Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes

in Life, Literature, Writing | December 14th, 2012

 

I’ve always been some­what amused by the accounts of Paul Ver­laine and Arthur Rimbaud’s brief bohemi­an affair. The old­er, mar­ried, and inter­nal­ly tor­tured Catholic Verlaine’s pin­ing for the self-destruc­tive and pre­co­cious young Rim­baud always presents a ridicu­lous pic­ture in prose. But it’s a pic­ture that takes on much clear­er con­tours when, for the first time, I get to see the house they occu­pied on 8 Roy­al Col­lege Street (above). The image of the house, with its for­bid­ding brick façade, gives their real­ly pret­ty unpleas­ant sto­ry a grav­i­tas that lit­er­ary his­to­ry can’t approach. Whether seen in per­son or in a pho­to­graph, the effect of view­ing any revered author’s home is sim­i­lar: his­to­ries once sub­ject to biog­ra­phers’ caprice take on the irrefutable weight of phys­i­cal real­i­ty. And while I’d love to have the lux­u­ry of a pil­grim­age to all my lit­er­ary heroes’ homes, I’m con­tent with the next best thing: an inter­net tour in pic­tures. That’s exact­ly what one gets at the Writ­ers’ Hous­es site, which has col­lect­ed dozens of images of famous writ­ers’ homes, sourced main­ly from user pho­tos.

And so home­bod­ies like myself can read their favorite Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay son­nets while gaz­ing at her Auster­litz, NY home “Steeple­top” (below, a bit more mod­est than I’d imag­ined):

Like­wise, I can read Flan­nery O’Connor’s grotesque lit­tle sto­ries and be con­tin­u­al­ly amazed that she did not emerge from some Medieval clois­ter in a fiery South­ern wild but from the bright, ram­bling farm­house called “Andalu­sia” (below).

And while I can only con­nect Thomas Hardy’s coun­try goth­ic nov­els and bleak poet­ry with the ter­mi­nal despair of a man who nev­er leaves his fire­lit study in some stur­dy, for­mal estate, his lit­tle cot­tage (below) is real­ly kind of cheery and resem­bles some­thing out of Peter Jackson’s Shire (though Hardy’s “Max Gate” home in Dorch­ester is exact­ly what I pic­ture him in).

The Writ­ers’ Hous­es site allows you to browse by author, state, and city, with a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry for “inter­na­tion­al hous­es.” Its main page is a reg­u­lar blog with a wealth of cur­rent infor­ma­tion on writ­ers’ homes, replete with links to oth­er sites and sources. For lovers of trav­el and archi­tec­tur­al and lit­er­ary his­to­ry, this is not to be missed.

via Kot­tke

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Beatboxing Bach’s Goldberg Variations

in Music | December 13th, 2012

It might not sur­pass Glenn Gould’s record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions from 1981. (Watch him per­form it here). But this clip, fea­tur­ing teenage pianist Kadar Qian and beat­box extra­or­di­naire Kevin Olu­so­la of Pen­ta­tonix, has a charm of its own. The clip comes from From the Top, a non-prof­it whose YouTube chan­nel presents out­stand­ing per­for­mances from the coun­try’s best young clas­si­cal musi­cians.

If you want your own copy of the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, you can instant­ly down­load The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first Kick­starter-fund­ed, open source record­ing of Bach’s mas­ter­piece. It’s avail­able entire­ly for free. Also don’t miss the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach. They’re free too!

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Enthusiastic Futurist Jason Silva Waxes Theoretical About the Immersive Power of Cinema

in Art, Film | December 13th, 2012

No one will ever accuse Jason Sil­va of lack­ing in enthu­si­asm. The self-pro­fessed “film­mak­er, futur­ist, epiphany addict” is in love, head over heels, with tech­nol­o­gy, and it’s a love infec­tious, as he shows us above in his short mono­logue, Atten­tion: The Immer­sive Pow­er of Cin­e­ma. Inspired by Diana Slattery’s essay “Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty and Hal­lu­ci­na­tion,” Sil­va extracts a the­o­ry of cin­e­ma as a “rhetor­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy, a shrine to immer­sion.” His ideas are also built around a nar­ra­tive and lin­guis­tic con­cept known as “deic­tic shift the­o­ry,” from deix­is or “self-ori­en­ta­tion.” For Sil­va, the deic­tic shift occurs when the “view­er assumes a view­point in the sto­ry,” and, in total immer­sion, “enters the dream as dream.” He spec­u­lates that at this point, the “pre-frontal lobe dims, and there’s a loss of ego,” such that “cin­e­ma is akin to god­li­ness.” Hog­wash, you say? Per­haps, but it’s enter­tain­ing hog­wash, and if one takes the time to process the ideas embed­ded in Silva’s man­ic, form-is-con­tent pre­sen­ta­tion, it’s even per­sua­sive. But poor Beethoven. Fur Elise doesn’t deserve anoth­er beat­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Kickstart the Restoration of the Very First William S. Burroughs Documentary

