Download 67,000 Historic Maps (in High Resolution) from the Wonderful David Rumsey Map Collection

in Archives, Art, History | April 20th, 2016

Soviet Map

Stan­ford University’s been in the news late­ly, what with expand­ing its tuition waiv­er last year and now fac­ing renewed scruti­ny over its ultra-low admis­sions rate. These sto­ries have per­haps over­shad­owed oth­er Stan­ford news of a more aca­d­e­m­ic nature: the arrival of the David Rum­sey Map Cen­ter, which cel­e­brat­ed its grand open­ing yes­ter­day and con­tin­ues the fes­tiv­i­ties today and tomor­row. While these kinds of uni­ver­si­ty improve­ments are rarely of much inter­est to the gen­er­al pub­lic, this one high­lights a col­lec­tion worth giv­ing full atten­tion. Well, for those of us, that is, who love maps.

Twelve Perspectives

You do not need to be a Stan­ford stu­dent or fac­ul­ty or staff mem­ber to access the vast trea­sures of the Rum­sey Map col­lec­tion, nor do you need to vis­it the uni­ver­si­ty or its new Cen­ter. Since 1996, the Rum­sey collection’s online data­base has been open to all, cur­rent­ly offer­ing any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion access to 67,000 maps from all over the globe, span­ning five cen­turies of car­tog­ra­phy.

Rumsey’s hold­ings con­sti­tute, writes Wired, “the dopest map col­lec­tion on Earth,” and though its phys­i­cal hous­ing at Stan­ford is a huge boon to aca­d­e­m­ic researchers, its online archive is yours for the brows­ing, search­ing, and down­load­ing, who­ev­er and wher­ev­er you are.

Pages like the 1867 map “Twelve Per­spec­tives on the Earth in Orbit and Rota­tion,” fur­ther up, con­tain detailed pub­li­ca­tion infor­ma­tion, the abil­i­ty to zoom in and exam­ine the tini­est details, and an “export” func­tion allow­ing users to down­load a vari­ety of res­o­lu­tions up to 12288 pix­els. (The same holds true for all oth­er maps.) There’s also a new fea­ture for many maps called “Geo­ref­er­enc­ing” (see a short intro­duc­to­ry video above), which match­es the map’s con­tours with oth­er his­toric maps or with more accu­rate, mod­ern satel­lite images.

Yosemite Valley

In the case of “Twelve Per­spec­tives on the Earth in Orbit and Rota­tion,” the geo­ref­er­enc­ing func­tion returns an error mes­sage stat­ing “this is not a map.” But in ter­res­tri­al images, like the topo­graph­i­cal map of the Yosemite Val­ley above, we can choose spe­cif­ic por­tions to geo­ref­er­ence, use the “visu­al­ize” func­tion to see how they match up to con­tem­po­rary views, and con­duct an accu­ra­cy analy­sis. (Geo­ref­er­enc­ing requires sign-in with a free account, or you can use your Google, Face­book, or Twit­ter log-ins.) Geo­ref­er­enc­ing is not avail­able for all maps, yet. You can help the Rum­sey col­lec­tion expand the fea­ture by vis­it­ing this page and click­ing the “Ran­dom Map” link.

1900 NYC Map

The Rum­sey Col­lec­tion con­tains a seem­ing­ly inex­haustible sup­ply of car­to­graph­ic images, such as the col­or­ful aer­i­al view of New York City from 1900, above, and the 1949 com­pos­ite map of the Sovi­et Union, at the top of the post. In addi­tion to the maps themselves—most works of art in their own right—the data­base is full of oth­er beau­ti­ful images relat­ed to geog­ra­phy, such as the fab­u­lous, full-col­or title page below for the 1730 Atlas Novus sive Tab­u­lae Geo­graph­i­cae by Matthaeus Seut­ter.

Atlas Novus

David Rum­sey—cur­rent­ly Pres­i­dent of the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny Car­tog­ra­phy Associates—began col­lect­ing maps and “relat­ed car­to­graph­ic mate­ri­als” in 1980. Since then, his phys­i­cal col­lec­tion has grown to include over 150,000 maps, to be housed at the Stan­ford Cen­ter that bears his name, and he has received sev­er­al awards for mak­ing his col­lec­tion avail­able online. The car­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts among us, and the hard­core schol­ars, can like­ly look for­ward to many more maps appear­ing in the web archive. For now, there’s no short­age of fas­ci­nat­ing mate­r­i­al.

rumsey map

On the site’s home­page, they high­light these areas worth explor­ing:

The his­tor­i­cal map col­lec­tion has over 67,000 maps and images online. The col­lec­tion includes rare 16th through 21st cen­tu­ry maps of Amer­i­ca, North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacif­ic and the World.

