How David Bowie Delivered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Ziggy Stardust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

When David Bowie left us on Jan­u­ary 10, 2016, we imme­di­ate­ly start­ed see­ing the just-released Black­star, which turned out to be his final album, as a farewell. But then, if we looked back across his entire career — a span of more than half a cen­tu­ry — we saw that he had been deliv­er­ing farewells the whole time. Through­out much of that career, Bowie’s observers have reflex­ive­ly com­pared him to a chameleon, so often and so dra­mat­i­cal­ly did he seem to revise his per­for­ma­tive iden­ti­ty to suit the zeit­geist (if not to shape the zeit­geist). But peri­od­ic cre­ative rebirth entails peri­od­ic cre­ative death, and as the Poly­phon­ic video essay above shows us, no rock star could die as cre­ative­ly as Bowie.

The video con­cen­trates on two of Bowie’s most famous farewells, in par­tic­u­lar: his last, on Black­star and the musi­cal Lazarus, and his first, deliv­ered onstage 43 years ear­li­er in his last per­for­mance in the char­ac­ter of Zig­gy Star­dust. “Not only is it the last show of the tour,” he announced to 3,500 scream­ing fans at Lon­don’s Ham­mer­smith Odeon, “but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.”

There fol­lowed a clos­ing per­for­mance of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Sui­cide,” a song described by the video’s nar­ra­tor as “Zig­gy Star­dust’s final moments, washed up and exhaust­ed from life as a rock star.” Though only 26 years old at the time, Bowie had already released six stu­dio albums and expe­ri­enced more than enough to reflect elo­quent­ly in song on “a life well lived.”

But then, if the phe­nom­e­non of David Bowie teach­es us any­thing, it teach­es us how a life can be com­posed of var­i­ous dis­crete life­times. Bowie under­stood that, as did the oth­er artists whose work he ref­er­enced in his farewells: names cit­ed in this video’s analy­sis include Jacques Brel, Charles Bukows­ki, and the Span­ish poet Manuel Macha­do. And as any fan knows, Bowie was also adept at ref­er­enc­ing his own work, a ten­den­cy he kept up until the end as in, for exam­ple, the reap­pear­ance of his mid-70s char­ac­ter (and sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Poly­phon­ic study) the Thin White Duke in the “Lazarus” music video. In that work he also left plen­ty of mate­r­i­al to not just inspire sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of cre­ators, but to send them back to the realms of cul­ture that inspired him. We may have heard David Bowie’s final farewell, but in our own life­times we sure­ly won’t hear the end of his influ­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Very Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust (1973)

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

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.

What Did Old English Sound Like? Hear Reconstructions of Beowulf, The Bible, and Casual Conversations

What is the Eng­lish lan­guage? Is it Anglo-Sax­on? It is tempt­ing to think so, in part because the def­i­n­i­tion sim­pli­fies a lin­guis­tic his­to­ry that defies lin­ear sum­ma­ry. Over the course of 1000 years, the lan­guage came togeth­er from exten­sive con­tact with Anglo-Nor­man, a dialect of French; then became heav­i­ly Latinized and full of Greek roots and end­ings; then absorbed words from Ara­bic, Span­ish, and dozens of oth­er lan­guages, and with them, arguably, absorbed con­cepts and pic­tures of the world that can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from the lan­guage itself.

Shake­speare and oth­er writ­ers filled in the gaps (and still do), invent­ing words where they were lack­ing. Why do we then refer to the long-dead Anglo-Sax­on lan­guage as “Old Eng­lish,” if it is only a dis­tant ances­tor, and one, you’ll note, no Eng­lish speak­er today under­stands? There are many tech­ni­cal rea­sons for this, but to put it in plain terms: if Eng­lish were a body, Anglo-Sax­on might be the bones and lig­a­ments: not only for the hard­ness of its con­so­nants and its blunt, unadorned poet­ry, but because it con­tains the most com­mon words in the lan­guage, the struc­tur­al bits that hold togeth­er all those pan-lin­guis­tic bor­row­ings.

