Journey to the Center of a Triangle: Watch the 1977 Digital Animation That Demystifies Geometry

in Animation, Math | November 8th, 2017

In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch below Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy them both. And find them in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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 “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

The Geom­e­try of Sound Visu­al­ized

Hear 14 Hours of Weird H.P. Lovecraft Stories on Halloween: “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror” & More

in Audio Books, Literature | October 31st, 2017

Image by Dominique Sig­noret, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The most mer­ci­ful thing in the world, I think, is the inabil­i­ty of the human mind to cor­re­late all its con­tents. We live on a placid island of igno­rance in the midst of black seas of infin­i­ty, and it was not meant that we should voy­age far.” So writes the nar­ra­tor of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” the best-known sto­ry by Howard Phillips Love­craft, who, before he burnt out and died young, spent his whole lit­er­ary career look­ing into that infin­i­ty and report­ing on the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of what he sensed lurk­ing there. What bet­ter writer to read on Hal­loween night, when — amid all the par­ty­ing and the can­dy — we all per­mit our­selves a glimpse into the abyss?

Indeed, what bet­ter writer to hear on Hal­loween night? Once it gets dark, con­sid­er fir­ing up this four­teen-hour Spo­ti­fy playlist of H.P. Love­craft audio­books, fea­tur­ing read­ings of not just “The Call of Cthul­hu” but The Shad­ow over Inns­mouth, “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” “The Thing on the Doorstep,” and oth­er sto­ries besides. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.)

Though Love­craft has a much wider read­er­ship now than he ever accrued in his life­time, some of your guests might still nev­er have heard his work and thus strug­gle to pin it down: is it hor­ror? Is it sus­pense? Is it the macabre, the sort of thing per­fect­ed by Love­craft’s pre­de­ces­sor in fright­en­ing Amer­i­can let­ters Edgar Allan Poe?

The word they need is “weird,” not in the mod­ern sense of “some­what unusu­al,” but in the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry sense — the sense of Weird Tales, the pulp mag­a­zine that pub­lished Love­craft — of a heady blend of the super­nat­ur­al, the myth­i­cal, the sci­en­tif­ic, and the mun­dane. Joyce Car­ol Oates once wrote that Love­craft’s sto­ries, sel­dom sen­sa­tion­al, “devel­op by way of incre­men­tal detail, begin­ning with quite plau­si­ble sit­u­a­tions — an expe­di­tion to Antarc­ti­ca, a trip to an ancient sea­side town, an inves­ti­ga­tion of an aban­doned eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry house in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, that still stood in Lovecraft’s time. One is drawn into Love­craft by the very air of plau­si­bil­i­ty and char­ac­ter­is­tic under­state­ment of the prose, the ques­tion being When will weird­ness strike?” An ide­al ques­tion to ask while float­ing along the black sea of Hal­loween night.

This playlist of Love­craft sto­ries will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

23 Hours of H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries: Hear Read­ings & Drama­ti­za­tions of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth,” & Oth­er Weird Tales

Hear Drama­ti­za­tions of H.P. Lovecraft’s Sto­ries On His Birth­day: “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

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

The Inksect: Award Winning Animation Envisions a Dystopian Future Without Books, Paying Homage to Kafka & Poe

in Animation, Books | October 30th, 2017

“Where would we be with­out books?” That ques­tion, sung over and over again by Sparks in the theme song of the long-run­ning pub­lic-radio show Book­worm, gets a trou­bling answer in The Ink­sect, the ani­mat­ed film above by Mex­i­can Film­mak­er Pablo Calvil­lo. In the book­less dystopia it envi­sions, fos­sil fuels have run out — one premise it shares with many mod­ern works of its sub­genre — but the pow­ers that be found a way to delay the inevitable by burn­ing all of human­i­ty’s print­ed mat­ter for ener­gy instead. “Soon after,” announce the open­ing titles, “we, the human race, devolved into illit­er­ate cock­roach­es.”

