What Is Higher Consciousness?: How We Can Transcend Our Petty, Day-to-Day Desires and Gain a Deeper Wisdom

in Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology | November 25th, 2019

Each of us has a nor­mal state of mind, as well as our own way of reach­ing a dif­fer­ent state of mind. As the School of Life video above reminds us, such habits go back quite deep into record­ed his­to­ry, to the eras when, then as now, “Hin­du sages, Chris­t­ian monks and Bud­dhist ascetics” spoke of “reach­ing moments of ‘high­er con­scious­ness’ – through med­i­ta­tion or chant­i­ng, fast­ing or pil­grim­ages.” In recent years, the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion has spread even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, among those of us who don’t sub­scribe to Bud­dhism, or indeed to any reli­gion at all. Peri­od­ic fast­ing has come to be seen as a neces­si­ty in cer­tain cir­cles of wealthy first-worlders, as has “dopamine fast­ing” among those who feel their minds com­pro­mised by the dis­trac­tions of high tech­nol­o­gy and social media. (And one needs only glance at that social media to see how seri­ous­ly some of us are tak­ing our pil­grim­ages.)

Still, on top of our moun­tain, deep into our sit­ting-and-breath­ing ses­sions, or even after hav­ing con­sumed our mind-alter­ing sub­stance of choice, we do feel, if only for a moment, that some­thing has changed with­in us. We under­stand things we don’t even con­sid­er under­stand­ing in our nor­mal state of mind, “where what we are prin­ci­pal­ly con­cerned with is our­selves, our sur­vival and our own suc­cess, nar­row­ly defined.”

When we occu­py this “low­er con­scious­ness,” we “strike back when we’re hit, blame oth­ers, quell any stray ques­tions that lack imme­di­ate rel­e­vance, fail to free-asso­ciate and stick close­ly to a flat­ter­ing image of who we are and where we are head­ing.” But when we enter a state of “high­er con­scious­ness,” how­ev­er we define it, “the mind moves beyond its par­tic­u­lar self-inter­ests and crav­ings. We start to think of oth­er peo­ple in a more imag­i­na­tive way.”

When we rise from low­er to high­er con­scious­ness, we find it much hard­er to think of our fel­low human beings as ene­mies. “Rather than crit­i­cize and attack, we are free to imag­ine that their behav­ior is dri­ven by pres­sures derived from their own more prim­i­tive minds, which they are gen­er­al­ly in no posi­tion to tell us about.” The more time we spend in our high­er con­scious­ness, the more we “devel­op the abil­i­ty to explain oth­ers’ actions by their dis­tress, rather than sim­ply in terms of how it affects us. We per­ceive that the appro­pri­ate response to human­i­ty is not fear, cyn­i­cism or aggres­sion, but always — when we can man­age it — love.” When our con­scious­ness reach­es the prop­er alti­tude, “the world reveals itself as quite dif­fer­ent: a place of suf­fer­ing and mis­guid­ed effort, full of peo­ple striv­ing to be heard and lash­ing out against oth­ers, but also a place of ten­der­ness and long­ing, beau­ty and touch­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The fit­ting response is uni­ver­sal sym­pa­thy and kind­ness.”

This may all come across as a bit new-age, sound­ing “mad­den­ing­ly vague, wishy washy, touchy-feely – and, for want of a bet­ter word, annoy­ing.” But the con­cept of high­er con­scious­ness is var­i­ous­ly inter­pret­ed not just across cul­tur­al and reli­gious tra­di­tions but in sci­en­tif­ic research as well, where we find a sharp dis­tinc­tion drawn between the neo­cor­tex, “the seat of imag­i­na­tion, empa­thy and impar­tial judge­ment,” and the “rep­til­ian mind” below. This sug­gests that we’d ben­e­fit from under­stand­ing states of high­er con­scious­ness as ful­ly as we can, as well as try­ing to “make the most of them when they arise, and har­vest their insights for the time when we require them most” — that is to say, the rest of our ordi­nary lives, espe­cial­ly their most stress­ful, try­ing moments. The instinc­tive, unimag­i­na­tive defen­sive­ness of the low­er con­scious­ness does have strengths of its own, but we can’t take advan­tage of them unless we learn to put it in its place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Med­i­ta­tion for Begin­ners: Bud­dhist Monks & Teach­ers Explain the Basics

