McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restaurant — and It’s Only for Bees

in Food & Drink, Nature | May 29th, 2019

How are the world’s hon­ey bees doing? Just a few years ago, word spread that they were on the verge of a mys­te­ri­ous extinc­tion. Look for updates on their sit­u­a­tion now and you get con­tra­dic­to­ry results, all of them fair­ly recent, from “Bees Are Still Dying” to “Bees Are Bounc­ing Back From Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der” to “Yes, the Bees Are Still in Trou­ble” to “The Bee Apoc­a­lypse Was Nev­er Real.” But whether they’re in exis­ten­tial dan­ger or not, bees at least now have their very own McDon­ald’s — bees in cer­tain parts of Swe­den, any­way.

“McDonald’s has cre­at­ed a tiny repli­ca of one of its restau­rants, too small for any human to eat there,” writes Emi­ly Chudy in the Inde­pen­dent. “The repli­ca, dubbed the ‘McHive,’ is a ful­ly-func­tion­ing bee­hive designed to look like a McDonald’s restau­rant and fea­tures seat­ing, a dri­ve-through and an entrance. The brain­child of set design­er Nick­las Nils­son, the hive is part of an ini­tia­tive which has seen bee­hives placed on cer­tain Swedish branch­es of the fran­chise.” This project seems to be the first insect-scale restau­rant for Nils­son, whose past work includes cos­tume design on the video for David Bowie’s “Black­star.”

You can see footage of the McHive’s design and assem­bly process, as well as an assem­bled McHive full of its “thou­sands of impor­tant guests,” in the video at the top of the post. There are more pho­tos at design­boom, which quotes the pro­jec­t’s adver­tis­ing agency NORD DDB as say­ing that “the ini­tia­tive start­ed out local­ly but is now grow­ing.” In addi­tion to installing bee­hives on their rooftops, more Swedish McDon­ald’s fran­chisees “have also start­ed replac­ing the grass around their restau­rants with flow­ers and plants that are impor­tant for the well­be­ing of wild bees.”

Why so much con­cern about hon­ey bees in the first place? Chudy quotes a Green­peace esti­mate that they “per­form about 80% of all pol­li­na­tion and a sin­gle bee colony can pol­li­nate 300 mil­lion flow­ers each day.” Bees do the hard work of keep­ing a sur­pris­ing­ly large part of the nat­ur­al world work­ing as we’ve always known it to, and to the extent that bees die out, much else may die out as well, with poten­tial knock-on effects many would pre­fer not to think about. But then, the taste for pre­dic­tions of eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter on the inter­net seems only to have grown since we first noticed the prob­lem with bees: if you real­ly want to feel moti­vat­ed to peti­tion your local McDon­ald’s to put up a McHive, try Googling the phrase “cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of nature.”

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing Time­lapse Film Cap­tures the Won­der of Bees Being Born

The Bil­lion-Bug High­way You Can’t See

A Shaz­am for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Iden­ti­fy Plants, Ani­mals & Oth­er Denizens of the Nat­ur­al World

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Here’s What Ancient Dogs Looked Like: A Forensic Reconstruction of a Dog That Lived 4,500 Years Ago

in History, Nature, Science | April 22nd, 2019

Images by His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land

We’re pret­ty sure dogs aren’t obsessed with ances­try, despite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of canine DNA test­ing ser­vices.

That seems to be more of a human thing.

How­ev­er, with very lit­tle dig­ging, near­ly every dog on earth could claim to be descend­ed from a hand­some spec­i­men such as the one above.

This news must be grat­i­fy­ing to all those lap­dogs who fan­cy them­selves to be some­thing more wolfish than their exte­ri­ors sug­gest.

This beast is no 21st-cen­tu­ry pet, but rather, a recon­struc­tion, foren­sic science’s best guess as to what the own­er of a Neolith­ic skull dis­cov­ered dur­ing a 1901 exca­va­tion of the 5,000-year-old Cuween Hill cham­bered cairn on Orkney, Scot­land would have looked like in life.

