Nikola Tesla’s Grades from High School & University: A Fascinating Glimpse

in History, Science | May 18th, 2020

In the his­to­ry of sci­ence, few peo­ple got a raw­er deal than Niko­la Tes­la. Cru­el­ly cheat­ed and over­shad­owed by Edi­son and Mar­coni (who patent­ed the radio tech­nol­o­gy Tes­la invent­ed), the bril­liant intro­vert didn’t stand a chance in the cut­throat busi­ness world in which his rivals moved with ease. Every biog­ra­ph­er por­trays Tes­la as Edison’s per­fect foil: the lat­ter played the con­sum­mate show­man and savvy patent hog, where Tes­la was a reclu­sive mys­tic and, as one writer put it, “the world’s sor­cer­er.”

“Unlike Tes­la,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Michael Bur­gan, “Edi­son had bare­ly gone to school: Tes­la was amazed that a man with almost no for­mal edu­ca­tion could invent so bril­liant­ly.” (He would have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion of Edi­son years lat­er.)

Tes­la began his own edu­ca­tion, as you can learn in the sur­vey of his high school and uni­ver­si­ty grades above, with much promise, but he was forced to drop out after his third year in col­lege when his father passed away and he was left with­out the means to con­tin­ue. As PBS writes, Tes­la showed pre­co­cious tal­ent ear­ly on.

Pas­sion­ate about math­e­mat­ics and sci­ences, Tes­la had his heart set on becom­ing an engi­neer but was “con­stant­ly oppressed” by his father’s insis­tence that he enter the priest­hood. At age sev­en­teen, Tes­la con­tract­ed cholera and crafti­ly exact­ed an impor­tant con­ces­sion from his father: the old­er Tes­la promised his son that if he sur­vived, he would be allowed to attend the renowned Aus­tri­an Poly­tech­nic School at Graz.

It was dur­ing his time at tech­ni­cal school that Tes­la first devised the idea of alter­nat­ing cur­rent, though he could not yet artic­u­late a work­ing design (he was told by a pro­fes­sor that the feat would be akin to build­ing a per­pet­u­al motion machine). He solved the engi­neer­ing chal­lenge after leav­ing school and going to work for the Cen­tral Tele­phone Exchange in Budapest.

While walk­ing through a city park with a friend, recit­ing Goethe’s Faust from mem­o­ry, Tes­la recounts in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, a pas­sage inspired him “like a flash of light­en­ing” and he “drew with a stick on the sand the dia­gram shown six years lat­er in my address before the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Elec­tri­cal Engi­neers.” The sto­ry is one of many in which Tes­la, a vora­cious read­er and infi­nite­ly curi­ous auto­di­dact, draws on the exten­sive knowl­edge that he gath­ered through self-edu­ca­tion.

His patent applications—Croatian schol­ar Danko Plevnik notes in the intro­duc­tion to a series of essays on Tesla’s self-schooling—show “the eru­di­tion of a learned man, broad knowl­edge which by far sur­passed the knowl­edge he could acquire through for­mal edu­ca­tion only.” In his lec­tures, arti­cles, and speech­es, Tes­la demon­strates a “famil­iar­i­ty with phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence his­to­ry and inven­tion-relat­ed thought, method­ol­o­gy of sci­ence, as well as oth­er areas of knowl­edge that were not includ­ed in the sub­jects and cours­es he attend­ed through his school­ing.”

Not only did he mem­o­rize entire books of poet­ry, but he could accu­rate­ly fore­see the future of tech­nol­o­gy, his keen insight honed both by his stud­ies of the sci­ences and the human­i­ties. Until fair­ly recent­ly Plevnik writes, “Tesla’s edu­ca­tion was referred to spo­rad­i­cal­ly, as if it had not influ­enced his sci­en­tif­ic reflec­tion, exper­i­ment­ing and inven­tions.” That is in large part, many Tes­la schol­ars now argue, because the best edu­ca­tion Tes­la received was the one he gave him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la: As Told by Tech­noil­lu­sion­ist Mar­co Tem­pest

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Elec­tric Pho­to of Niko­la Tes­la, 1899

Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fas­ci­nat­ing Look at His Report Cards

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

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DEVO Is Now Selling COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment: Energy Dome Face Shields

in Current Affairs, Design, Fashion, Health, Music | May 18th, 2020

Accord­ing to DEVO’s co-prin­ci­ple song­writer and bassist Ger­ald Casale, the exper­i­men­tal art band turned ear­ly MTV pop-punk dar­lings were “pro-infor­ma­tion, anti stu­pid con­for­mi­ty and knew that the strug­gle for free­dom against tyran­ny is nev­er-end­ing.”

Their sin­gu­lar per­for­mance garb also set them apart, and none more so than the bright red plas­tic Ener­gy Dome hel­mets they donned 40 years ago this month, upon the release of their third album, Free­dom of Choice.

