16th Century Bookwheels, the E‑Readers of the Renaissance, Get Brought to Life by 21st Century Designers

in Books, History, Technology | July 3rd, 2020

Most of us, through our com­put­ers or our even our phones, have access to more books than we could ever read in one life­time. That cer­tain­ly would­n’t have been the case in, say, the mid­dle ages, when books — assum­ing you belonged to the elite who could read them in the first place — were rare and pre­cious objects. Both books and lit­er­a­cy became more com­mon dur­ing the Renais­sance, though acquain­tance with both could still be con­sid­ered the sign of a poten­tial­ly seri­ous schol­ar. And for the most seri­ous Renais­sance schol­ars of all, Ital­ian mil­i­tary engi­neer Agosti­no Ramel­li designed the book­wheel, an elab­o­rate mechan­i­cal device allow­ing the user to turn from one book to anoth­er in rel­a­tive­ly quick suc­ces­sion.

First drawn by Ramel­li in 1588 (and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture in 2017) but nev­er actu­al­ly con­struct­ed by him, the book­wheel has attract­ed renewed atten­tion in the 21st cen­tu­ry. “In 2018, a group of under­grad­u­ate engi­neer­ing stu­dents at the Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy set out to build two,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Claire Voon. “They began by dili­gent­ly study­ing the Ital­ian engineer’s illus­tra­tion, then pro­cured his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate mate­ri­als, such as Euro­pean beech and white oak.

With the help of mod­ern pow­er tools and process­es, such as com­put­er mod­el­ing and CNC rout­ing, they brought it to life.” You can see the RIT book­wheels under con­struc­tion and in action in the video above. (Its schemat­ics, near-impos­si­bly com­plex by the stan­dards of Ramel­li’s day, are also avail­able at RIT’s web site.)

Oth­ers have also brought Ramel­li’s design into real­i­ty. In the video just above, for exam­ple, we have writer Joshua Foer (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here for his work on the sci­ence of mem­o­riza­tion) tak­ing his own repro­duc­tion for a spin. “It’s a fer­ris wheel for books,” Foer explains, “so that a schol­ar can have eight books in front of them, sort of like tabbed brows­ing before tabbed brows­ing.” The device’s cher­ry wood and laser-cut gears are cer­tain­ly hand­some, but what of its prac­ti­cal­i­ty? “I often read mul­ti­ple books at one time, and this way I can have them all open in front of me.” Most all of us start more books than we can fin­ish, and as we attempt to read them all in par­al­lel, occa­sion­al­ly one or two do get for­got­ten. Hence one advan­tage, even in our mod­ern times, of Ramel­li’s book wheel: any book placed on it becomes as unig­nor­able as the machine itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

Dis­cov­er the Jacobean Trav­el­ing Library: The 17th Cen­tu­ry Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

The Art of Mak­ing Old-Fash­ioned, Hand-Print­ed Books

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

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

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

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When Debbie Harry Combined Artistic Forces with H.R. Giger

in Music | July 3rd, 2020

After four years of phe­nom­e­nal chart suc­cess, the band Blondie went on hia­tus in 1981. While Deb­bie Har­ry pur­sued the act­ing she had start­ed in punk rock film­mak­er Amos Poe’s works, she also went the solo album route. On paper, this album, KooKoo, must have looked like a sure­fire hit: Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards from the band Chic were brought in to write and pro­duce, hot on the heels of their suc­cess­ful resus­ci­ta­tion of Diana Ross’s career the year before. Har­ry and boyfriend/band member/guitarist Chris Stein wrote tracks as well, and ful­ly indulged in the Black music gen­res they had already been toy­ing with on Blondie’s Autoamer­i­can, like “Rap­ture” and “The Tide Is High.”

But here’s where it gets a bit weird, and every­thing goes off kil­ter. The choice for the album art and pro­mo­tion­al videos was H.R. Giger, the artist who had rat­tled movie­go­ers’ brains the pre­vi­ous year with his designs for Rid­ley Scott’s Alien.

The cou­ple had met Giger in 1980 at a recep­tion for his paint­ings at New York’s Hansen Gallery.
“There I was intro­duced to a very beau­ti­ful woman, Deb­bie Har­ry, the singer of the group Blondie, and her boyfriend, Chris Stein,” Giger said in an inter­view. “They were appar­ent­ly excit­ed about my work and asked me whether I would be pre­pared to design the cov­er of the new Deb­bie Har­ry album.”

Though he didn’t know the group–Giger pre­ferred to lis­ten to jazz–he agreed to the cov­er and to the pro­mo videos, even direct­ing when the orig­i­nal direc­tor didn’t show.

