Art Historian Provides Hilarious & Surprisingly Efficient Art History Lessons on TikTok

in Art, Comedy, History, How to Learn for Free | May 31st, 2021

@_theiconoclassIf youse come at me again for my Aus­tralian pro­nun­ci­a­tion I swear 😂 #arthis­to­ry #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #baroque♬ orig­i­nal sound — AyseD­eniz

Art His­to­ri­an Mary McGillivray believes art appre­ci­a­tion is an acquired skill. Her Tik­Tok project, The Icon­o­class, is bring­ing those lack­ing for­mal art his­to­ry edu­ca­tion up to speed.

The 25-year-old Aus­tralian’s pithy obser­va­tions dou­ble as sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy mnemon­ics, use­ful for nav­i­gat­ing world class col­lec­tions both live and online.

Some high­lights from her whirl­wind guide to the Baroque peri­od, above:

If it looks like the chaos after black­out where every­one is stum­bling around in the dark under one soli­tary emer­gency light, it’s a Car­avag­gio.

If there’s at least one per­son look­ing to the cam­era like they’re on The Office, it’s a Velázquez.

If there’s a room with some nice fur­ni­ture, a win­dow, and some women just going about their every­day busi­ness, it’s a Ver­meer.

Rather than the tra­di­tion­al chrono­log­i­cal pro­gres­sion, McGillivray mix­es and match­es, often in response to com­ments and Patre­on requests.

When a com­menter on the Baroque Tik­Tok took umbrage that she referred to Artemisia Gen­tileschi by first name only, McGillivray fol­lowed up with an edu­ca­tion­al video explain­ing the con­ven­tion from the 17th-cen­tu­ry per­spec­tive.

@_theiconoclassReply to @rajendzzz her dad was hot, com­ment if you agree #baroque #artemisia #arthis­to­ryclass♬ Guilty Love — Lady­hawke & Broods

At the urg­ing of a Patre­on sub­scriber, she leaps across four cen­turies to dis­cov­er an unex­pect­ed kin­ship between Cubism and Renais­sance painters, using George Braque’s Man with a Gui­tar and San­dro Botticelli’s Four Scenes from the Ear­ly Life of Saint Zeno­bius. One is attempt­ing to escape the shack­les of per­spec­tive by show­ing sur­faces not vis­i­ble when regard­ing a sub­ject from a sin­gle point. The oth­er is using a sin­gle space to depict mul­ti­ple moments in a subject’s life simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

@_theiconoclass#arthis­to­ry #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #renais­sance #cubism #medievaltik­tok♬ orig­i­nal sound — Fin­ian Hack­ett

McGillivray is will­ing to be seen learn­ing along with her fol­low­ers. She’s open about the fact that she prefers Giot­to and Fra Angeli­co to con­tem­po­rary art (as per­haps befits an art his­to­ri­an whose face is more 1305 than 2021). Artist Dominic White’s wear­able, envi­ron­men­tal sculp­ture Hood­ie Empa­thy Suit does­n’t do much for her until a con­ver­sa­tion with the exhibit­ing gallery’s direc­tor helps ori­ent her to White’s objec­tives.

@_theiconoclassWant to see me tack­le more con­tem­po­rary art? Big thanks to @mprg_vic ❤️🪶#arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #arthis­to­ry #con­tem­po­rar­yart #art­gallery♬ orig­i­nal sound — Mary McGillivray

She tips her hand in an inter­view with Pedes­tri­an TV:

I’m not very inter­est­ed in decid­ing what is art and what isn’t. The whole “what is art” ques­tion has nev­er been very impor­tant to me. The ques­tions I pre­fer to ask are: Why was this image made?

She rec­om­mends art crit­ic John Berg­er’s 1972 four-part series Ways of See­ing to fans eager to expand beyond the Icon­o­class:

It’s got all the things you would expect from a 1970s BBC pro­duc­tion – wide col­lared shirts, long hair, smok­ing on tele­vi­sion – plus some of the most influ­en­tial insights into how we look at art and also how we look at the world around us.

