How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)

in Television | November 19th, 2024

In April, 1983, 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers watched the illu­sion­ist David Cop­per­field make the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty dis­ap­pear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you per­haps remem­ber the spec­ta­cle. How did he do it? 40 years lat­er, the YouTube chan­nel Mind Blown Mag­ic Illu­sion demys­ti­fies the large-scale mag­ic trick, explain­ing how Cop­per­field dis­tract­ed the audi­ence, rotat­ed the stage, and shift­ed Lady Lib­er­ty out of view. That’s appar­ent­ly the gist of the illu­sion. How­ev­er, in the com­ments sec­tion on YouTube, one com­menter adds a lit­tle more impor­tant detail:

You missed the most impor­tant mis­di­rec­tion. He had a heli­copter with a bright spot­light shin­ing on the stat­ue for a con­sid­er­able length of time dur­ing which he apol­o­gized to the audi­ence and said they were hav­ing “tech­ni­cal prob­lems.” Even­tu­al­ly the cur­tain came across and the stage began to revolve imper­cep­ti­bly slow­ly. How­ev­er the heli­copter moved in sync with the stage. The beam of light appeared to be sta­tion­ary in rela­tion to the stage. When the cur­tain was lift­ed they saw the heli­copter in the same place but with no stat­ue. The beam of light also helped black out the back­ground. Oth­er­wise the audi­ence would have seen a dif­fer­ent sky­line. Pure genius!

For Open Cul­ture read­ers, it’s worth men­tion­ing that the leg­endary film­mak­er Frank Capra (It’s a Won­der­ful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, It Hap­pened One Night) played an unlike­ly role in the pro­duc­tion. In an inter­view with Judd Apa­tow, Cop­per­field recalls how he enlist­ed Capra to help write the script for the episode:

So then I said [to myself] “Now the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty is going to dis­ap­pear, but I’ve got to make this have more mean­ing.” So I went to vis­it Frank Capra, one of my idols, and did a kind of Judd Apa­tow inter­view with him. I said, “I’d like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty to dis­ap­pear, but I want to do it as a les­son in free­dom, how valu­able free­dom is and what the world would be like with­out lib­er­ty.” And Frank Capra looked at me and said, “David, I love your idea, but here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to try and it’s not going to work; it’s not going to dis­ap­pear.” And I said, “Mr. Capra, I can’t do that.” You know? [laughs] And I got to watch Frank Capra, in his eight­ies, in action.

You can watch some of the orig­i­nal 1983 footage below. Enjoy!

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!

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Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together

in Random | November 18th, 2024

There’s an eXo­dus tak­ing place, and mil­lions are find­ing a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decen­tral­ized social media plat­form has been gain­ing 10,000 new users every 10–15 min­utes, or about 1 mil­lion new users per day. Open Cul­ture is already there, shar­ing the cul­tur­al posts you once enjoyed on Twit­ter. We hope you will join us. Find us at @openculture.bsky.social, or just click here.

PS. If you’re are on Threads, you can also find us there too.

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Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

in Education, Life, Philosophy | November 18th, 2024

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That hard­ly means he han­dled every such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: take note of his three divorces, the first of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the year he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer ideals — and, before long, two chil­dren — the cou­ple found­ed the exper­i­men­tal Bea­con Hill School in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their young pupils’ devel­op­ment as not just thinkers-in-train­ing but full human beings.

A few years lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture mag­a­zine called Every­man, and you can read it in full in this 1978 issue of the Rus­sell Soci­ety News. (Go to page 5.)

“Every­body, I sup­pose, has his own list of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels shame quite inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, so far at any rate as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by way of intro­duc­tion. “I have tried to put the virtues that I should wish to pos­sess into the form of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

  1. Do not lie to your­self.
  2. Do not lie to oth­er peo­ple unless they are exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
  3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons close­ly.
  4. When you desire pow­er, exam­ine your­self close­ly as to why you deserve it.
  5. When you have pow­er, use it to build up peo­ple, not to con­strict them.
  6. Do not attempt to live with­out van­i­ty, since this is impos­si­ble, but choose the right audi­ence from which to seek admi­ra­tion.
  7. Do not think of your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.
  8. Be reli­able.
  9. Be just.
  10. Be good-natured.

