Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975)

in Architecture, Design, Science, Technology | July 18th, 2019

His­to­ry seems to have set­tled Buckminster’s Fuller’s rep­u­ta­tion as a man ahead of his time. He inspires short, wit­ty pop­u­lar videos like YouTu­ber Joe Scott’s “The Man Who Saw The Future,” and the ongo­ing lega­cy of the Buck­min­ster Fuller Insti­tute (BFI), who note that “Fuller’s ideas and work con­tin­ue to influ­ence new gen­er­a­tions of design­ers, archi­tects, sci­en­tists and artists work­ing to cre­ate a sus­tain­able plan­et.”

Bril­liant futur­ist though he was, Fuller might also be called the man who saw the present and the past—as much as a sin­gle indi­vid­ual could seem­ing­ly hold in their mind at once. He was “a man who is intense­ly inter­est­ed in almost every­thing,” wrote Calvin Tomkins at The New York­er in 1965, the year of Fuller’s 70th birth­day. Fuller was as eager to pass on as much knowl­edge as he could col­lect in his long, pro­duc­tive career, span­ning his ear­ly epipha­nies in the 1920s to his final pub­lic talks in the ear­ly 80s.

“The some­what over­whelm­ing effect of a Fuller mono­logue,” wrote Tomkins, “is well known today in many parts of the world.” His lec­tures leapt from sub­ject to sub­ject, incor­po­rat­ing ancient and mod­ern his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, lin­guis­tics, archi­tec­ture, archae­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, reli­gion, and—in the exam­ple Tomkins gives—“irrefutable data on tides, pre­vail­ing winds,” and “boat design.” His dis­cours­es issue forth in wave after wave of infor­ma­tion.

Fuller could talk at length and with author­i­ty about vir­tu­al­ly anything—especially about him­self and his own work, in his own spe­cial jar­gon of “unique Bucky-isms: spe­cial phras­es, ter­mi­nol­o­gy, unusu­al sen­tence struc­tures, etc.,” writes BFI. He may not always have been par­tic­u­lar­ly hum­ble, yet he spoke and wrote with a lack of prej­u­dice and an open curios­i­ty and that is the oppo­site of arro­gance. Such is the impres­sion we get of Fuller in the series of talks he record­ed ten years after Tomkin’s New York­er por­trait.

Made in Jan­u­ary of 1975, Buck­min­ster Fuller: Every­thing I Know cap­tured Fuller’s “entire life’s work” in 42 hours of “think­ing out loud lec­tures [that exam­ine] in depth all of Fuller’s major inven­tions and dis­cov­er­ies from the 1927 Dymax­ion house, car and bath­room, through the Wichi­ta House, geo­des­ic domes, and tenseg­ri­ty struc­tures, as well as the con­tents of Syn­er­get­ics. Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal in parts, Fuller recounts his own per­son­al his­to­ry in the con­text of the his­to­ry of sci­ence and indus­tri­al­iza­tion.”

He begins, how­ev­er, in his first lec­ture at the top, not with him­self, but with his pri­ma­ry sub­ject of con­cern: “all human­i­ty,” a species that begins always in naked­ness and igno­rance and man­ages to fig­ure it out “entire­ly by tri­al and error,” he says. Fuller mar­vels at the advances of “ear­ly Hin­du and Chi­nese” civilizations—as he had at the Maori in Tomkin’s anec­dote, who “had been among the first peo­ples to dis­cov­er the prin­ci­ples of celes­tial nav­i­ga­tion” and “found a way of sail­ing around the world… at least ten thou­sand years ago.”

The leap from ancient civ­i­liza­tions to “what is called World War I” is “just a lit­tle jump in infor­ma­tion,” he says in his first lec­ture, but when Fuller comes to his own life­time, he shows how many “lit­tle jumps” one human being could wit­ness in a life­time in the 20th cen­tu­ry. “The year I was born Mar­coni invent­ed the wire­less,” says Fuller. “When I was 14 man did get to the North Pole, and when I was 16 he got to the South Pole.”

When Fuller was 7, “the Wright broth­ers sud­den­ly flew,” he says, “and my mem­o­ry is vivid enough of sev­en to remem­ber that for about a year the engi­neer­ing soci­eties were try­ing to prove it was a hoax because it was absolute­ly impos­si­ble for man to do that.” What it showed young Bucky Fuller was that “impos­si­bles are hap­pen­ing.” If Fuller was a vision­ary, he rede­fined the word—as a term for those with an expan­sive, infi­nite­ly curi­ous vision of a pos­si­ble world that already exists all around us.

