Michio Kaku Demystifies the God Equation: The Key to Understanding Everything

in Physics | September 10th, 2024

It speaks to the impor­tance of dis­cov­er­ies in physics over the past few gen­er­a­tions that even the dis­in­ter­est­ed lay­man has heard of the field­’s cen­tral chal­lenge. In brief, there exist two sep­a­rate sys­tems: gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty, which describes the physics of space, time, and grav­i­ty, and quan­tum mechan­ics which describes the physics of fun­da­men­tal par­ti­cles like elec­trons and pho­tons. Each being applic­a­ble only at its own scale, one would seem to be incom­pat­i­ble with the oth­er. What the field needs to bring them togeth­er is kind of a “grand uni­fied the­o­ry,” a con­cept that has long since worked its way into pop­u­lar cul­ture.

In the Big Think video above, physi­cist Michio Kaku explains this sci­en­tif­ic quest for what he calls “the God equa­tion” in about five min­utes. Such an equa­tion “should uni­fy the basic con­cepts of physics.” But gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty as con­ceived by Albert Ein­stein is “based on smooth sur­faces,” while quan­tum mechan­ics is “based on chop­ping things up into par­ti­cles.”

The chal­lenge of bring­ing the two into con­cert has attract­ed “the great­est minds of the entire human race,” but to no defin­i­tive avail. At this point, Kaku says, only one con­cep­tion “has sur­vived every chal­lenge: string the­o­ry, which is what I do for a liv­ing” — and which has attained a rather high lev­el of pub­lic aware­ness, if not nec­es­sar­i­ly pub­lic under­stand­ing.

Kaku breaks it down as fol­lows: “If you can peer into the heart of an elec­tron, you would see that it’s a rub­ber band: a tiny, tiny vibrat­ing string, very sim­i­lar to a gui­tar string. There’s an infi­nite num­ber of vibra­tions, and that is why we have sub­atom­ic par­ti­cles,” each vari­ety of which cor­re­sponds to a dif­fer­ent vibra­tion. “A sim­ple idea that encap­su­lates the entire uni­verse” — and, cru­cial­ly, a math­e­mat­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent one — string the­o­ry has attract­ed astute pro­po­nents and detrac­tors alike, the lat­ter object­ing to its untesta­bil­li­ty. But one day, tech­nol­o­gy may well advance suf­fi­cient­ly to fal­si­fy it or not, and if not, the door opens to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of time machines, worm­holes, par­al­lel uni­vers­es, “things out of The Twi­light Zone.” A physi­cist can dream, can’t he?

For more on this sub­ject read Michio Kaku’s book The God Equa­tion: The Quest for the The­o­ry of Every­thing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

What Is Déjà Vu? Michio Kaku Won­ders If It’s Trig­gered by Par­al­lel Uni­vers­es

Michio Kaku & Bri­an Green Explain String The­o­ry in a Nut­shell: Ele­gant Expla­na­tions of an Ele­gant The­o­ry

Beau­ti­ful Equa­tions: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Beau­ty of Ein­stein & Newton’s Great Equa­tions

Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Har­ris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Ques­tions

Bohemi­an Grav­i­ty: String The­o­ry Explored With an A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody

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 Big Map of Who Lived When Shows Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth at the Same Time: From 1200 to Present

in History, Maps | September 9th, 2024

We could call the time in which we live the “Infor­ma­tion Age.” Or we could describe it more vivid­ly as the era of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Mar­tin Scors­ese and Steven Spiel­berg, Oprah Win­frey and Martha Stew­art, Bey­on­cé and Bob Dylan. What­ev­er you think of the work of any of these fig­ures in par­tic­u­lar, you can hard­ly deny the impact they’ve had on our cul­ture. Were we liv­ing a cen­tu­ry ago, we might have said the same of Hen­ry Ford and John D. Rock­e­feller, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald (though he had­n’t quite pub­lished The Great Gats­by yet), Pablo Picas­so and Char­lie Chap­lin, Marie Curie and Sig­mund Freud.

Were we liv­ing in the year 1225, our lives would’ve over­lapped with those of Leonar­do Fibonac­ci, Fran­cis of Assisi, Rumi, and Thomas Aquinas, as well as both Genghis Khan and his grand­son Kublai Khan.

