The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Public Domain: A Deeper Dive Into the Collection

Oriental Tooth Paste

Every year for the past decade or so, we‘ve seen new, dire pro­nounce­ments of the death of print, along with new, upbeat rejoin­ders. This year is no dif­fer­ent, though the prog­no­sis has seemed espe­cial­ly pos­i­tive of late in robust appraisals of the sit­u­a­tion from enti­ties as diver­gent as The Onion’s A.V. Club and finan­cial giant Deloitte. I, for one, find this encour­ag­ing. And yet, even if all print­ed media were in decline, it would still be the case that the his­to­ry of the mod­ern world will most­ly be told in the his­to­ry of print. And iron­i­cal­ly, it is online media that has most enabled the means to make that his­to­ry avail­able to every­one, in dig­i­tal archives that won’t age or burn down.

One such archive, the British Library’s Flickr Com­mons project, con­tains over one mil­lion images from the 17th, 18th, and 19th cen­turies. As the Library wrote in their announce­ment of these images’ release, they cov­er “a star­tling mix of sub­jects. There are maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, colour­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings and so much more that even we are not aware of.” Microsoft dig­i­tized the books rep­re­sent­ed here, and then donat­ed them to the Library for release into the Pub­lic Domain.

The Aldine “O'er Land and Sea.” Library

One of the quirky fea­tures of this decid­ed­ly quirky assem­blage is the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor, a bot-run blog that gen­er­ates “ran­dom­ly select­ed small illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tions, post­ed on the hour.” At the time of writ­ing, it has giv­en us an ad for the rather cul­tur­al­ly dat­ed arti­fact “Ori­en­tal Tooth Paste,” a prod­uct “pre­pared by Jews­bury & Brown.” Many of the oth­er selec­tions have con­sid­er­ably less fris­son. Nonethe­less, writes the Library, often “our newest col­league,” the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor, “plucks from obscu­ri­ty, places all before you, and leaves you to work out the rest. Or not.”

Tiger

The Flickr Com­mons site itself gives us a much more con­ven­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion, with images—most of them dis­cov­ered by the Mechan­i­cal Curator—grouped into sev­er­al dozen themed albums. We have “Book cov­ers found by the com­mu­ni­ty from the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion,” fea­tur­ing images like that of The Texas Tramp or Sol­id Sam the Yan­kee Her­cules, a pulpy title pub­lished in 1890 by the Aldine Library’s “O’er Land and Sea” series. And just above, see an illus­tra­tion from the 1892 pub­li­ca­tion To the Snows of Tibet through China…With Illus­tra­tions and a Map. Each image’s page offers links to oth­er illus­tra­tions in the book and those of oth­er books pub­lished in the same year.

Cottager's Sabbath

Here, we have a strik­ing illus­tra­tion from an 1841 edi­tion of The Cottager’s Sab­bath, a poem… with … vignettes… by H. War­ren. This image comes from “Archi­tec­ture, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion.”

Pilgrims

We also have odd­i­ties like the illus­tra­tion above, from 1885’s “A Can­ter­bury Pil­grim­age, rid­den, writ­ten, and illus­trat­ed by J. and E.R.P.” This is to be found in “Cycling, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from [you guessed it] the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion,” which also con­tains plen­ty of more com­mer­cial illus­tra­tions like the 1893 “Paten­tee of Keating’s Spring Fork.”

Spring Fork

Speak­ing of com­merce, we also have an album devot­ed to adver­tise­ments, found by the com­mu­ni­ty from, yes, the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor Col­lec­tion. Here you will dis­cov­er ads like “Ori­en­tal Tooth Paste” or that below for “Gentlemen’s & Boy’s Cloth­ing 25 Per Cent. Under Usu­al Lon­don Prices” from 1894. Our con­cep­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land as exces­sive­ly for­mal gets con­firmed again and again in these ads, which, like the ran­dom choice at the top of the post, con­tain their share of awk­ward or humor­ous his­tor­i­cal notions.