See Fuller’s com­plete lec­ture series, Every­thing I Know, at the Inter­net Archive, and read edit­ed tran­scripts of his talks at the Buck­min­ster Fuller Insti­tute.

Every­thing I Know will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Three-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller, One of the 20th Century’s Most Pro­duc­tive Design Vision­ar­ies

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates Strik­ing Posters of His Own Inven­tions

Buck­min­ster Fuller Doc­u­ment­ed His Life Every 15 Min­utes, from 1920 Until 1983

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

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Introducing Pretty Much Pop (A Culture Podcast): Episode 1 — Pop Culture vs. High Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | July 18th, 2019

What is pop cul­ture? Does it make sense to dis­tin­guish it from high cul­ture, or can some­thing be both?

Open Cul­ture is pleased to curate a new pod­cast cov­er­ing all things enter­tain­ment: TV, movies, music, nov­els, video games, comics, nov­els, com­e­dy, the­ater, pod­casts, and more. Pret­ty Much Pop is the inven­tion of Mark Lin­sen­may­er (aka musi­cian Mark Lint), cre­ator of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Mark is joined by co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres, an actor and musi­cian who’s appeared on Broad­way and plays clas­si­cal and blue­grass vio­lin, and Bri­an Hirt, a sci­ence-fic­tion writer/linguistics major who col­lab­o­rates with his broth­er on the Con­stel­lary Tales mag­a­zine and pod­cast. For this intro­duc­to­ry dis­cus­sion touch­ing on opera, The Bea­t­les, Fort­nite, 50 Shades of Grey, real­i­ty TV, and more, our hosts are joined by the pod­cast’s audio edi­tor Tyler His­lop, aka Sac­ri­fice MC.

Some of the arti­cles brought in the dis­cus­sion are:

“The Long War Between High­brow and Low­brow” by Noah Berlatsky from the Pacif­ic Stan­dard (2017)

“Pop Cul­ture’s Progress Toward Tragedy” by Titus Techera from the Nation­al Review (2019)

Read more about the 1895 silent film that fea­tured a train com­ing right out of the screen, send­ing peo­ple scream­ing in ter­ror. Here’s more about the open­ing of Stravin­sky’s “Rite of Spring” at which spec­ta­tors riot­ed. You may also enjoy episode 137 of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life about the tastes of social class­es that ana­lyzes Pierre Bour­dieu. Also see episode 193 on lib­er­al edu­ca­tion and the idea of a “canon” of essen­tial, high-cul­ture works. The open­ing music is by Mark (gui­tars, cel­los, djem­be) and Eri­ca (vio­lins). The pod­cast logo is by Ken Ger­ber.

The end­ing song was writ­ten by Mark just for this episode. It’s called “High Rollin’ Cult,” and fea­tures Eri­ca on vio­lin and har­monies.

For more infor­ma­tion on the pod­cast, vis­it prettymuchpop.com or look for the pod­cast soon on Apple Pod­casts. To sup­port this effort (and imme­di­ate­ly get access to four episodes plus bonus con­tent), make a small, recur­ring dona­tion at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 

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An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges

in Books, Literature | July 18th, 2019

“Read­ing the work of Jorge Luis Borges for the first time is like dis­cov­er­ing a new let­ter in the alpha­bet, or a new note in the musi­cal scale,” writes the BBC’s Jane Cia­bat­tari. Borges’ essay-like works of fic­tion are “filled with pri­vate jokes and eso­ter­i­ca, his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and sar­don­ic foot­notes. They are brief, often with abrupt begin­nings.” His “use of labyrinths, mir­rors, chess games and detec­tive sto­ries cre­ates a com­plex intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, yet his lan­guage is clear, with iron­ic under­tones. He presents the most fan­tas­tic of scenes in sim­ple terms, seduc­ing us into the fork­ing path­way of his seem­ing­ly infi­nite imag­i­na­tion.”

If that sounds like your idea of good read, look a lit­tle deep­er into the work of Argenti­na’s most famous lit­er­ary fig­ure through the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. Mex­i­can writer and crit­ic Ilan Sta­vans, the lesson’s cre­ator, begins his intro­duc­tion to Borges by describ­ing a man who “not only remem­bers every­thing he has ever seen, but every time he has seen it in per­fect detail.” Many of you will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Funes the Mem­o­ri­ous, the star of Borges’ 1942 sto­ry of the same name — and those who don’t will sure­ly want to know more about him.