But among those cock­roach­es, a few still remem­bered books, and not only did they remem­ber them, they “knew that their pow­ers could lib­er­ate our minds and help us evolve into human beings once again.”

Tak­ing place in a grim, gray, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly malev­o­lent, and elab­o­rate­ly ren­dered New York City, the sto­ry fol­lows the jour­ney of one such rel­a­tive­ly enlight­ened man-bug’s quest for not just a return to his pri­or form but to the rich­er, brighter world con­tained in and made pos­si­ble by books. He catch­es a glimpse of Edgar Allan Poe with the raven of his most famous poem perched atop his head, a sight that might look absurd to us but inspires the pro­tag­o­nist to put pen to paper and write a sin­gle word: lib­er­ty.

The Ink­sect’s lit­er­ary ref­er­ences don’t end with The Raven. Nor do they begin with it: you’ll no doubt have already made the con­nec­tions between the film’s notions of a book-burn­ing dystopia or men turn­ing into cock­roach­es and their prob­a­ble inspi­ra­tions. Even apart from the many visu­al­ly strik­ing qual­i­ties on its sur­face, Calvil­lo’s film illus­trates just how deeply works of lit­er­a­ture, from Ray Brad­bury and Franz Kaf­ka and many oth­er minds besides, lie buried in the foun­da­tion of our col­lec­tive cul­ture. Even a film so expres­sive of 21st-cen­tu­ry anx­i­eties has to under­stand and incor­po­rate the con­cerns that human­i­ty has always dealt with — and so often dealt with, in many dif­fer­ent areas and many dif­fer­ent ways, through books.

The Ink­sect, named the best exper­i­men­tal film at the Cannes Short Film Fes­ti­val in 2016, will be added to our list of Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Rec­og­nize a Dystopia: Watch an Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Dystopi­an Fic­tion

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

Franz Kaf­ka Says the Insect in The Meta­mor­pho­sis Should Nev­er Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Any­way

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Ray Brad­bury Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion (in Which Case We Need More Lit­er­a­ture!)

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

New Documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Now Streaming on Netflix

in Film, Literature | October 29th, 2017

Quick note: Net­flix just launched a new doc­u­men­tary Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold. It’s a por­trait (nat­u­ral­ly) of the now 82-year-old lit­er­ary icon, Joan Did­ion, that’s direct­ed by her own nephew Grif­fin Dunne. If you have a Net­flix account, you can start stream­ing the 90 minute doc­u­men­tary here. If you don’t, you could always sign up for Net­flix’s 30-day free tri­al.

If you read the reviews of the film (at the New York­er, New York Times, NPR, etc), you’ll hear echoes of what God­frey Cheshire has to say over at RogerEbert.com:

A fond and appre­cia­tive por­trait of one of Amer­i­can journalism’s super­stars, “Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold” may not con­tain any rev­e­la­tions that will sur­prise those who’ve fol­lowed Didion’s elo­quent, often auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writ­ing over the years. But the fact that it was made by her nephew, actor/filmmaker Grif­fin Dunne, gives it a warmth and inti­ma­cy that might not have graced a more stan­dard doc­u­men­tary.

Again, you can start stream­ing here…

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Jim Jar­musch Doc­u­men­tary on Iggy Pop & The Stooges Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

Long Strange Trip, the New 4‑Hour Doc­u­men­tary on the Grate­ful Dead, Is Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

Watch the New Trail­er for the Upcom­ing Joan Did­ion Doc­u­men­tary, We Tell Our­selves Sto­ries In Order to Live

Three Huge Volumes of Stoic Writings by Seneca Now Free Online, Thanks to Tim Ferriss

in Philosophy | October 27th, 2017

“The great­est obsta­cle to liv­ing is expectan­cy, which hangs upon tomor­row and los­es today,” wrote Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger. “You are arrang­ing what is in For­tune’s con­trol and aban­don­ing what lies in yours.” That still much-quot­ed obser­va­tion from the first-cen­tu­ry Roman philoso­pher and states­man, best known sim­ply as Seneca, has a place in a much larg­er body of work. Seneca’s writ­ings stand, along with those of Zeno, Epicte­tus, and Mar­cus Aure­lius, as a pil­lar of Sto­ic phi­los­o­phy, a sys­tem of think­ing which empha­sizes the pri­ma­cy of per­son­al virtue and the impor­tance of observ­ing one­self objec­tive­ly and mas­ter­ing, instead of being mas­tered by, one’s own emo­tions.

