Behold the Unique Beauty of Japan’s Artistic Manhole Covers

in Art, Design, Travel | July 19th, 2023

Vis­i­tors to Japan can’t help but be struck by the beau­ty of its tem­ples, its scenic views, its zen gar­dens, its man­hole cov­ers…

You read that right.

What start­ed as a scheme to get tax­pay­ers on board with pricey rur­al sew­er projects in the 1980s has grown into a coun­try­wide tourist attrac­tion and a mat­ter of civic pride.

Each munic­i­pal­i­ty boasts its own unique man­hole cov­er designs, inspired by spe­cif­ic region­al ele­ments.

A com­mu­ni­ty might opt to rep its local flo­ral or fau­na, a famous local land­mark or fes­ti­val, an his­toric event or bit of folk­lore.

Mat­sumo­to City high­lights one of its pop­u­lar folk craft sou­venirs, the col­or­ful silk temari balls that once served as toys for female chil­dren and bridal gifts.

Nagoya touts the puri­ty of its water with a water strid­er — an insect that requires the most pris­tine con­di­tions to sur­vive.

Hiroshi­ma pays trib­ute to its base­ball team.

Osa­ka offers a view of its cas­tle sur­round­ed by cher­ry blos­soms.

The prox­im­i­ty of the San­rio Puroland theme park allows Tama City to lay claim to Hel­lo Kit­ty and Poké­mon-themed lids have sprung up like mush­rooms from Tokyo to Oki­nawa.

Most of Japan’s 15 mil­lion artis­tic man­hole cov­ers are mono­chro­mat­ic steel which makes spot­ting one of the vibrant­ly col­ored mod­els even more excit­ing.

In the fifty some years since their intro­duc­tion, an entire sub­cul­ture has emerged. Vet­er­an enthu­si­ast Sho­ji Mori­mo­to coined the term “man­holer” to describe hob­by­ists par­tic­i­pat­ing in this “trea­sure hunt for adults.”

Remo Camero­ta doc­u­ments his obses­sion in Drainspot­ting: Japan­ese Man­hole Cov­ers and Amer­i­can trav­el­er Car­rie McN­inch shares the joy of stum­bling across pre­vi­ous­ly unspot­ted ones in her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic series You Don’t Get There From Here.

The ongo­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of this offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned street art is evi­denced by the Japan­ese Soci­ety of Man­hole Lovers, an annu­al man­hole sum­mit, and tons of col­lectible trad­ing cards.

Explore a crowd­sourced gallery of Japan­ese man­hole cov­ers here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­cov­er Edo, the His­toric Green/Sustainable City of Japan

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine and nine books, includ­ing, most recent­ly Cre­ative, Not Famous. Fol­low her @Ayun-Halliday

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A Creative List of Meat Carving Terms from the Middle Ages: “Splaye that Breme,” “Splatte that Pyke” & More

in Books, Food & Drink, History | July 19th, 2023

A less­er adver­tised joy of work­ing in food ser­vice is achiev­ing com­mand of the slang:

Mon­key dish…

Deuces and four tops…

Fire, flash, kill… 

As you may have noticed, we here at Open Cul­ture have an insa­tiable hunger for vin­tage lin­go and it doesn’t get much more vin­tage than The Boke of Kervyn­ge (The Book of Carv­ing).

This 1508 man­u­al was pub­lished for the ben­e­fit of young noble­men who’d been placed in afflu­ent house­holds, to learn the ropes of high soci­ety by serv­ing the sov­er­eigns.

Few fam­i­lies could afford to serve meat, let alone whole ani­mals, so under­stand­ably, the pre­sen­ta­tion and carv­ing of these pre­cious entrees was not a thing to be under­tak­en light­ly.

The influ­en­tial Lon­don-based pub­lish­er Wynkyn de Worde com­piled step-by-step instruc­tions for get­ting dif­fer­ent types of meat, game and fish from kitchen to plate, as well as what to serve on sea­son­al menus and spe­cial occa­sions like East­er and the Feast of St. John the Bap­tist.

The book opens with the list of “good­ly ter­mes” above, essen­tial vocab for any young man eager to prove his skills around the car­cass of a deer, goose, or lob­ster.

