The Book of Leaves: A Beautiful Stop Motion Film Featuring 12,000 Pressed Leaves

in Nature | December 29th, 2022

Brett Foxwell metic­u­lous­ly col­lect­ed over 12,000 leaves while walk­ing through forests and parks. Then he care­ful­ly arranged the leaves, many at dif­fer­ent stage of devel­op­ment, into a stop motion sequence. He says:

While col­lect­ing leaves, I con­ceived that the leaf shape [of] every sin­gle plant type I could find would fit some­where into a con­tin­u­ous ani­mat­ed sequence of leaves if that sequence were expan­sive enough. If I did­n’t have the per­fect shape, it meant I just had to col­lect more leaves.

Above, you can see the result of his painstak­ing work. You can also watch anoth­er exact­ing Foxwell ani­ma­tion, The Woodswim­mer, here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Petapix­el/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch “The Woodswim­mer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entire­ly with Wood, and “Bru­tal­ly Tedious” Tech­niques

Stun­ning­ly Elab­o­rate Ottoman Cal­lig­ra­phy Drawn on Dried Leaves

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

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How a Lavish 17th-Century Study of Fish Almost Prevented the Publication of Newton’s Principia, One of the Most Important Science Books Ever Written

in Books, History, Nature, Science | December 26th, 2022

The exalt­ed sta­tus of Isaac New­ton’s Philosophiæ Nat­u­ralis Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca is reflect­ed by the fact that every­body knows it as, sim­ply, the Prin­cip­ia. Very few of us, by con­trast, speak of the His­to­ria when we mean to refer to John Ray and Fran­cis Willugh­by’s De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um, which came out in 1686, the year before the Prin­cip­ia. Both books were pub­lished by the Roy­al Soci­ety, and as it hap­pens, the for­mi­da­ble cost of Willugh­by and Ray’s lav­ish work of ichthy­ol­o­gy near­ly kept New­ton’s ground­break­ing trea­tise on motion and grav­i­ta­tion from the print­ing press.

Accord­ing to the Roy­al Soci­ety’s web site, “Ray and Willughby’s His­to­ria did not prove to be the pub­lish­ing sen­sa­tion that the Fel­lows had hoped and the book near­ly bank­rupt­ed the Soci­ety. This meant that the Soci­ety was unable to meet its promise to sup­port the pub­li­ca­tion of Isaac New­ton’s mas­ter­piece.”

For­tu­nate­ly, “it was saved from obscu­ri­ty by Edmund Hal­ley, then Clerk at the Roy­al Soci­ety” — and now bet­ter known for his epony­mous comet — “who raised the funds to pub­lish the work, pro­vid­ing much of the mon­ey from his own pock­et. ”

Hal­ley’s great reward, in lieu of the salary the Roy­al Soci­ety could no longer pay, was a pile of unsold copies of De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um. That may not have been quite the insult it sounds like, giv­en that the book rep­re­sent­ed a tri­umph of pro­duc­tion and design in its day. You can see a copy in the episode of Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed at the top of the post, and you can close­ly exam­ine its imagery at your leisure in the dig­i­tal archive of the Roy­al Soci­ety. In the words of Jonathan Ash­more, Chair of the Roy­al Society’s Library Com­mit­tee, a brows­ing ses­sion should help us “appre­ci­ate why ear­ly Fel­lows of the Roy­al Soci­ety were so impressed by Willughby’s stun­ning illus­tra­tions of piscine nat­ur­al his­to­ry.”