Pop­u­lar col­lec­tion cat­e­gories are celes­tial, antique atlas,globe, school geog­ra­phy, mar­itime chart, state, coun­ty, city, pock­et, wall & case, chil­dren’s, and man­u­script maps. Search exam­ples: Pic­to­r­i­al maps, Unit­ed States maps, Geol­o­gy maps, Cal­i­for­nia map, Afghanistan map,Amer­i­ca map, New York City map, Chica­go map, andU.S. Civ­il War maps. Browse  map cat­e­gories: What, Where, Who, When. The col­lec­tion is used to study his­to­ry, art, geneal­o­gy, explo­rations, and fam­i­ly his­to­ry.

Get to brows­ing… and geo­ref­er­enc­ing….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

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

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Hear the Vintage Sherlock Holmes Radio Drama, Starring John Gielgud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richardson

in Literature, Radio | April 20th, 2016

Can there ever be such a thing as too much Sher­lock Holmes? Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s cre­ation of the char­ac­ter in 1887, he’s nev­er gone out of style; there are often sev­er­al adap­ta­tions of Sher­lock Holmes—in film, tele­vi­sion, and otherwise—running simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and I nev­er hear any­one com­plain about Holmes over­load. In fact, Holmes holds the Guin­ness World Record for the most-por­trayed lit­er­ary char­ac­ter ever, with over 70 actors (but alas, no actress­es, yet) play­ing the bril­liant detec­tive in 254 screen adap­ta­tions. And that’s not even to men­tion the thou­sands of detec­tives and detec­tive-like char­ac­ters inspired by Holmes, or his many cameo appear­ances in oth­er fic­tion­al uni­vers­es.

Com­ments sec­tions may quib­ble and snipe, but it seems to me that we’ll nev­er run out of oppor­tu­ni­ties to make more Sher­lock Holmes films, tele­vi­sion shows, video games, ful­ly immer­sive holo­graph­ic vir­tu­al real­i­ty sim­u­la­tions…. But there’s one medi­um that seems to have slowed when it comes to adapt­ing Holmes—and every­thing else lit­er­ary: Radio. (Though sev­er­al pod­casts have picked up the slack.) And as much as we love to see the arch looks on Holmes actors’ faces as they aston­ish and per­plex their var­i­ous Watsons—radio is a medi­um well suit­ed to the dia­logue-dri­ven dra­ma of Conan Doyle’s sto­ries. One clas­sic demon­stra­tion of this is a series of Holmes radio plays that ran from 1939 to 1947 and starred for a time per­haps the quin­tes­sen­tial screen inter­preters of Holmes and Wat­son, Basil Rath­bone and Nigel Bruce.

The New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes, as it was called, took a light­heart­ed approach to the char­ac­ters and, as one review­er puts it, could feel “quite rushed,” with the actors giv­en lit­tle time to rehearse. Although the orig­i­nal series has many mer­its, in the ‘50s, NBC decid­ed to improve upon it, tak­ing the radio tran­scrip­tions of the Conan Doyle sto­ries and re-record­ing them with new actors. Which actors? In many episodes, two of the finest British stage actors of their gen­er­a­tion: Sir John Giel­gud as Holmes and Ralph Richard­son as Wat­son. And in one episode, an adap­ta­tion of “The Final Prob­lem,” the pro­duc­ers found to play their Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty an actor whose voice dom­i­nat­ed some of the most pop­u­lar radio broad­casts of the age: Orson Welles.

You can lis­ten to “The Final Prob­lem” with Giel­gud, Richard­son, and Welles at the top of the post; hear all of the 1950’s New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes episodes (125 in all) just above, and down­load them at the Inter­net Archive. And, fur­ther up, hear thir­ty-two broad­casts of the orig­i­nal New Adven­tures star­ring Rath­bone and Bruce. Like all com­mer­cial media then and now, each episode fea­tures its share of… well, com­mer­cials. But they also fea­ture some very fine voice act­ing and excel­lent music and sound design. Most impor­tant­ly, they fea­ture the genius of Sher­lock Holmes, who will live for­ev­er, it seems, in our imag­i­na­tive media, what­ev­er form it hap­pens to take.

