Meet the Mysterious Genius Who Patented the UFO

in Design, History | November 12th, 2021

Amer­i­can inven­tors nev­er met a phe­nom­e­non — nat­ur­al, man­made, or oth­er­wise — they couldn’t try to patent. From impos­si­ble tech­nolo­gies to pos­si­ble evi­dence of aliens vis­it­ing plan­et Earth, everything’s fair game if you can sell the idea. After high­ly-pub­li­cized UFO sight­ings in Wash­ing­ton State and Roswell, New Mex­i­co, for exam­ple, patents for fly­ing saucers began pour­ing into gov­ern­ment offices. “As soon as there was a pop­u­lar ‘spark,’” writes Ernie Smith at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the saucer was every­where.” It received its own clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the U.S. Patent Office, with the index­ing code B64C 39/001, for “fly­ing vehi­cles char­ac­ter­ized by sus­tain­ment with­out aero­dy­nam­ic lift, often fly­ing disks hav­ing a UFO-shape.”

Google Patents lists “around 192 items in this spe­cif­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” with surges in appli­ca­tions between 1953–56, 1965–71, and  an “unusu­al­ly dra­mat­ic surge… between 2001 and 2004.” Make of that what you will. The sto­ry of the UFO gets both stranger and more mun­dane when we learn that Alexan­der Weygers, the very first per­son to file a patent for such a fly­ing vehi­cle, invent­ed it decades before UFO-mania and patent­ed it in 1945. He was not an Amer­i­can inven­tor but the Indone­sian-born son of a Dutch sug­ar plan­ta­tion fam­i­ly. He learned black­smithing on the farm, received an edu­ca­tion in Hol­land in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and naval archi­tec­ture, and honed his mechan­i­cal skills while tak­ing long sea voy­ages alone.

In 1926, Weygers and his wife Jaco­ba Hut­ter moved to Seat­tle, Ash­lee Vance writes at Bloomberg Busi­ness­week, “where he pur­sued a career as a marine engi­neer and ship archi­tect and began ink­ing draw­ings of the Dis­copter” — the fly­ing-saucer-like vehi­cle he would patent after work­ing for many years as a painter and sculp­tor, mourn­ing the death of his wife, who died in child­birth in 1928. By the time Weygers was ready to revive the Dis­copter, the time was ripe, it seems, for a wave of tech­no­log­i­cal con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion — or a tech­no­log­i­cal theft. Per­haps, as Weygers’ claimed, UFOs real­ly were Army test planes: test pilots fly­ing some­thing based on the inventor’s design — which was not a UFO, but an attempt at a bet­ter heli­copter.

Sight­ings of strange objects in the sky did not begin in 1947. “Tales of mys­te­ri­ous fly­ing objects date to medieval times,” Vance writes, “and oth­er inven­tors and artists had pro­duced images of disk-shaped crafts. Hen­ri Coan­da, a Roman­ian inven­tor, even built a fly­ing saucer in the 1930s that looked sim­i­lar to what we now think of as the clas­sic craft from out­er space. His­to­ri­ans sus­pect that the designs of Coan­da and Weygers, float­ing around in the pub­lic sphere, com­bined with the post­war inter­est in sci-fi tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate an atmos­phere that gave rise to a sud­den influx of UFO sight­ings.” In the 1950s, NASA and the U.S. Navy even began test­ing ver­ti­cal take­off vehi­cles that looked sus­pi­cious­ly like the patent­ed Dis­copter.

Weygers was livid and “con­vinced his designs had been stolen.” The press even picked up the sto­ry. In 1950 the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle ran an arti­cle head­lined “Carmel Val­ley Artist Patent­ed Fly­ing Saucer Five Years Ago: ‘Dis­copter’ May Be What Peo­ple Have Seen Late­ly.” Although Weygers nev­er built a Dis­copter him­self, the arti­cle goes on to note that “the inven­tion became the pro­to­type for all disk-shaped ver­ti­cal take-off air­craft since built by the U.S. armed forces and pri­vate indus­try, both here and abroad.” Just how many such vehi­cles have been con­struct­ed, and have actu­al­ly been air-wor­thy, is impos­si­ble to say.