Though Sav­age duly mar­vels at the Roy­al Soci­ety’s copy of the His­to­ria — a recon­struc­tion made up of pages long ago cut out and sold sep­a­rate­ly, as was once com­mon prac­tice with books with pic­tures  suit­able for fram­ing — it’s clear that much of the moti­va­tion for his vis­it came from the prospect of close prox­im­i­ty to New­to­ni­ana, up to and includ­ing the man’s death mask. But then, New­ton lays fair claim to being the most impor­tant sci­en­tist who ever lived, and the Prin­cip­ia to being the most impor­tant sci­ence book ever writ­ten. Almost three and a half cen­turies lat­er, physics still holds mys­ter­ies for gen­er­a­tions of New­ton’s suc­ces­sors to solve. But then, so do the depths of the ocean.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Beau­ti­ful & Out­landish Col­or Illus­tra­tions Let Euro­peans See Exot­ic Fish for the First Time (1754)

The Bril­liant Col­ors of the Great Bar­ri­er Revealed in a His­toric Illus­trat­ed Book from 1893

How Isaac New­ton Lost $3 Mil­lion Dol­lars in the “South Sea Bub­ble” of 1720: Even Genius­es Can’t Pre­vail Against the Machi­na­tions of the Mar­kets

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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The Birdsong Project Features 220 Musicians, Actors, Artists & Writers Paying Tribute to Birds: Watch Performances by Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costello and Beck

in Music, Nature | July 20th, 2022

Birds are the orig­i­nal musi­cians. This, at least, is a premise of the Audubon Soci­ety’s Bird­song Project, “a move­ment inspir­ing bird con­ser­va­tion through art.” There could thus be no more nat­ur­al art form in which to cel­e­brate our fine feath­ered (and in many cas­es, now endan­gered) friends than music, which the Bird­song Project has com­mis­sioned for its first release, and in no small quan­ti­ty. They’ve so far put out the first two vol­umes of For the Birds, which in its total­i­ty will involve “more than 220 music artists, actors, lit­er­ary fig­ures, and visu­al artists, all com­ing togeth­er to cel­e­brate the joy birds bring to our lives” — and remind us of “the envi­ron­men­tal threats we all face.”

Those con­trib­u­tors include Yo‑Yo Ma, Elvis Costel­lo, and Beck, whose work on For the Birds you can hear in the videos in this post. And in the case of Yo-Yo Ma, who per­forms a piece called “In the Gale” (by com­pos­er Anna Clyne), you can see him play not in a con­cert hall but out in the midst of gen­uine nature.

This under­scores what’s heard bright­ly and clear­ly on the record­ing: that Ma and Clyne were just two of many col­lab­o­ra­tors on the track, the oth­ers being what sound like a for­est full of birds. Oth­er artists take dif­fer­ent approach­es: Beck­’s “Archangel” is a lush stu­dio sound­scape, and Costel­lo com­bines his own “The Birds Will Still Be Singing” with “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the most appro­pri­ate Bea­t­les cov­er imag­in­able (apart from “Black­bird,” at least).

Orga­nized by Ran­dall Poster, by day a music super­vi­sor for film­mak­ers like Wes Ander­son and Mar­tin Scors­ese, For the Birds also fea­tures music from, Jarvis Cock­er, The Flam­ing Lips, Kaoru Watan­abe, Stephin Mer­ritt, and Seu Jorge. And those are just the con­trib­u­tors known pri­mar­i­ly for their music: oth­ers involved in the project include Jeff Gold­blum, Til­da Swin­ton, and Jonathan Franzen. You can now stream the first two vol­umes on most major ser­vices, and pre-order the full 20-LP box set that will con­tain the mate­r­i­al musi­cal and lit­er­ary from all five vol­umes, the last of which is sched­uled to come out this Sep­tem­ber. Give it a lis­ten, and after­ward you’ll per­haps find your­self that much more able to appre­ci­ate the avian sym­pho­ny con­duct­ed all around us.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Sound Of Endan­gered Birds Get Turned Into Elec­tron­ic Music

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

Bird­Cast: You Can Now Fore­cast the Migra­tion of Birds Across the U.S. Just Like the Weath­er

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Listen to Earth.fm, a Free Archive of Natural Soundscapes That Can Re-Connect You with Nature & Improve Your Wellbeing

in Nature | July 12th, 2022

“Just lis­ten. Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place…. Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing.” – acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton

The study of acoustic ecol­o­gy does­n’t get much main­stream atten­tion. But if you’ve been a read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’ve like­ly come across a post about pre­serv­ing nat­ur­al sounds by stream­ing record­ings of the world’s many envi­ron­ments. These projects all, in one way or anoth­er, con­tribute to goals artic­u­lat­ed by Cana­di­an com­pos­er and writer R. Mur­ray Schafer, the “self-declared father” of acoustic ecol­o­gy, which involves the study, con­ser­va­tion, and appre­ci­a­tion of envi­ron­men­tal sound.

