Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

in Animation, K-12, Life, Music, TED Talks | February 10th, 2017

Remem­ber lis­ten­ing to Peter and the Wolf as a child, how the nar­ra­tor would explain that cer­tain instru­ments cor­re­spond to par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ters:  the duck — an oboe, the wolf — three horns, and so on?

In the above TED-Ed les­son (mem­o­rably ani­mat­ed by Com­pote Col­lec­tive), music his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Schwarm ful­fills much the same role for The Four Sea­sons by Anto­nio Vival­di. (Stream it here.)

Why are we so drawn to this Baroque con­cer­to? Is it because we asso­ciate it with brunch?

The hun­dreds of movies and com­mer­cials that have fea­tured it?

(Direc­tor Robert Ben­ton chose Vival­di rather than an orig­i­nal com­pos­er for the score of Kramer vs. Kramer, argu­ing that “Con­cer­to in C Major for Man­dolin & Strings” cap­tured the trou­bled Man­hat­tan couple’s refined lifestyle far bet­ter than the John Williams-esque bom­bast the ear asso­ciates with some many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic hits of the peri­od. The 1979 film’s suc­cess sent “The Four Sea­sons” to the top of the charts.)

These pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions no doubt account for some of our fond­ness, but Pro­fes­sor Schwarm posits that the sto­ries con­tained in the melodies are what real­ly reel us in.

Basi­cal­ly, we’re in the thrall of a musi­cal weath­er report, rev­el­ing in the way Vival­di man­ages to bring to life both the birdies’ sun­ny spring song and the sud­den thun­der­storm that dis­rupts it.

Sum­mer rolls out the mete­o­ro­log­i­cal big guns with a hail­storm.

Autumn’s cool­er night­time tem­per­a­tures keep the wine-flushed peas­ants from turn­ing their har­vest cel­e­bra­tions into a full-on bac­cha­nal.

Win­ter? Well per­haps you’re tucked up con­tent­ed­ly in front of the fire­place right now, grat­i­fied to be hear­ing your own com­fort echoed in the largo sec­tion.

Inspired by the land­scape paint­ings of artist, Mar­co Ric­ci, Vival­di penned four poems that dri­ve the move­ments of his most famous work. Their trans­la­tions, below, are nowhere near as elo­quent to the mod­ern listener’s ear, but you’ll find that read­ing them along with your favorite record­ing of the Four Sea­sons will cor­rob­o­rate Pro­fes­sor Schwarm’s the­sis.

Spring – Con­cer­to in E Major

Alle­gro

Spring­time is upon us.

The birds cel­e­brate her return with fes­tive song,

and mur­mur­ing streams are soft­ly caressed by the breezes.

Thun­der­storms, those her­alds of Spring, roar, cast­ing their dark man­tle over heav­en,

Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charm­ing songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn mead­ow, with leafy branch­es rustling over­head, the goat-herd sleeps, his faith­ful dog beside him.

Alle­gro

Led by the fes­tive sound of rus­tic bag­pipes, nymphs and shep­herds light­ly dance beneath the bril­liant canopy of spring.

Sum­mer – Con­cer­to in g‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Beneath the blaz­ing sun’s relent­less heat

men and flocks are swel­ter­ing,

pines are scorched.

We hear the cuck­oo’s voice; then sweet songs of the tur­tle dove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air….but threat­en­ing north wind sweeps them sud­den­ly aside. The shep­herd trem­bles, fear­ful of vio­lent storm and what may lie ahead.

Ada­gio e piano — Presto e forte

His limbs are now awak­ened from their repose by fear of light­ning’s flash and thun­der’s roar, as gnats and flies buzz furi­ous­ly around.

Presto

Alas, his worst fears were jus­ti­fied, as the heav­ens roar and great hail­stones beat down upon the proud­ly stand­ing corn.

Autumn – Con­cer­to in F Major

Alle­gro

The peas­ant cel­e­brates with song and dance the har­vest safe­ly gath­ered in.

The cup of Bac­chus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slum­ber.

Ada­gio molto

The singing and the danc­ing die away

as cool­ing breezes fan the pleas­ant air,

invit­ing all to sleep

with­out a care.