In the full text, Rus­sell elab­o­rates on the think­ing behind each of these virtues.  “When you wish to believe some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which will increase your income, you will, if you are not very care­ful, give much more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to those against”: hence the impor­tance of not lying to your­self. When it comes to lying to oth­ers, not only should gov­ern­ments tell the truth to their sub­jects, “par­ents should tell the truth to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may seem.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those who are intel­li­gent but weak can­not be expect­ed to forego the use of their intel­li­gence in their con­flicts with those who are stu­pid but strong.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment also applies to rela­tion­ships between the old and the young, since “those who deal with the young inevitably have pow­er, and it is easy to exer­cise this pow­er in ways pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor rather than use­ful to the child.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest a whole set of hum­drum but nec­es­sary virtues, such as punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, refrain­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest forms.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I think, failed to pro­duce reli­able human beings where social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress placed on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — may have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­sell edi­tor Andrew Bone. But Rus­sell still revised his deca­logue long after he left the Bea­con Hill School in 1932, with world events of the sub­se­quent decades inspir­ing him to use it in the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­cast on the BBC in 1951 includes such com­mand­ments as “Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing,” “Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which more of the last few gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents could have done well to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell: Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)

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Bambi Meets Godzilla: #38 on the List of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time (1969)

in Animation | November 17th, 2024

In 1994, Jer­ry Beck edit­ed the book, The 50 Great­est Car­toons: As Select­ed by 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als, which chal­lenged experts to cre­ate a rank­ing of the best short, cel ani­mat­ed car­toons ever made. To no one’s sur­prise, the experts chose 10 Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tions craft­ed by Chuck Jones. They also gave a nod to Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ orig­i­nal Super­man car­toon, Dis­ney’s first ani­ma­tion with Mick­ey Mouse (1928’s “Steam­boat Willie”), and the Don­ald Duck-star­ring WWII pro­pa­gan­da film,“Der Fuehrer’s Face.”

Yes, the big ani­ma­tion stu­dios (Warn­er Bros., Dis­ney, etc.) dom­i­nate the list. But a few “indies” man­age to squeak in there. Take for exam­ple Win­sor McCay’s sem­i­nal 1914 cre­ation “Ger­tie the Dinosaur.” Or Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la. A stu­dent film cre­at­ed by Marv New­land in 1969, Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la (above) runs only 90 sec­onds. Of which, 48 sec­onds are devot­ed to the open­ing cred­its, and 27 sec­onds to the clos­ing cred­its, leav­ing only 12 sec­onds of “action,” which is most­ly still­ness. The tim­ing is the fun­ny.

The short film cir­cu­lat­ed in the­aters across the U.S., shown before screen­ings of Philippe de Bro­ca’s fea­ture film King of Hearts. Over the years the pub­licly-avail­able ver­sions of Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la became worn and fad­ed. So, in 2013, Coda Gard­ner pro­duced a frame-for-frame HD re-cre­ation. You can watch it below.

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:

Watch the Trip­py 1970s Ani­mat­ed Film Qua­si at the Quack­adero: Vot­ed One of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

Watch the Oscar-Win­ning “Ger­ald McBo­ing-Boing” (1950): It’s Ranked as the 9th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

Don­ald Duck & Friends Star in World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons

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What Victorian People Sounded Like: Hear Recordings of Florence Nightingale & Queen Victoria Herself

in History, Technology | November 15th, 2024

More than 120 years after the end of the Vic­to­ri­an era, we might assume that we retain a more or less accu­rate cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of the Vic­to­ri­ans them­selves: of their social mores, their aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, their ambi­tions great and small, their many and var­ied hang-ups. Some of the most vivid rep­re­sen­ta­tions of these qual­i­ties have come down to us through pri­ma­ry sources, which tend to be texts and works of visu­al art. Late in Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign came pho­tographs, and at the very end, even the motion pic­ture. But how can we be sure how her peo­ple real­ly sound­ed?