These fine record­ings will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

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

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Hear Rufus Wainwright Sing Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A New Album Featuring Florence Welch, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner & More

in Literature, Music | April 20th, 2016

How to clas­si­fy the singing-song­writ­ing of Rufus Wain­wright? Pop? Folk? Sure­ly we’ll have to throw a “neo-” or two in there. And we can’t ignore the impor­tance of all things oper­at­ic to the work of this musi­cian who grows more sui gener­is with every album he puts out — and indeed, with every stage pro­duc­tion he puts on. His inter­est in opera dates back to his youth, and as ear­ly as his self-titled 2001 debut we can hear its direct influ­ence in a song like “Barcelona,” whose lyrics bor­row from Verdi’s Mac­beth. Ver­di, of course, was also work­ing with some pret­ty rich inspi­ra­tional mate­r­i­al him­self, and Wain­wright has found an occa­sion to pay more direct trib­ute to William Shake­speare this April 22nd, on almost the 400th anniver­sary of that most influ­en­tial Eng­lish play­wright’s death.

On that date, he’ll release Take All My Loves: 9 Shake­speare Son­nets, an album that finds him, in the words of NPR’s Stephen Thomp­son, “tack­ling the Bard’s work in a grand­ly sweep­ing col­lec­tion of record­ings” fea­tur­ing the tal­ents of “an assort­ment of singers and actors to per­form these 16 tracks, many of which pair rich orches­tral pieces with dra­mat­ic read­ings by the likes of Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, Car­rie Fish­er, and even William Shat­ner.” Yes, Wain­wright has some­how man­aged to bring Star Wars and Star Trek togeth­er — and in the least like­ly of all pos­si­ble con­texts, one in which we also hear Aus­tri­an sopra­no Anna Pro­has­ka, Flo­rence of Flo­rence + the Machine, Wain­wright’s sis­ter Martha, and a fair bit of Ger­man.

Fans of both the ambi­tious and near­ly uncat­e­go­riz­able singer, fans of the (if you believe Harold Bloom) human­i­ty-invent­ing drama­tist, and many in-between will find in Take All My Loves many more feats of musi­cal crafts­man­ship, lit­er­ary cre­ativ­i­ty, and sheer clev­er­ness. And they don’t have to wait until the actu­al anniver­sary (or in any case the day before) to do it. You can hear “A Wom­an’s Face Reprise” (based on Son­net 20, for those play­ing the Shake­speare-schol­ar­ship home game) at the top of the post; “When in Dis­grace with For­tune and Men’s Eyes” (Son­net 29) below that; and for a lim­it­ed time, the entire album avail­able to stream free from NPR, which gives every­one a chance to hear what one of our age’s most inter­est­ing bards has done in part­ner­ship with the Bard him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays (Free Course)

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Such Sweet Thun­der: Duke Elling­ton & Bil­ly Strayhorn’s Musi­cal Trib­ute to Shake­speare (1957)

Lou Reeds Sings “Blue Christ­mas” with Lau­rie Ander­son, Rufus Wain­wright & Friends

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Short Animated History of Zero (0): How It Started in India, Then Made Its Journey to the West

in Math | April 20th, 2016

Zilch. Nada. Bup­kis. Yes, I’m tak­ing about Zero (0), a num­ber that seems so essen­tial to our sys­tem of num­bers, and yet it has­n’t always enjoyed such a priv­i­leged place. Far from it.

In this short ani­ma­tion, Britain’s ven­er­a­ble Roy­al Insti­tu­tion traces the his­to­ry of zero, a num­ber that emerged in sev­enth cen­tu­ry India, before mak­ing its way to Chi­na and Islam­ic coun­tries, and final­ly pen­e­trat­ing West­ern cul­tures in the 13th cen­tu­ry. Only lat­er did it become the cor­ner­stone of cal­cu­lus and the lan­guage of com­put­ing.

India, we owe you thanks.