How Med­i­ta­tion Can Change Your Brain: The Neu­ro­science of Bud­dhist Prac­tice

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

The Neu­ronal Basis of Con­scious­ness Course: A Free Online Course from Cal­tech

The Unex­pect­ed Ways East­ern Phi­los­o­phy Can Make Us Wis­er, More Com­pas­sion­ate & Bet­ter Able to Appre­ci­ate Our Lives

Medieval Monks Com­plained About Con­stant Dis­trac­tions: Learn How They Worked to Over­come Them

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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Neuroscience & Jazz Improvisation: How Improvisation Shapes Creativity and What Happens Inside Our Brain

in Neuroscience | November 25th, 2019

Jazz impro­vi­sa­tion has become a hot top­ic in neu­ro­science late­ly, and lit­tle won­der. “Musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion is one of the most com­plex forms of cre­ative behav­ior,” write the authors of a study pub­lished in April in Brain Con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Research on the brains of impro­vis­ers offers “a real­is­tic task par­a­digm for the inves­ti­ga­tion of real-time creativity”—an even hot­ter top­ic in neu­ro­science.

Researchers study jazz play­ers for the same rea­son they take MRI scans of the brains of freestyle rappers—both involve cre­at­ing spon­ta­neous works “where revi­sion is not pos­si­ble,” and where only a few for­mal rules gov­ern the activ­i­ty, whether rhyme and meter or chord struc­ture and har­mo­ny. Those who mas­ter the basics can leap into end­less­ly com­plex feats of impro­visato­ry brava­do at any moment.

It’s a pow­er most of us only dream of possessing—though it’s also the case that many a researcher of jazz impro­vi­sa­tions also hap­pens to be a musi­cian, includ­ing study author Mar­tin Nor­gaard, a trained jazz vio­lin­ist who “began study­ing the effects of musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion… while earn­ing his Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin,” notes Jen­nifer Rainey Mar­quez at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty Research Mag­a­zine.

Nor­gaard inter­viewed both stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians, and he ana­lyzed the solos of Char­lie Park­er to find pat­terns relat­ed to spe­cif­ic kinds of brain activ­i­ty. In this recent study, Nor­gaard, now at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, worked with Mukesh Dhamala, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of physics and astron­o­my, using an fMRI to mea­sure the brain activ­i­ty of “advanced jazz musi­cians” who sang both stan­dards and impro­vi­sa­tions while being scanned.

The researchers’ find­ings are con­sis­tent with sim­i­lar stud­ies, like those of John Hop­kins sur­geon Charles Limb, who also con­sid­ers jazz a key to under­stand­ing cre­ativ­i­ty. While impro­vis­ing, musi­cians show decreased activ­i­ty in the pre­frontal cor­tex, the area of the brain that gen­er­ates plan­ning and over­think­ing, and gets in the way of what psy­chol­o­gists call a state of “flow.” Impro­vis­ing might engage “a small­er, more focused brain net­work,” says Nor­gaard, “while oth­er parts of the brain go qui­et.”

Train­ing and prac­tice in impro­vi­sa­tion may also have longer-term results as well. A study con­trast­ing the brain activ­i­ty of jazz and clas­si­cal play­ers found that the for­mer were much quick­er and more adapt­able in their think­ing. The researchers attrib­uted these qual­i­ties to changes in the brain wrought by years of impro­vis­ing. Nor­gaard and his team are much more cir­cum­spect in their con­clu­sions, but they do sug­gest a causal link.

In a study of 155 8th graders enrolled in a jazz for kids pro­gram, Nor­gaard found that the half who were giv­en train­ing in impro­vi­sa­tion showed “sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty.” Research like this not only val­i­dates the intu­itions of jazz musi­cians them­selves; it also helps define spe­cif­ic ques­tions about the cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of play­ing music, which are gen­er­al­ly evi­dent in study after study.