Strict­ly speak­ing, the ear­li­est process for mechan­i­cal­ly record­ing the sound of the human voice dates back to 1860, not even halfway through the Vic­to­ri­an era. But the tech­nol­o­gy still had a long way to go at that time, and it was­n’t until the 1880s that Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph and the wax cylin­ders it played became com­mer­cial­ly viable. So explains the King and Things video above, on the spread of audio record­ing and the ear­li­est pos­si­bil­i­ties it opened for cap­tur­ing the voic­es of what we now regard as the dis­tant past. Those voic­es include that of a man intro­duced as “one of Eng­land’s most famous after-din­ner speak­ers, Mr. Edmund Yates.”

That cylin­der was record­ed in 1888, at one of the Lon­don soirées held by an Amer­i­can Edi­son employ­ee named George Gouraud. The son of French engi­neer François Gouraud, who had intro­duced daguerreo­type pho­tog­ra­phy to the Unit­ed States in the 1830s, he took it upon him­self to bring the phono­graph to Britain. He did so in a top-down man­ner, invit­ing social­ly dis­tin­guished guests to his home for din­ner so that they might thrill to the nov­el­ty of after-din­ner speech­es deliv­ered by machine — and then record their own mes­sages to Edi­son him­self.  “I can only say that I am aston­ished and some­what ter­ri­fied at the results of this evening’s exper­i­ments,” said one of Gouraud’s guests, the com­pos­er Sir Arthur Sul­li­van.

That aston­ish­ment aside, Sul­li­van also admit­ted that he was “ter­ri­fied at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record for­ev­er.” Many alive today would cred­it him with con­sid­er­able pre­science on that count. But he also under­stood that the phono­graph would pro­duce won­ders, such as the record­ings includ­ed in this video of such nota­bles as four-time Prime Min­is­ter William Glad­stone, Flo­rence Nightin­gale, and Queen Vic­to­ria her­self — at least accord­ing to the con­sen­sus of the schol­ars who’ve scru­ti­nized the high­ly indis­tinct record­ing in ques­tion. Only long after Edis­on’s time would human­i­ty devel­op a record­ing tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of being replayed again and again with­out degra­da­tion. But giv­en our image of Vic­to­ri­ans, per­haps it’s suit­able that their voic­es should sound ghost­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

100-Year-Old Music Record­ings Can Now Be Heard for the First Time, Thanks to New Dig­i­tal Tech­nol­o­gy

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Thomas Edison’s 1889 Record­ing of Otto von Bis­mar­ck‎ Dis­cov­ered

The Old­est Voic­es That We Can Still Hear: Hear Audio Record­ings of Ghost­ly Voic­es from the 1800s

Hear the First Record­ing of the Human Voice (1860)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles

in Architecture, Travel | November 14th, 2024

Burj Al Babas might have been con­struct­ed express­ly to attract the atten­tion of the inter­net. “Sit­ting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-fin­ished, ful­ly aban­doned mini cas­tles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Kather­ine McLaugh­lin and Jes­si­ca Chern­er. Orig­i­nal­ly “planned as a lux­u­ri­ous, state­ly urban devel­op­ment offer­ing the look of roy­al liv­ing for any­one will­ing to shell out any­where from $370,000 to $500,000 for their own lit­tle palace,” it now stands as an unfin­ished ghost town. And though the project only broke ground a decade ago, it’s already set­tled into a ver­i­ta­bly eerie — and high­ly pho­tograph­able — state of decay.

This, of course, more than suits the sen­si­bil­i­ties of an adven­ture-ori­ent­ed YouTube chan­nel like Fear­less & Far. Its explo­ration of Burj Al Babas — one of sev­er­al such videos cur­rent­ly avail­able — offers on-the-ground views of what we can only call the town’s ruins. “This fan­ta­sy par­adise land did­n’t sell,” says its host. “Some blame the Turk­ish real estate cri­sis; some blame the kitsch­i­ness of it all. It’s all so strange. It’s all so fake.”

Indeed, write McLaugh­lin and Chern­er, “as build­ing the town got under­way, locals became enraged with both the aes­thet­ic of the homes and the busi­ness prac­tices of the devel­op­ers,” who sub­se­quent­ly declared bank­rupt­cy, leav­ing the devel­op­ment in lim­bo.