Alle­gro

The hunters emerge at dawn,

ready for the chase,

with horns and dogs and cries.

Their quar­ry flees while they give chase.

Ter­ri­fied and wound­ed, the prey strug­gles on,

but, har­ried, dies

Win­ter – Con­cer­to in F‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Shiv­er­ing, frozen mid the frosty snow in bit­ing, sting­ing winds;

run­ning to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chat­ter­ing in the bit­ter chill.

Largo

To rest con­tent­ed­ly beside the hearth, while those out­side are drenched by pour­ing rain.

Alle­gro

We tread the icy path slow­ly and cau­tious­ly, for fear of trip­ping and falling.

Then turn abrupt­ly, slip, crash on the ground and, ris­ing, has­ten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolt­ed doors…

this is win­ter, which nonethe­less brings its own delights.

 


You can down­load the Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty Cham­ber Play­ers’ record­ing of Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons” for free here.

See how well you retained your TED-ED les­son with a mul­ti­ple choice quiz, then read more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in less than three weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Animated Cartoons Are Made: A Vintage Primer Filmed Way Back in 1919

in Animation, Comedy, Technology | February 3rd, 2017

Many tech­niques shown in Bray Stu­dios’ 1919 short How Ani­mat­ed Car­toons are Made, above, were ren­dered obso­lete by dig­i­tal advance­ments, but its 21-year-old star, ani­ma­tor Wal­lace Carl­son, seems as if he would fit right in at Cal Arts or Pratt, Class of 2017.

Like many of today’s work­ing ani­ma­tors, the indus­try pio­neer got start­ed ear­ly, get­ting atten­tion (and a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal!) for work made as a young teen.

His com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties also sug­gest that young Carl­son would’ve found a place among the 21st-century’s ani­ma­tion greats (and soon-to-be-greats).

It doesn’t hurt that he’s cute, in an indie Williams­burg Dandy sort of way.

The vin­tage feel of his lit­tle instruc­tion­al film is pret­ty hip these days. It could be the work of a very par­tic­u­lar kind of mil­len­ni­al, famil­iar to fans of Girls, Search Par­ty, or oth­er shows whose char­ac­ters spend a lot of time in cafes, mak­ing art that will find its great­est audi­ence on the inter­net.

You know, down­load some silent clips from the Prelinger Archives, browse the Free Music Archive for a suit­ably jan­g­ly old time tune, and put it all togeth­er in iMovie, mess­ing around with title fonts until you achieve the desired effect. That’s what Carl­son might have been doing, had he been born a hun­dred years lat­er.

Some of his (silent) obser­va­tions about his craft still ring true.

Unless you’re work­ing on your own thing, it’s a good idea to get the boss’ bless­ing on your script before embark­ing on the painstak­ing ani­ma­tion process.

And char­ac­ter eye­brow move­ments remain an excel­lent sto­ry­telling device.

Ani­ma­tors whose tal­ents are more visu­al than ver­bal could take a les­son from Carlson’s kicky peri­od dia­logue—“Gee I just bust­ed a win­dow! Hope I don’t get pinched.”—though I’d advise against turn­ing a character’s dis­abil­i­ty into a punch­line.

While today’s young ani­ma­tors have lit­tle to no expe­ri­ence with film pro­cess­ing, Carlson’s exhaus­tion after pump­ing out draw­ing after draw­ing may strike a chord. The dev­il is still in the details for any­one seek­ing to pro­duce work of a high­er qual­i­ty than that which can be achieved with pur­chase of an app.

It’s also pret­ty cool to see Carl­son pre­fig­ur­ing white board ani­ma­tion 56 years before the inven­tion of dry erase mark­ers, as he demon­strates how to set a scene using his Lit­tle Ras­cals-esque char­ac­ters Mamie and Dreamy Dud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters (1914)

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in a Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She used one of the allud­ed-to archives to cre­ate the trail­er for her play, Zam­boni Godot, open­ing in New York City next month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch “Geometry of Circles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Animation Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

in Animation, Music, Television | January 31st, 2017

Look into the child­hood of any high­ly inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can artist of the past cou­ple gen­er­a­tions, and you’ll prob­a­bly find at least a trace of Sesame Street. The long-run­ning chil­dren’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion series, though wide­ly regard­ed as a sound source of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion for the coun­try’s young­sters, has also done more than its part to expose its quite lit­er­al­ly grow­ing audi­ence to the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties of cre­ation. This has proven espe­cial­ly so in the realm of music, where the show’s per­form­ing guests have includ­ed Her­bie Han­cock, Nina Simone, and Grace Slick — to name just three of the ones we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here.