“For near­ly three decades,” Nor­gaard says, “sci­en­tists have explored the idea that learn­ing to play an instru­ment is linked to aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.” But there are “many types of music learn­ing.” It’s cer­tain­ly not as sim­ple as study­ing Bach to work on accu­ra­cy or Coltrane for flex­i­bil­i­ty, but dif­fer­ent kinds of music cre­ates dif­fer­ent struc­tures in the brain. We might next won­der about the math­e­mat­i­cal prop­er­ties of these struc­tures, or how they inter­act with mod­ern the­o­ries of physics. Rest assured, there are jazz-play­ing sci­en­tists out there work­ing on the ques­tion.

via Futu­ri­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

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

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How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Training Film from 1943, Featuring Burgess Meredith

in Film, History, Life, Travel | November 25th, 2019

Fore­warned is fore­armed, so in 1943, the Unit­ed States Office of War Infor­ma­tion cre­at­ed a train­ing film to pre­vent sol­diers bound for Great Britain from earn­ing their Ugly Amer­i­can stripes.

The excerpt above con­cen­trates on pub eti­quette, cast­ing actor and Army Air Corps cap­tain Burgess Mered­ith in the role of a dis­creet mil­i­tary Vir­gil, explain­ing in hushed tones the British pen­chant for non-chilled beer and smok­ing or read­ing the paper unmo­lest­ed.

He also cau­tions incom­ing GIs against throw­ing their mon­ey around or mak­ing fun of kilt-wear­ing Scotsmen—commonsense advice that still applies.

To ensure the mes­sage sticks, he con­jures a cringe­wor­thy, semi-sloshed bad apple, who struts around in uni­form, bray­ing insults at the locals, until he dis­ap­pears in a puff of smoke.

No won­der the reception’s a bit frosty, when Mered­ith, ven­tures forth, also in uni­form. But unlike the brash bad­die who went before, Mered­ith has vet­ted his hosts, approach­ing as one might a skit­tish ani­mal. He offers cig­a­rettes, enjoys a game of darts as a spec­ta­tor, and buys his new friends drinks, being care­ful to choose some­thing in their price range, know­ing that they will insist on rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing in kind.

The film is pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with teach­ing restraint.

In anoth­er sec­tion of the not-quite-38-minute film offi­cial­ly called A Wel­come to Britain (see below), Mered­ith cau­tions young recruits to take small por­tions of food, know­ing how restrict­ed their hosts’ rations are.

The most uncom­fort­able teach­able moment comes when an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman spon­ta­neous­ly invites a black GI to tea, after thank­ing him for his ser­vice:

Now look men, you heard that con­ver­sa­tion, that’s not unusu­al here. It’s the sort of thing that hap­pens quite a lot. Now let’s be frank about it, there are col­ored sol­diers as well as white here, and there are less social restric­tions in this coun­try. An Eng­lish woman ask­ing a col­ored boy to tea, he was polite about it, and she was polite about it. Now, that might not hap­pen at home, but the point is, we’re not at home, and the point is too, if we bring a lot of prej­u­dices here, what are we going to do about them?

(No advice to young black sol­diers on whether they’re hon­or bound to accept, should an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman invite them to tea, when they were per­haps en route to the pub.)

Watch the entire­ty of A Wel­come to Britain, includ­ing a cameo by Bob Hope at the 30 minute mark, here.

For an updat­ed guide to British pub eti­quette, check out the Amer­i­can expats of Post­mod­ern Fam­i­ly reac­tion video here.

via Daniel Hol­land

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

How the Fences & Rail­ings Adorn­ing London’s Build­ings Dou­bled (by Design) as Civil­ian Stretch­ers in World War II

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Sacha Baron Cohen Links the Decline of Democracy to the Rise of Social Media, “the Greatest Propaganda Machine in History”

in Comedy, Current Affairs | November 22nd, 2019

Pre­sent­ing a keynote address at an ADL con­fer­ence, come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen was­n’t kid­ding around when he paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of our emerg­ing world: “Today … dem­a­gogues appeal to our worst instincts. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries once con­fined to the fringe are going main­stream. It’s as if the Age of Reason—the era of evi­den­tial argument—is end­ing, and now knowl­edge is dele­git­imized and sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus is dis­missed. Democ­ra­cy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autoc­ra­cy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surg­ing, as are mur­der­ous attacks on reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties.”