There’s noth­ing here for veg­e­tar­i­ans, obvi­ous­ly. And some 21st-cen­tu­ry car­ni­vores may find them­selves blanch­ing a bit at the thought of tear­ing into a heron or por­poise.

If, how­ev­er, you’re a medieval lad tasked with “dis­fig­ur­ing” a pea­cock, close­ly observed by an entire din­ing table of la crème de la crème, The Boke of Kervyn­ge is a life­saver.

(It also con­tains some invalu­able tips for meet­ing expec­ta­tions should you find your­self in the posi­tion of chaum­ber­layne, Mar­shall or ush­er.)

In any event, let’s spice up our vocab­u­lary while res­cu­ing some aged culi­nary terms from obscu­ri­ty.

Don’t be sur­prised if they work their way into an episode of The Bear next sea­son, though you should also feel free to use them metaphor­i­cal­ly.

And don’t lose heart if some of the terms are a bit befud­dling to mod­ern ears. Lists of Note’s Shaun Ush­er has tak­en a stab at truf­fling up some mod­ern trans­la­tions for a few of the less famil­iar sound­ing words, wise­ly refrain­ing from haz­ard­ing a guess as to the mean­ing of “fruche that chekyn”.

(It’s not the “chekyn” part giv­ing us pause…)

Ter­mes of a keruer —Terms of a carv­er

Breke that dere — break that deer

lesche y brawne — leach the brawn

rere that goose — rear that goose

lyft that swanne — lift that swan

sauce that capon — sauce that capon

spoyle that henne — spoil that hen

fruche that chekyn — ? that chick­en

vnbrace that malarde — unbrace that mal­lard

vnlace that cony — unlace that coney

dys­mem­bre that heron — dis­mem­ber that heron

dys­playe that crane — dis­play that crane

dys­fygure that pecocke —dis­fig­ure that pea­cock

vnioynt that byt­ture — unjoint that bit­tern

vntache that curlewe — untack that curlew

alaye that fesande — allay that pheas­ant

wyn­ge that partryche — wing that par­tridge

wyn­ge that quayle — wing that quail

mynce that plouer — mince that plover

thye that pegy­on — thigh that pigeon

bor­der that pasty — bor­der that pasty

thye all man­er of small byrdes — thigh all man­ner of small birds

tym­bre that fyre — tim­ber that fire

tyere that egge — tear that egg

chyne that samon — chine that salmon

stryn­ge that lam­praye — string that lam­prey

splat­te that pyke — splat that pike

sauce that playce — sauce that plaice

sauce that tenche — sauce that tench

splaye that breme — splay that bream

syde that had­docke — side that had­dock

tuske that bar­bell — tusk that bar­bel

culpon that troute — culpon that trout

fynne that cheuen — fin that cheven

trassene that ele — ? that eel

traunche that stur­gy­on — tranche that stur­geon

vnder­traunche yt pur­pos — under­tranch that por­poise

tayme that crabbe — tame that crab

barbe that lop­ster — barb that lob­ster

Here endeth the good­ly ter­mes.

Peruse a dig­i­tal copy of the sole sur­viv­ing copy of the first edi­tion of the Boke of Kervyn­ge here.

Via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Did Peo­ple Eat in Medieval Times? A Video Series and New Cook­book Explain

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nose­wise, Gar­lik, Have­g­ood­day & More

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make the 2000-Year-Old “Pizza” Discovered on a Pompeii Fresco

in Food & Drink, History | July 18th, 2023

Just last month, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture the dis­cov­ery of a Pom­pei­ian fres­co pur­port­ed to depict an ancient ances­tor of piz­za. For most of us piz­za-lov­ing mil­lions — nay, bil­lions — around the world, this was a notable curios­i­ty but for Max Miller, it was clear­ly a chal­lenge. As the cre­ator of the hit Youtube chan­nel Tast­ing His­to­ry, each of whose episodes involves faith­ful re-cre­ation of dish­es from eras past, he could­n’t pos­si­bly have ignored this devel­op­ment. But it also pos­es even stiffer dif­fi­cul­ties than most of his culi­nary projects, pro­vid­ing him not a recipe to work with but a pic­ture, and not a par­tic­u­lar­ly detailed pic­ture at that.

