Beautiful Hand-Colored Japanese Flowers Created by the Pioneering Photographer Ogawa Kazumasa (1896)

in Art, Photography | March 22nd, 2019

Ogawa Kazu­masa lived from the 1860s to almost the 1930s, sure­ly one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing 70-year stretch­es in Japan­ese his­to­ry. Ogawa’s home­land “opened” to the world when he was a boy, and for the rest of his life he bore wit­ness to the some­times beau­ti­ful, some­times strange, some­times exhil­a­rat­ing results of a once-iso­lat­ed cul­ture assim­i­lat­ing seem­ing­ly every­thing for­eign — art, tech­nol­o­gy, cus­toms — all at once. Nat­u­ral­ly he picked up a cam­era to doc­u­ment it all, and his­to­ry now remem­bers him as a pio­neer of his art.

At the Get­ty’s web site you can see a few exam­ples of the sort of pic­tures Ogawa took of Japan­ese life in the mid-1890s. Dur­ing that same peri­od he pub­lished Some Japan­ese Flow­ers, a book con­tain­ing his pic­tures of just that.

The fol­low­ing year, Ogawa’s hand-col­ored pho­tographs of Japan­ese flow­ers also appeared in the Amer­i­can books Japan, Described and Illus­trat­ed by the Japan­ese, edit­ed by the renowned Anglo-Irish expa­tri­ate Japan­ese cul­ture schol­ar Fran­cis Brink­ley and pub­lished in Boston, the city where Ogawa had spent a cou­ple of years study­ing por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy and pro­cess­ing.

Ogawa’s var­ied life in Japan includ­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at Shashin Shin­pō (写真新報), the only pho­tog­ra­phy jour­nal in the coun­try at the time, as well as at the flower mag­a­zine Kok­ka (国華), which would cer­tain­ly have giv­en him the expe­ri­ence he need­ed to pro­duce pho­to­graph­ic spec­i­mens such as these. Though Ogawa invest­ed a great deal in learn­ing and employ­ing the high­est pho­to­graph­ic tech­nolo­gies, they were the high­est pho­to­graph­ic tech­nolo­gies of the 1890s, when col­or pho­tog­ra­phy neces­si­tat­ed adding col­ors — of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance in the case of flow­ers — after the fact.

Some Japan­ese Flow­ers was re-issued a few years ago, but you can still see 20 strik­ing exam­ples of Ogawa’s flower pho­tog­ra­phy at the Pub­lic Domain Review. They’ve also made sev­er­al of his works avail­able as prints of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sizes in their online shop, a selec­tion that includes not just his flow­ers but the Bronze Bud­dha at Kamaku­ra and a man locked in bat­tle with an octo­pus as well. Even as every­thing changed so rapid­ly all around him, as he mas­tered the just-as-rapid­ly devel­op­ing tools of his craft, Ogawa nev­er­the­less kept his eye for the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al aspects of his home­land that seemed nev­er to have changed at all.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

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

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

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.

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An Archive of Animations/Cartoons of Ancient Greece & Rome: From the 1920s Through Today

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, History, Literature | March 22nd, 2019

Ancient Greece and Rome have pro­vid­ed fer­tile hunt­ing grounds for ani­mat­ed sub­ject mat­ter since the very incep­tion of the form.

So what if the results wind up doing lit­tle more than frol­ic in the pas­toral set­ting? Wit­ness 1930’s Play­ful Pan, above, which can basi­cal­ly be summed up as Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny in a toga (with a cute bear cub who looks a lot like Mick­ey Mouse and some flame play that pre­fig­ures The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice…)

Oth­ers are packed with his­to­ry, myth­ic nar­ra­tive, and peri­od details, though be fore­warned that not all are as visu­al­ly appeal­ing as Steve Simons’ Hoplites! Greeks at War, part of the Panoply Vase Ani­ma­tion Project.

Some series, such as the Aster­ix movies and Aesop and Son—a sta­ple of The Rocky and Bull­win­kle Show from 1959 to 1962—have been the gate­ways through which many his­to­ry lovers’ curios­i­ty was first roused.

(Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ana­toly Petrov’s erot­ic shorts for Soyuz­mult­film may rouse oth­er, er, curiosi­ties, and are def­i­nite­ly NSFW.)