The album cov­er is prob­a­bly bet­ter known than the music inside, and no won­der: it fea­tures Harry’s face pierced hor­i­zon­tal­ly by four spikes. Her expres­sion is ambigu­ous, pos­si­bly ecsta­t­ic. It was in one way a throw­back to Giger’s oth­er famous record cov­er, the one for Emer­son, Lake, and Palmer’s Brain Sal­ad Surgery. But the cov­er also would see its influ­ence in films like Hell­rais­er, the rise of what was called the “mod­ern prim­i­tive” move­ment, and help cul­ti­vate the dark masochis­tic char­ac­ter Har­ry would play in David Cronenberg’s Video­drome. It was a feel­ing that would flour­ish in the deca­dent ‘80s.

Har­ry wrote about this in Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine, which often fea­tured the artist, say­ing “Giger’s work has a sub­con­scious effect: it engen­ders the fear of being turned into met­al.”

The cov­er was a taster for more men­ac­ing things, how­ev­er. It’s the videos where Har­ry goes full Giger. First of all, the blonde hair is gone, replaced by black. And Giger puts Har­ry in a body­suit, half flayed-human, half machine. The music videos are sim­ple, per­for­mance based, though the sun­ny, allur­ing Har­ry has dis­ap­peared and a pro­to-Goth being has tak­en her place.

But that leaves us with the music, which one has to admit, is com­plete­ly unsuit­ed for this design. If Har­ry had made an album clos­er to Danielle Dax, for exam­ple, then we might have seen one of the odd­est mid-career shifts in ‘80s music. Instead the com­mer­cial flatlin­ing of the album threw Har­ry off-track, while Giger went on to be the go-to album artist for met­al and punk bands, from the Dead Kennedys to Blood­bath.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Learned to Deal With Super­fi­cial, Demean­ing Inter­view­ers

Watch Iggy Pop & Deb­bie Har­ry Sing a Swelli­gant Ver­sion of Cole Porter’s “Did You Evah,” All to Raise Mon­ey for AIDS Research (1990)

Hear Deb­bie Harry’s Stun­ning Ethe­re­al Vocal Tracks from “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rap­ture,” and “One Way or Anoth­er”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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An Animated Introduction to the Pioneering Anthropologist Margaret Mead

in Books, History | July 2nd, 2020

Mod­ern West­ern soci­eties haven’t solved the prob­lem of sex, but Samoa has the answer. Or at least it does accord­ing to the work of influ­en­tial anthro­pol­o­gist Mar­garet Mead, sub­ject of the ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion from Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life above. Her men­tor Franz Boas, the founder of anthro­pol­o­gy in the Unit­ed States, saw not a world pro­gress­ing “in a lin­ear fash­ion from bar­barism to sav­agery to civ­i­liza­tion” but “teem­ing with sep­a­rate cul­tures, each with their own unique per­spec­tives, insights, and effi­cien­cies.”

Though Mead­’s time liv­ing among the natives on the dis­tant islands of Samoa came at Boas’ sug­ges­tion, she already believed that “iso­lat­ed cul­tures could serve as lab­o­ra­to­ries that would reveal ways of liv­ing that the mod­ern world had for­got­ten about, but need­ed to remem­ber.” The result­ing book, 1928’s Com­ing of Age in Samoa, turned Mead into the most famous anthro­pol­o­gist in the world. In it she describes Samoan cul­ture as “far more open and com­fort­able with sex than the mod­ern Unit­ed States. Lit­tle chil­dren in Samoa knew all about mas­tur­ba­tion, and learned about inter­course and oth­er acts through first-hand obser­va­tion, but thought of it as no more scan­dalous or wor­thy of com­ment than death or birth.”

Mead also not­ed an accep­tance of not just homo­sex­u­al­i­ty but a nat­ur­al shift in sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion over time — a con­di­tion bound to intrigue a seri­ous schol­ar who her­self led a rather uncon­ven­tion­al life, “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly involved with suc­ces­sive hus­bands and her ever-present female lover.” Her analy­sis of Samoa, which informed the world­views of such influ­en­tial fig­ures as chil­drea­r­ing guru Ben­jamin Spock, would take on an even broad­er appeal in the 1960s, when a ris­ing coun­ter­cul­ture sought inspi­ra­tion in its push to trans­form West­ern soci­ety. Pro­po­nents of the “sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion” and its loos­en­ing of norms found a nat­ur­al ally in Mead, and traces of her life and work remain in frag­ments of the Sum­mer of Love up to and includ­ing Hair, one of whose minor char­ac­ters has her name.