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:

Free Online Math Cours­es

Free Math Text­books

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

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Behold the First Electric Guitar: The 1931 “Frying Pan”

in History, Music | April 19th, 2016

Frying Pan Schematic

The names Leo Fend­er and Les Paul will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the explo­sion of the elec­tric gui­tar into pop­u­lar cul­ture. And right­ly so. With­out engi­neer Fend­er and musi­cian and stu­dio wiz Paul’s time­less designs, it’s hard to imag­ine what the most icon­ic instru­ments of decades of pop­u­lar music would look like.

They just might look like fry­ing pans.

Though Fend­er and Paul (and the Gib­son com­pa­ny) get all the glo­ry, it’s two men named George who should right­ly get much of the cred­it for invent­ing the elec­tric gui­tar. The first, naval offi­cer George Breed, has a sta­tus vis-à-vis the elec­tric gui­tar sim­i­lar to Leonar­do da Vinci’s to the heli­copter.

In 1890, Breed sub­mit­ted a patent for a one-of-a-kind design, uti­liz­ing the two basic ele­ments that would even­tu­al­ly make their way into Stra­to­cast­ers and Les Pauls—a mag­net­ic pick­up and wire strings. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Breed, his design also includ­ed some very imprac­ti­cal cir­cuit­ry and required bat­tery oper­a­tion, “result­ing in a small but extreme­ly heavy gui­tar with an uncon­ven­tion­al play­ing tech­nique,” writes the Inter­na­tion­al Reper­to­ry of Music Lit­er­a­ture, “that pro­duced an excep­tion­al­ly unusu­al and ungui­tar­like, con­tin­u­ous­ly sus­tained sound.”

Like a Renais­sance fly­ing machine, the design went nowhere. That is, until George Beauchamp, a “musi­cian and tin­ker­er” from Texas, came up with a design for an elec­tric gui­tar pick­up that worked beau­ti­ful­ly. The first “Fry­ing Pan Hawai­ian” lap steel gui­tar, whose schemat­ic you can see at the top of the post, “now sits in a case in a muse­um,” writes Andre Mil­lard in his his­to­ry of the elec­tric gui­tar, “look­ing every inch the his­toric arti­fact but not much like a gui­tar.” Giz­mo­do quotes gui­tar his­to­ri­an Richard Smith, who dis­cuss­es the need in the 20s and 30s for an elec­tric gui­tar to be heard over the rhythm instru­ments in jazz and in Beauchamp’s pre­ferred style, Hawai­ian music, “where… the gui­tar was the melody instru­ment. So the real push to make the gui­tar elec­tric came from the Hawai­ian musi­cians.”

Beauchamp devel­oped the gui­tar after he was fired as gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Nation­al Instru­ment Man­u­fac­ture Com­pa­ny. Need­ing a new project, he and anoth­er Nation­al employ­ee, Paul Barth, began exper­i­ment­ing with Breed’s ideas. After build­ing a work­ing pick­up, they called on anoth­er Nation­al employ­ee, writes Rickenbacker.com, “to make a wood­en neck and body for it. In sev­er­al hours, carv­ing with small hand tools, a rasp, and a file, the first ful­ly elec­tric gui­tar took form.” (An ear­li­er elec­tro-acoustic gui­tar—the Stromberg Elec­tro—con­tributed to ampli­fi­er tech­nol­o­gy but its awk­ward pick­up design didn’t catch on.)

Need­ing cap­i­tal, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and dis­tri­b­u­tion, Beauchamp con­tract­ed with tool­mak­er Adolph Rick­en­backer, who mass pro­duced the Fry­ing Pan as “The Rick­en­bach­er A‑22″ under the com­pa­ny name “Elec­tro String.” (The com­pa­ny became Rick­en­backer Gui­tars after its own­er sold it in the 50s.) Although the nov­el­ty of the instru­ment and its cost dur­ing the Great Depres­sion inhib­it­ed sales, Beauchamp and Rick­en­backer still pro­duced sev­er­al ver­sions of the Fry­ing Pan, with cast alu­minum bod­ies rather than wood. (See an ear­ly mod­el here.) Soon, the Fry­ing Pan became inte­grat­ed into live jazz bands (see it at the 3:34 mark above in a 1936 Adoph Zukor short film) and record­ings.