The record, which the band con­ceived of as a funk album, explod­ed into main­stream con­scious­ness. The visu­als may have made an even more last­ing impact than the music, which includ­ed the chart top­ping “Whip It.”

Even the most anti-New Wave met­al­head could iden­ti­fy the source of those domes, which have been likened to upturned flower pots, dog bowls, car uri­nals, and lamp shades.

What they prob­a­bly don’t know is the Ener­gy Dome was “designed accord­ing to ancient zig­gu­rat mount pro­por­tions used in votive wor­ship. Like the mounds, it col­lects ener­gy and recir­cu­lates it. In this case, the dome col­lects ener­gy that escapes from the crown of the human head and push­es it back into the Medu­la Oblon­ga­ta for increased men­tal ener­gy.”

Thus sayeth Casale, any­way.

DEVO’s 2020 con­cert plans were, of course, scotched by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, but the band has found an alter­na­tive way to mark the 40th anniver­sary of Free­dom of Choice and the birth of its icon­ic head­gear.

In addi­tion to face masks embla­zoned with the famil­iar red tiered shape, DEVO­tees with mon­ey and con­fi­dence to spare can ante up for a DIY Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment kit that trans­forms a stan­dard-issue Ener­gy Dome into a face shield.

It’s worth not­ing that before tak­ing your con­vert­ed ener­gy dome out for a par­ti­cle deflect­ing spin, you’ll have to truf­fle up a hard hat sus­pen­sion lin­er and install it for a prop­er fit.

Casale her­ald­ed the open­ing of DEVO’s merch store in a Face­book post:

Here we are 40 years lat­er, liv­ing in the alter­nate real­i­ty night­mare spawned by Covid 19 and the botched response of our world “lead­ers” to do the right thing quick­ly. We are not exag­ger­at­ing when we say that 2020 could be the last time you might be able to exer­cise your free­dom of choice. If you don’t use it, you can cer­tain­ly lose it.

Uh, he’s talk­ing about vot­ing, right, rather than storm­ing the capi­tol build­ing to demand the pre­ma­ture reopen­ing of inessen­tial busi­ness­es or mak­ing out­sized threats in response to gro­cery store mask poli­cies?

Per­haps the pow­er of the Ener­gy Dome is such that it could reawak­en the pro-infor­ma­tion, anti-stu­pid­i­ty sen­si­bil­i­ties of some dor­mant DEVO fans among the unmasked rank and file.

As Casale him­self posit­ed in an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer: “You make it taste good so that they don’t real­ize there’s med­i­cine in it.”

Pre-order masks and PPE kits from DEVO’s offi­cial merch store.

Down­load instruc­tions for installing a hard hat sus­pen­sion replace­ment inside the Ener­gy Dome pri­or to attach­ing the shield.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Free Tem­plate for an Anti-Virus Face Shield: Down­load, and Then Use a Print­er, Paper & Scis­sors

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Archive of 1,000 “Peel Sessions” Available Online: Hear David Bowie, Bob Marley, Elvis Costello & Others Play in the Studio of Legendary BBC DJ John Peel

in Music, Radio | May 18th, 2020

Before he became the most influ­en­tial music broad­cast­er of all time on the BBC, John Peel had to become John Peel. Born and raised in Eng­land, he spent a stretch of his ear­ly twen­ties in the Unit­ed States, work­ing for a cot­ton pro­duc­er (his father’s indus­try), sell­ing insur­ance, and writ­ing punch­card com­put­er pro­grams before find­ing his way onto the air­waves. Host­ing work in such locales as Dal­las, Okla­homa City, and San Bernardi­no primed him to return to his home­land and take his radio career under­ground — or rather off­shore, to the for­mer minesweep­er anchored in the North Sea from which Radio Lon­don broad­cast in the mid-1960s. In those days, British “pirate radio” took place on actu­al ships, and it was on Radio Lon­don’s MV Galaxy that the returned son of Heswall, born John Robert Park­er Raven­scroft, quite lit­er­al­ly made his name.

Pirate radio exist­ed because the BBC could­n’t, or would­n’t, play the quan­ti­ty and vari­ety of pop and rock music younger audi­ences demand­ed — and over in the States, were already get­ting. After Radio Lon­don’s 1967 shut­down, Peel joined the Bee­b’s new­ly launched pop sta­tion, Radio 1. But even there lim­i­ta­tions con­tin­ued to apply, and today they sound dra­con­ian: the Musi­cians’ Union and Phono­graph­ic Per­for­mance Lim­it­ed, for instance, once lim­it­ed the num­ber of com­mer­cial­ly released records that could be played on air.

The BBC’s solu­tion was to cov­er pop­u­lar songs with its in-house orches­tra; Peel’s less square solu­tion, as it evolved, was to bring the bands in to do it them­selves. Over Peel’s 37-year career at the BBC, these “Peel Ses­sions” would num­ber over 4,000, about a thou­sand of which you can enjoy on Youtube today.