Mead also comes up in Hunter Thomp­son’s 1971 epi­taph for the coun­ter­cul­ture, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The scene is the Nation­al Dis­trict Attor­neys Asso­ci­a­tion’s Con­fer­ence on Nar­cotics and Dan­ger­ous Drugs, at which a par­tic­i­pant sug­gests that Mead par­takes in the sub­stance known as mar­i­jua­na. The “drug expert” onstage replies thus: “At her age, if she did smoke grass, she’d have one hell of a trip.” Though Mead pub­licly showed sym­pa­thy for addicts, whom she described as “casu­al­ties of a bad­ly orga­nized soci­ety,” her own expe­ri­ences with mind-alter­ing sub­stances are less well doc­u­ment­ed. But then, her time in Samoa may well have been the only con­scious­ness-expand­ing trip she need­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac, Allen Gins­berg & Mar­garet Mead Explain the Mean­ing of “Beat” in Rare 1950s Audio Clips

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

The His­to­ry of West­ern Social The­o­ry, by Alan Mac­Far­lane, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Anthro­pol­o­gist Claude Lévi-Strauss Remem­bered

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

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An Animated Introduction to Noam Chomsky’s Groundbreaking Linguistic Theories

in Language | July 2nd, 2020

Most peo­ple who know Noam Chom­sky know him equal­ly as a giant in aca­d­e­m­ic lin­guis­tics and a long­time left­ist dis­si­dent and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor. Only a com­mit­ted few, how­ev­er, read much of his work in either—or both—fields. He is one of those thinkers whose major con­cepts enter the dis­course unmoored from their orig­i­nal con­text. Phras­es like “uni­ver­sal gram­mar” and “man­u­fac­tured con­sent” tend to pop up in all kinds of places with­out ref­er­ence to Chomsky’s mean­ings.

If you sim­ply haven’t got the time to read Chom­sky (and let’s face it, there’s a lot going on in the world these days), you might famil­iar­ize your­self with his media the­o­ry in an amus­ing video here. For an entry into Chomsky’s work in lin­guis­tics, see the brief ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above. The explain­er revis­its the Chom­skyian rev­o­lu­tion of 1957, when he artic­u­lat­ed his ideas about the uni­ver­sal prop­er­ties of lan­guage in his first book, Syn­tac­tic Struc­tures.

Chom­sky, the video says, explored the ques­tions, “are there uni­ver­sal gram­mar rules and are they hard­wired into our brains?” He did not invent the con­cept of “uni­ver­sal grammar”—the idea can be found in the 13th cen­tu­ry writ­ing of Roger Bacon—but Chomsky’s spe­cif­ic mean­ing of the term applies unique­ly to lan­guage acqui­si­tion. Rather than sug­gest­ing that lan­guage exists as an abstract uni­ver­sal prop­er­ty, Chom­sky argued that its basic struc­ture, shared across the world, derives from struc­tures in the brain that take shape in infan­cy.

Humans phys­i­cal­ly evolved to acquire and use lan­guage in strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar ways that accord with uni­ver­sal­ly observ­able and applic­a­ble rules, Chom­sky argued. As the les­son points out, a claim this broad requires a moun­tain of evi­dence. At the time, many lan­guages around the world had not been suf­fi­cient­ly stud­ied or record­ed. Since Chomsky’s ini­tial argu­ments, ideas about lin­guis­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly revised.

Sev­er­al crit­ics have argued that no amount of data can ever pro­duce “uni­ver­sal” rules. After decades of cri­tique, Chom­sky revised his the­o­ries, explain­ing them in dif­fer­ent terms as “Prin­ci­ples and Para­me­ters” that gov­ern lan­guages. He has fur­ther sim­pli­fied and spec­i­fied, propos­ing one uni­ver­sal cri­te­ri­on: “Recur­sion.” All lan­guages, he argues, can nest ideas inside oth­er ideas.

Recur­sion, too, has been force­ful­ly chal­lenged by the study of an Ama­zon­ian lan­guage that shows none of the char­ac­ter­is­tics Chom­sky glob­al­ly out­lined. The oth­er part of Chomsky’s the­o­ry of uni­ver­sal grammar—the idea that the brain devel­ops innate, iso­lat­ed lan­guage-mak­ing faculties—has also been refut­ed by neu­ro­sci­en­tists, who have not found evi­dence of any such spe­cif­ic struc­tures.

Why, then, is Chom­sky still so crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to lin­guis­tics, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and oth­er fields of study? For one thing, his work encour­aged the study of lan­guages that had been neglect­ed and ignored. The debates Chom­sky gen­er­at­ed pushed the field for­ward, and broke the spell of the Behav­ior­ism that dom­i­nat­ed the human sci­ences into the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Even where he was wrong, or over­con­fi­dent, his work remains an essen­tial ref­er­ence for the kind of think­ing that rev­o­lu­tion­ized lin­guis­tics and brain sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent and How the Media Cre­ates the Illu­sion of Democ­ra­cy

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

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

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John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Perform “I Remember Everything”

in Music | July 2nd, 2020

It feels cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic that Great Amer­i­can Song­writer John Prine died of COVID-19 in ear­ly April, just before the U.S. response to the virus was devel­op­ing into what may well be the Great­est Polit­i­cal Fol­ly most Amer­i­cans have ever wit­nessed in their life­times. Mass death for prof­it and pow­er, colos­sal stu­pid­i­ty and bul­ly­ing ignorance—these were just the kinds of things that got Prine’s wheels turn­ing. His thoughts became folk poet­ry with teeth.