The Sto­ics found their way of life ben­e­fi­cial indeed in the harsh real­i­ty of more than 2,000 years ago, but Sto­icism los­es none of its val­ue when prac­ticed by those of us liv­ing today.

“At its core, it teach­es you how to sep­a­rate what you can con­trol from what you can­not, and it trains you to focus exclu­sive­ly on the for­mer,” writes self-improve­ment maven Tim Fer­riss in his intro­duc­tion to The Tao of Seneca, the three-vol­ume col­lec­tion of Seneca’s let­ters, illus­tra­tion and lined mod­ern com­men­tary, that he’s just pub­lished free on the inter­net. (For instruc­tions on how to upload them to your Kin­dle, see this page.)

• Tao of Seneca: Vol­ume 1
• Tao of Seneca: Vol­ume 2
• Tao of Seneca: Vol­ume 3

Of all the Sto­ics, he con­tin­ues, “Seneca stands out as easy to read, mem­o­rable, and sur­pris­ing­ly prac­ti­cal. He cov­ers specifics rang­ing from han­dling slan­der and back­stab­bing, to fast­ing, exer­cise, wealth, and death.” (Fer­riss has also cre­at­ed audio­book ver­sions of the texts, which you can buy through Audi­ble. Or get a cou­ple for free by sign­ing up for Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al pro­gram.)

Fer­ris sug­gests mak­ing Seneca “part of your dai­ly rou­tine. Set aside 10–15 min­utes a day and read one let­ter. Whether over cof­fee in the morn­ing, right before bed, or some­where in between, digest one let­ter.” He also adds that “Sto­icism has spread like wild­fire through­out Sil­i­con Val­ley and the NFL in the last five years, becom­ing a men­tal tough­ness train­ing sys­tem for CEOs, founders, coach­es, and play­ers alike,” evi­denc­ing a results-ori­ent­ed approach that may divide Sto­icism enthu­si­asts, many of whom believe that the true Sto­ic should nev­er con­sid­er the prod­uct, which will always lie out­side one’s realm of con­trol, but only the process. But even the ancients would sure­ly agree that any prompt to action is worth tak­ing, espe­cial­ly when it asks the cost of not a sin­gle coin — drach­ma, denar­ius, pen­ny, or bit.

The Tao of Seneca will be added to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

(via /r/stoicism)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Botton’s Doc­u­men­tary Shows How Niet­zsche, Socrates & 4 Oth­er Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

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

Albert Einstein’s Elegant Theory of Happiness: It Just Sold for $1.6 Million at Auction, But You Can Use It for Free

in Life, Physics | October 25th, 2017

Albert Ein­stein had a the­o­ry of gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Turns out, he had a the­o­ry of hap­pi­ness, too.

While trav­el­ing in Japan in 1922, Ein­stein learned that he had won the Nobel Prize. Sud­den­ly the object of unwant­ed pub­lic­i­ty, he seclud­ed him­self inside the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo. And while there, explains NPR, “a couri­er came to the door to make a deliv­ery.” In lieu of giv­ing the couri­er a small tip, Ein­stein hand­ed the couri­er two hand­writ­ten notes, one of which read: “A calm and mod­est life brings more hap­pi­ness than the pur­suit of suc­cess com­bined with con­stant rest­less­ness.“ ‘

Ein­stein also gave the bell­hop anoth­er use­ful piece of advice: Don’t lose those hand­writ­ten notes. They might be worth some­thing some­day.

