The Amazing Artistry & Ingenuity of the Furniture Enjoyed by 18th Century Aristocrats

in Design, History | January 15th, 2020

What­ev­er did peo­ple do with them­selves all day before social media and stream­ing video? Before TV, film, and radio? If you were most peo­ple in Europe, before var­i­ous rev­o­lu­tions, you worked from dawn to dusk and col­lapsed in bed, with rare hol­i­days to break up the monot­o­ny.

But if you were an aris­to­crat, you not only had the plea­sures of juicy gos­sip, live­ly cor­re­spon­dence, and bawdy nov­els to look for­ward to, but you might also—just as mil­lions do now—encounter such plea­sures while gam­ing.

The gam­ing tech­nol­o­gy of the time was all hand­craft­ed, and said aris­to­crats might find them­selves trad­ing wicked barbs while seat­ed around the height of tech above, a table that unfolds a series of leaves to reveal a felt sur­face for card games, a board for chess or check­ers, and a leather writ­ing sur­face that offers the option of a bookrest, for prop­ping up a scan­dalous book of verse.

If you think that’s impres­sive, the table hasn’t fin­ished yet. It fur­ther opens into a backgam­mon board, with slid­ing lids reveal­ing com­part­ments for game pieces. Then, the whole thing folds back to its size as a small side table, with detach­able legs that can be stored inside it for easy portage.

The ani­mat­ed video of the ulti­mate 18th cen­tu­ry gam­ing sys­tem at the top comes to us from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, demon­strat­ing a piece in their col­lec­tion designed by Ger­man cab­i­net­mak­er David Roent­gen that “once graced the inti­mate inte­ri­or of an aris­to­crat­ic Euro­pean home.” Not to be out­done, the Get­ty Muse­um brings us the 3D ani­ma­tion above of an 18th-cen­tu­ry French mechan­i­cal table, with intri­cate work­ings designed by Jean-François Oeben.

“An afflu­ent lady might spend hours at a fash­ion­able table, engaged in leisure or work,” notes a com­pan­ion video above. It illus­trates the point with a pair of ghost­ly ani­mat­ed hands com­pos­ing a let­ter on the table’s silk writ­ing sur­face.

One can imag­ine these hands spilling the ink while open­ing juniper-scent­ed draw­ers, and prop­ping up the book stand; los­ing their place in a book while search­ing through com­part­ments, ear­ly forms of scrolling or open­ing mul­ti­ple tabs.

We may now car­ry mechan­i­cal tables in our pock­ets and right­ly think of gam­ing sys­tems as por­tals to oth­er worlds, but there’s no deny­ing that these bespoke ances­tors of our devices offered plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty for pleas­ant dis­trac­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ladies & Gen­tle­men Got Dressed in the 18th Cen­tu­ry: It Was a Pret­ty Involved Process

The Sights & Sounds of 18th Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with 3D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

Restora­tion and 18th Cen­tu­ry Poet­ry: From Dry­den to Wordsworth (Free Course) 

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

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How a Philip Glass Opera Gets Made: An Inside Look

in Design, Fashion, Music, Opera | January 15th, 2020

Most fever dreams require very lit­tle pre-plan­ning and coor­di­na­tion. All it takes is the flu and a pil­low, and per­haps a shot of Ny-Quil.

A fever dream on the order of com­pos­er Philip Glass’ 1984 opera, Akhnat­en, is a horse of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent col­or, as “How An Opera Gets Made,” above, makes clear.

For those in the per­form­ing arts, the rev­e­la­tions of this eye­pop­ping Vox video will come as no sur­prise, though the for­mi­da­ble resources of New York City’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, where the piece was recent­ly restaged by direc­tor Phe­lim McDer­mott, may be cause for envy.

The cos­tumes!

The wigs!

The set!

The orches­tra!

The jug­glers!

… wait, jug­glers?

Yes, a dozen, whose care­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed efforts pro­vide a coun­ter­point to the styl­ized slow motion pace the rest of the cast main­tains for the dura­tion of the three and half hour long show.

This max­i­mal­ist approach to min­i­mal­ist mod­ern opera has proved a hit, though the New York Times’ crit­ic Antho­ny Tom­masi­ni opined that he could have done with less jug­gling…

We pre­sume every­one gets that bring­ing an opera to the stage involves many more depart­ments, steps, and heavy labor than can be squeezed into a 10-minute video.