Watch Mary McGillivray’s The Icon­o­class here. Sup­port her Patre­on here.

@_theiconoclassWant a part two? 😏😘 #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #arthis­to­ry­ma­jor #learnon­tik­tok♬ Rasputin (Sin­gle Ver­sion) — Boney M.

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

One Minute Art His­to­ry: Cen­turies of Artis­tic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Steve Mar­tin on How to Look at Abstract Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art of Balancing Stones: How Artists Use Simple Materials to Make Impossible Sculptures in Nature

in Art, Nature | May 31st, 2021

Not so long ago, a wave of long-form entreaties rolled through social media insist­ing that we stop build­ing rock cairns. Like many who scrolled past them, I could­n’t quite imag­ine the offend­ing struc­tures they meant, let alone recall con­struct­ing one myself. The cairns in ques­tion turned out, mun­dane­ly, to be those lit­tle stacks of flat rocks seen in parks, along­side trails and streams. They’re as com­mon in South Korea, where I live, as they seem to be in the Unit­ed States. Both coun­tries also share a great enthu­si­asm for Insta­gram, and it’s the appar­ent Insta­gram­ma­bil­i­ty of these cairns that has increased their num­ber (and con­se­quent eco­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al harm) in recent years.

No mat­ter how many likes they gar­ner, these com­mon cairns require lit­tle or no skill in the build­ing. The same can hard­ly be said of rock bal­anc­ing, an art that demands a great deal more dis­ci­pline and patience than many an influ­encer can muster. The Wired video at the top of the post pro­files one of the most famous liv­ing rock-bal­ancers, a Cana­di­an named Michael Grab.

“One of my core dri­ves is to make the for­ma­tion as impos­si­ble as pos­si­ble,” he says, refer­ring to the appar­ent defi­ance of grav­i­ty per­formed by all the rocks he finds and arranges into stacks, arcs, orbs, and oth­er unlike­ly shapes. In fact, it is grav­i­ty alone that holds his art­works togeth­er — and repeat­ed­ly destroys them in the count­less tri­als and errors before their com­ple­tion.

Yes, Grab has an Insta­gram account: Grav­i­ty Glue, on which he show­cas­es his pre­car­i­ous­ly sol­id sculp­tures as well as their nat­ur­al con­texts. So does Jon­na Jin­ton, a Swedish “artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Youtu­ber” who also bal­ances rocks. “It’s such a great way to also bal­ance myself,” she says in the short video just above, “and to cre­ate some­thing beau­ti­ful at the same time.” For her, the art has become a form of med­i­ta­tion: “As I try to find a tiny, tiny lit­tle bal­ance point, my thoughts are com­plete­ly silent, and that’s a very good feel­ing.” Jin­ton does­n’t say whether she per­son­al­ly ensures the destruc­tion of her works, as Grab does. But doing so, as one should note before enter­ing the rock-bal­ancer lifestyle, may keep you on the bet­ter side of the eco­log­i­cal rec­om­men­da­tions and indeed the law. But then the afore­men­tioned anti-cair­nism seemed to hit its zenith in ear­ly 2020, since which time, it’s fair to say, the world has had more press­ing con­cerns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

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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Why Do Tech Billionaires Make for Good TV Villains? Pretty Much Pop #93 Considers “Made for Love,” et al.

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | May 31st, 2021

The tech genius has become the go-to bad guy in recent films: They’re our mod­ern mad sci­en­tists with all imag­in­able resources and sci­ence at their com­mand, able to release dystopic tech­nol­o­gy to sur­veil, con­trol, and pos­si­bly mur­der us. Even Lex Luthor was made into a “tech bro” in Bat­man v. Super­man.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an dis­cuss the HBO Max series Made for Love star­ring Cristin Mil­i­oti, as well as Alex Gar­land’s Devs, Mike Judge’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, and Jed Rothestein’s doc­u­men­tary WeWork: Or the Mak­ing and Break­ing of a $47 Bil­lion Uni­corn. How does this trope work in com­e­dy vs. seri­ous media? How does it relate to real-life tech moguls? Can women be vil­lains of this sort, or is a cri­tique of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty part of this sort of depic­tion?

