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

in Biology, Museums, Nature, Science | February 4th, 2019

Now, this avian Vat­i­can also has its own Michelan­ge­lo.

– Audubon Mag­a­zine

And the Class of Aves has its very own avian Pan­tone chart, cre­at­ed by sci­ence illus­tra­tor Jane Kim in ser­vice of her 2,500 square-foot Wall of Birds mur­al at Cor­nell University’s Lab of Ornithol­o­gy.

The cus­tom chart’s fifty-one col­ors com­prise about 90 per­cent of the fin­ished work. A palette of thir­teen Gold­en Flu­id Acrylics sup­plied the jew­el-toned accents so thrilling to bird­watch­ers.

Along the way, Kim absorbed a tremen­dous amount of infor­ma­tion about the how and why of bird feath­er col­oration:

The iri­des­cence on the neck and back of the Superb Star­ling comes not from pig­ment,

but from struc­tur­al col­or. The starling’s out­er feath­ers are con­struct­ed in a way

that refracts light like myr­i­ad prisms, mak­ing the bird appear to shim­mer. The epony­mous

col­or­ing of the Lilac-breast­ed Roller results from a dif­fer­ent kind of struc­tur­al

col­or, cre­at­ed when woven microstruc­tures in the feath­ers, called barbs and bar­bules,

reflect only the short­er wave­lengths of light like blue and vio­let.

The pri­ma­ry col­ors that lend their name to the Red-and-yel­low Bar­bet are

derived from a class of pig­ments called carotenoids that the bird absorbs in its diet.

These are the same com­pounds that turn flamin­gos’ feath­ers pink. As a mem­ber of

the fam­i­ly Musophagi­dae, the Hartlaub’s Tura­co dis­plays pig­men­ta­tion unique in the

bird world. Birds have no green pig­men­ta­tion; in most cas­es, ver­dant plumage is a

com­bi­na­tion of yel­low carotenoids and blue struc­tur­al col­or. Tura­cos are an excep­tion,

dis­play­ing a green, cop­per-based pig­ment called tura­coverdin that they absorb

in their her­biv­o­rous diet. The flash of red on the Hartlaub’s under­wings comes from

turacin, anoth­er cop­per-based pig­ment unique to the fam­i­ly.

 

Kim also boned up on her sub­jects’ mat­ing rit­u­als, dietary habits, song styles, and male/female dif­fer­ences pri­or to inscrib­ing the 270 life-size, life­like birds onto the lab’s largest wall.

She exam­ined spec­i­mens from the cen­ter’s col­lec­tion and reviewed cen­turies’ worth of field obser­va­tions.

(The sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish nat­u­ral­ist John Ray dis­missed the horn­bill fam­i­ly as hav­ing a “foul look,” a colo­nial­ism that ruf­fled Kim’s own feath­ers some­what. In retal­i­a­tion, she dubbed the Great Horn­bill, “the Cyra­no of the Jun­gle” owing to his “tequi­la-sun­rise-hued facial phal­lus,” and select­ed him as the cov­er boy for her book about the mur­al.)

Research and pre­lim­i­nary sketch­ing con­sumed an entire year, after which it took 17 months to inscribe 270 life-size creatures—some long extinct—onto the lab’s main wall. The birds are set against a greyscale map of the world, and while many are depict­ed in flight, every one save the Wan­der­ing Alba­tross has a foot touch­ing its con­ti­nent of ori­gin.

Those who can’t vis­it the Wall of Birds (offi­cial title: From So Sim­ple a Begin­ning) in per­son, can log some dig­i­tal bird­watch­ing using a spec­tac­u­lar inter­ac­tive web-based ver­sion of the mur­al that pro­vides plen­ty of infor­ma­tion about each spec­i­men, some of it lit­er­ary. (The afore­men­tioned Alba­tross’ entry con­tains a pass­ing ref­er­ence to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

Explore the Wall of Birds’ inter­ac­tive fea­tures here.

You can down­load a free chap­ter of The Wall of Birds: One Plan­et, 243 Fam­i­lies, 375 Mil­lion Years by sub­scrib­ing to Kim’s mail­ing list here.

Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City Feb­ru­ary 11 for The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Mother, Perhaps the Most Iconic Photo in American History

in Photography | February 4th, 2019

When we visu­al­ize the Great Depres­sion, we think first of one woman: Native Amer­i­can migrant work­er Flo­rence Owens Thomp­son. Few of us know her name, though near­ly all of us know her face. For that we have anoth­er woman to thank: the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dorothea Lange who dur­ing the Depres­sion was work­ing for the Unit­ed States fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, specif­i­cal­ly the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion, on “a project that would involve doc­u­ment­ing poor rur­al work­ers in a pro­pa­gan­da effort to elic­it polit­i­cal sup­port for gov­ern­ment aid.”

That’s how Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, puts it in a video essay on Lange’s famous 1936 pho­to of Thomp­son, Migrant Moth­er. (For best results, view the video below on a phone or tablet rather than on a stan­dard com­put­er screen.) Reach­ing the migrant work­ers’ camp in Nipo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia where Thomp­son and her chil­dren were stay­ing toward the end of anoth­er long day of pho­tog­ra­phy, Lange at first passed it by.

Only about twen­ty miles lat­er did she decide to turn the car around and see what mate­r­i­al the 2,500 to 3,500 “pea pick­ers” there might offer. She stayed only ten min­utes, but in that time cap­tured what Puschak calls the pho­to­graph that “came to define the Depres­sion in the Amer­i­can con­scious­ness” — it even heads the Great Depres­sion’s Wikipedia page — and “became the arche­typ­al image of strug­gling fam­i­lies in any era.”

Over time, Migrant Moth­er has also become “one of the most icon­ic pic­tures in the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy.” But Lange did­n’t get it right away: it was actu­al­ly the sixth por­trait she took of Thomp­son, each one more pow­er­ful (and more able to “evoke sym­pa­thy from vot­ers that would trans­late into polit­i­cal sup­port”) than the last. Puschak takes us through each of these, mark­ing the changes in com­po­si­tion that led to the pho­to­graph we can all call to mind imme­di­ate­ly. “A less­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er would have milked the chil­dren’s faces for their sym­pa­thet­ic poten­tial,” for instance, but hav­ing them turn away “com­mu­ni­cates that mes­sage of fam­i­ly” with­out “tak­ing away from the cen­tral face, or the eyes, which seem at last to let down their guard as they search the dis­tance and wor­ry.”

These and oth­er active­ly made choic­es (includ­ing the removal of Thomp­son’s dis­tract­ing left thumb in the dark­room) mean that “there is very lit­tle spon­ta­neous in this icon­ic image of so-called doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy,” but “whether that dimin­ish­es its pow­er is up to you. For me, being able to actu­al­ly see the steps of Lange’s craft enhances her work.” What­ev­er Lange’s process, the prod­uct defined an era, and upon pub­li­ca­tion con­vinced the gov­ern­ment to send 20,000 pounds of food to Nipo­mo — though by that point Thomp­son her­self, who ulti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing for her fam­i­ly and lived to the age of 80, had moved on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

478 Dorothea Lange Pho­tographs Poignant­ly Doc­u­ment the Intern­ment of the Japan­ese Dur­ing WWII

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers & Fran­cis Stewart’s Cen­sored Pho­tographs of a WWII Japan­ese Intern­ment Camp

Found: Lost Great Depres­sion Pho­tos Cap­tur­ing Hard Times on Farms, and in Town

The Cap­ti­vat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Mak­ing of Ansel Adams’ Most Famous Pho­to­graph, Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co

“A Great Day in Harlem,” Art Kane’s Icon­ic Pho­to of 57 Jazz Leg­ends, Cel­e­brates Its 60th Anniver­sary

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

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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Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches: “The Philosophers’ Football Match,” “Philosopher’s Drinking Song” & More

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 1st, 2019

From dead par­rots to The Mean­ing of Life, Mon­ty Python cov­ered a lot of ter­ri­to­ry. Edu­cat­ed at Oxford and Cam­bridge, the Pythons made a habit of weav­ing arcane intel­lec­tu­al ref­er­ences into the sil­li­est of sketch­es. A clas­sic exam­ple is “Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Con­clu­sion Vis­it Jean-Paul Sartre,” (above) from episode 27 of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus.

The sketch fea­tures writ­ing part­ners John Cleese as Mrs. Premise and Gra­ham Chap­man as Mrs. Con­clu­sion, gab­bing away in a laun­derette about how best to put down a budgie. Mrs. Premise sug­gests flush­ing it down the loo. “Ooh! No!” protests Mrs. Con­clu­sion. “You should­n’t do that. No that’s dan­ger­ous. Yes, they breed in the sew­ers, and even­tu­al­ly you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled bud­gies fly­ing out of peo­ple’s lava­to­ries infring­ing their per­son­al free­dom.”