Per­haps the biggest sur­prise await­ing the unini­ti­at­ed is the play­ful off­stage man­ner of Antho­ny Roth Costan­zo, the supreme­ly gift­ed coun­tertenor in the title role. As the pharaoh who reduced ancient Egypt’s pan­theon to a sin­gle god, Aten, aka the sun, he makes his first entrance com­plete­ly nude, head shaved, flecked in gold, fac­ing the audi­ence for the entire­ty of his four-minute descent down a 12-step stair­case.

(One step the video does­n’t touch on is the work­out reg­i­men he embarked on in prepa­ra­tion for his nude debut, a 6‑day-a-week com­mit­ment that inspired him to found one of the first Amer­i­can busi­ness­es to offer fit­ness buffs train­ing ses­sions using Elec­tri­cal Mus­cle Stim­u­la­tion.)

His ded­i­ca­tion to his craft is obvi­ous­ly extra­or­di­nary. It has to be for him to han­dle the score’s demand­ing arpeg­gios and intri­cate rep­e­ti­tions, notably the six-minute seg­ment whose only lyric is “ah.” His breath con­trol on that sec­tion earns high praise from his long­time vocal coach Joan Pate­naude-Yarnell.

But—and this will come as a shock to those of us whose con­cept of male opera stars is informed near­ly exclu­sive­ly by Bugs Bun­ny car­toons and the late Luciano Pavarot­ti—his out­sized tal­ent does not seem to be reflect­ed in out­sized self-regard.

He treats view­ers to a self-dep­re­cat­ing peek inside the Met’s wig room while clad in a decid­ed­ly anti-pri­mo uomo sweat­shirt, game­ly dons his sty­ro­foam khep­resh for close range inspec­tion, and cracks him­self up by high-fiv­ing his own pharaon­ic image in the lob­by.

There’s incred­i­ble light­ness to this being.

As such, he may be more effec­tive at attract­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of admir­ers to the art form than any dis­counts or pre-show mix­er for patrons 35-and-under.

For fur­ther insights into how this musi­cal sausage got made, have a gan­der at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s pre-pro­duc­tion videos and read star Antho­ny Roth Costanzo’s essay in the Guardian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is Opera Part of Pop Cul­ture? Pret­ty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

Watch Klaus Nomi Debut His New Wave Vaude­ville Show: The Birth of the Opera-Singing Space Alien (1978)

Hear the High­est Note Sung in the 137-Year His­to­ry of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Celebrating Women Composers: A New BBC Digital Archive Takes You from Hildegard of Bingen (1098) to Nadia Boulanger (1979)

in Gender, Music | January 15th, 2020

Recent­ly, we pub­lished a post about Nadia Boulanger, the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most influ­en­tial music teacher. While a com­pos­er and con­duc­tor in her own right—indeed, she was the first woman to con­duct major sym­phonies in Europe and the U.S.—Boulanger is best known for her list of illus­tri­ous stu­dents, includ­ing Aaron Cop­land, Leonard Bern­stein, Philip Glass, and Quin­cy Jones.

One read­er of the post right­ly point­ed out a not-so-glar­ing irony in the way Boulanger has been remem­bered. While cel­e­brat­ed as a pow­er­ful woman in music, in a sea of more famous men, her many dis­tin­guished female stu­dents go unmen­tioned, per­haps more due to igno­rance than prej­u­dice (though this may be no great excuse). Most peo­ple have nev­er heard of for­mer Boulanger stu­dents like Graży­na Bacewicz, Mar­i­on Bauer, Louise Tal­ma, Peg­gy Glanville-Hicks and Pri­aulx Rainier.

Not many have heard of Lili Boulanger, Nadia’s sis­ter, a child prodi­gy who died at 24, after com­pos­ing two dozen inno­v­a­tive choral and instru­men­tal works and becom­ing the first woman to win the Prix de Rome in 1913, at the age of 19, for her can­ta­ta Faust and Hélène, with lyrics, by Eugene Ade­nis, based on Goethe’s Faust (top).

Pol­ish com­pos­er Bacewicz, who began study­ing with Nadia Boulanger’s for­mer stu­dent Kaz­imierz Siko­rs­ki at 13, trav­eled to Paris to “learn from the great ped­a­gogue her­self,” notes the BBC Music Mag­a­zine.