All this is laid out visu­al­ly in The Big Map of Who Lived When, cre­at­ed ear­li­er this year by a Red­dit user called Profound_Whatever. As Big Think’s Frank Jacobs writes, the map reveals sur­pris­ing instances of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ness, such as that cur­rent U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden “for about a year was alive at the same time as Niko­la Tes­la (1854–1943), the Ser­bian-Amer­i­can inven­tor who devel­oped the alter­nat­ing cur­rent (AC) sys­tem that is used for dis­trib­ut­ing elec­tric­i­ty.”

For “anoth­er, more recent (and more baf­fling) over­lap: The life of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), who wrote The Lord of the Rings, coin­cid­ed ever so slight­ly with that of Eminem.” Going far­ther into the past, how many of us were ful­ly aware that “Christo­pher Colum­bus (1451–1506), Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1452–1519), and Mar­tin Luther (1483–1546) were con­tem­po­raries of each oth­er”? Or that “the lives of Oliv­er Cromwell (1599–1658) and René Descartes (1596–1650) synced almost per­fect­ly with each oth­er, despite the one being the dog­mat­i­cal­ly Puri­tan fig­ure­head of the Eng­lish Civ­il War, and the oth­er the father of mod­ern, ratio­nal­ist phi­los­o­phy by giv­ing doubt to a cen­tral role in the pur­suit of truth”?

The Big Map of Who Lived When uses a col­or-cod­ing sys­tem to divide the fig­ures whose lifes­pans it charts into eight cat­e­gories, includ­ing artists (Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Rube Gold­berg), thinkers (John Locke, Charles Dar­win), “busi­ness & indus­try” (includ­ing famed pirates from Hen­ry Mor­gan to Black­beard), and “lead­ers & bad­dies” (Napoleon, Adolf Hitler). It all reminds us that we’d give any­thing for a chance to meet some of them, or to stay out of the path of oth­ers. Of course, the indi­vid­u­als we think of as hav­ing defined a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal era weren’t always regard­ed that way by every­one else who lived at the same time: some­thing it would­n’t hurt to bear in mind when con­sid­er­ing our own place in his­to­ry.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Great His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Info­graph­ics Ever (1769)

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­played in a 5‑Foot-Long “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Info­graph­ic) From 1931

180,000 Years of Reli­gion Chart­ed on a “His­tom­ap” in 1943

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

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

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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Watch The Idea, the First Animated Film to Deal with Big, Philosophical Ideas (1932)

in Animation, History, Philosophy | September 8th, 2024

A vague sense of dis­qui­et set­tled over Europe in the peri­od between World War I and World War II. As the slow burn of mil­i­tant ultra­na­tion­al­ism min­gled with jin­go­ist pop­ulism, author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers and fas­cist fac­tions found mount­ing sup­port among a cit­i­zen­ry hun­gry for cer­tain­ty. Europe’s grow­ing trep­i­da­tion fos­tered some of the 20th century’s most strik­ing painter­ly, lit­er­ary, and cin­e­mat­ic depic­tions of the total­i­tar­i­an­ism that would soon fol­low. It was almost inevitable that this peri­od would see the birth of the first deeply philo­soph­i­cal ani­mat­ed film, known as The Idea.

The Idea first emerged as a word­less nov­el in 1920, drawn by Frans Masereel. Masereel, a close friend of Dadaist and New Objec­tivist artist George Grosz, had cre­at­ed a stark, black-and-white sto­ry about the indomitable nature of ideas. Employ­ing thick, aggres­sive lines obtained through wood­cut print­ing, Masereel depict­ed a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal order’s fight against the birth of a new idea, which even­tu­al­ly flour­ished in spite of the establishment’s relent­less attempts to sup­press it.

Set­ting to work in 1930, a Czech film­mak­er named Berthold Bar­tosch spent two years ani­mat­ing The Idea. Bartosch’s visu­al style remained true to Masereel’s harsh, vivid lines. His ver­sion of the sto­ry, how­ev­er, took a decid­ed­ly bleak­er turn—one that was more rem­i­nis­cent of the writ­ings of his com­pa­tri­ot, Franz Kaf­ka. Where­as Masereel believed that the puri­ty of good ideas would over­whelm their oppo­si­tion, Bar­tosch, work­ing a decade clos­er to the Nazis’ ascen­dan­cy, was wary of such ide­al­ism.

Above, you can watch what film his­to­ri­an William Moritz has called “the first ani­mat­ed film cre­at­ed as an art­work with seri­ous, even trag­ic, social and philo­soph­i­cal themes.” Paired with a haunt­ing score com­posed by Arthur Honeg­ger, the 25-minute ani­ma­tion is a pow­er­ful­ly mov­ing med­i­ta­tion on art, strug­gle, puri­ty of thought, and pop­ulist sav­agery that remains untar­nished after eight decades.

