View 250,000 British Paintings & Sculptures Free Online

in Art | August 7th, 2020

A lit­tle over four years ago, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and arbi­trar­i­ly con­fus­ing trav­el bans descend­ed on the U.S., tear­ing refugee fam­i­lies apart and leav­ing thou­sands in diplo­mat­ic lim­bo. This seemed night­mar­ish enough at the time. But it took a viral pan­dem­ic to bring trav­el bans and restric­tions down on the entire world, more or less, with coun­tries appear­ing on bul­letins that vague­ly look like lists of ene­mies on gov­ern­ing bod­ies’ web­sites, includ­ing the CDC’s.

Like­wise, almost all 27 coun­tries that com­prise the Euro­pean Union are cur­rent­ly dis­al­low­ing U.S. trav­el­ers, with the excep­tion of Croa­t­ia,” Mary Claire Pat­ton reports. The UK has also kept its ban on U.S. cit­i­zens in place. All this is to say, to fel­low cit­i­zens and res­i­dents of any gen­der, that the days of traips­ing around the world for Insta­gram impres­sions, or sav­ing and scrap­ing for that vaca­tion hon­ey­moon, or mak­ing even more impor­tant jour­neys, may be on hold indef­i­nite­ly.

For­tu­nate­ly, art gal­leries world­wide have been prepar­ing their col­lec­tions for inde­pen­dent lives online, with ultra-high-res­o­lu­tion pho­tog­ra­phy; mate­ri­als that rarely appear on view in any form; and more con­text than vis­i­tors typ­i­cal­ly get on a guid­ed tour.

Would-be vis­i­tors keen on pub­lic art col­lec­tions will find their niche online at Art UK, a char­i­ty project that is dig­i­tiz­ing “more than 150,000 pub­licly owned sculp­tures in Great Britain by the end of 2020,” writes Men­tal Floss, includ­ing many sculp­tures liv­ing their lives out in pub­lic spaces.

Art UK seem to be lag­ging a bit behind on the sculp­ture posts, and they are light on the con­text, but a few big things have hap­pened since they made the announce­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2019. In any case, you will not have to trav­el to a Nando’s eatery in Har­low to see Rodin’s Eve, orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed for his Gates of Hell in Paris. (Not that one wouldn’t want to go to Har­low, which “also dis­plays works by acclaimed artists such as Hen­ry Moore, Elis­a­beth Frink, Bar­bara Hep­worth and Lynn Chad­wick,” Mark Brown points out at The Guardian.)

The over twen­ty-five thou­sand pub­lic UK sculp­tures doc­u­ment­ed in the data­base so far are already impres­sive enough. Oh, and did we men­tion that the foun­da­tion had already pre­vi­ous­ly dig­i­tized over two-hun­dred thou­sand oil paint­ings between 2003 and 2012? These are also all paint­ings owned by the UK pub­lic “from over 3,000 loca­tions,” Katey Good­win writes for Art UK. “This is the only project of its kind in the world to cre­ate a com­plete online cat­a­logue of every oil paint­ing in a nation­al col­lec­tion.”

These include the req­ui­site dot­ing and reveal­ing por­traits of lords, ladies, mer­chants, wor­thies, and bureau­crats. They also include bril­liant oil paint­ings like David Hep­her’s Night Flats, whose title and far­away lone­some­ness evoke Edward Hop­per. Fur­ther­more, not all por­traits of British wor­thies fit the stereo­type, as Col­in Cola­han’s 1933 arrest­ing like­ness of Eng­lish actress Marie Ney demon­strates.

You can read more about the process of bring­ing this work online in Goodwin’s essay, which also lists the nation­al orga­ni­za­tions and muse­ums from which the col­lec­tion draws. These are “locat­ed through­out Eng­land, Scot­land, Wales and North­ern Ire­land, and the crown depen­den­cies of the Isle of Man and the Chan­nel Islands.” Vis­it Art UK them­selves here to see their pho­to­graph­ic archive of pub­licly-owned paint­ing, sculp­ture, and oth­er visu­al media in the UK—now pub­licly avail­able online around the world to peo­ple indef­i­nite­ly banned from vis­it­ing the art in per­son.

For a wealth of oth­er free art, vis­it this page on our site: Vis­it 2+ Mil­lion Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Muse­ums Free Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 569 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Tate Dig­i­tizes 70,000 Works of Art: Pho­tos, Sketch­books, Let­ters & More

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

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

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Get the Ancient Roman Look: A Hair & Makeup Video Tutorial

in Art, Gender, History, Life | August 7th, 2020

Remem­ber ear­ly April, when we threw our­selves into the Get­ty Chal­lenge, turn­ing our­selves into his­toric art recre­ations in lieu of climb­ing the walls?