Prine’s tar­gets includ­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive demo­niza­tion of sin­gle moth­ers in “Unwed Fathers,” who “can’t be both­ered,” he sang, “They run like water, through a moun­tain stream.” In 1971, he told bel­liger­ent Amer­i­can nation­al­ists “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heav­en Any­more,” in a song he’d actu­al­ly writ­ten in the late 60s, call­ing out America’s “dirty lit­tle war.” He revis­it­ed this ever­green anti-war theme in 2005’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” a song that angered many fans. While Prine’s explic­it­ly polit­i­cal songs are only a small part of his cat­a­logue, his lyri­cism always clear­ly reflect­ed his beliefs.

“Bestow­ing dig­ni­ty on the over­looked and mar­gin­al­ized was a com­mon theme through­out Prine’s career,” writes Annie Zales­ki in an NPR Music trib­ute. “He became known for detailed vignettes about ordi­nary peo­ple that illus­trat­ed truths about soci­ety.” His mas­tery of this form made him the ulti­mate songwriter’s song­writer. But while he won two Gram­mys and sev­er­al oth­er dis­tin­guished awards, “induc­tions into mul­ti­ple song­writer halls of fame,” notes Eli Enis at Con­se­quence of Sound, “and gush­ing praise from peers like Bob Dylan, Bruce Spring­steen, and Tom Pet­ty,” Prine nev­er had a No. 1 hit, until now—in a final irony he would have appreciated—with his posthu­mous release, “I Remem­ber Every­thing.”

The song came out on June 11 and this week “debuted at the top of the Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, mak­ing it the high­est-chart­ing sin­gle of the late legend’s entire career.” It show­cas­es Prine’s abil­i­ty to make the per­son­al reflect larg­er social real­i­ties he may nev­er have seen com­ing but some­how tuned into nonethe­less. In this case, the sub­ject is a man who knows he’s out of time and wants to savor every mem­o­ry before he goes. Writ­ten with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Pat McLaugh­lin, the lyrics are gor­geous­ly bit­ter­sweet, touch­ing the depths of loss and reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty.

Prine’s per­for­mance at the top was record­ed last year by Gram­my-win­ning pro­duc­er Dave Cobb. “Giv­en that Prine passed away back in April fol­low­ing a bat­tle with coro­n­avirus, the song’s life-span­ning, self-reflec­tive lyrics are aching­ly pre­scient,” writes Enis. And it’s “almost too on-the-nose that the track was pre­sent­ed in a home per­for­mance con­text, months before that set­up would become nor­mal­ized for a world in quar­an­tine.” Prine always had an “uncan­ny abil­i­ty to address (if not pre­dict) the soci­etal and polit­i­cal zeit­geist,” Zales­ki wrote in April. No mat­ter how ugly the zeit­geist was, he nev­er let it dull his wit or cloud his eye for beau­ty.

 

I Remem­ber Every­thing

I’ve been down this road before
I remem­ber every tree
Every sin­gle blade of grass
Holds a spe­cial place for me
And I remem­ber every town
And every hotel room
And every song I ever sang
On a gui­tar out of tune

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Care­ful not to let my past
Go sneak­ing up on me
Got no future in my hap­pi­ness
Though regrets are very few
Some­times a lit­tle ten­der­ness
Was the best that I could do

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
Swim­ming pools of but­ter­flies
That slipped right through the net
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

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

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Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” and Hero Worship: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#50)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports, Television | July 2nd, 2020

The 10-part ESPN doc­u­men­tary dis­sect­ing Michael Jor­dan and the Bulls’ six cham­pi­onships has pro­vid­ed some much need­ed sports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, rop­ing in even sports haters with a mix of game high­lights and behind-the-scenes dra­ma.

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Seth from The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to inter­ro­gate the event: Was it actu­al­ly worth 10 hours of our time? Did its “time-jump­ing” struc­ture work? Its its treat­ment of Jor­dan real­ly “hagiog­ra­phy” sanc­ti­fy­ing the man, or is the pic­ture of grudge-hold­ing ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness actu­al­ly pret­ty repul­sive? Why was he like that? Why are sports amenable to cre­at­ing cul­tur­al icons out of its heroes in a way that, say, physics isn’t? Are we going to see many more of these long-form treat­ments of sports heroes?