You can find oth­er great ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Novem­ber, 2013. It was writ­ten by Ilia Blin­d­er­man. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4 Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Watch Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

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How 2001: A Space Odyssey Became “the Hardest Film Kubrick Ever Made”

in Film, History, Sci Fi | September 6th, 2024

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been praised in all man­ner of terms since it came out more than half a cen­tu­ry ago. An ear­ly adver­tis­ing cam­paign, tap­ping into the enthu­si­asm of the con­tem­po­rary coun­ter­cul­ture, called it “the ulti­mate trip”; in the equiv­a­lent­ly trendy par­lance of the twen­ty-twen­ties, one could say that it “goes hard,” in that it takes no few bold, even unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic and dra­mat­ic turns. The new video essay from Just One More Thing even describes 2001 as “the hard­est film Kubrick ever made” — which, giv­en Kubrick­’s uncom­pro­mis­ing ambi­tions as a film­mak­er, is cer­tain­ly say­ing some­thing.

In one of the many inter­view clips that con­sti­tute the video’s 23 min­utes, Steven Spiel­berg recalls his con­ver­sa­tions with Kubrick in the last years of the mas­ter’s life. “I want to make a movie that changes the form,” Kubrick would often say to Spiel­berg. Arguably, he’d already done so with 2001, which con­tin­ues to launch its first-time view­ers into an expe­ri­ence unlike any they’ve had with a movie before. Unlike the more sub­stance-inclined mem­bers of his gen­er­a­tion, Spiel­berg went into the the­ater “clean as a whis­tle,” but “came out of there altered” nev­er­the­less. It did­n’t require drugs to appre­ci­ate after all; “that film was the drug.”

This isn’t to say that 2001 is pure­ly or even pri­mar­i­ly an abstract work of cin­e­ma. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick put a great deal of tech­ni­cal thought into the film’s vision of the future, with its well-appoint­ed space sta­tions, its arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent com­put­ers, its video calls, and its tablet-like mobile devices. Work­ing in the years before the moon land­ing, says Stan­ley Kubrick: The Com­plete Films author Paul Dun­can, they “had to com­plete­ly visu­al­ize, and make real, things that had nev­er occurred.” Such was the real­ism of their spec­u­la­tive work (up to and includ­ing imag­in­ing how Earth would look from space) that, as Roger Ebert notes, the real Apol­lo 11 astro­nauts could describe their expe­ri­ence sim­ply: “It was like 2001.”

Con­ceived in the heat of the Space Race, the film envi­sions a great deal that did­n’t come to pass by the epony­mous year — and indeed, has yet to mate­ri­al­ize still today. “We haven’t quite got­ten to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence as por­trayed,” says star Keir Dul­lea in a 50th-anniver­sary inter­view. “Almost, but not quite.” Still, even since then, the tech­nol­o­gy has come far enough along that few of us can pon­der the cur­rent state of AI with­out soon­er or lat­er hear­ing the omi­nous­ly polite voice of HAL some­where in the back of our minds. The saga of astro­nauts cur­rent­ly strand­ed on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion does con­trast harsh­ly with 2001’s visions of sta­ble and well-func­tion­ing life in out­er space — but as a sto­ry, it might well have appealed to Kubrick in his Dr. Strangelove mode.

Relat­ed con­tent:

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Sev­en-Part Video Essay

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

“Kubrick/Tarkovsky”: A Video Essay Explores the Visu­al Sim­i­lar­i­ties Between the Two “Cin­e­mat­ic Giants”

How Stan­ley Kubrick Became Stan­ley Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by the Film­mak­er

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

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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Bringing Tsarist Russia to Life: Vivid Color Images from 1905–1915

in Photography | September 5th, 2024

His­to­ry escapes us. Events that changed the world for­ev­er, or should have, slide out of col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. If we’re point­ing fin­gers, we might point at edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems that fail to edu­cate, or at huge his­tor­i­cal blind spots in mass media. Maybe anoth­er rea­son the recent past fades like old pho­tographs may have to do with old pho­tographs.

The present leaps out at us from our ubiq­ui­tous screens in vivid, high-res­o­lu­tion col­or. We are riv­et­ed to the spec­ta­cles of the moment. Per­haps if we could see his­to­ry in color—or at least the small but sig­nif­i­cant sliv­er of it that has been photographed—we might have some­what bet­ter his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ries. It’s only spec­u­la­tion, who knows? But look­ing at the images here makes me think so.

