Behold the MusicMap: The Ultimate Interactive Genealogy of Music Created Between 1870 and 2016

in Design, Education, Music, Web/Tech | March 28th, 2018

A Pan­do­ra for the adven­tur­ous anti­quar­i­an, the high­ly under­rat­ed site Radiooooo gives users stream­ing music from all over the world and every decade since 1900. While it offers an aur­al feast, its lim­it­ed inter­face leaves much to be desired from an edu­ca­tion­al stand­point. On the oth­er end of the audio-visu­al spec­trum, clever dia­grams like those we’ve fea­tured here on elec­tron­ic music, alter­na­tive, and hip hop show the detailed con­nec­tions between all the major acts in these gen­res, but all they do so in silence.

Now a new inter­ac­tive info­graph­ic built by Bel­gian archi­tect Kwin­ten Crauwels brings togeth­er an ency­clo­pe­dic visu­al ref­er­ence with an exhaus­tive musi­cal archive. Though it’s miss­ing some of the fea­tures of the resources above, the Musicmap far sur­pass­es any­thing of its kind online—“both a 23and me-style ances­tral tree and a thor­ough dis­am­bigua­tion of just about every extant genre of music,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny.

Or as Frank Jacobs explains at Big Think, Crauwels’ goal is “to pro­vide the ulti­mate geneal­o­gy of pop­u­lar music gen­res, includ­ing their rela­tions and his­to­ry.”

With over 230 gen­res in all—linked togeth­er in intri­cate webs of influ­ence, mapped in a zoomable visu­al inter­face that orga­nizes them all at macro and micro lev­els of descrip­tion, and linked to explana­to­ry arti­cles and rep­re­sen­ta­tive playlists (drawn from YouTube)—the project is almost too com­pre­hen­sive to believe, and its degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion almost too com­plex to sum­ma­rize con­cise­ly (though Jacobs does a good job of it). The Musicmap spans the years 1870–2016 and cov­ers 22 major cat­e­gories (with Rock fur­ther bro­ken into six and “World” into three).

In an oval around the col­or­ful sky­scraper-like “super-gen­res” are decades, mov­ing from past to present from top to bot­tom. Zoom into the “super-gen­res” and find “a spider’s web of links with­in and between the dif­fer­ent hous­es” of sub­gen­res. “Those links can indi­cate parent­age or influ­ence, but also a back­lash (i.e. as ‘anti-links’).” Click­ing on the name of each sub­genre reveals “a short syn­op­sis and a playlist of rep­re­sen­ta­tive songs.” These two func­tions, in turn, link to each oth­er, allow­ing users to click through in a more Wikipedia-like way once they’ve entered the minu­ti­ae of the Musicmap’s con­tents.

The map not only draws con­nec­tions between sub­gen­res but also between their rel­a­tives in oth­er “super-gen­res” (learn about the rela­tion­ship, for exam­ple, between folk rock and clas­sic met­al). On the left side of the screen is a series of but­tons that reveal an intro­duc­tion, method­ol­o­gy, abstract, sev­er­al nav­i­ga­tion­al func­tions, a glos­sary of musi­cal terms, and a bib­li­og­ra­phy (called “Acknowl­edg­ments”). Aside from visu­al­ly reduc­ing all the way down to the lev­el of indi­vid­ual bands with­in each sub­genre, which could become a lit­tle dizzy­ing, it’s hard to think of any­thing seri­ous­ly lack­ing here.

Any­thing we might find fault with might be changed in the near future. Although Crauwels spent almost ten years on research and devel­op­ment, first con­ceiv­ing of the project in 2008, the cur­rent site “is still ver­sion 1.0 of Music map. In lat­er ver­sions, the playlists will be expand­ed, per­haps even com­mu­ni­ty-gen­er­at­ed.” Crauwels also wants to sync up with Spo­ti­fy. Although not a musi­cian him­self, he is as pas­sion­ate about music as he is about design and edu­ca­tion, mak­ing him very like­ly the per­fect per­son to take on this task, which he admits can nev­er be com­plet­ed.