To learn more, read what we read:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Leonardo da Vinci Designs the Ideal City: See 3D Models of His Radical Design

in Architecture, History | May 28th, 2021

Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ray Brad­bury: they and oth­er 20th-cen­tu­ry nota­bles all gave seri­ous thought to the ide­al city, what it would include and what it would exclude. To that extent we could describe them, in 21st-cen­tu­ry par­lance, as urban­ists. But the roots of the dis­ci­pline — or area of research, or pro­fes­sion, or obses­sion — we call urban­ism run all the way back to the 15th cen­tu­ry. At that time, ear­ly in the Euro­pean Renais­sance, thinkers were recon­sid­er­ing a host of con­di­tions tak­en for grant­ed in the medieval peri­od, from man’s place in the uni­verse (and indeed the uni­verse itself) to the dis­pos­al of his garbage. Few of these fig­ures thought as far ahead, or across as many fields as Leonar­do da Vin­ci.

In addi­tion to his accom­plish­ments in art, sci­ence, engi­neer­ing, and archi­tec­ture, the quin­tes­sen­tial “Renais­sance man” also tried his hand at urban­ism. More specif­i­cal­ly, he includ­ed in his note­books designs for what he saw as an ide­al city. “Leonar­do was 30 when he moved to Milan in around 1482,” writes Engi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy’s Hilary Clarke.

“The city he found was a crowd­ed medieval war­ren of build­ings, with no san­i­ta­tion. Soon after the young painter had arrived, it was hit by an out­break of the bubon­ic plague that killed 50,000 peo­ple — more than a third of the city’s pop­u­la­tion at the time.” This could well have prompt­ed him to draw up his plan, which dates between 1487 and 1490, for a clean­er and more effi­cient urban envi­ron­ment.

While it would­n’t have been par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to envi­sion a less dirty and dis­or­dered set­ting than the late medieval Euro­pean city, Leonar­do, true to form, per­formed a thor­ough­go­ing act of reimag­i­na­tion. “Draw­ing on the knowl­edge he had gained from study­ing Milan’s canals, Leonar­do want­ed to use water to con­nect the city like a cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem,” writes Clarke, who adds that Leonar­do was also study­ing human anato­my at the time. “His ide­al town-plan­ning prin­ci­ple was to have a mul­ti-tiered city, which also includ­ed an under­ground water­way to flush away efflu­ent.” The top tier would have all the hous­es, squares and oth­er pub­lic build­ings; “the bot­tom tier was for the poor, goods and traf­fic — hors­es and carts — and ran on the same lev­el as the canals and basins, so wag­ons could be eas­i­ly offloaded.”

Though its ambi­tion would have seemed fan­tas­ti­cal in the 15th cen­tu­ry, Leonar­do’s city plan every­where mar­shals his con­sid­er­able engi­neer­ing knowl­edge to address prac­ti­cal prob­lems. He had a real loca­tion in mind — along the Tici­no Riv­er, which runs through mod­ern-day Italy and Switzer­land — and planned details right down to the spi­ral stair­cas­es in every build­ing. He insist­ed on spi­rals, Clarke notes, “because they lacked cor­ners, mak­ing it hard­er for men to uri­nate,” but they also add an ele­gance to his vision of the ver­ti­cal city, a notion that strikes us as obvi­ous today but was unknown then. Of course, Leonar­do was a man ahead of his time, and the 3D-ren­dered and phys­i­cal mod­els of his ide­al city in these videos from the Ide­al Spaces Work­ing Group and Italy’s Museo Nazionale del­la Scien­za e del­la Tec­nolo­gia Leonar­do da Vin­ci make one won­der if his plan would­n’t look both allur­ing and impos­si­bly rad­i­cal to urban­ists even today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Drew an Accu­rate Satel­lite Map of an Ital­ian City (1502)