Gentlemen's Clothing

Doubt­less none of the pro­to-Mad Men of these very Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tions fore­saw such a mar­vel as the Mechan­i­cal Cura­tor. Much less might they have fore­seen such a mech­a­nism aris­ing with­out a mon­e­tiz­ing scheme. But thanks to this free, new­fan­gled algorithm’s efforts, and much assis­tance from “the com­mu­ni­ty,” we have a dig­i­tal record that shows us how pub­lic dis­course shaped print cul­ture, or the oth­er way around. A fas­ci­nat­ing, and at times bewil­der­ing, fea­ture of this phe­nom­e­nal archive is the require­ment that we our­selves sup­ply most of the cul­tur­al con­text for these aus­tere­ly pre­sent­ed images.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2,200 Rad­i­cal Polit­i­cal Posters Dig­i­tized: A New Archive

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Down­load for Free 2.6 Mil­lion Images from Books Pub­lished Over Last 500 Years on Flickr

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

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

A Look Inside Hannah Arendt’s Personal Library: Download Marginalia from 90 Books (Heidegger, Kant, Marx & More)

Hannah_Arendt

It does seem pos­si­ble, I think, to over­val­ue the sig­nif­i­cance of a writer’s library to his or her own lit­er­ary pro­duc­tions. We all hold on to books that have long since ceased to have any pull on us, and lose track of books that have great­ly influ­enced us. What we keep or don’t keep can be as much a mat­ter of hap­pen­stance or sen­ti­ment as delib­er­ate per­son­al archiv­ing. But while we may not always be con­scious cura­tors of our lives’ effects, those effects still speak for us when we are gone in ways we may nev­er have intend­ed. In the case of famous—and famous­ly controversial—thinkers like Han­nah Arendt, what is left behind will always con­sti­tute a body of evi­dence. And in some cases—such as that of Arendt’s teacher and one­time lover Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger’s glar­ing­ly anti-Semit­ic Black Note­books—the evi­dence can be irrev­o­ca­bly damn­ing.

Heidegger Early Greek

In Arendt’s case, we have no such smok­ing gun to sub­stan­ti­ate argu­ments that, despite her own back­ground, Arendt was anti-Jew­ish and blamed the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. Dur­ing the so-called “Eich­mann wars” in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, a tor­rent of crit­i­cism bom­bard­ed Arendt’s Eich­mann in Jerusalem, the com­pi­la­tion of dis­patch­es she penned as an observ­er of the Nazi arch-bureaucrat’s tri­al. These days, writes Corey Robin in The Nation, “while the con­tro­ver­sy over Eich­mann remains, the con­tro­ver­sial­ists have moved on.” The debate now seems more cen­tered on Arendt’s book itself than on her moti­va­tions. What do Arendt’s obser­va­tions reveal to us today about the log­ic of total­i­tar­i­an­ism and geno­ci­dal state actions? One way to approach the ques­tions of mean­ing in Eich­mann, and in her mon­u­men­tal The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, is to exam­ine the sources of her thought—and her use of those sources.

Arendt Nicomachean

Arendt’s library—much of it on view online thanks to Bard col­lege—offers us a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to do just that, not only by giv­ing us access to the spe­cif­ic edi­tions and trans­la­tions that she her­self read and saved (for what­ev­er rea­son), but also by offer­ing insight into what Arendt con­sid­ered impor­tant enough in those texts to under­line and anno­tate. In Bard’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of “Arendt Mar­gin­a­lia”—selec­tions of her anno­tat­ed books in down­load­able PDFs—we see a polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy informed by Aris­to­tle (see a page from her copy of Nico­machean Ethics above), Pla­to, and Kant, but also by con­ser­v­a­tive Ger­man polit­i­cal the­o­rist Carl Schmitt, a mem­ber and active sup­port­er of Nazism, and of course, by Hei­deg­ger, whose work occu­pies a cen­tral place in her library: in Ger­man and Eng­lish (like his Ear­ly Greek Think­ing above, inscribed by the trans­la­tor), and in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sources.