From there the con­ver­sa­tion veers straight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Free­dom. It’s a clas­sic sketch–vintage Python–and you can read a tran­script here while watch­ing it above.

Anoth­er clas­sic is the “Philoso­pher’s Drink­ing Song,” shown above in a scene from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The song was writ­ten and sung by Eric Idle. In the sketch, mem­bers of the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment at the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Wool­loomooloo” lead the audi­ence in singing, “Immanuel Kant was a real pis­sant who was very rarely sta­ble; Hei­deg­ger, Hei­deg­ger was a boozy beg­gar who could think you under the table…”

And one of our favorites: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match” (above), a filmed sequence from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl, pit­ting the Ancient Greeks against the Ger­mans, with Con­fu­cius as ref­er­ee. The sketch was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1972 in a two-part West Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus.

When you’re done laugh­ing, you can dive deep into phi­los­o­phy here with our col­lec­tion of 75 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es online.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

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How the Clavichord & Harpsichord Became the Modern Piano: The Evolution of Keyboard Instruments, Explained

in History, Music | February 1st, 2019

Though dif­fer­ent mod­ern pianos may not sound exact­ly the same as one anoth­er, they all sound more or less like pianos to our ears. But the piano did­n’t appear ful­ly formed in the world of music as the instru­ment we know today: it has a vari­ety of pre­de­ces­sors, not all of which sound very sim­i­lar to the mod­ern piano at all, and a few dis­tinc­tive-sound­ing exam­ples of which you can hear demon­strat­ed in these videos from Baro­que­Band. In the first, musi­cian and edu­ca­tor David Schrad­er plays the first two: a repli­ca of a Ger­man clavi­chord, “the old­est stringed key­board instru­ment we know of,” dat­ing from around 1600, and a harp­si­chord, built accord­ing to plans dat­ing back to 1617.

The clavi­chord strikes its strings like a mod­ern piano, but the harp­si­chord plucks them, using a series of “tiny lit­tle gui­tar picks” called plec­trums. Schrad­er explains this while offer­ing a look inside the work­ings of these instru­ments, just as he does with their descen­dants in the sec­ond video: a repli­ca of an ear­ly Vien­nese piano built by Alton Wal­ter, who in the 1780s built an instru­ment for a cer­tain Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, and a mod­ern Stein­way grand piano made in Ham­burg.

The eight bars of one of Mozart’s piano sonata we hear on the Stein­way sound good, espe­cial­ly per­formed by Schrader’s skilled hands, but the Vien­nese piano offers addi­tion­al con­trols that enable the play­er to achieve a kind of “tone col­or” that mod­ern pianos don’t.

Hence the inter­est some musi­cians and groups (such as the Orches­tra of the Age of the Enlight­en­ment, recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have in play­ing clas­si­cal music with the same instru­ments from the eras in which the pieces were com­posed. “Each of these his­tor­i­cal instru­ments served the music of its own time best,” as Schrad­er puts it. “After all, you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly restore an old oil paint­ing with acrylic paint. Even if you choose not to play the his­tor­i­cal instru­ments, if you study them and how they work, it will mod­i­fy your approach to make for a clear­er, nicer per­for­mance on the mod­ern instru­ment.” But of course, “those of us who choose to eat every­thing on the plate will play all the instru­ments” — and will enjoy a per­form­ing expe­ri­ence clos­er to that which the com­pos­er intend­ed as a result.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Hear Music Played on the Vio­la Organ­ista, a Piano That Sounds Like a Vio­lin, Which Leonar­do da Vin­ci Invent­ed, But Nev­er Heard

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

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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A History of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Minutes

in Animation, History, Technology | February 1st, 2019

Thanks for watch­ing his­to­ry. I hope I men­tioned every­thing. — Bill Wurtz

Here at Open Cul­ture, we hap­pi­ly acknowl­edge that learn­ing is not a one-size-fits-all propo­si­tion.

The inter­net may be doing a num­ber on our atten­tion spans, but as the world has grown small­er, the edu­ca­tion­al buf­fet has grown rich­er, more var­ied, and vast­ly more afford­able.

Take for exam­ple the His­to­ry of the World.

Geog­ra­phy fans can approach the sub­ject via Ollie Bye’s year-by-year ani­mat­ed map.

John Green’s play­ful Crash Course series offers a won­der­ful respite for any kid grind­ing their way through AP World His­to­ry.

