The Vincent van Gogh “Starry Night” LEGO Set Is Now Available: It’s Created in Collaboration with MoMA

in Art, Creativity, Design, Museums | June 6th, 2022

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night is one of the most pop­u­lar and eas­i­ly rec­og­nized paint­ings on earth. If you haven’t seen it per­son, you’ve prob­a­bly seen it repro­duced on a post­card, a tote bag, or a t‑shirt.

Musi­cian Shel­don Clarke was a Star­ry Night vir­gin when he start­ed work­ing as a secu­ri­ty offi­cer at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art:

I knew noth­ing about Vin­cent or Star­ry Night before I start­ed work­ing here. And I remem­ber the first time I stood at that painting…first of all, I was so amazed at the reac­tion of the pub­lic. There was always a group of peo­ple just fight­ing to look at it or take pic­tures or take self­ies and I was just curi­ous to know like, who is this painter and why is every­one so excit­ed to see this piece?

Now, Clarke is suf­fi­cient­ly well versed to hold forth on both the nature of the art­work and cir­cum­stances in which the artist cre­at­ed it. He is, with Senior Paint­ings Con­ser­va­tor Anny Avi­ram,  Asso­ciate Cura­tor Cara Manes, and Robert Kastler, direc­tor of Imag­ing and Visu­al Resources, one of four MoMA staffers to give some con­text, while try­ing their hands at the new Star­ry Night LEGO set.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between MoMA and LEGO, the set rein­ter­prets Van Gogh’s thick impas­to brush­work in 2316 tiny plas­tic bricks, includ­ing a mini fig­ure of the artist, equipped with paint­brush, palette, easel, and an adjustable arm for posi­tion­ing him at suf­fi­cient dis­tance to gain per­spec­tive on his world famous work.

The set is the win­ning entry in a LEGO Ideas com­pe­ti­tion. Design­er Tru­man Cheng, a 25-year-old LEGO fan and PhD can­di­date focus­ing on  med­ical robot­ics and mag­net­ic con­trolled sur­gi­cal endo­scopes. He had long want­ed to ren­der The Star­ry Night in LEGO, bu its exe­cu­tion required a light­bulb moment:

One day, I was just play­ing with LEGO parts, and I real­ized that stack­ing LEGO plates togeth­er at ran­dom inter­vals looks a lot like van Gogh’s icon­ic brush strokes. I couldn’t help but won­der what the full paint­ing would look like with this build style.

As Avi­ram and Kastler point out, the set cleaves faith­ful­ly to Van Gogh’s lim­it­ed palette. Some LEGO fans report that build­ing up the blue back­ground lay­ers is the most chal­leng­ing aspect of assem­bling the 11”x14.5” kit:

I’m 54 and the col­ors, being kind of close, were play­ing games with my eyes. LOL This is my favorite LEGO of all time! In clos­ing, if you haven’t heard the song, Vin­cent  by Don McLean, I sug­gest you take a lis­ten to this song as you stare at this LEGO mas­ter­piece.

Order LEGO’s Vin­cent van Gogh - The Star­ry Night set from Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Zoom Into a Super High Res­o­lu­tion Pho­to of Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

- 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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Ergonomics Experts Explain How to Set Up Your Desk

in Biology, Design, Life | April 15th, 2022

Ergonom­ics aren’t a joke, Jim. â€” Dwight Schrute, The Office

Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions are snow­balling faster than ever in the third decade of the 21st-cen­tu­ry. A home office set-up that would have been cause for pride in 2019 seems woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate now.

Just ask any­one whose desk job piv­ot­ed to vir­tu­al in March of 2020.

So, per­haps don’t take phys­i­cal ther­a­pist’s Jon Cinkay’s near­ly three year old advice in the above Wall Street Jour­nal video as gospel, but rather as a chance to check in with your carpal tun­nels, your aching neck and back, and your favorite refur­bished office fur­ni­ture out­let.

