David Byrne Launches the “Reasons to Be Cheerful” Web Site: A Compendium of News Meant to Remind Us That the World Isn’t Actually Falling Apart

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 16th, 2018

What­ev­er your ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sion, our time has no doubt giv­en you more than a few rea­sons to fear for the future of civ­i­liza­tion, not least because bad news sells. Musi­cian, artist, and for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne has cer­tain­ly felt the effects: “It seems like the world is going to Hell. I wake up in the morn­ing, look at the paper, and go, ‘Oh no!’,” he writes. “Often I’m depressed for half the day.” But he writes that on the front page of his new project Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, which began as a qua­si-ther­a­peu­tic col­lec­tion of pieces of “good news that remind­ed me, ‘Hey, there’s actu­al­ly some pos­i­tive stuff going on!’ ” and has grown into an online obser­va­to­ry of world improve­ment.

What kind of pos­i­tive stuff has Byrne found? He iden­ti­fies cer­tain com­mon qual­i­ties among the sto­ries that have caught his eye: “Almost all of these ini­tia­tives are local, they come from cities or small regions who have tak­en it upon them­selves to try some­thing that might offer a bet­ter alter­na­tive than what exists.” These adjust­ments to the human con­di­tion tend to devel­op in a “bot­tom up, com­mu­ni­ty and indi­vid­u­al­ly dri­ven” man­ner, they hap­pen all over the world but could poten­tial­ly work in any cul­ture, all “have been tried and proven to be suc­cess­ful” and “can be copied and scaled up” with­out the sin­gu­lar efforts of “one amaz­ing teacher, doc­tor, musi­cian or activist.”

The sto­ries col­lect­ed so far on Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful fall into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. In Civic Engage­ment, for exam­ple, he’s found a vari­ety of effec­tive exam­ples of that prac­tice in his trav­els back and forth across the Unit­ed States. In Health, he writes about efforts to end the war on drugs in places like Van­cou­ver, Col­orado, and Por­tu­gal. As any­one who’s fol­lowed Byrne’s writ­ing and speak­ing about cycling and the infra­struc­ture that sup­ports it might imag­ine, this side also includes a sec­tion called Urban/Transportation, whose first post deals with the glob­al influ­ence of bike share sys­tems like Paris’ Velib and bike-only street-clo­sure days like Bogotá’s Ciclovia.

In Cul­ture, Byrne writes about the rise of a form of music called AfroReg­gae that offers an alter­na­tive to a life of crime for the youth of Brazil’s fave­las, the dis­tinc­tive libraries estab­lished at the end of Bogotá’s rapid bus lines and in poor parts of Medel­lín, and even some of his own work relat­ed to the record­ing and tour design of his own upcom­ing album Amer­i­can Utopia. Amer­i­can Utopia in the year 2018? That might sound awful­ly opti­mistic, but remem­ber that David Byrne is the man who once went on an artis­tic speak­ing tour about his love of Pow­er­point. If he can see the good in that, he can see the good in any­thing.

Vis­it Byrne’s Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Phi­los­o­phy of “Opti­mistic Nihilism,” Or How to Find Pur­pose in a Mean­ing­less Uni­verse

The Pow­er of Pes­simism: Sci­ence Reveals the Hid­den Virtues in Neg­a­tive Think­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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An Animated Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophical Recipe for Getting Over the Sources of Regret, Disappointment and Suffering in Our Lives

in Philosophy | January 16th, 2018

The idea of accep­tance has found much, well… accep­tance in our ther­a­peu­tic cul­ture, by way of Elis­a­beth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, 12-step pro­grams, the wave of sec­u­lar mind­ful­ness prac­tices, the body-accep­tance move­ment, etc. All of these inter­ven­tions into depressed, bereaved, guilt-rid­den, and/or anx­ious states of mind have their own aims and meth­ods, which some­times over­lap, some­times do not. But what they all share, per­haps, for all the strug­gle involved, is a gen­er­al sense of opti­mism about accep­tance.

One can­not say this defin­i­tive­ly about the Sto­ic idea of amor fati—the instruc­tion to “love one’s fate”—though you might be per­suad­ed to think oth­er­wise if you google the term and come up with a cou­ple dozen pop­u­lar­iza­tions. Yes, there’s love in the name, but the fate we’re asked to embrace may just as well be painful and debil­i­tat­ing as plea­sur­able and uplift­ing. We can­not change what has hap­pened to us, or much con­trol what’s going to hap­pen, so we might as well just get used to it, so to speak.