The Medieval City Plan Gen­er­a­tor: A Fun Way to Cre­ate Your Own Imag­i­nary Medieval Cities

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den City Built Entire­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

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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Hear the Earliest Recorded Customer Complaint Letter: From Ancient Sumeria 1750 BC

in History | May 28th, 2021

Three-thou­sand, sev­en-hun­dred, and sev­en­ty-one years ago, in the city of Dil­mun, near Ur in Mesopotamia, there was a mer­chant named Ea-nasir. His busi­ness was in sell­ing met­al ingots that he pur­chased in the Per­sian Gulf. Was he a good mer­chant? Not accord­ing to one of his cus­tomers, Nan­ni. If Yelp had exist­ed back in 1750 BC, Nan­ni would def­i­nite­ly have giv­en Ea-nasir a one-star review.

We know this because Nanni’s com­plaint about Ea-nasir, writ­ten in Akka­di­an cuneiform, still exists. The tiny 4.5x2x1 inch tablet is cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the British Muse­um, and was dis­cov­ered by archae­ol­o­gist Sir Leonard Woo­ley in his 1920s exca­va­tion of Ur.

In the video above, you can hear Nanni’s com­plaint come to life.

Ea-nasir had agreed to sell cop­per ingots to Nan­ni, who sent a ser­vant with some mon­ey to pick them up. Not only were the ingots of low qual­i­ty, but Ea-nasir was rude to the ser­vant, giv­ing him the ol’ “take it or leave it” treat­ment. And not only that, but the ser­vant had to trav­el through ene­my ter­ri­to­ry. And for all the things Nanni’s done for Ea-nasir! (You can just imag­ine Nan­ni pick­ing out a fresh clay tablet and get­ting down to some furi­ous cuneiformin’.)

David Kelly’s read­ing brings out some of the haughty anger from Nanni’s com­plaint, but I won­der if Kel­ly is being too nice. Maybe Voic­es of the Past should hire a New York cab­bie to have a go the next time they find some sev­er­al-mil­len­nia-old ephemera from Ea-nasir’s for­mer busi­ness quar­ters. We don’t know if Nan­ni ever set­tled his dis­pute, but appar­ent­ly he wasn’t the only one.

The room that Sir Leonard exca­vat­ed con­tained many com­plaints from many cus­tomers, includ­ing sev­er­al back and forths from frus­trat­ed peo­ple all over Mesopotamia. Accord­ing to this Forbes arti­cle, Ea-nasir did have a legit prof­itable busi­ness once, but as his debt grew, the cred­i­tors came call­ing, and he began to stiff peo­ple. What makes Nanni’s let­ter stand out is that he used both the front and back of the tablet to write his with­er­ing assess­ment. We’ve all seen those kind of let­ters.

The full text from Nan­ni reads:

Now, when you had come, you spoke say­ing thus: ‘I will give good ingots to Gim­il-Sin’; this you said to me when you had come, but you have not done it. You have offered bad ingots to my mes­sen­ger, say­ing ‘If you will take it, take it; if you will not take it, go away.’ Who am I that you are treat­ing me in this man­ner — treat­ing me with such con­tempt? and that between gen­tle­men such as we are. I have writ­ten to you to receive my mon­ey, but you have neglect­ed [to return] it. Repeat­ed­ly you have made them [mes­sen­gers] return to me emp­ty-hand­ed through for­eign coun­try. Who is there amongst the Dil­mun traders who has act­ed against me in this way? You have treat­ed my mes­sen­ger with con­tempt. And fur­ther with regard to the sil­ver that you have tak­en with you from my house you make this dis­cus­sion. And on your behalf I gave 18 tal­ents of cop­per to the palace, and Sumi-abum also gave 18 tal­ents of cop­per, apart from the fact that we issued the sealed doc­u­ment to the tem­ple of Samas. With regard to that cop­per, as you have treat­ed me, you have held back my mon­ey in a for­eign ter­ri­to­ry, although you are oblig­at­ed to hand it over to me intact. You will learn that here in Ur I will not accept from you cop­per that is not good. In my house, I will choose and take the ingots one by one. Because you have treat­ed me with con­tempt, I shall exer­cise against you my right of select­ing the cop­per.