Cinkay assumes that your desk is a stan­dard 29 — 30” tall, which is not the case here, but okay…

Our bod­ies’ unique dimen­sions mean that no desk can be a one-size-fits-all propo­si­tion, and Cinkay makes a robust case for mak­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions:

1. Adjust your desk chair

Cinkay rec­om­mends adjust­ing the seat height until your elbows are bent at a 90-degree angle when your fin­gers are on the key­board. (As of this writ­ing, key­boards have not yet become obso­lete.)

In a 2020 arti­cle for the Hos­pi­tal of Spe­cial Surgery, he also rec­om­mends mak­ing sure your chair’s arm­rests can fit under your desk to avoid pos­tur­al com­pro­mis­es when reach­ing for your key­board or mouse.

He also wise­ly advis­es look­ing for a chair with a min­i­mum 30-day war­ran­ty so you don’t get stuck with an expen­sive mis­take.

2. Con­sid­er a foot­stool

If crank­ing your desk chair to the per­fect height leaves your feet dan­gling, you’ll need a foot­stool to help your knees main­tain a prop­er 90-degree bend. If you can’t invest in a high tech adjustable foot­stool, a ream of paper will do in a pinch.

Tech expert David Zhang, who we’ll hear from soon below, rests his cute striped socks on a yoga mat.

Who among us does not have dozens of things that could be pressed into ser­vice as a foot­stool?

I am left to pon­der the fate of the dec­o­ra­tive needle­point­ed foot­stools my late grand­moth­er and her sis­ters scat­tered around their liv­ing rooms.

Can an actu­al foot­stool be con­sid­ered a foot­stool hack?

3. Adjust the height of your mon­i­tor 

To avoid neck pain, use a mon­i­tor stand to posi­tion the top of the screen lev­el with your eyes. If you’re work­ing with a lap­top, you’ll need a stand, a sep­a­rate key­board and and a mouse.

Cinkay’s mon­i­tor stand hack is — you guessed it — a ream of paper.

Mine is 5000 Years of the Art of India which is about the same thick­ness as a ream of paper and was in easy reach at the library where I work.

To judge by some of the com­ments on Cinkay’s Wall Street Jour­nal video, his key­board dates to the Stone Age.

What­ev­er his key­board vin­tage, the afore­men­tioned arti­cle did sug­gest gel wrist rests to relieve pres­sure on the sen­si­tive carpal tun­nel area, but watch out! Zhang is not a fan!

4. Get a Head­set

Leav­ing aside the fact that the phone in ques­tion appears to be a land­line, a head­set allows you to keep your head on straight, thus min­i­miz­ing neck and shoul­der pain.

5. Remem­ber that you’re not chained to your desk

Of all the ergonom­ic advice offered above, this seems like­li­est to remain ever­green.

Take a snack break, a water break, a bath­room break, and while you’re at it toss in a cou­ple of the stretch­es Cinkay rec­om­mends.

(The Mayo Clin­ic has more, includ­ing our favorite shoul­der stretch.)

Zhang’s desk-cen­tric video was uploaded in 2017, when key­board trays were already becom­ing a rel­ic of a bygone era. 

As men­tioned, he’s anti-wrist rest. If your wrists are in need of sup­port, and they are, get a palm rest!

Zhang’s also crit­i­cal of draw­ers and — unusu­al for 2017 — stand­ing desks though like Cirkay, he’s a big fan of stand­ing up and mov­ing around.

His video descrip­tion includes some com­mon sense, ass-cov­er­ing encour­age­ment for view­ers with irreg­u­lar symp­toms or pain to seek pro­fes­sion­al help. We think this means med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, though unsur­pris­ing­ly, ergonom­ic assess­ment is a fast grow­ing field. It’s expen­sive but pos­si­bly costs less in the long run than rush­ing out to buy what­ev­er a stranger on the inter­net tells you to.

To that end, we appre­ci­ate Zhang’s trans­paren­cy regard­ing his channel’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ama­zon Ser­vices LLC Asso­ciates affil­i­ate adver­tis­ing pro­gram.