Observe the piece of verse known as Cædmon’s Hymn, below. Amidst the tan­gle of unfa­mil­iar phonemes and extinct let­ters like the “þ,” you can­not miss such bedrock words as “and,” “his,” “or,” “He,” and “to.” In oth­er texts, you’ll find rec­og­niz­able equiv­a­lents of “father,” “moth­er,” “hus­band,” “wife,” “good,” “god,” and many oth­er com­mon house­hold words.

Nu scu­lon her­ian     heo­fon­rices Weard,
Metodes mihte     and his mod­geþanc,
weorc Wul­dor­fæder,     swa he wun­dra
gehwæs
ece Dry­ht­en,     or onstealde.
He ærest scop     eorþan bear­num
heo­fon to hrofe     halig Sci­ep­pend.
þa mid­dan­geard     man­cynnes Weard
ece Dry­ht­en,     æfter teode
firum foldan     Frea ælmi­htig.

Despite shar­ing many words with mod­ern Eng­lish, how­ev­er, Anglo Sax­on is anoth­er lan­guage, from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent world long dis­ap­peared. No one liv­ing, of course, knows exact­ly what it sound­ed like, so schol­ars make their best edu­cat­ed guess­es using inter­nal evi­dence in the scant lit­er­a­ture, sec­ondary sources in oth­er lan­guages from the time, and sim­i­lar­i­ties to oth­er, liv­ing lan­guages. Now that you’ve seen what Old Eng­lish looks like, hear how it sounds to mod­ern ears.

In the video at the top, stu­dent of the lan­guage Stephen Rop­er reen­acts a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with an Anglo-Sax­on speak­er, one who can under­stand but can­not speak con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish. The oth­er exam­ples here come from lit­er­ary con­texts. Fur­ther up, Justin A. Jack­son, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Hills­dale Col­lege, reads the open­ing lines of Beowulf, and just above, hear an unnamed nar­ra­tor read the epic poem’s full Pro­logue.

Just below—backed by a dra­mat­ic, dron­ing score and recit­ed over footage of misty Eng­lish moors—a read­ing of “The Lord’s Prayer” in 11th cen­tu­ry Old Eng­lish. In this text, you’ll pick out quite a few more famil­iar words, though the fact that most read­ers know the mod­ern Eng­lish equiv­a­lent prob­a­bly doesn’t hurt. But if you feel con­fi­dent after lis­ten­ing to these spec­u­la­tive recon­struc­tions of the lan­guage, enough to take a crack at read­ing it aloud your­self, head over this Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow col­lec­tion of Old Eng­lish read­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Beowulf Read In the Orig­i­nal Old Eng­lish: How Many Words Do You Rec­og­nize?

These Four Man­u­scripts Con­tain All of the Lit­er­a­ture Writ­ten in Old English–and Beyond That, There’s Noth­ing More

Hear Beowulf and Gawain and the Green Knight Read in Their Orig­i­nal Old and Mid­dle Eng­lish by an MIT Medieval­ist

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

A New Photo Book Documents the Wonderful Homemade Cat Ladders of Switzerland

There are days when Cal­gon is not escape enough

Days when one longs to be a cat, specif­i­cal­ly a free-rang­ing feline of Bern, Switzer­land, as fea­tured in graph­ic design­er Brigitte Schus­ter’s forth­com­ing book, Swiss Cat Lad­ders

Some Amer­i­can cats come and go freely through—dare we say—doggie doors, those small aper­tures cut into exist­ing points of entry, most com­mon­ly the one lead­ing from kitchen to Great Out­doors.

The cit­i­zens of Bern have aimed much high­er, cus­tomiz­ing their homes in align­ment with both the feline com­mit­ment to inde­pen­dence and their fear­less­ness where heights are con­cerned.

As Schus­ter doc­u­ments, there’s no one solu­tion designed to take cats from upper res­i­den­tial win­dows and patios to the des­ti­na­tions of their choos­ing.

Some build­ings boast sleek ramps that blend seam­less­ly into the exist­ing exte­ri­or design.

In oth­ers, sure­foot­ed pussies must nav­i­gate ram­shackle wood­en affairs, some of which seem bet­ter suit­ed to the hen house.

One cat lad­der con­nects to a near­by tree.

Anoth­er start­ed life as a drain spout.