Bacewicz was an incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed vio­lin­ist (see her fur­ther up in 1952) and a wide­ly admired com­pos­er, just one of many note­wor­thy female com­posers, of the past and present, who don’t often turn up in con­ver­sa­tion about clas­si­cal and avant-garde music. The BBC aims to cor­rect these major slights with their “Cel­e­brat­ing Women Com­posers” series, which fea­tures archival inter­view clips from leg­ends like Nadia Boulanger, Dame Ethel Smyth (pro­filed above), and Elis­a­beth Lutyens.

You’ll also find inter­views with dozens of con­tem­po­rary female com­posers, a series on com­posers’ rooms, pro­files of his­tor­i­cal greats, links to per­for­mance record­ings, and sev­er­al infor­ma­tive arti­cles on women com­posers past and present. Most of the com­posers pro­filed have found some mea­sure of fame in their life­time, and renown among those in the know, but are unknown to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Some of the com­posers you’ll learn about, like the five in a fea­ture titled “The Women Erased from Musi­cal His­to­ry,” might have dis­ap­peared entire­ly were it not for the work of archivists. Learn about these redis­cov­ered fig­ures and much, much more at the BBC’s Cel­e­brat­ing Women Com­posers, one of many such projects mak­ing it hard­er to plead igno­rance of women’s pres­ence in clas­si­cal music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Nadia Boulanger, “The Most Influ­en­tial Teacher Since Socrates,” Who Men­tored Philip Glass, Leonard Bern­stein, Aaron Cop­land, Quin­cy Jones & Oth­er Leg­ends

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

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

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

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The New York Public Library Announces the Top 10 Checked-Out Books of All Time

in Books, K-12, Libraries | January 14th, 2020

Pub­lic libraries are unsung heroes of their com­mu­ni­ties. Many a busy work­ing adult can take their impor­tance for grant­ed. But par­ents of young chil­dren know—the library is a qui­et haven, place of won­der and dis­cov­ery, and free resource for all sorts of edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ences. Giv­en the impor­tance of libraries in kids’ lives, it’s no won­der that six of the top ten most-checked-out books—accord­ing to the New York Pub­lic Library—are children’s books.

The NYPL cal­cu­lat­ed the most checked out books in its his­to­ry in hon­or of its 125th anniver­sary. Giv­en that it hous­es the sec­ond largest col­lec­tion in the U.S., after the Library of Con­gress, and serves mil­lions in the most lin­guis­ti­cal­ly diverse city in the coun­try, its cir­cu­la­tion num­bers give us a rea­son­able sam­pling of near-uni­ver­sal tastes.

These include time­less clas­sics of children’s lit­er­a­ture: Ezra Jack Keats’ Calde­cott-win­ning The Snowy Day tops the list, “in print and in the Library’s cat­a­log con­tin­u­ous­ly since 1962”; The Cat in the Hat comes in at a close sec­ond. Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar round out the list of books for the very young.

Where is the stal­wart Good­night Moon, you may ask? Here we have a juicy bit of lore:

By all mea­sures, this book should be a top check­out (in fact, it might be the top check­out) if not for an odd piece of his­to­ry: extreme­ly influ­en­tial New York Pub­lic Library children’s librar­i­an Anne Car­roll Moore hat­ed Good­night Moon when it first came out. As a result, the Library didn’t car­ry it until 1972. That lost time bumped the book off the top 10 list for now. But give it time.

For now, Mar­garet Wise Brown’s 1947 clas­sic receives hon­or­able men­tion. Clas­sic kids’ books cir­cu­late a lot because they’re wide­ly read, but also because they’re short, which leads to more turnover, the Library points out. Length of time in print is also a fac­tor, which makes the pres­ence of Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, pub­lished in 1998, par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive.

  1. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: 485,583 check­outs
  2. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss: 469,650 check­outs
  3. 1984 by George Orwell: 441,770 check­outs
  4. Where the Wild Things Are by Mau­rice Sendak: 436,016 check­outs
  5. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird by Harp­er Lee: 422,912 check­outs
  6. Char­lot­te’s Web by E.B. White: 337,948 check­outs
  7. Fahren­heit 451 by Ray Brad­bury: 316,404 check­outs
  8. How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple by Dale Carnegie: 284,524 check­outs
  9. Har­ry Pot­ter and the Sor­cer­er’s Stone by J.K. Rowl­ing: 231,022 check­outs
  10. The Very Hun­gry Cater­pil­lar by Eric Car­le: 189,550 check­outs

Like J.K. Rowling’s mod­ern clas­sic, all of the remain­ing books on the list are novels—save out­lier How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple by Dale Carnegie—and all are nov­els read exten­sive­ly by mid­dle and high school stu­dents, a fur­ther sign of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­lic libraries.