Com­piled by a fan named Dave Strick­son, this list of Peel Ses­sions avail­able on Youtube goes all the way from the Man­cun­ian pop-punk of A Cer­tain Ratio in 1979 and 1981 to the Glaswe­gian new wave of Zones in 1978. (Yes, the list tech­ni­cal­ly begins with the numer­al-fea­tur­ing acts as 14 Iced Bears and 23 Ski­doo.) In between, Peel’s guests include A Flock of Seag­ulls (1981), Bil­ly Bragg (1983, 1991), Bob Mar­ley and the Wail­ers (1973), Cocteau Twins (1982, 1983, 1984), David Bowie and the Spi­ders from Mars (1972), Elvis Costel­lo & the Attrac­tions (1977, 1978, 1978, 1980), Fair­port Con­ven­tion (1968, 1969, 1969, 1974), Joy Divi­sion (1979), Mor­ris­sey (2004), Roxy Music (1972, 1972), Shon­en Knife (1992), Son­ic Youth (1986, 1988, 1989), Tears for Fears (1982), The Jesus and Mary Chain (1984, 1985, 1985, 1988, 1989), and Yo La Ten­go (1997).

And of course, Strick­son’s list also includes no few­er than eight Peel Ses­sions by The Fall (1978, 1980, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1991, 2003, 2004), the leg­endary DJ’s favorite band — or at least the band that took up the most shelf space in his for­mi­da­ble record col­lec­tion. But as Peel’s fans know, he only met The Fal­l’s mas­ter­mind Mark E. Smith (like Peel, an out­spo­ken North­ern­er) two brief times in his life. One such fan, a Metafil­ter com­menter by the name of Paul Slade, notes that “Peel used to make a point of stay­ing away from ses­sion record­ings, part­ly because he did­n’t want to hear the new music till it went out live. That way, he knew he’d be able to react hon­est­ly on-air to any­thing in the ses­sion that sur­prised or delight­ed him.” His between-song com­ments do indeed con­sti­tute an unex­pect­ed charm of these vin­tage broad­casts, though sur­pris­ing­ly many have noth­ing to do with the ses­sion at hand. Peel undoubt­ed­ly loved music, but he seems to have loved Liv­er­pool Foot­ball Club even more.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Radio Car­o­line, the Pirate Radio Ship That Rocked the British Music World (1965)

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

Stream 935 Songs That Appeared in “The John Peel Fes­tive 50” from 1976 to 2004: The Best Songs of the Year, as Select­ed by the Beloved DJ’s Lis­ten­ers

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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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Roger Waters Performs a Socially-Distanced Version of Pink Floyd’s “Mother”

in Music | May 17th, 2020

The video comes pref­aced with these words: “Social dis­tanc­ing is a nec­es­sary evil in Covid world. Watch­ing ‘Moth­er’ reminds me just how irre­place­able the joy of being in a band is.”

He’s joined here by his band: vocal­ists Hol­ly Lae­sig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius, key­boardist Drew Erick­son, gui­tarists Dave Kilmin­ster and Jonathan Wil­son, bassist Gus Seyf­fert, and drum­mer Joey Waronker.

Find more social­ly dis­tanced per­for­mances in the Relat­eds below.

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

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

via Jam­base

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Neil Finn Sings a Love­ly Ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Live from Home

Juil­liard Stu­dents & the New York Phil­har­mon­ic Per­form Ravel’s Bolero While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

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Japanese Health Manual Created During the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic Offers Timeless Wisdom: Stay Away from Others, Cover Your Mouth & Nose, and More

in Music | May 15th, 2020

In August of 1918, a group of sumo wrestlers returned to Japan from an exhi­bi­tion in Tai­wan. When they came down with an ill­ness it was first diag­nosed as bron­chi­tis or pneu­mo­nia. In fact, they had returned with the Span­ish Flu.

The “Sumo Flu,” as it was first called by some in the Japan­ese press, was not tak­en as seri­ous­ly as the more preva­lent cholera, which had a high­er death rate at the time. But cholera was not as infec­tious. By the time the Span­ish Flu had burned its way through the pop­u­la­tion of Japan it would leave behind near­ly half a mil­lion dead, either from the flu itself or sec­ondary health com­pli­ca­tions.

These posters (seen above and through­out this post) were part of Japan’s Cen­tral San­i­tary Bureau’s plan to edu­cate the pub­lic, part of a 455-man­u­al that detailed symp­toms and pre­scrip­tions, and sug­gest­ed four rules to avoid con­tract­ing the virus and spread­ing it to oth­ers.