Seems like ages ago, doesn’t it, that you wrapped a show­er cur­tain around your head and rifled through the but­ton box, rabid to make your­self into a mas­ter­piece.

While it’s not accu­rate to say we’ve col­lec­tive­ly set­tled into a new nor­mal, many of us have accept­ed that cer­tain alter­ations to our every­day lives will be pro­longed if our every­day lives are to pro­ceed.

First it was depress­ing.

Now it’s just bor­ing (with the occa­sion­al thrum of anx­i­ety).

Per­haps it’s time to shake things up a bit, and Crows Eye Pro­duc­tions’ tuto­r­i­al on achiev­ing an Ancient Roman look using mod­ern hair and beau­ty prod­ucts, above, is an excel­lent place to start.

While Crows Eye spe­cial­izes in build­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate peri­od dress from the unmen­tion­able out, it’s worth not­ing that styl­ist Liv Free takes a few lib­er­ties, adding a bit of mas­cara and lip­stick despite a dearth of evi­dence that Roman women enhanced their lips or lash­es.

She also uses curl­ing irons, pony­tail hold­ers, and a hair donut to cre­ate a crown of ringlets and braids.

If you’re a stick­ler for authen­tic­i­ty who won’t be able to live with your­self if you’re not sewn into your hair style with a bone nee­dle, you may be bet­ter off con­sult­ing the YouTube chan­nel of hair arche­ol­o­gist Janet Stephens.

https://youtu.be/X1ZRgz-Pdh4

But, if your goal is mere­ly to wow your co-work­ers with a full-on Fla­vian Dynasty look dur­ing your next Zoom call, by all means grab some pale lead-free foun­da­tion, some expend­able Hot Buns, and some light blush.

Don’t wor­ry that you’ll appear too done up. Free notes that Roman women of both high and low birth were devot­ed to make­up, but in def­er­ence to their men, lim­it­ed them­selves to the nat­ur­al look.

That’s a tad anachro­nis­tic, huh?

These days, any­one who wants to remake them­selves in the image of Empress Domi­tia Long­i­na should feel free to take a crack at it, irre­spec­tive of gen­der, race, or extra hands to help with the parts of the hair­style you can can’t see in the mir­ror (or a Zoom win­dow).

Once we have mas­tered our new look, we can see about anoth­er muse­um chal­lenge. Here’s some inspi­ra­tion to get us start­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bal­ti­more Hair­dress­er Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archae­ol­o­gist” of Ancient Rome

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

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

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Professor Who Picked Every Election Winner Since Ronald Reagan Reveals His Prediction for the 2020 Election

in Current Affairs | August 6th, 2020

The New York Times writes: “Right now, polls say Joe Biden has a healthy lead over Pres­i­dent Trump. But we’ve been here before (cue 2016), and the polls were, frankly, wrong. One man, how­ev­er, was not. The his­to­ri­an Allan Licht­man was the lone­ly fore­cast­er who pre­dict­ed Mr. Trump’s vic­to­ry in 2016 — and also proph­e­sied the pres­i­dent would be impeached. That’s two for two. But Pro­fes­sor Lichtman’s record goes much deep­er. In 1980, he devel­oped a pres­i­den­tial pre­dic­tion mod­el that ret­ro­spec­tive­ly account­ed for 120 years of U.S. elec­tion his­to­ry. Over the past four decades, his sys­tem has accu­rate­ly called pres­i­den­tial vic­tors, from Ronald Rea­gan in ’84 to, well, Mr. Trump in 2016.

In the video Op-Ed above, Pro­fes­sor Licht­man walks us through his sys­tem, which iden­ti­fies 13 “keys” to win­ning the White House. Each key is a bina­ry state­ment: true or false. And if six or more keys are false, the par­ty in the White House is on its way out”

No spoil­ers from us. You have to watch until the end.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

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Roald Dahl Gives a Tour of the Small Backyard Hut Where He Wrote All of His Beloved Children’s Books

in Books, Writing | August 6th, 2020

Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, The BFG, The Witch­es, Matil­da: Roald Dahl wrote these and all his oth­er beloved chil­dren’s books in a hut. Just fif­teen feet long and ten feet wide, it served him for 35 years as an office in which no meet­ings were held and no calls tak­en. For four hours a day, bro­ken into two-hour morn­ing and after­noon ses­sions, it was just Dahl in there — Dahl and his paper, his pen­cils, his sharp­en­er, his cof­fee, his cig­a­rettes, his increas­ing­ly eccen­tric col­lec­tion of arti­facts from his own life, and here and there the occa­sion­al spi­der web and goat drop­ping. It was all part of an effort, explains Dahl’s biog­ra­ph­er Jere­my Tre­glown, “not only to recre­ate his own ear­ly child­hood but to improve on it.”