It’s kind of com­fort­ing in its own weird way, know­ing that find­ing a good busi­ness you can trust has been an eter­nal quest, whether you’re try­ing to get a refund from eBay or look­ing at some low qual­i­ty ingots and deal­ing with a very annoyed ser­vant.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Cooks 4000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Mesopotamia, and Lets You See How They Turned Out

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Bass Sounds: One Song Highlights the Many Different Sounds Made by Different Bass Guitars

in Music | May 28th, 2021

If you’re a sea­soned bass play­er, the diver­si­ty of bass sounds in the “Bass Sounds” videos here will hard­ly sur­prise you. Most oth­er peo­ple — includ­ing many musi­cians — have lit­tle under­stand­ing of the range of the bass, an instru­ment thought to just hold down the low end. Yes, it does do that, but it doesn’t always do it with bass fre­quen­cies. Bass tones and over­tones fall any­where in the range of 40hz — a low rum­ble more felt than heard — to a snap­py 4000hz, the high-midrange fre­quen­cy of snare drums and gui­tars.

That’s a lot of son­ic ter­ri­to­ry for an instru­ment to explore. It includes the sound of Paul McCartney’s Hofn­er Vio­lin Bass on “Pen­ny Lane,” a “bass-heavy tone with almost no mids or tre­ble,” Joel McIv­er writes at Mus­i­cRad­er; the smooth top end of Jaco Pas­to­ri­ous’ home­made fret­less Fend­er Jazz bass; and the buz­z­saw pow­er chords of Lem­my Kilmister’s Rick­en­backer 4001, which he played with midrange turned to 11 and bass con­trols com­plete­ly off.

Of course, ampli­fiers and effects make all the dif­fer­ence in famous bassists’ tones, but it starts at the fin­gers, the body, the pick­ups, and the frets, as bass play­er Bart Soeters demon­strates with a series of clas­sic, mod­ern, and obscure bass gui­tars, accom­pa­nied by the music of Joris Holtack­ers. Bass­es here include such rec­og­niz­able shapes as the Hofn­er, with its cham­bered body and f‑holes, the Fend­er Jazz and Pre­ci­sion bass­es, and the Gib­son SG. They also include unusu­al or unique instru­ments like the NS Design Bass­cel­lo and Soeters’ own Adamovic FBC sig­na­ture bass.

Boomy, woody, even reedy — bass gui­tars can rum­ble and they can croon. They can be imi­tat­ed by an elec­tric cel­lo — as Soeters demon­strates in the fol­low-up Bass Sounds II video at the top — make love­ly acoustic thumps, and gen­er­al­ly sound as per­cus­sive or melod­ic as you like. Will edu­cat­ing oth­ers about the range of bass gui­tar tones change unfor­tu­nate stereo­types about bass play­ers (demon­strat­ed below via inter­pre­tive dance and spo­ken word by The Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDon­ald and Bruce McCul­loch)? Only time will tell. But it can cer­tain­ly  sharp­en the music appre­ci­a­tion skills of musi­cians and non-musi­cians alike. See all the dif­fer­ent bass­es list­ed on the Bass Sounds YouTube pages here and here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Some of the Most Pow­er­ful Bass Gui­tar Solos Ever: Ged­dy Lee, Flea, Boot­sy Collins, John Dea­con & More