Sure enough, Ein­stein’s scrawled the­o­ry of hap­pi­ness sold for $1.6 mil­lion at an auc­tion on Tues­day.

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:

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Albert Ein­stein on Indi­vid­ual Lib­er­ty, With­out Which There Would Be ‘No Shake­speare, No Goethe, No New­ton’

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic Supernatural Poem to 3D Paper Life

in Books, Poetry | October 24th, 2017

You know a sto­ry has stay­ing pow­er not just when when we keep telling it decades and even cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion, but when we keep telling it in new forms. Even when Edgar Allan Poe set his lit­er­ary sights on writ­ing a poem that would win both high crit­i­cal praise and a wide pop­u­lar audi­ence back in 1845, he could hard­ly have imag­ined that it would still bring haunt­ed delight to its read­ers, lis­ten­ers and even view­ers more than 170 years lat­er. But The Raven does endure, not just in the var­i­ous celebri­ty read­ings we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture but in numer­ous illus­trat­ed edi­tions, a beloved Simp­sons seg­ment, and now even a pop-up book.

Though The Raven: a Pop-up Book, illus­trat­ed and designed by Christo­pher Wormell and David Pel­ham, adapts Poe’s work of super­nat­ur­al verse into a per­haps unex­pect­ed medi­um, it does so with thor­ough­ness indeed.

Flip through it as do the hands in the video above, you’ll find spring­ing to paper life before you not just the poem’s lovelorn nar­ra­tor and the talk­ing crow who pays him a vis­it, but every ele­ment of the set­ting as well, from the fur­ni­ture and oth­er objects of the nar­ra­tor’s study — the vel­vet chair, the books, the bust of Pal­las, the lock­et with the image of lost Lenore — to the sea­side cas­tle in which this vision of the sto­ry locates it.

Those of us who haven’t opened a pop-up book since child­hood might be sur­prised to see how far its art has come. Not only would the illus­tra­tions of The Raven: a Pop Up Book hold up in a mere two dimen­sions as well, they inter­lock in three to form rel­a­tive­ly com­plex geo­met­ric struc­tures, ones that some­times move with an almost eerie hint of nat­u­ral­ness. (You may, as I did, want to watch the nar­ra­tor open his lock­et-hold­ing hand more than once.) What’s more, the design allows view­ing from more than one angle, pro­vid­ing details that those who only look at the book straight on will nev­er see. Using the archa­ic apos­tro­phe of which Poe him­self might have approved, Boing Boing’s Cory Doc­torow rec­om­mends the book “if you’re gear­ing up for Hal­lowe’en and want to get your kids in the spir­it of things” — and espe­cial­ly if those kids wrong­ly believe them­selves too old for pop-up books or too 21st-cen­tu­ry for Poe. Get your copy of  The Raven: a Pop Up Book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

Calm Down & Study with Relaxing Piano, Jazz & Harp Covers of Music from Hayao Miyazaki Films

in Animation, Film, Jazz, K-12, Music | October 23rd, 2017

Call­ing all pedi­atric den­tists!

Cat Trum­pet, aka musi­cian and ani­me lover Cur­tis Bon­nett, may have inad­ver­tent­ly hit on a genius solu­tion for keep­ing young patients calm in the chair: relax­ing piano cov­ers of famil­iar tunes from Stu­dio Ghibli’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures.

The results fall some­where between pianist George Winston’s ear­ly 80s sea­son­al solos and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s sound­track for the film Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mr. Lawrence. Let us remem­ber that most of these tunes were fair­ly easy on the ears to begin with. Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi, who has col­lab­o­rat­ed with direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki on every Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie save Cas­tle of Cagliostro, isn’t exact­ly a punk rock­er.

Many lis­ten­ers report that the playlist helps them stay focused while study­ing or doing home­work. Oth­ers suc­cumb to the emo­tion­al rip­tides of child­hood nos­tal­gia.