Smith sur­veys many of the patents for fly­ing saucers filed over the past 75 years by both indi­vid­u­als and large com­pa­nies. In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, we have com­pa­nies like Air­bus and star­tups cre­at­ed by Google co-founder Lar­ry Page cur­rent­ly work­ing on fly­ing saucer-like designs. The his­to­ry of such vehi­cles may not pro­vide suf­fi­cient evi­dence to dis­prove UFO sight­ings, but it may one day lead to the tech­nol­o­gy for fly­ing cars we thought would already have arrived this far into the space age. For that we have to thank, though he may nev­er get the cred­it, the mod­ern Renais­sance artist and inven­tor Alexan­der Weygers.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Do Aliens Look Like? Oxford Astro­bi­ol­o­gists Draw a Pic­ture, Based on Dar­win­ian The­o­ries of Evo­lu­tion

The CIA Has Declas­si­fied 2,780 Pages of UFO-Relat­ed Doc­u­ments, and They’re Now Free to Down­load

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

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

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Watch 30+ Exceptional Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screening Room

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Magazines | November 12th, 2021

For short films, find­ing an audi­ence is an often uphill bat­tle. Even major award win­ners strug­gle to reach view­ers out­side of the fes­ti­val cir­cuit.

Thank good­ness for The Screen­ing Room, The New Yorker’s online plat­form for shar­ing short films.

It’s a mag­nif­i­cent free buf­fet for those of us who’d like noth­ing bet­ter than to gorge our­selves on these lit­tle gems.

If you’re not yet a fan of the form, allow us to sug­gest that any one of the 30 fic­tion­al shorts post­ed in The Screen­ing Room could func­tion as a superb palate cleanser between binge watch­es of more reg­u­lar fare.

Take co-direc­tors Ami­na Sut­ton and Maya Tanaka’s hilar­i­ous The Price of Cheap Rent, clock­ing in at 6 1/2 min­utes, above.

A com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed project, star­ring Sut­ton and shot in Tanaka’s Brook­lyn apart­ment, it’s a com­e­dy of man­ners that brings fresh mean­ing to the semi-con­tro­ver­sial phrase “Bed Stuy, Do or Die.”

Sut­ton plays a young Black artist with a mas­ters from Yale, a gig behind the bar at Applebee’s, and a keen inter­est in posi­tion­ing her­self as an influ­encer, an ambi­tion the film­mak­ers lam­poon with glee.

When she dis­cov­ers that her new apart­ment is haunt­ed, she is “so freaked the f&ck out,” she spends a week sleep­ing in the park, before ven­tur­ing back:

And it’s a stu­dio, so it’s like liv­ing in a clown car of hell.

But once she dis­cov­ers (or pos­si­bly just decides) that the major­i­ty of the ghosts are Black, she begins plan­ning a pod­cast and makes her peace with stay­ing put.

Pros: the rent’s a lot less than the 1‑bathroom dump she shared with five room­mates, there’s laun­dry in the base­ment, and the ghosts, whom she now con­ceives of as ances­tors, share many of her inter­ests — his­to­ry, the arts, and the 1995 live action/CGI adap­ta­tion of Casper the Friend­ly Ghost. (They give Ghost­busters a thumbs down.)

Cons: the ghost of an 18th-cen­tu­ry Dutch Protes­tant set­tler whose white fragili­ty man­i­fests in irri­tat­ing, but man­age­able ways.

Those with 18 min­utes to spare should check out Joy Joy Nails, anoth­er very fun­ny film hing­ing on iden­ti­ty.

Every day a group of salty, young Kore­an women await the van that will trans­port them from their cramped quar­ters in Flush­ing, Queens, to a nail salon in a ritzi­er — and, judg­ing by the cus­tomers, far whiter — neigh­bor­hood.

Writer-direc­tor Joey Ally con­trasts the salon’s aggres­sive­ly pink decor and the employ­ees’ chum­my def­er­ence to their reg­u­lar cus­tomers with the grub­bi­ness of the break room and the trans­ac­tion­al nature of the exchange.