For more dis­cus­sion, here are some arti­cles we looked at:

If you enjoyed this, check out our episode #25 with sports­cast­er Dave Rev­sine.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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How Ornette Coleman Shaped the Jazz World: An Introduction to His Irreverent Sound

in Music | July 1st, 2020

Ornette Cole­man “arrived in New York in 1959,” writes Philip Clark, “with a white plas­tic sax­o­phone and a set of ideas about impro­vi­sa­tion that would shake jazz to its big apple core.” Every big name in jazz was doing some­thing sim­i­lar at the time, invent­ing new styles and lan­guages. Cole­man went fur­ther out there than any­one, infu­ri­at­ing and frus­trat­ing oth­er jazz pio­neers like Miles Davis.

He called his the­o­ry “Har­molod­ics,” a Buck­min­ster Fuller-like meld­ing of “har­mo­ny,” “move­ment,” and “melody” that he coined in the 1970s. The man­i­festo explain­ing his ideas reads like psy­che­del­ic Dada:

—I play pure emo­tion

—In music, the only thing that mat­ters is whether you feel it or not

—Blow what you feel – any­thing. Play the thought, the idea in your mind – Break away from the con­ven­tion and stag­na­tion – escape!

—My music doesn’t have any real time, no met­ric time. It has time, but not in the sense that you can time it. It’s more like breath­ing – a nat­ur­al, freer time. Peo­ple have for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful it is to be nat­ur­al. Even in love.

—Music has no face. What­ev­er gives oxy­gen its pow­er, music is cut from the same cloth.

—It was when I real­ized I could make mis­takes that I decid­ed I was real­ly on to some­thing.

—I have found that by elim­i­nat­ing chords or keys or melodies as being the present idea of what you’re try­ing to feel i think you can play more emo­tion into the music. in oth­er words, you can have the har­mo­ny, melody, into­na­tion all blend­ing into one to the point of your emo­tion­al thought.

—There is a music that has the qual­i­ty to pre­serve life.

Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come pre­saged not only what jazz would, and could, become but also out­sider rock, from Cap­tain Beef­heart to The Roy­al Trux, and exper­i­men­tal music of all kinds. Cole­man resent­ed the idea the music should be sub­ject to cat­e­go­riza­tion or for­mal con­straints, or even that musi­cians need­ed have for­mal train­ing at all. All music is sound, he says, and sound is “as free,” he joked with Clark in a 2015 inter­view, “as the gas that pass­es through your butt.”

This irrev­er­ent atti­tude is typ­i­cal of Coleman’s approach to his art. Some of the high­lights of his ear­ly career, as laid out in the Poly­phon­ic video above—recording an entire album with his 10-year-old son on drums; get­ting punched by the drum­mer after his first New York gig—make him sound like jazz’s first punk, before there was any such thing as punk. He would go on to sit for a famous inter­view with Jacques Der­rida and become one of a hand­ful of musi­cians to win a Pulitzer Prize. The enig­mat­ic genius’s “audac­i­ty, vision, and tal­ent” has made him one of the most myth­i­cal fig­ures in music, a rep­u­ta­tion that is more than well-deserved. Get a clos­er look at his lega­cy at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

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

 

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A 1947 French Film Accurately Predicted Our 21st-Century Addiction to Smartphones

in Film, Television | July 1st, 2020

When we watch a movie from, say, twen­ty years ago, it strikes us that both noth­ing and every­thing has changed. Apart from their slight­ly bag­gi­er clothes, the peo­ple look the same as us. But where are their phones? Com­pared to the recent past, the look of life today has­n’t changed much, but thanks to the inter­net and even more so to smart­phones, the feel has changed enor­mous­ly. Most lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic pre­dic­tions of the future got this exact­ly wrong, envi­sion­ing flam­boy­ant aes­thet­ic trans­for­ma­tions atop com­plete­ly unchanged forms of human behav­ior and soci­ety.

But more than 70 years ago, J. K. Ray­mond-Mil­let’s film Télévi­sion: Oeil de Demain (“Tele­vi­sion: Eye of Tomor­row”) seems to have scored the bulls­eye few oth­er visions of the world ahead even aimed for.  “This is one extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tion in a work of sci­ence fic­tion,” wrote William Gib­son as he tweet­ed out a four-minute clip of the film that has recent­ly gone viral.

Though long regard­ed as a sci-fi prophet, Gib­son is the first to admit how lit­tle about tech­nol­o­gy he’s accu­rate­ly fore­seen: his break­out nov­el Neu­ro­mancer, for instance, fea­tures 21st-cen­tu­ry hack­ers mak­ing calls from pub­lic tele­phone booths.

Hence the impres­sive­ness, here in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry, of this vision of a future in which peo­ple stare near-con­stant­ly down at the screens of their hand­held devices: on the train, at the café (vis­it­ed, at 0:13, by what appears to be a time-trav­el­ing Gib­son him­self), in the street, on col­li­sion cours­es with fel­low screen-watch­ers on foot and in cars alike. These hand­held tele­vi­sions remind us of our mobile phones in more ways than one, not least in their being scuffed from sheer use. As with every astute pre­dic­tion of the future, all this may at first strike us denizens of the actu­al future as mun­dane — until we remem­ber that the pre­dic­tion was made in 1947.