And then there are instant clas­sics like 2004’s It’s All Greek to Scoo­by in which “Shag­gy’s pur­chase of a mys­te­ri­ous amulet only serves to cause a pes­ter­ing archae­ol­o­gist and cen­taur to chase him.”  (Ye gods…)

Senior Lec­tur­er of Clas­si­cal and Mediter­ranean Stud­ies at Van­der­bilt, Chiara Sul­prizio, has col­lect­ed all of these and more on her blog, Ani­mat­ed Antiq­ui­ty.

Begin­ning with the 2‑minute frag­ment that’s all we have left of Win­sor McCay’s 1921 The Cen­taurs, Sul­prizio shares some of her favorite car­toon rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ancient Greece, Rome, and beyond. Her areas of pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial­iza­tion—gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, Greek com­e­dy, and Roman satire—are well suit­ed to her cho­sen hob­by, and her com­men­tary dou­bles down on his­tor­i­cal con­text to include the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion.

The appear­ance of car­toon stars like Daffy Duck, Tom and Jer­ry, and Pop­eye fur­ther demon­strates this antique sub­ject matter’s stur­di­ness. TED-Ed and the BBC may view the genre as an excel­lent teach­ing tool, but there’s noth­ing stop­ping the ani­ma­tor from shoe­horn­ing some fab­ri­ca­tions in amongst the bux­om nymphs and buff glad­i­a­tors.

(Raise your hand if your moth­er ever sac­ri­ficed you on the altar to Spinachia, god­dess of spinach, in hopes that she might unleash a mush­room cloud of super-atom­ic pow­er in your puny bicep.)

You’ll find a num­ber of entries fea­tur­ing the work of Japan­ese and Russ­ian ani­ma­tors, includ­ing Ther­mae Romae, part of the jug­ger­naut that’s sprung from Mari Yamazaki’s pop­u­lar graph­ic nov­el series and Icarus and the Wise Men from the leg­endary Fyo­dor Khitruk, whose retelling of the myth sent a mes­sage about free­dom from the Sovi­et Union, cir­ca 1976.

Begin your decade-by-decade explo­rations of Chiara Sulprizio’s ani­mat­ed antiq­ui­ties here or sug­gest that a miss­ing favorite be added to the col­lec­tion. (We vote for this one!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

18 Clas­sic Myths Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Pandora’s Box, Sisy­phus & More

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

25 Ani­ma­tions of Great Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to, Dos­to­evsky & Dick­in­son, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Case for Why Captain Beefheart’s Awful Sounding Album, Trout Mask Replica, Is a True Masterpiece

in Music | March 21st, 2019

I’ve had Trout Mask Repli­ca in my col­lec­tion for years. I can’t say I reg­u­lar­ly pull it out to give it a lis­ten, but I know I’d nev­er get rid of it. It’s a some­times impen­e­tra­ble slab of genius, wrought from end­less ses­sions and then a short burst of record­ing, led by a man who couldn’t read music, was prone to fits of vio­lent anger, but dammit knew what he want­ed. (And Zap­pa pro­duced.) When I learned lat­er that the house where a lot of this went down was locat­ed in the hills behind the sub­urbs of Wood­land Hills, it made the insur­rec­tion of the album all the more mag­i­cal.

But yes, it’s a hard one to get into. There are no “hits.” There’s no foot tap­pin’ pop (well, mayyyyybe “Ella Guru,” and only because I knew it first as a cov­er by XTC.) It’s dis­cor­dant. Don Van Vli­et aka Cap­tain Beef­heart sounds pos­sessed by Howl­in’ Wolf try­ing to sing nurs­ery rhymes on acid, and it often plays like mem­bers of the band are in dif­fer­ent areas of the house with a vague idea of what the oth­ers are doing. (This is actu­al­ly a bit close to the truth).

Vox’s con­tin­u­ing series “Ear­worm,” host­ed by Estelle Caswell, attempts to con­vert lis­ten­ers who may have nev­er heard of the album, by tak­ing apart the open­ing track, “Frown­land.”

As Caswell explains, with help from musi­col­o­gists Samuel Andreyev and Susan Rogers, Van Vli­et meld­ed blues and free jazz, and played it with a decon­struct­ed rock band instru­men­ta­tion. Drums and bass did not lock down a rhythm–they played inde­pen­dent of the oth­ers, with the bass even play­ing chords. Rhythm and lead gui­tar played two dif­fer­ent time sig­na­tures each, and nei­ther were easy, 4/4 rhythms. And then there’s the sax­o­phone work, drop­ping in to squonk and thrash like Ornette Cole­man. As Mag­ic Band mem­bers point out, Van Vli­et didn’t under­stand that a bass or a gui­tar did not have the same range of notes as an 88-key piano, which was Van Vliet’s song­writ­ing instru­ment.