What’s lead­ing to these desta­bi­liz­ing changes? Baron Cohen could cite many rea­sons. But if pushed, he’ll empha­size one:

But one thing is pret­ty clear to me. All this hate and vio­lence is being facil­i­tat­ed by a hand­ful of inter­net com­pa­nies that amount to the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

The great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

Think about it. Face­book, YouTube and Google, Twit­ter and others—they reach bil­lions of peo­ple. The algo­rithms these plat­forms depend on delib­er­ate­ly ampli­fy the type of con­tent that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trig­ger out­rage and fear. It’s why YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos by the con­spir­acist Alex Jones bil­lions of times. It’s why fake news out­per­forms real news, because stud­ies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no sur­prise that the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry has spread the old­est con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in history—the lie that Jews are some­how dan­ger­ous. As one head­line put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Face­book.”

On the inter­net, every­thing can appear equal­ly legit­i­mate. Bre­it­bart resem­bles the BBC. The fic­ti­tious Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rant­i­ngs of a lunatic seem as cred­i­ble as the find­ings of a Nobel Prize win­ner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democ­ra­cy depends.

You can watch his sober­ing talk above, or read the tran­script here.

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:

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

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Neurosymphony: A High-Resolution Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

in Neuroscience | November 22nd, 2019

We can’t talk about how music moves us with­out talk­ing about what, exact­ly, music does to our brains. The musi­cophile neu­rol­o­gist Oliv­er Sacks made the rela­tion­ship between music and the brain one of the themes of his career, and were he alive today, he would sure­ly enjoy Neu­rosym­pho­ny, a new audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence of the brain now up at Aeon. It takes the high­est-res­o­lu­tion MRI scan of the human brain in exis­tence, fea­tured ear­li­er this year here at Open Cul­ture, and mash­es it up with music suit­able for a jour­ney through the cross-sec­tions of our most impres­sive organ — suit­able not just aes­thet­i­cal­ly, but also in the sense that it, too, was made from the stuff of the brain.

Orig­i­nal­ly scanned by the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Neu­roImag­ing of Coma and Con­scious­ness (NICC) at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in Boston, this brain imagery is sound­tracked in Neu­rosym­pho­ny by “an excerpt from the album Chapel by the US elec­tron­ic musi­cian and music-cog­ni­tion researcher Grace Leslie, in which she con­verts her brain­waves into music.” On her web site, Leslie describes her­self as “com­mit­ted to har­ness­ing the expres­sion grant­ed by new music inter­faces to bet­ter under­stand the link between music and emo­tion, with an ulti­mate goal of employ­ing musi­cal brain-com­put­er inter­faces to pro­mote well­ness.”

A few years ago, Leslie revealed her process of con­vert­ing brain waves to musi­cal sounds to BBC Future. “Using equip­ment that mon­i­tors the elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty of her brain, changes in her heart rate and sub­tle shifts in the con­duc­tance of her skin, she is cre­at­ing music from the sig­nals pro­duced by her own body while on stage,” writes Richard Gray. “Leslie plays these sig­nals through an elec­tron­ic syn­the­siz­er to pro­duce ambi­ent sounds that reflect what is going on in her body. She can also fil­ter the sounds from musi­cal instru­ments, like a flute, with the sig­nals from her body to mix them togeth­er in a com­put­er.” You can watch Leslie’s 2017 per­for­mance of anoth­er such piece, Audi­ble, in the video below.