About the size of a large col­lie, the “Cuween dog” has the face of a Euro­pean grey wolf and the rea­son­able gaze of a fam­i­ly pet.

(Kudos to the project’s orga­niz­ers for resist­ing the urge to bestow a nick­name on their cre­ation, or if they have, to resist shar­ing it pub­licly.)

Whether or not this good boy or girl had a name, it would’ve earned its keep, guard­ing a farm in the tomb’s vicin­i­ty.

Steve Far­rar, Inter­pre­ta­tion Man­ag­er at His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land, the con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion that com­mis­sioned the recon­struc­tion, believes that the farm­ers’ esteem for their dogs went beyond mere util­i­tar­i­an appre­ci­a­tion:

Maybe dogs were their sym­bol or totem, per­haps they thought of them­selves as the ‘dog peo­ple’.

Radio­car­bon dat­ing of this dog’s skull and 23 oth­ers found on the site point to rit­u­al burial—the ani­mals were placed with­in more than 500 years after the pas­sage to the tomb was built. His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land posits that the canine remains’ place­ment next to those of humans attest to the community’s belief in an after­life for both species.

The mod­el is pre­sum­ably more relat­able than the naked skull, which was scanned by Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty’s Roy­al (Dick) School of Vet­eri­nary Stud­ies, enabling His­toric Envi­ron­ment Scot­land to make the 3D print that foren­sic artist Amy Thorn­ton fleshed out with mus­cle, skin, and hair.

What a human geneal­o­gist wouldn’t give to trace their lin­eage back to 2000 BC, let alone have such a fetch­ing pic­ture.

via Live Sci­ence

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Animated History of Dogs, Inspired by Keith Haring

in Animation, Biology, Education, K-12, Nature, Science | April 5th, 2019

That quiv­er­ing teacup Chi­huahua…

The long-suf­fer­ing Labrador whose child-friend­ly rep­u­ta­tion has led to a life­time of ear tug­ging and tail pulling…

The wheez­ing French bull­dog, whose own­er has out­fit­ted with a full wardrobe of hood­ies, tutus, rain slick­ers, and paja­mas…

All descend­ed from wolves.

As anthro­pol­o­gist and sci­ence edu­ca­tor David Ian Howe explains in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son, A Brief His­to­ry of Dogs, above, at first glance, can­is lupus seemed an unlike­ly choice for man’s best friend.

For one thing, the two were in direct com­pe­ti­tion for elk, rein­deer, bison, and oth­er tasty prey wan­der­ing Eura­sia dur­ing the Pleis­tocene Epoch.

Though both hunt­ed in groups, run­ning their prey to the point of exhaus­tion, only one roast­ed their kills, cre­at­ing tan­ta­liz­ing aro­mas that drew bold­er wolves ever-clos­er to the human camps.

The ones who will­ing­ly dialed down their wolfish­ness, mak­ing them­selves use­ful as com­pan­ions, secu­ri­ty guards and hunt­ing bud­dies, were reward­ed come sup­per­time. Even­tu­al­ly, this mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial tail wag­ging became full on domes­ti­ca­tion, the first such ani­mal to come under the human yoke.

The intense focus on pure­breds did­n’t real­ly become a thing until the Vic­to­ri­ans began host­ing dog shows. The push to iden­ti­fy and pro­mote breed-spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics often came at a cost to the ani­mals’ well­be­ing, as Neil Pem­ber­ton and Michael Wor­boys point out in BBC His­to­ry Mag­a­zine:

…the improve­ment of breeds towards ‘per­fec­tion’ was con­tro­ver­sial. While there was approval for the greater reg­u­lar­i­ty of type, many fanciers com­plained that stan­dards were being set on arbi­trary, large­ly aes­thet­ic grounds by enthu­si­asts in spe­cial­ist clubs, with­out con­cern for util­i­ty or the health of the ani­mal. This meant that breeds were chang­ing, and not always for the bet­ter. For exam­ple, the mod­ern St Bernard was said to be a beau­ti­ful ani­mal, but would be use­less in Alpine res­cue work.