If this isn’t exact­ly opti­mism in the sense of “it gets bet­ter,” it isn’t entire­ly pes­simism either. But it can become a grim and joy­less fatal­is­tic exer­cise. Yet, as Friedrich Niet­zsche used the term—and he used it with much rel­ish—amor fati means not only accept­ing loss, suf­fer­ing, mis­takes, addic­tions, appear­ances, or men­tal and emo­tion­al tur­bu­lence; it means accept­ing all of it—every­thing and every­one that caus­es both pain and plea­sure, as Alain de Bot­ton says above, “with strength and an all-embrac­ing atti­tude that bor­ders on a kind of enthu­si­as­tic affec­tion.”

“I do not want to wage war against what is ugly,” he wrote in The Gay Sci­ence, “I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.” Read­ers of Niet­zsche may find them­selves pick­ing up any one of his books, includ­ing The Gay Sci­ence, to see him doing all of the above, con­stant­ly, on any ran­dom page. But his is nev­er a sys­tem­at­ic phi­los­o­phy, but an expres­sion of pas­sion and atti­tude, incon­sis­tent in its parts but, as a whole, sur­pris­ing­ly holis­tic. “My for­mu­la for great­ness in a human being,” he writes in Ecce Homo, “is amor fati”

That one wants noth­ing to be dif­fer­ent, not for­ward, not back­ward, not in all eter­ni­ty. Not mere­ly bear what is nec­es­sary, still less con­ceal it… but love it.

Although the con­cept may remind us of Sto­ic phi­los­o­phy, and is very often dis­cussed in those terms, Niet­zsche saw such thought—as he under­stood it—as gloomy, ascetic, and life-deny­ing. His use of amor fati goes beyond mere res­ig­na­tion to some­thing more rad­i­cal, and very dif­fi­cult for the human mind to stom­ach, to use a some­what Niet­zschean fig­ure of speech. “It encom­pass­es the whole of world his­to­ry (includ­ing the most hor­rif­ic episodes),” notes a Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty sum­ma­ry, “and Nietzsche’s own role in this his­to­ry.” Above all, he desired, he wrote, to be a “Yes-say­er.”

Is amor fati a rem­e­dy for regret, dis­sat­is­fac­tion, the end­less­ly rest­less desire for social and self-improve­ment? Can it ban­ish our agony over history’s night­mares and our per­son­al records of fail­ure? De Bot­ton thinks so, but one nev­er real­ly knows with Nietzsche—his often satir­i­cal exag­ger­a­tions can turn them­selves inside out, becom­ing exact­ly the oppo­site of what we expect. Yet above all, what he always turns away from are absolute ideals; we should nev­er take his amor fati as some kind of divine com­mand­ment. It works in dialec­ti­cal rela­tion to his more vig­or­ous crit­i­cal spir­it, and should be applied with a sit­u­a­tion­al and prag­mat­ic eye. In this sense, amor fati can be seen as instrumental—a tool to bring us out of the paral­y­sis of despair and con­dem­na­tion and into an active realm, guid­ed by a rad­i­cal­ly lov­ing embrace of it all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of “Opti­mistic Nihilism,” Or How to Find Pur­pose in a Mean­ing­less Uni­verse

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

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

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Hear Dolores O’Riordan’s Beautifully-Pained Vocals in the Unplugged Version of The Cranberries’ 1994 Hit “Zombie”

in Music | January 16th, 2018

Yes­ter­day, amidst the many trib­utes and inevitable dis­sention over the lega­cy of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., a sad piece of news seemed to get buried: the death of Cran­ber­ries singer Dolores O’Riordan, at the far-too-young age of 46. The Irish vocal­ist not only “defined the sound of The Cran­ber­ries,” as her NPR obit­u­ary notes, she defined the sound of the 90s. Any­one who remem­bers the decade remem­bers spend­ing a sub­stan­tial part of it with Cran­ber­ries’ hits “Linger,” “Dreams,” and “Zom­bie” loop­ing in their heads.

Just 18 when she audi­tioned for them in 1989, O’Riordan took the band from what might have been rather for­mu­la­ic mopey, jan­g­ly dream­pop and gave it “a smoky hue in full cry” as well as “a sweet, del­i­cate tone that evoked cen­turies of Gael­ic folk tra­di­tion.”

Like anoth­er recent, trag­ic loss from the Gen X heyday—Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell—she ful­ly embod­ied pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty with a voice that was an arrest­ing force. Whether you were a fan or not, you sim­ply had to pay atten­tion.