Those who know their Mid­dle East­ern lan­guages will rec­og­nize the very name Burj Al Babas as a “non­sen­si­cal mashup of Ara­bic and Turk­ish,” as Ruth Michael­son and Beril Eski put it in an in-depth Guardian piece last month. Though locat­ed in Turkey, with an intent to take advan­tage of local hot springs, it was financed with mon­ey from Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia and Bahrain. Since its con­struc­tion “abrupt­ly stopped in 2016, the project has become a bizarre white ele­phant,” caus­ing scan­dal, law­suits, an attempt­ed sui­cide, “and even a minor diplo­mat­ic inci­dent between Turkey and Kuwait.” Any­one who’s seen Burj Al Babas up-close will have their doubts about its prospects for com­ple­tion — but if they’ve got a YouTube chan­nel of their own, they’ll hard­ly want demo­li­tion to start before they can pay it a vis­it them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vis­it to Tian­ducheng, China’s Eeri­ly Emp­ty $1 Bil­lion Copy of Paris

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan – Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Explor­ing the Great­est of Italy’s 6,000 Ghost Towns: Take a Tour of Cra­co, Italy

Dis­cov­er the Dis­ap­pear­ing Turk­ish Lan­guage That is Whis­tled, Not Spo­ken

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine

in Magazines, Sci Fi | November 13th, 2024

Along with Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion and The Mag­a­zine of Fan­ta­sy and Sci­ence Fic­tion, Galaxy Mag­a­zine was one of the most impor­tant sci­ence fic­tion digests in 1950s Amer­i­ca. Ray Brad­bury wrote for it–including an ear­ly ver­sion of his mas­ter­piece Fahren­heit 451–as did Robert A. Hein­lein, Isaac Asi­mov, Fred­erik Pohl, Theodore Stur­geon, Cord­wain­er Smith, Jack Vance, and numer­ous oth­ers.

Now a fair­ly decent col­lec­tion of issues (356 in total) is avail­able for your perusal at archive.org for absolute­ly free. It’s not com­plete yet, but it’s close.

When Galaxy appeared in Octo­ber 1950, it promised a kind of sci­ence fic­tion dif­fer­ent from the space operas of pre­vi­ous decades. As an “annu­al report” writ­ten by pub­lish­er H.L. Gold pro­claimed,

…oth­er pub­lish­ers thought the idea of offer­ing mature sci­ence fic­tion in an attrac­tive, adult for­mat was down­right fun­ny. They knew what sold–shapely female endo­morphs with bronze bras, embat­tled male meso­morphs clad in mus­cle, and fright­ful alien mon­sters in search of a human soul.

And while Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion was focused on technology–suited for an Amer­i­ca that had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed since WWII–H.L. Gold’s Galaxy focused on ideas, humor, satire, psy­chol­o­gy and soci­ol­o­gy. It also had one of the best pay rates in the indus­try, and offered some of its writ­ers exclu­sive con­tracts. And the writ­ers respond­ed in kind and fol­lowed their own obsessions–although Gold often pitched ideas.

(Iron­i­cal­ly, though immersed in sto­ries of inner and out­er space, Gold was an acute ago­ra­phobe, and stayed in his apart­ment, com­mu­ni­cat­ing by phone.)

After a wob­bly start graph­ics-wise, Gold hired Ed Emsh­willer in 1951 to paint cov­ers, whose often humor­ous style (e.g. this Christ­mas issue below) suit­ed the humor inside the issue.

Con­fi­dent in their sta­ble of writ­ers, Galaxy pro­duced the won­der­ful birth­day cov­er at the top, fea­tur­ing car­i­ca­tures of every­body from Brad­bury to Asi­mov. There’s also a guide to see who’s who.

A series of editors–including Fred­erik Pohl–took over from Gold after a car acci­dent in 1961, and by 1977–eight years after Pohl’s departure–the mag­a­zine was on its decline. There were more iter­a­tions, reprints, antholo­gies, and online ver­sions, but the essen­tial run is here. And those first ten years changed Amer­i­can sci­ence fic­tion for­ev­er, paving the way for exper­i­men­tal writ­ers like Philip K. Dick and William Gib­son.