Although we can date col­or pho­tog­ra­phy back as ear­ly as 1861, when physi­cist James Clerk Maxwell made an exper­i­men­tal print with col­or fil­ters, the process didn’t real­ly come into its own until the turn of the cen­tu­ry. (It wouldn’t be until much lat­er in the 20th cen­tu­ry that mass-pro­duc­ing col­or pho­tographs became fea­si­ble.) One ear­ly mas­ter of the art, Russ­ian chemist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, used Maxwell’s fil­ter process and oth­er meth­ods to cre­ate the images you see here, dat­ing from between 1905 and 1915.

You can see hun­dreds more such images—over 2000, in fact—at the Library of Con­gress’ col­lec­tion, dig­i­tal­ly recre­at­ed from col­or glass neg­a­tives for your brows­ing and down­load­ing plea­sure or his­tor­i­cal research. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a pho­to­graph from the past and felt its sub­jects come alive so vivid­ly,” writes Messy Nessy, “as if they’ve almost blinked at me, as if it were just yes­ter­day.”

Clear­ly the cloth­ing, archi­tec­ture, and oth­er mark­ers of the past give away the age of these pic­tures, as does their fad­ed qual­i­ty. But imag­ine this lat­ter evi­dence of time passed as an Instra­gram fil­ter and you might feel like you could have been there, on the farms, church­es, water­ways, gar­dens, forests, city streets, and draw­ing rooms of Impe­r­i­al Rus­sia dur­ing the doomed last years of the Romanovs.

Sev­er­al hun­dred of the pho­tos in the archive aren’t in col­or. Prokudin-Gorskii, notes the LoC, “under­took most of his ambi­tious col­or doc­u­men­tary project from 1909 to 1915.” Even while trav­el­ing around pho­tograph­ing the coun­try­side, he made just as many mono­chrome images. Because of our cul­tur­al con­di­tion­ing and the way we see the world now we are bound to inter­pret black-and-white and sepia-toned prints as more dis­tant and estranged.

Prokudin-Gorskii took his most famous pho­to, a col­or image of Leo Tol­stoy which we’ve fea­tured here before, in 1908. It grant­ed him an audi­ence with the Tsar, who after­ward gave him “a spe­cial­ly equipped rail­road-car dark­room,” Messy Nessy notes, and “two per­mits that grant­ed him access to restrict­ed areas.” After the Rev­o­lu­tion, he fled to Paris, where he died in 1944, just one month after the city’s lib­er­a­tion.

His sur­viv­ing pho­tos, plates, and neg­a­tives had been stored in the base­ment of his Parisian apart­ment build­ing until a Library of Con­gress researcher found and pur­chased them in 1948. His work in col­or, a nov­el­ty at the time, now strikes us in its ordi­nar­i­ness; an aid “for any­one who has ever found it dif­fi­cult to con­nect with his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs.” Still, we might won­der, “what will they think of our pho­tographs in a hun­dred years’ time?”

I sus­pect a hun­dred years from now, or maybe even 20 or 30, peo­ple will mar­vel at our quaint, prim­i­tive two-dimen­sion­al vision, while strolling around in vir­tu­al 3D recre­ations, maybe chat­ting casu­al­ly with holo­graph­ic, AI-endowed his­tor­i­cal peo­ple. Maybe that tech­nol­o­gy will make it hard­er for the future to for­get us, or maybe it will make it eas­i­er to mis­re­mem­ber.

Enter the Library of Con­gress Prokudin-Gorskii archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Down­load 437 Issues of Sovi­et Pho­to Mag­a­zine, the Sovi­et Union’s His­toric Pho­tog­ra­phy Jour­nal (1926–1991)

The Only Col­or Pic­ture of Tol­stoy, Tak­en by Pho­tog­ra­phy Pio­neer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

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

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Every Frame a Painting Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sustained Two-Shot Vanished from Movies

in Film | September 5th, 2024

Video essay­ists don’t nor­mal­ly retire; in most cas­es, they just drift into inac­tiv­i­ty. Hence the sur­prise and even dis­may of the inter­net’s cinephiles when Tony Zhou and Tay­lor Ramos declared the end of their respect­ed chan­nel Every Frame a Paint­ing in 2016. We here at Open Cul­ture had fea­tured their analy­ses of every­thing from the work of auteurs like Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Michael Bay to how clas­si­cal art inspired cel­e­brat­ed shots to the thoughts and feel­ings of edi­tors to the use of Van­cou­ver in film. Now, near­ly eight years after their last such video essay, Zhou and Ramos have returned to YouTube.