Sta­vans goes on to describe a library “built out of count­less iden­ti­cal rooms, each con­tain­ing the same num­ber of books of the same length,” that as a whole “con­tains every pos­si­ble vari­a­tion of text.” He also men­tions a rumored “lost labyrinth” that turns out to be “not a phys­i­cal maze but a nov­el,” and a nov­el that reveals the iden­ti­ty of the real labyrinth: time itself. Borges enthu­si­asts know which places Sta­vans is talk­ing about, mean­ing they know in which of Borges’ sto­ries — which their author, stick­ing to a word from his native Span­ish, referred to as fic­ciones — they orig­i­nate.

But though “The Library of Babel” (which in recent years has tak­en a dig­i­tal form online) and “The Gar­den Fork­ing Paths” count as two par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ples of what Sta­vans calls “Borges’ many explo­rations of infin­i­ty,” he found so many ways to explore that sub­ject through­out his writ­ing career that his lit­er­ary out­put func­tions as a con­scious­ness-alter­ing sub­stance. It does to the right read­ers, that is, a group that includes such oth­er mind-bend­ing writ­ers as Umber­to Eco, Rober­to Bolaño, and William Gib­son, none of whom were quite the same after they dis­cov­ered the fic­ciones. Behold Borges’ mir­rors, mazes, tigers, and chess games your­self — there­by catch­ing a glimpse of infin­i­ty — and you, too, will nev­er be able to return to the read­er you once were. Not that you’d want to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Explains The Task of Art

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

Why Should You Read James Joyce’s Ulysses?: A New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Why You Should Read The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Bulgakov’s Rol­lick­ing Sovi­et Satire

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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There’s a Tiny Art Museum on the Moon That Features the Art of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschenberg

in Art | July 18th, 2019

This week is the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing, and though we have yet to send an artist into space (pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael Naj­jar is appar­ent­ly still train­ing to become the first), there is a tiny art muse­um on the moon, and it’s been there since Novem­ber 1969, four months after man set foot on the lunar ser­vice, and in the after­glow of that amaz­ing sum­mer.

Don’t expect a walk­a­ble gallery, how­ev­er. The muse­um is actu­al­ly a ceram­ic wafer the size of a postage stamp, but what an impres­sive list: John Cham­ber­lain, For­rest Myers, David Novros, Claes Old­en­burg, Robert Rauschen­berg and Andy Warhol.

As you can see, the six kept it min­i­mal. Rauschen­berg drew a sin­gle line. Abstract artist Novros cre­at­ed a black square with inter­sect­ing white lines that look like a cir­cuit board. Sculp­tor Cham­ber­lain also cre­at­ed a geo­met­ric shape like cir­cuit­ry. Old­en­burg left his sig­na­ture, which at the time resem­bled an old Mick­ey Mouse. Myers, who ini­ti­at­ed the project, drew a “linked sym­bol.” And Andy Warhol drew a “styl­ized sig­na­ture” but let’s be hon­est, it’s a penis. Yes, Warhol put a dick pic on the moon.

The muse­um was not an offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned project. It had to be smug­gled onto the Apol­lo 12 lunar lan­der. This took some doing and it start­ed with Myers.

He might not be as well known as his fel­lows, but Myers was one of the forces behind the Soho art scene in the ‘60s, who saw the indus­tri­al area blos­som with artists look­ing for cheap rents and large spaces.

Myers had been think­ing about putting art on the moon, but all his entreaties to NASA were met with silence–neither a no nor a yes. It would have to be smug­gled on board, he decid­ed, but for such an oper­a­tion, he’d need some­one on the inside.

For­tu­nate­ly, there was a non-prof­it that was help­ing con­nect artists with engi­neers, called Exper­i­ments in Art and Tech­nol­o­gy (E.A.T.) and Rauschen­berg was one of its founders. Through E.A.T., Myers met Bell Labs’ Fred Wald­hauer who loved the moon muse­um project, and came up with the idea of the small wafers. Six­teen wafers were pro­duced (oth­er accounts say 20), one to go on Apol­lo 12, the oth­ers to go back to the artists (one now resides in MOMA’s col­lec­tion). Wald­hauer knew an engi­neer with Grum­man who was work­ing on the Apol­lo 12, and he agreed to sneak the ceram­ic wafer on board. But how would they know this ultra secret mis­sion was accom­plished?