The fres­co’s genre is xenia, which, Miller explains in the video above, “comes from the Greek word that referred to a sort of social con­tract between hosts and guests.” The ancient Roman archi­tect Vit­ru­vius (he whose work inspired Leonar­do’s Vit­ru­vian Man) described how the Greeks, after becom­ing wealthy, “began pro­vid­ing din­ing rooms, cham­bers, and store­rooms of pro­vi­sions for their guests.”

The food and drink they brought out for their din­ner par­ties became the sub­ject of xenia art­works like this fres­co from Pom­peii, which hap­pens to include a famil­iar-look­ing round bread. What’s more, “some schol­ars have sug­gest­ed that one of the ingre­di­ents that prob­a­bly is on this bread is sort of piz­za-like, inso­far as it is a kind of spread­able cheese.”

The qual­i­ty of that ingre­di­ent, called more­tum, seem­ing­ly makes or breaks this ancient piz­za, and so Miller spends most of the video explain­ing its prepa­ra­tion, draw­ing details from a poem attrib­uted to Vir­gil. Those fol­low­ing along in their own kitchens will need to gath­er a cou­ple heads of gar­lic, large hand­fuls of pars­ley and cilantro, a small hand­ful of rue, and ten ounces of white cheese. When you’ve made the more­tum, you can bake the Roman bread, loaves of which were pre­served by the explo­sion of Mount Vesu­vius, then spread on the more­tum and “top it with things like white cheese, dates, pome­gran­ates, or what­ev­er else you saw in the fres­co.” Miller notes that actu­al Pom­pei­ians prob­a­bly would­n’t have sliced the final prod­uct, but rather picked off and eat­en its top­pings one-by-one before get­ting around to the bread: a piz­za con­sump­tion method prac­ticed by more than a few of us mod­erns, at least in child­hood.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Fres­co in Pom­peii Reveals a Pre­cur­sor to Piz­za

His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing: How to Make Ancient Roman & Medieval Ital­ian Dish­es

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

A Culi­nary Videos Series Shows Every Con­ceiv­able Way to Cook Eggs, Pota­toes, Piz­za, Bacon & More

A Tour of All the Piz­za Styles You Can Eat in the Unit­ed States (and the His­to­ry Behind Your Favorite Slices)

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

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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How to Spot Bullshit: A Manual by Princeton Philosopher Harry Frankfurt (RIP)

in Philosophy | July 18th, 2023

Note: Over the week­end, the Prince­ton philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt passed away at the age of 94. After a long career, he became the author of the sur­prise best­selling book, On Bull­shit, which we fea­tured in 2016. Please revis­it our orig­i­nal post below.

We live in an age of truthi­ness. Come­di­an Stephen Col­bert coined the word to describe the Bush administration’s ten­den­cy to fudge the facts in its favor.

Ten years after the Amer­i­can Dialect Soci­ety named it Word of the Year, for­mer pres­i­dent Bush’s cal­en­dar is packed with such leisure activ­i­ties as golf and paint­ing por­traits of world lead­ers, but “truthi­ness” remains on active duty.

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly ger­mane in this elec­tion year, though politi­cians are far from its only prac­ti­tion­ers.

Take glob­al warm­ing. NASA makes a pret­ty rock sol­id case for both its exis­tence and our role in it:

97 per­cent or more of active­ly pub­lish­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists agree: Cli­mate-warm­ing trends over the past cen­tu­ry are extreme­ly like­ly due to human activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, most of the lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions world­wide have issued pub­lic state­ments endors­ing this posi­tion.

In view of such num­bers, it’s under­stand­able that a sub­ur­ban Joe with a freez­er full of fac­to­ry-farmed beef and mul­ti­ple SUVs in his garage would cling to the posi­tion that glob­al warm­ing is a lie. It’s his last resort, real­ly.

But such self-ratio­nal­iza­tions are not truth. They are truthi­ness.

Or to use the old-fash­ioned word favored by philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt, above: bull­shit!

Frank­furt–a philoso­pher at Prince­ton and the author of On Bull­shit–allows that bull­shit artists are often charm­ing, or at their very least, col­or­ful. They have to be. Achiev­ing their ends involves engag­ing oth­ers long enough to per­suade them that they know what they’re talk­ing about, when in fact, that’s the oppo­site of the truth.