Right now, a lot of us are try­ing to do num­ber one–Stay Away from Others–without going crazy, some of us are fol­low­ing num­ber two (Cov­er Your Mouth and Nose), everybody’s wait­ing for num­ber three (Get Vac­ci­nat­ed), and if you replace “Gar­gle” (Rule Num­ber 4) with “anx­i­ety drink­ing,” well we’ve got num­ber four cov­ered.

Back up to Num­ber Three: the vac­cine in ques­tion at that time helped with symp­toms of pneu­mo­nia, which was a sec­ondary cause of death. If a person’s immune sys­tem could fight off the lung infec­tion part of the flu, they stood a bet­ter chance of sur­vival.

And for Num­ber Two, the Japan­ese response of wear­ing face masks to fight infec­tion has con­tin­ued to this day. Any­one who has vis­it­ed Japan, espe­cial­ly dur­ing cold and flu sea­son, will have noticed the rou­tine use of masks. Will oth­er coun­tries see this become a tra­di­tion in the future? We will have to wait and find out.

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment of Japan, as well as most places around the globe in 1918, did not have the sci­ence or knowl­edge to treat the virus or enforce rules. A lot of deci­sions for the pub­lic were left to var­i­ous pre­fec­tures to decide. Most doc­tors and researchers were already busy fight­ing cholera (as men­tioned above) and tuber­cu­lo­sis. For a while, the virus was misiden­ti­fied as a bac­te­ria. And just like in Amer­i­ca in 1919, the Japan­ese pub­lic thought things had got­ten back to nor­mal when the ini­tial cas­es dropped–they were sad­ly mis­tak­en and, after let­ting its guard down, the Japan­ese were hit with a sec­ond wave, with a mor­tal­i­ty rate five times that of the first wave. As it spread from the city to the coun­try­side, the Span­ish Flu wiped out entire vil­lages. Quack­ery and snake oil sales­men promised mir­a­cle cures. Oth­ers turned to spir­i­tu­al­ism, prayer, and spe­cial devo­tion­al tem­ple vis­its. The virus didn’t care.

But it also soon fiz­zled out. Japan report­ed no new cas­es in June of 1919, and that was that. (Cur­rent­ly, that does not seem to be the case in Wuhan or Ger­many.)

As the say­ing goes, his­to­ry doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes, and so take these posters as a warn­ing and as a form of reas­sur­ance that we will get through this.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pan­dem­ic Lit­er­a­ture: A Meta-List of the Books You Should Read in Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Down­load Full Issues of MAVO, the Japan­ese Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine That Announced a New Mod­ernist Move­ment (1923–1925)

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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Breathtakingly-Detailed Tibetan Book Printed 40 Years Before the Gutenberg Bible

in Books, History, Religion | May 15th, 2020

The Guten­berg Bible went to press in the year 1454. We now see it as the first piece of mass media, print­ed as it was with the then-cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy of met­al mov­able type. But in the his­to­ry of aes­thet­ic achieve­ments in book-print­ing, the Guten­berg Bible was­n’t with­out its prece­dents. To find tru­ly impres­sive exam­ples requires look­ing in lands far from Europe: take, for instance, this “Sino-Tibetan con­certi­na-fold­ed book, print­ed in Bei­jing in 1410, con­tain­ing San­skrit dhāranīs and illus­tra­tions of pro­tec­tive mantra-dia­grams and deities, wood­block-print­ed in bright red ink on heavy white paper,” whose “breath­tak­ing­ly detailed print­ing” pre­dates Guten­berg by 40 years.

That descrip­tion comes from a Twit­ter user called Incunab­u­la (a term refer­ring to ear­ly books), a self-described bib­lio­phile and rare book col­lec­tor who posts about “the his­to­ry of writ­ing, and of the book, from cave paint­ing to cuneiform tablet to papyrus scroll to medieval codex to Kin­dle.”

Incunab­u­la’s six-tweet thread on this ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry Sino-Tibetan book includes both pic­tures and descrip­tions of this remark­able arti­fac­t’s inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or.

Its text, writ­ten in the Tibetan and Nepalese Rañ­janā script, “is print­ed twice, once on each side of the paper, so that the book may be read in the Indo-Tibetan man­ner by turn­ing the pages from right to left or in Chi­nese style by turn­ing from left to right.” The book’s con­tent is “a sequence of Tibetan Bud­dhist recita­tion texts,” or chants, all “pro­tect­ed at front and back by thick­er board-like wrap­pers,” each “cov­ered in fine pen-draw­ings in gold paint on black of 20 icons of the Tathā­gatas.”