While it may go too far to claim, as promi­nent schol­ar Bernard Wasser­stein did in 2009, that an exam­i­na­tion of Arendt’s sources shows her inter­nal­iz­ing the val­ues of Nazis and anti-Semi­tes, the pre­pon­der­ance of con­ser­v­a­tive Ger­man thinkers in her per­son­al library does give us a sense of her intel­lec­tu­al lean­ings. But we can­not draw broad con­clu­sions from a cur­so­ry sur­vey of a life­time of read­ing and re-read­ing, though we do see a par­tic­u­lar­ly Aris­totelian strain in her think­ing: that the indi­vid­ual is only as healthy as his or her polit­i­cal cul­ture. What schol­ars of Arendt will find in Bard’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion are ample clues to the devel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion of her phi­los­o­phy over time. What lay read­ers will find is the out­line of a course on the sources of Arendt-ian thought, includ­ing not only Greeks and Ger­mans, but the Amer­i­can poet Robert Low­ell, who wrote a glow­ing pro­file of Arendt and con­tributed at least four signed books of his to her library.

I say “at least” because the Bard dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is yet incom­plete, rep­re­sent­ing only a por­tion of the phys­i­cal media in the college’s phys­i­cal archive of “approx­i­mate­ly 4,000 vol­umes, ephemera and pam­phlets that made up the library in Han­nah Arendt’s last apart­ment in New York City.” What we don’t have online are books inscribed to her by Jew­ish schol­ar and mys­tic Ger­shom Scholem, by W.H. Auden and Ran­dall Jar­rell, and many oth­ers. Nonethe­less the “Arendt Mar­gin­a­lia” gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to peer into a writer and scholar’s process, and see her wres­tle with the thought of her pre­de­ces­sors and con­tem­po­raries. The full Arendt col­lec­tion gives us even more to sift through, includ­ing pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence and record­ings of pub­lic speech­es. The dig­i­ti­za­tion of these sources offers many oppor­tu­ni­ties for those who can­not trav­el to New York and access the phys­i­cal archives to delve into Arendt’s intel­lec­tu­al world in ways pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able to pro­fes­sion­al aca­d­e­mics.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Enter the Han­nah Arendt Archives & Dis­cov­er Rare Audio Lec­tures, Man­u­scripts, Mar­gin­a­lia, Let­ters, Post­cards & More

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

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

2,200 Radical Political Posters Digitized: A New Archive

labadiecollectionposter07

I recent­ly heard some­one say his col­lege-bound nephew asked him, “What’s a union?” Whether you love unions, loathe them, or remain indif­fer­ent, the fact that an osten­si­bly edu­cat­ed young per­son might have such a sig­nif­i­cant gap in their knowl­edge should cause con­cern. A his­toric labor con­flict, after all, pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for Ronald Rea­gan to prove his bona fides to the new con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that swept him into pow­er. His crush­ing of the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PATCO) in 1981 set the tone for the ensu­ing 30 years or so of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, with the labor move­ment fight­ing an uphill bat­tle all the way. Pri­or to that defin­ing event, unions held sway over pol­i­tics local and nation­al, and had con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er blocks in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape through decades of strug­gle against oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing work­ing con­di­tions.

In prac­ti­cal terms, unions have stood in the way of cap­i­tal’s unceas­ing search for cheap labor and new con­sumer mar­kets; in social and cul­tur­al terms, the pol­i­tics of labor have rep­re­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenge to con­ser­v­a­tives as well, by way of a vibrant assem­blage of anar­chists, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans, anti-colo­nial­ists, com­mu­nists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, paci­fists, fem­i­nists, social­ists, etc. A host of rad­i­cal isms flour­ished among orga­nized work­ers espe­cial­ly in the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, find­ing their voice in newslet­ters, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, leaflets, and posters—fragile medi­ums that do not often weath­er well the rav­ages of time. Thus the advent of dig­i­tal archives has been a boon for stu­dents and his­to­ri­ans of work­ers’ move­ments and oth­er pop­ulist polit­i­cal groundswells. One such archive, the Joseph A. Labadie Col­lec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Library, has recent­ly announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of over 2,200 posters from their col­lec­tion, a data­base that spans the globe and the spec­trum of left­ist polit­i­cal speech and iconog­ra­phy.