You could start with the Ray Brad­bury sto­ry (“The Fire­man”) we told you about, or Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Pup­pet.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy: Hear the 1973 Radio Drama­ti­za­tion

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

X Minus One: Hear Clas­sic Sci-Fi Radio Sto­ries from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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A New 3D Scan, Created from 25,000 High-Resolution Images, Reveals the Remarkably Well-Preserved Wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance

in Film, History | November 13th, 2024

Pho­tos on this page cour­tesy of the Falk­lands Mar­itime Her­itage 

Few who hear the sto­ry of the Endurance could avoid reflect­ing on the apt­ness of the ship’s name. A year after set­ting out on the Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drift­ing ice off Antarc­ti­ca. There it remained for ten months, while leader Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton and his crew of 27 men wait­ed for a thaw. But the Endurance was being slow­ly crushed, and even­tu­al­ly had to be left to its watery grave. What secures its place in the his­to­ry books is the sub-expe­di­tion made by Shack­le­ton and five oth­ers in search of help, which ensured the res­cue of every sin­gle man who’d been on the ship.

This har­row­ing jour­ney has, of course, inspired doc­u­men­taries, includ­ing this year’s Endurance from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, which debuted at the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val last month and will come avail­able to stream on Dis­ney+ lat­er this fall. “The doc­u­men­tary incor­po­rates footage and pho­tos cap­tured dur­ing the expe­di­tion by Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Hur­ley, who [in 1914] brought sev­er­al cam­eras along for the jour­ney,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Sarah Kuta. “Film­mak­ers have col­or-treat­ed Hurley’s black-and-white images and footage for the first time. They also used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to recre­ate crew mem­bers’ voic­es to ‘read’ their own diary entries.”

The fruits of an even more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive project have been released along with Endurance: a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el “cre­at­ed from more than 25,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images cap­tured after the icon­ic ves­sel was dis­cov­ered in March 2022.”

As we not­ed at the time here on Open Cul­ture, the ship was found to be in remark­ably good con­di­tion after well over a cen­tu­ry spent two miles beneath the Wed­dell Sea. “Endurance looks much like it did when it sank on Novem­ber 21, 1915. Every­day items used by the crew — includ­ing din­ing plates, a boot and a flare gun — are still eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able among the pro­tect­ed wreck­age.”

Endurance has, in oth­er words, endured. Its intact­ness — which “makes it look as though the ship,” writes CNN.com’s Jack Guy, “has been mirac­u­lous­ly lift­ed out of the Wed­dell Sea onto dry land in one piece” — is, in its way, as improb­a­ble and impres­sive as Shack­le­ton and com­pa­ny’s sur­vival of its fate­ful first expe­di­tion. The degree of detail cap­tured by this new scan (not tech­no­log­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble back at the time of the last acclaimed doc­u­men­tary on this sub­ject), should make pos­si­ble fur­ther, even deep­er research into the sto­ry of the Endurance. But one ques­tion will remain unan­swer­able: would that sto­ry have res­onat­ed quite as long had the ship kept its orig­i­nal name, Polaris?

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

How an Ancient Roman Ship­wreck Could Explain the Uni­verse

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Mushroom Color Atlas: An Interactive Web Site Lets You Explore the Incredible Spectrum of Colors Created from Fungi

in Art, Nature | November 13th, 2024

Enter the Mush­room Col­or Atlas, and you can dis­cov­er the “beau­ti­ful and sub­tle col­ors derived from dye­ing with mush­rooms.” Fea­tur­ing 825 col­ors, each asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ent types of mush­rooms, the inter­ac­tive atlas lets you appre­ci­ate the broad spec­trum of col­ors latent in the fun­gi king­dom. The shades, tints, and hues will sur­prise you.

Julie Beel­er, a design­er liv­ing in Ore­gon, first launched the inter­ac­tive Mush­room Col­or Atlas back in 2021. Now, she has released a com­pan­ion book, The Mush­room Col­or Atlas: A Guide to Dyes and Pig­ments Made from Fun­gi. Illus­trat­ed by Yuli Gates, the book is “equal parts art book, field guide, and col­or dis­til­la­tion work­shop.” You can order your copy today. The same goes for a Mush­room Col­or Atlas poster.