Incunab­u­la has also post­ed exten­sive­ly about Bud­dhist texts from oth­er times and lands: a Thai fold­ing man­u­script from the mid-19th cen­tu­ry telling of a monk’s jour­neys to heav­en and hell; a Mon­go­lian man­u­script from the same peri­od that trans­lates the Čoy­i­jod Dagi­ni, “a pop­u­lar Bud­dhist text about virtue, sin and the after­life”; an exam­ple of “Japan­ese Bud­dhist print­ing 150 years before Guten­berg”; an “8th cen­tu­ry Khotanese amulet­ic scroll from the Silk Road.” The cre­ators of these texts would have meant the words they were pre­serv­ing to sur­vive them — but our mar­veling at them hun­dreds, even more than a thou­sand years lat­er, would sure­ly have come as a sur­prise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Old­est Book Print­ed with Mov­able Type is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Teach­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized Online

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The World’s Largest Col­lec­tion of Tibetan Bud­dhist Lit­er­a­ture Now Online

Free Online Course: Robert Thurman’s Intro­duc­tion to Tibetan Bud­dhism (Record­ed at Colum­bia U)

Tibetan Musi­cal Nota­tion Is Beau­ti­ful

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

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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John Mayer Teaches Guitarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Masterclass

in Music | May 15th, 2020

Play­ing the blues is easy, many a bud­ding gui­tarist thinks—their star­ry eyes fixed on the math­i­est, prog­gi­est, djent-iest (or what­ev­er) gui­tar pyrotech­nics of their favorite 7- or 8‑string slinger. Learn a minor pen­ta­ton­ic blues scale, a few barre chords, some sexy bends, a 12-bar pro­gres­sion and you’re off, right? Why spend time try­ing to play like Albert King (Jimi Hendrix’s idol) or Bud­dy Guy when you’re reach­ing for the ulti­mate sweep-pick­ing tech­nique, or what­ev­er, in the com­pet­i­tive games­man­ship of gui­tar hero­ics?

I’ve encoun­tered this kind of think­ing among gui­tar play­ers quite often and find it baf­fling giv­en the blues essen­tial place in rock and roll, met­al included—and giv­en how much more there is to play­ing blues than the stereo­typ­i­cal for­mu­las to which the music gets reduced. Black Sab­bath start­ed as a blues band, Led Zep­pelin nev­er stopped being one, and it was Robert John­son who turned the dev­il into rock­’s brood­ing, Byron­ic hero.

The cross­roads sto­ry has been told in hind­sight as a metaphor for John­son’s trou­bled, curs­ed­ly short life. But at the time, it was about envy on the part of his fel­low blues­men, who couldn’t believe how good he’d got­ten in seem­ing­ly no time. Want to emerge from quar­an­tine and inspire sim­i­lar envy? The dev­il isn’t offer­ing online lessons, but you can learn the blues from con­tem­po­rary leg­end, John May­er, who post­ed the les­son above on his Insta­gram Live a few days back.

As with all such online lessons, every­one will respond dif­fer­ent­ly to the teacher’s style. The for­mat does not allow for Q&A, obvi­ous­ly, but you can pause and rewind indef­i­nite­ly. May­er doesn’t move too quick­ly; if you’re an inter­me­di­ate play­er with a grasp on the basics, it won’t be too hard to keep up. He comes across as easy­go­ing and hum­ble (not a qual­i­ty he’s always been known for), and explains con­cepts clear­ly, relat­ing them back to the fret­board each time.

As always, one will get out of the les­son what they put into it. Maybe no one will accuse you of con­spir­ing with the evil one when you’ve mas­tered some of these tech­niques and incor­po­rat­ed them into your own play­ing. But you won’t have to lie, exact­ly, if you tell peo­ple you’ve been jam­ming with John May­er. Or, if that’s not cool in your cir­cles, come up with your own legend—abduction by a con­spir­a­cy of blues-play­ing aliens, per­haps.

How­ev­er you explain it to your friends when we get out of the wood­shed, I have no doubt that becom­ing a bet­ter blues play­er can improve what­ev­er else you plan to do with the gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

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

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The Largest & Most Detailed Photograph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

in Art | May 14th, 2020

What makes great paint­ings great? Unless you can see them for yourself—and be awed, or not, by their phys­i­cal presence—the answers will gen­er­al­ly come sec­ond-hand, through the words of art his­to­ri­ans, crit­ics, cura­tors, gal­lerists, etc. We can study art in repro­duc­tion, but see­ing, for exam­ple, the paint­ings of Rem­brandt van Rijn in the flesh presents an entire­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence than see­ing them on the page or screen.

Late­ly, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing, and the bound­aries blur­ring between a vir­tu­al and an in-per­son expe­ri­ence of art. It’s pos­si­ble with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to have expe­ri­ences no ordi­nary muse­um-goer has had, of course—like walk­ing into a VR Sal­vador Dalí paint­ing, or through a sim­u­lat­ed Ver­meer muse­um in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty.

But these tech­no­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions are nov­el­ties, in a way. Like famous paint­ings silkscreened on t‑shirts or glazed on cof­fee mugs, they warp and dis­tort the works they rep­re­sent.