“Any­one not fired with enthu­si­asm… will be!” threat­ens a yel­lowed notice taped in the employ­ees only area.

Behind the reg­is­ter, the veil is lift­ed a bit, nar­row­ing the upstairs/downstairs divide with real­is­ti­cal­ly home­made signs:

“CASH! FOR TIP ONLY”

Like Sut­ton and Tana­ka, Ally is versed in hor­ror tropes, inspir­ing dread with close ups of pumice stones, emory boards, and cuti­cle trim­mers at work.

When a more objec­tive view is need­ed, she cuts to the black-and-white secu­ri­ty feed under the recep­tion counter.

When one of the cus­tomers calls to ask if her miss­ing ear­ring was left in the wax­ing room, the sto­ry takes a trag­ic turn, though for rea­sons more com­plex than one might assume.

Ally’s script punc­tures the all-too-com­mon per­cep­tion of nail salon employ­ees as a mono­lith­ic immi­grant mass to explore themes of dom­i­nance and bias between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­ied cul­tures, a point dri­ven home by the sub­ti­tles, or absence there­of.

The 2017 film also tapped into its release year zeit­geist with a plot point involv­ing the boss’ son.

On a tight sched­ule? You can still squeeze in Undis­cov­ered, direc­tor Sara Litzen­berg­er’s 3‑minute ani­ma­tion from 2014.

Iden­ti­ty fac­tors in here, too, as a Sasquatch-like crea­ture ter­ri­fies a string of cam­era wield­ing humans in its attempt to get a pho­to­graph that will show it as it wish­es to be per­ceived.

It’s an eas­i­ly digest­ed delight, suit­able for all ages.

Explore all 30+ fic­tion­al shorts in the Screen­ing Room for free here or on The New York­er’s YouTube playlist. You can find them all embed­ded and stream­able below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short “Hair Love”

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 36 Short Ani­ma­tions That Tell the Ori­gin Sto­ries of Mexico’s Indige­nous Peo­ples in Their Own Lan­guages

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy

in Politics | November 11th, 2021

russell rules 2

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell saw the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion as being shaped by an unfor­tu­nate oscil­la­tion between two oppos­ing evils: tyran­ny and anar­chy, each of which con­tain the seed of the oth­er. The best course for steer­ing clear of either one, Rus­sell main­tained, is lib­er­al­ism.

“The doc­trine of lib­er­al­ism is an attempt to escape from this end­less oscil­la­tion,” writes Rus­sell in A His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy. “The essence of lib­er­al­ism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irra­tional dog­ma [a fea­ture of tyran­ny], and insur­ing sta­bil­i­ty [which anar­chy under­mines] with­out involv­ing more restraints than are nec­es­sary for the preser­va­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

In 1951 Rus­sell pub­lished an arti­cle in The New York Times Mag­a­zine, “The Best Answer to Fanaticism–Liberalism,” with the sub­ti­tle: “Its calm search for truth, viewed as dan­ger­ous in many places, remains the hope of human­i­ty.” In the arti­cle, Rus­sell writes that “Lib­er­al­ism is not so much a creed as a dis­po­si­tion. It is, indeed, opposed to creeds.” He con­tin­ues:

But the lib­er­al atti­tude does not say that you should oppose author­i­ty. It says only that you should be free to oppose author­i­ty, which is quite a dif­fer­ent thing. The essence of the lib­er­al out­look in the intel­lec­tu­al sphere is a belief that unbi­ased dis­cus­sion is a use­ful thing and that men should be free to ques­tion any­thing if they can sup­port their ques­tion­ing by sol­id argu­ments. The oppo­site view, which is main­tained by those who can­not be called lib­er­als, is that the truth is already known, and that to ques­tion it is nec­es­sar­i­ly sub­ver­sive.

Rus­sell crit­i­cizes the rad­i­cal who would advo­cate change at any cost. Echo­ing the philoso­pher John Locke, who had a pro­found influ­ence on the authors of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, Rus­sell writes:

The teacher who urges doc­trines sub­ver­sive to exist­ing author­i­ty does not, if he is a lib­er­al, advo­cate the estab­lish­ment of a new author­i­ty even more tyran­ni­cal than the old. He advo­cates cer­tain lim­its to the exer­cise of author­i­ty, and he wish­es these lim­its to be observed not only when the author­i­ty would sup­port a creed with which he dis­agrees but also when it would sup­port one with which he is in com­plete agree­ment. I am, for my part, a believ­er in democ­ra­cy, but I do not like a regime which makes belief in democ­ra­cy com­pul­so­ry.

