Johannes Kepler Theorized That Each Planet Sings a Song, Each in a Different Voice: Mars is a Tenor; Mercury, a Soprano; and Earth, an Alto

in Astronomy, Music, Science | May 24th, 2019

Johannes Kepler deter­mined just how the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem make their way around the sun. He pub­lished his inno­v­a­tive work on the sub­ject from 1609 to 1619, and in the final year of that decade he also came up with a the­o­ry that each plan­et sings a song, and each in a dif­fer­ent voice at that. Mars is a tenor, Mer­cury is a sopra­no, and Earth, as the BBC show QI (or Quite Inter­est­ing) recent­ly tweet­ed, “is an alto that sings two notes Mi and Fa, which Kepler read as ‘Mis­e­ri­am & Famem’, ‘mis­ery and famine’ ” — two phe­nom­e­na not unknown on Earth in Kepler’s time, even though the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion had already start­ed to change the way peo­ple lived.

Not all of the best minds of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion thought pure­ly in terms of cal­cu­la­tion. The blog Thats­Maths describes Kepler’s mis­sion as explain­ing the solar sys­tem “in terms of divine har­mo­ny,” find­ing “a sys­tem of the world that was math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect and har­mon­i­cal­ly pleas­ing.” Tru­ly divine har­mo­ny could pre­sum­ably find its expres­sion in music, an idea that led Kepler to explain “plan­e­tary motions in terms of har­mon­ic rela­tion­ships, a scheme that he called the ‘song of the Earth.’ ”

Accord­ing to this scheme, “each plan­et emits a tone that varies in pitch as its dis­tance from the Sun varies from per­i­he­lion to aphe­lion and back” — that is, from the near­est they get to the sun to the far­thest they get from the sun and back — “pro­duc­ing a con­tin­u­ous glis­san­do of inter­me­di­ate tones, a ‘whistling pro­duced by fric­tion with the heav­en­ly light.’ ”

Kepler named the com­bined result “the music of the spheres,” but what does it sound like? Switzer­land-based cor­net­tist Bruce Dick­ey wants to give us a sense of it with Nature’s Whis­per­ing Secret, “a project for a CD record­ing explor­ing the ideas about music and cos­mol­o­gy of Johannes Kepler.” Demand­ing the musi­cian­ship of not just Dick­ey but com­pos­er Cal­liope Tsoupa­ki, singer Hana Blažíková, and a group of singers and instru­men­tal­ists from across Europe and Amer­i­ca as well, all “among the most dis­tin­guished musi­cians per­form­ing 16th-cen­tu­ry poly­phon­ic music today.” The Indiegogo cam­paign for this ambi­tious trib­ute to Kepler’s ideas at the inter­sec­tion of sci­ence and aes­thet­ics, which involves an album as well as a series of live per­for­mances into the year 2020, is on its very last day, so if you’d like to hear the music of the spheres for your­self, con­sid­er mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion.

via Quite Inter­est­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

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

Relax with 8 Hours of Clas­si­cal Space Music: From Richard Strauss & Haydn, to Bri­an Eno, Philip Glass & Beyond

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

Kepler, Galileo & Nos­tradamus in Col­or, on Google

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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Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols Creates a Short Film for NASA to Recruit New Astronauts (1977)

in Science, Television | May 10th, 2019

Imag­ine grow­ing up in the late 1960s, wit­ness­ing at an impres­sion­able age the hey­day of the orig­i­nal Star Trek fol­lowed by the real-life moon land­ing. (If you actu­al­ly did grow up in the late 1960s, just remem­ber your child­hood.) How could you not have dreamed of work­ing on some­thing to do with out­er space, or indeed in out­er space itself? It seems that both the pro­mot­ers of NASA and the cre­ators of Star Trek know that both their projects draw from the same well of won­der about the world beyond our plan­et. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, William Shat­ner has nar­rat­ed a doc­u­men­tary on the space shut­tle as well as a Mars land­ing video, and Leonard Nimoy nar­rat­ed a short about NASA’s space­craft Dawn.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieu­tenant Uhu­ra in the orig­i­nal series, also did her NASA-pro­mot­ing bit — or per­haps more than her bit — by star­ring in the agen­cy’s 1977 recruit­ment film. In the years since the end of Star Trek, she had already been vol­un­teer­ing with NASA’s push to recruit more women and minori­ties.