Cat-fanciers, rest assured that the oppo­si­tion received fair and equal cov­er­age in a feline-cen­tric TED-Ed les­son, pub­lished ear­li­er this year.

And while we applaud TED-Ed for spark­ing our curios­i­ty with its “Brief His­to­ry of” series, cov­er­ing top­ics as far rang­ing as cheese, numer­i­cal sys­tems, goths, video games, and tea, sure­ly we are not the only ones won­der­ing why the late artist Kei­th Har­ing isn’t thanked or name checked in the cred­its?

Every canine-shaped image in this ani­ma­tion is clear­ly descend­ed from his icon­ic bark­ing dog.

While we can’t explain the omis­sion, we can direct read­ers toward Jon Nelson’s great analy­sis of Haring’s rela­tion­ship with dogs in Get Leashed:

They’re sym­bol­ic of unan­swered ques­tions, preva­lent in the 80s: “Can I do this?” “Is this right?” “What are you doing?” “What is hap­pen­ing?” Dogs stand by peo­ple, bark­ing or danc­ing along, some­times in pre­car­i­ous sce­nar­ios, even involved in some of Haring’s explic­it­ly sex­u­al work. Dogs are nei­ther approv­ing nor dis­ap­prov­ing of what peo­ple do in the images; their mouth angle is neu­tral or even hap­py. In some cas­es, human bod­ies wear a dog’s head, pos­si­bly stat­ing that we know only our own enjoy­ment, unaware, like a dog, of life’s next stage or the con­se­quences of our actions.

Vis­it Eth­no­cynol­o­gy, David Ian Howe’s Insta­gram page about the ancient rela­tion­ship between humans and dogs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

Pho­tos of Famous Writ­ers (and Rock­ers) with their Dogs

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City April 15 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover the KattenKabinet: Amsterdam’s Museum Devoted to Works of Art Featuring Cats

in Art, Nature, Travel | February 25th, 2019

Image by T_Marjorie, via Flickr Com­mons

There’s been quite a bit of bark­ing in the media late­ly to her­ald the reopen­ing of the Amer­i­can Ken­nel Club Muse­um of the Dog, relo­cat­ing from St. Louis to New York City’s Park Avenue.

What’s a cat per­son to do?

Per­haps decom­press with­in Amsterdam’s Kat­tenK­abi­net…

In con­trast to the Muse­um of the Dog’s glitzy, glass-front­ed HQ, the Cat Cab­i­net main­tains a fair­ly low pro­file inside a 17th-cen­tu­ry canal house. (Sev­er­al vis­i­tors have not­ed in their Trip Advi­sor reviews that the 3‑room museum’s grand envi­rons help jus­ti­fy the €7  admis­sion.)

The Muse­um of the Dog’s high­ly tot­ed “dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences”  and redesigned atri­um sug­gest a cer­tain eager­ness to estab­lish itself as a major 21st-cen­tu­ry insti­tu­tion.

The Kat­tenK­abi­net is more of a stealth oper­a­tion, cre­at­ed as an homage to one J.P. Mor­gan, a dear­ly depart­ed gin­ger tom, who lived upstairs with his own­er.

The inau­gur­al col­lec­tion took shape around presents the for­mi­da­ble Mor­gan received dur­ing his 17 years on earth—paintings, a bronze cat stat­ue, and a fac­sim­i­le of a dol­lar bill fea­tur­ing his like­ness and the mot­to, “We Trust No Dog.”

In spir­it, the Kabi­net hews close­ly to America’s eclec­tic (and fast dis­ap­pear­ing) road­side muse­ums.