Speak­ing of oppo­sites, Frank­furt main­tains that bull­shit is a dif­fer­ent beast from an out-and-out lie. The liar makes a spe­cif­ic attempt to con­ceal the truth by swap­ping it out for a lie.

The bull­shit artist’s approach is far more vague. It’s about cre­at­ing a gen­er­al impres­sion.

There are times when I admit to wel­com­ing this sort of manure. As a mak­er of low bud­get the­ater, your hon­est opin­ion of any show I have Lit­tle Red Hen’ed into exis­tence is the last thing I want to hear upon emerg­ing from the cramped dress­ing room, unless you tru­ly loved it.

I’d also encour­age you to choose your words care­ful­ly when dash­ing a child’s dreams.

But when it comes to mat­ters of pub­lic pol­i­cy, and the pub­lic good, yes, trans­paren­cy is best.

It’s inter­est­ing to me that film­mak­ers James Nee and Chris­t­ian Brit­ten trans­formed a por­tion of their learned subject’s thoughts into voiceover nar­ra­tion for a light­ning fast stock footage mon­tage. It’s divert­ing and fun­ny, fea­tur­ing such omi­nous char­ac­ters as Nos­fer­atu, Bill Clin­ton, Char­lie Chaplin’s Great Dic­ta­tor, and Don­ald Trump, but isn’t it also the sort of mis­di­rec­tion sleight of hand at which true bull­shit­ters excel?

Frank­furt expands upon his thoughts on bull­shit in his apt­ly titled best­selling book, On Bull­shit and its fol­lowup On Truth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

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

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J. Robert Oppenheimer Explains How, Upon Witnessing the First Nuclear Explosion, He Recited a Line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”

in History, Physics, Religion | July 17th, 2023

No mat­ter how lit­tle we know of the Hin­du reli­gion, a line from one of its holy scrip­tures lives with­in us all: “Now I am become Death, the destroy­er of worlds.” This is one facet of the lega­cy of J. Robert Oppen­heimer, an Amer­i­can the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who left an out­sized mark on his­to­ry. For his cru­cial role in the Man­hat­tan Project that dur­ing World War II pro­duced the first nuclear weapons, he’s now remem­bered as the“father of the atom­ic bomb.” He secured that title on July 16, 1945, the day of the test in the New Mex­i­can desert that proved these exper­i­men­tal weapons actu­al­ly work — that is, they could wreak a kind of destruc­tion pre­vi­ous­ly only seen in visions of the end of the world.

“We knew the world would not be the same,” Oppen­heimer remem­bered in 1965. “A few peo­ple laughed, a few peo­ple cried. Most peo­ple were silent. I remem­bered the line from the Hin­du scrip­ture, the Bha­gavad Gita; Vish­nu is try­ing to per­suade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his mul­ti-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroy­er of worlds.’ ”

The trans­la­tion’s gram­mat­i­cal archaism made it even more pow­er­ful, res­onat­ing with lines in Ten­nyson (“I am become a name, for always roam­ing with a hun­gry heart”), Shake­speare (“I am come to know your plea­sure”), and the Bible (“I am come a light into the world, that whoso­ev­er believeth on me should not abide in dark­ness”).

But what is death, as the Gita sees it? In an inter­view with Wired, San­skrit schol­ar Stephen Thomp­son explains that, in the orig­i­nal, the word that Oppen­heimer speaks as “death” refers to “lit­er­al­ly the world-destroy­ing time.” This means that “irre­spec­tive of what Arju­na does” — Arju­na being the afore­men­tioned prince, the nar­ra­tive’s pro­tag­o­nist — every­thing is in the hands of the divine.” Oppen­heimer would have learned all this while teach­ing in the 1930s at UC Berke­ley, where he learned San­skrit and read the Gita in the orig­i­nal. This cre­at­ed in him, said his col­league Isidor Rabi, “a feel­ing of mys­tery of the uni­verse that sur­round­ed him like a fog.”