labadiecollectionposter06

We have clev­er­ly-designed visu­al puns like the Chica­go Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World poster just above, titled “What is what in the world of labor?” Pro­mot­ing itself as “One Big Union of All Labor,” the IWW made some of the most ambi­tious pro­pa­gan­da, like the 1912 poster (mid­dle) in which an “Indus­tri­al Co-Oper­a­tive Com­mon­wealth” replaces the tyran­ny of the cap­i­tal­ist, who is told by his “trust man­ag­er” peer, “Our rule is end­ed, dis­mount and go to work.” In this post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fan­ta­sy, the IWW promis­es that “A few hours of use­ful work insure all a lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing,” though it only hints at the details of this utopi­an arrange­ment. Up top, we have an ornate May Day poster from 1895 by Wal­ter Crane, hop­ing for a “Mer­rie Eng­land” with “No Child Toil­ers,” “Pro­duc­tion for Use Not For Prof­it,” and “The Land For the Peo­ple,” among oth­er, more nation­al­ist, sen­ti­ments like “Eng­land Should Feed Her Own Peo­ple.”

labadiecollectionposter05

“While all of the posters were scanned at high res­o­lu­tion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “they appear online as thumb­nails with nav­i­ga­tion to zoom.” You can down­load the images, but only the small­er, thumb­nail size in most cas­es. These hun­dreds of posters rep­re­sent “just a por­tion of the mate­r­i­al in the Labadie Collection”—named for a “Detroit-area labor orga­niz­er, anar­chist, and author” who “had the idea for the social protest archive at the uni­ver­si­ty in 1911.” You can view oth­er polit­i­cal arti­facts in the UMich library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here, includ­ing anar­chist pam­phlets, polit­i­cal but­tons, and a dig­i­tal pho­to col­lec­tion. The col­lec­tion as a whole gives us a poten­tial­ly inspir­ing, or infu­ri­at­ing, mosa­ic of polit­i­cal thought at its bold­est and most graph­i­cal­ly assertive from a time before online peti­tions and hash­tag cam­paigns took over as the pri­ma­ry cir­cu­la­tors of pop­u­lar rad­i­cal thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic (where you can find some oth­er big, visu­al­ly strik­ing posters)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

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

New Archive Offers Free Access to 22,000 Literary Documents From Great British & American Writers

LF_HardyT_001_582px

Thomas Hardy—archi­tect, poet, and writer (above)—gave us the fierce, stormy romance Far From the Madding Crowd, cur­rent­ly impress­ing crit­ics in a film adap­ta­tion by Thomas Vin­ter­berg. He also gave us Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure, books whose per­sis­tent­ly grim out­look might make them too depress­ing by far were it not for Hardy’s engross­ing prose, unfor­get­table char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, unshak­able sense of place. Hardy set most of his nov­els in a region he called Wes­sex, which—much like William Faulkn­er’s Yoknapatawpha—is a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized recre­ation of his rur­al home­town of Dorch­ester and its sur­round­ing coun­ties.

Hardy Revisions

Now, thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, we can learn all about this ancient region in South West Eng­land, and Hardy’s trans­mu­ta­tion of it, through Hardy’s own proof copy of a 1905 book by Frank R. Heath called Dorch­ester (Dorset) and its Sur­round­ings, with revi­sions in Hardy’s hand. In the excerpt above, for exam­ple, from page 36 of this schol­ar­ly work, the author dis­cuss­es Hardy’s use of Dorch­ester in The May­or of Cast­er­bridge and the so-called “Wes­sex Poems.” In the mar­gins on the right, we see Hardy’s cor­rec­tions and gloss­es. Though this may not seem the most excit­ing piece of Hardy mem­o­ra­bil­ia, for stu­dents of the author and his invest­ment in a rur­al cor­ner of Eng­land, it is indeed a trea­sure.