No apps, no inter­ac­tive kiosks, a stolid­ly old fash­ioned approach when it comes to dis­play…

It does have a gift shop, where one can pur­chase logo t‑shirts fea­tur­ing an extreme­ly cat-like spec­i­men, viewed from the rear, tail aloft.

While the KattenKabinet’s hold­ings include some mar­quee names—Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Rembrandt—there’s some­thing com­pelling about the collection’s less well known artists, many of whom embraced the museum’s pet sub­ject again and again.

Muse­um founder Bob Mei­jer rewards vir­tu­al vis­i­tors with some juicy bio­graph­i­cal tid­bits about his artists, cat-relat­ed and oth­er­wise. Take, for exam­ple, Leonor Fini, whose Ubu glow­ers below:

Fini had a three-way rela­tion­ship with the Ital­ian diplo­mat-cum-artist Stanis­lao LeP­ri, who, like Fini, was dif­fi­cult to pin into a cer­tain style, and the Pol­ish lit­er­ary writer Con­stan­tin Jelen­s­ki. The two men were not, how­ev­er, her only house­mates: Fini had dozens of Per­sian cats around her. Indoors you rarely see a pho­to of her with­out a cat in her arms. In the Cat Cab­i­net you can find many of her works, from cheer­ful­ly col­ored cats to high­ly detailed por­traits of cats. The women depict­ed in the paint­ings have that icon­ic mys­tique char­ac­ter­is­tic of Fini’s work.

Tsug­uharu Fou­ji­ta, whose work is a sta­ple of the muse­um, is anoth­er cat-lov­ing-artist-turned-art-him­self, by virtue of Dora Kalmus’ 1927 por­trait, above.

Hil­do Krop is well rep­re­sent­ed through­out Ams­ter­dam, his sculp­tures adorn­ing bridges and build­ings. Two Cats Mak­ing Love, on view at the Kabi­net, is, Mei­jer com­ments,” clear­ly one of his small­er projects and prob­a­bly falls into the cat­e­go­ry of “free work.” One of his most famous works, and of a dif­fer­ent order of mag­ni­tude, is the Berlage mon­u­ment on Vic­to­rieplein in Ams­ter­dam.”

In addi­tion to fine art, the Kabi­net show­cas­es oth­er feline appearances—in vin­tage adver­tis­ing, Tadaa­ki Nar­i­ta’s Lucky cat pin­ball machine, and in the per­son, er, form of 5 live spec­i­mens who have the run of the place.

Those vis­it­ing in the flesh can cat around to some of Amsterdam’s oth­er feline-themed attrac­tions, includ­ing two cat cafes, a cat-cen­tric bou­tique, and the float­ing shel­ter, De Poezen­boot.

And let’s not for­get the oth­er cat muse­ums ‘round the globe, from Min­sk and Malaysia to Syl­va, North Carolina’s Amer­i­can Muse­um of the House Cat.

Begin your explo­ration of the col­lec­tion here.

via the BBC

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

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

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.E

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Explore an Interactive Version of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mural That Documents the Evolution of Birds Over 375 Million Years

in Biology, Museums, Nature, Science | February 4th, 2019

Now, this avian Vat­i­can also has its own Michelan­ge­lo.

– Audubon Mag­a­zine

And the Class of Aves has its very own avian Pan­tone chart, cre­at­ed by sci­ence illus­tra­tor Jane Kim in ser­vice of her 2,500 square-foot Wall of Birds mur­al at Cor­nell University’s Lab of Ornithol­o­gy.

The cus­tom chart’s fifty-one col­ors com­prise about 90 per­cent of the fin­ished work. A palette of thir­teen Gold­en Flu­id Acrylics sup­plied the jew­el-toned accents so thrilling to bird­watch­ers.