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 

A Stun­ning, Hand-Illus­trat­ed Book of Mush­rooms Drawn by an Over­looked 19th Cen­tu­ry Female Sci­en­tist

Björk Takes You on a Jour­ney into the Vast King­dom of Mush­rooms with the New Doc­u­men­tary Fun­gi: Web of Life

The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Atlas of Mush­rooms: Edi­ble, Sus­pect and Poi­so­nous (1827)

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

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Stanley Kubrick’s Annotated Copy of Stephen King’s The Shining

in Books, Film | November 12th, 2024

The web site Over­look Hotel has post­ed pic­tures of Stan­ley Kubrick’s per­son­al copy of Stephen King’s nov­el The Shin­ing. The book is filled with high­light­ed pas­sages and large­ly illeg­i­ble notes in the margin—tantalizing clues to Kubrick’s inten­tions for the movie.

The site fea­tures a pic­ture of the book’s care­worn cov­er along with two spreads from the book’s inte­ri­or —pages 8–9, where Jack Tor­rance is being inter­viewed by hotel man­ag­er Mr. Ull­man, and pages 86–87 where hotel cook Dick Hal­lo­rann talks to Jack’s son Dan­ny about the tele­path­ic abil­i­ty called “shin­ing.”

Much of the mar­gin­a­lia is mad­den­ing­ly hard to deci­pher. One of the notes I could make out reads:

Maybe just like their [sic] are peo­ple who can shine, maybe there are places that are spe­cial. Maybe it has to do with what hap­pened in them or where they were built.

Kubrick is clear­ly work­ing to trans­late King’s book into film. Oth­er notes, how­ev­er, seem whol­ly unre­lat­ed to the movie.

Any prob­lems with the kitchen – you phone me.

When The Shin­ing came out, it was greet­ed with tepid and non­plussed reviews. Since then, the film’s rep­u­ta­tion has grown, and now it’s con­sid­ered a hor­ror mas­ter­piece.

At first view­ing, The Shin­ing over­whelms the view­er with pun­gent images that etch them­selves in the mind—those creepy twins, that rot­ting senior cit­i­zen in the bath­tub, that del­uge of blood from the ele­va­tor. Yet after the fifth or sev­enth view­ing, the film reveals itself to be far weird­er than your aver­age hor­ror flick. For instance, why is Jack Nichol­son read­ing a Play­girl mag­a­zine while wait­ing in the lob­by? What’s the deal with that guy in the bear suit at the end of the movie? Why is Dan­ny wear­ing an Apol­lo 11 sweater?

While Stephen King has had dozens of his books adapt­ed for the screen (many are flat-out ter­ri­ble), of all the adap­ta­tions, this is one that King active­ly dis­likes.

“I would do every­thing dif­fer­ent,” com­plained King about the movie to Amer­i­can Film Mag­a­zine in 1986. “The real prob­lem is that Kubrick set out to make a hor­ror pic­ture with no appar­ent under­stand­ing of the genre.” King lat­er made his own screen ver­sion of his book. By all accounts, it’s nowhere as good as Kubrick’s.

Per­haps the rea­son King loathed Kubrick’s adap­ta­tion so much is that the famous­ly secre­tive and con­trol­ling direc­tor packed the movie with so many odd signs, like Danny’s Apol­lo sweater, that seem to point to a mean­ing beyond a tale of an alco­holic writer who descends into mad­ness and mur­der. The Shin­ing is a semi­otic puz­zle about …what?

Crit­ic after crit­ic has attempt­ed to crack the film’s hid­den mean­ing. Jour­nal­ist Bill Blake­more argued in his essay “The Fam­i­ly of Man” that The Shin­ing is actu­al­ly about the geno­cide of the Native Amer­i­cans. His­to­ri­an Geof­frey Cocks sug­gests that the movie is about the Holo­caust. And con­spir­a­cy guru Jay Wei­d­ner has argued pas­sion­ate­ly that the movie is in fact Kubrick’s cod­ed con­fes­sion for his role in stag­ing the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing. (On a relat­ed note, see Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax.)