Caveat emp­tor!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Sit­ting Is The New Smok­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Expla­na­tion

Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

Behold the Elab­o­rate Writ­ing Desks of 18th Cen­tu­ry Aris­to­crats

- 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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The Rembrandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Functional Bracelet Featuring 1400 Rembrandt Drawings

in Art, Creativity, Design, Fashion, Museums | April 8th, 2022

Admit­ted­ly jew­el­ry is not one of our areas of exper­tise, but when we hear that a bracelet costs €10,000, we kind of expect it to have a smat­ter­ing of dia­monds.

Design­ers Lyske Gais and Lia Duinker are get­ting that amount for a wrist­let com­prised chiefly of five large paper sheets print­ed with high res images down­loaded free from the Rijksmu­se­um’s exten­sive dig­i­tal archive of Rem­brandt draw­ings and etch­ings.

Your aver­age pawn­bro­ker would prob­a­bly con­sid­er its 18-karat gold clasp, or pos­si­bly the cus­tom-made wood­en box in which it can be stored when not in use the most pre­cious thing about this orna­ment.

An ardent bib­lio­phile or art lover is per­haps bet­ter equipped to see the book bracelet’s val­ue.

Each gilt edged page — 1400 in all — fea­tures an image of a hand, sourced from 303 down­loaded Rem­brandt works.

An illus­tra­tion on the design­ers’ Duinker and Dochters web­site details the painstak­ing process where­by the book­bracelet takes shape in 8‑page sec­tions, or sig­na­tures, cross stitched tight­ly along­side each oth­er on a paper band. Put it on, and you can flip through Rem­brandt hands, Rolodex-style. When you want to do the dish­es or take a show­er, just pack it flat into that cus­tom box.

Gais and Duinker also include an index, which is handy for those times when you don’t feel like hunt­ing and peck­ing around your own wrist in search of a hand that appeared in the Flute Play­er or  Christ cru­ci­fied between the two mur­der­ers.

The Rembrandt’s Hands and a Lion’s Paw bracelet, titled like a book and pub­lished in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 10, nabbed first prize in the 2015 Rijksstu­dio Awards, a com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges design­ers to cre­ate work inspired by the Rijksmuseum’s col­lec­tion.

(2015’s sec­ond prize went to an assort­ment of con­serves and condi­ments that harkened to Johannes Hannot’s 1668 Still Life with Fruit. 2014’s win­ner was a palette of eye­shad­ow and some eye­lin­ers inspired by Jan Adam Kruseman’s 1833 Por­trait of Ali­da Christi­na Assink and a Leen­dert van der Cooghen sketch.)

But what about that spe­cial art lov­ing bib­lio­phile who already has every­thing, includ­ing a Rem­brandts Hands and a Lions Paw boekarm­band?

Maybe you could get them Col­lier van hond­jes, Gais and Duinker’s fol­low up to the book bracelet, a rub­ber chok­er with an attached 112-page book pen­dant show­cas­ing Rem­brandt dogs sourced from var­i­ous museum’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions.

Pur­chase Rem­brandt’s Hands and a Lions Paw lim­it­ed edi­tion book bracelet here.

And embark on mak­ing your own improb­a­ble thing inspired by a high res image in the Rijksmu­se­um’s Rijks Stu­dio here.

via Colos­sal/Neatora­ma

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

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Japanese Researcher Sleeps in the Same Location as Her Cat for 24 Consecutive Nights!

in Biology, Data, Design, Life | March 25th, 2022


Cross cat nap­ping with bed hop­ping and you might end up hav­ing an “adven­ture in com­fort” sim­i­lar to the one that informs stu­dent Yuri Naka­hashi’s the­sis for Tokyo’s Hosei Uni­ver­si­ty.

For 24 con­sec­u­tive nights, Naka­hashi for­went the com­forts of her own bed in favor of a green sleep­ing bag, unfurled in what­ev­er ran­dom loca­tion one of her five pet cats had cho­sen as its sleep­ing spot that evening.