How does the Fry­ing Pan sound? Aston­ish­ing­ly good, as you can hear for your­self in the demon­stra­tion videos above. Although Rick­en­backer and oth­er gui­tar mak­ers moved on to installing pick­ups in so-called “Span­ish” guitars—hollow-bodied jazz box­es with their famil­iar f‑holes—the Fry­ing Pan lap steel con­tin­ues to have a par­tic­u­lar mys­tique in gui­tar his­to­ry, and was man­u­fac­tured and sold into the ear­ly 1950s.

The next leap for­ward in elec­tric gui­tar design? After the Fry­ing Pan came Les Paul’s first ful­ly solid­body elec­tric: The Log.

Learn More about the inven­tion of the elec­tric gui­tar in the short Smith­son­ian video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s First Bass Gui­tar (1936)

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Oxford Sci­en­tist Explains the Physics of Play­ing Elec­tric Gui­tar Solos

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

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A Huge Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music (1920–2007) Featuring John Cage, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart & More

in Music | April 19th, 2016

800px-ElectroComp_EML-200,_etc,_Equipment_for_Electronic_Music_Class

Image by Emi­ly, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’ve tak­en any intro­duc­to­ry course or even read any intro­duc­to­ry books on music, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly have heard it described as “orga­nized sound.” Fair enough, but then what do you call dis­or­ga­nized sound? Why, noise of course. And all this makes per­fect sense until your first encounter with the seem­ing­ly para­dox­i­cal but robust and ever-expand­ing tra­di­tion of noise music.

“Mod­ern ‘noise music’ finds its roots in ear­ly elec­tron­ic and indus­tri­al musics,” says Sta­t­ic Sig­nals, which used to review a lot of the stuff. “Where com­posers began expand­ing their vocab­u­lary of sound and instru­men­ta­tion is where the con­cept of ‘noise’ begins: what sounds can pro­duce music and which are pure­ly sta­t­ic or noise? For some, music’s out­er bound­ary is defined by west­ern Euro­pean clas­si­cal instru­ments designed hun­dreds of years ago and the sounds, pitch­es, rhythms they can (clas­si­cal­ly) pro­duce. For oth­ers, no sound, rhythm, tone, or pitch is off lim­its; music can be made by any­thing that can vibrate air.”

The devel­op­ment of elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ments — and indeed, any kind of sound-manip­u­lat­ing elec­tron­ic device — came as a great boon to this explo­ration of the bor­der­lands between orga­nized and dis­or­ga­nized sound. You can hear the effects of that sort of tech­nol­o­gy and much else besides in An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music, a sev­en-part anthol­o­gy released by for­mi­da­ble Bel­gian exper­i­men­tal music label Sub Rosa, all of it avail­able on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load here if you need it). The first two vol­umes are embed­ded above; all sev­en vol­umes can be streamed via the links below. If you dig the col­lec­tion, we’d encour­age you to pur­chase your own copy and sup­port Sub Rosa’s project.

To the noise music-unini­ti­at­ed — and prob­a­bly even to a few of the ini­ti­at­ed — some of the tracks here will sound like music, and some cer­tain­ly won’t. But most of them fall fas­ci­nat­ing­ly in-between the two states, ide­al­ly expand­ing the lis­ten­er’s con­cep­tion of the son­ic ter­ri­to­ry music can explore. Some musi­cal exper­i­ments, just like sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments, point in more fruit­ful direc­tions than oth­ers, but each one sheds a lit­tle new light on the musi­cal enter­prise itself. And “the noise,” to take the words straight from Sub Rosa them­selves, “goes on…”

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Björk Presents Ground­break­ing Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cians on the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists (1997)

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Hear Albums from Bri­an Eno’s 1970s Label, Obscure Records

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the Titanic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Animation

in Animation, History | April 19th, 2016

From the mak­ers of Titan­ic: Hon­or and Glo­ry–a PC video game that lets you sail aboard a ful­ly detailed re-cre­ation of the RMS Titan­ic–comes an ani­ma­tion that lets you watch the sink­ing of the Titan­ic in real time. Accord­ing to the web site Titan­ic Facts, the ship sank in two hours and 40 min­utes in 1912. And that’s pre­cise­ly how long things take to unfold in the video above. The ani­ma­tion nar­rates the events in a fair­ly straight­for­ward way–nothing like the dra­mat­ic scenes paint­ed in James Cameron’s 1997 fic­tion­al­ized film. But it’s still worth the watch. 