Rod­ney Ascher’s 2012 doc­u­men­tary Room 237 jux­ta­pos­es all of these wild­ly diver­gent read­ings, bril­liant­ly show­ing just how dense and mul­ti­va­lent The Shin­ing is. You can see the trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary above.

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Kubrick Schol­ar Dis­cov­ers an Eerie Detail in The Shin­ing That’s Gone Unno­ticed for More Than 40 Years

How Stan­ley Kubrick Adapt­ed Stephen King’s The Shin­ing into a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece

Free Doc­u­men­tary View from the Over­look: Craft­ing The Shin­ing Looks at How Kubrick Made “the World’s Scari­est Movie”

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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How Designing Buildings Upside-Down Revolutionized Architecture, Making Possible St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sagrada Família & More

in Architecture, History, Physics | November 12th, 2024

For 142 years now, Sagra­da Família has been grow­ing toward the sky. Or at least that’s what it seems to be doing, as its ongo­ing con­struc­tion real­izes ever more ful­ly a host of forms that look and feel not quite of this earth. It makes a kind of sense to learn that, in design­ing the cathe­dral that would remain a work in progress near­ly a cen­tu­ry after his death, Antoni Gaudí built a mod­el upside-down, mak­ing use of grav­i­ty in the oppo­site way to which we nor­mal­ly think of it as act­ing on a build­ing. But as archi­tec­ture YouTu­ber Stew­art Hicks explains in the video above, Gaudí was hard­ly the first to use that tech­nique.

Take St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, which Christo­pher Wren decid­ed to make the tallest build­ing in Lon­don in 1685. It includ­ed what would be the high­est dome ever built, at 365 feet off the ground. “For a tra­di­tion­al dome design to reach this height, it would have to span an open­ing that’s 160 feet or 49 meters wide, but this made it much too heavy for the walls below,” says Hicks. “Exist­ing tech­niques for build­ing this just could­n’t work.” Enter sci­en­tist-engi­neer Robert Hooke, who’d already been fig­ur­ing out ways to mod­el forces like this by hang­ing chains from the ceil­ing.

“Hooke’s genius was that he real­ized that the chain in his exper­i­ments was cal­cu­lat­ing the per­fect shape for it to remain in ten­sion, since that’s all it can do.” He explained domes as, phys­i­cal­ly, “the exact oppo­site of the chains. His famous line was, ‘As hangs the flex­ile line, so but invert­ed will stand the rigid arch.’ ” In oth­er words, “if you flip the shape of Hooke’s chain exper­i­ments upside down, the forces flip, and this shape is the per­fect com­pres­sion sys­tem.” Hence the dis­tinc­tive­ly elon­gat­ed-look­ing shape of the dome on the com­plet­ed St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, a depar­ture from all archi­tec­tur­al prece­dent.

The shape upon which Wren and Hooke set­tled turned out to be very sim­i­lar to what archi­tec­ture now knows as a cate­nary curve, a con­cept impor­tant indeed to Gaudí, who was “famous­ly enam­ored with what some call organ­ic forms.” He made detailed mod­els to guide the con­struc­tion of his projects, but after those he’d left behind for Sagra­da Família were destroyed by anar­chists in 1936, the builders had noth­ing to go on. Only in 1979 did the young archi­tect Mark Bur­ry “imag­ine the mod­els upside-down,” which brought about a new under­stand­ing of the build­ing’s com­plex, land­scape-like forms. It was a sim­i­lar phys­i­cal insight that made pos­si­ble such dra­mat­ic mid-cen­tu­ry build­ings as Anni­bale Vitel­lozzi and Pier Nervi’s Palazzet­to del­lo Sport and Eero Saari­nen’s TWA Flight Cen­ter: pure Space Age, but root­ed in the Enlight­en­ment.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

How This Chica­go Sky­scraper Bare­ly Touch­es the Ground

Why Hasn’t the Pantheon’s Dome Col­lapsed?: How the Romans Engi­neered the Dome to Last 19 Cen­turies and Count­ing

An Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of Sagra­da Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Auda­cious Church That’s Been Under Con­struc­tion for 142 Years

A Guid­ed Tour of the Largest Hand­made Mod­el of Impe­r­i­al Rome: Dis­cov­er the 20x20 Meter Mod­el Cre­at­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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