Rus­sell con­cludes the New York Times piece by offer­ing a “new deca­logue” with advice on how to live one’s life in the spir­it of lib­er­al­ism. “The Ten Com­mand­ments that, as a teacher, I should wish to pro­mul­gate, might be set forth as fol­lows,” he says:

1: Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing.

2: Do not think it worth­while to pro­duce belief by con­ceal­ing evi­dence, for the evi­dence is sure to come to light.

3: Nev­er try to dis­cour­age think­ing, for you are sure to suc­ceed.

4: When you meet with oppo­si­tion, even if it should be from your hus­band or your chil­dren, endeav­or to over­come it by argu­ment and not by author­i­ty, for a vic­to­ry depen­dent upon author­i­ty is unre­al and illu­so­ry.

5: Have no respect for the author­i­ty of oth­ers, for there are always con­trary author­i­ties to be found.

6: Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you.

7: Do not fear to be eccen­tric in opin­ion, for every opin­ion now accept­ed was once eccen­tric.

8: Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than in pas­sive agree­ment, for, if you val­ue intel­li­gence as you should, the for­mer implies a deep­er agree­ment than the lat­ter.

9: Be scrupu­lous­ly truth­ful, even when truth is incon­ve­nient, for it is more incon­ve­nient when you try to con­ceal it.

10. Do not feel envi­ous of the hap­pi­ness of those who live in a fool’s par­adise, for only a fool will think that it is hap­pi­ness.

Wise words then. Wise words now.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2013.

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:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish”

Bertrand Rus­sell: The Every­day Ben­e­fit of Phi­los­o­phy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncer­tain­ty

Bertrand Rus­sell Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948) 

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What Is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War About?: A Short Introduction

in History, Literature, Philosophy | November 11th, 2021

After wars in Japan and Viet­nam, the U.S. mil­i­tary became quite keen on a slim vol­ume of ancient Chi­nese lit­er­a­ture known as The Art of War by a sup­pos­ed­ly his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al named Sun Tzu. This book became required read­ing at mil­i­tary acad­e­mies and a favorite of law enforce­ment, and has formed a basis for strat­e­gy in mod­ern wartime — as in the so-called “Shock and Awe” cam­paigns in Iraq. But some have argued that the West­ern adop­tion of this text — wide­ly read across East Asia for cen­turies — neglects the cru­cial con­text of the cul­ture that pro­duced it.

Despite his­tor­i­cal claims that Sun Tzu served as a gen­er­al dur­ing the Spring and Autumn peri­od, schol­ars have most­ly doubt­ed this his­to­ry and date the com­po­si­tion of the book to the War­ring States peri­od (cir­ca 475–221 B.C.E.) that pre­ced­ed the first empire, a time in which a few rapa­cious states gob­bled up their small­er neigh­bors and con­stant­ly fought each oth­er.

“Occa­sion­al­ly the rulers man­aged to arrange recess­es from the endem­ic wars,” trans­la­tor Samuel B. Grif­fith notes. Nonethe­less, “it is extreme­ly unlike­ly that many gen­er­als died in bed dur­ing the hun­dred and fifty years between 450 and 300 B.C.”

The author of The Art of War was pos­si­bly a gen­er­al, or one of the many mil­i­tary strate­gists for hire at the time, or as some schol­ars believe, a com­pil­er of an old­er oral tra­di­tion. In any case, con­stant war­fare was the norm at the time of the book’s com­po­si­tion. This tac­ti­cal guide dif­fers from oth­er such guides, and from those that came before it. Rather than coun­sel­ing div­ina­tion or the study of ancient author­i­ties, Sun Tzu’s advice is pure­ly prac­ti­cal and of-the-moment, requir­ing a thor­ough knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion, the ene­my, and one­self. Such knowl­edge is not eas­i­ly acquired. With­out it, defeat or dis­as­ter are near­ly cer­tain:

If you know the ene­my and know your­self, you need not fear the result of a hun­dred bat­tles. If you know your­self but not the ene­my, for every vic­to­ry gained you will also suf­fer a defeat. If you know nei­ther the ene­my nor your­self, you will suc­cumb in every bat­tle.