Humans who pre­fer to out­source their cat lad­ders may elect to pur­chase a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed spi­ral stair­case online.

Pre-order Swiss Cat Lad­ders for 45 € using the order form at the bot­tom of this page. The text, which is in both Ger­man and Eng­lish, includes dia­grams to inspire those who would cater to their own cat’s desire for high fly­ing inde­pen­dence.

All pho­tographs © Brigitte Schus­ter

Via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. And con­grat­u­la­tions to her home­schooled senior, Milo Kotis, who grad­u­ates today! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Longest of the Grateful Dead’s Epic Long Jams: “Dark Star” (1972), “The Other One” (1972) and “Playing in The Band” (1974)

As a ded­i­cat­ed fan of the long jam—I always felt like I should try to dig the Grate­ful Dead. I did­n’t not dig the Grate­ful Dead. But I suf­fered from under­ex­po­sure to their music, if not to their rep­u­ta­tion as end­less noodlers. By the time I gave the Dead a chance my head was full of ideas of what a long jam should be, from the likes of Kraftwerk, Coltrane, Neil Young, Vel­vet Under­ground, Son­ic Youth, Pink Floyd, Sun Ra…

Here­in lies a dif­fer­ence. Some jams are struc­tured, con­trolled, almost orches­tral, build­ing into move­ments or dron­ing on into a haze of noise and son­ic wash. Then there’s the Dead, the world’s finest pur­vey­ors of mean­der­ing end­less noodling. I don’t mean that to sound deroga­to­ry. One could say the same thing about many jazz ensembles—like Sun Ra’s Arkestra or Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew period—without tak­ing away from the bril­liant abstrac­tion, the keen con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­play, the dynam­ic range and moments of antic­i­pa­tion, the phe­nom­e­nal solos.…

Maybe there’s a lot more going on than noodling, after all, even if the “end­less” part can seem accu­rate when it comes to the Dead, a point on which I’ve seen Dead­heads agree. Of what might be the band’s longest jam—a near­ly 47-minute live ren­di­tion of “Play­ing in The Band” from 1974 (top)—one Red­dit fan, MrCom­plete­ly, writes, “Playin’ is sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer than it is good.” Form your own opin­ion. Your atten­tion span might make up your mind for you.

A far more com­mon top­ic  in forums like Reddit’s r/gratefuldead are con­ver­sa­tions about not only which live song ranks as the longest jam, but how bliss­ful and mag­i­cal said jam was and whether the Dead­head saw the jam or for­ev­er regrets miss­ing the jam. One Dead fan, Pyrate­fish, cites “The Oth­er One” from 9–17-72 as “a beast” to beat them all. “Forty minute ride in to the far reach­es of the uni­verse that cul­mi­nates in a bat­tle for your very soul.” Top that.

Maybe we can, with anoth­er can­di­date for longest jam, a per­for­mance of “Dark Star” in Rot­ter­dam in 1972. Men­tion of this jam brought up oth­er con­tenders, most of them ver­sions of “Dark Star” or “Dark Star” med­leys. One fan, lastLeaf­Fall­en, even sug­gests a “jazzy, exper­i­men­tal, and mind-bend­ing” ver­sion of the song from 1990, but they don’t get any tak­ers on that one, even though “Bran­ford Marsalis sits in on sax mak­ing this jam espe­cial­ly spe­cial!”

The Grate­ful Dead were gen­uine jaz­zheads and meshed well with musi­cians like Marsalis and Miles Davis. But they didn’t play jazz them­selves so much as they used loose jazz fig­ures and ideas to make exper­i­men­tal rock. When done well, it is done excep­tion­al­ly well, as in the inevitably-over­stuffed, 48-minute-long Rot­ter­dam “Dark Star” fur­ther up. We can hear strains of future post-rock bands like Tor­toise and even late Radio­head, hints of music that hadn’t arrived yet on the plan­et. And oth­er long pas­sages that sound like some­thing only the Grate­ful Dead could play.