Two days before the Apol­lo launch, Myers received a telegram from Cape Canaver­al:
“YOUR ON’ A.O.K. ALL SYSTEMS GO.
JOHN F.”

The art­work was not the only object sent to the moon on that mis­sion. Engi­neers placed per­son­al pho­tos in the same place: in between the gold ther­mal insu­la­tion pads that would be shed when the lan­der left the moon’s sur­face.

Only when Apol­lo 12’s re-entry cap­sule was on its way back to earth did Myers reveal to the press his suc­cess­ful stunt. How­ev­er, unless we sent astro­nauts back to the exact same spot we don’t real­ly know if the muse­um ever made its way there. Maybe it land­ed the wrong way up? Maybe oth­er wafers moved in through gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, raised rents, and the moon muse­um had to move to Mars. We’ll nev­er find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Apol­lo 11 in Real Time: A New Web Site Lets You Take a Real-Time Jour­ney Through First Land­ing on the Moon

David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Turn 50 This Month: Cel­e­brate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Romanovs’ Last Spectacular Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)

in History, Photography | July 17th, 2019

In 1903, the Romanovs, Russia’s last and longest-reign­ing roy­al fam­i­ly, held a lav­ish cos­tume ball. It was to be their final blowout, and per­haps also the “last great roy­al ball” in Europe, writes the Vin­tage News. The par­ty took place at the Win­ter Palace in St. Peters­burg, 14 years before Czar Nicholas II’s abdi­ca­tion, on the 290th anniver­sary of Romanov rule. The Czar invit­ed 390 guests and the ball ranged over two days of fes­tiv­i­ties, with elab­o­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry boyar cos­tumes, includ­ing “38 orig­i­nal roy­al items of the 17th cen­tu­ry from the armory in Moscow.”

“The first day fea­tured feast­ing and danc­ing,” notes Rus­sia Beyond, “and a masked ball was held on the sec­ond. Every­thing was cap­tured in a pho­to album that con­tin­ues to inspire artists to this day.” The entire Romanov fam­i­ly gath­ered for a pho­to­graph on the stair­case of the Her­mitage the­ater, the last time they would all be pho­tographed togeth­er.

It is like see­ing two dif­fer­ent dead worlds super­im­posed on each other—the Romanovs’ play­act­ing their begin­ning while stand­ing on the thresh­old of their last days.

With the irony of hind­sight, we will always look upon these poised aris­to­crats as doomed to vio­lent death and exile. In a mor­bid turn of mind, I can’t help think­ing of the baroque goth­ic of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ry about a doomed aris­toc­ra­cy who seal them­selves inside a cos­tume ball while a con­ta­gion rav­ages the world out­side: “The exter­nal world could take care of itself,” Poe’s nar­ra­tor says. “In the mean­time it was fol­ly to grieve or to think. The prince had pro­vid­ed all the appli­ances of plea­sure…. It was a volup­tuous scene, that mas­quer­ade.”

Maybe in our imag­i­na­tion, the Romanovs and their friends seem haunt­ed by the weight of suf­fer­ing out­side their palace walls, in both their coun­try and around Europe as the old order fell apart. Or per­haps they just look haunt­ed the way every­one does in pho­tographs from over 100 years ago. Does the col­oriz­ing of these pho­tos by Russ­ian artist Klimbim—who has done sim­i­lar work with images of WW2 sol­diers and por­traits of Russ­ian poets and writ­ers—make them less ghost­ly?

It puts flesh on the pale mono­chro­mat­ic faces, gives the lav­ish cos­tum­ing and fur­ni­ture tex­ture and dimen­sion. Some of the images almost look like art nou­veau illus­tra­tions (and resem­ble those of some of the finest illus­tra­tors of Poe’s work) and the work of con­tem­po­rary painters like Gus­tav Klimt. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that unease lingers in the eyes of some subjects—Empress Alexan­dra Fedorov­na among them—a cer­tain vague and trou­bled appre­hen­sion.

In their book A Life­long Pas­sion, authors Andrei May­lu­nas and Sergei Miro­nenko quote the Grand Duke Alexan­der Mikhailovitch who remem­bered the event as “the last spec­tac­u­lar ball in the his­to­ry of the empire.” The Grand Duke also recalled that “a new and hos­tile Rus­sia glared though the large win­dows of the palace… while we danced, the work­ers were strik­ing and the clouds in the Far East were hang­ing dan­ger­ous­ly low.” As Rus­sia Beyond notes, soon after this cel­e­bra­tion, “The glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis marked the begin­ning of the end for the Russ­ian Empire, and the court ceased to hold balls.”