“As a boy in the 1920s,” Tre­glown writes, “Roald used to hide up in a tree in order to write his diary.” But the hut, con­struct­ed right behind his Buck­ing­hamshire home, “was a more sub­stan­tial place to work, where he could com­mem­o­rate, and fan­ta­size about, his past.”

On his side were items like “his father’s sil­ver and tor­toise­shell paper knife,” a “tablet frag­ment with a cuneiform inscrip­tion found in Baby­lon” — a sou­venir from his time in the King’s African Rifles — and, “saved from oper­a­tions,” pieces of his own femur and spine. In his hut, Dahl wrote “sur­round­ed by these fetish­es, snug­ly wrapped in a sleep­ing bag, sit­ting in an old arm­chair, his feet on a trunk which was filled with blocks and tied to a leg of the chair, to pre­vent it from slip­ping.”

“I could­n’t pos­si­bly work in the house, espe­cial­ly when there used to be a lot of chil­dren around,” says Dahl in the 1982 clip at the top of the post as he approach­es his hut. “Even when there aren’t chil­dren, there are vac­u­um clean­ers and peo­ple bustling about.” He then goes in to demon­strate his writ­ing rou­tine, which involves the pour­ing of cof­fee, sharp­en­ing of pre­cise­ly six pen­cils “to a fierce point” (a step that had its own pro­cras­ti­na­tion val­ue), the brush­ing away of the pre­vi­ous day’s eras­er dust (onto the floor, where it has remained ever since), and the sit­u­a­tion with the arm­chair and sleep­ing bag. “Final­ly you get set­tled, you get into a sort of nest, you get real­ly com­fort­able,” Dahl says. “And then you’re away.”

The footage also includes views of Dahl’s much more tra­di­tion­al­ly well-appoint­ed main house, includ­ing its bil­liards table around which he and his local friends would gath­er for a twice-week­ly ses­sion. The game had its influ­ence on Dahl’s writ­ing life, and indeed his writ­ing hut. Among his “snook­er pals” was builder Wal­ly Saun­ders, whom Dahl hired to put it up in the first place (and whose for­mi­da­ble stature and ear size would, near­ly thir­ty lat­er, inspire the title char­ac­ter of The BFG). As he explains on the British Chil­dren’s pro­gram Going Live, he even cov­ered his hand­made wood­en writ­ing sur­faces, which he placed across the arm­rests of his chair, with green baize, a mate­r­i­al he found easy on the eyes.

When Dahl died in 1990, his writ­ing hut went untouched for two decades. But even­tu­al­ly, as explained in this ITV News clip, the sim­ple build­ing could­n’t with­stand fur­ther expo­sure to the ele­ments. So began the project to move the inte­ri­or of the hut, eras­er dust and all, to the Roald Dahl Muse­um and Sto­ry Cen­tre in Buck­ing­hamshire. Luck­i­ly for Wes Ander­son, this hap­pened after he came to Dahl’s home to seek per­mis­sion to adapt The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox from the writer’s wid­ow Felic­i­ty. So com­pelling did she find Ander­son­’s vision that she even allowed him into the “hal­lowed writ­ing hut,” the ide­al space in which to com­mune with Dahl’s spir­it. The hut may now no longer be whole, but that same spir­it con­tin­ues to course through the imag­i­na­tions of gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of young read­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

When Roald Dahl Host­ed His Own Creepy TV Show Way Out, a Com­pan­ion to Rod Serling’s Twi­light Zone (1961)

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

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”

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & 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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A Physicist Examines the Scientific Accuracy of Physics Shown in Major Movies: Batman, Gravity, Contact, Interstellar, Star Trek & More

in Film, Science | August 6th, 2020

Ever had a friend who can­not bring them­selves sus­pend dis­be­lief? It’s not a moral fail­ing, but it can be a tedious qual­i­ty in sit­u­a­tions like, say, the movies, or the cin­e­ma, or what­ev­er you call it when you’ve paid your day’s wages for a giant tub of car­cino­genic pop­corn and a three-hour dis­trac­tion. (These days, maybe, an over­priced stream­ing new release and Grub­hub.) Who doesn’t love a big-screen sci­ence fic­tion epic—science be damned? Who wants to lis­ten to the seat­mate who mut­ters “oh, come on!,” “no way!,” “well, actu­al­ly, that’s sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble”? You know they nev­er passed intro to physics….