in Film, Literature | December 13th, 2012

If you’re into William S. Bur­roughs, maybe you’ve watched all the Bur­roughs-relat­ed mate­r­i­al we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, like his 1981 Sat­ur­day Night Live appear­ance or the 1991 doc­u­men­tary Com­mis­sion­er of Sew­ers. But anoth­er doc­u­men­tary on Bur­roughs exists — the ear­li­est one of all — and we can’t show it to you. Nobody can show Bur­roughs: The Movie to you, or at least they can’t show it to you in any crisp, clear, acces­si­ble form. Sure you could pay between 25 and 90 dol­lars for a VHS copy on Ama­zon, but that mon­ey might be more pro­duc­tive­ly put toward restor­ing the orig­i­nal film. As you can see in the video above, such a restora­tion is in the works, pro­vid­ed the restor­ers can raise the $20,000 they need to do it on Kick­starter by the end of this month.

Aaron Brookn­er, nephew of Bur­roughs: The Movie’s direc­tor Howard Brookn­er, found a print of the film in good con­di­tion, but now needs the fund­ing to remas­ter it clean­ly into a mod­ern dig­i­tal form. Begun in 1979 and debuted on the BBC in 1983, the doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views not just with Bur­roughs but with Allen Gins­berg, Brion Gysin, Fran­cis Bacon, Her­bert Hun­ke, Pat­ti Smith, Ter­ry South­ern, and Lau­ren Hut­ton. Howard Brookn­er, who died in 1989, made it as his New York Uni­ver­si­ty film school the­sis, and to oper­ate the cam­era and record the sound he enlist­ed two soon-to-be famous class­mates, Tom DiCil­lo and Jim Jar­musch. As of this writ­ing, Aaron Brookn­er has received $9,425 in pledges, near­ly half of his goal. Bur­roughs enthu­si­asts inter­est­ed in chip­ping in — back­ing pre­mi­ums include lim­it­ed-edi­tion DVDs, nev­er-before-heard audio record­ings, and Bur­roughs: The Movie pho­to­books — should vis­it the pro­jec­t’s Kick­starter page.

Relat­ed con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes Now Free on the Kindle

in Books, e-books, Literature | December 13th, 2012

It’s sure­ly worth giv­ing you the quick heads up that, start­ing today, “the com­plete col­lec­tion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes tales, both long and short, have been com­piled togeth­er for the first time.” The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes (down­load it here) is free on the Kin­dle thanks to Simon & Schus­ter. Unlike many free texts, the for­mat­ting looks quite nice on my Kin­dle Paper­white as well as on the iPad using the Free Kin­dle app. So, we’re glad­ly adding this one to our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks, which gives you imme­di­ate access to many more clas­sics.

NOTE: We have unfor­tu­nate­ly dis­cov­ered that this par­tic­u­lar text is not avail­able in some coun­tries. Sor­ry, there was no way for us to know that in advance. But, fear not, you can find oth­er ver­sions of Sher­lock Holmes on the web. Give these links a try:

Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes

via @kirstinbutler/The Verge

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The Physics of Guinness Beer Demystified

in Physics | December 13th, 2012

Over the years the physi­cists behind the YouTube chan­nel Six­ty Sym­bols have answered some big ques­tions — like what hap­pens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? Or do physi­cists believe in God? But now these fine sci­en­tists from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham have brought physics to a lev­el that I can per­son­al­ly appre­ci­ate. They’ve hit the streets of Dublin to demys­ti­fy what goes into the finest of Irish liba­tions, the per­fect glass of Guin­ness Beer. Their inquiry starts with the most obvi­ous ques­tion: What cre­ates that thick beige froth that sits ele­gant­ly atop the dark brown stout? It sounds like a mun­dane ques­tion. Until you real­ize it’s not. The dynam­ics of Guin­ness foam can be explained part­ly by work done by the Irish physi­cist Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) long ago. But oth­er aspects of Guin­ness foam are still being hot­ly con­test­ed by physi­cists today. Take for exam­ple this paper, Waves in Guin­ness, pub­lished in 2008 in the jour­nal Physics of Flu­ids. Now we’ll let Six­ty Sym­bols explain the rest.…

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:

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Free Online Cours­es Online about Physics from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Ein­stein for the Mass­es