Crauwels does not cur­rent­ly seem to have plans to mon­e­tize his map. His stat­ed motives are altru­is­tic, in the same pub­lic ser­vice spir­it as Radiooooo. “Musicmap,” he says, “believes that knowl­edge about music gen­res is a uni­ver­sal right and should be part of basic edu­ca­tion.” At the moment, the edu­ca­tion here only applies to pop­u­lar music, although enough of it to acquire a grad­u­ate-lev­el his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge base.

The four cat­e­gories at the top of the map—the strange­ly named “Util­i­ty” (which includes hymns, mil­i­tary march­es, musi­cals, and sound­tracks), Folk, Clas­si­cal, and World—are zoomable but do not have click­able links or playlists. Giv­en Crauwels’ com­pletist instincts, this may well change in future updates. In the TED talk above, see him tell the sto­ry of how he cre­at­ed Musicmap, a DIY effort that came out of his frus­tra­tion that noth­ing like it exist­ed, so he had to cre­ate it him­self.

Enter the Musicmap here and try not to get lost for sev­er­al hours.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiooooo: A Musi­cal Time Machine That Lets You Hear What Played on the Radio in Dif­fer­ent Times & Places

Radio Gar­den Lets You Instant­ly Tune into Radio Sta­tions Across the Entire Globe

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

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

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The History of the U.S. Civil War Visualized Month by Month and State by State, in an Infographic from 1897

in Education, History, K-12, Maps | March 26th, 2018

There’s been a lot of hand­wring­ing over the i‑Generation’s lack of map read­ing skills.

While we’re at it, let’s take a cold, hard look at the Gild­ed Age info­graph­ic, above.…

… and con­clude that peo­ple who live in glass hous­es should stop reach­ing for stones.

Pub­lished in 1897 by the Com­par­a­tive Syn­op­ti­cal Chart Com­pa­ny, this now unfath­omable doc­u­ment–His­to­ry of the Civ­il War in the Unit­ed States: 1860–1865–achieved its goal of squeez­ing the max­i­mum amount of con­tent onto a sin­gle sheet.

This is in direct oppo­si­tion to today’s gen­er­al­ly accept­ed rules for cre­at­ing suc­cess­ful info­graph­ics, one of which is to sim­pli­fy.

Anoth­er holds that text should be used spar­ing­ly, lest it clut­ter up strong visu­als. Con­sumers have a lim­it­ed atten­tion span, and for con­tent to be con­sid­ered share­able, they should be able to take it in at a glance.

Mod­ern eyes may be for­giv­en for mis­tak­ing this chart for the world’s most con­vo­lut­ed sub­way map. But those aren’t stops, friend. They’re minor engage­ments. Blood­i­er and bet­ter-known bat­tles are delin­eat­ed with larg­er circles—yellow cen­ters for a Union vic­to­ry, pale green for Con­fed­er­ate.

The fastest way to begin mak­ing heads or tails of the chart is to note that each col­umn is assigned to a dif­fer­ent state.

The ver­ti­cal axis is divid­ed into months. Notice all the neg­a­tive space around Fort Sumter.

And the con­stant entries in Vir­gini­a’s col­umn.

The pub­lish­er not­ed that the loca­tion of events was “entire­ly gov­erned” by this time scale.

You’ll have to look hard for Lincoln’s assas­si­na­tion.

Con­sumers who pur­chased the His­to­ry of the Civ­il War in the Unit­ed States 1860–1865 pre­sum­ably pored over it by can­dle­light, sup­ple­ment­ing it with maps and books.

It would still make a superb addi­tion to any his­to­ry teacher’s class­room, both as dec­o­ra­tion and the tin­der that could ignite dis­cus­sion as to how we receive infor­ma­tion, and how much infor­ma­tion is in fact received.