But Sesame Street, known in its hey­day for a stead­fast refusal to talk down to its view­ers, no mat­ter how small, has also demon­strat­ed a reach far out­side rock, pop, and soul. In 1979 it aired “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” a series of four ani­ma­tions with music by min­i­mal­ist, “repet­i­tive structure”-oriented com­pos­er Philip Glass, who turns 80 years old today. Pro­duc­er Cathryn Aison, accord­ing to the Mup­pet Wiki, com­mis­sioned Glass to score her visu­al work, whose sto­ry­boards had already got­ten the go-ahead from Chil­dren’s Tele­vi­sion Work­shop.

The music she received from Glass to accom­pa­ny this show of shape, line, and col­or “under­scores the ani­ma­tion in a style that close­ly resem­bles the ‘Dance’ num­bers and the North Star vignettes writ­ten dur­ing the same time peri­od as his Ein­stein on the Beach opera.”

“Glass has writ­ten scores to The Tru­man Show and Notes on a Scan­dal and his style is much imi­tat­ed,” writes Tele­graph “opera novice” Sameer Rahim by way of back­ground on the com­poser’s wide range of oth­er work in a review of his five-hour for­mal­ist col­lab­o­ra­tion with exper­i­men­tal the­ater direc­tor Robert Wil­son. “Any­one, like me, born in 1981 has absorbed his musi­cal gram­mar with­out real­is­ing.” Though a few years too young to have caught “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles” in its first run (and hav­ing grown up in the wrong coun­try in any case), the will­ing­ness of cre­ators like Glass to work in all kinds of set­tings, and the will­ing­ness of venues like Sesame Street to have them, plant­ed the seeds for count­less careers, both today’s and tomor­row’s, in art, in math­e­mat­ics, and no doubt even in exper­i­men­tal opera.

Below you can lis­ten to an 47-track col­lec­tion of Glass’ work. The Spo­ti­fy playlist is sim­ply called, “This is: Philip Glass.” If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Watch Philip Glass Remix His Own Music—Then Try it Your­self With a New App

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Betty Boop: Meet the Original Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons, History, Jazz, Music | January 30th, 2017

Jazz Age car­toon flap­per, Bet­ty Boop, inhab­its that rare pan­theon of stars whose fame has not dimmed with time.

While she was nev­er alive per se, her ten year span of active film work places her some­where between James Dean and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. The mar­ket for Boop-col­lectibles is so vast, a defin­i­tive guide was pub­lished in 2003. Most recent­ly, Bet­ty has popped up on pre­paid deb­it cards and emo­ji, and inspired fashion’s enfant ter­ri­ble Jean Paul Gaulti­er to cre­ate a fra­grance in her hon­or.

As not­ed in the brief his­to­ry in the video above, Bet­ty hailed from ani­ma­tor Max Fleischer’s Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios and actress Margie Hines pro­vid­ed her voice.

Phys­i­cal­ly, she bore a close resem­blance to pop­u­lar singer Helen Kane. Their baby­ish vocal stylings were remark­ably sim­i­lar, too. But when Bet­ty put the bite on a cou­ple of Kane’s hits, below, Kane fought back with a law­suit against Para­mount and Max Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios, seek­ing dam­ages and an injunc­tion which would have pre­vent­ed them from mak­ing more Bet­ty Boop car­toons.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed that Kane con­found­ed the court stenog­ra­ph­er who had no idea how to spell the Boop­sian utter­ances she repro­duced before the judge, in an effort to estab­lish own­er­ship. Her case seemed pret­ty sol­id until the defense called Lou Bolton, a the­atri­cal man­ag­er whose client ros­ter had once includ­ed Harlem jazz singer,“Baby Esther” Jones.