While Leslie’s meth­ods pro­duce music quite unlike what most of us are used to, her goals go beyond the per­for­ma­tive. “Ulti­mate­ly, Leslie believes this inno­v­a­tive form of musi­cal expres­sion could be used to help those who have dif­fi­cul­ty inter­act­ing with the world, such as those with autism,” writes Gray. In this way she has some­thing in com­mon, beyond pure inter­est in the brain, with the team at the NICC, who pro­duced their ground­break­ing scans as a part of their mis­sion to fur­ther the under­stand­ing of recov­ery from trau­mat­ic brain injury. All wor­thy pur­suits, of course, but it cer­tain­ly does­n’t hurt that their by-prod­ucts include works like Neu­rosym­pho­ny that moti­vate us all to learn a bit more about the nature of our own brains.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

View/Download the High­est Res­o­lu­tion MRI Scan of a Human Brain, Reveal­ing It as We’ve Nev­er Seen It Before

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

The Sci­ence of Singing: New, High-Speed MRI Machine Images Man Singing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’

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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Lynda Barry’s New Book Offers a Master Class in Making Comics

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons | November 22nd, 2019

In the same way you don’t have to like the way your liv­er looks for it to be able to func­tion, you don’t have to like the way your draw­ings look for them to start to work.  —Lyn­da Bar­ry

Want to feel more alive in the world?

Get back in touch with your inner four-year-old artist, using meth­ods put for­ward by artist, edu­ca­tor, and g*ddamn nation­al trea­sure Lyn­da Bar­ry.

Mak­ing Comics, the lat­est book from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin asso­ciate pro­fes­sor, MacArthur Genius, and Omega Insti­tute fac­ul­ty mem­ber, bypass­es stan­dard­ized pro­fes­sion­al skills such as ink­ing, sto­ry­board­ing, and let­ter­ing, in order to foment a deep­er emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between car­toon­ist and com­ic.

First things first, you can draw. Stop say­ing you can’t. You can.

Stop say­ing your draw­ings look like they were made by a four-year-old.

In Barry’s expe­ri­ence, the unfet­tered draw­ings of four-year-old artists are some­thing to aim for.

As author and comics his­to­ri­an Chris Gavaler notes in his Pop Mat­ters review:

Mak­ing Comics is a love let­ter to every child who ever picked up a cray­on and start­ed mak­ing marks with unself­con­scious inten­si­ty. Those chil­dren include her col­lege stu­dents. Like her read­ers, some arrive at class with artis­tic train­ing and some arrive with none at all. The lat­ter arrive hav­ing long for­got­ten the unin­hib­it­ed style of image-mak­ing they under­stood instinc­tive­ly as chil­dren. Find­ing each of those chil­dren is Bar­ry’s mis­sion, and she is very very good at it.

Bar­ry, who is child­less, is keen­ly attuned to the sort of play­ful assign­ments that hold imme­di­ate appeal for chil­dren of all ages.

And she doles out instruc­tions on a need to know basis, dis­arm­ing the self-doubt and excuse-mak­ing that plague adult stu­dents who are pre­sent­ed with the big pic­ture too ear­ly in the process.

In Mak­ing Comics, exer­cis­es include draw­ing with eyes closed, draw­ing with the non-dom­i­nant hand, two-hand­ed draw­ing, simul­ta­ne­ous part­ner draw­ing, Exquis­ite Corpse, and trans­form­ing scrib­bles and cof­fee stains by teas­ing out what­ev­er image they may sug­gest.

Bar­ry also con­veys pre­cise instruc­tions with regard to speed and mate­ri­als, know­ing that those can close as many win­dows as they open.

She’s bat­tling the sti­fling impulse toward per­fec­tion, the impos­si­ble stan­dards that cause so many to turn away from mak­ing pic­tures and sto­ries as they mature.

Don’t sweat it! More rock, less talk! Unleash the mon­sters of your id! Invite unfore­seen ghosts into the frame!

As Bar­ry says:

….there are two work­ing lan­guages in human life. One is sort of top of the mind, what we’re con­scious of. The oth­er is this uncon­scious stuff that we might not know about or have access to. The way we access it is usu­al­ly through this thing we call ‘the arts.’ Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that has got­ten removed from the reg­u­lar dai­ly expe­ri­ence of human life. What I’m try­ing to do is to show that there is a way that they can come togeth­er, and that you can make things in a way that makes you actu­al­ly feel alive and present.

Read an excerpt of Lyn­da Barry’s Mak­ing Comics. Or pur­chase your own copy of Mak­ing Comics here.