That is not the case, how­ev­er, with the lat­est dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion of Rembrandt’s grand­est and most exclu­sive paint­ing, The Night Watch, a 44.8 gigapix­el image of the work that the muse­um has “released online in a zoomable inter­face,” notes Kot­tke. “The lev­el of detail avail­able here is incred­i­ble.” Even that descrip­tion seems like under­state­ment. The image comes to us from the same team respon­si­ble for the painting’s mul­ti-phase, live-streamed restora­tion.

The Rijksmuseum’s imag­ing team led by data­sci­en­tist Robert Erd­mann made this pho­to­graph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 expo­sures. The 24 rows of 22 pic­tures were stitched togeth­er dig­i­tal­ly with the aid of neur­al net­works. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapix­els (44,804,687,500 pix­els), and the dis­tance between each pix­el is 20 microme­tres (0.02 mm). This enables the sci­en­tists to study the paint­ing in detail remote­ly. The image will also be used to accu­rate­ly track any future age­ing process­es tak­ing place in the paint­ing.

The huge­ly famous work is so enor­mous, near­ly 12 feet high and over 14 feet wide, that its fig­ures are almost life-size. Yet even when it was pos­si­ble to get close to the painting—before COVID-19 shut down the Rijksmu­se­um and before Rembrandt’s mas­ter­work went behind glass—no one except con­ser­va­tion­ists could ever get as close to it as we can now with just the click of a mouse or a slide of our fin­gers across a track­pad.

The expe­ri­ence of see­ing Rembrandt’s brush­strokes mag­ni­fied in crys­talline clar­i­ty doesn’t just add to our store of knowl­edge about The Night Watch, as the Rijksmu­se­um sug­gests above. This aston­ish­ing image also—and per­haps most impor­tant­ly for the major­i­ty of peo­ple who will view it online—enables us to real­ly com­mune with the mate­ri­al­i­ty of the paint­ing, and to be moved by it in a way that may have only been pos­si­ble in the past by mak­ing an exclu­sive, in-per­son vis­it to the Rijksmu­se­um with­out a tourist in sight. (For most of us, that is an unre­al­is­tic way to view great art.)

See the huge pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion of The Night Watch here and zoom in on any detail until you can almost smell the var­nish. This image rep­re­sents the paint­ing in the cur­rent state of its restora­tion, an effort that the muse­um pre­vi­ous­ly opened to the pub­lic by live stream­ing it. Yet, the work has stopped for the past two months as con­ser­va­tion­ists have stayed home. Just yes­ter­day, the team’s onsite research began again, and will con­tin­ue at least into 2021. This huge pho­to of the paint­ing may be the clos­est almost any­one will ever get to the can­vas, and the only oppor­tu­ni­ty for some time to approx­i­mate­ly feel its mon­u­men­tal scale.

For any­one inter­est­ed, there’s also a 10 bil­lion pix­el scan of Vermeer’s mas­ter­piece Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. Explore it here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

The Restora­tion of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Begins: Watch the Painstak­ing Process On-Site and Online

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

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

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The Shakespeare and Company Project Digitizes the Records of the Famous Bookstore, Showing the Reading Habits of the Lost Generation

in Literature | May 14th, 2020

Great writ­ers don’t come out of nowhere, even if some of them might end up there. They grow in gar­dens tend­ed by oth­er writ­ers, read­ers, edi­tors, and pio­neer­ing book­sellers like Sylvia Beach, founder and pro­pri­etor of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Beach opened the Eng­lish-lan­guage shop in Paris in 1919. Three years lat­er, she pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses, “a feat that would make her—and her book­shop and lend­ing library—famous,” notes Prince­ton University’s Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project. (Infa­mous as well, giv­en the obscen­i­ty charges against the nov­el in the U.S.)

Just as the pub­li­ca­tion of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl put Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights at the cen­ter of the Beat move­ment, so Joyce’s mas­ter­piece made Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny a des­ti­na­tion for aspir­ing Mod­ernists.

The shop was already “the meet­ing place for a com­mu­ni­ty of expa­tri­ate writ­ers and artists now known as the Lost Gen­er­a­tion.” Along with Joyce, there gath­ered Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, all of whom not only bought books but bor­rowed them and left a hand­writ­ten record of their read­ing habits.

Through a large-scale dig­i­ti­za­tion project of the Sylvia Beach papers at Prince­ton, the Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project will “recre­ate the world of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion. The Project details what mem­bers of the lend­ing library read and where they lived, and how expa­tri­ate life changed between the end of World War I and the Ger­man Occu­pa­tion of France.” Dur­ing the thir­ties, Beach began to cater more to French-speak­ing intel­lec­tu­als. Among lat­er log­books we’ll find the names Aimé Césaire, Jacques Lacan, and Simone de Beau­voir. Beach closed the store for good in 1941, the sto­ry goes, rather than sell a Nazi offi­cer a copy of Finnegans Wake.