“I am going to bring you so many qual­i­fied women and minor­i­ty astro­naut appli­cants for this posi­tion that if you don’t choose one… every­body in the news­pa­pers across the coun­try will know about it,” she has since remem­bered telling NASA at the time. In the event, NASA chose more than a few, includ­ing astro­nauts like Sal­ly Ride, Guion Blu­ford, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair.

“I still feel a lit­tle bit like Lieu­tenant Uhu­ra on the star­ship Enter­prise,” Nichols says at the begin­ning of the film. “You know, now there’s a 20th-cen­tu­ry Enter­prise, an actu­al space vehi­cle built by NASA and designed to put us in the busi­ness of space, and not mere­ly space explo­ration.” NASA’s Enter­prise, she explains, is “a space shut­tle built to make reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled runs into space and back, just like a com­mer­cial air­line,” one that “may even be used to build a space sta­tion in orbit around the Earth, and this would require the ser­vices of peo­ple with a vari­ety of skills and qual­i­fi­ca­tions.” At the very end, she empha­sizes a dif­fer­ent sense of vari­ety: “I’m speak­ing to the whole fam­i­ly of humankind, minori­ties and women alike. If you qual­i­fy and would like to be an astro­naut, now is the time. This is your NASA, a space agency embarked on a mis­sion to improve the qual­i­ty of life on plan­et Earth right now” — an even wor­thi­er mis­sion, some might say, than bold­ly going where no man has gone before.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Trek Celebri­ties William Shat­ner and Wil Wheaton Nar­rate Mars Land­ing Videos for NASA

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

William Shat­ner Puts in a Long Dis­tance Call to Astro­naut Aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

NASA Cre­ates Movie Par­o­dy Posters for Its Expe­di­tion Flights: Down­load Par­o­dies of Metrop­o­lis, The Matrix, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and More

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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How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

in Books, Education, Neuroscience, Science | May 3rd, 2019

Some­times, when I can’t sleep, I men­tal­ly revis­it the var­i­ous homes of my child­hood, wan­der­ing from room to room, turn­ing on lights and peer­ing in clos­ets until I conk out.

Turns out these imag­i­nary tours are also handy mnemon­ic tools, as Vox’s Dean Peter­son explains above.

Hey, that’s good news… isn’t the sub­con­scious rumored to do some heavy lift­ing in terms of pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion?

Peter­son con­quered a self-described bad mem­o­ry, at least tem­porar­i­ly, by traips­ing around his apart­ment, deposit­ing vivid sen­tence-by-sen­tence clues that would even­tu­al­ly help him recite by heart one of his favorite chap­ters in Moby Dick.

In truth, he was plant­i­ng these clues in his hip­pocam­pus, the rel­a­tive­ly small struc­ture in the brain that’s a crit­i­cal play­er when it comes to mem­o­ry, includ­ing the spa­tial mem­o­ries that allow us to nav­i­gate famil­iar loca­tions with­out seem­ing to give the mat­ter any thought.

What made it stick was pair­ing his every­day coor­di­nates to extra­or­di­nary visu­als.

Chap­ter 37, for those keep­ing track at home, is a mono­logue for Cap­tain Ahab in which he describes him­self as not just mad but “mad­ness mad­dened.” Here’s the first sen­tence:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail.

Not the eas­i­est text for 21st-cen­tu­ry heads to wrap around, though with a lit­tle effort, most of us get the gist.

Let’s not get hung up on lit­er­ary inter­pre­ta­tion here, though, folks. Hav­ing set­tled on his front stoop as the first stop of his mem­o­ry palace Peter­son refrained from pic­tur­ing frothy spume lap­ping at the low­er­most step. Instead he plunked down a funer­al wreath and direc­tor John Waters, pale of suit and cheek, weep­ing. Get it? White? Wake? Pale cheeks?

After which Peter­son moved on to the next sen­tence.

There are 38 in all, and after sev­er­al days of prac­tice in which he men­tal­ly walked the image-strewn course of his apart­ment-cum-Mem­o­ry Palace, Peter­son was able to regale his cowork­ers with an off-book recita­tion.

The time fac­tor will def­i­nite­ly be a let down for those hop­ing for a low com­mit­ment par­ty trick.