Ten­der pre­na­tal and new­born ears might pre­fer Cat Trumpet’s even gen­tler harp cov­ers of sev­en Ghi­b­li tunes, above.

Meawhile, the Japan-based Cafe Music BGM Sta­tion pro­vides hours of jazzy, bossa-nova inflect­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li cov­ers to hos­pi­tals, hair salons, bou­tiques, and cafes. You can lis­ten to three-and-a-half-hours worth, above. This, too, gets high marks as a home­work helper.

Cat Trumpet’s Relax­ing Piano Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Com­plete Col­lec­tion

00:00:03 Spir­it­ed Away — Inochi no Namae

00:04:14 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — Mer­ry Go Round of Life

00:07:16 Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice — Town With An Ocean View

00:09:31 The Secret World of Arri­et­ty — Arri­et­ty’s Song

00:13:29 Lapu­ta Cas­tle In The Sky — Car­ry­ing You

00:17:05 Por­co Rosso — Theme

00:19:55 Whis­per of the Heart — Song of the Baron

00:22:33 Por­co Rosso — Mar­co & Gina’s Theme

00:26:19 Only Yes­ter­day — Main Theme

00:29:07 From Up On Pop­py Hill — Rem­i­nis­cence

00:34:12 Spir­it­ed Away — Shi­roi Ryuu

00:37:06 Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — Tori no Hito

00:41:14 Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind —  Kaze no Denset­su

00:43:25 My Neigh­bor Totoro — Kaze no Toori Michi

00:47:48 Cas­tle of Cagliostro — Fire Trea­sure

00:51:38 Princess Mononoke — Tabidachi nishi e

00:53:07 Tales From Earth­sea — Teru’s Theme

00:58:17 My Neigh­bor Totoro — Tonari no Totoro

01:02:35 Whis­per of the Heart — Theme

01:06:03 Ponyo — Ron­do of the Sun­flower House

01:10:34 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — The Promise of the World

Cat Trumpet’s Relax­ing Harp Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Col­lec­tion Playlist

00:03 Spir­it­ed Away — Inochi no Namae

04:01 Spir­it­ed Away — Waltz of Chi­hi­ro

06:43 Howls Mov­ing Cas­tle — Mer­ry Go Round of Life

09:45 Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle — The Promise of the World

13:15 Lapu­ta Cas­tle In The Sky — Main Theme

16:55 Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea — Main Theme

20:15 Tonari no Totoro — Kaze no Toori Michi

Cafe Music BGM’s Relax­ing Jazz & Bossa Nova Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Cov­er Playlist (song titles in Japan­ese)

0:00 海の見える街  〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

4:10 もののけ姫  〜もののけ姫/Princess Mononoke

7:28 君をのせて 〜天空の城ラピュタ/Laputa, the Cas­tle of the Sky

11:09 風の通り道 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

16:26 ひこうき雲 〜風立ちぬ/THE WIND RISES〜

19:48 空とぶ宅急便 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

25:05 人生のメリーゴーランド

〜ハウルの動く城/Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle

28:07 いつも何度でも 〜千と千尋の神隠し/Spirited Away

32:08 となりのトトロ 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

36:40 さんぽ　〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

38:40 崖の上のポニョ 〜崖の上のポニョ/Ponyo

42:08 ねこバス 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

46:06 旅路 〜風立ちぬ/THE WIND RISES

49:16 アシタカとサン 〜もののけ姫/Princess Mononoke

53:38 おかあさん 〜となりのトトロ/My Nei­bour Totoro

58:19 旅立ち 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

1:02:25 風の谷のナウシカ 〜風の谷のナウシカ/Nausicaa of the Val­ley of the Wind

1:06:59 やさしさに包まれたなら 〜魔女の宅急便/Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice

Tune in to Cat Trumpet’s Spo­ti­fy chan­nel for his relax­ing takes on Dis­ney and ani­me, as well as Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. They are avail­able for pur­chase on iTunes and Google Play, or enjoy some free down­loads by patron­iz­ing his Patre­on. He takes requests, too.