Princeton’s “trove of mate­ri­als reveals, among oth­er things,” writes Lithub, “the read­ing pref­er­ences of some of the 20th century’s most famous writ­ers,” it’s true. But not only are there many famous names; the library logs also record “less famous but no less inter­est­ing fig­ures, too, from a respect­ed French physi­cist to the woman who start­ed the musi­col­o­gy pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia.” Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny became the place to go for thou­sands of French and expat patrons in Paris dur­ing some of the city’s most leg­en­dar­i­ly lit­er­ary years.

“Eng­lish-lan­guage books are expen­sive,” if you’ve arrived in the city in the 1920s, the Project explains—“five to twen­ty times the price of French books.” Eng­lish-lan­guage hold­ings at oth­er libraries are lim­it­ed. Read­ers, and soon-to-be famous writ­ers, go to Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny to bor­row a copy of Moby Dick or pick up the lat­est New York­er.

You find Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny on a nar­row side street, just off the Car­refour de l’Odéon. You step inside. The room is filled with books and mag­a­zines. You rec­og­nize a framed por­trait of Edgar Allan Poe. You also rec­og­nize a few framed Whit­man man­u­scripts. Sylvia Beach, the own­er, intro­duces her­self and tells you that her aunt vis­it­ed Whit­man in Cam­den, New Jer­sey and saved the man­u­scripts from the waste­bas­ket. Yes, this is the place for you.

The lend­ing library had dif­fer­ent mem­ber­ship plans (you can learn about them here) and kept care­ful records with codes indi­cat­ing the sta­tus of each bor­row­er. These records are still being dig­i­tized and the Project is ongo­ing. It does not offi­cial­ly launch until next month. But at the moment, you can: “Search the lend­ing library mem­ber­ship. Browse the lend­ing library cards. Read about join­ing the lend­ing library. Down­load a pre­lim­i­nary export of Project data. In June, you will be able to search and browse the lend­ing library’s books, track the cir­cu­la­tion of your favorite novels—and dis­cov­er new ones.”

See how these lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ties shaped and reshaped them­selves around what would become “the most famous book­store in the world.”

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Picked Drunk­en Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hem­ing­way

7 Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

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

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Hyperland: The “Fantasy Documentary” in Which Douglas Adams and Doctor Who’s Tom Baker Imagine the World Wide Web (1990)

in History, Sci Fi, Technology, Television | May 14th, 2020

Thir­ty years ago, the inter­net we use today would have looked like sci­ence fic­tion. Now as then, we spend a great deal of time star­ing at streams of video, but the high-tech 21st cen­tu­ry has endowed us with the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize those streams as nev­er before. No longer do we have to set­tle for tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion and the tyran­ny of “what’s on”; we can fol­low our curios­i­ty wher­ev­er it leads through vast, ever-expand­ing realms of image, sound, and text. No less a sci­ence-fic­tion writer than Dou­glas Adams dreams of just such realms in Hyper­land, a 1990 BBC “fan­ta­sy doc­u­men­tary” that opens to find him fast asleep amid the mind­less sound and fury spout­ed unceas­ing­ly by his tele­vi­sion set — so unceas­ing­ly, in fact, that it keeps on spout­ing even when Adams gets up and toss­es it into a junk­yard.

Amid the scrap heaps Adams meets a ghost of tech­nol­o­gy’s future: his “agent,” a dig­i­tal fig­ure played by Doc­tor Who star Tom Bak­er. “I have the hon­or to pro­vide instant access to every piece of infor­ma­tion stored dig­i­tal­ly any­where in the world,” says Bak­er’s Vir­gil to Adams’ Dante. “Any pic­ture or film, any sound, any book, any sta­tis­tic, any fact — any con­nec­tion between any­thing you care to think of.”

Adams’ fans know how much the notion must have appealed to him, unex­pect­ed con­nec­tions between dis­parate aspects of real­i­ty being a run­ning theme in his fic­tion. It became espe­cial­ly promi­nent in the Dirk Gen­tly’s Holis­tic Detec­tive Agency Series, whose wide range of ref­er­ences includes Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan — one of the many pieces of infor­ma­tion Adams has his agent pull up in Hyper­land.

Adams’ jour­ney along this pro­to-Infor­ma­tion Super­high­way also includes stops at Beethoven’s 9th Sym­pho­ny, Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca, and Kurt Von­negut’s the­o­ry of the shape of all sto­ries. Such a path­way will feel famil­iar to any­one who reg­u­lar­ly goes down “rab­bit holes” on the inter­net today, a pur­suit — or per­haps com­pul­sion — enabled by hyper­text. Already that term sounds old fash­ioned, but at the dawn of the 1990s active­ly fol­low­ing “links” from one piece of infor­ma­tion, so com­mon now as to require no intro­duc­tion or expla­na­tion, struck many as a mind-bend­ing nov­el­ty. Thus the pro­gram’s seg­ments on the his­to­ry of the rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies, begin­ning with U.S. gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist Van­nevar Bush and the the­o­ret­i­cal “Memex” sys­tem he came up with at the end of World War II — and first described in an Atlantic Month­ly arti­cle you can, thanks to hyper­text, eas­i­ly read right now.