Peter­son spent three-to-four hours a day pac­ing his spa­tial mem­o­ry, admir­ing the odd­i­ties he him­self had placed there.

The incred­u­lous com­ments from those ques­tion­ing the effi­cien­cy of giv­ing up half a day to mem­o­rize a page and a half are bal­anced by tes­ti­mo­ni­als from those who’ve met with suc­cess, using the Mem­o­ry Palace method to retain vast amounts of data pri­or to an exam.

That may, ulti­mate­ly, be a bet­ter use of the Mem­o­ry Palace. Peter­son gets an A for spit­ting out the lines as writ­ten, but his expres­sion is that of an actor audi­tion­ing with mate­r­i­al he has not yet mas­tered. (No shade on Peterson’s act­ing tal­ent or lack thereof—even great actors get this face when their lines are shaky. One friend doesn’t con­sid­er her­self off book until she can get all the way through her mono­logue whilst hop­ping on one foot.)

For more infor­ma­tion on build­ing a Mem­o­ry Palace, refer, as Peter­son did, to author Joshua Foer’s Moon­walk­ing With Ein­stein: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing, or to his appear­ance on Adam Grant’s TED Work/Life pod­cast. Stream it here:

If you would like to go whale to whale with Peter­son, below is the text that he installed in his Mem­o­ry Palace, com­pli­ments of Her­man Melville:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envi­ous bil­lows side­long swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

Yon­der, by ever-brim­ming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The div­er sun- slow dived from noon- goes down; my soul mounts up! she wea­ries with her end­less hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lom­bardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wear­er, see not its far flash­ings; but dark­ly feel that I wear that, that daz­zling­ly con­founds. ‘Tis iron- that I know- not gold. ‘Tis split, too- that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the sol­id met­al; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no hel­met in the most brain-bat­ter­ing fight!

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sun­rise nobly spurred me, so the sun­set soothed. No more. This love­ly light, it lights not me; all love­li­ness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gift­ed with the high per­cep­tion, I lack the low, enjoy­ing pow­er; damned, most sub­tly and most malig­nant­ly! damned in the midst of Par­adise! Good night-good night! (wav­ing his hand, he moves from the win­dow.)

‘Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stub­born, at the least; but my one cogged cir­cle fits into all their var­i­ous wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of pow­der, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire oth­ers, the match itself must needs be wast­ing! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad- Star­buck does; but I’m demo­ni­ac, I am mad­ness mad­dened! That wild mad­ness that’s only calm to com­pre­hend itself! The prophe­cy was that I should be dis­mem­bered; and- Aye! I lost this leg. I now proph­esy that I will dis­mem­ber my dis­mem­ber­er. Now, then, be the prophet and the ful­filler one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye crick­et-play­ers, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blind­ed Bendi­goes! I will not say as school­boys do to bul­lies- Take some one of your own size; don’t pom­mel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hid­den. Come forth from behind your cot­ton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s com­pli­ments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye can­not swerve me, else ye swerve your­selves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed pur­pose is laid with iron rails, where­on my soul is grooved to run. Over unsound­ed gorges, through the rifled hearts of moun­tains, under tor­rents’ beds, unerr­ing­ly I rush! Naught’s an obsta­cle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Til­da Swin­ton, Stephen Fry, John Waters & Oth­ers

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

How to Prac­tice Effec­tive­ly: Lessons from Neu­ro­science Can Help Us Mas­ter Skills in Music, Sports & Beyond

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City May 13 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daughter to Measles, Writes a Heartbreaking Letter about Vaccinations: “It Is Almost a Crime to Allow Your Child to Go Unimmunised”

in Life, Science | April 29th, 2019

dahl vaccine

Image by Carl Van Vechten/Library of Con­gress, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Gen­er­a­tions of us know Roald Dahl as, first and fore­most, the author of pop­u­lar chil­dren’s nov­els like The BFG, The Witch­es, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry (that book of the “sub­ver­sive” lost chap­ter), and James and the Giant Peach. We remem­ber read­ing those with great delight, and some of us even made it into the rumored lit­er­ary ter­ri­to­ry of his “sto­ries for grown-ups.” But few of us, at least if we grew up in the past few decades, will have famil­iar­ized our­selves with all the pur­pos­es to which Dahl put his pen. Like many fine writ­ers, Dahl always drew some­thing from his per­son­al expe­ri­ence, and few per­son­al expe­ri­ences could have had as much impact as the sud­den death of his measles-strick­en sev­en-year-old daugh­ter Olivia in 1962. A chap­ter of Don­ald Stur­rock­’s biog­ra­phy Sto­ry­teller: The Life of Roald Dahl, excerpt­ed at The Tele­graph, tells of both the event itself and Dahl’s sto­ic, writer­ly (accord­ing to some, per­haps too sto­ic and too writer­ly) way of han­dling it.