Lis­ten, for exam­ple, to the band’s 1994 protest song “Zom­bie,” which memo­ri­al­izes two boys killed the pre­vi­ous year in an IRA bomb­ing. It’s a track that “sounds wild­ly anom­alous,” writes Rob Harvil­la at The Ringer, “giv­en the oth­er songs that made her famous.” While the “plod­ding rum­ble” and “crush­ing dis­tor­tion” evoke any num­ber of angsty qui­et-loud anthems of the time, O’Riordan’s “was the last voice you expect­ed to hear howl­ing over it.” The con­trast is haunt­ing, yet the song works just as well with­out fuzzed-out gui­tars and thun­der­ous drums, as in the orches­tral MTV Unplugged ver­sion above.

The “Zom­bie” video offers a clas­sic col­lec­tion of 90s styl­is­tic quirks, from Derek Jar­man-inspired set­pieces to the use of black and white and earnest polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing. For us old folks, it’s an almost pure hit of nos­tal­gia, and for the young, a near­ly per­fect spec­i­men of the decade’s rock aes­thet­ics, which includ­ed a refresh­ing num­ber of famous female solo artists and front­women just as like­ly as the men to dom­i­nate rock radio and tele­vi­sion. Indeed, it seems like the 90s may have pro­duced more promi­nent female-front­ed bands than any oth­er decade before or since. Or maybe I just remem­ber it that way. In any case, cen­tral to that mem­o­ry is Dolores O’Riordan’s “sta­di­um-size hit about dead­ly vio­lence in North­ern Ire­land,” and its beau­ti­ful­ly pained laments and point­ed­ly unsub­tle yelps and wails—a stun­ning expres­sion of mourn­ing that rever­ber­ates still some 25 years lat­er as we mourn its singer’s untime­ly pass­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soundgarden’s Chris Cor­nell Sings Haunt­ing Acoustic Cov­ers of Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

David Bowie: The Last Five Years Is Now Airing/Streaming on HBO

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

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Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Free Course from Princeton

in Online Courses, Technology | January 16th, 2018

Quick fyi: Ear­li­er this month, we tried to make sense of the Bit­coin fren­zy in the only we know how–by point­ing you toward a free course. Specif­i­cal­ly, we high­light­ed a Prince­ton course called Bit­coin and Cur­ren­cy Tech­nolo­gies that’s being offered on the online plat­form Cours­era. The course is based on a suc­cess­ful course taught on Prince­ton’s cam­pus.

Transform Business with Blockchain. 100% online courses. No Coding Required.

And it’s worth men­tion­ing that you can find the actu­al video lec­tures from that orig­i­nal cam­pus course on Youtube. (See them embed­ded above, or access them direct­ly here.) Pair the 12 lec­tures with the free Prince­ton Bit­coin text­book and you should be ready to make sense of Bit­coin … and maybe even some of the Bit­coin hype.

For more free cours­es vis­it our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

What Actu­al­ly Is Bit­coin? Princeton’s Free Course “Bit­coin and Cur­ren­cy Tech­nolo­gies” Pro­vides Much-Need­ed Answers

Bit­coin, the New Decen­tral­ized Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy, Demys­ti­fied in a Three Minute Video

The Prince­ton Bit­coin Text­book Is Now Free Online

Why Eco­nom­ics is for Every­one!, Explained in a New RSA Ani­mat­ed Video

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

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Omoshiroi Blocks: Japanese Memo Pads Reveal Intricate Buildings As The Pages Get Used

in Design, Technology | January 15th, 2018

We’ve all had the expe­ri­ence, grow­ing up, of using notepads for some­thing oth­er than their intend­ed pur­pose: run­ning our thumbs down their stacked-up pages and savor­ing the buzzing sound, turn­ing them into flip­books by painstak­ing­ly draw­ing a frame on each page, and even — in times of tru­ly dire bore­dom — cut­ting them down into unusu­al sizes and shapes. Now, Japan­ese archi­tec­tur­al mod­el mak­er Tri­ad has ele­vat­ed that youth­ful impulse to great heights of aes­thet­ic refine­ment with their line­up of Omoshi­roi Blocks.

The Japan­ese word omoshi­roi (面白い) can trans­late to “inter­est­ing,” “fun,” “amus­ing,” or a whole host of oth­er such descrip­tors that might come to the mind of some­one who runs across an Omoshi­roi Block in per­son, or even on the inter­net.