Those of a more tra­di­tion­al mind­set, who pre­fer a state­lier pace can lose them­selves in 46 lec­tures by Richard Bul­li­et, pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

And then there’s world his­to­ry accord­ing Bill Wurtz, above, a cre­ator of short, anachro­nis­tic-look­ing videos, whose YouTube fame was kin­dled by Vine, a now defunct app for shar­ing short-form videos.

Chaf­ing at Vine’s 7‑second time con­straints, Wurtz under­took a more ambi­tious project, a con­densed His­to­ry of Japan that would employ the same tech­niques he brought to bear in his short­er works: graph­ic text, clip art, and Microsoft Paint draw­ings. He zeroed in on the sub­ject because he knew pre­cious lit­tle about Japan, and looked for­ward to doing some vir­gin research.

Wurtz fol­lowed up the 9‑minute His­to­ry of Japan, above, with His­to­ry of the Entire World, I guess.

The non­cha­lance of the title is reflect­ed in Wurtz’s offhand­ed nar­ra­tion. Any word or phrase over two syl­la­bles runs a risk of being trans­formed into an infomer­cial-wor­thy musi­cal jin­gle: space dust, the moon, Egypt…

You may bri­dle at first, but stick it out. Its charms sneak up on you.

Time is not par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­a­tive in Wurtz’s com­pressed uni­verse. Whether it’s 10 min­utes pass­ing before some major devel­op­ment or 500 mil­lion years, their pas­sage is accord­ed equal heft.

Humans show up around the four minute mark, grab­bing stuff, bang­ing rocks, fig­ur­ing out agri­cul­ture…

(Mesopotamia’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as a “sweet dank val­ley” between the Tigris and Euphrates is a par­tic­u­lar high­light.)

This is the rare his­to­ry video where sci­ence plays a major role. It takes time out for weath­er updates—the floor is no longer lava, the entire world is now an ocean… it’s sober­ing to remem­ber that ozone is what made it safe for mul­ti-celled life forms to ven­ture forth on land.

Empires rise and fall, uncon­quer­able rulers are unseat­ed and for­got­ten.

(That’s the Tamil Kings. Nobody con­quers the Tamil Kings. Who are the Tamil Kings? Mer­chants prob­a­bly and they’ve got spices…)

Of course the prob­lem with a great overview such as this is the back end’s shelf life can prove rather short. It’s been a lit­tle over a year and a half since Wurtz post­ed the video, and thus far, his part­ing shots still feel pret­ty rel­e­vant: armed drones, 3d print­ing, plas­tic-choked oceans, and a seem­ing­ly unbridge­able gap between the desire to save the world and an actu­al plan for doing so.

Fried by 11 months of inten­sive research and labor on His­to­ry of the Entire World, I guess, Wurtz is cur­rent­ly tak­ing a leave of absence from his­to­ry. These days, he’s pour­ing his ener­gies into orig­i­nal music videos like “At the Air­port Ter­mi­nal.” He also devotes a bit of every day to  answer­ing fans’ ques­tions, rou­tine­ly turn­ing in upwards of a dozen suc­cinct hum­ble, all-low­er­case replies:

1.18.19  7:00 pm   what inspired you to make “the entire world, i guess”? was it a project you already had in mind from before or did you start it when you saw you could do more than just japan

it’s always a nice idea to try to explain the whole world in one video. it’s sure­ly some­thing i’ve always want­ed to do, but was­n’t confident/experienced/stupid enough to believe i could do it until after i had done japan which worked so well

1.18.19  12:53 am   are you ever going to make any­thing else as in depth as his­to­ry of japan or the world?

that would take so much time that by the time it was done you prob­a­bly would­n’t care any­more, but some­one else will so i still might do it

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, he’s the sub­ject of a live­ly sub-red­dit. One fan, red­dit user n44m, was inspired to plot the time­line of His­to­ry of the Entire World, I Guess, below.

To learn more about some of the civ­i­liza­tions, events and per­sons fea­tured in His­to­ry of the Entire World, I Guess, check out anoth­er fan’s anno­tat­ed tran­scrip­tion here.

And rather than nit­pick about cer­tain crit­i­cal bits of his­to­ry that were left on the cut­ting room floor, try writ­ing a script for your own his­to­ry based ani­ma­tion:

The more you learn, the more you find out how much you’re gonna have to leave out. It’s like 99%. That was painful. — Bill Wurtz

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

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

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