Watch the First Performance of a Mozart Composition That Had Been Lost for Centuries

in History, Music | September 25th, 2024

For most musi­cians, a long-lost song writ­ten in their teenage years would be of inter­est only to seri­ous fans — and even then, prob­a­bly more for bio­graph­i­cal rea­sons than as a stand­alone piece of work. But that’s hard­ly the case for Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, who was com­pos­ing advanced music at the age of five, and indeed com­plet­ed the first act of his short life by ado­les­cence. Hence the guar­an­teed appre­cia­tive audi­ence for Ser­e­nade in C, a hith­er­to unknown piece recent­ly dis­cov­ered in the hold­ings of Germany’s Leipzig Munic­i­pal Libraries and first per­formed for the pub­lic just last week.

“Library researchers were com­pil­ing an edi­tion of the Köchel cat­a­log, a com­pre­hen­sive archive of Mozart’s work, when they stum­bled across a mys­te­ri­ous bound man­u­script con­tain­ing a hand­writ­ten com­po­si­tion in brown ink,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Son­ja Ander­son.

Com­posed in the mid-to-late 1760s, Ser­e­nade in C “con­sists of sev­en minia­ture move­ments for a string trio (two vio­lins and a bass).” Accord­ing to researchers, it “fits styl­is­ti­cal­ly” the work of that peri­od, “when Mozart was between the ages of 10 and 13”; a few years lat­er, he’d out­grown (or tran­scend­ed) this style of cham­ber music entire­ly.

You can see and hear Ser­e­nade in C in the video at the top of the post, per­formed ear­li­er this month, not long after its pre­miere, on the steps of the Leipzig Opera by Vin­cent Geer, David Geer, and Elis­a­beth Zim­mer­mann of the Leipzig School of Music’s youth sym­pho­ny orches­tra. Renamed Ganz kleine Nacht­musik, this “new” Mozart piece has been includ­ed in the lat­est Köchel cat­a­log with the num­ber K. 648. If you lis­ten to it in the con­text of Mozart’s artis­tic evo­lu­tion, you’ll also notice the ways in which it stands out in a peri­od when he wrote main­ly arias, sym­phonies, and piano music. As for the extent to which it pre­fig­ures things to come, it’s ear­ly enough that we should prob­a­bly leave that ques­tion to the Mozartol­o­gists.

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Mozart’s Music, Com­posed from Ages 5 to 35

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

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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Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

in Audio Books, Literature | September 24th, 2024

moby dick big read

Image of Moby Dick by David Austen.

In 2013, Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promis­ing a full audio­book of Her­man Melville’s influ­en­tial nov­el, with famous (and not so famous) voic­es tak­ing on a chap­ter each. When we first wrote about it here, only six chap­ters had been unveiled, but boast­ed actors like Til­da Swin­ton (read­ing chap­ter one below), author Nigel Williams, and poet and jour­nal­ist Musa Okwon­ga.

We’re glad to say the project reached its suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. And they cer­tain­ly called on an impres­sive ros­ter of celebri­ty read­ers: Stephen Fry, Neil Ten­nant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Chi­na Miéville, Tony Kush­n­er, John Waters, Simon Cal­low, Sir David Atten­bor­ough, even for­mer Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron. Pulitzer Prize win­ning poet Mary Oliv­er fin­ish­es off the whole project, read­ing the Epi­logue.

All 135 chap­ters are avail­able to be lis­tened to in your brows­er, down­loaded on iTunes, or streamed on Sound­Cloud. How­ev­er, do check them out online, as each chap­ter comes with a work of art each cre­at­ed by 135 con­tem­po­rary artists such as Matthew Bar­ney, Oliv­er Clegg, and Matthew Bene­dict. (See David Austen’s work above.) The project is a mam­moth under­tak­ing befit­ting such a mon­u­men­tal book, and if you’ve nev­er read it this just might be the way to go.