St Juliots Hardy

The Hardy archive also con­tains scans of the author’s cor­re­spon­dence, man­u­scripts and signed type­scripts, and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings, like that of St. Juliot’s Church in Corn­wall, above. This exten­sive dig­i­tal Hardy col­lec­tion is but one of many housed in the Ran­som Cen­ter’s Project Reveal, an acronym for “Read and View Eng­lish & Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture.” Read and view you can indeed, through the inti­ma­cy of first drafts, man­u­scripts, per­son­al writ­ing, and oth­er ephemera.

Wilde Salome

See, for exam­ple, a hand­writ­ten draft of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, in French, (excerpt above). Below, we have a hand­writ­ten list of Robert Louis Steven­son’s favorite books, and fur­ther down, a manuscript draft of Kather­ine Mans­field­’s “Now I am a plant, a weed” from her per­son­al poet­ry note­book.

MSS_StevensonRL_2_1_066

Oth­er authors includ­ed in the Project Reveal archive include Char­lotte Perkins Gilman, Hart Crane, Hen­ry James, Joseph Con­rad, and William Thack­er­ay. The project, writes the Ran­som Cen­ter in a press release, gen­er­at­ed more than 22,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images, avail­able for use by any­one for any pur­pose with­out restric­tion or fees” (but with attri­bu­tion). The lit­er­ary store­house on dis­play here only adds to an already essen­tial col­lec­tion of arti­facts the Ran­som Cen­ter hous­es, such as the papers of Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, syl­labi, anno­tat­ed books, and man­u­scripts from David Fos­ter Wal­lace, scrap­books of Har­ry Hou­di­ni, and the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en. See a com­plete list of con­tents of the Ran­som Cen­ter’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here, and learn more about this amaz­ing library in the heart of Texas at their main site.

MSS_MansfieldK_1_4_003

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Library of Con­gress Launch­es New Online Poet­ry Archive, Fea­tur­ing 75 Years of Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Lit­er­ary Remains of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Will Rest in Texas

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

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

The Sketchbook Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketchbooks, Created by Artists from 135 Countries

sketchbook2

Artist: Helen Sander­son

If you love some­thing give it away.

If it doesn’t come back to you, it was nev­er real­ly yours…

Or, it’s a labor of love you cre­at­ed under the aus­pices of the Brook­lyn Art Library, with the full knowl­edge that giv­ing it away is a cost of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Every year, thou­sands of artists, from the expe­ri­enced to the fledg­ling, pay a nom­i­nal fee to fill a 5x7 sketch­book with a cus­tom bar­code. Upon com­ple­tion, the books are to be mailed back to the one room Art Library, to become part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion, cur­rent­ly over 34,000 vol­umes strong (24,000 of which appear online). Vis­i­tors receive free library cards that allow them to view as many vol­umes as they like in-house, three at a time.

Artists will­ing to cough up a slight­ly more sub­stan­tial fee can have their book dig­i­tized for online view­ing at The Sketch­book Project.

sketchbook3

Artist: Tim Oliveira

In their vir­gin state, the sketch­books are uni­form. From there, any­thing goes, pro­vid­ed they retain their orig­i­nal height and width, and swell to no more than an inch thick. (Messy, gooey books might face rejec­tion, in part because they threat­en to con­t­a­m­i­nate the herd.)

Dip in at ran­dom and you will find an aston­ish­ing array of fin­ished work: messy, metic­u­lous, inti­mate, inscrutable, self-mock­ing, sin­cere, abstract, nar­ra­tive, care­ful­ly plot­ted, utter­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al, accom­plished, ama­teur — ren­dered in a wide vari­ety of media, includ­ing ball point pen and col­lage.

sketchbook4

Artist: Estel­la Yu

My favorite way to browse the col­lec­tion, whether in per­son or online, is by select­ing a theme, just as the artists do when sign­ing up for the annu­al project. 2016’s themes include  “sand­wich,” “great hopes and mas­sive fail­ures,” and “Ahhh! Mon­ster!”

(“I’ll choose my own theme” is a peren­ni­al menu offer­ing.)

The theme that guid­ed the artists whose work is pub­lished here­in is “Things Found on Restau­rant Nap­kins.” Would you have guessed?

sketcbhook5

Artist: Christo­pher Mof­fitt

You can also search on spe­cif­ic words or medi­ums, artists’ names, and geo­graph­ic loca­tions. To date, The Sketch­book Project has received sketch­books by cre­ative peo­ple from 135+ coun­tries.