In 1904, the Rus­so-Japan­ese War began, a war Rus­sia was to lose the fol­low­ing year. Then the aristocracy’s pow­er was fur­ther weak­ened by the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1905, which Lenin would lat­er call the “Great Dress Rehearsal” for the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary takeover of 1917. While the aris­toc­ra­cy cos­tumed itself in the trap­pings of past glo­ry, armies amassed to force their reck­on­ing with the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Who knows what thoughts went through the mind of the tzar, tza­ri­na, and their heirs dur­ing those two days, and the minds of the almost 400 noble­men and women dressed in cos­tumes spe­cial­ly designed by artist Sergey Solomko, who drew from the work of sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans to make accu­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry recre­ations, while Peter Carl Fabergé chose the jew­el­ry, includ­ing, writes the Vin­tage News, the tzarina’s “pearls topped by a dia­mond and emer­ald-stud­ded crown” and an “enor­mous emer­ald” on her bro­cad­ed dress?

If the Romanovs had any inkling their almost 300-year dynasty was com­ing to its end and would take all of the Russ­ian aris­toc­ra­cy with it, they were, at least, deter­mined to go out with the high­est style; the fam­i­ly with “almost cer­tain­ly… the most abso­lutist pow­ers” would spare no expense to live in their past, no mat­ter what the future held for them. See the orig­i­nal, black and white pho­tos, includ­ing that last fam­i­ly por­trait, at His­to­ry Dai­ly and Rus­sia Beyond, and see sev­er­al more col­orized images at the Vin­tage News.

via The Vin­tage News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

How Obses­sive Artists Col­orize Old Pho­tographs & Restore the True Col­ors of the Past

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

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When Neil Young & Devo Jammed Together: Watch Them Play “Hey Hey, My My” in a Clip from the 1982 Film Human Highway

in Film, Music | July 17th, 2019

It’s well known that in the 80s, Neil Young briefly went New Wave, first with 1981’s Re-ac-tor, then the fol­low­ing year’s Kraftwerk-inspired album Trans, which fea­tures such dance floor-friend­ly tracks as “Com­put­er Age” (see it live fur­ther down), “Trans­former Man,” and “Com­put­er Cow­boy (aka Syscrush­er).” This is a weird peri­od in Young’s career—one crit­ics tend to ignore or dis­miss, as William Ruhlmann writes at All­mu­sic, as “baf­fling.”

“Despite the crisp dance beats and syn­the­siz­ers,” Ruhlmann com­plains, Trans “sound­ed less like new Kraftwerk than like old Devo” (as though this were a bad thing). But the “old Devo” dig prob­a­bly would­n’t both­er Young. He jammed with the band them­selves in his bizarre 1982 film Human High­way. Devo not only star in the movie—as garbage men at a nuclear pow­er plant—they also play  a ver­sion of “Hey Hey, My My,” with Young on gui­tar and Mark Moth­ers­baugh on vocals.

Young wasn’t cash­ing in on Devo’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, rid­ing their New Wave coat­tails to bol­ster his hip­ster cred with a punk gen­er­a­tion. He began as a big fan before they even released their first album. “Young first saw Devo when they played the Star­wood Club in West Hol­ly­wood in 1977,” writes Andy Greene at Rolling Stone. “He was blown away by their wild, fre­net­ic stage show and decid­ed to cast them in his movie,” which began shoot­ing the fol­low­ing year.

The admi­ra­tion wasn’t mutu­al at first. Devo were “shocked by the atmos­phere on the set,” espe­cial­ly the stoned, drunk­en antics of Den­nis Hop­per and Dean Stock­well, and they weren’t total­ly dig­ging the song, either. The jam was “com­plete­ly unre­hearsed.” Says Devo’s Jer­ry Casale, “He told us the chord pro­gres­sion and that was that…. It was hip­pie style.” Moth­ers­baugh remem­bers, “I didn’t want to sing about John­ny Rot­ten. So we sang about John­ny Spud.”

Young, at work on songs for the clas­sic 1979 live album Rust Nev­er Sleeps, was push­ing his approach­es to per­for­mance and record­ing in new direc­tions. But when Human High­way start­ed shoot­ing in 1978, few fans would have pre­dict­ed that when it wrapped four years lat­er, he would be mak­ing synth-rock records. The film became a cult clas­sic, notable for bring­ing togeth­er a leg­endary cast of weirdos and serv­ing as Mark Mothersbaugh’s first ven­ture in film-scor­ing.