Pro­duced as an edu­ca­tion­al film, Télévi­sion (view­able in full here) first shows and tells how the epony­mous, still-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy works, then goes on to imag­ine the forms in which it could poten­tial­ly sat­u­rate mod­ern soci­ety. These include not just the afore­men­tioned “minia­ture-tele­vi­sion devices in pub­lic places,” as schol­ar of tele­vi­sion Anne-Katrin Weber puts it, but “pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings con­duct­ed via pic­ture-phones,” “cars equipped with tele­vi­sion screens,” and “shops pro­mot­ing their goods on tele­vi­sion.”

We also see that “the small hand­held portable devices replace news­pa­pers and air ‘the infor­ma­tion broad­cast, or the polit­i­cal com­ment, the fash­ion show, or the sports bul­letin’, while the tele­vi­sion set at the trav­el agency replaces the paper cat­a­logues and invites poten­tial clients to ‘tele­vi­su­al­ly’ vis­it vaca­tion des­ti­na­tions.” Such tech­nol­o­gy will also offer more “inti­mate sights,” as when “the young woman, step­ping out of the show­er, has for­got­ten to turn off her tele­phone-cam­era and reveals her­self naked to the caller.” Yes, of course, “for­got­ten” — but then, this approach­es aspects of the future in which we live that even the bold­est tech­no­log­i­cal prophets nev­er dared con­sid­er.

via Kot­tke/William Gib­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

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

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How Two Teenage Dutch Sisters Ended Up Joining the Resistance and Assassinating Nazis During World War II

in History | July 1st, 2020

Ger­many invad­ed the Nether­lands in 1940 and quick­ly over­pow­ered the country’s small forces. Nazis arrest­ed and deport­ed Jews, cre­at­ed forced labor, strict­ly rationed food, and banned all non-Nazi orga­ni­za­tions. “Almost every Dutch per­son was affect­ed by the con­se­quences of the occu­pa­tion,” the Verzets Resis­tance Muse­um writes. “The choic­es and dilem­mas fac­ing the pop­u­la­tion became more far reach­ing.” Often those choic­es were stark: Col­lab­o­rate and live? Or resist and will­ing­ly put one­self at risk of prison or death?

Two sis­ters, Fred­die and Tru­us Over­stee­gen, 14 and 16 years old dur­ing the Ger­man inva­sion, chose the lat­ter course of action. Along with 19-year-old Han­nie Schaft, a Dutch nation­al hero the Nazis called “the girl with the red hair,” they did things they cer­tain­ly nev­er imag­ined they would, killing sol­diers and col­lab­o­ra­tors in order to save lives. The sis­ters learned their first resis­tance lessons at home. They were raised in the city of Haar­lem by their work­ing-class, com­mu­nist moth­er, Tri­jn, who “taught the girls com­pas­sion for those less for­tu­nate,” writes Jake Rossen at Men­tal Floss.

The fam­i­ly shel­tered Jews, dis­si­dents, and gays flee­ing Ger­many in the 1930s. “When the Nazis invad­ed the Nether­lands,” Rossen notes, “Fred­die and Tru­us hand­ed out pam­phlets oppos­ing the occu­pa­tion and plas­tered warn­ings over pro­pa­gan­da posters.” The Dutch resis­tance asked the girls to join them, and their moth­er agreed, know­ing lit­tle of what lay in store.

Fred­die and Tru­us were, for a time, the only two women in the sev­en-per­son rebel­lion dubbed the Haar­lem Coun­cil of Resis­tance. After being recruit­ed by com­man­der Frans van der Wiel in 1941, the two learned the basics of sab­o­tage, pick­ing up tricks like how to rig rail­ways and bridges with dyna­mite so trav­el paths would be cut off; how to fire a weapon; and how to roam unde­tect­ed through an area pep­pered with Nazi sol­diers. The lat­ter abil­i­ty was a result of their appear­ance. With her hair in braids, Fred­die was said to have looked as young as 12 years old. Few sol­diers took notice of the two girls as they rode bicy­cles through occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry, though they were secret­ly act­ing as couri­ers, trans­port­ing paper­work and weapons for the resis­tance. The duo burned down a Nazi ware­house unde­tect­ed. They escort­ed small chil­dren and refugees to hid­ing spots and secured false iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for them, which they con­sid­ered of para­mount impor­tance even as Allied bombs went off over­head.

The sis­ters lured SS offi­cers into death­traps, act­ing as look­outs while fight­ers killed the Ger­mans. They soon “grad­u­at­ed to elim­i­nat­ing their own tar­gets, which Fred­die would lat­er describe as ‘liq­ui­da­tions,’” gun­ning down Nazis from their bicy­cles. “Some­times, Fred­die said, she would shoot a man and then feel a strange com­pul­sion to try to help him up.” It’s a chill­ing image of a resis­tance fight­er who is also a child sol­dier in a war she can­not avoid.