As Neil Clarke notes at Earth.fm, Schaf­fer­’s com­plex dis­ci­pline can seem dif­fi­cult to grasp, as it “strad­dles ‘acoustics, archi­tec­ture, lin­guis­tics, music, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy and urban plan­ning.’ ” Maybe all we need to know to appre­ci­ate the goals of Earth.fm — anoth­er excel­lent entry in a grow­ing list of nat­ur­al-sound stream­ing sites – comes through in Clarke’s descrip­tion of Schaffer’s World Sound­scape Project (WSP):

It was hoped that, even­tu­al­ly, the WSP would be able to cre­ate a bal­ance “between the human com­mu­ni­ty and its son­ic envi­ron­ment.” To this end, lis­ten­ing and “ear-clean­ing” prac­tices, includ­ing “sound­walks” – a walk­ing med­i­ta­tion where a high son­ic aware­ness is main­tained – were designed to increase indi­vid­u­als’ con­scious­ness of the sounds around them. By prompt­ing engage­ment with the real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary sound­scapes, lis­ten­ers were intend­ed to gain aware­ness of their part in these sound­scapes’ cre­ation, and there­fore appre­ci­ate their respon­si­bil­i­ty towards them.

Schaf­fer began record­ing sound­scapes (a word he coined) in Van­cou­ver in the ear­ly 70s. Since then, his work has inspired and com­ple­ment­ed that of oth­er field recordists/acoustic theorists/sound archivists like Bernie Krauss and Gor­don Hemp­ton. Although the ear­ly acoustic ecol­o­gists could not have fore­seen stream­ing media, it has with­out a doubt become for many of us a dom­i­nant vehi­cle for sound in our dai­ly lives, includ­ing sounds of the nat­ur­al world.

With­out an appre­ci­a­tion for the sounds of nat­ur­al silence (which we know, since John Cage, does not mean absolute qui­et), our under­stand­ing of rain­forests, deserts, and oceans as liv­ing, breath­ing real­i­ties can become dulled, just as much as we lose touch with the green spaces out­side our win­dows. Recon­nect­ing through sound has the dual effect of calm­ing our inner states and attun­ing us more close­ly to the out­er world as it is, with­out the dis­trac­tions of record­ed music and video laid over­top.

Billing itself as “like Spo­ti­fy, but for nat­ur­al sound­scapes,” Earth.fm, offers not a rival stream­ing ser­vice, but an alter­na­tive in which users can make their own playlists, The Verge explains, “zip­ping from Brazil to Egypt in a mat­ter of min­utes.” New sounds are added every three days. “You can lis­ten to bird species in Malaysia or India or for­est sounds in Ghana. The sounds are gath­ered from numer­ous con­trib­u­tors who have expe­ri­ence record­ing the nat­ur­al world in places includ­ing Brazil, Spain, Nor­way, New Zealand, and the Unit­ed King­dom.”

We can intu­it Earth.fm’s mis­sion not only as ther­a­peu­tic and preser­va­tion­ist but also as an eth­i­cal attempt to approach the cri­sis stream­ing media has intro­duced in the arts. Human-made sounds (or “anthro­pophy”) are just as much a part of our envi­ron­ment as those made by frogs, rivers, and ante­lope. Our con­stant, often mind­less stream­ing, how­ev­er — made pos­si­ble by infi­nite dig­i­tal repos­i­to­ries and cheap (for now) ener­gy — can be seen as a form of noise pol­lu­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to ener­gy over­con­sump­tion.