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Marilyn Monroe Explains Relativity to Albert Einstein (in a Nicolas Roeg Movie)

in Film, Physics | December 12th, 2012


A cer­tain motion pic­ture has as its main char­ac­ters Joe DiMag­gio, Joseph McCarthy, Albert Ein­stein, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. Sure, the script calls them the Ballplay­er, the Sen­a­tor, the Pro­fes­sor, and the Actress, but there’s no mis­tak­ing their real iden­ti­ties. Sure­ly this already intrigues any­one inter­est­ed in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture, but what if I also men­tioned that in the direc­tor’s chair sits Nico­las Roeg, whose rich­ly askew visions for Walk­a­bout, Don’t Look Now, and The Man Who Fell to Earth so enriched the cin­e­ma of the sev­en­ties? Adapt­ed from a stage play by Ter­ry John­son, 1985’s Insignif­i­cance has each of its icon­ic char­ac­ters pass through a sin­gle New York City hotel room in 1954. Rough­ly halfway through the sto­ry, we get the scene above, an expla­na­tion of the the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty: by the Actress to the Pro­fes­sor.

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe’s inter­est in things Ein­stein­ian seems at least some­what ground­ed in real­i­ty; John­son thought up the play after read­ing about an auto­graphed pho­to of the physi­cist found among the late star’s pos­ses­sions. Roeg felt a sim­i­lar­ly strong reac­tion upon watch­ing the stage pro­duc­tion, seiz­ing the mate­r­i­al as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the theme of how “nobody knows a damn thing about any­one.” This he espe­cial­ly illus­trat­ed in the dis­tant mar­riage of the Actress and the Ballplay­er, their real-life inspi­ra­tions hav­ing been briefly mar­ried them­selves. (In the role of the Actress Roeg cast There­sa Rus­sell, his own then-wife.) Though not Roeg’s best-known film, Insignif­i­cance has nonethe­less inspired a con­stant stream of aca­d­e­m­ic and cinephilic dis­cus­sion since its release, and it received a hand­some Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion edi­tion last year. And if I had my way, I’d encour­age both film and physics teach­ers every­where to fire it up on slow class days.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist Einstein’s Big Idea: E=mc²

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Wonder, Thrill & Meaning of Seeing Earth from Space. Astronauts Reflect on The Big Blue Marble

in Astronomy, Life, Religion | December 12th, 2012

On Decem­ber 7, 1972, the Apol­lo 17 crew took a pho­to­graph of earth that became known as “The Blue Mar­ble” because of the whor­ling clouds above the con­ti­nents. Not the first image of the earth from space, it remains one of the most arrest­ing. To com­mem­o­rate the for­ti­eth anniver­sary of “The Blue Mar­ble,” Plan­e­tary Col­lec­tive, a group of visu­al artists, philoso­phers, and sci­en­tists, released the short film Overview (above) at a screen­ing at Har­vard this past Fri­day. Overview takes its title from author Frank White’s phrase for the per­spec­tive of the earth as seen from space: “The Overview Effect.” White’s book of the same name uses inter­views and writ­ings from thir­ty astro­nauts and cos­mo­nauts to build a the­o­ry about the psy­chol­o­gy of plan­e­tary per­spec­tives.

The film is a pre­lude to a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary called Con­tin­u­um, and it intro­duces many of that project’s themes: the inter­de­pen­dence of every­one on earth, the neces­si­ty of adopt­ing a plan­e­tary per­spec­tive, and the meet­ing of cer­tain reli­gious expe­ri­ences with the sci­ences. Through a selec­tion of inter­views with five astro­nauts and philoso­phers asso­ci­at­ed with think tank The Overview Insti­tute, one gets a thrilling and vic­ar­i­ous expe­ri­ence of what it’s like to see Bucky Fuller’s “Space­ship Earth.”  Across all of the respons­es emerge the cen­tral themes of Earth­’s uni­ty, and its fragili­ty: we’re all in this togeth­er, or else, the film con­cludes.

Espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing is the inter­view with Apol­lo astro­naut Edgar Mitchell; he comes to see his expe­ri­ence in mys­ti­cal terms, as a kind of intense med­i­ta­tive state known in San­skrit as savikalpa Samad­hi, a union with the divine. Dr. Mitchell’s attempts to inte­grate sci­en­tif­ic prac­tice and human con­scious­ness par­al­lel those of Plan­e­tary Col­lec­tive and The Overview Insti­tute, all of whom seek in their own ways to help the human race achieve a shift in per­spec­tive sim­i­lar to what the astro­nauts expe­ri­enced, a shift so well artic­u­lat­ed by Carl Sagan in his Cos­mos doc­u­men­tary series and his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot. Inspired by anoth­er icon­ic image of the earth from space, Voy­ager 1’s pho­to from 4 bil­lion miles out, Sagan’s mus­ings took a mys­ti­cal turn, but nev­er left the ground of sound sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing. His “Pale Blue Dot” has become a metaphor for a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive as White’s “overview effect,” albeit one con­sid­er­ably more detached. Watch Sagan’s words brought to life below by ani­ma­tion stu­dio ORDER.

via @kirstinbutler

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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