The new Every Frame a Paint­ing video explains the tech­nique of the sus­tained two-shot, and, as IndieWire’s Sarah Shachat writes, “charts — in under six min­utes — the tech­no­log­i­cal and indus­tri­al trends that have put it more or less in favor with film­mak­ers and its util­i­ty in con­tem­po­rary film­mak­ing as a show­case for two actors’ chem­istry. This is stan­dard. Zhou, who nar­rates the series, still can’t avoid feel­ing like an unseen char­ac­ter with­in the essay and also the film school TA we all wish we had.” What’s more, it incor­po­rates footage from Zhou and Ramos’ own short film “The Sec­ond” to more direct­ly approach the film­mak­ing chal­lenge of “need­ing to change cov­er­age plans for an out­door scene when you’re los­ing the light.”

As implied by its name, a two-shot con­tains two actors, and a sus­tained two-shot con­tin­ues unbro­ken for the length of a dia­logue between them. We don’t see so many of them in recent pic­tures, Zhou explains, because they were cre­at­ed in a time when “film was expen­sive, so it encour­aged film­mak­ers to rehearse more and con­serve their takes.” Now, “dig­i­tal is cheap­er, so peo­ple don’t real­ly pick one angle and shoot it; they cov­er a scene from as many angles as pos­si­ble,” recon­struct­ing it out of bits and pieces in the edit­ing room. Act­ing styles have also changed since the old-Hol­ly­wood days, with all their “ges­tur­ing and mov­ing around” that increased the two-shot’s visu­al inter­est.

Yet today’s film­mak­ers ignore the pow­er of this dis­used form at their per­il: “The sus­tained two-shot is the com­po­si­tion that best allows two per­form­ers to play off each oth­er, and try as you might, you can­not repli­cate this feel­ing with edit­ing.” And indeed, it’s only one of the effec­tive ele­ments of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry film that have only become more dif­fi­cult to repli­cate amid the prac­ti­cal­ly end­less array of options afford­ed by dig­i­tal tools and media. One hopes that Zhou and Ramos will cov­er a vari­ety of them in Every Frame a Paint­ing’s lim­it­ed-run come­back — and even more so, that they’ll put them to good use in their own nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing careers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How the Coen Broth­ers Put Their Remark­able Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fun­da­men­tal Cin­e­mat­ic Tech­nique

The Most Beau­ti­ful Shots in Cin­e­ma His­to­ry: Scenes from 100+ Films

A Salute to Every Frame a Paint­ing: Watch All 28 Episodes of the Fine­ly Craft­ed (and Now Con­clud­ed) Video Essay Series on Cin­e­ma

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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Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908)

in Animation, Film | September 4th, 2024

Try­ing to describe the plot of Fan­tas­magorie, the world’s first ani­mat­ed car­toon, is a fol­ly akin to putting last night’s dream into words:

I was dressed as a clown and then I was in a the­ater, except I was also hid­ing under this lady’s hat, and the guy behind us was pluck­ing out the feath­ers, and I was maybe also a jack in the box? And I had a fish­ing pole that turned into a plant that ripped my head off, but only for a few sec­onds. And then there was a giant cham­pagne bot­tle and an ele­phant, and then, sud­den­ly I was on an oper­at­ing table, and you know how some­times in a dream, it’s like you’re being crushed to death? Except I escaped by blow­ing myself up like a bal­loon and then I hopped onto the back of this horse and then I woke up.

The brain­child of ani­ma­tion pio­neer Émile Cohl (1857 – 1938), the trip­py silent short from 1908 is com­posed of 700 draw­ings, pho­tographed onto neg­a­tive film and dou­ble-exposed.

Clock­ing in at under two min­utes, it’s def­i­nite­ly more divert­ing than lis­ten­ing to your bed mate bum­ble through their sub­con­scious’ lat­est inco­her­ent nar­ra­tive.

The film’s title is an homage to a mid-19th cen­tu­ry vari­ant of the mag­ic lantern, known as the fan­tas­mo­graph, while its play­ful, non­sen­si­cal con­tent is in the spir­it of the Inco­her­ent Move­ment of the 1880s.