How­ev­er, only jazz­bos dig on learn­ing about polyrhythms. There’s so many oth­er rea­sons to appre­ci­ate Trout Mask. For one, it’s in the proud tra­di­tion of Euro­pean sur­re­al­ism but also comes from a par­tic­u­lar “old weird Amer­i­ca” that pro­duced some of our most bril­liant nut­cas­es. (How many peo­ple, learn­ing that Van Vli­et was raised near Joshua Tree, nod­ded in enlight­en­ment? Of course he was.) You want drug music, the album says…well then, this is the uncut stuff.

And then some­times it real­ly just hits hard: “Moon­light On Ver­mont” is relent­less, with a cor­r­us­cat­ing gui­tar line and Beef­heart worked up into a lath­er over “that old time reli­gion.” He quotes Blind Willie John­son, con­flates pagan­ism and Puri­tanism, and tran­scends both. (Maybe this is the gate­way song for new­bies?)

The Vox video pre­cedes its defense with some neg­a­tive reviews from the con­tem­po­rary press, but this Dick Lar­son review from the time under­stood it from the get go, who writes about it as a giant step for­ward after Beefheart’s two pre­vi­ous, more acces­si­ble albums:

Dylan would sym­pa­thise with Beefheart’s ‘nature-and-love-trips’, but the Cap­tain is faster and more bul­bous (and he’s got his band). But this is it. In straight­en­ing out his music, he’s found some kind of reli­gion. It may be in hair pies (yes!) or in Frown­land, but main­ly it’s peo­ple, chil­dren and coun­try men and women. And this is a new delight for Beef­heart – a rough out­door human­i­ty blend­ed with humour and a rich ver­bal vom­it of imagery.

It is a wild album, lit­er­al­ly. There are field record­ings in between the music, with sounds of crick­ets and a plane pass­ing over­head. The LP art shows the band stand­ing, crouch­ing, and hid­ing in the over­grown back­yard of the house. There’s mys­te­ri­ous things in the stream below and only some of them are fish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

Cap­tain Beef­heart Issues His “Ten Com­mand­ments of Gui­tar Play­ing”

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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Why We Dance: An Animated Video Explains the Science Behind Why We Bust a Move

in Dance, Neuroscience | March 21st, 2019

Has any cul­ture, apart from that of the tiny Utah town in Foot­loose, done entire­ly with­out danc­ing? It would at first seem that any human need the rhyth­mic shak­ing of one’s limbs to orga­nized sound ful­fills must reside pret­ty low on the over­all pri­or­i­ty scale, but anthro­pol­o­gy tells us that var­i­ous human soci­eties start­ed danc­ing before they got into most every oth­er activ­i­ty that fills their time today. “Why is this osten­si­bly friv­o­lous act so fun­da­men­tal to being human?” asks the Aeon video above. “The answer, it seems, is in our need for social cohe­sion — that vital glue that keeps soci­eties from break­ing apart despite inter­per­son­al dif­fer­ences.”

Direct­ed and ani­mat­ed by Rosan­na Wan and Andrew Khos­ra­vani, the four-minute explain­er frames our deep, cul­ture-tran­scend­ing need to “bust a move” in terms of the work of both 19th- and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry French soci­ol­o­gist Émile Durkheim and more recent research per­formed by Bron­wyn Tarr, an Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who also hap­pens to be a dancer her­self.

Durkheim posit­ed the phe­nom­e­non of “col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence,” or “a sort of elec­tric­i­ty,” or “that exhil­a­ra­tion, almost eupho­ria, that over­takes groups of peo­ple unit­ed by a com­mon pur­pose, pur­su­ing an intense­ly involv­ing activ­i­ty togeth­er.” When you feel it, you feel “a flow, a sense that your self is meld­ing with the group as a whole.” And has any prac­tice gen­er­at­ed as much col­lec­tive effer­ves­cence through­out human his­to­ry as dance?

Mod­ern sci­ence has shed a bit of light on why: Tarr has found that “we humans have a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to syn­chro­nize our move­ments with oth­er humans,” thanks to a region in the brain which helps us make the same move­ments we see oth­ers mak­ing. “When we mim­ic our part­ner’s move­ments, and they’re mim­ic­k­ing ours, sim­i­lar neur­al net­works in both net­works open up a rush of neu­ro­hor­mones, all of which make us feel good.” Lis­ten­ing to music “can cre­ate such a euphor­ic delight that it appears to acti­vate opi­oid recep­tors in the brain,” mak­ing it even hard­er to resist get­ting up and danc­ing. “They said he’d nev­er win,” Foot­loose’s tagline said of the movie’s big-city teen intent on get­ting the town danc­ing again, but “he knew he had to” — an assur­ance that turns out to have had a basis in neu­rol­o­gy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Three Soci­ol­o­gists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

The Strange Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France Could Not Stop Danc­ing for Months

The Addams Fam­i­ly Dance to The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”

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.