The neces­si­ty of the Unit­ed States’ sub­se­quent drop­ping of not one but two atom­ic bombs on Japan, exam­ined in the 1965 doc­u­men­tary The Deci­sion to Drop the Bomb (below), remains a mat­ter of debate. Oppen­heimer went on to oppose nuclear weapons, describ­ing him­self to an appalled Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man as hav­ing “blood on my hands.” But in devel­op­ing them, could he have sim­ply seen him­self as a mod­ern Prince Arju­na? “It has been argued by schol­ars,” writes the Eco­nom­ic Times’ Mayank Chhaya, “that Oppen­heimer’s approach to the atom­ic bomb was that of doing his duty as part of his dhar­ma as pre­scribed in the Gita.” He knew, to quote anoth­er line from that scrip­ture brought to mind by the nuclear explo­sion, that “if the radi­ance of a thou­sand suns were to burst into the sky that would be like the splen­dor of the Mighty One” — and per­haps also that splen­dor and wrath may be one.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020. In the light of the new Oppen­heimer film, we’re bring­ing it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oppen­heimer: The Man Behind the Bomb

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

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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Wes Anderson Explains How He Built Asteroid City, the Fictional American Desert Town in His New Film

in Film | July 17th, 2023

Wes Ander­son­’s lat­est pic­ture Aster­oid City is named for the small Ari­zona town (pop­u­la­tion: 87) in which its cen­tral sto­ry takes place. That town, in turn, is named for the inci­dent that made it (mod­est­ly) famous: the impact of an aster­oid that left behind a large crater. That crater was one of the fea­tures that Ander­son and his pro­duc­tion design­ers had to make for the shoot — but then, so was every­thing else in Aster­oid City, which had to be raised whole in an out-of-the-way area of Spain. Unlike­ly though it may sound in itself, the cin­e­mat­ic project of re-cre­at­ing the Amer­i­can West in south­ern Europe isn’t with­out prece­dent: the “Spaghet­ti West­erns” of the nine­teen-six­ties and sev­en­ties also relied on the Span­ish desert to pro­vide the right atmos­phere of sub­lime des­o­la­tion.

Just as movies like A Fist­ful of Dol­lars or Djan­go are root­ed in a cer­tain con­cep­tion of the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, so Aster­oid City is root­ed in a cer­tain con­cep­tion of the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth. This comes through most clear­ly in the archi­tec­ture of their sets.

“The thing was to try to make build­ings that were as evoca­tive of the time as we pos­si­bly could,” Ander­son says in the short mak­ing-of video above. But this thor­ough­ly mid­cen­tu­ry-provin­cial set­ting also need­ed its mys­te­ri­ous ele­ments: the crater, of course, but also the obser­va­to­ry and “the free­way on-ramp there that goes to nowhere.” The ful­ly assem­bled Aster­oid City felt like not just a set, but some­thing approach­ing an actu­al place: “Once it was built, we could be a tiny group in this what seemed like an aban­doned town.”

Any­one who’s spent enough time road-trip­ping across the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca will rec­og­nize that, con­ti­nen­tal loca­tion notwith­stand­ing, Aster­oid City cap­tures some­thing essen­tial about that coun­try’s more remote set­tle­ments, inhab­it­ed or not, locat­ed in arid regions or oth­er­wise. This required the fab­ri­ca­tion of not just build­ings but the flo­ra, fau­na, and geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions of an entire land­scape, prac­ti­cal­ly all of it adher­ent to Ander­son­’s sig­na­ture hand­made aes­thet­ic scheme, which some­how con­vinces through arti­fi­cial­i­ty. Even detrac­tors of Ander­son­’s work sure­ly derive plea­sure from the result­ing qual­i­ty of sheer phys­i­cal­i­ty, some of which also owes to his still shoot­ing on good old 35-mil­lime­ter film — as this video’s pub­lish­er, Kodak, does­n’t hes­i­tate to remind us.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Wes Ander­son Uses Minia­tures to Cre­ate His Aes­thet­ic: A Primer from His Mod­el Mak­er & Prop Painter

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Revis­its Aban­doned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Oth­er Clas­sic Films in North Africa