Explore a larg­er, zoomable ver­sion of the map here.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course from Yale on the U.S. Civ­il War

Watch Vet­er­ans of The US Civ­il War Demon­strate the Dread­ed Rebel Yell (1930)

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”: A Toolkit That Can Help You Scientifically Separate Sense from Nonsense

in Education, Life, Politics, Science | March 6th, 2018

It’s prob­a­bly no stretch to say that mass dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and ram­pant anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism will con­sti­tute an increas­ing amount of our polit­i­cal real­i­ty both today and in the future. As Han­nah Arendt wrote, the polit­i­cal lie has always been with us. But its glob­al reach, par­tic­u­lar vehe­mence, and bla­tant con­tempt for ver­i­fi­able real­i­ty seem like inno­va­tions of the present.

Giv­en the embar­rass­ing wealth of access to infor­ma­tion and edu­ca­tion­al tools, maybe it’s fair to say that the first and last line of defense should be our own crit­i­cal rea­son­ing. When we fail to ver­i­fy news—using resources we all have in hand (I assume, since you’re read­ing this), the fault for believ­ing bad infor­ma­tion may lie with us.

But we so often don’t know what it is that we don’t know. Indi­vid­u­als can’t be blamed for an inad­e­quate edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, and one should not under­es­ti­mate the near-impos­si­bil­i­ty of con­duct­ing time-con­sum­ing inquiries into the truth of every sin­gle claim that comes our way, like try­ing to iden­ti­fy indi­vid­ual droplets while get­ting hit in the face with a pres­sur­ized blast of tar­get­ed, con­tra­dic­to­ry info, some­times com­ing from shad­owy, unre­li­able sources.

Carl Sagan under­stood the dif­fi­cul­ty, and he also under­stood that a lack of crit­i­cal think­ing did not make peo­ple total­ly irra­tional and deserv­ing of con­tempt. “It’s not hard to under­stand,” for exam­ple, why peo­ple would think their rel­a­tives are still alive in some oth­er form after death. As he writes of this com­mon phe­nom­e­non in “The Fine Art of Baloney Detec­tion,” most super­nat­ur­al beliefs are just “humans being human.”

In the essay, a chap­ter from his 1995 book The Demon-Haunt­ed World, Sagan pro­pos­es a rig­or­ous but com­pre­hen­si­ble “baloney detec­tion kit” to sep­a­rate sense from non­sense.

  • Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble there must be inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion of the “facts.”
  • Encour­age sub­stan­tive debate on the evi­dence by knowl­edge­able pro­po­nents of all points of view.
  • Argu­ments from author­i­ty car­ry lit­tle weight — “author­i­ties” have made mis­takes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Per­haps a bet­ter way to say it is that in sci­ence there are no author­i­ties; at most, there are experts.
  • Spin more than one hypoth­e­sis. If there’s some­thing to be explained, think of all the dif­fer­ent ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­prove each of the alter­na­tives.
  • Try not to get over­ly attached to a hypoth­e­sis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way sta­tion in the pur­suit of knowl­edge. Ask your­self why you like the idea. Com­pare it fair­ly with the alter­na­tives. See if you can find rea­sons for reject­ing it. If you don’t, oth­ers will.
  • If what­ev­er it is you’re explain­ing has some mea­sure, some numer­i­cal quan­ti­ty attached to it, you’ll be much bet­ter able to dis­crim­i­nate among com­pet­ing hypothe­ses. What is vague and qual­i­ta­tive is open to many expla­na­tions.
  • If there’s a chain of argu­ment, every link in the chain must work (includ­ing the premise) — not just most of them.
  • Occam’s Razor. This con­ve­nient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypothe­ses that explain the data equal­ly well to choose the sim­pler. Always ask whether the hypoth­e­sis can be, at least in prin­ci­ple, fal­si­fied…. You must be able to check asser­tions out. Invet­er­ate skep­tics must be giv­en the chance to fol­low your rea­son­ing, to dupli­cate your exper­i­ments and see if they get the same result.

Call­ing his rec­om­men­da­tions “tools for skep­ti­cal think­ing,” he lays out a means of com­pen­sat­ing for the strong emo­tion­al pulls that “promise some­thing like old-time reli­gion” and rec­og­niz­ing “a fal­la­cious or fraud­u­lent argu­ment.” At the top of the post, in a video pro­duced by Big Think, you can hear sci­ence writer and edu­ca­tor Michael Sher­mer explain the “baloney detec­tion kit” that he him­self adapt­ed from Sagan, and just above, read Sagan’s own ver­sion, abridged into a short list (read it in full at Brain Pick­ings).