Cohl, who cut his teeth on polit­i­cal car­i­ca­ture and Guig­nol pup­pet the­atre, went on to cre­ate over 250 films over the next 15 years, expand­ing his explo­rations to include the realms of live action and stop motion ani­ma­tion.

Above, you can watch a some­what restored ver­sion of the film, fea­tur­ing music by Fabio Napo­dano. To get a feel for the orig­i­nal grainier silent film, watch here.

For the defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Emile Cohl, read Emile Cohl, Car­i­ca­ture, and Film by Don­ald Crafton (Notre Dame).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

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

 

 

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A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

in Archives, History, Music, Technology | September 4th, 2024

Audio cas­sette tapes first appeared on the mar­ket in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dom­i­nate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by hav­ing made it pos­si­ble not just to lis­ten to their albums of choice on the go, but also to col­lect and trade their own cus­tom-assem­bled lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. By the eight­ies, blank tapes had become a house­hold neces­si­ty on the order of bat­ter­ies or toi­let paper for such con­sumers — and just as with those fre­quent­ly replen­ished prod­ucts, every­one seemed to have their favorite brand.


Some pre­ferred tapes from Philips, which devel­oped the for­mat of the Com­pact Cas­sette in the first place. Oth­ers had their pick from Fuji, BASF, Sony, Radio Shack, Scotch (which also made tape of the sticky vari­ety), and a host of oth­er brands besides.

Even some mem­bers of post-cas­sette gen­er­a­tions rec­og­nize the old tagline “Is it live or is it Mem­o­rex?” or Max­el­l’s “Blown Away Guy” in his scarf and LC2. If you’re old enough to have done tap­ing of your own, you don’t need a logo to rec­og­nize your brand; you’ll know it as soon as you spot the design of the cas­sette itself in the online archive at tapedeck.org.


“I built tapedeck.org to show­case the amaz­ing beau­ty and (some­times) weird­ness found in the designs of the com­mon audio tape cas­sette,” writes the site’s cre­ator Oliv­er Gel­brich. “There’s an amaz­ing range of designs, start­ing from the ear­ly 60’s func­tion­al cas­sette designs, mov­ing through the col­or­ful play­ful­ness of the 70’s audio tapes to amaz­ing shape vari­a­tions dur­ing the 80s and 90s.” You can browse the ever-expand­ing col­lec­tion by brand, run­ning time, col­or, and even tape coat­ing: chrome, fer­ro, fer­rochrome, and met­al, by whose dif­fer­ences audio­philes set great store.


Some­what improb­a­bly, in this age where even home CD-burn­ing has been dis­placed by near-instan­ta­neous stream­ing and down­load­ing of dig­i­tal music, the cas­sette tape has made some­thing of a come­back. The near-mytho­log­i­cal allure of the mix­tape has only grown in recent years, dur­ing which artists both minor and major have put out cas­sette releas­es — and in some cas­es, cas­sette-only releas­es. This seems to be hap­pen­ing around the world: a few weeks ago, while strolling an art-school neigh­bor­hood in Seoul, where I live, I passed a cof­fee shop that offered its young cus­tomers rentals of both tapes and Walk­man-style play­ers on which to lis­ten to them. As anoth­er gen­er­a­tion-tran­scend­ing slo­gan has it, every­thing old is new again.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music: When the Music Indus­try Waged War on the Cas­sette Tape Dur­ing the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wob­bly VHS & Oth­er Ana­log-Media Imper­fec­tion

Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers: Hear 90 Hours of Back­ground Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Hey­day

A Free Dig­i­tal Archive of Graph­ic Design: A Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Design Trea­sures from the Inter­net Archive

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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20 Mesmerizing Videos of Japanese Artisans Creating Traditional Handicrafts

in Art, Design | September 3rd, 2024

In Japan­ese “tewaza” means “hand tech­nique” or “hand­craft” and, in this YouTube playlist of 20 short films, var­i­ous arti­sanal tech­niques are explored and demon­strat­ed by Japan­ese mas­ters in the field. For those who are both obsessed with Japan­ese art and watch­ing things get made, these videos are cat­nip. There’s very lit­tle spo­ken, except a few quotes from the mak­ers them­selves, and gen­tle music plays over shots of del­i­cate, intri­cate, and con­fi­dent hand­i­work.

Watch the video up top, a look at how a small group of men forge a Sakai knife. (Yes, we keep expect­ing the music to turn into the Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme too.) No words are nec­es­sary in this exact­ing demon­stra­tion, and just check out the wood-like grain in the met­al.