Video at the top of the page cour­tesy of Art Book Walk-throughs & Reviews.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fol­low Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s 2017 “Mak­ing Comics” Class Online, Pre­sent­ed at UW-Wis­con­sin

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Blade Runner Captured the Imagination of a Generation of Electronic Musicians

in Music | November 22nd, 2019

“I feel that there is ‘Before Blade Run­ner’ and ‘After Blade Run­ner,’” says direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve. “The movie was like a land­mark in film his­to­ry aes­thet­ic.” The quote comes from this FACT­magazine pro­mo released ahead of Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel Blade Run­ner 2049, which exam­ines the impact the sound­track had on sci­ence fic­tion films and elec­tron­ic music, as well how its entire aes­thet­ic echoed into the ‘90s and beyond.

Com­pos­er Van­ge­lis and direc­tor Rid­ley Scott had worked togeth­er pre­vi­ous­ly on a Chanel com­mer­cial, and the com­pos­er had thought the choice to use his music was “brave,” accord­ing to Vil­leneuve. A few years lat­er Van­ge­lis would be asked to com­pose the score, which he did, impro­vis­ing over footage.

The gear­heads in the doc point out the Lex­i­con 224 reverb, a great ana­log effects unit, as well as the “beast,” the Yahama CS80, which would often go out of tune. (Check out YouTube user Per­fect Cir­cuit try­ing out some of its fea­tures).

“The best time (the synth) found its voice was on that album,” says musi­cian Kue­do.
The doc also inter­views Tricky, Gary Numan, Ikoni­ka, Abay­o­mi, Clare Wieck, Kue­do, Mogwai’s Stu­art Braith­waite, and music pro­duc­er Hans Berg, all of whom have found Blade Run­ner creep­ing into their work inten­tion­al­ly or sub­lim­i­nal­ly. Ikoni­ka even calls her music alter-ego a “repli­cant,” after the film’s androids. But the film for her was a warn­ing: “You could see the future tak­ing over and it would be the good times,” she says about the ear­ly ‘80s. And “then Blade Run­ner was like, after that, this is going to hap­pen.” The sound­track has gone on to have its own series of re-releas­es, just like Scott has released a Director’s Cut of the film.

First, it was nev­er prop­er­ly released as an album until 1994. Imme­di­ate­ly bootlegs appeared col­lect­ing much more of the score from the film. In 2002, the best of them, the “Esper Edi­tion,” deliv­ered 33 tracks from the score. (And there’s a fur­ther “Retire­ment Edi­tion” of the “Esper” kick­ing around out there.) Then in 2007, Uni­ver­sal Music released a 25th anniver­sary edi­tion, with an extra disc of music com­posed for the film and *anoth­er* disc of *new* music Van­ge­lis com­posed for the release. All of which shows a work that is beloved and held dear by fans.

Now that we’ve hit the month depict­ed in the film, and Los Ange­les doesn’t exact­ly look like the open­ing scene (smoke and fire, yes; rain, not so much), it’s time to take stock of its dystopi­an vision.

As musi­cian Kue­do says, “Almost 40 years lat­er we’re still chas­ing it, but it’s still there ahead of us.”

Note: Vil­leneuve chose Christo­pher Nolan favorite Hans Zim­mer to com­pose the sequel’s score, work­ing with Ben­jamin Wallfisch…both much safer choic­es than Van­ge­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner Get­ting Adapt­ed into a New Ani­me Series, Pro­duced by Cow­boy Bebop Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

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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Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox Explained in Animation

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | November 21st, 2019

Many of us have heard of Stephen Hawk­ing but know him only as a sym­bol of a pow­er­ful mind ded­i­cat­ed for a life­time to the thorni­est prob­lems in astro­physics. Even more of us have heard of black holes but know of them only as those dan­ger­ous things in sci-fi movies that suck in space­ships. But if we gain an under­stand­ing of Hawk­ing’s work on black holes, how­ev­er basic, we gain a much clear­er view of both enti­ties and what they mean to the human endeav­or of grasp­ing the work­ings of real­i­ty. What it all has to do with “one of the biggest para­dox­es in the uni­verse,” and why that para­dox “threat­ens to unrav­el mod­ern sci­ence,” pro­vide the sub­ject mat­ter for the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above.