Like many a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor after him, Sagan was very much con­cerned with the influ­ence of super­sti­tious reli­gious beliefs. He also fore­saw a time in the near future much like our own. Else­where in The Demon-Haunt­ed World, Sagan writes of “Amer­i­ca in my children’s or grandchildren’s time…. when awe­some tech­no­log­i­cal pow­ers are in the hands of a very few.” The loss of con­trol over media and edu­ca­tion ren­ders peo­ple “unable to dis­tin­guish between what feels good and what’s true.”

This state involves, he says a “slide… back into super­sti­tion” of the reli­gious vari­ety and also a gen­er­al “cel­e­bra­tion of igno­rance,” such that well-sup­port­ed sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries car­ry the same weight or less than expla­na­tions made up on the spot by author­i­ties whom peo­ple have lost the abil­i­ty to “knowl­edge­ably ques­tion.” It’s a scary sce­nario that may not have com­plete­ly come to pass… just yet, but Sagan knew as well or bet­ter than any­one of his time how to address such a poten­tial social epi­dem­ic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Carl Sagan’s Last Inter­view

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

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175+ College Admissions Offices Promise Not to Penalize High School Students Who Get Suspended for Protesting Peacefully Against Gun Violence

in Current Affairs, Education | February 26th, 2018

Image by Lorie Shaull, via Flickr Com­mons

“Will my admis­sion get rescind­ed if I get sus­pend­ed for engag­ing in a school walk-out meant to bring atten­tion to the school shoot­ing issue?” That’s a ques­tion many high school stu­dents have posed to col­lege admis­sions offices around the coun­try, espe­cial­ly after some high school offi­cials threat­ened to sus­pend stu­dents tak­ing part in anti-gun demon­stra­tions.

Many lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have since issued pol­i­cy state­ments and giv­en these stu­dents their bless­ing and sup­port. In a post called “In Sup­port of Stu­dent Protests,” Han­nah Mend­lowitz, from Yale’s Admis­sions Office, writes:

[W]e con­tin­ue to get the ques­tion: will Yale look unfa­vor­ably upon dis­ci­pline result­ing from peace­ful demon­stra­tions?

The answer is sim­ple: Of course not.

To the stu­dents who have reached out to us with these con­cerns, we have made clear that they should feel free to par­tic­i­pate in walk-out events to bring atten­tion to this issue with­out fear of reper­cus­sion. Yale will NOT be rescind­ing anyone’s admis­sion deci­sion for par­tic­i­pat­ing in peace­ful walk­outs for this or oth­er caus­es, regard­less of any high school’s dis­ci­pli­nary pol­i­cy. I, for one, will be cheer­ing these stu­dents on from New Haven.

And on the offi­cial Twit­ter feed for the Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, a tweet reads:

Appli­cants to Brown: Expect a social­ly con­scious, intel­lec­tu­al­ly inde­pen­dent cam­pus where free­dom of expres­sion is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant. You can be assured that peace­ful, respon­si­ble protests against gun vio­lence will not neg­a­tive­ly impact deci­sions on admis­sion to Brown.

And that’s just the tip of the ice­berg. Below, find a list of 175+ uni­ver­si­ties that have grant­ed sim­i­lar assur­ances, along with links to their state­ments. The list comes from Alex Gar­cia, who is main­tain­ing a reg­u­lar­ly-updat­ed Google Doc. Access it online here.

Again, you can refer to this Google Doc for more updates.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Carl Sagan’s Syllabus & Final Exam for His Course on Critical Thinking (Cornell, 1986)

in Education, Science | January 29th, 2018

Though now more than twen­ty years gone, Carl Sagan, through his many books and his clas­sic tele­vi­sion series Cos­mos, con­tin­ues to teach us all he knew about life, the uni­verse, and every­thing. Three decades’ worth of stu­dents will also remem­ber learn­ing from him in per­son, in the lec­ture halls of Har­vard and Cor­nell where he kept up his pro­fes­so­r­i­al duties along­side the con­sid­er­able demands of his career as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. If you’ve ever learned any­thing from Sagan, whether from the man him­self or from his work, you know he did­n’t just want to teach human­i­ty about out­er space: he want­ed to teach human­i­ty how to think.