And the names of these goods denote the towns of origin–Sakai is just out­side Osa­ka, and is one of Japan’s main sea­ports and, yes, known for its knives.

Oth­er videos show the mak­ing of hand­made washi paper from Mino; stun­ning gold leaf pro­duc­tion from Kanaza­wa; paper lantern making from Gifu; dec­o­rat­ed wall­pa­per from Ueno; a Kumano writ­ing brush, and very del­i­cate bam­boo weav­ing from Bep­pu that looks so pre­cise it’s like it’s made by machine, but no, this is all in the eye.

The YouTube chan­nel that has pro­duced these videos, Aoya­ma Square, is a lit­er­al one-stop shop in Tokyo for all the kinds of crafts seen in the videos, and is a mem­ber of the Japan­ese nation­al asso­ci­a­tion that pro­motes and keeps these skills and mini-indus­tries alive. So is this one long ad for a large crafts empo­ri­um? Well, could be. Do we still want to buy some of that beau­ti­ful lac­quer­ware from Echizen? Oh yes, very much so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

The Beau­ti­ful Art of Mak­ing Japan­ese Cal­lig­ra­phy Ink Out of Soot & Glue

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Arti­san Make a Noh Mask, Cre­at­ing an Aston­ish­ing Char­ac­ter From a Sin­gle Block of Wood

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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Behold the First American Board Game, Travellers’ Tour Through the United States (1822)

in Games, History | September 3rd, 2024

Asked to name a clas­sic Amer­i­can board game, most of us would first think of Monop­oly, whose imagery and ver­biage — Park Place, Rich Uncle Pen­ny­bags, “Do not pass go” — has worked its way deep into the cul­ture since Park­er Broth­ers brought it to mar­ket in 1935. Despite that, it isn’t the old­est Amer­i­can board game: that hon­or goes to Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States, which came out more than a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, in 1822. Where­as Monop­oly teach­es its play­ers about real-estate val­ues in Depres­sion-era Atlantic City (as well as a thing or two about cap­i­tal­ism), the old­er game took a larg­er sub­ject for its edu­ca­tion­al ambi­tions: the whole of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

Of course, that whole was a lot small­er back in 1822, the year after Mis­souri became the 24th state. Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States presents its two-to-four play­ers with the task of tra­vers­ing the young coun­try, begin­ning in Wash­ing­ton and end­ing in New Orleans. This is done by spin­ning some­thing called a “tee­to­tum,” a kind of hybrid between a top and a die, designed to hedge against the sin­ful asso­ci­a­tions of gam­bling. The play­er then moves ahead accord­ing to the dis­tance shown on the tee­to­tum, but must name the unla­beled city on which they’ve land­ed — and, in a more chal­leng­ing vari­a­tion, guess its pop­u­la­tion — in order to remain there.

As they move their pieces across the coun­try, play­ers can also read the includ­ed descrip­tions of each city, town, and region through which they pass. “Pro­mot­ing the val­ue of edu­ca­tion, the game high­lights insti­tu­tions of learn­ing,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Matthew Wynn Sivils. “Philadelphia’s ‘lit­er­ary and benev­o­lent insti­tu­tions are numer­ous and respectable.’ Prov­i­dence boasts ‘Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, a respectable lit­er­ary insti­tu­tion.’ ” Mak­ing their way south, “play­ers learn about Richmond’s ‘fer­tile back­coun­try’ and the ‘pol­ished man­ners and unaf­fect­ed hos­pi­tal­i­ty’ of the cit­i­zens of Charleston. Savan­nah ‘con­tains many splen­did edi­fices’ and Columbia’s ‘South Car­oli­na Col­lege … bids fair to be a valu­able insti­tu­tion.’ ”

As clear-eyed descrip­tions of the Unit­ed States in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, these fall some­what short of Toc­queville — but then, they were writ­ten almost a decade before Alex­is de Toc­queville set foot in Amer­i­ca. Not only did the coun­try still have much expan­sion across the con­ti­nent left to do, it had amassed but a frac­tion of the pow­er and influ­ence it would go on to do in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. How­ev­er com­pelling a spec­ta­cle the U.S. had become to for­eign observers, it must have inspired among its own peo­ple an even stronger yearn­ing to under­stand its nature, and there­fore its future — a yearn­ing the mak­ers of Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States clear­ly hoped would moti­vate sales. As a prod­uct, it seems not to have been suc­cess­ful, but as an idea, it lives on more than 200 years lat­er in the form of the great Amer­i­can road trip.