The ethics of stream­ing must account for the impact on the beings (in this case, us) who make these sounds. Big Tech com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of music requires a “vast con­ver­sa­tion,” argues an essay on the Earth.fm site, that includes “the for­mat’s impact on those at the heart of this whole under­tak­ing: those who cre­ate music.” By impli­ca­tion, Earth.fm and oth­er sites that stream acoustic record­ings of nat­ur­al sounds (like those in the links below), offer an eth­i­cal alter­na­tive to music stream­ing — one that recon­nects us, Eliz­a­beth Wadding­ton writes on the site, to “the music of a chang­ing world.” Learn more about Earth.fm’s activ­i­ties here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

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

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Why 99% Of Smithsonian’s Specimens Are Hidden In High-Security

in Museums, Nature | June 28th, 2022

Muse­ums are the mem­o­ry of our cul­ture and they’re the mem­o­ry of our plan­et. — Dr. Kirk John­son, Direc­tor, Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

For many of us nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­ums are emblem­at­ic of school field trips, or rainy day out­ings with (or as) chil­dren.

There’s always some­thing to be gleaned from the recon­struct­ed dinosaur skele­tons, daz­zling min­er­als, and 100-year-old spec­i­mens on dis­play.

The edu­ca­tion­al prospects are even greater for research sci­en­tists.

The above entry in Busi­ness Insid­er’s Big Busi­ness series takes us behind the scenes of the Smith­son­ian Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, a fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed insti­tu­tion where more than 99% of its vast col­lec­tion is housed in the base­ment, on upper floors and employ­ees-only wings of exhi­bi­tion floors, or at an off­site facil­i­ty in neigh­bor­ing Mary­land.

The lat­ter is poised to pro­vide safe space for more of these trea­sures as cli­mate change-relat­ed flood­ing pos­es an increas­ing­ly dire threat. The museum’s Nation­al Mall loca­tion, which draws more than 6 mil­lion vis­i­tors annu­al­ly, is now vir­tu­al­ly at sea lev­el, and Con­gress is mov­ing at a pace for­mer­ly known as glacial to approve the expen­sive but nec­es­sary struc­tur­al improve­ments that would safe­guard these pre­cious col­lec­tions.

The muse­um cur­rent­ly boasts some 147 mil­lion spec­i­mens, and is con­tin­u­al­ly adding more, by means of field col­lec­tions, dona­tions, and pur­chas­es made with endow­ments, though as a non-prof­it insti­tu­tion, it’s rarely able to out­bid deep-pock­et­ed pri­vate col­lec­tors at auc­tions of hot-tick­et items like large dinosaur bones.

The Divi­sion of Birds’ dai­ly mail brings sam­ples of “snarge” — whatever’s left over when a bird makes impact with an air­craft.

Upon arrival at the Smith­son­ian, what­ev­er its size or mar­ket val­ue, every item is sub­ject­ed to a process of inspec­tion known as “acces­sion­ing”.

After that, it is metic­u­lous­ly cleaned.

Bee­tles in an off­site Osteo Prep Lab get to work on resid­ual organ­ic mate­ri­als like skin and tis­sue.

Human experts use a hand­held air scrape tool to incre­men­tal­ly sep­a­rate fos­sils from the rocky matrix in which they were dis­cov­ered

The goal is per­ma­nent stor­age state.

Geo­log­i­cal spec­i­mens are clas­si­fied accord­ing to Dana’s Sys­tem of Min­er­al­o­gy and stored in draw­ers. High-val­ue items are assigned to the Blue Room or the Gem Vault.

Bones that are look­ing to spend the bet­ter part of eter­ni­ty on a shelf are fit­ted for cus­tom fiber­glass and plas­tic cra­dles to pro­tect against pests, mois­ture, and grav­i­ty-relat­ed stress frac­tures.