Dominic Wal­li­man, on the oth­er hand, is a physi­cist. And he is not the kind of per­son to ruin a movie by going on about how goofy its sci­en­tif­ic ideas sound, though he’s like­ly to express appre­ci­a­tion for films that get it right. He doesn’t get bent out of shape by artis­tic license and can appre­ci­ate, for exam­ple, the cre­ative use of visu­al effects in Inter­stel­lar to rep­re­sent a black hole, which would oth­er­wise appear onscreen as, well, a black hole. “I’m okay with bad physics in movies,” he says, “because the job of a movie isn’t to be a sci­ence doc­u­men­tary, the goal of a movie is to tell an inter­est­ing sto­ry.”

Even so, if you sit him down and ask him to talk specif­i­cal­ly about sci­ence in movies, as a friend does in the video above, he’ll tell you what he thinks, and you’ll want to lis­ten to him (after the movie’s over) because he actu­al­ly knows what he’s talk­ing about. Over the years, Wal­li­man has mapped var­i­ous domains of sci­ence, like chem­istry, com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, math­e­mat­ics, physics, and his own field, quan­tum physics. His visu­al expla­na­tions make the rela­tion­ships between dif­fi­cult con­cepts clear and easy to fol­low. In this video, he com­ments on some of your favorite sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy films (stand­outs include the first Bat­man and Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons) in ways that are equal­ly illu­mi­nat­ing.

Big win­ners for rel­a­tive accu­ra­cy, in Walliman’s opin­ion, are no sur­prise. They include Grav­i­ty, Con­tact (writ­ten by Carl Sagan), even a clip from the incred­i­bly smart Futu­ra­ma. It is soon appar­ent that the use of a fold­ed piece of paper to rep­re­sent space­time through a worm­hole has “become a bit of a cliché,” although a help­ful-enough visu­al aid. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is “bor­ing” (with apolo­gies), a judg­ment that might dis­qual­i­fy Wal­li­man as a film crit­ic, in many people’s opin­ion, but does not tar­nish his sci­en­tif­ic rep­u­ta­tion.

One of the biggest sci­ence-in-film fails: 2009’s Star Trek, whose vil­lains have dis­cov­ered a sub­stance called “red mat­ter.” A sin­gle drop can destroy an entire plan­et, and the idiots seem to have enough onboard their ship to take out the uni­verse with one care­less oop­sie. Wal­li­man is maybe not qual­i­fied to weigh in on the pale­o­bi­ol­o­gy of Juras­sic Park, but Jeff Goldblum’s expla­na­tion of chaos the­o­ry fits with­in his purview. “So, this is not a good descrip­tion of chaos the­o­ry,” he says, “at all.” It is, how­ev­er, a fab­u­lous plot device.

If you’re inter­est­ed in more engag­ing­ly acces­si­ble, non-cin­e­ma-relat­ed, sur­veys of sci­en­tif­ic ideas, vis­it any one of Walliman’s many Domain of Sci­ence videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Arthur C. Clarke Cre­ates a List of His 12 Favorite Sci­ence-Fic­tion Movies (1984)

Info­graph­ics Show How the Dif­fer­ent Fields of Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics, Physics & Com­put­er Sci­ence Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Quan­tum Physics: A Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Explains the Often Mis­un­der­stood Branch of Sci­ence

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

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Seriously Awesome Ukulele Covers of “Sultans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thunderstruck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

in Music | August 6th, 2020

The ukulele has got­ten a bad rap, thanks to some well-mean­ing musi­cians who turned the small, gui­tar-like Hawai­ian lute into a nov­el­ty instru­ment. Chief among the offend­ers is Tiny Tim. Explod­ing into fame in the ear­ly six­ties with his ukulele ver­sion of the ‘20s dit­ty “Tip­toe Thru’ the Tulips,” he became so famous, wrote Roger Ebert, “The Bea­t­les asked him to sing ‘Nowhere Man’ on a boot­leg Christ­mas record­ing. He did a night at Roy­al Albert Hall.” His mar­riage to Vic­ki Budinger on John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show is “still one of the top-rat­ed TV shows of all time.”