“There were a lot of women involved in the resis­tance in the Nether­lands,” says Bas von Ben­da-Beck­mann, a for­mer researcher at the Nether­lands’ Insti­tute for War, Holo­caust and Geno­cide Stud­ies, “but not so much in the way these girls were. There are not that many exam­ples of women who actu­al­ly shot col­lab­o­ra­tors.” The women nev­er revealed how many peo­ple they “liq­ui­dat­ed.” When asked in inter­views, History.com notes, “Fred­die would tell people…she and her sis­ter were sol­diers, and sol­diers don’t say.”

Han­nie was even­tu­al­ly cap­tured and exe­cut­ed. The Over­stee­gen sis­ters sur­vived the war and lived into their 90s, pass­ing away with­in two years of each oth­er: Tru­us in 2016 and Fred­die in 2018. The trau­mat­ic toll these events took on Fred­die was evi­dent to the end of her life. “If you ask me,” her son Remi Dekker said after her death, “In her mind [the war] was still going on, and on. It didn’t stop, even until the last day.”

The Over­stee­gen sis­ters were part of a hand­ful of Dutch resis­tance fight­ers who lived into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Anoth­er resis­tance hero, Sel­ma van de Perre, is still alive at 97 and has pub­lished a book about her expe­ri­ence and the many oth­er Jew­ish resis­tance fight­ers in the Nether­lands dur­ing the war. The coun­try “spawned one of Europe’s most for­mi­da­ble anti-Nazi net­works,” the Pitts­burgh Jew­ish Chron­i­cle points out, thanks to the brav­ery of young fight­ers like Schaft, the Over­stee­gan sis­ters, and van de Perre. Learn more at the Verzets Resis­tance Muse­um.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret Stu­dent Group Who Took on the Nazis: An Intro­duc­tion to “The White Rose”

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

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

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When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

in Music | June 30th, 2020

When Amer­i­can rock and roll made its way to the UK in the 1950s and 60s, along with a bur­geon­ing folk and blues revival, many young British fans hadn’t been con­di­tioned to think of music in the same way as their U.S. coun­ter­parts. “Unlike racial­ly seg­re­gat­ed Amer­i­cans,” for exam­ple, “the Bea­t­les didn’t see—or hear—the dif­fer­ence between Elvis and Chuck Berry,” writes Joseph Tirella, “between the Ever­ly Broth­ers and the Mar­velettes.” They also couldn’t see play­ing to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences as just one of those social cus­toms one polite­ly observes when tour­ing abroad.

In 1964, at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia, the band was booked to play Florida’s Gator Bowl in Jack­sonville just after a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane and months after the intro­duc­tion of the Civ­il Rights Act into Con­gres­sion­al delib­er­a­tions. Major polit­i­cal shifts were hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and would have hap­pened with or with­out the Bea­t­les tak­ing a stand for inte­gra­tion.

But they took a stand nonethe­less and used their celebri­ty pow­er to show how mean­ing­less the sys­tem of Apartheid in the South actu­al­ly was. It could, in fact, be annulled by fiat should a group with as much lever­age as the Fab Four refuse to play along.

The rid­er for the Sep­tem­ber 11 con­cert “explic­it­ly cit­ed the band’s refusal to per­form in a seg­re­gat­ed facil­i­ty,” writes Ken­neth Wom­ack at Salon. When con­cert pro­mot­ers pushed back, John Lennon flat­ly stat­ed in a press con­fer­ence, “We nev­er play to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences, and we aren’t going to start now. I’d soon­er lose our appear­ance mon­ey.” Despite storm dam­age and evac­u­a­tions, the 32,000-seat sta­di­um had sold out. The Gator Bowl had to relent and deseg­re­gate for the evening’s show.

One of the concert’s atten­dees, his­to­ri­an Dr. Kit­ty Oliv­er, who appears in the clip at the top from Ron Howard’s Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary Eight Days a Week, was a young Bea­t­les fan who hadn’t heard the news about the show deseg­re­gat­ing. Deter­mined to go, and sav­ing up enough mon­ey to score a seat near the front row, she remem­bers fear­ing the atmos­phere she would encounter:

At the time, I didn’t know any­thing about the group’s press con­fer­ence announce­ment refus­ing to per­form for an audi­ence where Black patrons would be forcibly seg­re­gat­ed from Whites, prob­a­bly rel­e­gat­ed to the worse seats far­thest away from the stage and maybe sub­ject­ed to a threat­en­ing atmos­phere if they showed up.