A Star Wars Film Made in a Wes Ander­son Aes­thet­ic

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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You Can Get Open Culture Posts on Threads, Mastodon, Post, & Other Social Media Platforms

in Random | July 16th, 2023

As Twit­ter decays, we want to remind you that you can find posts from Open Cul­ture on oth­er social media plat­forms. Find us now on Threads, where have 900+ fol­low­ers in the first 24 hours. We’re also on Mastodon, Post, Blue Sky, and Face­book. Or get our dai­ly email newslet­ter. Pick your favorite and keep tabs on our dai­ly posts.…

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The First Known Photograph of People Having a Beer (1843)

in History, Photography | July 14th, 2023

It should go with­out say­ing that one should drink respon­si­bly, for rea­sons per­tain­ing to life and limb as well as rep­u­ta­tion. The ubiq­ui­ty of still and video cam­eras means poten­tial­ly embar­rass­ing moments can end up on mil­lions of screens in an instant, copied, down­loaded, and saved for pos­ter­i­ty. Not so dur­ing the infan­cy of pho­tog­ra­phy, when it was a painstak­ing process with min­utes-long expo­sure times and arcane chem­i­cal devel­op­ment meth­ods. Pho­tograph­ing peo­ple gen­er­al­ly meant keep­ing them as still as pos­si­ble for sev­er­al min­utes, a require­ment that ren­dered can­did shots next to impos­si­ble.

We know the results of these ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic por­trai­ture from many a famous Daguerreo­type, named for its French inven­tor, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. At the same time, dur­ing the 1830s and 40s, anoth­er process gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in Eng­land, called the Calo­type—or “Tal­bo­type,” for its inven­tor William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot. “Upon hear­ing of the advent of the Daguerreo­type in 1839,” writes Linz Welch at the Unit­ed Pho­to­graph­ic Artists Gallery site, Tal­bot “felt moved to action to ful­ly refine the process that he had begun work on. He was able to short­en his expo­sure times great­ly and start­ed using a sim­i­lar form of cam­era for expo­sure on to his pre­pared paper neg­a­tives.”

This last fea­ture made the Calo­type more ver­sa­tile and mechan­i­cal­ly repro­ducible. And the short­ened expo­sure times seemed to enable some greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in the kinds of pho­tographs one could take. In the 1843 pho­to above, we have what appears to be an entire­ly unplanned group­ing of rev­el­ers, caught in a moment of cheer at the pub. Cre­at­ed by Scot­tish painter-pho­tog­ra­phers Robert Adam­son and David Octavius Hill—who grins, half-stand­ing, on the right—the image looks like almost no oth­er por­trait from the time. Rather than sit­ting rigid­ly, the fig­ures slouch casu­al­ly; rather than look­ing grim and mourn­ful, they smile and smirk, appar­ent­ly shar­ing a joke. The pho­to­graph is believed to be the first image of alco­holic con­sump­tion, and it does its sub­ject jus­tice.

Though Tal­bot patent­ed his Calo­type process in Eng­land in 1841, the restric­tions did not apply in Scot­land. “In fact,” the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art writes, “Tal­bot encour­aged its use there.” He main­tained a cor­re­spon­dence with inter­est­ed sci­en­tists, includ­ing Adamson’s old­er broth­er John, a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry. But the Calo­type was more of an artists’ medi­um. Where Daguerreo­types pro­duced, Welch writes, “a star­tling resem­blance of real­i­ty,” with clean lines and even tones, the Calo­type, with its salt print, “tend­ed to have high con­trast between lights and darks…. Addi­tion­al­ly, because of the paper fibers, the image would present with a grain that would dif­fuse the details.” We see this espe­cial­ly in the cap­tur­ing of Octavius Hill, who appears both life­like in motion and ren­dered artis­ti­cal­ly with char­coal or brush.