Tiny Tim played the guile­less man­child, the Pee Wee Her­man of his day. He was not a seri­ous spokesper­son for the instru­ment he pop­u­lar­ized. He died in 1996, doing what he loved, play­ing his hit to a Women’s Club in Min­neapo­lis. “The last thing he heard was the applause,” his wid­ow said.

Tiny Tim had a good run, but it may not be mere coin­ci­dence that since he tip­toed thru’ his last tulip, the ukulele has seen a major pop cul­ture revival, from indie folk singer/songwriters to TV theme songs, an orches­tra, and Jake Shimabukuro, “a genre-demol­ish­ing artist,” writes NPR, “who plays jazz, blues, funk, clas­si­cal, blue­grass, fla­men­co and rock” on his four-string axe.

Join­ing the ranks of seri­ous ukulele artists are Over­driv­er Duo, who inter­pret songs with some very chal­leng­ing gui­tar riffs and solos, like Guns ‘n’ Ros­es’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans of Swing,” and AC/DC’s “Thun­der­struck.” One thing these songs all have in com­mon is their melodies in the upper reg­is­ter, where the ukulele, and their vocals, real­ly shine. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” on the oth­er hand, depends on pow­er chords and pound­ing drums for its impact. Leave it to these accom­plished play­ers to turn their tiny-bod­ied instru­ments into a con­vinc­ing alt-rock rhythm sec­tion.

Con­tem­po­rary play­ers have more than earned the ukulele the respect it deserves. That’s not to say ukulele lovers of the past, like devot­ed life-long play­er George Har­ri­son, did not appre­ci­ate the instru­ment. Har­ri­son played a mean jazz uke, and took it seri­ous­ly. But even he declared “you can’t play and not laugh!” Play­ers like Shimabukuro and Over­driv­er Duo tend to inspire more awe than com­e­dy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms Stun­ning Cov­ers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” & More

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

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Food As Pop with Prof. C. Thi Nguyen (Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #55)

in Food & Drink, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 6th, 2020

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Utah phi­los­o­phy prof and for­mer food writer C. Thi Nguyen to talk food as art, food­ies, elit­ism, food TV, cook­ing vs. eat­ing, and how ana­lyz­ing food is like ana­lyz­ing games.

Read Thi’s work at objectionable.net, includ­ing the arti­cle on “out­rage porn” we talk about that he co-wrote with Bek­ka Williams, and his gen­er­al account of “the arts of action.” Also, check out his blog posts about cook­books and his new book. Pur­chase Games: Agency As Art. Fol­low Thi @add_hawk.

Oth­er sources we looked at include:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments

in Architecture, History, Technology | August 5th, 2020

If you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of this site, you’re like­ly famil­iar with the sim­u­la­tion hypoth­e­sis, the idea that con­scious expe­ri­ence is noth­ing more than a com­put­er pro­gram. This con­cept has many sci-fi impli­ca­tions, from Matrix-like sce­nar­ios to the rad­i­cal idea that every­thing in the uni­verse is soft­ware, run by incom­pre­hen­si­ble beings who might as well be gods. One of the more plau­si­ble ver­sions sug­gests that we are liv­ing in an “ances­tor sim­u­la­tion,” designed by future human soci­eties to recre­ate their past.

Pre­sum­ably, sim­u­lat­ed ances­tors would cre­ate their own ances­tor sim­u­la­tions and so on, ad infini­tum. There’s no way to know where on the con­tin­u­um we fall, but wher­ev­er it is, ances­tor sim­u­la­tions are on the way… maybe. They’re rudi­men­ta­ry at the moment, con­sist­ing of immer­sive video games and VR recre­ations of ancient cities.

Each iter­a­tion, how­ev­er, is bet­ter than the last, as we have seen in the case of Rome Reborn (or Rome Reborn®), a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el­ing project designed to recre­ate the city’s archi­tec­ture as it was in 320 CE, through expert ren­der­ings informed by archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­ans and “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gists” like Dr. Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia.

Back in a 2012 Open Cul­ture post, Matthias Rasch­er explained the sig­nif­i­cance of this year, “when Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built.” His­to­ri­ans will also rec­og­nize 320 as fol­low­ing direct­ly on the heels of the Dona­tion of Con­stan­tine that gave the city to the Pope. We can tour the vir­tu­al streets of this rapid­ly chang­ing ancient city, though the bur­geon­ing pop­u­la­tion is nowhere in evi­dence. Noth­ing moves, grows, or changes in Rome Reborn. In that sense it is still like so many pre­vi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of antiq­ui­ty.