via My Mod­ern Met/Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Moth­er of All Maps of the “Father of Waters”: Behold the 11-Foot Traveler’s Map of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er (1866)

he Fiendish­ly Com­pli­cat­ed Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours to Play: Dis­cov­er The Cam­paign for North Africa

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rol­lick­ing Nov­el

Watch a Playthrough of the Old­est Board Game in the World, the Sumer­ian Roy­al Game of Ur, Cir­ca 2500 BC

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

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 Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969)

in Music | September 3rd, 2024

Recent­ly an old­er musi­cian acquain­tance told me he nev­er “got into ‘Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that,” refer­ring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floy­d’s career and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of space rock bands. I found myself a lit­tle tak­en aback. Though I was born too late to be there, I’ve come to see “’Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that” as one of the most inter­est­ing things about the end of the sixties—the com­ing of Cap­tain Beef­heart and the Mag­ic Band, of The Soft Machine, of Hawk­wind and oth­er psy­che­del­ic war­riors.

Too oft over­looked in the pop­u­lar Wood­stock/Alta­mont bina­ry short­hand for fin-de-six­ties rock and roll, these bands’ brand of prog/­jaz­z/blues/psych-rock exper­i­men­tal­ism got its due in Amou­gies, Bel­gium, in a 1969 fes­ti­val meant as Europe’s answer to the three-day “Aquar­i­an expo­si­tion” staged in upstate New York that same year.

Spon­sored by Paris mag­a­zine Actuel, “The Actuel Rock Fes­ti­val” fea­tured all of the bands men­tioned above (except Hawk­wind), along with Yes, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cher­ry, and many more. MC’ing the event, and serv­ing as Beefheart’s man­ag­er, was none oth­er than impre­sario of weird him­self, Frank Zap­pa, who sat in with Floyd on “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” bring­ing his con­sid­er­able lead gui­tar prowess to their dark, descend­ing instru­men­tal.

Just above, hear that Zappa/Floyd per­for­mance of the song. The live audio record­ing is fuzzy and a bit hol­low, but the play­ing comes through per­fect­ly clear. Zap­pa, in fact, jammed with near­ly all the artists on the ros­ter, though only a few record­ings have sur­faced, like this one from an audi­ence mem­ber. Of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, Pink Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason said in 1973, “Frank Zap­pa is real­ly one of those rare musi­cians that can play with us. The lit­tle he did in Amou­gies was ter­ri­bly cor­rect.” I think you’ll agree.

Dan­ger­ous Minds records many of Zappa’s rec­ol­lec­tions of the event, includ­ing a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sar­don­ic account he gave in an inter­view with The Simp­sons’ Matt Groen­ing in which he com­plains of feel­ing “like Lin­da McCart­ney” and about the scourge of “slum­ber­ing euro-hip­pies.” Zap­pa appar­ent­ly did not remem­ber jam­ming with Floyd but “the pho­tos don’t lie and nei­ther does the record­ing.” He does recall play­ing with Cap­tain Beef­heart, who says he him­self “enjoyed it.” You can hear Beef­heart’s set with Zap­pa above.

Accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of found­ing Pink Floyd singer and gui­tarist Syd Bar­rett—gone by the time of the festival—footage of the Zappa/Floyd jam exists, part of an unre­leased doc­u­men­tary of the event by Gerome Laper­rousaz. That film has yet to sur­face, it seems, but we do have the film above—slipping between black-and-white and color—of Pink Floyd play­ing “Green is the Colour,” “Care­ful With That Axe, Eugene,” and “Set the Con­trols For the Heart of the Sun.” It’s a must-watch if only for Roger Waters’ bone-chill­ing screams in the sec­ond song.

The fes­ti­val is notable not only for these ear­ly per­for­mances of the new­ly Gilmour-front­ed Pink Floyd, but also for the appear­ance of Ayns­ley Dun­bar, future Zap­pa drum­mer and jour­ney­man musi­cian extra­or­di­naire. Alleged­ly Zap­pa met Dun­bar at the fes­ti­val and was quite impressed with the latter’s jazz chops (though Dun­bar first joined Zappa’s band on gui­tar before mov­ing to drums). You can hear Zap­pa jam with his even­tu­al star drummer’s band, Ayns­ley Dunbar’s Retal­i­a­tion, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix, Pink Floyd, Traf­fic & Oth­er Bands Play Huge Lon­don Fes­ti­val “Christ­mas on Earth Con­tin­ued” (1967)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

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

 

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