That goal became explic­it in Astron­o­my 490, also known as “Crit­i­cal Think­ing in Sci­ence and Non-Sci­ence Con­text,” which Sagan taught at Cor­nell in 1986. You can read its course mate­ri­als at the Library of Con­gress, whose Jen­nifer Harb­ster writes that they “include men­tion of the impor­tant bal­ance between open­ness to new ideas and skep­ti­cal engage­ment with those ideas in sci­ence,” a point that “ani­mates much of Carl Sagan’s work as an edu­ca­tor and sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor.”

The LoC offers the course’s intro­duc­tion and syl­labus, its final exam, and Sagan’s lec­ture notes, as well as the infor­ma­tion he assem­bled to design the course in the first place, which show just how wide a range of con­texts for crit­i­cal think­ing he had in mind.

Sagan col­lect­ed exam­ples of report­ing on and pub­lic per­cep­tion of phe­nom­e­na relat­ed to sports play­off series, car-loan inter­est rates, tobac­co indus­try-spon­sored tobac­co health-risk research, and the num­ber of heli­copters that crash in Los Ange­les. Harb­ster explains that “these notes illus­trate how he want­ed to use stu­dents’ every day expe­ri­ence with things like tele­vi­sion to prompt them to think more skep­ti­cal­ly about how claims are made and war­rant­ed in every­day life.” Though some of his exam­ples  (the lan­guage of cig­a­rette adver­tise­ments, for instance) may look dat­ed now, the course’s core prin­ci­ples have only grown more use­ful, and indeed nec­es­sary, with time — as Sagan, who wrote dark­ly of “the slow decay of sub­stan­tive con­tent in the enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial media,” sure­ly knew they would.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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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MIT’s New Master’s Program Admits Students Without College and High School Degrees … and Helps Solve the World’s Most Pressing Problems

in Economics, Education, MIT | January 26th, 2018


One of the cen­tral prob­lems of inequal­i­ty is that it per­pet­u­ates itself by nature. The inher­ent social cap­i­tal of those born in cer­tain places and class­es grants access to even more social cap­i­tal. Ques­tions of mer­it can seem mar­gin­al when the cre­den­tials required by elite insti­tu­tions prove inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple. In an admirable effort to break this cycle glob­al­ly, MIT is now admit­ting stu­dents to a grad­u­ate pro­gram in eco­nom­ics, with­out GRE scores, with­out let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and with­out a col­lege degree.

Instead stu­dents begin with some­thing called a “Micro­Mas­ters” pro­gram, which is like “a method used in med­i­cine… ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­als,” reports WBUR. This entry­way removes many of the usu­al bar­ri­ers to access by allow­ing stu­dents to first “take rig­or­ous cours­es online for cred­it, and if they per­form well on exams, to apply for a master’s degree pro­gram on campus”—a degree in data, eco­nom­ics and devel­op­ment pol­i­cy (DEDP), which focus­es on meth­ods for reduc­ing glob­al inequal­i­ty.

 



 

Enroll­ment in the online Micro­Mas­ters cours­es began in Feb­ru­ary of last year (the next round starts on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2018), and the DEDP mas­ter’s pro­gram will start in 2019. “The world of devel­op­ment pol­i­cy has become more and more evi­dence-based over the past 10–15 years,” explains MIT pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics Ben Olken, who co-cre­at­ed the pro­gram with eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sors Esther Duflo and Abhi­jit Baner­jee. “Devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers need to under­stand not just devel­op­ment issues, but how to ana­lyze them rig­or­ous­ly using data. This pro­gram is designed to help fill that gap.”