Along the way, Kim absorbed a tremen­dous amount of infor­ma­tion about the how and why of bird feath­er col­oration:

The iri­des­cence on the neck and back of the Superb Star­ling comes not from pig­ment,

but from struc­tur­al col­or. The starling’s out­er feath­ers are con­struct­ed in a way

that refracts light like myr­i­ad prisms, mak­ing the bird appear to shim­mer. The epony­mous

col­or­ing of the Lilac-breast­ed Roller results from a dif­fer­ent kind of struc­tur­al

col­or, cre­at­ed when woven microstruc­tures in the feath­ers, called barbs and bar­bules,

reflect only the short­er wave­lengths of light like blue and vio­let.

The pri­ma­ry col­ors that lend their name to the Red-and-yel­low Bar­bet are

derived from a class of pig­ments called carotenoids that the bird absorbs in its diet.

These are the same com­pounds that turn flamin­gos’ feath­ers pink. As a mem­ber of

the fam­i­ly Musophagi­dae, the Hartlaub’s Tura­co dis­plays pig­men­ta­tion unique in the

bird world. Birds have no green pig­men­ta­tion; in most cas­es, ver­dant plumage is a

com­bi­na­tion of yel­low carotenoids and blue struc­tur­al col­or. Tura­cos are an excep­tion,

dis­play­ing a green, cop­per-based pig­ment called tura­coverdin that they absorb

in their her­biv­o­rous diet. The flash of red on the Hartlaub’s under­wings comes from

turacin, anoth­er cop­per-based pig­ment unique to the fam­i­ly.

 

Kim also boned up on her sub­jects’ mat­ing rit­u­als, dietary habits, song styles, and male/female dif­fer­ences pri­or to inscrib­ing the 270 life-size, life­like birds onto the lab’s largest wall.

She exam­ined spec­i­mens from the cen­ter’s col­lec­tion and reviewed cen­turies’ worth of field obser­va­tions.

(The sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish nat­u­ral­ist John Ray dis­missed the horn­bill fam­i­ly as hav­ing a “foul look,” a colo­nial­ism that ruf­fled Kim’s own feath­ers some­what. In retal­i­a­tion, she dubbed the Great Horn­bill, “the Cyra­no of the Jun­gle” owing to his “tequi­la-sun­rise-hued facial phal­lus,” and select­ed him as the cov­er boy for her book about the mur­al.)

Research and pre­lim­i­nary sketch­ing con­sumed an entire year, after which it took 17 months to inscribe 270 life-size creatures—some long extinct—onto the lab’s main wall. The birds are set against a greyscale map of the world, and while many are depict­ed in flight, every one save the Wan­der­ing Alba­tross has a foot touch­ing its con­ti­nent of ori­gin.

Those who can’t vis­it the Wall of Birds (offi­cial title: From So Sim­ple a Begin­ning) in per­son, can log some dig­i­tal bird­watch­ing using a spec­tac­u­lar inter­ac­tive web-based ver­sion of the mur­al that pro­vides plen­ty of infor­ma­tion about each spec­i­men, some of it lit­er­ary. (The afore­men­tioned Alba­tross’ entry con­tains a pass­ing ref­er­ence to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

Explore the Wall of Birds’ inter­ac­tive fea­tures here.

You can down­load a free chap­ter of The Wall of Birds: One Plan­et, 243 Fam­i­lies, 375 Mil­lion Years by sub­scrib­ing to Kim’s mail­ing list here.

Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City Feb­ru­ary 11 for The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the Meditative Cinepoem “H20”: A Landmark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

in Environment, Film, Nature | January 25th, 2019

We all stand to ben­e­fit from a bit of hydrother­a­py, but in these hec­tic, try­ing times, it’s chal­leng­ing to find the time for a bath, let alone come up with the dough for a trop­i­cal vaca­tion or sooth­ing spa expe­ri­ence.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the near­ly hun­dred-year-old exper­i­men­tal film above may be your best option.