Just as their ear­ly fusion of coun­try, rock, and blues had pro­duced some­thing unlike any of them, their fusion of jazz and rock could syn­the­size new forms. Or it could fall apart, or both sev­er­al times over in the same song or at the same time. Hear the full 1974 con­cert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Seat­tle at the site Live for Live Music. The epic, 47-minute “Play­ing in The Band” is track 17. Sug­gest oth­er can­di­dates for longest Grate­ful Dead jam in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

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

Bryan Cranston Narrates the Landing on Omaha Beach on the 75th Anniversary of the D‑Day Invasion

75 years ago today, the Allies launched the D‑Day inva­sion in Nor­mandy, which marked a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in World War II–the begin­ning of the free­ing of Europe from Nazi con­trol. Above, actor Bryan Cranston com­mem­o­rates the anniver­sary by read­ing a let­ter that Pfc. Dominick “Dom” Bart sent to his wife. A 32-year-old infantry­man, Bart took part in the har­row­ing first wave of the mas­sive amphibi­ous assault. Below, we also hear Cranston read­ing the words of Pfc. Jim “Pee Wee” Mar­tin, describ­ing “his first taste of bat­tle as a para­troop­er in the D‑Day inva­sion.” As Cranston reads, you can watch “nev­er-before-seen restored high-res­o­lu­tion 4K footage from Oma­ha Beach.”

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:

Free Audio: Bryan Cranston, Break­ing Bad Star, Reads First Chap­ter of The Things They Car­ried

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Your­self by Trav­el­ing and Get­ting Lost

Download Iconic National Park Fonts: They’re Now Digitized & Free to Use

Fonts put in the ser­vice of the pub­lic good, like road signs, and street names, try to be invis­i­ble most of the time. They’re here to do their job and noth­ing else. But cer­tain fonts accu­mu­late some­thing else, a sense of famil­iar­i­ty, a feel­ing of com­fort and affec­tion. That’s the think­ing behind this recre­ation of America’s Nation­al Park font, which a team of five design­ers has cre­at­ed after much lov­ing research.

Jere­my Shel­horn, the font studio’s founder, pin­points exact­ly that kind of com­fort:

Any­way I wasn’t fish­ing for some rea­son and was wan­der­ing around  fol­low­ing a deer trail turned into fisherman’s trail then back to anoth­er trail as some­time fish­er­man do.  I had trekked pret­ty far that day and wasn’t exact­ly lost, but I need­ed a lit­tle reas­sur­ance that I was head­ing the right direc­tion when I came across one of those ubiq­ui­tous signs you see in a nation­al park. You know the ones that have the text carved or “rout­ed” into it. Enter­ing Rocky Moun­tain Nation­al Park.

The font is “rout­ed” into wood­en signs and fol­lows famil­iar rules: round­ed ser­ifs, sim­ple angles. Shel­horn began to won­der:

…if it actu­al­ly was a type­face or “font” that any­one could down­load and use? Do park rangers have this as a type­face on their com­put­ers to set in their word docs, pdfs and pow­er point slides?…Turns out it isn’t a type­face at all but a sys­tem of paths, points and curves that a router fol­lows.

The Nation­al Park Type Face was cre­at­ed by Shel­horn, his part­ner Andrea Her­stows­ki, two stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas– Chloe Hubler and Jen­ny O’Grady–and an actu­al NPS Ranger Miles Barg­er. It looks like the real thing and comes in three weights and one out­line font. Research was done by tak­ing pen­cil rub­bings of var­i­ous signs. And now you can down­load the fonts here.

Out­side this font, Jere­my Shell­horn and asso­ciates work on oth­er projects involv­ing our Nation­al Parks (always under threat from big indus­try and rapa­cious cap­i­tal­ists). You can check their var­i­ous work here.

Mel­bourne typog­ra­ph­er Stephen Ban­ham once described the cul­tur­al bag­gage that comes with Gil Sans:

When­ev­er I read text set in Gill Sans, I can’t help but hear the voice of an Eng­lish nar­ra­tor read­ing along with me.

With that in mind, what does the Nation­al Park font (down­load here) sound like to you? A friend­ly ranger? The sound of hik­ing boots on a trail? Bird­song? A bab­bling brook? The voice of nature itself? Let us know in the com­ments.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

Font Based on Sig­mund Freud’s Hand­writ­ing Com­ing Cour­tesy of Suc­cess­ful Kick­starter Cam­paign

Braille Neue: A New Ver­sion of Braille That Can Be Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Read by the Sight­ed and the Blind

The His­to­ry of Typog­ra­phy Told in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

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.