Accord­ing to Spoon & Tam­a­go, Tri­ad uses “laser-cut­ting tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate what is, at first, just a seem­ing­ly nor­mal square cube of paper note cards. But as the note cards get used, an object begins to appear. And you’ll have to exhaust the entire deck of cards to ful­ly exca­vate the hid­den object.

These objects include “var­i­ous notable archi­tec­tur­al sites in Japan like Kyoto’s Kiy­omizud­era Tem­ple, Tokyo’s Asakusa Tem­ple and Tokyo Tow­er. The blocks are com­posed of over 100 sheets of paper and each sheet is dif­fer­ent from the next in the same way that indi­vid­ual moments stack up togeth­er to form a mem­o­ry.” Oth­er three-dimen­sion­al enti­ties exca­vat­able from Omoshi­roi Blocks include trains, cam­eras, and even the streetscape of Detroit, which includes the late John C. Port­man Jr.‘s Renais­sance Cen­ter — the Tokyo Tow­er, you might say, of the Motor City.

You can see most of these Omoshi­roi Blocks, and oth­ers, on Tri­ad’s Insta­gram account. You may have no oth­er option at the moment, since Tri­ad’s offi­cial site has recent­ly been over­whelmed by vis­i­tors, pre­sum­ably seek­ing a few of these recent­ly-gone-viral blocks for them­selves. Besides, notes their most recent Insta­gram post, “all items are out of stock. So, over­seas ship­ping is not pos­si­ble at this moment. Please wait for our online shop announce­ments to be updat­ed.”

Until then, accord­ing to Spoon & Tam­a­go, you might try your luck find­ing one at the Osa­ka branch of Tokyu Hands, Japan’s most cre­ative depart­ment store.

If you can’t make it out there, rest assured that Tri­ad will prob­a­bly have their online shop up and run­ning before this year’s hol­i­day sea­son, thus pro­vid­ing you with an impres­sive gift option for the enthu­si­asts in your life of archi­tec­ture, sta­tionery, uncon­ven­tion­al uses of tech­nol­o­gy, small-scale intri­cate crafts­man­ship, and the arti­facts of Japan­ese cul­ture — all fields in which Japan has spent hun­dreds, if not thou­sands of years excelling.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go/ h/t @herhandsmyhands

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­ers May Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­rate Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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A Teaser Trailer for Fahrenheit 451: A New Film Adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Ever-Relevant Novel

in Film, Sci Fi | January 15th, 2018

From HBO comes a teas­er trail­er for an upcom­ing adap­ta­tion of Ray Brad­bury’s Fahren­heit 451, a film that went into pro­duc­tion a year before the 2016 election–that is, before things in Amer­i­ca took a turn for the worse and the weird. That life has start­ed to imi­tate Brad­bury’s art has­n’t been lost on the film’s direc­tor, Ramin Bahrani, who told crit­ics at the Tele­vi­sion Crit­ics Asso­ci­a­tion:

Polit­i­cal­ly things are going in a very strange direc­tion in terms of what is real and what is not real… I think we’ve been going in that direc­tion for a long time, it’s just now kind of being revealed to us more clear­ly. So I think from a high lev­el, that’s a prob­lem.…

I don’t want to focus so much on [Trump] because I don’t want to excuse the 30, 40 years pri­or to that. He’s just an exag­ger­a­tion of it now…

I don’t want us to for­get what Brad­bury said, that we asked for this… We are [also] elect­ing again this thing [a smart­phone] in my pock­et . We are elect­ing to give it all away to this.

Between the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in last 20 years and pol­i­tics, I think Bradbury’s biggest con­cern about the ero­sion of cul­ture is now… and the speed at which this is advanc­ing is expo­nen­tial.

Will we actu­al­ly get ahead of the dam, or will it just be a flood and up to some oth­er gen­er­a­tion to bring back all of Bradbury’s heroes?

The new film star­ring Michael B. Jor­dan, and Michael Shan­non will come out this spring. Stay tuned.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

To Read This Exper­i­men­tal Edi­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451, You’ll Need to Add Heat to the Pages

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Father Writes a Great Let­ter About Cen­sor­ship When Son Brings Home Per­mis­sion Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Cen­sored Book, Fahren­heit 451

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

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Smartify, a Shazam for Art, Lets You Use Your Phone to Scan, Identify & Learn About Major Works of Art

in Art, Data, Museums, Travel, Web/Tech | January 15th, 2018

Not so long ago, art muse­ums were known as tem­ples of qui­et con­tem­pla­tion, despite dai­ly inva­sions by rau­cous school groups.