Copies of Moby Dick can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Mean­while, this big read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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:

Why Should We Read Melville’s Moby-Dick? A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

How to Mem­o­rize an Entire Chap­ter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Orson Welles Reads From Moby-Dick: The Great Amer­i­can Direc­tor Takes on the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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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How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

in Art, History | September 24th, 2024

George Clooney may be bet­ter regard­ed as an actor than as a direc­tor, but his occa­sion­al work in the lat­ter capac­i­ty reveals an admirable inter­est in less­er-dra­ma­tized chap­ters of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. His films have found their mate­r­i­al in every­thing from the ear­ly years of the NFL to the racial strife in Levit­town to even The Gong Show cre­ator Chuck Bar­ris’ dubi­ous past as a CIA assas­sin. A decade ago, he direct­ed The Mon­u­ments Men, whose ensem­ble cast – includ­ing Matt Damon, Bill Mur­ray, John Good­man, and Clooney him­self — play Allied sol­diers tasked with recov­er­ing the many works of art stolen by the Nazis dur­ing World War II.

The Mon­u­ments Men is based, if loose­ly, on real events; hence the inclu­sion of a few of its clips in the new Great Art Explained video above. In it, gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne gets into the sub­ject of how the Nazis plun­dered Europe’s cul­tur­al trea­sures through one paint­ing in par­tic­u­lar: one of dar­ing Expres­sion­ist Egon Schiele’s Boats Mir­rored in the Water series, whose where­abouts remain unknown.

Before the war, it had been in the art col­lec­tion of the Vien­na cabaret star Franz Friedrich “Fritz” Grün­baum. Unlike Schiele’s por­traits, none of the Boats Mir­rored in the Water were suf­fi­cient­ly offen­sive to be labeled “degen­er­ate art.” They were nonethe­less sub­ject to the orga­nized theft that the regime called “Aryaniza­tion.”

In 1956, long after the Nazis had sent Grün­baum and his wife to their deaths, 80 per­cent of their col­lec­tion came up for auc­tion in Switzer­land. How it got there, we don’t know, though it end­ed up dis­persed far and wide, to both insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als. The Boats Mir­rored in the Water in ques­tion was record­ed as hav­ing been sold again, in 1990, to an uniden­ti­fied pri­vate col­lec­tor, and it has­n’t been seen since. That may not be a Hol­ly­wood end­ing, but the art-repa­tri­at­ing work of the real Mon­u­ments Men con­tin­ues today; not so long ago, a Ger­man court even award­ed a once-Aryanized por­trait by Schiele’s idol Gus­tav Klimt to the son of its orig­i­nal own­er. It’s not impos­si­ble that the miss­ing boat Schiele paint­ed in Tri­este over a cen­tu­ry ago will see the light of day once again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Dig­i­tal Archive Will Fea­ture the Com­plete Works of Egon Schiele: Start with 419 Paint­ings, Draw­ings & Sculp­tures

How Jan van Eyck’s Mas­ter­piece, the Ghent Altar­piece, Became the Most Stolen Work of Art in His­to­ry

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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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Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the Art of Gustave Doré

in Film, Literature | September 23rd, 2024

Around here we sub­scribe to the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years past, we gave you Welles nar­rat­ing Pla­to’s Cave Alle­go­ry and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” and, before that, the Welles-nar­rat­ed para­ble Free­dom Riv­er, and the list goes on.

Now, we present The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a 1977 exper­i­men­tal film cre­at­ed by Lar­ry Jor­dan, an inde­pen­dent film­mak­er who tried to mar­ry “the clas­sic engrav­ings of Gus­tave Doré to the clas­sic poem by Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge through a clas­sic nar­ra­tor: Orson Welles.” As Jor­dan describes it, the film is “a long opi­um dream of the old Mariner (Welles) who wan­ton­ly killed the alba­tross and suf­fered the pains of the damned for it.” You can watch above.