In 1929, pho­togra­her and film­mak­er Ralph Stein­er turned his cam­era on a num­ber of watery subjects—hydrants, water­falls, streams, rain­drops dis­turb­ing placid pud­dled sur­faces.…

The result was H20, an 11-and-a-half minute cinepo­em, con­sid­ered by film his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times not­ed in Steiner’s obit, to be “the sec­ond Amer­i­can art film.”

(Have a look at James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Webber’s impres­sion­is­tic 1928 adap­ta­tion of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er if you’re curi­ous about the first.)

Pho­to­play mag­a­zine bestowed its first prize for ama­teur film­mak­ing upon H20, prais­ing Steiner’s pure abstract pat­terns and aston­ish­ing tem­po, and gush­ing that “the pic­ture is bound to attract wide atten­tion and a great deal of dis­cus­sion wher­ev­er it is shown.”

He revis­it­ed the sub­ject two years lat­er with Surf and Sea­weed, above, though his fas­ci­na­tion with move­ment was not lim­it­ed to the nat­ur­al world, as evi­denced by 1930’s Mechan­i­cal Prin­ci­ples.

The hub­bub may have died down a bit in the 90 years since H20’s release, though Steiner’s spir­it lives on in a num­ber of young exper­i­men­tal filmmakers—witness Nor­bert Shieh’s award-win­ning Wash­es, Dave Krunal’s Water­bomb, and Jaden Chen’s A Cup of Water, below.

H2O has been pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty by the Library of Con­gress’ Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Reg­istry. The orig­i­nal piano score in the ver­sion fea­tured on Open Cul­ture was com­posed by William Pear­son.

Down­load a free copy of H20 from the Inter­net archive for use in future try­ing times.

Stein­er’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Aleister Crowley, the Infamous Occultist, Led the First Attempt to Reach the Summit of K2 (1902)

in History, Nature | August 16th, 2018

It sounds like the plot of a Wern­er Her­zog film: Aleis­ter Crow­ley, heir to a brew­ing for­tune and “flam­boy­ant, bisex­u­al drug fiend with a fas­ci­na­tion for the occult,” meets “son of a well-known Jew­ish Social­ist” Oscar Eck­en­stein, “a chemist turned rail­way engi­neer.” The two strike up a friend­ship over their mutu­al pas­sion for moun­taineer­ing, and, in four years time, co-lead an expe­di­tion to reach the sum­mit of K2, the sec­ond high­est moun­tain in the world.

The descrip­tions of these char­ac­ters come from Mick Conefrey’s The Ghosts of K2: The Race for the Sum­mit of the World’s Most Dead­ly Moun­tain, a book detail­ing the many gru­el­ing attempts, many deaths, and few suc­cess­es, in over a cen­tu­ry of climbs to the mountain’s peak. Crow­ley and Eckenstein’s expe­di­tion, under­tak­en in 1902, was the first. Though unsuc­cess­ful, their effort remains a leg­endary feat of his­tor­i­cal brav­ery, or hubris, or insanity—an ascent up the face of what climber George Bell called “a sav­age moun­tain that tries to kill you.”

In an inter­view with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Cone­frey sums up the doomed expe­di­tion:

 In those days, nobody had a clue about what it was going to be like. They thought they would go to the Himalayas and knock off K2 in a cou­ple of days. But as the expe­di­tion pro­ceed­ed, it start­ed falling apart. Eck­en­stein, the leader, had a bad res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion. Crow­ley had malar­ia and spent most of the time in his tent with a high fever. At one point he got so deliri­ous, he start­ed wav­ing his revolver at oth­er mem­bers of the team. 

There are many oth­er Her­zo­gian touch­es. In his book Fall­en Giants, Mau­rice Isser­man describes the team—also con­sist­ing of a novice Eng­lish­man, a Swiss doc­tor, and two expe­ri­enced Aus­tri­an climbers—as “unrea­son­ably bur­dened by three tons of lug­gage.” Some of that unnec­es­sary bur­den came from a “sev­er­al-vol­ume library” Crow­ley “intend­ed to haul onto the glac­i­er.” The oth­ers “object­ed to the super­flu­ous weight, but Crow­ley had read enough Joseph Con­rad to know what hap­pened to those who let go of their hold on civ­i­liza­tion in the wild.” The library stayed, and a train of 200 porters hauled the team’s lug­gage to Bal­toro Glac­i­er. (See Crow­ley in a pho­to from the expe­di­tion above, pre­sum­ably strick­en with malar­ia.)