In the Relat­eds below, you can check out two relat­ed clips — a vin­tage clip show­ing footage of the actu­al Titan­ic in 1911, and anoth­er ani­mat­ed reen­act­ment of the Titan­ic sink­ing, this one cre­at­ed by Cameron him­self.

via coudal.com

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

Titan­ic: The Nazis Cre­ate a Mega-Bud­get Pro­pa­gan­da Film About the Ill-Fat­ed Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

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Brian Eno Creates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bulgarian Folk

in Music | April 19th, 2016

vu by vu

For most of us, mak­ing a list of our favorite albums involves no small amount of nos­tal­gia. We remem­ber high­lights from high school and col­lege: songs on con­stant rota­tion after breakups and dur­ing sum­mers of bliss. More so than any oth­er media we con­sume, music—from clas­si­cal to the most com­mer­cial pop—feels deeply per­son­al.

But there are many oth­er ways to relate to music. Bri­an Eno’s jour­ney through the world of record­ed sound, for exam­ple, more resem­bles that of a 19th cen­tu­ry explor­er. He grav­i­tates toward the cul­tur­al­ly exot­ic, makes stu­dious obser­va­tions, and advances hypothe­ses and the­o­ries. In read­ing through an inter­view he gave to The Qui­etus for their “baker’s dozen” series—in which they ask famous artists to name their top 13 albums—one theme emerges in the way Eno talks about music: dis­cov­ery.

And as Eno reminds us in his com­men­tary on his first pick—a gospel record by Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir—one pre­cur­sor to dis­cov­ery is curios­i­ty, unbound­ed by prej­u­dice or pre­con­cep­tion. It’s an approach that has enabled him to cre­ate some of the most con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing records decade after decade (hear 150 Eno tracks here), and to remain rel­e­vant long after most of his ’70s peers have dis­ap­peared.

Eno first heard, or mis­heard, the gospel group on U.S. radio. To his ears, the refrain “sur­ren­der to His will” sound­ed like “sur­ren­der to the wheel,” a cryp­tic phrase that pro­voked all sorts of asso­ci­a­tions. But even after he learned the real lyric, he was hooked on the group’s sound, and want­ed to know more, though he him­self is entire­ly non-reli­gious.

“Why am I so moved by a music based on some­thing that I just don’t believe in?,” Eno asked him­self. His response ranges into philo­soph­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry, then ends on an unex­pect­ed­ly upbeat note. If it sur­pris­es you that one of Eno’s favorite albums is an obscure record by an ama­teur gospel group, take a look at the rest of his picks. We’d expect the Vel­vet Under­ground to appear—giv­en his famous com­ment about their mas­sive influ­ence—and they do. The rest is a col­lec­tion of wild cards. See the eclec­tic list below and stop by The Qui­etus to read Eno’s thought­ful, can­did com­men­tary on each album.

 

The Dynam­ic Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir in Con­cert, by Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir

Farid El Atra­che, by Farid El Atra­che

Umut, by Arif Sag

“Go Where I Send Thee,” The Gold­en Gate Quar­tet (sin­gle)

Fresh, by Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone

Plan­ta­tion Lul­la­bies, Me’Shell Nde­geO­cel­lo

The Vel­vet Under­ground, by The Vel­vet Under­ground

Ear­ly Works, by Steve Reich

Afro­disi­ac, by Fela Ran­some-Kuti & The Africa ‘70

Glid­er, by My Bloody Valen­tine

Heart­land, by Owen Pal­lett

Grande Liturgie Ortho­doxe Slave, by Chœur Bul­gare Sve­toslav Obreten­ov

Court and Spark, by Joni Mitchell

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Kurt Cobain Lists His 50 Favorite Albums: Fea­tures LPs by David Bowie, Pub­lic Ene­my & More

Hear 150 Tracks High­light­ing Bri­an Eno’s Career as a Musi­cian, Com­pos­er & Pro­duc­er & Stream His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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

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Hear 100 Amazing Cover Versions of Beatles Songs

in Music | April 18th, 2016

If you’ve ever learned to play an instru­ment, espe­cial­ly the gui­tar or piano, odds are you’ve spent count­less hours try­ing to mas­ter the rhythms and melodies of your favorite songs. And odds are at least one of those songs was writ­ten by Messrs. Lennon & McCart­ney. If you’re any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly real­ized ear­ly in the exer­cise that The Bea­t­les weren’t only praised as great song­writ­ers because of their lyri­cism and social and roman­tic insights. Their songs are also packed with inge­nious chord changes, unex­pect­ed time shifts, unusu­al hooks, etc.