But good did come out of Dahl’s response to the tragedy. In 1986, he wrote a leaflet for the Sandwell Health Author­i­ty enti­tled Measles: A Dan­ger­ous Ill­ness, which tells Olivi­a’s sto­ry and pro­vides a swift and well-sup­port­ed argu­ment for uni­ver­sal vac­ci­na­tion against the dis­ease:

Olivia, my eldest daugh­ter, caught measles when she was sev­en years old. As the ill­ness took its usu­al course I can remem­ber read­ing to her often in bed and not feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly alarmed about it. Then one morn­ing, when she was well on the road to recov­ery, I was sit­ting on her bed show­ing her how to fash­ion lit­tle ani­mals out of coloured pipe-clean­ers, and when it came to her turn to make one her­self, I noticed that her fin­gers and her mind were not work­ing togeth­er and she could­n’t do any­thing.

“Are you feel­ing all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was uncon­scious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a ter­ri­ble thing called measles encephali­tis and there was noth­ing the doc­tors could do to save her. That was twen­ty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles hap­pens to devel­op the same dead­ly reac­tion from measles as Olivia did, there would still be noth­ing the doc­tors could do to help her.

On the oth­er hand, there is today some­thing that par­ents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not hap­pen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immu­nised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reli­able measles vac­cine had not been dis­cov­ered. Today a good and safe vac­cine is avail­able to every fam­i­ly and all you have to do is to ask your doc­tor to admin­is­ter it.

It is not yet gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that measles can be a dan­ger­ous ill­ness. Believe me, it is. In my opin­ion par­ents who now refuse to have their chil­dren immu­nised are putting the lives of those chil­dren at risk. In Amer­i­ca, where measles immu­ni­sa­tion is com­pul­so­ry, measles like small­pox, has been vir­tu­al­ly wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many par­ents refuse, either out of obsti­na­cy or igno­rance or fear, to allow their chil­dren to be immu­nised, we still have a hun­dred thou­sand cas­es of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suf­fer side effects of one kind or anoth­er. At least 10,000 will devel­op ear or chest infec­tions. About 20 will die.

LET THAT SINK IN.

Every year around 20 chil­dren will die in Britain from measles.

So what about the risks that your chil­dren will run from being immu­nised?

They are almost non-exis­tent. Lis­ten to this. In a dis­trict of around 300,000 peo­ple, there will be only one child every 250 years who will devel­op seri­ous side effects from measles immu­ni­sa­tion! That is about a mil­lion to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child chok­ing to death on a choco­late bar than of becom­ing seri­ous­ly ill from a measles immu­ni­sa­tion.

So what on earth are you wor­ry­ing about? It real­ly is almost a crime to allow your child to go unim­mu­nised.

The ide­al time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is nev­er too late. All school-chil­dren who have not yet had a measles immu­ni­sa­tion should beg their par­ents to arrange for them to have one as soon as pos­si­ble.

Inci­den­tal­ly, I ded­i­cat­ed two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The sec­ond was ‘The BFG’, ded­i­cat­ed to her mem­o­ry after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the begin­ning of each of these books. And I know how hap­py she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of ill­ness and death among oth­er chil­dren.