Two years before Bet­ty Boop debuted (as an anthro­po­mor­phic poo­dle) in the car­toon short, Dizzy Dish­es, above, Kane and her man­ag­er took in Baby Esther’s act in New York. A cou­ple of weeks’ lat­er the non­sen­si­cal inter­jec­tions that were part of Baby Esther’s schtick, below, began creep­ing into Kane’s per­for­mances.

Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Bolton tes­ti­fied that:

Baby Esther made fun­ny expres­sions and inter­po­lat­ed mean­ing­less sounds at the end of each bar of music in her songs.

“What sounds did she inter­po­late?” asked Louis Phillips, a defense attor­ney.

“Boo-Boo-Boo!” recit­ed Bolton.

“What oth­er sounds?”

“Doo-Doo-Doo!”

“Any oth­ers?”

“Yes, Wha-Da-Da-Da!”

Baby Esther her­self did not attend the tri­al, and did not much ben­e­fit from Kane’s loss. Casu­al car­toon his­to­ri­ans are far more like­ly to iden­ti­fy Kane as the inspi­ra­tion for the ani­mat­ed Boop-oop-a-doop girl. You can hear Kane on cds and Spo­ti­fy, but you won’t find Baby Esther.

With a bit more dig­ging, how­ev­er, you will find Gertrude Saun­ders — the giv­en name of “Baby Esther” — belt­ing it out on Spo­ti­fy. Some of her into­na­tions are a bit rem­i­nis­cent of Bessie Smith… who hat­ed her (not with­out rea­son). Saun­ders appeared in a few movies and died in 1991.

via Urban Intel­lec­tu­als

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Vin­tage Car­toons: Bugs Bun­ny, Bet­ty Boop and More

A 103-Year-Old Harlem Renais­sance Dancer Sees Her­self on Film for the First Time & Becomes an Inter­net Star

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” A 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch The Danish Poet, the Oscar-Winning Animated Film Narrated by Ingmar Bergman’s Muse Liv Ullmann

in Animation | January 18th, 2017


“Liv, you are my Stradi­var­ius,” Ing­mar Bergman once told his muse, Liv Ull­mann, the actress who starred in 12 of the direc­tor’s films, includ­ing Per­sona (1966), The Pas­sion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whis­pers (1972) and Autumn Sonata (1978).

Ull­mann and Bergman’s cin­e­mat­ic lega­cies are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. When you think of one, you think of the oth­er. And yet Ull­mann had an act­ing career before and after Bergman. Above, you can watch The Dan­ish Poet, nar­rat­ed by Ull­mann her­self. Win­ner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film, The Dan­ish Poet fol­lows “Kasper, a poet whose cre­ative well has run dry, on a hol­i­day to Nor­way to meet the famous writer, Sigrid Und­set. As Kasper’s quest for inspi­ra­tion unfolds, it appears that a spell of bad weath­er, an angry dog, slip­pery barn planks, a care­less post­man, hun­gry goats and oth­er seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed fac­tors might play impor­tant roles in the big scheme of things after all.”

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:

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors, (1968)

Ing­mar Bergman Names the 11 Films He Liked Above All Oth­ers (1994)

The Mir­rors of Ing­mar Bergman, Nar­rat­ed with the Poet­ry of Sylvia Plath

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Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fascists Are Made

in Animation, History | January 16th, 2017


Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme, the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds, hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films. (Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films 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:

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Des­ti­no: See the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Film, Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­boards & Ink Draw­ings

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion Demon­strat­ed in 12 Ani­mat­ed Primers

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Jim Henson Creates an Experimental Animation Explaining How We Get Ideas (1966)

in Animation, Television | January 16th, 2017

What do ideas look like?

Jim Henson’s looked very much like a Mup­pet nose, as evi­denced by “The Idea Man,” a 1966 three-minute ani­ma­tion, above.

The film was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be part of a live mul­ti­me­dia per­for­mance on The Mike Dou­glas Show. The real star of that seg­ment was Lim­bo, an abstract Mup­pet, whose phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion was but a dis­em­bod­ied mouth and a pair of eyes, oper­at­ed by two pup­peteers.