Some stu­dents may only be required to read a small hand­ful of nov­els in their school career, and whether they fol­low through, and maybe go on to read more and more books, and maybe write a few books of their own, may depend upon those nov­els con­stant­ly cir­cu­lat­ing for every­one through insti­tu­tions like the New York Pub­lic Library.

See the full list above and learn more about the project at NPR and the NYPL.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Brief­cas­es & Hand­bags for Job Inter­views

The New York Pub­lic Library Puts Clas­sic Sto­ries on Insta­gram: Start with Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis Soon

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

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

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Art Record Covers: A Book of Over 500 Album Covers Created by Famous Visual Artists

in Art, Music | January 14th, 2020

The list of musi­cians who are also visu­al artists goes on and on. We’re all famil­iar with the biggest names: David Bowie, Pat­ti Smith, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Cap­tain Beef­heart, etc, etc, etc. Less­er-known alter­na­tive and indie artists like Stone Ros­es gui­tarist John Squire and Austin singer/songwriter Daniel John­ston cre­at­ed icon­ic imagery that adorned their album cov­ers and mer­chan­dise.

Such mul­ti­tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als embody the kin­ship of sound and vision. But so too do the many col­lab­o­ra­tions between musi­cians and fine artists—hun­dreds of whom have gift­ed their tal­ents to album cov­ers of every con­ceiv­able kind.

Aside from obvi­ous, his­toric exam­ples (Andy Warhol’s Vel­vet Under­ground cov­ers come imme­di­ate­ly to mind) such col­lab­o­ra­tions are often hid­ing in plain sight. Per­haps you did not know, for exam­ple, that the allur­ing yet mys­te­ri­ous deep blue pho­to­graph of Björk on the cov­er of her remix album Telegram is by Nobuyoshi Ara­ki, one of Japan’s most admired and pro­lif­ic fine art pho­tog­ra­phers.

Maybe you were unaware of how Con­cep­tu­al artist Bar­bara Kruger, whose work “speaks truth to pow­er,” con­tributed to the look of the 90s activist indus­tri­al hip-hop group Con­sol­i­dat­ed. Or how Yay­oi Kusama leant her eye-pop­ping dots to Towa Tei’s boun­cy, elec­tron­ic pop for the for­mer Deee-Lite DJ’s 2013 album Lucky.

We all know that Pat­ti Smith’s debut album, Hors­es, fea­tures an icon­ic cov­er pho­to by her friend Robert Map­plethor­pe. But did you know that the cov­er of Metallica’s 1996 album Load is a pho­to­graph­ic study by artist Andreas Ser­ra­no—of Piss Christ fame—that min­gles cow blood and his own semen between sheets of plex­i­glass?

You’ll find hun­dreds more such col­lab­o­ra­tions, though few as vis­cer­al, in Taschen’s new book Art Record Cov­ers, a cel­e­bra­tion of sound and vision in pop­u­lar music. True to the arts publisher’s rep­u­ta­tion for cof­fee table books the size of cof­fee tables, this sur­vey is a com­pre­hen­sive as they come.

The book presents 500 cov­ers and records by visu­al artists from the 1950s through to today, explor­ing how mod­ernism, Pop Art, Con­cep­tu­al Art, post­mod­ernism, and var­i­ous forms of con­tem­po­rary art prac­tice have all informed this col­lat­er­al field of visu­al pro­duc­tion and sup­port­ed the mass dis­tri­b­u­tion of music with defin­ing imagery that swift­ly and sug­ges­tive­ly evokes an aur­al encounter.

Along the way, we find Jean-Michel Basquiat’s urban hiero­glyphs for his own Tar­town record label, Banksy’s sten­ciled graf­fi­ti for Blur, Damien Hirst’s sym­bol­ic skull for the Hours, and a skew­ered Sal­vador Dalí but­ter­fly on Jack­ie Gleason’s Lone­some Echo.

Edi­tor Francesco Spamp­ina­to, an art his­to­ri­an study­ing at the Sor­bonne Nou­velle in Paris, has most­ly kept the focus on pop, rock, punk, met­al, alter­na­tive, and indie. Includ­ing the full breadth of jazz, avant-garde, and oth­er world musics would offer exam­ples enough to jus­ti­fy anoth­er vol­ume or two of Art Record Cov­ers.