The kind of knowl­edge Sun Tzu rec­om­mends is prac­ti­cal intel­li­gence about troop deploy­ments, food sup­plies, etcetera. It is also knowl­edge of the Tao — in this case, the gen­er­al moral prin­ci­ple and its real­iza­tion through the sov­er­eign. In a time of War­ring States, Sun Tzu rec­og­nized that knowl­edge of war­fare was “a mat­ter of vital impor­tance”; and that states should under­take it as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.

“To sub­due the ene­my with­out fight­ing is the acme of skill,” The Art of War famous­ly advis­es. Diplo­ma­cy, decep­tion, and indi­rec­tion are all prefer­able to the mate­r­i­al waste and loss of life in war, not to men­tion the high odds of defeat if one goes into bat­tle unpre­pared. “The ide­al strat­e­gy of restraint, of win­ning with­out fight­ing… is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Tao­ism,” writes Rochelle Kaplan. “Both The Art of War and the Tao Te Ching were designed to help rulers and their assis­tants achieve vic­to­ry and clar­i­ty,” and “each of them may be viewed as anti-war tracts.”

Read a full trans­la­tion of The Art of War by Lionel Giles, in sev­er­al for­mats online here, and just above, hear the same trans­la­tion read aloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Chang­ing Books: Your Picks

“The Phi­los­o­phy of “Flow”: A Brief Intro­duc­tion to Tao­ism

When Sci-Fi Leg­end Ursu­la K. Le Guin Trans­lat­ed the Chi­nese Clas­sic, the Tao Te Ching

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

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Life Magazine Predicts in 1914 How People Would Dress in the 1950s

in History, Life, Magazines | November 11th, 2021

Though still just with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, 1950 now seems as if it belongs not just to the past but to a whol­ly bygone real­i­ty. Yet that year once stood for the future: that is to say, a time both dis­tant enough to fire up the imag­i­na­tion and near enough to instill a sense of trep­i­da­tion. It must have felt that way, at least, to the sub­scribers of Life mag­a­zine in Decem­ber of 1914, when they opened an issue of that mag­a­zine ded­i­cat­ed in part to pre­dict­ing the state of human­i­ty 36 years hence. Its bold cov­er depicts a man and woman of the 1950s amus­ed­ly regard­ing pic­tures of a man and woman in 1914: the lat­ter wear but­toned-up Euro­pean street cloth­ing, while the for­mer have on almost noth­ing at all.

As ren­dered by illus­tra­tor Otho Cush­ing, the thor­ough­ly mod­ern 1950s female wears a kind of slip, some­thing like a gar­ment from ancient Greece updat­ed by abbre­vi­a­tion. Her male coun­ter­part takes his inspi­ra­tion from an even ear­li­er stage of civ­i­liza­tion, his loin­cloth cov­er­ing as few as pos­si­ble of the abstract pat­terns paint­ed or tat­tooed all over his body. (About his choice to top it all off with a plumed hel­met, an entire PhD the­sis could sure­ly be writ­ten.)

Any cred­i­ble vision of the future must draw inspi­ra­tion from the past, and Cush­ing’s inter­ests equipped him well for the task: 28 years lat­er, his New York Times obit­u­ary would refer to his ear­ly spe­cial­iza­tion in depict­ing “hand­some young men and women in Greek or mod­ern cos­tumes.”