What may seem at first lis­ten like a sim­ple tune reveals itself as high­ly chal­leng­ing for the ama­teur musi­cian. I well remem­ber sweat­ing over two of my favorites—“Julia” and “Martha My Dear”—for many days.

Even in mod­i­fied ver­sions that sim­pli­fy dif­fi­cult voic­ings, I strug­gled to mas­ter the let­ter of the songs while still con­vey­ing the spir­it. Sure­ly, that’s a tes­ta­ment to my own lack of skill, and yet the trou­ble I’ve had pulling off my favorite Bea­t­les’ songs has giv­en me all the more respect for musi­cians who make it look easy.

Even a straight-ahead blues like “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” ain’t easy to sell—far from it. But I’ve nev­er heard any­one do it bet­ter than Tul­sa, Okla­homa-born blues­man Low­ell Ful­som (top). Fur­ther down, St. Vin­cent does a stel­lar live ren­di­tion of anoth­er of my favorites, “Dig a Pony.” A great song can take all kinds of bend­ing, stretch­ing, and pulling and still retain its essence. In Pao­lo Nutini’s smooth, stripped-down, organ, voice, and drums take on Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” above, the pas­sion remains, even if the impas­sioned shouts have been tamed.

There are hun­dreds more great Bea­t­les’ cov­ers out there, and prob­a­bly hun­dreds of ter­ri­ble ones, too—and many an odd­ball inter­pre­ta­tion that sharply divides opin­ion in either direc­tion (such as Marc Ribot’s machine-shop “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” which I hap­pen to love). Just above, we’ve put togeth­er a Spo­ti­fy playlist of over 80 great cov­er ver­sions of Bea­t­les’ songs, culled from sug­ges­tions made by @openculture followers/fans on Twit­ter. (You can down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware here.) And in the list below, find links to 20 fab­u­lous cov­er ver­sions on Youtube. (Those weren’t avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, but they’re def­i­nite­ly worth hear­ing). In total, you’ll find 100 tracks, by artists rang­ing from Ray Charles, to Joe Cock­er and Sarah McLach­lan, to Pat­ti Smith, David Bowie, and John­ny Cash. It makes for 6 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

If we’ve missed an essen­tial cov­er, let us know in the com­ments below, and drop in a link if you can.

Jimi Hen­drix — Sgt. Pep­per
The Pix­ies — Wild Hon­ey Pie  
David Gilmour — Here, There and Every­where
Alice Coop­er and the Bee Gees — Because
Kris Kristof­fer­son — Paper­back Writer 
Bryan Fer­ry — She’s Leav­ing Home
Pao­lo Nuti­ni — Don’t Let Me Down
The Fall — A Day in the Life 
Elliot Smith — Because 
Elvis Costel­lo — Pen­ny Lane 
Marc Ribot — While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps
Ben E. King — Don’t Let Me Down
Ike & Tina Turn­er – She Came in Through the Bath­room Win­dow
St Vin­cent — Dig a Pony  
Peer Framp­ton and the Bee Gees — Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band (sound­track)
Ray Charles — The Bea­t­les Cov­ers
Book­er T. & the MGS — McLemore Avenue (Cov­ers of Abbey Road)  
George Ben­son — The Oth­er Side of Abbey Road

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Peter Sell­ers Cov­ers the Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You” & “Help!”

Bea­t­les Trib­ute Band “The Fab Faux” Per­forms Live an Amaz­ing­ly Exact Repli­ca of the Orig­i­nal Abbey Road Med­ley

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

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The 100 Most Memorable Shots in Cinema Over the Past 100 Years

in Film | April 18th, 2016

Harold Lloyd hang­ing high above the city on the hands of a sky­scrap­er’s clock. A shot through the eye on the Odessa steps. Anoth­er eye, this one read­ied for the razor blade. King Kong roar­ing atop a sky­scraper of his own. Snow White offer­ing a perch to the blue­bird. Dorothy, the Cow­ard­ly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scare­crow skip­ping off toward the dis­tant Emer­ald City. Charles Fos­ter Kane orat­ing before his own enor­mous por­trait. Nor­ma Desmond’s unset­tling approach through ever-soft­er focus.