Tune in to Cafe Music’s BGM Spo­ti­fy chan­nel for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li jazz, in addi­tion to some relax­ing Hawai­ian gui­tar jazz and a selec­tion of nature-based mel­low tunes. They are avail­able for pur­chase on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

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

How Saxophones Are Made: Two Short Films (Including One by Sesame Street) Take You Inside Saxophone Factories

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2017

Many of us, hand­ed a sax­o­phone, would­n’t have the first clue about how to play it prop­er­ly, and almost none of us would have any idea at all about how to make one. Then again, those of us of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion might feel an old mem­o­ry com­ing back to the sur­face: had­n’t we once wit­nessed the inner work­ings of a sax­o­phone fac­to­ry? We did if we ever hap­pened to catch the clas­sic 1980 Sesame Street short above which shows the sax­o­phone-mak­ing process in its entire­ty, begin­ning with flat sheets of met­al and end­ing up, two min­utes lat­er, with jazz­i­ly playable instru­ments — just like the one we’ve heard impro­vis­ing to the action onscreen the whole time.

Gold­en-age Sesame Street always did well with reveal­ing how things were made in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mes­mer­iz­ing way, as also seen around the same time in an even more wide­ly remem­bered two min­utes in a cray­on fac­to­ry. Both it and the sax­o­phone work­shop, though they use plen­ty of tech­nol­o­gy, look like quaint­ly, even charm­ing­ly labor-inten­sive oper­a­tions today: in almost every step shown, we see not just a machine or tool but the human (or at least a part of the human) oper­at­ing it.

And it turns out, on the evi­dence of the 2012 video from the Musi­cal Instru­ment Muse­um just below, that the art of sax­o­phone-mak­ing has­n’t changed as much in the sub­se­quent decades as we might imag­ine.

With its more than ten min­utes of run­time, the MIM’s video shows in a bit more detail what actu­al­ly hap­pens inside a mod­ern sax­o­phone fac­to­ry, name­ly that of wood­wind and brass instru­ment mak­er Hen­ri Selmer Paris, whose sax­o­phones have been played by Char­lie Park­er, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, Son­ny Rollins and Cole­man Hawkins. And while some of the equip­ment clear­ly grew more advanced in the 32 years since the Sesame Street short, the over­all process remains clear­ly rec­og­niz­able, as does the con­cen­tra­tion evi­dent in the actions and on the faces of all the skilled work­ers involved, albeit on a much larg­er scale. The day when we can 3D-print our own sax­o­phones at home — the cul­mi­na­tion of the indus­tri­al evo­lu­tion­ary process glimpsed in two dif­fer­ent stages in these videos — will come, but it cer­tain­ly has­n’t come yet.

via Laugh­ingsquid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Learn How Crayons Are Made, Cour­tesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

Glass: The Oscar-Win­ning “Per­fect Short Doc­u­men­tary” on Dutch Glass­mak­ing (1958)

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

Why Should We Read Virginia Woolf? A TED-Ed Animation Makes the Case

in Literature | October 16th, 2017

Vir­ginia Woolf dis­suad­ed read­ers from play­ing the crit­ic in her essay “How Should One Read a Book?” But in addi­tion to her nov­els, she is best known for her lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and became a foun­da­tion­al fig­ure in fem­i­nist lit­er­ary the­o­ry for her imag­i­na­tive polemic “A Room of One’s Own,” an essay that takes tra­di­tion­al crit­i­cism to task for its pre­sump­tions of male lit­er­ary supe­ri­or­i­ty.