Even though fash­ions have yet to make a return to antiq­ui­ty, how many out­fits on the street of any major city today would scan­dal­ize the aver­age Life read­er of 1914? Of course, the cov­er is essen­tial­ly a gag, as is much of the osten­si­ble prog­nos­ti­ca­tion inside. As cir­cu­lat­ed again not long ago in a tweet thread by Andy Machals, it fore­sees mon­archs in the unem­ploy­ment line, boys’ jobs tak­en by girls, women acquir­ing harems of men, and the near-extinc­tion of mar­riage. But some pre­dic­tions, like 30 miles per hour becom­ing a slow enough dri­ving speed to be tick­etable, have come true. Anoth­er piece imag­ines peo­ple of the 1950s hir­ing musi­cians to accom­pa­ny them through­out each phase of the day. Few of us do that even in the 2020s, but liv­ing our dig­i­tal­ly sound­tracked lives, we may still won­der how our ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry ances­tors man­aged: “Between meals they lis­tened to almost absolute­ly noth­ing.”

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Author Imag­ines in 1893 the Fash­ions That Would Appear Over the Next 100 Years

Fash­ion Design­ers in 1939 Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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How Kraftwerk Made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

in Music | November 10th, 2021

The word “sem­i­nal” does a lot of work in expres­sions like “sem­i­nal band/album/track, etc.” Yes, it’s an adjec­tive denot­ing “major­ly influ­en­tial,” even “essen­tial.” It’s also an adjec­tive relat­ing direct­ly to the male repro­duc­tive sys­tem. The con­cep­tu­al use of the term does not nec­es­sar­i­ly exclude women, who can per­fect­ly well be said to “seed” artis­tic move­ments. But it does sug­gest that cre­ativ­i­ty is an inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line act. To take a broad­er view, we could say that art is non-bina­ry; it includes all of the gen­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples involved in the act of cre­ation, includ­ing ges­ta­tion, birthing, and nur­tur­ing new art forms.

In this vein, we might call Ger­man elec­tron­ic pio­neers Kraftwerk a “sem­i­nal matrix” of musi­cal activ­i­ty, an econ­o­my of cre­ative work led by two fathers — Flo­ri­an Schnei­der and Ralf Hüt­ter  — who mid­wived a techno/electro rev­o­lu­tion, and — indi­rect­ly — through ear­ly spin-off projects like NEU!, an exper­i­men­tal post-punk/New Wave rev­o­lu­tion.

The best known of the “Krautrock” bands to emerge in the 1970s, ear­ly ver­sions of Kraftwerk includ­ed in its ranks Ger­man pro­duc­er Con­ny Plank (unof­fi­cial­ly) as well as drum­mer Klaus Dinger, and gui­tarist Michael Rother, both of whom went on to play in the afore­men­tioned NEU! and “sem­i­nal” avant-garde bands like Har­mo­nia and La Düs­sel­dorf.

In its ear­ly, anar­chic phase, “Kraftwerk’s music nei­ther ref­er­enced nor evoked the robot­ic,” writes Simon Reynolds at NPR. “They start­ed, in the final years of the 1960s, as post-psy­che­del­ic pro­gres­sives — long hair and all. (Watch their first record­ed gig in 1970 here.) In 1968, Hüt­ter and Schnei­der met at the Acad­e­my of Arts in Rem­scheid, near Düs­sel­dorf, where they stud­ied piano and flute, respec­tive­ly. Shar­ing an inter­est in impro­vi­sa­tion and avant-garde elec­tron­ics, as well as a fond­ness for The Vel­vet Under­ground, the Doors and the mul­ti­me­dia provo­ca­tions of Fluxus, they joined with three oth­er musi­cians and record­ed the album Tone Float under the name Organ­i­sa­tion.”

This ear­ly avant-garde phase con­tin­ued for a time, but once Dinger and Rother left and were replaced by Wolf­gang Flür and Karl Bar­tos, Kraftwerk began its unlike­ly climb up the charts, and into the hands of remix­ers and DJs every­where, with 1975’s Auto­bahn. “That is the point at which they went from a krautrock curio to a world-his­tor­i­cal force,” Reynolds writes, “when the sin­gle edit of the 24-minute title track became an inter­na­tion­al hit in 1975.” The song retains some instru­men­tal ele­ments from the band’s pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions — “twin­kling gui­tar and waft­ing flute fea­ture along­side synth puls­es and drum machine.”