Though to an extent required to stand for the con­tem­po­rary view­er, Adams was hard­ly a tech­no­log­i­cal neo­phyte. An ardent ear­ly adopter, he pur­chased the very first Apple Mac­in­tosh com­put­er ever sold in Europe. “I hap­pen to know you’ve writ­ten inter­ac­tive fic­tion your­self,” says Bak­er, refer­ring to the adven­ture games Adams designed for Info­com, one of them based on his beloved Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy nov­els. Though Adams’ con­sid­er­able tech savvy makes all this look amus­ing­ly pre­scient, he could­n’t have known just then how con­nect­ed every­one and every­thing was about to become. “While Dou­glas was cre­at­ing Hyper­land,” says his offi­cial web site, “a stu­dent at CERN in Switzer­land was work­ing on a lit­tle hyper­text project he called the World Wide Web.” And despite his ear­ly death, the man who dreamed of an elec­tron­ic “guide­book” con­tain­ing and con­nect­ing all the knowl­edge in the uni­verse lived long enough to see that such a thing would one day become a real­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Author William Gib­son Pre­dicts in 1997 How the Inter­net Will Change Our World

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net & PC in 1974

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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David Lynch Creates Daily Weather Reports for Los Angeles: How the Filmmaker Passes Time in Quarantine

in Current Affairs, Film | May 13th, 2020

David Lynch has­n’t direct­ed a fea­ture film in thir­teen years, but that does­n’t mean he’s been idle. Quite the oppo­site, in fact: in addi­tion to the acclaimed Show­time series Twin Peaks: The Return, he’s record­ed an album, writ­ten a mem­oir, taught a Mas­ter­class, over­seen the devel­op­ment of a Twin Peaks vir­tu­al real­i­ty game, and made a short film about ants devour­ing a piece of cheese. In his home stu­dio, he’s also con­tin­ued the visu­al art prac­tice he start­ed before turn­ing to film­mak­er in the 1970s. We may know Lynch best as the man behind Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, but he seems equal­ly com­fort­able work­ing in whichev­er form or medi­um is at hand. In this time of COVID-19 quar­an­tine, which has sus­pend­ed film­mak­ing, film­go­ing, and oth­er kinds of human activ­i­ty, one such medi­um is the weath­er report.

“Here in L.A.… kind of cloudy… some fog this morn­ing,” says the respect­ed film­mak­er in his weath­er-report video for May 11, 2020. “64 degrees Fahren­heit; around sev­en­teen Cel­sius. This all should burn off pret­ty soon, and we’ll have sun­shine and 70 degrees.” All just what one would expect from the cli­mate of Los Ange­les, the south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis where Lynch lives and which he often prais­es — and which, it’s recent­ly been report­ed, will like­ly extend its stay-at-home order for at least three more months.

The sud­den lack of move­ment in this famous­ly mobile city has done won­ders for the air qual­i­ty, but so far that ele­ment has­n’t fig­ured explic­it­ly into Lynch’s reports. “We’ve got clouds and kind of fog­gy weath­er, with some blue shin­ing through,” he says on the morn­ing of May 12th. But just as the day before, that fog “should burn off lat­er, and we’ll have sun­shine.” Long­time fol­low­ers of Lynch’s inter­net projects will rec­og­nize these as a sequel to the dai­ly video weath­er reports he post­ed in 2008:

They’ll also rec­og­nize most of the objects that sur­round Lynch in his office, from his set of draw­ers to his wall-mount­ed phone to his angu­lar-han­dled black cof­fee cup. But the dra­mat­ic increase in the res­o­lu­tion of inter­net video over the past dozen years has made every­thing vis­i­ble in a new­ly crisp detail, right down to the steam ris­ing from Lynch’s hot bev­er­age of choice. More dai­ly weath­er reports will pre­sum­ably appear on the David Lynch The­ater Youtube chan­nel, each one col­ored by his sig­na­ture (and, giv­en the unre­lent­ing­ly dis­turb­ing qual­i­ties of his best-known work, seem­ing­ly incon­gru­ous) opti­mism. “It’s going to be a dif­fer­ent world on the oth­er side,” he told Vice last month. “It’s going to be a much more intel­li­gent world. Solu­tions to these prob­lems are going to come and life’s going to be very good. The movies will come back. Every­thing will spring back and in a much bet­ter way, prob­a­bly.”

Find a playlist of Lynch’s weath­er reports 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:

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

How David Lynch Got Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion? By Drink­ing a Milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, Every Sin­gle Day, for Sev­en Straight Years

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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