Alas, this mes­sage has­n’t quite fall­en into irrel­e­vance. What with anti-vac­ci­na­tion move­ments hav­ing some­how picked up a bit of steam in recent years (and with the num­ber of cas­es of measles cas­es now climb­ing again), it might make sense to send Dahl’s leaflet back into print — or, bet­ter yet, to keep it cir­cu­lat­ing far and wide around the inter­net. Not that oth­ers haven’t made cogent pro-vac­ci­na­tion argu­ments of their own, in dif­fer­ent media, with dif­fer­ent illus­tra­tions of the data, and with dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fan­i­ty. Take, for instance, Penn and Teller’s seg­ment below, which, find­ing the per­fect tar­get giv­en its man­date against non-evi­dence-based beliefs, takes aim at the propo­si­tion that vac­ci­na­tions cause autism:

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on site in 2014. Giv­en that the num­ber of report­ed cas­es of the measles has just hit a 25 year record in the US–a sit­u­a­tion that mod­ern sci­ence has made com­plete­ly avoid­able, should peo­ple want to avail them­selves of vac­ci­na­tions–we’re bring­ing the post back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read a Nev­er Pub­lished, “Sub­ver­sive” Chap­ter from Roald Dahl’s Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

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

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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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Climate Change Gets Strikingly Visualized by a Scottish Art Installation

in Art, Science | April 20th, 2019

What does it accom­plish to talk about cli­mate change? Even those who talk about cli­mate change pro­fes­sion­al­ly might find it hard to say. If you real­ly want to make a point about ris­ing sea lev­els — not to men­tion all the oth­er changes pre­dict­ed to afflict a warm­ing Earth — you might do bet­ter to show, not tell. That rea­son­ing seems to have moti­vat­ed art projects like the giant hands reach­ing out from the waters of Venice pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, and it looks even clear­er in the more recent case of Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W), an instal­la­tion now on dis­play on a Scot­tish island.

All images cour­tesy of Timo Aho and Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta

“At high tide, three syn­chro­nized lines of light acti­vate in the Out­er Hebrides off the west coast of Scot­land,” writes Design­boom’s Zach Andrews, and in the dark, “wrap around two struc­tures and along the base of a moun­tain land­scape.

Every­thing below these lines of light will one day be under­wa­ter.” Cre­at­ed by Finnish artists Pekka Niit­tyvir­ta and Timo Aho for Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre, Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) offers a stark reminder of the future human­i­ty faces if cli­mate change goes on as pro­ject­ed.

But why put up an instal­la­tion of such appar­ent urgency in such a thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed, out-of-the-way place? “Low lying arch­i­pel­a­gos like this one are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of cli­mate change,” Andrews writes, adding that the Taigh Chearsab­hagh Muse­um & Arts Cen­tre itself “can­not even afford to devel­op on its exist­ing site any­more due to the pre­dict­ed rise of storm surge sea.” But though the effects of ris­ing sea lev­els may be felt first on islands like these, few pre­dic­tions have those effects stop­ping there; worst-case sce­nar­ios won’t spare our major metrop­o­lis­es, and cer­tain­ly not the coastal ones.

You can get a sense of what Lines (57° 59 ́N, 7° 16 ́W) looks like in action from the pho­tographs on Niit­tyvir­ta’s site a well as the time-lapse video at the top, which shows the lines of light acti­vat­ing when their sen­sors detect high tide, then only those lines of light remain­ing by the time the sun has gone com­plete­ly down. To expe­ri­ence the full impact of the instal­la­tion, how­ev­er, requires see­ing it in per­son in the con­text for which it was cre­at­ed. So if you’ve been putting off that trip to the Out­er Hebrides, now might be the time to final­ly take it — not just because of Niit­tyvir­ta and Aho’s work, but because in a few years, it may not be quite the same place.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Show the Melt­ing Arc­tic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

A Map Shows What Hap­pens When Our World Gets Four Degrees Warmer: The Col­orado Riv­er Dries Up, Antarc­ti­ca Urban­izes, Poly­ne­sia Van­ish­es

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

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 or on Face­book.

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550 Million Years of Human Evolution in an Illustrated Flipbook

in Art, Science | April 9th, 2019

Graph­ic artist Juri­an Moller cre­at­ed a flip­book that lets you watch 550 mil­lion years of human evo­lu­tion unfold in a mat­ter of sec­onds. He writes: “This flip­book goes back in time and shows you the evo­lu­tion of the gen­er­a­tions in both a per­son­al and sci­en­tif­ic way. The dif­fer­ences between the gen­er­a­tions on each page are very dif­fi­cult to see, but the long, con­tin­u­ous ances­tral line goes right back to our very ori­gins.”