Pri­or to set­ting off for K2 Eck­en­stein and Crow­ley had climbed vol­ca­noes in Mex­i­co, then the lat­ter had trav­eled to San Fran­cis­co, Hawaii, Japan, Sri Lan­ka, and India—along the way hav­ing affairs, learn­ing med­i­ta­tion, and devel­op­ing a “life­long devo­tion to Shi­va, the Hin­du god of destruc­tion.” While it takes a cer­tain rare per­son­al­i­ty to sub­ject them­selves to the rig­ors of scal­ing a moun­tain almost five miles high, Crowley—notorious for his “mag­ick,” sex­u­al adven­tures, drug use, lewd poet­ry, and found­ing of a reli­gious order—is arguably the most out-there per­son­al­i­ty in the his­to­ry of a very extreme sport.

But moun­taineer­ing “is not a nor­mal pur­suit,” writes Scot­tish climber Robin Camp­bell, “and we should not be too sur­prised to find its adepts show­ing odd behav­ior in oth­er spheres of life.” Like all devo­tees of stren­u­ous, death-defy­ing pur­suits, Crow­ley “want­ed extreme expe­ri­ences,” says Cone­frey, “where he pushed him­self to the lim­it.” It just so hap­pened that he want­ed to push far beyond the nat­ur­al and human worlds. After the failed K2 attempt, he would only make one more dar­ing expe­di­tion with Eck­en­stein, in 1905, a climb up the Himalayan moun­tain of Kangchen­jun­ga, the third high­est moun­tain in the world.

On the trip, Crow­ley, the leader, report­ed­ly treat­ed the local porters with bru­tal arro­gance, and when three of them were killed along with one of the expe­di­tion mem­bers, he refused to help, writ­ing to a Dar­jeel­ing news­pa­per, “a moun­tain ‘acci­dent’ of this sort is one of the things for which I have no sym­pa­thy what­ev­er.” He left the fol­low­ing day and gave up moun­taineer­ing, devot­ing the rest of his life to his occult inter­ests and the exploits that earned him the tabloid rep­u­ta­tion as “the wickedest man in the world.”

K2 was final­ly con­quered by two Ital­ian climbers in 1954, who reached the sum­mit, frost­bit­ten and half-mad, as Joan­na Kaven­na puts it in a review of Cone­frey’s spell­bind­ing book, “in a moment of sub­lime anti­cli­max.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)

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

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Pianist Plays Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Ravel & Debussy for Blind Elephants in Thailand

in Biology, Music, Nature, Travel | July 27th, 2018

Rom­sai the ele­phant wore a red rope around his neck to warn approach­ing humans that he was a dan­ger to both them and ele­phants. A dark patch on his head from a tem­po­rin secre­tion indi­cat­ed that he was in the musth cycle, which only height­ened his aggres­sion. His mahouts at the Ele­phantsWorld sanc­tu­ary in Kan­chanaburi, Thai­land observed that the old, blind ele­phant was grow­ing more dan­ger­ous with age.

And yet, he is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of sweet­ness, as pianist Paul Bar­ton ser­e­nades him with a per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathé­tique, repeat­ing the melody sec­tion sev­er­al times “as he seems to like it.”

In lieu of applause, Rom­sai places his trunk over the top of Barton’s upright piano again and again, in no way aggres­sive, more the ges­ture of a grate­ful audi­ence mem­ber.