In order to explain what’s called the “Black Hole Infor­ma­tion Para­dox,” astro­physi­cist Fabio Pacuc­ci must first explain “infor­ma­tion,” which in this usage con­sti­tutes every part of the real­i­ty in which we live. “Typ­i­cal­ly, the infor­ma­tion we talk about is vis­i­ble to the naked eye,” he says. “This kind of infor­ma­tion tells us that an apple is red, round, and shiny.” But what physi­cists care about is “quan­tum infor­ma­tion,” which “refers to the quan­tum prop­er­ties of all the par­ti­cles that make up that apple, such as their posi­tion, veloc­i­ty and spin.” The par­ti­cles that make up every object of the uni­verse have “unique quan­tum prop­er­ties,” and the laws of physics as cur­rent­ly under­stood hold that “the total amount of quan­tum infor­ma­tion in the uni­verse must be con­served.”

Smash the apple into sauce, in oth­er words, and you don’t cre­ate or destroy any quan­tum infor­ma­tion, you just move it around. But in the parts of space­time with grav­i­ty so strong that noth­ing can escape them, bet­ter known as black holes, that par­tic­u­lar law of physics may not apply. “When an apple enters a black hole, it seems as though it leaves the uni­verse, and all its quan­tum infor­ma­tion becomes irre­triev­ably lost,” says Pacuc­ci. “How­ev­er, this doesn’t imme­di­ate­ly break the laws of physics. The infor­ma­tion is out of sight, but it might still exist with­in the black hole’s mys­te­ri­ous void.”

Then we have Hawk­ing Radi­a­tion, the epony­mous genius’ con­tri­bu­tion to the study of black holes, which shows that “black holes are grad­u­al­ly evap­o­rat­ing,” los­ing mass over “incred­i­bly long peri­ods of time” in such a way that sug­gests that “a black hole and all the quan­tum infor­ma­tion it con­tains could be com­plete­ly erased” in the process. What might go into the black hole as an apple’s infor­ma­tion does­n’t come out look­ing like an apple’s infor­ma­tion. Quan­tum infor­ma­tion seems to be destroyed by black holes, yet every­thing else about quan­tum infor­ma­tion tells us it can’t be destroyed: like any para­dox, or con­tra­dic­tion between two known or prob­a­ble truths, “the destruc­tion of infor­ma­tion would force us to rewrite some of our most fun­da­men­tal sci­en­tif­ic par­a­digms.”

But for a sci­en­tist in the Hawk­ing mold, this dif­fi­cul­ty just makes the chase for knowl­edge more inter­est­ing. Pacuc­ci cites a few hypothe­ses: that “infor­ma­tion actu­al­ly is encod­ed in the escap­ing radi­a­tion, in some way we can’t yet under­stand,” that “the para­dox is just a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty and quan­tum field the­o­ry inter­act, that “a solu­tion to this and many oth­er para­dox­es will come nat­u­ral­ly with a ‘uni­fied the­o­ry of every­thing,’ ” and most bold­ly that, because “the 2D sur­face of an event hori­zon” — the inescapable edge of a black hole — “can store quan­tum infor­ma­tion,” the bound­ary of the observ­able uni­verse “is also a 2D sur­face encod­ed with infor­ma­tion about real, 3D objects,” imply­ing that “real­i­ty as we know it is just a holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tion of that infor­ma­tion.” Big if true, as they say, but as Hawk­ing seems to have known, the truth about our real­i­ty is sure­ly big­ger than any of us can yet imag­ine.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawking’s Final Book and Sci­en­tif­ic Paper Just Got Pub­lished: Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions and “Infor­ma­tion Para­dox”

Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Stephen Hawking’s Uplift­ing Mes­sage: You Can Get Your­self Out of Any Hole, No Mat­ter What Their Size

The Largest Black Holes in the Uni­verse: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Watch a Star Get Devoured by a Super­mas­sive Black Hole

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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