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:

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Para­bles of the Human Con­di­tion

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Orson Welles Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Para­ble About How Xeno­pho­bia & Greed Will Put Amer­i­ca Into Decline (1971)

Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a Doc­u­men­tary Ask­ing Whether There’s Extrater­res­tri­al Life in the Uni­verse (1975)

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Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Urging High-School Students to Create Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

in Art, Education, Letters | September 23rd, 2024

As cul­tur­al fig­ures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Von­negut would seem to have had lit­tle in com­mon, but each could eas­i­ly be rec­og­nized by his voice. Jones’ will come to mind as soon as you think of Darth Vad­er, Sim­ba’s father, or “This is CNN.” Von­negut’s dis­tinc­tion was the voice evi­dent on any giv­en page of nov­els like Cat’s Cra­dle, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, and of course Slaugh­ter­house-Five — a voice many of us have known since ado­les­cence. They come togeth­er in the Let­ters Live video above with Jones read­ing a Von­negut let­ter to the stu­dents of Ms. Lock­wood’s Eng­lish class at New York’s Xavier High School in 2006.

Von­negut was writ­ing in response to five such stu­dents, who’d cho­sen him when assigned to write to their favorite author. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his let­ter here on Open Cul­ture as read aloud by Sir Ian McK­ellen, but its mes­sage bears repeat­ing by any­one who will speak it, beloved actor or oth­er­wise. “Prac­tice any art, music, singing, danc­ing, act­ing, draw­ing, paint­ing, sculpt­ing, poet­ry, fic­tion, essays, reportage, no mat­ter how well or bad­ly,” he writes. The idea is “not to get mon­ey and fame, but to expe­ri­ence becom­ing, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

The cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ist even hands down an assign­ment to his teenage fans: “Write a six line poem, about any­thing, but rhymed. No fair ten­nis with­out a net. Make it as good as you pos­si­bly can. But don’t tell any­body what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to any­body, not even your girl­friend or par­ents or what­ev­er, or Ms. Lock­wood.” After thor­ough­ly dis­pos­ing of this entire­ly pri­vate piece of art, know that “you have expe­ri­enced becom­ing, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.”

None of this con­flicts with the stan­dard advice about writ­ing, which tends to empha­size just get­ting start­ed, work­ing under restric­tions, and not mak­ing an undue rush to pub­li­ca­tion. But they make a dif­fer­ent kind of impact when rec­om­mend­ed by Von­negut in what would turn out to be the last year of life, and with his char­ac­ter­is­tic ten­den­cy to reach for the heav­ens while nev­er depart­ing from the mun­dane, even sil­ly things of this earth. “Dance home after school, and sing in the show­er and on and on,” he sug­gests. “Make a face in your mashed pota­toes. Pre­tend you’re Count Drac­u­la.” There writes a grand old man of Amer­i­can let­ters who knew how com­mu­ni­cate across a dis­tance of gen­er­a­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White House Poet­ry Jam

Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Mean­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” Read by James Earl Jones

Darth Vader’s Voice: The Orig­i­nal Voice Ver­sus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Sir Ian McK­ellen Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter to High School Stu­dents: Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

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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David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books

in Uncategorized | September 23rd, 2024

Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2013, the cura­tors of the tour­ing muse­um exhib­it “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, pro­vid­ing us with deep­er insights into his lit­er­ary tastes. Cov­er­ing fic­tion and non-fic­tion, the list spans six decades, mov­ing from Richard Wright’s mem­oir Black Boy (1945) to Susan Jacoby’s The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son (2008). As we once not­ed in anoth­er post, “his list shows a lot of love to Amer­i­can writ­ers, from … Tru­man Capote to … Hubert Sel­by, Jr., Saul Bel­low, Junot Díaz, Jack Ker­ouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fel­low Brits George Orwell, Ian McE­wan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishi­ma and Bul­gakov.”  You can read the full list below, and, if you choose, also explore a relat­ed book from 2019–Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life.