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Oxford’s Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Teaches You to Think Like a Philosopher

in Online Courses, Philosophy | March 21st, 2019

Image by Pablo Fer­nán­dez, via Flickr Com­mons

When I was younger, I often found myself dis­agree­ing with some­thing I’d read or heard, but could­n’t explain exact­ly why. Despite being unable to pin­point the pre­cise rea­sons, I had a strong sense that the rules of log­ic were being vio­lat­ed. After I was exposed to crit­i­cal think­ing in high school and uni­ver­si­ty, I learned to rec­og­nize prob­lem­at­ic argu­ments, whether they be a straw man, an appeal to author­i­ty, or an ad hominem attack. Faulty argu­ments are all-per­va­sive, and the men­tal bias­es that under­lie them pop up in media cov­er­age, col­lege class­es, and arm­chair the­o­riz­ing. Want to learn how to avoid them? Look no fur­ther than Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners, a top rat­ed col­lec­tion of lec­tures led by Oxford University’s Mar­i­anne Tal­bot.

Tal­bot builds the course from the ground up, and begins by explain­ing that argu­ments con­sist of a set of premis­es that, log­i­cal­ly linked togeth­er, lead to a con­clu­sion. She pro­ceeds to out­line the way to lay out an argu­ment log­i­cal­ly and clear­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, the basic steps involved in assess­ing its strengths and weak­ness­es.

The six-part series, which was record­ed in 2009, shows no sign of wear, and Tal­bot, unlike some phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, does a ter­rif­ic job of mak­ing the con­tent digestible. If you’ve got some time on your hands, the lec­tures, which aver­age just over an hour in length, can be fin­ished in less than a week. That’s peanuts, if you con­sid­er that all of our knowl­edge is built on the foun­da­tions that this course estab­lish­es. If you haven’t had the chance to be exposed to a class on crit­i­cal thought, I can’t rec­om­mend Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners with enough enthu­si­asm: there are few men­tal skills that are as under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, and as cen­tral to our dai­ly lives, as crit­i­cal think­ing.

Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners is cur­rent­ly avail­able on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford web­site in both audio and video for­mats, and also on iTunes and YouTube. You can find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 1300 Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Mythos: An Animation Retells Timeless Greek Myths with Abstract Modern Designs

in Animation | March 20th, 2019

Design­er Stephen Kelle­her and ani­ma­tor Chris Guy­ot present “Mythos,” an ani­ma­tion that tells time­less stories–Greek myths–with sim­ple abstract designs. Here’s how they describe this project where the ancient unex­pect­ed­ly meets the mod­ern:

For cen­turies the Greek Myths have been used as cau­tion­ary tales and teach­ing tools for peo­ple both young and old. These sto­ries con­vey deep wis­dom about the human con­di­tion which con­tin­ue to res­onate with us. I want­ed to hon­or these ancient sto­ries by inter­pret­ing them in the age of the pix­el and gif.

The chal­lenge was to com­mu­ni­cate these com­plex sto­ries in the most min­i­mal way pos­si­ble while retain­ing their essence. By hav­ing each vignette loop seam­less­ly, the time­less and peren­ni­al nature of these sto­ries are rein­forced. Ulti­mate­ly these ani­ma­tions serve as visu­al short­hand for ancient truths which are as rel­e­vant today as they were when first told.

Sisy­phus:

After numer­ous trans­gres­sions, Zeus decid­ed to pun­ish the deceit­ful king Sisy­phus once and for all by forc­ing him to push a huge enchant­ed boul­der up a steep hill. As soon as he reached the top, the boul­der would roll back down to the base of the hill, con­demn­ing Sisy­phus to an eter­ni­ty of frus­trat­ed labor.

Icarus:

King Minos impris­oned Icarus in a tow­er along­side his father, the mas­ter crafts­man Daedalus. As a means of escape Daedalus cre­at­ed a set of wings made of feath­ers and wax for his son but warned him not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus did not how­ev­er heed his father’s advice. His wings dis­solved and Icarus fell into the sea below and drowned.