When Kraftwerk Issued Their Own Pocket Calculator Synthesizer — to Play Their Song “Pocket Calculator” (1981)

Kraftwerk put out their eighth stu­dio album in 1981, and they titled it pre­scient­ly: Com­put­er World was released into what human­i­ty had only just begun to real­ize would become a world of com­put­ers. But back then, most peo­ple either had nev­er used a com­put­er at all, or had used no com­put­er more advanced than a pock­et cal­cu­la­tor. But the boys from Düs­sel­dorf had a song for them too: the album’s first sin­gle “Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor.” And it was­n’t just a name: the Casio fx-501P pro­gram­ma­ble cal­cu­la­tor appeared on the list of “instru­ments” used in its record­ing.

Kraftwerk had become world-famous by the ear­ly 1980s, and on the inter­na­tion­al music scene they par­o­died the stiff, pre­ci­sion-obsessed Ger­man stereo­type to per­fec­tion. You’d think that they would thus demon­strate alle­giance to the for­mi­da­ble Dieter Rams-designed Braun ET55 cal­cu­la­tor, but by the time Com­put­er Love came out, Japan­ese com­pa­nies like Casio had come to dom­i­nate the per­son­al-elec­tron­ics mar­ket. Kraftwerk even record­ed a Japan­ese ver­sion of “Pock­et Calu­la­tor,” “Den­taku,” along with ones in Ger­man (“Taschen­rech­n­er”), French (“Mini Cal­cu­la­teur”), and Ital­ian (“Mini Cal­co­la­tore”).

“I’m the oper­a­tor with my pock­et cal­cu­la­tor,” go the song’s Eng­lish lyrics. “I am adding and sub­tract­ing. I’m con­trol­ling and com­pos­ing.” And whichev­er lan­guage you lis­ten to it in, it has a line equiv­a­lent to, “By press­ing down a spe­cial key, it plays a lit­tle melody.”

Kraftwerk actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned as a pro­mo­tion­al item a spe­cial cal­cu­la­tor from Casio that could do just that, a ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s VL-80 mod­el that was also a musi­cal syn­the­siz­er. You can see and hear the basic, non-Kraftwerk mod­el demon­strat­ed in the video above. Casio, a name that in the music world would become a byword for sim­ple, inex­pen­sive syn­the­siz­ers, had already brought to mar­ket in 1979 the VL‑1, the first com­mer­cial dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er (which itself includ­ed a cal­cu­la­tor func­tion).

With a Kraftwerk taschen­rech­n­er, even those with­out tech­ni­cal or musi­cal knowl­edge, let alone a full-fledged syn­the­siz­er, could make music. “Kraftwerk was eager for fans to play Kraftwerk hits on their own cal­cu­la­tors,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, “so they issued these spe­cial instruc­tions — OK, let’s call it ‘sheet music’ — to play not just the new mate­r­i­al but also clas­sics like ‘Trans Europa Express’ and ‘Schaufen­ster­pup­pen.’ ” Today, Kraftwerk con­tin­ues to per­form all over the com­put­er world in which we now live. With the 40th anniver­sary of Com­put­er World approach­ing, per­haps the time has come to bring the cal­cu­la­tors back on stage.

(via Dan­ger­ous Minds)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk Plays a Live 40-Minute Ver­sion of their Sig­na­ture Song “Auto­bahn:” A Sound­track for a Long Road Trip (1974)

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

The Keaton Music Type­writer: An Inge­nious Machine That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion

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.

See the Very First Solar Eclipse Captured on Film: A Magical Moment in Science and Filmmaking (1900)

The “con­quest of space,” so to speak—the human under­stand­ing of and trav­el to the cosmos—has come about through a suc­ces­sion of great sci­en­tif­ic minds, as well as some of the most inter­est­ing and accom­plished peo­ple all around. We nev­er seem to tire of learn­ing about their devo­tion to math­e­mat­ics, physics, med­i­cine, and sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery writ as large as pos­si­ble. But some­times the con­quest of space has required the unique tal­ents of magi­cians. From the ancient mages who excit­ed human imag­i­na­tion about the stars for thou­sands of years, to alchemists like Isaac New­ton and beyond.