  1. Inter­views With Fran­cis Bacon by David Sylvester
  2. Bil­ly Liar by Kei­th Water­house
  3. Room At The Top by John Braine
  4. On Hav­ing No Head by Dou­glass Hard­ing
  5. Kaf­ka Was The Rage by Ana­tole Bro­yard
  6. A Clock­work Orange by Antho­ny Burgess
  7. City Of Night by John Rechy
  8. The Brief Won­drous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  9. Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert
  10. Ili­ad by Homer
  11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkn­er
  12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
  13. Berlin Alexan­der­platz by Alfred Döblin
  14. Inside The Whale And Oth­er Essays by George Orwell
  15. Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
  16. Halls Dic­tio­nary Of Sub­jects And Sym­bols In Art by James A. Hall
  17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
  18. Blast by Wyn­d­ham Lewis
  19. Pass­ing by Nel­la Lar­son
  20. Beyond The Bril­lo Box by Arthur C. Dan­to
  21. The Ori­gin Of Con­scious­ness In The Break­down Of The Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes
  22. In Bluebeard’s Cas­tle by George Stein­er
  23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd
  24. The Divid­ed Self by R. D. Laing
  25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  26. Infants Of The Spring by Wal­lace Thur­man
  27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
  28. The Song­lines by Bruce Chatwin
  29. Nights At The Cir­cus by Angela Carter
  30. The Mas­ter And Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
  31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
  32. Loli­ta by Vladimir Nabokov
  33. Her­zog by Saul Bel­low
  34. Puck­oon by Spike Mil­li­gan
  35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
  36. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
  37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishi­ma
  38. Dark­ness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
  39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
  40. McTeague by Frank Nor­ris
  41. Mon­ey by Mar­tin Amis
  42. The Out­sider by Col­in Wil­son
  43. Strange Peo­ple by Frank Edwards
  44. Eng­lish Jour­ney by J.B. Priest­ley
  45. A Con­fed­er­a­cy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
  47. 1984 by George Orwell
  48. The Life And Times Of Lit­tle Richard by Charles White
  49. Awop­bopaloobop Alop­bam­boom: The Gold­en Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
  50. Mys­tery Train by Greil Mar­cus
  51. Beano (com­ic, ’50s)
  52. Raw (com­ic, ’80s)
  53. White Noise by Don DeLil­lo
  54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The South­ern Dream Of Free­dom by Peter Gural­nick
  55. Silence: Lec­tures And Writ­ing by John Cage
  56. Writ­ers At Work: The Paris Review Inter­views edit­ed by Mal­colm Cow­ley
  57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Char­lie Gillette
  58. Octo­bri­ana And The Russ­ian Under­ground by Peter Sadecky
  59. The Street by Ann Petry
  60. Won­der Boys by Michael Chabon
  61. Last Exit To Brook­lyn By Hubert Sel­by, Jr.
  62. A People’s His­to­ry Of The Unit­ed States by Howard Zinn
  63. The Age Of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jaco­by
  64. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life by Fran Lebowitz
  65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stop­pard
  66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
  67. All The Emperor’s Hors­es by David Kidd
  68. Fin­ger­smith by Sarah Waters
  69. Earth­ly Pow­ers by Antho­ny Burgess
  70. The 42nd Par­al­lel by John Dos Pas­sos
  71. Tales Of Beat­nik Glo­ry by Ed Saun­ders
  72. The Bird Artist by Howard Nor­man
  73. Nowhere To Run The Sto­ry Of Soul Music by Ger­ri Hir­shey
  74. Before The Del­uge by Otto Friedrich
  75. Sex­u­al Per­son­ae: Art And Deca­dence From Nefer­ti­ti To Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Camille Paglia
  76. The Amer­i­can Way Of Death by Jes­si­ca Mit­ford
  77. In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote
  78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  79. Teenage by Jon Sav­age
  80. Vile Bod­ies by Eve­lyn Waugh
  81. The Hid­den Per­suaders by Vance Packard
  82. The Fire Next Time by James Bald­win
  83. Viz (com­ic, ear­ly ’80s)
  84. Pri­vate Eye (satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, ’60s – ’80s)
  85. Select­ed Poems by Frank O’Hara
  86. The Tri­al Of Hen­ry Kissinger by Christo­pher Hitchens
  87. Flaubert’s Par­rot by Julian Barnes
  88. Mal­doror by Comte de Lautréa­mont
  89. On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac
  90. Mr. Wilson’s Cab­i­net of Won­der by Lawrence Weschler
  91. Zanoni by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton
  92. Tran­scen­den­tal Mag­ic, Its Doc­trine and Rit­u­al by Eliphas Lévi
  93. The Gnos­tic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
  94. The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Di Lampe­dusa
  95. Infer­no by Dante Alighieri
  96. A Grave For A Dol­phin by Alber­to Den­ti di Pira­jno
  97. The Insult by Rupert Thom­son
  98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McE­wan
  99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlan­do Figes
  100. Jour­ney Into The Whirl­wind by Euge­nia Ginzburg