But the meld­ing of man and machine was well under­way. “Cru­cial­ly, it was music stripped of indi­vid­u­al­ized inflec­tion and per­son­al­i­ty” — not only were Kraftwerk beyond 70s gen­der stereo­types, they were chart­ing the course for the post-human before the term had any cur­ren­cy. “We go beyond the indi­vid­ual feel,” Schnei­der told Sounds mag­a­zine. “We are more like vehi­cles, a part of our men­sch machine, our man-machine. Some­times we play the music, some­times the music plays us, some­times… it plays.” Kraftwerk may have played Ger­man stereo­types for humor in music videos and live per­for­mances, but their detach­ment was no act — their approach from the late 1970’s onward was entire­ly the oppo­site of rock and rol­l’s self (indulgent)-expression.

Why, then, does Kraftwerk belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Just induct­ed this year, their pres­ence is tru­ly indis­putable. It’s not much of an exag­ger­a­tion to say, as the Hall of Fame does, that they “are the foun­da­tion upon which all syn­the­siz­er-based rock and elec­tron­ic dance music is built.… Kraftwerk’s influ­ence can be heard in the work of David Bowie and Bri­an Eno, the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, the elec­tron­ic-rock inte­gra­tion of U2, the ‘robot rock’ of Daft Punk, the pro­duc­tion tech­niques of Kanye West, and in count­less EDM and dub­step artists.”

This is just to name a tiny sam­pling of the musi­cians influ­enced by the per­fec­tion­is­tic Ger­man four­some. The case can and has been made that for the sheer breadth of their influ­ence, Kraftwerk is more impor­tant than even the Bea­t­les to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, for rather than mas­ter­ing and trans­form­ing the music of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s first half, they invent­ed the rock and roll of the future. See many more clas­sic Kraftwerk videos at this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

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

Watch Kraftwerk Per­form a Real-Time Duet with a Ger­man Astro­naut Liv­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

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

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

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Violinist Breaks a String While Performing Tchaikovsky in Concert, and Gracefully Recovers

in Music | November 10th, 2021

Hav­ing evolved over cen­turies — indeed, mil­len­nia — the for­mal ele­gance and son­ic beau­ty of stringed instru­ments con­tin­ue to inspire their play­ers toward ever-greater heights of vir­tu­os­i­ty. But of course, the attain­ment of vir­tu­os­i­ty itself does­n’t come easy, and what­ev­er alti­tude you reach, you’ll still be dogged by some of the same prob­lems you were as a novice. What vio­lin­ist, for instance, could ever ful­ly put out of their mind the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a string’s break­ing as they play, whether at home or in Carnegie Hall? Not celebri­ty play­er Ray Chen, sure­ly, giv­en that it’s hap­pened to him at least twice in the past five years.

Being a Youtu­ber as well, Chen has turned these onstage mis­for­tunes to his advan­tage. Just last week he put up “Vio­lin­ist string BREAKS dur­ing Tchaikovsky,” a video that cap­tures his lat­est such expe­ri­ence while play­ing with the Seat­tle Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Far from grind­ing to a halt, the per­for­mance con­tin­ues with only a minor hitch.

After mak­ing a valiant attempt to sol­dier on short an E string, Chen switch­es to what appears to be the back­up plan. With­out the option of singing the blues while chang­ing the string him­self, as B.B. King did at Farm Aid, he swaps his instru­ment with that of the con­cert­mas­ter, who pass­es it down the line. Unfazed, Chen con­tin­ues play­ing right where he left off.

Chen fol­lowed a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure after a string break in 2017, while play­ing in Brus­sels with the Tai­wan Phil­har­mon­ic. Then, as now, he uploaded the footage to his Youtube chan­nel, where it has  racked up more than 1.6 mil­lion views. The brief clip also cap­tures his final toss onto the floor of the spare pack of strings he’d had the good sense to place in his pock­et before­hand. The acco­lades post­ed in the com­ments below bring to mind the sto­ry of 19th-cen­tu­ry vio­lin­ist Carl Her­man Unthan. Born with­out arms, Unthan became a vir­tu­oso by play­ing instead with his feet — which he also used to change a string that broke on him in con­cert. This proved aston­ish­ing enough that he’s said lat­er to have delib­er­ate­ly weak­ened strings in order to repeat the spec­ta­cle for oth­er audi­ences. Just imag­ine if he’d had Youtube.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