The oth­er two figures—James Bal­lan­tine, writer, stained-glass artist, and son of an Edin­burgh brew­er, and Dr. George Bell, in the center—have the rak­ish air of char­ac­ters in a William Hog­a­rth scene. The Nation­al Gal­leries of Scot­land attrib­ut­es the nat­u­ral­ness of these pos­es to “Hill’s socia­bil­i­ty, humour and his capac­i­ty to gauge the sit­ters’ char­ac­ters.” Sure­ly the booze did its part in loos­en­ing every­one up. The three men are said to be drink­ing Edin­burgh Ale, “accord­ing to a con­tem­po­rary account… ‘a potent flu­id, which almost glued the lips of the drinker togeth­er.’ ” Such a side effect would, at least, make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to over-imbibe.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

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

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The Oldest Known Footage of London (1890–1920) Features the City’s Great Landmarks

in History, Television | July 14th, 2023

The City of Lon­don has explod­ed like Blade Run­ner in the last cou­ple of decades with glass and con­crete and shrines to glob­al cap­i­tal­ism like St. Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the Shard (aka the Shard). But has the view from the ground stayed the same? Accord­ing to this charm­ing then vs. now video assem­bled by a com­pa­ny called Yester­Vid, yes.

Trawl­ing through the old­est sur­viv­ing pub­lic domain footage from the ear­ly days of film (1890 — 1920), the video­g­ra­phers have placed old and mod­ern-day shots side by side, match­ing as close as they can cam­era place­ment and lens.

Miss­ing from today: the soot, the filth in the gut­ter, and the free-for-all in the streets as horse-drawn car­riages and ear­ly busses bat­tled it out with pedes­tri­ans. Streets are safer now, with rail­ings to pro­tect cit­i­zens, though the signs of increased secu­ri­ty are also appar­ent, and CCTV cam­eras are most prob­a­bly film­ing the director…somewhere!

St. Paul’s still needs room to breathe, and while the Empire The­atre may not show any more Lumiere Cin­e­matogra­phies, it’s still a cin­e­ma show­ing IMAX films. It didn’t suf­fer the fate of many cin­e­mas out­side of Lon­don after the ‘60s: being turned into bin­go halls or just torn down.

Also: the sea of red pop­pies seen at 4:28 dur­ing the shot of the Tow­er of London’s moat is an instal­la­tion work by artist Paul Cum­mins. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was installed between July and Novem­ber of 2014 and, accord­ing to Wikipedia, it con­sist­ed of 888,246 ceram­ic red pop­pies, each intend­ed to rep­re­sent one British or Colo­nial ser­vice­man killed in the Great War.

Final point: the old­est pub in Lon­don, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, still stands, and dur­ing the swel­ter­ing sum­mers pro­vides a cool respite, as most of its drink­ing rooms are under­ground. Cheers!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Fly Through 17th-Cen­tu­ry London’s Grit­ty Streets with Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tions

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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George Bernard Shaw’s Famous Writing Hut, Which Could Be Rotated 360 Degrees to Catch the Sun All Day

in Architecture, History, Theatre, Writing | July 13th, 2023

Sev­en decades after his death, George Bernard Shaw is remem­bered for his prodi­gious body of work as a play­wright, but also — and at least as much — for his per­son­al eccen­tric­i­ties: the then-unfash­ion­able tee­to­tal­ing veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, the rejec­tion of vac­cines and even the germ the­o­ry of dis­ease, the all-wool wardrobe. Thus, even those casu­al­ly famil­iar with Shaw’s life and work may not be ter­ri­bly sur­prised to learn that he not only had an out­build­ing in which to do his work, but an out­build­ing that could be rotat­ed 360 degrees. “Shaw’s writ­ing refuge was a six-square-meter wood­en sum­mer­house, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for his wife Char­lotte,” writes Idler’s Alex John­son. “Built on a revolv­ing base that used cas­tors on a cir­cu­lar track,” it was “essen­tial­ly a shed on a lazy Susan.”

The hut became a part of Shaw’s for­mi­da­ble pub­lic image in a peri­od of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry “when there was a grow­ing appre­ci­a­tion of idyl­lic rur­al set­tings — a knock-on effect of which was that peo­ple had gar­den build­ings installed. Shaw made the most of this move­ment, pro­mot­ing him­self as a reclu­sive thinker toil­ing in his rus­tic shel­ter, away from the intru­sions of press and peo­ple alike, while at the same time invit­ing in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines and pos­ing for pho­tos.”