The Depart­ment of Ento­mol­o­gy dries and pins incom­ing insects, arach­nids, and myr­i­apods, and stores them in hydraulic car­riages.

Mam­mals, rep­tiles, fish and birds are stuffed or pick­led in alco­hol.

Many items in the museum’s col­lec­tion date back to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

These days, staff strive to pre­serve as much as they can, using every tool and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment at their dis­pos­al. As ornithol­o­gist and feath­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Car­la Dove, states, “It’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to do as much as we can with the spec­i­men if we’re going to take it from the wild for research.”

These care­ful prepa­ra­tions ensure that the world’s largest nat­ur­al his­to­ry col­lec­tion can con­tin­ue to serve as a liv­ing library for thou­sands of vis­it­ing scientists…climate change per­mit­ting.

Access to the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al History’s col­lec­tions and data­bas­es result in the pub­li­ca­tion of hun­dreds of research papers and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of hun­dreds of new species every year.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing valu­able intel­li­gence for research ini­tia­tives on such top­ics as dis­ease trans­mis­sion, vol­canic activ­i­ty, and of course, the effects of bird strikes on air­planes, muse­um staff is work­ing toward a goal of pre­serv­ing each item with a dig­i­tal scan — 9 mil­lion and count­ing…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

The Smith­son­ian Puts 2.8 Mil­lion High-Res Images Online and Into the Pub­lic Domain

Smith­son­ian Dig­i­tizes & Lets You Down­load 40,000 Works of Asian and Amer­i­can Art

The Smith­son­ian Picks “101 Objects That Made Amer­i­ca”

- 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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Watch a New Animation of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

in Animation, Music, Nature, Physics | May 2nd, 2022

…I would like not to under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of the world view which is the result of sci­en­tif­ic effort. We have been led to imag­ine all sorts of things infi­nite­ly more mar­velous than the imag­in­ings of poets and dream­ers of the past.

- Richard Feyn­man

In 1955, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man gave a talk on the val­ue of sci­ence to mem­bers of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the wake of the destruc­tion of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, his involve­ment with the Man­hat­tan Project had been cause for seri­ous depres­sion and soul search­ing.

He con­clud­ed that the pur­suit of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge remained valu­able to soci­ety, even though such knowl­edge comes with­out oper­at­ing instruc­tions, and thus can be put to evil pur­pos­es.

In the Cal­tech speech, he cit­ed the life improv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and med­ical break­throughs that are the result of sci­en­tif­ic explo­rations, as well as the sci­en­tif­ic field­’s alle­giance to the con­cept that we must be free to dis­sent, ques­tion, and dis­cuss:

If we sup­press all dis­cus­sion, all crit­i­cism, pro­claim­ing “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom human­i­ty for a long time to the chains of author­i­ty, con­fined to the lim­its of our present imag­i­na­tion.

(This strikes a pro­found chord in 2022, remem­ber­ing how some extreme­ly vocal politi­cians and cit­i­zens took chang­ing pub­lic health man­dates as evi­dence of con­spir­a­cy, rather than an ever-deep­en­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of how an unfa­mil­iar virus was oper­at­ing.)

Any child with an inter­est in STEM will be grat­i­fied to learn that Feyn­man also found much to admire in “the fun …which some peo­ple get from read­ing and learn­ing and think­ing about (sci­ence), and which oth­ers get from work­ing in it.

Through­out his speech, he refrained from tech­ni­cal jar­gon, using lan­guage that those whose pas­sions skew more toward the arts can under­stand to invoke the expe­ri­ence of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.

His med­i­ta­tions con­cern­ing the inter­con­nect­ed­ness between every mol­e­cule “stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness” and every­thing else in the known uni­verse, includ­ing him­self, a human stand­ing beside the sea, try­ing to make sense of it all, is of a piece with Shake­speare and Walt Whit­man.

Unti­tled Ode to the Won­der of Life

by Richard Feyn­man

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.