Now, the onus is on the muse­ums to bring the moun­tain to Mohammed. Those kids have smart­phones. How long can a muse­um hope to stay relevant—nay, survive—without an app?

Many of the muse­ums who’ve already part­nered up with Smar­ti­fy—an app (Mac-Android) that lets you take a pic­ture of art­work with your phone and instant­ly access infor­ma­tion about them—have exist­ing apps of their own in place: the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, Amsterdam’s Rijksmu­se­um, to name a few.

These insti­tu­tion­al apps pro­vide vis­i­tors with an expand­ed view of the sort of infor­ma­tion one com­mon­ly finds on a muse­um card, in addi­tion to such prac­ti­cal­i­ties as gallery lay­outs and cal­en­dars of events. More often than not, there’s an option to “save” an art­work the vis­i­tor finds captivating—no word on what this fea­ture is doing to post­card sales in muse­um shops, so per­haps print isn’t dead yet.

Giv­en all the muse­um apps free for the down­load­ing, for whom is Smar­ti­fy, a “Shaz­am for art,” intend­ed?

Per­haps the glo­be­trot­ting muse­um hop­per eager to con­sol­i­date? Its devel­op­ers are adamant that it’s intend­ed to com­ple­ment, not replace, in-per­son vis­its to the insti­tu­tions where the works are housed, so arm­chair muse­um goers are advised to look else­where, like Google Arts & Cul­ture.

Per­haps the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be the small­er gal­leries and muse­ums ill equipped to launch free­stand­ing apps of their own. Smartify’s web­site states that it relies on “annu­al mem­ber­ship from muse­um part­ners, in-app trans­ac­tions, adver­tis­ing and data sales to rel­e­vant arts organ­i­sa­tions.”

Ear­ly adopters com­plained that while the app (Mac-Android) had no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing famous works of art, it came up emp­ty on the less­er-known pieces. That’s a pity as these are the works vis­i­tors are most like­ly to seek fur­ther infor­ma­tion on.

One of the devel­op­ers com­pared the Smar­ti­fy expe­ri­ence to vis­it­ing a muse­um in the com­pa­ny of “an enthu­si­as­tic and knowl­edge­able friend telling you more about a work of art.”

Maybe bet­ter to do just that, if the option exists? Such a friend would not be ham­pered by the copy­right laws that ham­per Smar­ti­fy with regard to cer­tain works. A friend might even stand you a hot choco­late or some pricey scone in the muse­um cafe.

At any rate, the app (Mac-Android) is now avail­able for vis­i­tors to take for a spin in 22 dif­fer­ent muse­ums and gal­leries in the UK, US, and Europe, with the promise of more to come.

Those whose knowl­edge of art his­to­ry is vast are like­ly to be under­whelmed, but it could be a way for those vis­it­ing with kids and teens to keep every­one engaged for the dura­tion. As one enthu­si­as­tic user wrote:

As a child­hood Poke­mon fan and avid art fan, this is a dream come true. This is like a Pokedex for art lol. If you ever watched the ani­me, Ash Ketchum would scan a Poke­mon with his Pokedex and get the details of its name, type, habits, etc. This app does that but instead of scan­ning mon­sters, it scans and ana­lyzes art work then gives you the load (sic) down about it.

Those with Inter­net pri­va­cy con­cerns may choose to heed, instead, the user who wrote:

Be aware, they want to gath­er as a “side effect” your pri­vate art col­lec­tion. I just want­ed to try it out with some of my art pieces (Gün­ther Förg, Richter, etc) but it does­n’t work if you don’t give them your loca­tion data. Be care­ful!

 

Muse­ums and Gal­leries Whose Images/Art Appear in Smar­ti­fy as of Jan­u­ary 2018

USA:

J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um

Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art (LACMA)

Lagu­na Art Muse­um

Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy

Freer | Sack­ler Gal­leri­es­The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Met Clois­ters

 

UK:

The Bowes Muse­um

Mid­dles­brough Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art

Ben Uri Gallery

The Wal­lace Col­lec­tion

Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts

Nation­al Gallery

Sculp­ture in the City

 

Europe:

Rijksmu­se­um

Rijksmu­se­um Twen­the

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Museo Cor­rer

Museo San Dona­to (MPSArt)

The State Her­mitage Muse­um

The Pushkin Muse­um of Fine Arts

 

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s Free App Ana­lyzes Your Self­ie and Then Finds Your Dop­pel­ganger in Muse­um Por­traits