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

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Bass-Smash­ing Pho­to on the Clash’s Lon­don Call­ing

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

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

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Behold the Astronomicum Caesareum, “Perhaps the Most Beautiful Scientific Book Ever Printed” (1540)

in Art, Books, Science | May 27th, 2021

Art, sci­ence, and mag­ic seem to have been rarely far apart dur­ing the Renais­sance, as evi­denced by the elab­o­rate 1540 Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum — or “Emperor’s Astron­o­my” — seen here. “The most sump­tu­ous of all Renais­sance instruc­tive man­u­als, ” the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art notes, the book was cre­at­ed over a peri­od of 8 years by Petrus Api­anus, also known as Api­an, an astron­o­my pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ingol­stadt. Mod­ern-day astronomer Owen Gin­gerich, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, calls it “the most spec­tac­u­lar con­tri­bu­tion of the book-maker’s art to six­teenth-cen­tu­ry sci­ence.”

Apian’s book was main­ly designed for what is now con­sid­ered pseu­do­science. “The main con­tem­po­rary use of the book would have been to cast horo­scopes,” Robert Bat­teridge writes at the Nation­al Library of Scot­land. Api­an used as exam­ples the birth­days of his patrons: Holy Roman Emper­or Charles V and his broth­er Fer­di­nand I. But the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum did more than cal­cu­late the future.

Despite the fact that the geo­cen­tric mod­el on which Api­an based his sys­tem “would begin to be over­tak­en just 3 years after the book’s pub­li­ca­tion,” he accu­rate­ly described five comets, includ­ing what would come to be called Halley’s Comet.

Api­an also “observed that a comet’s tail always points away from the sun,” Fine Books and Col­lec­tions writes, “a dis­cov­ery for which he is cred­it­ed.” He used his book “to cal­cu­late eclipses,” notes Gin­gerich in an intro­duc­tion, includ­ing a par­tial lunar eclipse in the year of Charles’ birth. And, “in a pio­neer­ing use of astro­nom­i­cal chronol­o­gy, he takes up the cir­cum­stances of sev­er­al his­tor­i­cal eclipses.” These dis­cus­sions are accom­pa­nied by “sev­er­al mov­able devices” called volvelles, designed “for an assort­ment of chrono­log­i­cal and astro­log­i­cal inquiries.”

Medieval volvelles were first intro­duced by artist and writer Ramón Llull in 1274. A “cousin of the astro­labe,” Get­ty writes, the devices con­sist of “lay­ered cir­cles of parch­ment… held togeth­er at the cen­ter by a tie.” They were con­sid­ered “a form of ‘arti­fi­cial mem­o­ry,’” called by Lund University’s Lars Gis­lén “a kind of paper com­put­er.” Api­an was a spe­cial­ist of the form, pub­lish­ing sev­er­al books con­tain­ing volvelles from his own Ingol­stadt print­ing press. The Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum became the pin­na­cle of such sci­en­tif­ic art, using its hand-col­ored paper devices to sim­u­late the move­ments of the astro­labe. “The great vol­ume grew and changed in the course of the print­ing,” Gin­gerich writes, “even­tu­al­ly com­pris­ing fifty-five leaves, of which twen­ty-one con­tain mov­ing parts.”

