­u­lar­ly draw­ing upon the per­spec­tives of those who dis­agree with him.

Under­ly­ing Dalio’s ideas about hyper­re­al­ism and suc­cess is a mech­a­nis­tic con­cep­tion of human­i­ty, the econ­o­my, the world, indeed all real­i­ty: “Every­thing is a machine,” as he stark­ly puts it. By this, he does­n’t mean we should think of our­selves as pre-pro­grammed robots, but that we can approach all of our choic­es as puz­zles to be fig­ured out. “Most every­thing hap­pens over and over again in slight­ly dif­fer­ent ways,” he says, but most of us, with our view­points biased toward recent his­to­ry and our “ego and blind spot bar­ri­ers” that keep us from see­ing the full pic­ture, mis­tak­en­ly regard the sit­u­a­tions in which we find our­selves as unique, thus mak­ing them into more dif­fi­cult prob­lems than they are.

Of course, even if we embrace hyper­re­al­ism and devel­op ever more reli­able strate­gies to sur­mount the obsta­cles that crop up along our cho­sen paths, we’ll fail as often as we suc­ceed. Dalio tells of his own grand hum­bling in the ear­ly 1980s when he bet every­thing on a depres­sion that nev­er came, and explains how the fall­out taught him that “truth is the essen­tial foun­da­tion for pro­duc­ing good out­comes.” Even if we have no inter­est in doing what it takes to make $18.4 bil­lion, we might still bear in mind the two prin­ci­ple-dri­ven equa­tions that Dalio pro­vides — “Dreams + real­i­ty + deter­mi­na­tion = a suc­cess­ful life” and “Pain + reflec­tion = progress” — along with his con­vic­tion that suc­cess requires not just know­ing the truth of world, but the truth of our­selves as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How The Eco­nom­ic Machine Works: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer by Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio

Steve Jobs Shares a Secret for Suc­cess: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

Har­vard Dean Lists the 5 Essen­tial Ques­tions to Ask In Life … Which Will Bring You Hap­pi­ness & Suc­cess

Oprah Winfrey’s Har­vard Com­mence­ment Speech: Fail­ure is Just Part of Mov­ing Through Life

Alain de Bot­ton Pro­pos­es a Kinder, Gen­tler Phi­los­o­phy of Suc­cess

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.