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:

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Hayao Miyaza­ki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

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Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

in Animation, Art, History | September 19th, 2024

In pre­vi­ous cen­turies, unless you were a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty, a wealthy reli­gious order, or a mer­chant guild, your chances of spend­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time with a Medieval tapes­try were slim. Though “much pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly coarse, intend­ed for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the tapes­try still com­mand­ed high prices, just as it com­mand­ed respect for its own­er. And as oth­er dec­o­ra­tive arts of the time pre­served his­tor­i­cal memory—or cer­tain polit­i­cal ver­sions of it, at least—tapestry designs might embody “cel­e­bra­to­ry or pro­pa­gan­dis­tic themes” in their weft and warp.

“Enriched with silk and gilt metal­lic thread,” writes the Met, “such tapes­tries were a cen­tral com­po­nent of the osten­ta­tious mag­nif­i­cence used by pow­er­ful sec­u­lar and reli­gious rulers to broad­cast their wealth and might.” Such is one of the most famous of these works, the Bayeux Tapes­try, which com­mem­o­rates the 1066 vic­to­ry of William the Con­queror at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The famous wall hang­ing, housed at the Bayeux Muse­um in Nor­mandy, was “prob­a­bly com­mis­sioned in the 1070s” by Bish­op Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-broth­er, mak­ing it a very ear­ly exam­ple of the form. So the site of a Vic­to­ri­an-era repli­ca writes, and yet “noth­ing known is cer­tain about the tapestry’s ori­gins.” (The first writ­ten record of it dates from 1476.)

While the Bayeux Tapes­try may have been inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple for how­ev­er many cen­turies it has exist­ed, you can now stand before it in its home of Bayeux, or see the very con­vinc­ing repli­ca at Britain’s Read­ing Muse­um. (You’ll note in both cas­es that the Bayeux tapes­try is not, in fact, a tapes­try, woven on a loom, but a painstak­ing, hand-stitched embroi­dery.) Or, rather than trav­el­ing, you can watch the video above, an ani­mat­ed ren­di­tion of the tapestry’s sto­ry by film­mak­er David New­ton and sound design­er Marc Syl­van.

Dur­ing the years 1064 to the fate­ful 1066, a fierce rival­ry took shape as the ail­ing King Edward the Con­fes­sor’s advi­sor Harold God­win­son and William the Con­queror vied for the crown. Once Edward died in 1066, Harold seized the throne, prompt­ing William to invade and defeat him at the Bat­tle of Hast­ings. The Tapes­try gives us a graph­ic his­to­ry of this bloody con­test, “a sto­ry,” writes the Bayeux Muse­um, “broad­ly in keep­ing with the accounts of authors of the 11th cen­tu­ry.” “The Tapes­try’s depic­tion of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings,” his­to­ri­an Robert Bartlett tells us, “is the fullest pic­to­r­i­al record of a medieval bat­tle in existence”—and the ani­ma­tion above makes it come alive with sound and move­ment.

Note: The Ani­mat­ed Bayeux Tapes­try above was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a stu­dent project. David New­ton pro­vid­ed the ani­ma­tion, and Marc Syl­van cre­at­ed the orig­i­nal music and sound effects. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

How the Ornate Tapes­tries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

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

 

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Do All Roads Lead to Philosophy on Wikipedia?: They Do About 97.3% of the Time

in Philosophy, Wikipedia | September 19th, 2024

Pull up the Wikipedia page for Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love,” the 1984 sin­gle now known for re-pop­u­lar­iz­ing the genre of Japan­ese “city pop.” Then click the first of its links (not relat­ed to the lan­guage of the arti­cle itself), which leads to Takeuchi’s own page. If you keep fol­low­ing that same pro­ce­dure, you’ll con­tin­ue on to City Pop, then Japan­ese Pop Music, then Pop­u­lar Music. Keep drilling down, and you’ll pass the very con­cepts of music and sound, then enter the realms of physics, the sci­en­tif­ic method, log­i­cal propo­si­tions, and the phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage. This is one exam­ple pro­vid­ed by the video above from YouTu­ber Not David, which inves­ti­gates whether all roads on Wikipedia even­tu­al­ly lead to phi­los­o­phy.