Those ready to take the Brook­lyn Art Library’s Sketch­book Project plunge can enlist here. Don’t fret about your qualifications—co-founders Steven Peter­man and Shane Zuck­er have made things demo­c­ra­t­ic, which is to say uncu­rat­ed, by design.

sketchbook6

Artist: Bet­ty Esper­an­za

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 422 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her 2011 sketch­book, “I’m a Scav­enger” is housed in the Brook­lyn Art Library. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

NASA Puts Online a Big Collection of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Download and Use


When we envi­sion the fruits of the research of the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (aka NASA), we tend to think of images. I think I exag­ger­ate not at all when I say that the nev­er-before-seen view of the Earth from space gave human­i­ty a whole new per­spec­tive, no pun intend­ed, on our very exis­tence. But you don’t have to strain too hard to think of his­tor­i­cal­ly momen­tous NASA sounds, either: “Hous­ton we’ve had a prob­lem,” “One giant leap for mankind.”

If you can’t think of more than those two, why not spend some lis­ten­ing time with NASA’s new Sound­cloud account, or alter­na­tive­ly perus­ing the NASA Sounds web site, which fea­tures a larg­er num­ber of down­load­able mp3s. “There are rock­et sounds, the chirps of satel­lites and equip­ment, light­ning on Jupiter, inter­stel­lar plas­ma and radio emis­sions,” writes Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Music’s Peter Kirn. “And in one nod to human­i­ty, and not just Amer­i­can human­i­ty, there’s the Sovi­et satel­lite Sput­nik (among many projects that are inter­na­tion­al in nature).” Bet­ter still, “you’re free to use all of these sounds as you wish, because NASA’s own audio isn’t copy­right­ed.”

We’ve includ­ed here three of NASA’s Sound­cloud playlists: space shut­tle mis­sion sounds, solar sys­tem and beyond sounds, and Pres­i­dent Kennedy sounds. When you’ve lis­tened through all NASA them­selves have uploaded, you can find more sound clips of out­er-space inter­est in NASA’s liked sounds, a col­lec­tion of the ambi­ent sounds of space explo­ration that include those of a space suit­’s inter­nal pump, a Japan­ese exper­i­ment mod­ule, and, of course, a space toi­let — a con­stant son­ic com­pan­ion on any trip to the final fron­tier.

Please note that you can down­load the Sound­cloud files by fol­low­ing these instruc­tions. From the NASA Sounds web page, you can down­load files by right click­ing on them and then sav­ing them to your hard dri­ve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Whitney Museum Puts Online 21,000 Works of American Art, By 3,000 Artists

soir bleu

Soir Bleu by Edward Hop­per, 1914.

The trend has now become delight­ful­ly clear: the world’s best-known art insti­tu­tions have got around to the impor­tant busi­ness of mak­ing their col­lec­tions freely view­able online. We’ve already fea­tured the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Rijksmu­se­um, and the Nation­al Gallery (as well as new, inter­net-based insti­tu­tions such as the Google Art Project and Art.sy). Today, we bring news that the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art has joined in as well.

the steerage

The Steer­age by Alfred Stieglitz, 1907.

“Last week, the Whit­ney Muse­um mas­sive­ly over­hauled its online data­base,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Bec­ca Roth­feld. “The muse­um of Amer­i­can art expand­ed its online col­lec­tion from a pal­try 700 works to around 21,000. The dig­i­tal reserve now includes over 3,000 pieces by Edward Hop­per, in addi­tion to offer­ings from a wide swathe of art from the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the likes of Mike Kel­ley and Mar­tin Wong.” Roth­feld also notes that all this dig­i­ti­za­tion has hap­pened dur­ing the muse­um’s phys­i­cal move, cur­rent­ly under­way, to a build­ing in the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict with 63,000 com­bined square feet of indoor and out­door gallery space.

morning sky

Morn­ing Sky by Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, 1916.