Women writ­ers like her­self, she argues, had always been a priv­i­leged few with the means and the free­dom to pur­sue writ­ing in ways most women couldn’t. These con­di­tions were so rare for women through­out lit­er­ary his­to­ry that innu­mer­able artists may have gone unno­ticed and unher­ald­ed for their lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty. Her obser­va­tion would have put her read­ers in mind of Thomas Gray’s revered “Ele­gy Writ­ten in a Coun­try Church­yard,” with its famous line about a pau­per’s grave: “Some mute inglo­ri­ous Mil­ton here may rest.”

Woolf alludes to the poem, writ­ing of “some mute and inglo­ri­ous Jane Austen,” and makes a case that would-have-been women writ­ers were excep­tion­al­ly mar­gin­al­ized by gender—by its inter­sec­tions with pow­er and priv­i­lege and their lack. She famous­ly con­struct­ed a scenario—brought into pop cul­ture by The Smiths and Bana­nara­ma singer Siob­han Fahey—involv­ing Shakespeare’s fic­tion­al sis­ter Judith, whose tal­ent and ambi­tion are squashed for the sake of her brother’s edu­ca­tion. It is hard­ly a far-fetched idea. We might remem­ber Mozart’s sis­ter Nan­nerl, who was also a child prodi­gy, whose career end­ed with her child­hood, and who dis­ap­peared in her brother’s shad­ow.

In the TED-Ed video at the top, Woolf schol­ar and doc­tor­al can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin Iseult Gille­spie describes the import of Woolf’s thought exper­i­ment. Shakespeare’s sis­ter stands in for every woman who is pushed into domes­tic labor and mar­riage while the men in her fam­i­ly pur­sue their goals unhin­dered. “Woolf demon­strates the tragedy of genius restrict­ed,” just as Langston Hugh­es would do a cou­ple decades lat­er. Her par­tic­u­lar genius, says Gille­spie, lies in her abil­i­ty to por­tray “the inter­nal expe­ri­ence of alien­ation…. Her char­ac­ters fre­quent­ly live inner lives that are deeply at odds with their exter­nal exis­tence.”

The video out­lines Woolf’s own biog­ra­phy: her inclu­sion in the “Blooms­bury Group”—a social cir­cle includ­ing E.M. Forster and Vir­gini­a’s soon-to-be hus­band Leonard Woolf. And it sketch­es out the inno­v­a­tive  lit­er­ary tech­niques of her nov­els. Woolf thought of her­self, as Alain de Bot­ton says in his short intro­duc­tion above, as a “dis­tinc­tive­ly mod­ernist writer at odds with a raft of the staid and com­pla­cent assump­tions of 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture.” One such assump­tion, as she writes in “A Room of One’s Own,” includes an opin­ion that “the best woman was intel­lec­tu­al­ly the infe­ri­or of the worst man.”

Woolf’s own mod­ernist break­throughs rival those of her con­tem­po­raries James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Her favorite women writ­ers rank as high­ly as men in the same canon in any seri­ous study; but this is of course beside the point. It wasn’t the truth or false­hood of claims about women’s infe­ri­or­i­ty that deter­mined their pow­er, but rather the social pow­er of those who made such claims.

Dom­i­neer­ing fathers, spot­light-steal­ing broth­ers, mor­al­iz­ing cler­gy­men, the gate­keep­ing intel­lec­tu­als of “Oxbridge”—Woolf’s port­man­teau for the snob­bery and chau­vin­ism of Oxford and Cam­bridge dons: it was such men who deter­mined not only whether or not a woman might pur­sue her writ­ing, but whether she lived or died in penury, mute and inglo­ri­ous. Woolf knew much of what she wrote, hav­ing grown up sur­round­ed by the cream of 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary soci­ety, and hav­ing had to “steal an edu­ca­tion from her father’s study,” as de Bot­ton notes, while her broth­ers went off to Cam­bridge. She was nonethe­less well aware of her priv­i­lege and used it not only to cre­ate new forms of writ­ing, but to open new lit­er­ary spaces for women writ­ers to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Vir­ginia Woolf

The Steamy Love Let­ters of Vir­ginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (1925–1929)

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

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