As Bar­ton, a York­shire­man who went to Thai­land over twen­ty years ago for what he thought would be a short piano teach­ing stint only to wind up mar­ry­ing a local artist and ani­mal rights activist, said in an inter­view with YourSto­ry:

All ani­mals like music. Dogs, cats, etc. But ele­phants are the clos­est to human beings in the sense that they have the same neu­rons in the brains as us. Also they have a very good mem­o­ry. If you are treat­ed bad­ly as a child, you are going to remem­ber that all your life. It’s the same with ele­phants. The ele­phant shares that part of the brain with us which has flash­backs. They can nev­er for­get the ter­ri­ble things they have seen and suf­fered… If you play clas­si­cal music to an ele­phant, some­thing soft and beau­ti­ful, some­thing that human beings have been lis­ten­ing to for hun­dreds for hun­dreds of years, some­thing that is timeless—and you play that to an ele­phant that is blind and they’ve nev­er heard music before—the reac­tion is price­less. There is a spe­cial bond between you and the ele­phant. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. That lan­guage is nei­ther ours nor theirs. There is some­thing infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly won­der­ful in a piece of Beethoven that con­nects me to that ele­phant and that feel­ing is oth­er­world­ly.

The impulse to play live con­certs for Rom­sai and oth­er blind sanc­tu­ary dwellers was part­ly born from see­ing the pos­i­tive effect music had on some blind chil­dren with whom Bar­ton worked.

He also want­ed to make amends for the defor­esta­tion of the elephant’s home­land, and the way the teak indus­try exploit­ed their labor. It was while thus employed that many of them suf­fered scratched corneas and oth­er eye injuries that blind­ed them, ren­der­ing them dou­bly vul­ner­a­ble when the Thai gov­ern­ment enact­ed a ban on com­mer­cial tim­ber log­ging in 1989:

The ele­phant has worked for humans for too long. It was used in wars, it was used to defor­est its own home. What is the lit­tle thing I can do as a human to say sor­ry, for my species for what we have done to them? I’ll car­ry this heavy thing myself and play some music for the ele­phant while it is hav­ing some break­fast.

Removed from the plush seats of a con­cert hall, Rav­el feels right at home. A roost­er crows, a near­by child pipes up, and Rom­sai wan­ders in and out of the frame, at times appear­ing to keep time with his trunk.

Cicadas under­score Schubert’s Ser­e­nade.

Anoth­er Ele­phantsWorld res­i­dent, Lam Duan’s (aka “Tree with Yel­low Flow­ers”) still­ness as she lis­tens to Bach is rem­i­nis­cent of Barton’s first musi­cal out­ing with the ele­phants:

Ele­phants eat a lot of food. A lot. It is exhaust­ing try­ing to pro­cure that much food for so many ele­phants. When an ele­phant gets to eat, it’s a bit like a dog. A dog will eat its food so quick­ly because it’s not sure if it will ever eat again. And ele­phants are the same. Once they get their hands on some juicy leaves, they will eat and eat and noth­ing can tear them away from their food. That morn­ing I brought the piano in ear­ly to the sanc­tu­ary. Pla-Ra was tak­en to a field full of juicy bam­boo shoots and she began eat­ing with a sin­gle mind­ed ded­i­ca­tion. I start­ed to play Beethoven and she stopped eat­ing. There was this half eat­en bam­boo shoot stick­ing out of her trunk while she stared at me. That was a reac­tion nev­er seen before. An ele­phant stopped eat­ing because of music.

Barton’s lat­est record­ing fea­tures 80-year-old Ampan, blind in one eye and near blind in the oth­er, enjoy­ing Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

Sup­port Paul Barton’s Patre­on here. Learn about vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties or make a dona­tion to Ele­phantsWorld here

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Get Per­fect­ly Visu­al­ized as an Emo­tion­al Roller Coast­er Ride

Down­load 400,000 Free Clas­si­cal Musi­cal Scores & 46,000 Free Clas­si­cal Record­ings from the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project

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

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