Hen­son favored the bod­i­less Lim­bo (who even­tu­al­ly mor­phed in Sesame Street’s Nobody) as a deliv­ery mech­a­nism for some of his more pro­found mus­ings.

His vocal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion imbued Lim­bo with a fair­ly Eey­ore-ish out­look, though occa­sion­al­ly one catch­es an echo of Henson’s most famous cre­ation—Ker­mit the Frog, mak­ing a brief, unbilled appear­ance, here, along with John F. Kennedy, Mad mag­a­zine’s Alfred E. Neu­man, and Kuk­la of Kuk­la, Fran and Ollie.

Lim­bo, now just a dis­em­bod­ied voice as far as you and I are con­cerned, bemoans that all the real­ly good ideas have already been taken—the safe­ty pin, tele­vi­sion, Atom­ic ener­gy…

Even­tu­al­ly, though, he suc­cumbs to the sort of excit­ed curios­i­ty that fired his cre­ator, con­ced­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of one “glo­ri­ous­ly mar­velous, great big beau­ti­ful idea,” visu­al­ized as the sort of gid­dy, col­lage pile-up beloved by Ter­ry Gilliam.

Watch more of Henson’s exper­i­men­tal short films here.

“The Idea Man” will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Mesmerizing GIFs Illustrate the Art of Traditional Japanese Wood Joinery — All Done Without Screws, Nails, or Glue

in Animation, Architecture, Art | January 12th, 2017

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try, whether used to build a din­ner table or the entire house con­tain­ing it, does­n’t use screws, nails, adhe­sives, or any oth­er kind of non-wood­en fas­ten­er. So how do its con­struc­tions hold togeth­er? How have all those thou­sands of wood­en hous­es, tables, and count­less oth­er objects and struc­tures stood up for dozens and even hun­dreds of years, and so solid­ly at that? The secret lies in the art of join­ery and its elab­o­rate cut­ting tech­niques refined, since its ori­gin in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry, through gen­er­a­tions and gen­er­a­tions of steadi­ly increas­ing mas­tery — albeit by a steadi­ly dwin­dling num­ber of mas­ters.

“Even until recent times when car­pen­try books began to be pub­lished, mas­tery of these wood­work­ing tech­niques remained the fierce­ly guard­ed secret of fam­i­ly car­pen­try guilds,” writes Spoon & Tam­ago’s John­ny Strat­e­gy. If you find it dif­fi­cult to grasp how sim­ply cut­ting two pieces of wood in a cer­tain way could unite them as if they’d grown togeth­er in the first place, have a look at a Twit­ter feed called The Join­ery, run by a young enthu­si­ast who has col­lect­ed a great many of these car­pen­try books. He’s used them, in com­bi­na­tion with mechan­i­cal design soft­ware skills pre­sum­ably honed in his career in the auto indus­try, to cre­ate ele­gant­ly ani­mat­ed visu­al expla­na­tions of Japan­ese car­pen­try’s tried-and-true join­ery meth­ods.

Arch­dai­ly points to the work of archi­tect Shigeru Ban as one exam­ple of how this “unique­ly Japan­ese wood aes­thet­ic” has sur­vived into the mod­ern day, but the man behind The Join­ery imag­ines even more ambi­tious pos­si­bil­i­ties: “3D print­ing and wood­work­ing machin­ery has enabled us to cre­ate com­pli­cat­ed forms fair­ly eas­i­ly,” he tells Spoon & Tam­a­go. “I want to orga­nize all the join­ery tech­niques and cre­ate a cat­a­log of them all,” so that any­one with the tools might poten­tial­ly make use of their beau­ty and stur­di­ness in hith­er­to unimag­ined new con­texts. And so anoth­er tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese craft that has looked doomed to out­mod­ed obliv­ion, what with all the more advanced and effi­cient fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion tech­niques devel­oped over the past 1400 years, may well thrive in the future. To learn more about the art of join­ery, you’ll want to explore this 1995 book, The Com­plete Japan­ese Join­ery.

via Arch­Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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