Instead, she writes, “the crowd rose, thun­der­ous, in uni­son, when the Bea­t­les took the stage. Then tun­nel vision set in: Eyes glued to the front, I sang along to ‘She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah…’ full voiced, just as loud­ly as every­one, all of us lost in the sound.” The band “left behind a lega­cy that night,” writes Wom­ack, hav­ing “stood up to insti­tu­tion­al racism and won.” It was not a cause-of-the-moment for them but a deep con­vic­tion all four mem­bers shared, as Paul McCart­ney explains above in an inter­view with reporter Lar­ry Kane, who fol­lowed the band on their first Amer­i­can tour.

McCart­ney had been so moved by the events in Lit­tle Rock in 1957 that almost a decade lat­er, he remem­bered them in his song “Black­bird,” as he explains above. This year, he recalled the band’s stand against seg­re­ga­tion in Jack­sonville and com­ment­ed, “I feel sick and angry that here we are, almost 60 years lat­er, and the world is in shock at the hor­rif­ic scenes of the sense­less mur­der of George Floyd at the hands of police racism, along with the count­less oth­ers that came before. I want jus­tice for George Floyd’s fam­i­ly, I want jus­tice for all those who have died and suf­fered. Say­ing noth­ing is not an option.” When it came to issues of injus­tice, even at the height of their fame, the Bea­t­les were will­ing to say—and, more impor­tant­ly, do—something about it even if it cost them.

via Salon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

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

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An Immaculate Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Supper Digitized by Google: View It in High Resolution Online

in Art | June 30th, 2020


Roman­tic poets told us that great art is eter­nal and tran­scen­dent. They also told us every­thing made by human hands is bound to end in ruin and decay. Both themes were inspired by the redis­cov­ery and renewed fas­ci­na­tion for the arts of antiq­ui­ty in Europe and Egypt. It was a time of renewed appre­ci­a­tion for mon­u­men­tal works of art, which hap­pened to coin­cide with a peri­od when they came under con­sid­er­able threat from loot­ers, van­dals, and invad­ing armies.

One work of art that appeared on the itin­er­ary of every Grand Tour­ing aris­to­crat, Leonardo’s da Vinci’s fres­co The Last Sup­per in Milan, was made espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble when the refec­to­ry in which it was paint­ed became an armory and sta­ble for Napoleon’s troops in 1796. The sol­diers scratched out the apos­tles’ eyes and lobbed rocks at the paint­ing. Lat­er, in 1800, Goethe wrote of the room flood­ing with two feet of water, and the build­ing was also used as a prison.

As every cura­tor and con­ser­va­tion­ist knows well, grand ideas about art gloss over impor­tant details. Art is bound to par­tic­u­lar cul­tures, his­to­ries and mate­ri­als. One of Leonardo’s most influ­en­tial fres­coes dur­ing the Renais­sance, for exam­ple, almost com­plete­ly melt­ed right after he fin­ished it, due to his insis­tence on using oils, which he also mixed with tem­pera in The Last Sup­per. Just a few decades after that paint­ing’s com­ple­tion, one Ital­ian writer would describe it as “blurred and col­or­less com­pared with what I remem­ber of it when I saw it as a boy.”

His­tor­i­cal decay is one thing. Recent fires at Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um and Notre Dame served as stark reminders that acci­dents and poor plan­ning can rob the world of cher­ished cul­tur­al trea­sures all at once. Insti­tu­tions have been dig­i­tiz­ing their col­lec­tions with as much detail and pre­ci­sion as pos­si­ble. For their part, England’s Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts has part­nered with Google Arts & Cul­ture to ren­der sev­er­al of their most prized works online, includ­ing a copy of The Last Sup­per on can­vas, made by Leonardo’s stu­dents from his orig­i­nal work.

More than any oth­er con­tem­po­rary descrip­tion of the paint­ing, this faith­ful copy, prob­a­bly made by artists who worked on the fres­co itself, pro­vides art his­to­ri­ans “key insights into the long-fad­ed mas­ter­work in Milan,” and lets us see the vivid shades that awed its first view­ers. Pre­sent­ed in “Gigapix­el clar­i­ty,” notes Art­net, the huge dig­i­tal image with its “ultra high res­o­lu­tion” was “made pos­si­ble by a pro­pri­etary Google cam­era.” As you zoom in to the tini­est details, facts appear about the paint­ing and its larg­er, more bat­tered orig­i­nal in Milan.

It is either a “mir­a­cle” that The Last Sup­per has sur­vived, as Áine Cain writes at Busi­ness Insid­er, or the result of an “unend­ing fight” to pre­serve the work, as Kevin Wong details at Endgad­get. Or maybe some mys­te­ri­ous mix­ture of chance and near-hero­ic effort. But what has sur­vived is not what Leonar­do paint­ed, but rather the best recon­struc­tion to emerge from cen­turies of destruc­tion and restora­tion. Get clos­er than any­one ever could to a fac­sim­i­le of the orig­i­nal and see details from Leonardo’s work that have left no oth­er trace in his­to­ry. Explore it here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

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

 

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