There is, of course, a Wikipedia page about this, called “Get­ting to Phi­los­o­phy.” “Fol­low­ing the first hyper­link in the main text of an Eng­lish Wikipedia arti­cle, and then repeat­ing the process for sub­se­quent arti­cles, usu­al­ly leads to the Phi­los­o­phy arti­cle,” it says. “In Feb­ru­ary 2016, this was true for 97% of all arti­cles on Wikipedia (includ­ing this one).” As for the rest, they “lead to an arti­cle with­out any out­go­ing wik­ilinks, to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in loops.” This is actu­al­ly the case with the path start­ing from “Plas­tic Love,” after Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage goes in cir­cles around con­cepts, abstrac­tion, and log­ic itself, nev­er quite reach­ing Phi­los­o­phy prop­er.

Or at least that’s what hap­pened for me today; it could go dif­fer­ent­ly tomor­row, or even a few sec­onds from now. Ever since Wikipedia went live in 2001, its main dif­fer­ence from oth­er ency­clo­pe­dias has been that it’s con­stant­ly chang­ing, and the rate of that change has only increased over time. The “phi­los­o­phy game,” as Not David calls it, is at all times sub­ject to break­age, but also to un-break­age. At nor­mal times, Orange Juice to Phi­los­o­phy takes thir­teen steps, Apple Juice to Phi­los­o­phy takes fif­teen steps; both the Cal­gary Flames and Edmon­ton Oil­ers lie six­teen steps from Phi­los­o­phy. But things go hay­wire if some­one goes and, say, re-orders the links on the Aware­ness arti­cle so Psy­chol­o­gy comes first.

These things hap­pen: Wikipedia is, after all, the ency­clo­pe­dia that any­one can edit. And as you can see (at least as of this writ­ing), Aware­ness now links first to Phi­los­o­phy again. These changes play hav­oc with the efforts of any­one try­ing to map out the con­nec­tions between one part of Wikipedia and anoth­er, as Not David does in this video. But they don’t alter the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of net­work design, which his analy­sis illu­mi­nates. As with the cor­pus cal­lo­sum, which con­nects the two hemi­spheres of the human brain, Phi­los­o­phy is less impor­tant for what direct­ly con­nects to it than for its own func­tion as a con­nec­tor. And indeed, haven’t philoso­phers always want­ed to know how every­thing fits togeth­er?

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy

A Data Visu­al­iza­tion of Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy, 1950–2018

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

Philo­graph­ics Presents a Visu­al Dic­tio­nary of Phi­los­o­phy: 95 Philo­soph­i­cal Con­cepts as Graph­ic Designs

Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Course

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

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 Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

in Literature, Writing | September 18th, 2024

Samuel Beck­ett: avant-garde drama­tist, brood­ing Nobel Prize win­ner, poet, and…gritty tele­vi­sion detec­tive?

Sad­ly, no, but he had the mak­ings of a great one, at least as cut togeth­er by play­wright Dan­ny Thomp­son, cofounder of Chicago’s The­ater Oobleck.

Some 35 years after Beckett’s death, Thompson—whose cred­its include the Com­plete Lost Works of Samuel Beck­ett as Found in a Dust­bin in Paris in an Enve­lope (Par­tial­ly Burned) Labeled: Nev­er to Be Per­formed. Nev­er. Ever. Ever! Or I’ll Sue! I’ll Sue From the Grave!!!-–repur­posed Rosa Veim and Daniel Schmid’s footage of the moody genius wan­der­ing around 1969 Berlin into the open­ing cred­its of a nonex­is­tent, 70s era Quinn Mar­tin police pro­ce­dur­al.