We non-New York­ers have, of course, already booked our flights to expe­ri­ence the Whit­ney’s new digs. But since the build­ing won’t actu­al­ly open to the pub­lic until May, all of us, no mat­ter where we live, will have to con­tent our­selves for the moment with what the muse­um has put online so far. For­tu­nate­ly, it has put a lot online: you can browse their dig­i­tal col­lec­tions by artist here; you’ll notice a great deal of Jack­son Pol­lock, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Edward Hop­per, and Andy Warhol already avail­able for your brows­ing plea­sure.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art: Photos, Sketchbooks, Letters & More

Photograph of Nigel Henderson by Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Pho­to­graph of Nigel Hen­der­son via Nigel Hen­der­son Estate

If you’re like me, one of the first items on your itin­er­ary when you hit a new city is the art muse­ums. Of course one, two, even three or four vis­its to the world’s major col­lec­tions can’t begin to exhaust the wealth of paint­ing, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, and more con­tained with­in. Rotat­ing and spe­cial exhibits make tak­ing it all in even less fea­si­ble. That’s why we’re so grate­ful for the dig­i­tal archives that insti­tu­tions like the Get­tyLA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Nation­al Gallery, and the British Library make avail­able free online. Now anoth­er muse­um, Britain’s Tate Mod­ern, gets into the dig­i­tal archive are­na with around 70,000 dig­i­tized works of art in their online gallery.

Sketch of the bus stop

“Sketch of the bus stop” from the estate of Josef Her­man

But wait, there’s more. Much more. A sep­a­rate dig­i­tal archive—the Tate’s Archives & Access project—offers up a trove of mate­ri­als you’re unlike­ly to encounter much, if at all, in their phys­i­cal spaces. That’s because this col­lec­tion dig­i­tizes lit­tle-seen “artists’ mate­ri­als, includ­ing pho­tographs, sketch­books, diaries, let­ters and objects, doc­u­ment­ing the lives and work­ing process­es of British born and émi­gré artists, from 1900 to the present.” These include, writes The Guardian, “the love let­ters of painter Paul Nash, the detailed sculp­ture records of Bar­bra Hep­worth, and 3,000 pho­tographs by Nigel Hen­der­son, pro­vid­ing a behind-the-scenes back­stage look at London’s 1950s jazz scene.” Thus far, the Tate has uploaded about 6,000 items, “includ­ing 52 col­lec­tions relat­ing to 79 artists.” At the Tate archive, you’ll find pho­tographs like that of painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nigel Hen­der­son (see top of the post) and also paint­ings by the high­ly regard­ed Pol­ish-British real­ist, Josef Her­man (right above).

Squared-up drawings of soldiers 1920-1921 by David Jones 1895-1974

“Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers” via The estate of David Jones

You’ll find pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es like the 1920–21 Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers by painter and poet David Jones, above, one of 109 sketch­es and two sketch­books avail­able by the same artist. You’ll find let­ters like that below, writ­ten by sculp­tor Ken­neth Armitage to his wife Joan Moore in 1951—one of hun­dreds. These are but the tini­est sam­pling of what is now “but a drop in the ocean,” The Guardian writes, “giv­en the more than 1 mil­lion items in the [phys­i­cal] archive.” Archive head Adri­an Glew calls the col­lec­tion “a nation­al archival trea­sure” that is also “for the enrich­ment of the whole world.”

Letter from Kenneth Armitage to Joan Moore [1951] by Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002

Let­ter from Ken­neth Armitage to Joan Moore via the The Ken­neth Armitage Foun­da­tion

The remain­der of the dig­i­tized Archives & Access collection—52, 000 items in total—should be avail­able by the sum­mer of 2015. While view­ing art and arti­facts online is cer­tain­ly no sub­sti­tute for see­ing them in per­son, it’s bet­ter than nev­er see­ing them at all. In any case, mil­lions of pieces are only view­able by cura­tors and spe­cial­ists and nev­er make their way to gallery floors. But with the appear­ance and expan­sion of free online archives like the Tate’s, that sit­u­a­tion will shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly, open­ing up nation­al trea­sures to inde­pen­dent schol­ars and ordi­nary art lovers the world over.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

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

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.