Wit­ness the strange career of Mar­vel White­side Par­sons, bet­ter known as Jack Par­sons: sci-fi fanat­ic, occultist, dis­ci­ple of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, and one­time mag­i­cal part­ner of L. Ron Hub­bard. Par­sons is most famous for found­ing the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry, the research cen­ter that pow­ers NASA. Then we have magi­cian Nevil Maskelyne—son of magi­cian John Nevil Maske­lyne, and pos­si­ble descen­dent, so he said, of the fifth British Roy­al Astronomer, “also named Nevil Maske­lyne,” writes Jason Daley at Smith­son­ian. Maske­lyne the very much younger doc­u­ment­ed the first total solar eclipse ever cap­tured on film.

Grant­ed, he was a stage magi­cian, not a fol­low­er of “The Great Beast 666.” Maske­lyne’s inter­est in show­man­ship and spec­ta­cle drew him not to sex mag­ic but to film­mak­ing and astron­o­my, inter­ests he com­bined when he made the first film ever of a total solar eclipse. Nowa­days, mil­lions of peo­ple have the means to make such a film in their pock­et, pro­vid­ed they have a good view of the infre­quent cos­mic event (and do not ever look at it direct­ly). In 1900, when Maske­lyne under­took the chal­lenge, film­mak­ing was just emerg­ing from infan­cy into tod­dler­hood.

The Lumière broth­ers, often cred­it­ed as the first film­mak­ers, had held their first pub­lic screen­ing only five years ear­li­er. They called their ear­ly pro­duc­tions actu­al­ités, essen­tial­ly “real­i­ty films.” Some of these, like the leg­endary L’ar­rivée d’un train en gare de La Cio­tat, famous­ly shocked and ter­ri­fied audi­ences out of their seats. In 1900, film was still a kind of mag­ic, and “like mag­ic,” says Bry­ony Dixon, cura­tor at the British Film Insti­tute (BFI), film “com­bines both art and sci­ence.” The sto­ry of Maskelyne’s achieve­ment is “a sto­ry about mag­ic.”

Maskelyne’s love for film inspired in him a pas­sion for astron­o­my as well, and he even­tu­al­ly became a fel­low of the Roy­al Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his first cin­e­mat­ic con­tri­bu­tion to the field dis­ap­peared, nev­er to be seen again. Two years before he shot the footage above from the ground in North Car­oli­na on May 28, 1900, on a ven­ture fund­ed by the British Astro­nom­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, Maske­lyne trav­eled to India to doc­u­ment a sim­i­lar event. The film can­nis­ter was stolen on his return trip home

But he had learned what he need­ed to, hav­ing designed “a spe­cial tele­scop­ic adapter for a movie cam­era,” just as he and his father had ear­li­er improved upon the film pro­jec­tor by build­ing their own. Maske­lyne had his spec­ta­cle. He showed the film in his the­ater, and the Roy­al Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety ensured that we could see it almost 120 years lat­er by archiv­ing a minute of the footage. Thanks to a part­ner­ship between the British Film Insti­tute and the RAS, the film has been restored, dig­i­tized in 4K res­o­lu­tion, and made freely avail­able online as part of a trove of Vic­to­ri­an-era films” just released by the BFI.

While thou­sands, maybe mil­lions, of dif­fer­ent mov­ing images of 2017’s solar eclipse exist on social media accounts, of this event 120 years ago there has exist­ed only one. Now that brief moment in time can reach mil­lions of peo­ple in an instant, and exist in an infi­nite num­ber of per­fect copies, a phe­nom­e­non that might have seemed in 1900 like an advanced form of mag­ic.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moons, Moons, They’re Every­where. The Unex­pect­ed Shad­ows of the Solar Eclipse

Last Night’s Solar Eclipse in a 60-Sec­ond, 700-Pic­ture Time­lapse Video

Solar Eclipse Seen From Out­er Space

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

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