Now in ver­sion 3.0, Rome Reborn began as a 3D mod­el in 2007, and was first owned by the Regents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia. It now oper­ates, under the aus­pices of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, as a pri­vate com­pa­ny called Fly­over Zone. They have oth­er such dig­i­tal recre­ations in their prod­uct line, includ­ing “Athens Reborn®, Hadri­an’s Vil­la Reborn®, Baal­bek Reborn®, Egypt Reborn®, and His­tor­i­cal Games®.” Rome Reborn’s design­er, Dani­la Logi­nov, has released increas­ing­ly detailed pro­mos of the project over the years, and you can see these many videos here.

To ful­ly expe­ri­ence this sim­u­lat­ed Rome, you’ll need a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty head­set. The third ver­sion of the 3D mod­el has been made pub­licly avail­able. “You can immerse your­self in the ancient city and even enter into some of its most famous build­ings while lis­ten­ing to the com­men­tary of high­ly qual­i­fied experts,” the Rome Reborn site promis­es. Famous build­ings one might explore include the Roman forum and the Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius. It is not an expe­ri­ence based in real­ism. In some of the sim­u­la­tions “you can opt for a whirl­wind  fly­over tour of the city,” notes Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian.

This rough­ly two-hour tour is like noth­ing any ancient Roman ever expe­ri­enced. “Com­par­a­tive­ly, the two site vis­its place users in the driver’s seat,” Sol­ly writes, “afford­ing them free­dom to roam through recon­struct­ed streets and halls.” It’s not quite the stuff of a sim­u­lat­ed uni­verse just yet, but it may not be too far in the future before Rome Reborn® ful­ly lives up to its name. Learn more about ancient Rome, cir­ca 320 CE, in the videos here, and learn more about Rome Reborn at their offi­cial site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

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

 

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How Scholars Finally Deciphered Linear B, the Oldest Preserved Form of Ancient Greek Writing

in History | August 5th, 2020

In the ear­ly 1900s, British archae­ol­o­gist Sir Arthur Evans unearthed almost 3,000 tablets on the island of Crete, inscribed with a lan­guage he had nev­er seen before. The dis­cov­ery began a decades-long race to read the lan­guage of Europe’s old­est civ­i­liza­tion. And the final deci­pher­ing of the script, which Evans called Lin­ear B, end­ed up over­turn­ing an accept­ed his­to­ry of ancient Greek ori­gins as we learn in the TED-Ed video above script­ed by clas­sics pro­fes­sor Susan Lupack.

The tablets, found among the ruins of the ancient city of Knos­sos, belonged to a peo­ple who thrived 3,000–4,000 years ago, and whom Evans named the Minoans after the myth­i­cal king Minos, keep­er of the Mino­taur. Evans spent a good part of thir­ty years try­ing to deci­pher Lin­ear B with no suc­cess, keep­ing most of the tablets locked away. He did, how­ev­er, find two keys that allowed future researchers to trans­late the ancient lan­guage.

One of those schol­ars, Alice Kober, became inter­est­ed in the Minoan script while an under­grad­u­ate at Hunter Col­lege in New York. By the time she earned her doc­tor­ate, she had “devot­ed her­self to the deci­pher­ment of the pho­net­ic signs,” notes Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. “To do so, she stud­ied archae­ol­o­gy in New Mex­i­co and at the ASCSA, acquaint­ing her­self with the scripts of as many ancient lan­guages and cul­tures as she could.”

Schol­ars around the world spec­u­lat­ed about Lin­ear B. “Was it the lost lan­guage of the Etr­uscans?” they asked. “Or an ear­ly form of Basque?” Kober her­self spent two decades try­ing to decode the script. Like Evans, she died before she could com­plete her work, but she came clos­er than any­one had before. Mean­while, archi­tect Michael Ven­tris became obsessed with Lin­ear B, even work­ing on it while he served in World War II.

Build­ing on Kober’s meth­ods and new tablets exca­vat­ed at a Greek site, Pylos, he was able to iso­late the names of ancient places. From these geo­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences, Ven­tris “unrav­eled Lin­ear B, with each word reveal­ing more clear­ly” that the lan­guage it rep­re­sent­ed was not Minoan, but Greek. It is, in fact, “the old­est pre­served form of writ­ten Greek that we know of,” the Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia explains, like­ly “devised in Knoss­es (Crete), some­where around 1450 BCE when the Myce­naeans took con­trol of Knoss­es, and spread from here to Main­land Greece.”