(The choice of which cat would get the plea­sure of dic­tat­ing each night’s sleep­ing bag coor­di­nates was also ran­dom­ized.)

As the own­er of five cats, Naka­hashi pre­sum­ably knew what she was sign­ing up for…

 

Cats rack out atop sofa backs, on stairs, and under beds…and so did Naka­hashi.

Her pho­tos sug­gest she logged a lot of time on a bare wood­en floor.

A Fit­Bit mon­i­tored the dura­tion and qual­i­ty of time spent asleep, as well as the fre­quen­cy with which she awak­ened dur­ing the night.

She doc­u­ment­ed the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of this exper­i­ment in an inter­ac­tive pub­lished by the Infor­ma­tion Pro­cess­ing Soci­ety of Japan.

She reports that she eager­ly await­ed the rev­e­la­tion of each night’s coor­di­nates, and that even when her sleep was dis­rupt­ed by her pets’ mid­dle of the night groom­ing rou­tines, bunk­ing next to them had a “relax­ing effect.”

Mean­while, our research sug­gests that the same exper­i­ment would awak­en a vast­ly dif­fer­ent response in a dif­fer­ent human sub­ject, one suf­fer­ing from ail­uro­pho­bia, say, or severe aller­gies to the pro­teins in feline sali­va, urine, and dan­der.

What’s real­ly sur­pris­ing about Nakahashi’s itin­er­ant, and appar­ent­ly plea­sure-filled under­tak­ing is how lit­tle dif­fer­ence there is between her aver­age sleep score dur­ing the exper­i­ment and her aver­age sleep score from the 20 days pre­ced­ing it.

At left, an aver­age sleep score of 84.2 for the 20 days lead­ing up to exper­i­ment. At right, an aver­age sleep score 83.7 dur­ing the exper­i­ment.

Nakahashi’s entry for the YouFab Glob­al Cre­ative Awards, a prize for “work that attempts a dia­logue that tran­scends the bound­aries of species, space, and time” reflects the play­ful spir­it she brought to her slight­ly off-kil­ter exper­i­ment:

 Is it pos­si­ble to add diver­si­ty to the way we enjoy sleep? Let’s think about food. In addi­tion to the taste and nutri­tion of the food, each meal is a spe­cial expe­ri­ence with diver­si­ty depend­ing on the peo­ple you are eat­ing with, the atmos­phere of the restau­rant, the weath­er, and many oth­er fac­tors. In order to bring this kind of enjoy­ment to sleep, we pro­pose an “adven­ture in com­fort” in which the cat decides where to sleep each night, away from the fixed bed­room and bed. This project is sim­i­lar to going out to eat with a good friend at a restau­rant, where the cat guides you to sleep.

She notes that tra­di­tion­al beds have an immo­bil­i­ty owing to “their phys­i­cal weight and cul­tur­al con­cepts such as direc­tion.”

This sug­gests that her work could be of some ben­e­fit to humans in decid­ed­ly less fan­ci­ful, invol­un­tary sit­u­a­tions, whose lack of hous­ing leads them to sleep in unpre­dictable, and inhos­pitable loca­tions.

Naka­hashi’s time in the green sleep­ing bag inspired her to cre­ate the below mod­el of a more flex­i­ble bed, using a polypropy­lene bag, rice and nylon film.

We have cre­at­ed a pro­to­type of a dou­ble-lay­ered inflat­able bed that has a pouch struc­ture that inflates with air and a jam­ming struc­ture that becomes hard when air is com­pressed. The pouch side soft­ly receives the body when inflat­ed. The jam­ming side becomes hard when the air is removed, and can be firm­ly fixed in an even space. The air is designed to move back and forth between the two lay­ers, so that when not in use, the whole thing can be rolled up soft­ly for stor­age. 