A Gigan­tic Vio­lin Floats Down Venice’s Grand Canal with a String Quar­tet on Top

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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What Makes Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ a Timeless, Great Painting?

in Art | November 10th, 2021

Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio had many fol­low­ers. He was, after all, the most revered painter in Rome before he was exiled for mur­der. After his own death, his work fell into a peri­od of obscu­ri­ty and might have dis­ap­peared were it not for his many imi­ta­tors. Called Car­avaggisti or tene­brosi (“shad­ow­ists”), those who adopt­ed Caravaggio’s high-con­trast hyper­re­al­ism, includ­ing Dutch mas­ters like Rem­brandt, pro­duced the finest work of the Baroque peri­od. Some of Caravaggio’s dis­ci­ples were so good they pro­duced copies of his work that could fool experts. And some­times experts could be fooled into think­ing a Car­avag­gio was actu­al­ly the work of a copy­ist.

Such was the case with Caravaggio’s strik­ing can­vas, The Tak­ing of Christ, a depic­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment sto­ry of Jesus’ arrest and betray­al by his first dis­ci­ple, Peter. Com­mis­sioned by Roman noble­man Ciri­a­co Mat­tei in 1602, the paint­ing dis­ap­peared and was thought to have been lost until 1993, when it was found hang­ing in a Jesuit house in Ire­land. The Jesuits had thought it to be the work of Dutch artist Ger­ard van Hon­thorst, a painter who acquired the Ital­ian  nick­name Gher­ar­do del­li Not­ti (“Ger­ard of the nights”) after a vis­it to Rome inspired him to take up Caravaggio’s dra­mat­i­cal­ly lit style.

“Car­avag­gio’s approach to reli­gious art was shock­ing and con­tro­ver­sial in his time,” notes the video. “His work was cen­sored, dis­missed and crit­i­cized, but it would lead to an entire­ly new kind of Chris­t­ian art.” The vio­lent dynamism of his paint­ings “was matched only by his tem­pes­tu­ous lifestyle.” Dead at age 38, the painter left behind only around 90 paint­ings and draw­ings, and these inti­mate­ly reveal the marks of the artist. “Car­avag­gio’s tech­nique was as spon­ta­neous as his tem­per,” notes the Nation­al Gallery. “He paint­ed straight onto the can­vas with min­i­mal prepa­ra­tion.”

Such is the case in The Tak­ing of Christ. The Nation­al Gallery of Ire­land, which hous­es the rev­o­lu­tion­ary work, point out that “numer­ous pen­ti­men­ti (changes of mind)” on the can­vas, “now vis­i­ble due to changes over time in the paint lay­er, are a reminder of the artist’s uncon­ven­tion­al way of pos­ing mod­els in tableaux and alter­ing details as he worked.” He also seems to have lit­er­al­ly paint­ed him­self into the scrum: “Only the moon lights the scene. Although the man at the far right is hold­ing a lantern, it is, in real­i­ty, an inef­fec­tive source of illu­mi­na­tion. In that man’s fea­tures Car­avag­gio por­trayed him­self, aged 31.”

Car­avag­gio’s face and dis­tinc­tive­ly rapid tech­nique show up fre­quent­ly in his work, but so lit­tle was known about him for so long that schol­ars seemed to have a dif­fi­cult time telling an orig­i­nal from a copy. The Tak­ing of Christ has 12 such known copies, some believed to be by Car­avag­gio him­self. One hung in the Odessa Muse­um of West­ern and East­ern Art in Ukraine. It was lat­er claimed that the paint­ing was a faith­ful ren­di­tion by an obscure Ital­ian painter, made at the request of Asdrubale Mat­tei, broth­er of the orig­i­nal painter’s own­er. Car­avag­gio’s many imi­ta­tors paid him the high­est of com­pli­ments, and made cer­tain his influ­ence sur­vived his untime­ly death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

How Car­avag­gio Paint­ed: A Re-Cre­ation of the Great Master’s Process

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

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

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