The title sequence hits all the right peri­od notes, from the jazzy graph­ics to the pre­sen­ta­tion of its sup­port­ing cast: Andre the Giant, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean “Hug­gy Bear” Cocteau. (Did you know that Beck­ett drove a young Andre the Giant to school in real life?)

Thomp­son ups the verisimil­i­tude by cop­ping Pat Williams’ theme for The Streets of San Fran­cis­co and nam­ing the imag­i­nary pilot episode after a col­lec­tion of Beckett’s short sto­ries.

He also jok­ing­ly notes that a DVD release of the first, only and, again, entire­ly non-exis­tent sea­son has been held up by the Beck­ett estate. Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

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

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The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

in Maps, Travel | September 18th, 2024

No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through. I myself once took a more souther­ly route, road-trip­ping from Los Ange­les to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na over a week or two; these days, I dream of an east-coast jour­ney from Maine all the way down to Key West, a rel­a­tive­ly man­age­able 1,900 miles. But if you take your road-trip­ping seri­ous­ly, you’ve got to go to anoth­er con­ti­nent entire­ly.

Such is the con­clu­sion to be drawn from the Half as Inter­est­ing video above, which finds the longest dri­vable dis­tance on Earth. “The North Amer­i­can road sys­tem goes as far as Prud­hoe Bay in Canada’s Cana­da, Alas­ka, and as far south as Yav­iza in Pana­ma,” says the video’s cre­ator Sam Den­by, “but this only clocks in at 7,500 miles.”

That may require six straight days of dri­ving, but it does­n’t set any records. A route from south­ern Africa and east Asia may seem promis­ing, but they can’t be dri­ven with­out pass­ing through west­ern Europe. That requires pas­sage across the Mediter­ranean on a fer­ry, which — for the true road-trip­per — taints the puri­ty of the endeav­or.

Start­ing in Europe, then, you should begin in Sagres, Por­tu­gal, “the most extreme point on the con­tigu­ous road net­work.” From there, you can dri­ve as far east as “the banks of the Aldan Riv­er in Rus­sia,” a dis­tance of 8,437 miles. But wait, there’s longer: you could keep going to Khasan, “the only Russ­ian town to bor­der North Korea,” and bring the mileage up to 8,726, thus com­plet­ing “the longest direct dri­ving route in the world.” If you go ped­al-to-the-met­al (to the extent pos­si­ble while observ­ing local speed lim­its, any­way) it will take six days and 19 hours — book­end­ed, ide­al­ly, by one meal of cat­a­plana and anoth­er of Khasan oys­ters.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­en­tists Fig­ure Out What’s the Longest Dis­tance You Could Sail at Sea With­out Hit­ting Land

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ani­mat­ed Maps Reveal the True Size of Coun­tries (and Show How Tra­di­tion­al Maps Dis­tort Our World)

Why Route 66 Became America’s Most Famous Road

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

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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John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

in Graduation Speech, Life | September 17th, 2024

John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this to say:

Uh, don’t hate all rich peo­ple. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor peo­ple, too. We need some rich peo­ple: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean mon­ey-wise. I mean that I have fig­ured out how to nev­er be around ass­holes at any time in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. That’s rich. And not being around ass­holes should be the goal of every grad­u­ate here today.

It’s OK to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spir­it, not wealth. A poor per­son to me can have a big bank bal­ance but is stu­pid by choice – uncu­ri­ous, judg­men­tal, iso­lat­ed and unavail­able to change.

I’m also sor­ry to report there’s no such thing as kar­ma. So many of my tal­ent­ed great friends are dead and so many of the fools I’ve met and loathed are still alive. It’s not fair, and it nev­er will be.

Like I said, irrev­er­ent­ly phrased. But when stripped down to their basics, some very good prin­ci­ples to live by.

Watch the speech above; read the com­plete tran­script 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:

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters’ Com­i­cal & Inspir­ing Com­mence­ment Speech: “You Too Can Fail Upwards” (2022)

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