Perse­phone:

The daugh­ter of Zeus and Deme­ter, Perse­phone was abduct­ed by the god of the under­world Hades. Although Zeus inter­vened and brought her back to the land of the liv­ing, Perse­phone was bound to Hades for four months of each year. In her grief, Deme­ter would make the soils bar­ren there­by cre­at­ing win­ter while Persephone’s return would mark the start of the spring.

Nar­cis­sus:

As pun­ish­ment for mor­tal Nar­cis­sus’ cru­el treat­ment of the nymph Echo, he was cursed by Neme­sis, the god­dess of revenge. She led him to a pool where upon see­ing his own reflec­tion, he became besot­ted with his image and was unable to leave. Fix­at­ed, starv­ing and in despair, he fell into the pool and drowned.

Midas:

Hav­ing done a great ser­vice for the god Diony­sus, King Midas was grant­ed one wish of his choos­ing. He wished that every­thing he touched would turn to gold. Upon turn­ing food, water and even his own daugh­ter to gold how­ev­er, he soon real­ized his fool­ish­ness and prayed to Diony­sus to undo his wish. Diony­sus took pity on King Midas and duly undid the wish.

The­seus:

A Greek hero of many adven­tures, The­seus is best known for his defeat of the Mino­taur. Under the decree of King Minos, every year four­teen young Athe­neans were sac­ri­ficed to the Mino­taur — a mon­strous half bull, half man who resided deep with­in the Labyrinth. Not only was The­seus able to slay the Mino­taur but he also suc­cess­ful­ly escaped the com­plex Labyrinth, solid­i­fy­ing his leg­end.

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 Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Video Intro­duc­tion to Hilma af Klint, the Mys­ti­cal Female Painter Who Helped Invent Abstract Art

36 Abstract Cov­ers of Vin­tage Psy­chol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Free Cours­es on Design from the Famous Cal­i­for­nia Design Firm IDEO Start This Week

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David Lynch Teaches an Online Course on Film & Creativity

in Film, Online Courses | March 20th, 2019

How many of us became David Lynch fans while first watch­ing one of his films? And how many of those fans also left filled with the desire to make a film them­selves? Though the long-cir­cu­lat­ing term “Lynchi­an” puts a name to Lynch’s dis­tinc­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing and dis­turb­ing cin­e­mat­ic style, it increas­ing­ly seems that no film­mak­er, no mat­ter how skilled, can quite pull off that style but Lynch him­self. But even if you can nev­er be the man who direct­ed the likes of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve (and co-cre­at­ed the sim­i­lar­ly inim­itable tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks), you can still learn a great deal about film­mak­ing from him that you can’t learn from any­one else.

Now online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­Class has made some of his knowl­edge eas­i­ly acces­si­ble in the form of their new course “David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film.” In Lynch’s world — unlike Hol­ly­wood in gen­er­al — you can’t make a film with­out cre­ativ­i­ty. But of what does cre­ativ­i­ty con­sist? “Ideas are every­thing,” says Lynch in the trail­er for his Mas­ter­Class above. “We’re noth­ing with­out an idea. So I go where the ideas lead.” He has long liked to make an anal­o­gy with fish­ing: you put a piece of bait on a hook, cast your line out into the world, and wait for an idea to bite. Dif­fer­ent idea-fish­ing meth­ods work for dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and Lynch has spo­ken of his suc­cess with drink­ing a milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy every day for sev­en years, and even more so with decade after decade of twice-dai­ly med­i­ta­tion.


How­ev­er you fish for ideas, “you don’t know when they’re going to come or what will trig­ger them. Lo and behold, on a lucky day, bin­go, you’ll catch an idea, and… par­ty time.” Lynch also drops an unex­pect­ed­ly prac­ti­cal piece of advice to do with all this in the trail­er: “If you want to make a fea­ture-length film, all you need to do is get 70 ideas.” Then you take those 70 ideas, write them on cards, and put the cards in order — and not nec­es­sar­i­ly in a nar­ra­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al order. “In cin­e­ma, I don’t like rules,” Lynch says, a state­ment that will sur­prise nei­ther his boost­ers nor his detrac­tors. He cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry in the eleventh les­son of his Mas­ter­Class, which explains the dif­fer­ence between “restric­tions that sti­fle cre­ativ­i­ty from those that actu­al­ly help you to think out­side the box.” Oth­er lessons get into “how to approach a blank page,” “how to iden­ti­fy and rec­og­nize the right per­former for a part,” and “how David han­dles the pres­sures of the set while pro­tect­ing a cre­ative space for the cast and crew.”