It’s hard to imag­ine the pres­ence of a pussy­cat doing much to ame­lio­rate the anx­i­ety of those forced to flee their famil­iar beds with lit­tle warn­ing, but we can see how Nakahashi’s design might bring a degree of phys­i­cal relief when sleep­ing in sub­way sta­tions, base­ment cor­ners, and oth­er har­row­ing loca­tions.

Via Spoon & Toma­go

- 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

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

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

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The Iconic Design of the Doomsday Clock Was Created 75 Years Ago: It Now Says We’re 100 Seconds to Midnight

in Current Affairs, Design, History | March 15th, 2022

Image via The Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists

Last year, the fates hand­ed the New York Times’ Maria Cramer an envi­ably strik­ing lede: “Human­i­ty is 100 sec­onds away from total anni­hi­la­tion. Again.” That we all know imme­di­ate­ly what she was writ­ing about speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design. Specif­i­cal­ly, it speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design as prac­ticed by Martyl Langs­dorf, who hap­pened to be mar­ried to ex-Man­hat­tan Project physi­cist Alexan­der Langs­dorf. This con­nec­tion got her the gig of cre­at­ing a cov­er for the June 1947 issue of the Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists. She came up with a sim­ple image: the upper-left cor­ner of a clock, its hands at sev­en min­utes to mid­night.

Asked lat­er why she set the clock to that time in par­tic­u­lar, Langs­dorf explained that “it looked good to my eye.” That quote appears in a post at the Bul­letin address­ing fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions about what’s now known as the Dooms­day Clock, “a design that warns the pub­lic about how close we are to destroy­ing our world with dan­ger­ous tech­nolo­gies of our own mak­ing. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the per­ils we must address if we are to sur­vive on the plan­et.” In the 75 years since its intro­duc­tion, its minute hand has been moved back­ward eight times and for­ward six­teen times; cur­rent­ly it still stands where Cramer report­ed it as hav­ing remained last Jan­u­ary, at 100 sec­onds to mid­night. 

To the pub­lic of 1947, “mid­night” sig­ni­fied above all the prospect of human­i­ty’s self-destruc­tion through the use of nuclear weapons. But as tech­nol­o­gy itself has advanced and pro­lif­er­at­ed, the means of auto-anni­hi­la­tion have grown more diverse. This year’s Dooms­day Clock state­ment cites not just nukes but car­bon emis­sions, infec­tious dis­eases, and “inter­net-enabled mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion.” Ear­li­er this month, the Bul­letin remind­ed us that even as 2022 began, “we called out Ukraine as a poten­tial flash­point in an increas­ing­ly tense inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty land­scape. For many years, we and oth­ers have warned that the most like­ly way nuclear weapons might be used is through an unwant­ed or unin­tend­ed esca­la­tion from a con­ven­tion­al con­flict.”

Now that “Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine has brought this night­mare sce­nario to life,” many have found them­selves glanc­ing ner­vous­ly at the Dooms­day Clock once again. This also hap­pened after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, which prompt­ed the Vox video above on the Clock­’s his­to­ry and pur­pose. Its icon­ic sta­tus, as cel­e­brat­ed in the new book The Dooms­day Clock at 75, has long out­last­ed the Cold War, but the device itself isn’t with­out its crit­ics. Bul­letin co-founder Eugene Rabi­now­itch once artic­u­lat­ed the lat­ter as meant “to pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion by scar­ing men into ratio­nal­i­ty,” a some­what con­tro­ver­sial inten­tion. One could also raise objec­tions to using an inher­ent­ly lin­ear and uni­di­rec­tion­al con­cept like time to rep­re­sent a prob­a­bil­i­ty result­ing from human action. Yet some­how more tech­ni­cal­ly suit­able images — “100 cen­time­ters from the edge,” say — don’t have quite the same ring.

Relat­ed con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita — “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds” — Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

The Night Ed Sul­li­van Scared a Nation with the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Ani­mat­ed Short, A Short Vision (1956)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

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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Organized Chaos!: Watch 33 Videos Showing How Saturday Night Live Gets Made Each Week

in Comedy, Design, Photography, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | February 16th, 2022

Who do you think of when you think of Sat­ur­day Night Live?