The action is on full dis­play above. Below, watch the same flip­book in an ani­mat­ed form. Pur­chase the book in var­i­ous for­mats at Moller’s site here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Long Info­graph­ic from 1931

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

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Neurons as Art: See Beautiful Anatomy Drawings by the Father of Neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal

in Art, Neuroscience, Science | April 8th, 2019

Art depends on pop­u­lar judg­ments about the uni­verse, and is nour­ished by the lim­it­ed expanse of sen­ti­ment. . . . In con­trast, sci­ence was bare­ly touched upon by the ancients, and is as free from the incon­sis­ten­cies of fash­ion as it is from the fick­le stan­dards of taste. . . . And let me stress that this con­quest of ideas is not sub­ject to fluc­tu­a­tions of opin­ion, to the silence of envy, or to the caprices of fash­ion that today repu­di­ate and detest what yes­ter­day was praised as sub­lime.

- San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal

The above draw­ing is the sort of sub­lime ren­der­ing that attracts throngs of vis­i­tors to the world’s great mod­ern art muse­ums, but that’s not the sort of renown the artist, Nobel Prize-win­ning father of mod­ern neu­ro­science San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal (1852 ‑1934), active­ly sought.

Or rather, he might have back before his father, a pro­fes­sor of anato­my, coerced his wild young son into trans­fer­ring from a provin­cial art acad­e­my to the med­ical school where he him­self was employed.

After a stint as an army med­ical offi­cer, the artist-turned-anatomist con­cen­trat­ed on inflam­ma­tion, cholera, and epithe­lial cells before zero­ing in on his true muse—the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem.

At the time, retic­u­lar the­o­ry, which held that every­thing in the ner­vous sys­tem was part of a sin­gle con­tin­u­ous net­work, pre­vailed.

Ramón y Cajal was able to dis­prove this wide­ly held belief by using Gol­gi stains to sup­port the exis­tence of indi­vid­ual ner­vous cells—neurons—that, while not phys­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed, com­mu­ni­cat­ed with each oth­er through a sys­tem of axons, den­drites, and synaps­es.

He called upon both his artis­tic and med­ical train­ing in doc­u­ment­ing what he observed through his micro­scope. His metic­u­lous free­hand draw­ings are far more accu­rate than any­thing that could be pro­duced by the micro­scop­ic-image pho­to­graph­ic tools avail­able at the time.

His pre­ci­sion was such that his illus­tra­tions con­tin­ue to be pub­lished in med­ical text­books. Fur­ther research has con­firmed many of his sup­po­si­tions.

As art crit­ic Rober­ta Smith writes in The New York Times, the draw­ings are “fair­ly hard-nosed fact if you know your sci­ence”:

If you don’t, they are deep pools of sug­ges­tive motifs into which the imag­i­na­tion can dive. Their lines, forms and var­i­ous tex­tures of stip­pling, dash­es and faint pen­cil cir­cles would be the envy of any mod­ern artist. That they con­nect with Sur­re­al­ist draw­ing, bio­mor­phic abstrac­tion and exquis­ite doo­dling is only the half of it.

The draw­ings’ prag­mat­ic titles cer­tain­ly take on a poet­ic qual­i­ty when one con­sid­ers the con­text of their cre­ation:

Axon of Purk­in­je neu­rons in the cere­bel­lum of a drowned man

The hip­pocam­pus of a man three hours after death

Glial cells of the cere­bral cor­tex of a child

His spec­i­mens were not lim­it­ed to the human world:

Reti­na of lizard

The olfac­to­ry bulb of the dog

In his book Advice for a Young Inves­ti­gator, Ramón y Cajal took a holis­tic view of the rela­tion­ship between sci­ence and the arts:

The inves­ti­ga­tor ought to pos­sess an artis­tic tem­pera­ment that impels him to search for and admire the num­ber, beau­ty, and har­mo­ny of things; and—in the strug­gle for life that ideas cre­ate in our minds—a sound crit­i­cal judg­ment that is able to reject the rash impuls­es of day­dreams in favor of those thoughts most faith­ful­ly embrac­ing objec­tive real­i­ty.

Explore more of Ramón y Cajal’s cel­lu­lar draw­ings in Beau­ti­ful Brain: The Draw­ings of San­ti­a­go Ramón y Cajal, the com­pan­ion book to a recent trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion of his work. Or immerse your­self at the neur­al lev­el by order­ing a repro­duc­tion on a beach tow­el, yoga mat, cell phone case, show­er cur­tain, or oth­er neces­si­ty on Sci­ence Source.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

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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