A final “bonus chap­ter” offers Lynch’s views on tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, a prac­tice that has taught him “to approach life and work with deep­er aware­ness” and “enjoy the ‘doing’ of almost any activ­i­ty.” That sets “David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film” apart from the oth­er film­mak­ing cours­es Mas­ter­class offers, taught by such an intel­lec­tu­al­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly var­ied set of lumi­nar­ies as Mar­tin Scors­ese, Ken Burns, Jodie Fos­ter, Spike Lee, and Wern­er Her­zog. You can take all of those, and any oth­er Mas­ter­class besides, with the site’s “all-access pass,” or just this one course for $90. And even if you don’t, you’d do pret­ty well to take with you into your film­mak­ing career the words by which Lynch him­self has clear­ly lived: “Nev­er give up final cut and total cre­ative free­dom.” For a com­plete list of Mas­ter­class cours­es, click here.

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing: A New Inter­ac­tive Com­e­dy Game

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.

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Christopher Hitches Makes the Case for Paying Reparations for Slavery in the United States

in Politics | March 20th, 2019

There may be no more hereti­cal fig­ure from the last sev­er­al decades for both the cur­rent main­stream polit­i­cal left and right than the late Christo­pher Hitchens. He has main­tained con­trar­i­an posi­tions that range from vex­ing to enrag­ing for near­ly every ortho­doxy. Con­trar­i­an­ism can seem his one sin­gu­lar con­sis­ten­cy in a slide from “social­ist to neo­con” and some very impe­ri­al­ist views on war, race, cul­ture, and reli­gion. But his one true alle­giance, he would say, was to “the prin­ci­ples of free inquiry” and Enlight­en­ment thought.

Hitchens inquired freely and often, and he was a supreme­ly pol­ished rhetori­cian who had mas­tered the art of mak­ing argu­ments, regard­less of whether he was per­suad­ed by them him­self. It may seem sur­pris­ing that a cru­sad­er against “the race card in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics” and “the per­ils of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics,” would make the case for repa­ra­tions for slav­ery. But he does so in a 2001 Oxford-style debate at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, a forum that requires no per­son­al alle­giance to the posi­tion.

This con­text aside, Hitchens’ argu­ment is com­pelling on its own mer­its. “It mat­ters not what you think,” he says in a clas­si­cal­ly lib­er­al for­mu­la in his intro­duc­to­ry remarks above, “it mat­ters how you think.” He starts with an argu­ment from anal­o­gy: with the repa­tri­a­tion of the Elgin Mar­bles, sec­tions of the Parthenon tak­en from Greece in the 18th cen­tu­ry. The acqui­si­tion of these arti­facts was “an orig­i­nal crime,” says Hitchens, “a des­e­cra­tion of a great his­toric cul­ture…. It was a theft, a rape, a tak­ing, per­pe­trat­ed by the strong upon the weak.”

This was, he says, “by the way… all done at the same time as the British fleet… was also the mil­i­tary guar­an­tor of the slave trade.” Not every crime com­mit­ted by the British Empire could be made good, but “this one could. Resti­tu­tion could be made.” Upon pub­lish­ing a book mak­ing this case for return­ing the Greek stones, Hitchens says he was “imme­di­ate­ly impressed by the tor­rent of bad faith argu­ments in which I was doused… the irrel­e­vant, the non-sequitur, the gen­er­al­iza­tion.” Like­wise, when the sub­ject of repa­ra­tions comes up, Hitch­es says he hears “a con­stant whine and drone” of bad faith.

To laughs from the audi­ence, he cheek­i­ly calls coun­ter­ar­gu­ments a “white whine.” On the sub­ject of repa­ra­tions, white Amer­i­cans dis­play “a rather nasty com­bi­na­tion of self pity and self hatred,” he says, the work­ings of a “bad con­science.” He weaves his scorn for self-inter­est and flim­sy rea­son­ing into an extend­ed anal­o­gy with loot­ed arti­facts in the British muse­um. Curi­ous­ly, he does not seem to argue that Britain make resti­tu­tion to the descen­dants of loot­ed peo­ple, an obvi­ous con­clu­sion of his argu­ments for the U.S. But per­haps it comes up in the full debate from which these remarks come, just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

W.E.B. Du Bois Cre­ates Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Artis­tic Data Visu­al­iza­tions Show­ing the Eco­nom­ic Plight of African-Amer­i­cans (1900)

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

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