The orig­i­nal cast? 

Cre­ator Lorne Michaels?

Who­ev­er host­ed last week’s episode?

What about the guy who makes and holds the cue cards?

Wal­ly Fer­esten is just one of the back­stage heroes to be cel­e­brat­ed in Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live, a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the long-run­ning tele­vi­sion sketch show comes togeth­er every week.

Like many of those inter­viewed Fer­esten is more or less of a lif­er, hav­ing come aboard in 1990 at the age of 25.

He esti­mates that he and his team of 8 run through some 1000 14” x 22” cards cards per show. Teleprompters would save trees, but the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tech­ni­cal issues dur­ing the live broad­cast presents too big of a risk.

This means that any last minute changes, includ­ing those made mid-broad­cast, must be han­dled in a very hands on way, with cor­rec­tions writ­ten in all caps over care­ful­ly applied white painter’s tape or, worst case sce­nario, on brand new cards.

(After a show wraps, its cards enjoy a sec­ond act as drop­cloths for the next week’s paint­ed sets.)

Near­ly every sketch requires three sets of cue cards, so that the cast, who are rarely off book due to the fre­quent changes, can steal glances to the left, right and cen­ter.

As the depart­ment head, Fer­esten is part­nered with each week’s guest host, whose lines are the only ones to be writ­ten in black. Bet­ty White, who host­ed in 2010 at the age of 88, thanked him in her 2011 auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

Sure­ly that’s worth his work-relat­ed arthrit­ic shoul­der, and the recur­rent night­mares in which he arrives at Stu­dio 8H just five min­utes before show­time to find that all 1000 cue cards are blank.

Cos­tumes have always been one of Sat­ur­day Night Live’s flashiest plea­sures, run­ning the gamut from Cone­heads and a rap­ping Cup o’Soup to an immac­u­late recre­ation of the white pantsuit in which Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris deliv­ered her vic­to­ry speech a scant 3 hours before the show aired.

“A cos­tume has a job,” wardrobe super­vi­sor Dale Richards explains:

It has to tell a sto­ry before (the actors) open their mouth…as soon as it comes on cam­era, it should give you so much back­sto­ry.

And it has to cleave to some sort of real­i­ty and truth­ful­ness, even in a sketch as out­landish as 2017’s Hen­ri­et­ta & the Fugi­tive, star­ring host Ryan Gosling as a detec­tive in a film noir style romance. The gag is that the dame is a chick­en (cast mem­ber Aidy Bryant.)

Richards cites actress Bette Davis as the inspi­ra­tion for the chick­en’s look:


Because you’re not going to believe it if the detec­tive couldn’t actu­al­ly fall in love with her. She has to be very fem­i­nine, so we gave her Bette Davis bangs and long eye­lash­es and a beau­ti­ful bon­net, so the under­pin­nings were very much like an actress in a movie, although she did have a chick­en cos­tume on.

The num­ber of quick cos­tume changes each per­former must make dur­ing the live broad­cast helps deter­mine the sketch­es’ run­ning order.

Some of the break­neck trans­for­ma­tions are han­dled by Richards’ sis­ter, Don­na, who once beat the clock by pig­gy­back­ing host Jen­nifer Lopez across the stu­dio floor to the chang­ing area where a well-coor­di­nat­ed crew swished her out of her open­ing monologue’s skintight dress and sky­scraper heels and into her first cos­tume.

That’s one exam­ple of the sort of traf­fic the 4‑person crane cam­era crew must bat­tle as they hur­tle across the stu­dio to each new set. Cam­era oper­a­tor John Pin­to com­mands from atop the crane’s coun­ter­bal­anced arm.

Those swoop­ing crane shots of the musi­cal guests, open­ing mono­logue and good­nights (see below) are a Sat­ur­day Night Live tra­di­tion, a part of its icon­ic look since the begin­ning.