It had pre­vi­ous­ly been assumed that the oppo­site occurred, that the Minoans had invad­ed Greece. This was Evans sup­po­si­tion, but Ven­tris’ dis­cov­ery showed, “whether by peace­ful annex­a­tion or armed inva­sion… the Minoan cul­ture was replaced, both in Crete and in main­land Greece, by the Myce­nean culture”—Greeks from the main­land who adopt­ed the Minoan script to write in Greek.

This means that the ancient Minoan lan­guage Evans hoped to find still remains a mys­tery, locked away in the labyrinth of anoth­er ancient script, called Lin­ear A. When this pri­mal lin­guis­tic ances­tor is final­ly deci­phered, it will prob­a­bly not be through decades of painstak­ing efforts by ded­i­cat­ed schol­ars, but through the sin­gu­lar break­through of a machine lan­guage.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Etr­uscan Sound Like? An Ani­mat­ed Video Pro­nounces the Ancient Lan­guage That We Still Don’t Ful­ly Under­stand

Hear What the Lan­guage Spo­ken by Our Ances­tors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sound­ed Like: A Recon­struc­tion of the Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean Lan­guage

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

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

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Istanbul Captured in Beautiful Color Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Topkaki Palace’s Imperial Gate & More

in History, Photography | August 5th, 2020

Even those who know noth­ing else about Istan­bul know that it used to be called Con­stan­tino­ple. The offi­cial renam­ing hap­pened in 1930, mean­ing that the pho­tographs you see here, all of which date from around 1890, were tak­en, strict­ly speak­ing, not in Istan­bul but Con­stan­tino­ple. But under any name, and despite all the oth­er changes that have occurred over the past 130 years, the Turk­ish metrop­o­lis on the Bospho­rus remains rec­og­niz­able as the gate­way between East and West it has been through­out record­ed his­to­ry. This is thanks in part to its old­est land­marks, above all the cathe­dral-turned-mosque-turned-muse­um known as Hagia Sophia, pic­tured above.

In the 1890s Hagia Sophia was still a mosque, and as we recent­ly post­ed here, it has just this year become one again. But as a his­tor­i­cal­ly rich struc­ture even by the stan­dards of such a his­tor­i­cal­ly rich city, it will no doubt remain Istan­bul’s prime tourist attrac­tion in the 2020s, much as it must have been in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

For those who could­n’t make the trip in those days — or who could make the trip and want­ed to bring home sou­venirs that could con­vey as rich­ly as pos­si­ble what they’d seen on their trav­els — there were Pho­tocrom prints. Though not tech­ni­cal­ly a col­or pho­tog­ra­phy process, Pho­tocrom could pro­duce fair­ly con­vinc­ing images by apply­ing col­or to black-and-white pic­tures.

Hence Pho­tocrom’s use in cap­tur­ing vis­tas from the great Euro­pean cities, includ­ing Rome, Venice, and Paris, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Pho­tocrom prints, explains the Library of Con­gress’ web site, “are ink-based images pro­duced through ‘the direct pho­to­graph­ic trans­fer of an orig­i­nal neg­a­tive onto litho and chro­mo­graph­ic print­ing plates,’ ” a tech­nol­o­gy that allowed for the mass pro­duc­tion of images that could then be wide­ly dis­trib­uted. Thanks to the ven­tures of licensees like the Detroit Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, those on the oth­er side of the world could behold a city like Istan­bul — or rather Con­stan­tino­ple — through what looked “decep­tive­ly like col­or pho­tographs.”

The sub­jects of these prints, all of which you can view and down­load at the Library of Con­gress’ online archive, include not just Hagia Sophia but the foun­tain of Sul­tan Ahmed, Top­ka­ki Palace’s impe­r­i­al gate, and the Gala­ta Bridge (for which Leonar­do da Vin­ci him­self once sub­mit­ted a design). Oth­er pic­tures depict the city’s street life with views of the Eminönü bazaar as well as bar­bers and cooks ply­ing their trade in the open air. The col­ors and con­trasts of the Pho­tocrom process gives all of them a sense of real­i­ty more vivid, in a way, than real­i­ty itself — but as those who’ve been there know, the real­i­ty of Istan­bul is vivid enough for any­body.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Thou­sands of Ottoman-Era Pho­tographs That Have Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

Rome Comes to Life in Pho­tochrom Col­or Pho­tos Tak­en in 1890: The Colos­se­um, Tre­vi Foun­tain & More