There are the rush­ing waves

moun­tains of mol­e­cules

each stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness

tril­lions apart

yet form­ing white surf in uni­son.

Ages on ages before any eyes could see

year after year

thun­der­ous­ly pound­ing the shore as now.

For whom, for what?

On a dead plan­et

with no life to enter­tain.

Nev­er at rest

tor­tured by ener­gy

wast­ed prodi­gious­ly by the sun

poured into space.

A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea

all mol­e­cules repeat

the pat­terns of one anoth­er

till com­plex new ones are formed.

They make oth­ers like them­selves

and a new dance starts.

Grow­ing in size and com­plex­i­ty

liv­ing things

mass­es of atoms

DNA, pro­tein

danc­ing a pat­tern ever more intri­cate.

Out of the cra­dle

onto dry land

here it is

stand­ing: atoms with con­scious­ness;

mat­ter with curios­i­ty.

Stands at the sea,

won­ders at won­der­ing: I

a uni­verse of atoms

an atom in the uni­verse

The Mar­gin­a­lian’s (for­mer­ly Brain Pick­ings) Maria Popo­va seizes on this inter­lude for the final install­ment of her video series, The Uni­verse in Verse, above, col­lab­o­rat­ing with ani­ma­tor Kel­li Ander­son on a “per­spec­tive-broad­en­ing, mind-deep­en­ing” visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Feynman’s excerpt­ed remarks.

Flow­ing under and around Feynman’s nar­ra­tion is an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion by cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, whose renown in the field of music is on par with Feynman’s in physics, and who notes in the intro­duc­tion to The Quotable Feyn­man:

While he paid close atten­tion to prob­lems we face and gen­er­ate, he also knew that humans are a sub­set of nature, and nature held for him the great­est fas­ci­na­tion — for the imag­i­na­tion of nature is far, far greater than the imag­i­na­tion of man, and nature guards her secrets jeal­ous­ly.

Read Feynman’s com­plete speech to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty here.

Watch all nine chap­ters of The Uni­verse in Verse here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

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

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Video

- 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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Watch Awesome Human Choreography That Reproduces the Murmurations of Starling Flocks

in Dance, Nature, Sports | December 24th, 2021

A num­ber of chore­o­g­ra­phers have tak­en inspi­ra­tion from the move­ment of birds.

Sadek Waff, cre­ator of thrilling­ly pre­cise “mur­mu­ra­tions” such as the one above, is also inspired by street dance — par­tic­u­lar­ly the pop­ping hip hop moves known as Tut­ting and Toy­Man.

The nature lover and founder of the dance troupe Géométrie Vari­able uses both to excel­lent effect, chan­nel­ing a star­ling flock­’s hive mind with human dancers, whose low­er halves remain firm­ly root­ed. It’s all about the hands and arms, punc­tu­at­ed with the occa­sion­al neck flex.

As he observes on his Insta­gram pro­file:

There is mag­ic every­where, the key is know­ing how to look and lis­ten in silence. Like a cloud of birds form­ing waves in the sky, each indi­vid­ual has their own iden­ti­ty but also has an irre­place­able place in the whole.

To achieve these kalei­do­scop­ic mur­mu­ra­tions, Waff’s dancers drill for hours, count­ing aloud in uni­son, refin­ing their ges­tures to the point where the indi­vid­ual is sub­sumed by the group.

The use of mir­rors can height­en the illu­sion:

The reflec­tion brings a sym­met­ri­cal dimen­sion, like a calm body of water con­tem­plat­ing the spec­ta­cle from anoth­er point of view, adding an addi­tion­al dimen­sion, an exten­sion of the image.

The larg­er the group, the more daz­zling the effect, though a video fea­tur­ing a small­er than usu­al group of dancers — 20 in total — is help­ful for iso­lat­ing the com­po­nents Waff brings to bear in his avian-inspired work.