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

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

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Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, the New Series Starring Bryan Cranston, Anna Paquin & Steve Buscemi, Now Streaming Free on Amazon Prime

in Sci Fi, Television | January 15th, 2018

Do I like Philip K. Dick? Do androids dream of elec­tric sheep? Hon­est­ly, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer such ques­tions about the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of arti­fi­cial beings. But I know for cer­tain that I like Philip K. Dick. Deeply admire, respect, fear, even… there are many words I could use to describe the way I feel about his imag­i­na­tion and vision. And I could say much the same about the film adap­ta­tions of Dick’s work, up to and includ­ing Blade Run­ner 2049, which wasn’t as visu­al­ly over­whelm­ing on the small screen after its release on stream­ing video but still as emo­tion­al­ly cap­ti­vat­ing in its nar­ra­tive, pac­ing, score, and direc­tor Denis Villeneuve’s fideli­ty to, and expan­sion of, the orig­i­nal film’s use of col­or and mon­u­men­tal, future-bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture to tell a sto­ry.

Though he very much want­ed to break out of sci­ence fic­tion and achieve the sta­tus of a “lit­er­ary” writer—the dis­tinc­tions in his day being much hard­er and faster—Dick’s fic­tion has pro­vid­ed the ulti­mate source for the cin­e­mat­ic sci-fi epic for sev­er­al decades now, and shows lit­tle sign of falling out of favor. The com­mer­cial and cre­ative ques­tion seems to be not whether Dick’s sto­ries still res­onate, but whether they trans­late to tele­vi­sion as bril­liant­ly as they do to film. Crit­i­cal opin­ion can sharply divide on Amazon’s adap­ta­tion of Dick’s alter­na­tive his­to­ry nov­el The Man in the High Cas­tle (about a world in which the Axis pow­ers tri­umphed), which might be “pon­der­ous,” “bor­ing,” and—in its sec­ond season—“the worst TV show of the year,” or “the sec­ond best show Ama­zon has ever made.”

How much this lat­ter judg­ment con­veys depends upon how high­ly, on the whole, one rates the qual­i­ty of pro­gram­ming from that cor­po­rate mega-jug­ger­naut threat­en­ing to over­take near­ly every aspect of con­sumer cul­ture. To say that I find it iron­ic that such an enti­ty pos­sess­es not only one Philip K. Dick prop­er­ty, but now two, with its lat­est Dick-inspired anthol­o­gy show Philip K. Dick­’s Elec­tric Dreams, would be to gross­ly under­state the case. The author who imag­ined an intru­sive inter­net of things and a dystopi­an world where adver­tise­ments appear in our minds might also find this sit­u­a­tion some­what… Dick-ian (Dick-like? Dick-ish?). But such is the world we live in. Putting these ironies aside, let’s revis­it the ques­tion: do Dick­’s sto­ries work as well on TV as they do on film?

Find out for your­self. The first sea­son of Philip K. Dick­’s Elec­tric Dreams is now stream­ing on Ama­zon (see the trail­er above), and you can either pur­chase it by episode, or binge-stream the whole thing gratis with a 30-day free tri­al of Ama­zon Prime. Giv­en that the series, which adapts sto­ries from a col­lec­tion of the same title, is not the prod­uct of one sin­gu­lar vision but a dif­fer­ent cre­ative team each time, you may agree with Evan Nar­cisse at Giz­mo­do, who writes that the episodes “don’t just vary in aes­thet­ics; they vary wide­ly in qual­i­ty.” It has a star-stud­ded cast—including Anna Paquin, Janelle Mon­ae, Ter­rance Howard, Steve Busce­mi, and Bryan Cranston (who co-produced)—and some impres­sive pro­duc­tion val­ues.

But Elec­tric Dreams also has a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge set before it: “to show both new view­ers and con­ver­sant fans why Dick’s oeu­vre mat­ters, which is hard in a world where we’re eeri­ly close to some of his fic­tion­al real­i­ties.” Indeed—as we pon­der whether we might be char­ac­ters in a sim­u­lat­ed real­i­ty, our thoughts and beliefs manip­u­lat­ed by pow­er­ful com­pa­nies like those in Dick’s unset­tling Ubik—watch­ing the show might add yet anoth­er lay­er of bewil­der­ment to the already very strange expe­ri­ence of every­day life these days. But then again, “if you feel weird­ed out while watch­ing, that just means the show is doing its job.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New 2‑In‑1 Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? & A Scan­ner Dark­ly

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

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

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