Api­an was reward­ed hand­some­ly for his work. “Emper­or Charles V grant­ed the pro­fes­sor a new coat of arms,” and “the right to appoint poets lau­re­ate and to pro­nounce as legit­i­mate chil­dren born out of wed­lock.” He was also appoint­ed court math­e­mati­cian, and copies of his extra­or­di­nary book lived on in the col­lec­tions of Euro­pean aris­to­crats for cen­turies, “a tri­umph of the printer’s art,” writes Gin­gerich, and an astron­o­my, and astrol­o­gy, “fit for an emper­or.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

16th Cen­tu­ry Book­wheels, the E‑Readers of the Renais­sance, Get Brought to Life by 21st Cen­tu­ry Design­ers

A Medieval Book That Opens Six Dif­fer­ent Ways, Reveal­ing Six Dif­fer­ent Books in One

160,000+ Medieval Man­u­scripts Online: Where to Find Them

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

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Meet the Linda Lindas, the Tween Punk Band Who Called Out Racism & Misogyny and Scored a Record Deal

in Gender, K-12, Music | May 27th, 2021

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” we chant­ed as kids, but “words will nev­er hurt me.” The say­ing seems to both invite phys­i­cal vio­lence and deny the real effects of ver­bal abuse. Maybe this was once effec­tive as a stock play­ground retort, but it’s nev­er been true, as any­one who’s been picked on as a child can attest. When the taunts are racist, the dam­age is expo­nen­tial­ly mul­ti­plied. Not only are kids being sin­gled out and mocked for immutable char­ac­ter­is­tics, but their fam­i­ly and entire cul­ture of ori­gin are being tar­get­ed.

What to do? Lash out? Fight back? Ignore it and pre­tend it isn’t hap­pen­ing? To quote anoth­er cliche, “the best revenge is suc­cess.” More appro­pri­ate­ly for the case at hand, take an orig­i­nal line from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: “Be con­struc­tive with your blues.”

The Lin­da Lin­das, a four-piece punk band rang­ing in age from 10 to 16 would agree. When one of the girls was harassed by a class­mate, they got bummed about it, then ral­lied, wrote a song, went viral, and scored a record deal. Deal­ing with bul­lies will rarely lead to such joy­ful results, but it’s worth pay­ing atten­tion when it does.

The song, “Racist, Sex­ist Boy” has “become some­thing of a 2021 anthem,” writes NPR, with its glee­ful call-outs (“Pos­er! Block­head! Riffraff! Jerk face!”) and crunchy pow­er chords. “In what has become a very famil­iar cycle to music-indus­try watch­ers, the band land­ed a record deal almost as soon as its video went viral,” sign­ing with L.A.’s Epi­taph Records. “By Fri­day, the band’s per­for­mance of ‘Racist, Sex­ist Boy’ had been post­ed on Epi­taph’s YouTube chan­nel.” The video comes from a per­for­mance at the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library, which you can watch in full above, with an intro­duc­tion and inter­view with the band. (See a setlist on YouTube and don’t miss their cov­er of Biki­ni Kil­l’s “Rebel Girl” at 35:56.)

So, who are the Lin­da Lin­das? On their Band­camp page, they describe them­selves as “Half Asian / half Lat­inx. Two sis­ters, a cousin, and their close friend. The Lin­da Lin­das chan­nel the spir­it of orig­i­nal punk, pow­er pop, and new wave through today’s ears, eyes and minds.” You can meet the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed tweens and teens in the video above, made in 2019 by a fifth grade teacher to inspire his stu­dents. The girls are hard­ly new to the music busi­ness. Clips in the video show them per­form­ing with Mon­ey Mark and open­ing for Biki­ni Kill. They got their start in 2018 at Girlschool LA, “a cel­e­bra­tion of females chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo,” and they’ve been men­tored by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Lin­da Lin­das also cap­tured the atten­tion of Amy Pohler, who fea­tured the band in her Net­flix doc­u­men­tary Mox­ie. See a clip above. Not every kid who fights bul­ly­ing with music — or art, sci­ence, sports, or what­ev­er their tal­ent — can expect celebri­ty, and we shouldn’t set kids up to think they can all win the inter­net lot­tery. But the Lin­da Lin­das have become heroes for mil­lions of young girls who look like them, and who dream not of fame and for­tune but of a unit­ed front of friend­ship and fun against racism, misog­y­ny, and the pains of grow­ing up.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Record­ed Song (1976)

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

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