Roger Thorn­hill pur­sued by the biplane. Pat­ton salut­ing before the enor­mous Amer­i­can flag. Alex DeLarge star­ing, in his bowler and past his pros­thet­ic eye­lash­es, straight into the cam­era. Rocky jog­ging up the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art steps. A cam­ou­flage-paint­ed Willard ris­ing out of the swamp. The slow-motion march of Messrs. Blonde, Blue, Brown, Orange, Pink, and White. The open­ing-night recep­tion dance after Max Fis­cher’s Heav­en and Earth. Leonidas kick­ing the mes­sen­ger into the hole. The young Mason Evans, Jr. flat on the grass, star­ing up at the skies.

Oh, and Char­lie Chap­lin using Scraps the dog as a pil­low. I could have described more of the most mem­o­rable shots of the past cen­tu­ry of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, but in the video above, which presents one hun­dred years of film with one shot select­ed from each year, they all speak for them­selves. “While many of these shots are the most rec­og­niz­able in film his­to­ry, oth­ers are equal­ly icon­ic in their own right,” writes the video’s cre­ator Jacob T. Swin­ney, “For exam­ple, some shots pio­neered a style or defined a genre, while oth­ers test­ed the bound­aries of cen­sor­ship and film­go­er expec­ta­tions.”

While the ear­li­est pic­tures here, a group start­ing in 1915 with D.W. Grif­fith’s The Birth of a Nation, have had plen­ty of time to estab­lish them­selves in our visu­al lex­i­con — even for those of us who’ve nev­er actu­al­ly sat down and watched the movies in full — the more recent selec­tions clear­ly require some guess­work: Swin­ney’s mem­o­rable shots from the past decade come from sources as var­ied as There Will Be Blood and The Tree of Life, Avatar, and The Avengers.

And some cin­e­ma purists, as opposed to struc­tur­al purists, will regret that, with these strict­ly sin­gle shots, the famous cuts (in both sens­es, when it comes to Un Chien Andalou’s eye­ball) don’t come across. Me, I’d have bent the rules to pay prop­er trib­ute to Lawrence blow­ing out the match, but that’s just one cinephile’s opin­ion. Besides, you’ve got to see it in con­text, pro­ject­ed in 70-mil­lime­ter, to real­ly feel why it can stand for all of 1962 in film — and then some.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Shakespeare and His World: Free Shakespeare Course Starts Today, During the 400th Anniversary of the Bard’s Death

in Literature, Online Courses | April 18th, 2016

Coin­cid­ing with the 400th anniver­sary of Shakespeare’s death, the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick (locat­ed just 16 miles from Shakespeare’s home­town of Strat­ford-Upon-Avon) has teamed up  with the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust to run a free 10-week online course start­ing on April 18th. The course explores not only the great writer’s work, but his world too — you might even say it’s such stuff as dreams are made on.

Sir Jonathan Bate will intro­duce a new play each week, exam­in­ing it in rela­tion to cul­tur­al themes and trea­sures from the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust’s archives. In fact this course offers unprece­dent­ed access to the famous vaults of the Trust where thou­sands of rare arte­facts are kept.

Here’s a quick run through of what each week cov­ers:

Week 1: An Intro­duc­tion to Shake­speare and his World

Week 2: Shake­speare and Strat­ford — The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor

Week 3: The Birth of The­atre — A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream

Week 4: The World at War — Hen­ry V

Week 5: Mon­ey and the City — The Mer­chant of Venice

Week 6: Witch­es and Doc­tors — Mac­beth

Week 7: The Clash of Civil­i­sa­tions — Oth­el­lo

Week 8: The Roman Exam­ple — Antony & Cleopa­tra

Week 9: O Brave New World — The Tem­pest

Week 10: The Cult of Shake­speare

You can find the free course Shake­speare and his World on Future­Learn. The last time this course ran it attract­ed over 40,000 learn­ers around the world so it might be time to brush up on your Shake­speare­an lin­go. The course starts today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. Her favourite Shake­speare­an insult is ‘you egg’  because it’s both sim­ple and strange.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

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