In 1929, “Shaw stood in front of his hut for a pho­to for Mod­ern Mechan­ics & Inven­tions mag­a­zine to pro­mote the idea of sun­light as a heal­ing agent.” Hence the impor­tance of rotat­ing to catch its rays all day long through win­dows made of Vita­glass, “a recent inven­tion that allowed UV rays to come through, let­ting, the mak­ers said, ‘health into the build­ing.’ ”

How­ev­er odd some of Shaw’s views and prac­tices, one can’t help but imag­ine that at least some of them con­tributed to his longevi­ty. The 1946 British Pathé news­reel above pays him a vis­it just a few years before his death at the age of 94, find­ing him still writ­ing (he still had the play Buoy­ant Bil­lions ahead of him, as well as sev­er­al oth­er mis­cel­la­neous works), and what’s more, doing so in his hut: “Like G. B. S. him­self,” says the nar­ra­tor, “it pre­tends to be strict­ly prac­ti­cal, with no non­sense about it.” Yet Shaw seems to have had a sense of humor about his the­o­ret­i­cal­ly hum­ble work­space, nam­ing it after the Eng­lish cap­i­tal so that unwant­ed vis­i­tors to his home in the vil­lage of Ayot St Lawrence could be told, not untruth­ful­ly, that he was in Lon­don. But one nat­u­ral­ly won­ders: when he rang up the main house with his in-hut tele­phone (anoth­er of its high­ly advanced fea­tures), did his house­keep­er say it was Lon­don call­ing?

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

The Cork-Lined Bed­room & Writ­ing Room of Mar­cel Proust, the Orig­i­nal Mas­ter of Social Dis­tanc­ing

Clas­sic Mon­ty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilar­i­ous Bat­tle of Wits

Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

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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Download Instructions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Internet Archive

in Internet Archive | July 13th, 2023

We’ve all come across a LEGO set from child­hood and felt the temp­ta­tion to try build­ing it one more time — mak­ing the gen­er­ous assump­tion, of course, that all the pieces are in the box, to say noth­ing of the instruc­tions. If you’re miss­ing a few bricks, you can always turn to the robust sec­ondary mar­ket in LEGO com­po­nents. If you’re miss­ing the man­u­al, there’s now one place you should look first: the LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive. There you’ll find dig­i­tized mate­ri­als for more than 6,800 dif­fer­ent sets, includ­ing such pop­u­lar releas­es as the LEGO Chevro­let Camaro Z28, the LEGO Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, and the LEGO cov­er pho­to of Meet the Bea­t­les.

Since they were first brought to mar­ket in the late nine­teen-fifties, LEGO’s sig­na­ture build­ing bricks have been pri­mar­i­ly con­sid­ered chil­dren’s toys. And of course, most of us got to know LEGO in child­hood; I myself have fond mem­o­ries of work­ing my way up to the Ice Plan­et 2002 series, with its still much-ref­er­enced trans­par­ent orange chain­saws.

But even after com­ing of age, the seri­ous enthu­si­ast need not leave LEGO behind: the com­pa­ny has put out such adult-ori­ent­ed mod­els as the Colos­se­um, Andy Warhol’s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, to name just a few whose instruc­tions are down­load­able from the Inter­net Archive.

The Metafil­ter dis­cus­sion of the Inter­net Archive’s LEGO build­ing instruc­tions col­lec­tion reveals not only that some are excit­ed indeed about the exis­tence of this resource, but also that oth­ers con­sid­er build­ing from instruc­tions to be a mis­use of the medi­um. It may be true that fol­low­ing spe­cif­ic doc­u­ment­ed steps for hours on end may encour­age a cer­tain slack­en­ing of the imag­i­na­tion. But then, it may also be true that phys­i­cal­ly work­ing one’s way through a com­plex assem­bly process can build dex­ter­i­ty and gen­er­ate ideas for lat­er freeform con­struc­tions. How­ev­er we approach LEGO, and what­ev­er age at which we approach it, we need only keep in mind the Dan­ish imper­a­tive that gave the com­pa­ny its name: leg godt — play well. Enter the col­lec­tion of instruc­tions here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hokusai’s Icon­ic Print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa Recre­at­ed with 50,000 LEGO Bricks

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

The Vin­cent van Gogh Star­ry Night LEGO Set Is Now Avail­able: It’s Cre­at­ed in Col­lab­o­ra­tion with MoMA

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest LEGO Set Ever

Ai Wei­wei Recre­ates Monet’s Water Lilies Trip­tych Using 650,000 Lego Bricks

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #37

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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