But we can also see this bizarre musi­cal com­e­dy as a con­cep­tu­al bridge between the jam-band “hip­pie style” rock of Crazy Horse and the slick, vocoder pop of Trans, an album that might make a lit­tle more sense if we think of it in part as Young’s trib­ute to Devo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

When Neil Young & Rick James Cre­at­ed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

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

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

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Beatles Songs Re-Imagined as Vintage Book Covers and Magazine Pages: “Drive My Car,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” & More

in Books, Design, Music | July 17th, 2019

What makes the Bea­t­les the best-known rock band in his­to­ry? None can deny that they com­posed songs of unsur­passed catch­i­ness, a qual­i­ty demon­strat­ed as soon as those songs hit the air­waves. But the past 55 or so years have shown us that they also pos­sess an endur­ing pow­er to inspire: how many begin­ning musi­cians, fired up by their enjoy­ment of the Bea­t­les, play their first notes each day? The trib­utes to the music of the Bea­t­les keep com­ing in non-musi­cal forms as well: take, for exam­ple, these Bea­t­les songs turned into vin­tage book cov­ers and mag­a­zine pages by screen­writer and self-described “graph­ic-arts prankster” Todd Alcott.

“ ‘Dri­ve My Car’ re-imag­ines the clas­sic 1965 Bea­t­les song as a clas­sic 1965 adver­tise­ment for an actu­al car,” Alcott writes of the work at the top of the post, “mash­ing up the image from an ad for a 1966 Chevro­let Cor­vair with the lyrics from the song.”

Below that, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” makes of that num­ber a mass-mar­ket book cov­er “in the style of Erich von Daniken’s clas­sic 1970s alien-vis­i­ta­tion book Char­i­ots of the Gods?” Below, Alcot­t’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” per­fect­ly re-cre­ates the look (and, with that vis­i­ble cov­er wear, the feel) of a heady 1960s sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el.

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows does sound like a plau­si­ble piece of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion from that era, but Alcott has made use of much more than these songs’ titles. Even casu­al Bea­t­les fans will notice how much of their lyri­cal con­tent he man­ages to work into his designs, for which the 1967 Nation­al Enquir­er cov­er pas­tiche he put togeth­er for the 1967 sin­gle “A Day in the Life” (“com­plete with pho­tos of Tory Browne, the Guin­ness heir about whom the song was writ­ten”) offered an espe­cial­ly rich oppor­tu­ni­ty. Just when the Bea­t­les broke up in real life, the era of the new-age self-help book began, and after see­ing what Alcott did with “Hel­lo Good­bye” using the dis­tinc­tive visu­al brand­ing of that pub­lish­ing trend, you’ll won­der why no one cashed in on such a com­bi­na­tion at the time.

You can see all of Alcot­t’s Bea­t­les book cov­er and mag­a­zine page designs, and buy prints of them in var­i­ous sizes, over at Etsy. Oth­er selec­tions include “Rocky Rac­coon” as an 1880s dime nov­el (pub­lish­ers of which includ­ed a firm named Bea­dles) and “Rev­o­lu­tion” as a Sovi­et his­to­ry book. Open Cul­ture read­ers will know Alcott from his pre­vi­ous for­ays into retro music-to-book graph­ic design, which took the songs of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radio­head and oth­ers and re-imag­ined them as sci-fi nov­els, pulp-fic­tion mag­a­zines, and oth­er arti­facts of print cul­ture from times past. In the case of the Bea­t­les, Alcot­t’s for­mi­da­ble skill at evok­ing a high­ly spe­cif­ic era of recent his­to­ry with an image under­scores, by con­trast, the time­less­ness of the songs that inspired them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Pulp Cov­ers for Clas­sic Detec­tive Nov­els by Dashiell Ham­mett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie & Ray­mond Chan­dler

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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Alan Turing Will Be Featured on England’s New £50 Banknote

in Uncategorized | July 16th, 2019

This week, the Bank of Eng­land announced that it will fea­ture Alan Tur­ing on its £50 ban­knote, thus com­plet­ing the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Eng­lish math­e­mati­cian, com­put­er sci­en­tist and code break­er. The new note will go into cir­cu­la­tion in 2021. Find more at The Guardian.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Tur­ing Machine Hand­made Out of Wood

The Books on Young Alan Turing’s Read­ing List: From Lewis Car­roll to Mod­ern Chro­mat­ics

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

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