Duflo, co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Pover­ty Action Lab (J‑PAL), explains the inno­va­tion of Micro­Mas­ters’ rad­i­cal­ly open admis­sions. (For any­one with access to the inter­net, that is, still a huge bar­ri­er for mil­lions world­wide): “Any­body could do that. At this point, you don’t need to have gone to col­lege. For that mat­ter, you don’t need to have gone to high school.” Stu­dents who are accept­ed after their ini­tial online course work will move into a “blend­ed” pro­gram that com­bines their pri­or work with a semes­ter on MIT’s cam­pus.

Micro­Mas­ters cours­es are priced on a slid­ing scale (from $100 to $1,000), accord­ing to what stu­dents can afford, and costs are nowhere near what tra­di­tion­al stu­dents pay—after hav­ing already paid, or tak­en loans, for a four-year degree, var­i­ous test­ing reg­i­mens, admis­sions costs, liv­ing expens­es, etc. The cur­rent pro­gram might fea­si­bly be scaled up to include oth­er fields in the future. Thus far, over 8,000 stu­dents in the world have enrolled in the Micro­Mas­ters pro­gram. “In total,” Duflo says, “there are 182 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed,” includ­ing ten per­cent from Chi­na, a large group from India, and “even some from the U.S.”

Stu­dents enrolled in these cours­es design their own eval­u­a­tions of ini­tia­tives around the globe that address dis­par­i­ties in health­care, edu­ca­tion, and oth­er areas. Co-designed by the Pover­ty Action Lab and the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Micro­Mas­ters asks stu­dents to “grap­ple with some of the world’s most press­ing prob­lems,” includ­ing the prob­lem of access to high­er edu­ca­tion. You can view the require­ments and enroll at the MITx Micro­Mas­ters’ site. Read fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions and learn about the instruc­tors here. And here, lis­ten to WBUR’s short seg­ment on this fas­ci­nat­ing edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ment.

Find more Micro­Mas­ters sub­jects in our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

MIT Is Dig­i­tiz­ing a Huge Archive of Noam Chomsky’s Lec­tures, Papers and Oth­er Doc­u­ments & Will Put Them Online

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT 

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

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Take 7 Free Courses From the Museum of Modern Art (aka MoMA)

in Art, Education, MOOCs, Museums | January 22nd, 2018

If you would like to know more about mod­ern art, but have dif­fi­cul­ty wrap­ping your head around the Futur­ists, Neo-Impres­sion­ists, Abstract Expres­sion­ists, and the myr­i­ad oth­er ‑ists and ‑isms  of this vast sub­ject, per­haps you should unteth­er your­self from time­lines.

Mod­ern Art & Ideas, a free online course from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (aka MoMA), shifts the focus away from peri­od and move­ment, instead group­ing works accord­ing to four themes: Places & Spaces, Art & Iden­ti­ty, Trans­form­ing Every­day Objects, and Art & Soci­ety.

It’s an approach that’s worked well for MoMA’s Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment. (Anoth­er upcom­ing online class, Art & Ideas: Teach­ing with Themes, is rec­om­mend­ed for pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors look­ing to devel­op the ped­a­gog­i­cal skills the depart­ment employs to get vis­i­tors to engage with the art.)

The course, which begins today, is taught by Lisa Maz­zo­la, Assis­tant Direc­tor of the museum’s School and Teacher Pro­grams and a vet­er­an of their pre­vi­ous for­ays into Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es.

An ear­ly les­son on how artists cap­ture envi­ron­ments con­sid­ers three works: Vin­cent van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night (1889), Piet Mondrian’s Broad­way Boo­gie Woo­gie (1942–43), and Gor­don Matta-Clark’s Bin­go. Vin­tage pho­tos and footage con­spire with peri­od music to whisk stu­dents to the set­tings that inspired these works—a bucol­ic French men­tal hos­pi­tal, New York City’s bustling, WWII-era Times Square, and a derelict house in down on its luck Nia­gara Falls.

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Open Cul­ture are like­ly to have a han­dle on some of the ways art stars Fri­da Kahlo and Andy Warhol explored iden­ti­ty, the course’s third week theme, but what about Glenn Ligon, a liv­ing African Amer­i­can con­cep­tu­al artist?