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

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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Explore the Ruins of Timgad, the “African Pompeii” Excavated from the Sands of Algeria

in Architecture, History | August 4th, 2020

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Fif­teen cen­turies after its fall, the Roman Empire lives on in unex­pect­ed places. Take, for instance, the for­mer colo­nial city of Tim­gad, locat­ed in Alge­ria 300 miles from the cap­i­tal. Found­ed by the Emper­or Tra­jan around 100 AD as Colo­nia Mar­ciana Ulpia Tra­iana Thamu­ga­di, it thrived as a piece of Rome in north Africa before turn­ing Chris­t­ian in the third cen­tu­ry and into a cen­ter of the Donatist sect in the fourth. The three cen­turies after that saw a sack­ing by Van­dals, a reoc­cu­pa­tion by Chris­tians, and anoth­er sack­ing by Berbers. Aban­doned and cov­ered by sand from the Sahara from the sev­enth cen­tu­ry on, Tim­gad was redis­cov­ered by Scot­tish explor­er James Bruce in 1765. But not until the 1880s, under French rule, did a prop­er exca­va­tion begin.

Today a vis­i­tor to the ruins of Tim­gad can see the out­lines of exact­ly where each of its build­ings once stood (espe­cial­ly if they have the aer­i­al view of the pho­to above, recent­ly tweet­ed out by Archi­tec­ture Hub). This, in part, is what qual­i­fied the place for inscrip­tion on UNESCO’s World Her­itage List.

“With its square enclo­sure and orthog­o­nal design based on the car­do and decumanus, the two per­pen­dic­u­lar routes run­ning through the city, it is an excel­lent exam­ple of Roman town plan­ning,” says UNESCO’s web site. Its “remark­able grid sys­tem” — quite nor­mal to 21st-cen­tu­ry city-dwellers, much less so in sec­ond-cen­tu­ry Africa — makes it “a typ­i­cal exam­ple of an urban mod­el” that “con­tin­ues to bear wit­ness to the build­ing inven­tive­ness of the mil­i­tary engi­neers of the Roman civ­i­liza­tion, today dis­ap­peared.”

“With­in a few gen­er­a­tions of its birth,” writes Messy Nessy,” the out­post had expand­ed to over 10,000 res­i­dents of both Roman, African, as well as Berber descent. “The exten­sion of Roman cit­i­zen­ship to non-Romans was a care­ful­ly planned strat­e­gy of the Empire,” she adds. “In return for their loy­al­ty, local elites were giv­en a stake in the great and pow­er­ful Empire, ben­e­fit­ted from its pro­tec­tion and legal sys­tem, not to men­tion, its mod­ern urban ameni­ties such as Roman bath hous­es, the­atres, and a fan­cy pub­lic library.”

Tim­gad’s library, which “would have housed man­u­scripts relat­ing to reli­gion, mil­i­tary his­to­ry and good gov­er­nance,” seems to have been fan­cy indeed, and its ruins indi­cate the pur­chase Roman cul­ture man­aged to attain in this far-flung set­tle­ment.

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Tim­gad’s library is just one ele­ment of what UNESCO calls its “rich archi­tec­tur­al inven­to­ry com­pris­ing numer­ous and diver­si­fied typolo­gies, relat­ing to the dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal stages of its con­struc­tion: the defen­sive sys­tem, build­ings for the pub­lic con­ve­niences and spec­ta­cles, and a reli­gious com­plex.” Hav­ing out­grown its orig­i­nal street grid, Tim­gad “spread beyond the perime­ters of its ram­parts and sev­er­al major pub­lic build­ings are built in the new quar­ters: Capi­toli­um, tem­ples, mar­kets and baths,” most of which date from the city’s “Gold­en Age” in the Sev­er­an peri­od between 193 and 235.

Image Alan and Flo­ra Bot­ting via Flickr Com­mons

This makes for an African equiv­a­lent of Pom­peii, the Roman city famous­ly buried and thus pre­served in the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius in the year 79. But it is less­er-known Tim­gad, with its still clear­ly laid-out blocks, its rec­og­niz­able pub­lic facil­i­ties, and its demar­cat­ed “down­town” and “sub­urbs,” that will feel more famil­iar to us today, whichev­er city in the world we come from.

via Archi­tec­ture Hub/Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour Through Ancient Rome, 320 C.E.

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

Pierre Bourdieu’s Pho­tographs of Wartime Alge­ria

Repli­ca of an Alger­ian City, Made of Cous­cous: Now on Dis­play at The Guggen­heim

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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