We’re par­tic­u­lar­ly enthralled by the mur­mu­ra­tion Waff cre­at­ed for the 2020 Par­a­lympic Games’ clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Tokyo, using both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs in match­ing black COVID-pre­cau­tion masks to embody the event’s themes of “har­mo­nious cacoph­o­ny” and “mov­ing for­ward.” (Notice that the front row of dancers are wheel­chair users.)

See more of Sadek Waff’s mur­mu­ra­tions on his YouTube chan­nel and on Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Dancer Pays a Grav­i­ty-Defy­ing Trib­ute to Claude Debussy

The Evo­lu­tion of Dance from 1950 to 2019: A 7‑Decade Joy Ride in 6 Min­utes

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist 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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Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: Discover One of the Most Prized Natural History Books of All Time (1734–1765)

in Biology, Books, Nature | December 13th, 2021

In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, a Euro­pean could know the world in great detail with­out ever leav­ing his home­land. Or he could, at least, if he got into the right indus­try. So it was with Alber­tus Seba, a Dutch phar­ma­cist who opened up shop in Ams­ter­dam just as the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry began. Giv­en the city’s promi­nence as a hub of inter­na­tion­al trade, which in those days was most­ly con­duct­ed over water, Seba could acquire from the crew mem­bers of arriv­ing ships all man­ner of plant and ani­mal spec­i­mens from dis­tant lands. In this man­ner he amassed a ver­i­ta­ble pri­vate muse­um of the nat­ur­al world.

The “cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties” Seba put togeth­er — as col­lec­tors of won­ders did in those days — ranked among the largest on the con­ti­nent. But when he died in 1736, his mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion did not sur­vive him. He’d already sold much of it twen­ty years ear­li­er to Peter the Great, who used it as the basis for Rus­si­a’s first muse­um, the Kun­stkam­mer in St. Peters­burg.

What remained had to be auc­tioned off in order to fund one of Seba’s own projects: the Locu­pletis­si­mi rerum nat­u­ral­i­um the­sauri accu­ra­ta descrip­tio, or “Accu­rate descrip­tion of the very rich the­saurus of the prin­ci­pal and rarest nat­ur­al objects,” pages of which you can view at the Pub­lic Domain Review and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art.

This four-vol­ume set of books con­sti­tut­ed an attempt to cat­a­log the vari­ety of liv­ing things on Earth, a for­mi­da­ble endeav­or that Seba was nev­er­the­less well-placed to under­take, ren­der­ing each one in engrav­ings made life­like by their depth of col­or and detail. The lav­ish pro­duc­tion of the The­saurus (more recent­ly repli­cat­ed in the con­densed form of Taschen’s Cab­i­net of Nat­ur­al Curiosi­ties) pre­sent­ed a host of chal­lenges both phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic. But there was also the intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem of how, exact­ly, to orga­nize all its tex­tu­al and visu­al infor­ma­tion. As orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished, it groups its spec­i­mens by phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties, in a man­ner vague­ly sim­i­lar to the much more influ­en­tial sys­tem pub­lished by Swedish sci­en­tist Carl Lin­naeus in 1735.

Lin­naeus, as it hap­pens, twice vis­it­ed Seba to exam­ine the lat­ter’s famous col­lec­tion. It sure­ly had an influ­ence on his think­ing on how to name every­thing in the bio­log­i­cal realm: not just the likes of trees, owls, snakes, and jel­ly­fish, but also the “parax­o­da,” crea­tures whose exis­tence was sus­pect­ed but not con­firmed. These includ­ed not only the hydra and the phoenix, but also the rhi­noc­er­os and the pel­i­can.

Eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Euro­peans pos­sessed much more infor­ma­tion about the world than did their ances­tors, but facts were still more than occa­sion­al­ly inter­mixed with fan­ta­sy. Giv­en the strange­ness of what had recent­ly been doc­u­ment­ed, no one dared put lim­its on the strange­ness of what had­n’t.

Note: A num­ber of the vibrant images on this page come from the Taschen edi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

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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