Ligon may not have the renown or tote bag appeal of his lesson­mates, but his 1993 series, Run­aways, is pow­er­ful enough to hold its own against Kahlo’s Self-Por­trait with Cropped Hair and Warhol’s Gold Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

In fact, teach­ers look­ing to expand their Black His­to­ry Month cur­ricu­lum could spark some live­ly dis­cus­sions by show­ing stu­dents the extreme­ly accu­rate fac­sim­i­les of 19th-cen­tu­ry run­away slave ads fea­tur­ing phys­i­cal descrip­tions of Ligon, solicit­ed from friends who’d been told they were sup­ply­ing details for a hypo­thet­i­cal Miss­ing Per­son poster.

Ligon’s series is also a good start­ing place for dis­cussing con­cep­tu­al art with a friend who thinks  con­cep­tu­al art is best defined as White Cow in a Snow­storm.

Offered on Cours­era, the 5‑week course requires approx­i­mate­ly 2 hours of study and one quiz per week. Enroll here, or browse MoMAs oth­er cur­rent offer­ings also on Cours­era.

Note: To take the cours­es for free, selec­tion the Audit (as opposed to paid) option dur­ing the enroll­ment process.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 75,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

What to Say When You Don’t Under­stand Con­tem­po­rary Art? A New Short Film, “Mas­ter­piece,” Has Help­ful Sug­ges­tions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Nine Tips from Bill Murray & Cellist Jan Vogler on How to Study Intensely and Optimize Your Learning

in Education, Life, Music | November 20th, 2017

Pho­to by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Would you take study tips from Bill Mur­ray? After high school, he did spend some time as a pre-med­ical stu­dent at Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­ver — before drop­ping out to return to his home­town of Chica­go and get his start in com­e­dy with the famed improv group Sec­ond City. Still, Reg­is did even­tu­al­ly award him an hon­orary Doc­tor of Human­i­ties a decade ago, and you have to admit that the fame-and-for­tune path worked out for him. In fact, it worked out and then some: see­ing the mas­sive suc­cess of Ghost­busters (and the temp­ta­tions there­of) loom­ing in 1984, Mur­ray decid­ed to make his return to school, this time to study phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, and French — and at the Sor­bonne, no less.

The Spo­ti­fy playlist below offers brief selec­tions of spo­ken-word wis­dom relat­ed to study­ing and learn­ing in gen­er­al, part of the fruit of a project by Mur­ray and Ger­man cel­list Jan Vogler. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.)

They recent­ly made an album togeth­er called New Worlds, where the sounds of Vogler’s clas­si­cal trio accom­pa­ny Mur­ray’s voice, singing and read­ing clas­sic works of Amer­i­can music and lit­er­a­ture from Mark Twain to Van Mor­ri­son. They also record­ed this selec­tion of mem­o­ries, gal­va­niz­ing mes­sages, and “intense study tips” briefly sum­ma­rized as fol­lows: “Don’t cram,” “Con­cen­trate,” “One prob­lem,” “Sleep on it,” “Take a bath,” “Focus on oth­ers,” “More is more,” “Take a break,” and “Build a rou­tine.”

Lis­ten to the playlist and you can hear Mur­ray expand on these sug­ges­tions, some of which will res­onate with mate­r­i­al we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: the psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non that has us do our best think­ing in the show­er (or indeed the bath), for instance, or the intel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tions of Mur­ray’s comedic per­sona. If you find his advice use­ful, you might also look to the exam­ple he sets with how he runs his career, famous­ly tak­ing risks on untest­ed ideas or col­lab­o­ra­tors (includ­ing a cer­tain Wes Ander­son) and going to great lengths (up to and includ­ing replac­ing his agent with a voice­mail box) to avoid get­ting caught in the gears of his indus­try. Whether study­ing a sub­ject or becom­ing the most beloved com­ic actor of your gen­er­a­tion, in oth­er words, you’ve got to find a path that works for you and you alone. As one track of Mur­ray and Vogler’s help­ful playlist puts it, “Good luck.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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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