Get to know oth­er back­stage work­ers and how they con­tribute to this week­ly high wire act in a 33 episode Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night playlist, all on dis­play below:

- 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

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Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate: 7 Courses Helps Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Design, Online Courses | February 7th, 2022

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” One such cer­tifi­cate focus­es on User Expe­ri­ence Design, or what’s called UX Design, the process design teams use to cre­ate prod­ucts that pro­vide mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences to users.

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures sev­en cours­es, includ­ing the Foun­da­tions of User Expe­ri­ence, Start the UX Design Process, Build Wire­frames and Low-Fideli­ty Pro­to­types, and Con­duct UX Research and Test Ear­ly Con­cepts. In total, this pro­gram “includes over 200 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based activ­i­ties and assess­ments that sim­u­late real-world UX design sce­nar­ios and are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in UX design.” Upon com­ple­tion, stu­dents can direct­ly apply for jobs with Google and over 130 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Wal­mart, Best Buy, and Astreya. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es. If you con­tin­ue beyond that, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months.

Explore the User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Cours­era and Google Launch an Online Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram to Help Stu­dents Become IT Pro­fes­sion­als & Get Attrac­tive Jobs

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

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Discover Khipu, the Ancient Incan Record & Writing System Made Entirely of Knots

in Design, History, Language, Life, Museums | January 17th, 2022

Khi­pus, the portable infor­ma­tion archives cre­at­ed by the Inca, may stir up mem­o­ries of 1970s macrame with their long strands of intri­cate­ly knot­ted, earth-toned fibers, but their func­tion more close­ly resem­bled that of a dense­ly plot­ted com­put­er­ized spread­sheet.

As Cecil­ia Par­do-Grau, lead cura­tor of the British Museum’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion Peru: a jour­ney in time explains in the above Cura­tors Cor­ner episode, khi­pus were used to keep track of every­thing from inven­to­ries and cen­sus to his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, using a sys­tem that assigned mean­ing to the type and posi­tion of knot, spaces between knots, cord length, fiber col­or, etc.

Much of the infor­ma­tion pre­served with­in khi­pus has yet to be deci­phered by mod­ern schol­ars, though the Open Khipu Repos­i­to­ry — com­pu­ta­tion­al anthro­pol­o­gist Jon Clin­daniel’s open-source data­base — makes it pos­si­ble to com­pare the pat­terns of hun­dreds of khi­pus resid­ing in muse­um and uni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tions.

Even in the Incan Empire, few were equipped to make sense of a khipu. This task fell to quipu­ca­may­ocs, high born admin­is­tra­tive offi­cials trained since child­hood in the cre­ation and inter­pre­ta­tion of these organ­ic spread­sheets.

Fleet mes­sen­gers known as chask­is trans­port­ed khipus on foot between admin­is­tra­tive cen­ters, cre­at­ing an infor­ma­tion super­high­way that pre­dates the Inter­net by some five cen­turies. Khi­pus’ stur­dy organ­ic cot­ton or native camelid fibers were well suit­ed to with­stand­ing both the rig­ors of time and the road.

A 500-year-old com­pos­ite khipu that found its way to British Muse­um organ­ics con­ser­va­tor Nicole Rode pri­or to the exhi­bi­tion was intact, but severe­ly tan­gled, with a brit­tle­ness that betrayed its age. Below, she describes falling under the khipu’s spell, dur­ing the painstak­ing process of restor­ing it to a con­di­tion where­by researchers could attempt to glean some of its secrets.

Vis­it Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino’s web­site to learn more about khipu in a series of fas­ci­nat­ing short arti­cles that accom­pa­nied their ground­break­ing 2003 exhib­it QUIPU: count­ing with knots in the Inka Empire.

via Aeon.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How the Inca Used Intri­cate­ly-Knot­ted Cords, Called Khipu, to Write Their His­to­ries, Send Mes­sages & Keep Records

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Machu Pic­chu, One of the New 7 Won­ders of the World

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

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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