The focus is suit­ably broad, nonethe­less, to show how “visu­al and music pro­duc­tion have had a par­tic­u­lar­ly inti­mate rela­tion­ship… since the dawn of mod­ernism…. From Lui­gi Russolo’s 1913 Futur­ist man­i­festo L’Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Mar­cel Duchamp’s 1925 dou­ble-sided discs Rotore­liefs.” It’s also a great way to dis­cov­er new art and new music, and to see the inter­re­la­tion­ships between them in entire­ly new ways. Order a copy of Art Record Cov­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

7 Rock Album Cov­ers Designed by Icon­ic Artists: Warhol, Rauschen­berg, Dalí, Richter, Map­plethor­pe & More

The Impos­si­bly Cool Album Cov­ers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Cre­ative Team Behind These Icon­ic Designs

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

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

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What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

in Environment | January 14th, 2020

For­mer­ly a NASA Fel­low at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter, Dr James O’Donoghue now works as a plan­e­tary sci­en­tist at the Japan­ese space agency JAXA. He also hosts a video chan­nel on YouTube. Above, you can watch his high-res remake of a NASA ani­ma­tion pro­duced back in 2008. Here’s how NASA framed the orig­i­nal clip:

Three fifths of the Earth­’s sur­face is under the ocean, and the ocean floor is as rich in detail as the land sur­face with which we are famil­iar. This ani­ma­tion sim­u­lates a drop in sea lev­el that grad­u­al­ly reveals this detail. As the sea lev­el drops, the con­ti­nen­tal shelves appear imme­di­ate­ly. They are most­ly vis­i­ble by a depth of 140 meters, except for the Arc­tic and Antarc­tic regions, where the shelves are deep­er. The mid-ocean ridges start to appear at a depth of 2000 to 3000 meters. By 6000 meters, most of the ocean is drained except for the deep ocean trench­es, the deep­est of which is the Mar­i­anas Trench at a depth of 10,911 meters.

In 51 sec­onds, watch and see where the great drain­ing ends…

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:

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

A Map Shows What Hap­pens When Our World Gets Four Degrees Warmer: The Col­orado Riv­er Dries Up, Antarc­ti­ca Urban­izes, Poly­ne­sia Van­ish­es

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Inventions Come to Life as Museum-Quality, Workable Models: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Chariot, Perpetual Motion Machine & More

in History, Physics, Technology | January 14th, 2020

Per­pet­u­al motion is impos­si­ble. Even if we don’t know much about physics, we all know that to be true — or at least we’ve heard it from cred­i­ble enough sources that we might as well believe it. More accu­rate­ly, we might say that nobody has yet fig­ured out how to make a machine that keeps on going and going and going by itself, with­out any exter­nal ener­gy source. But it has­n’t been for lack of try­ing, and the effort has been on the part of not just crack­pots but some of the most impres­sive minds in human his­to­ry. Take char­ter mem­ber of that group Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the Renais­sance design­er of bridges, musi­cal instru­ments, war machines, and much else beside, whose fas­ci­na­tion with the sub­ject also had him imag­in­ing the occa­sion­al per­pet­u­al motion machine.

Our unflag­ging fas­ci­na­tion with Leonar­do has fueled the efforts of 21st-cen­tu­ry enthu­si­asts to build his inven­tions for them­selves, even those inven­tions that pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ed only in his note­books. In the video above you can see a series of such Leonar­do-imag­ined devices made real in func­tion­al mod­el form.

Some of them, like the fly­wheel, odome­ter, ver­ti­cal ball-bear­ing, and dou­ble-deck­er bridge, have become so com­mon in oth­er forms that we no longer even stop to con­sid­er their inge­nious­ness. Oth­ers, like the invad­er-repelling cas­tle wall defense mech­a­nism and some­thing called a “scythed char­i­ot” — a nasty-look­ing yet char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly grace­ful piece of work — remind of us that, at least in most of the world, we live in less war­like times than Leonar­do did.

The video comes from Valeriy Ivanov, who on Youtube spe­cial­izes in build­ing and demon­strat­ing “work­ing mod­els of per­pet­u­al motion machines” as well as “Da Vin­ci inven­tions” and “mar­ble machines.” (Leonar­do’s odome­ter, fea­tured in the video, makes a par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive use of mar­bles.) “My mod­els of per­pet­u­al motion machines are of motor­ized ver­sions that were built to illus­trate how they were sup­posed to work in the minds of inven­tors,” writes Ivanov. We see not only the mechan­ics Leonar­do and oth­er hope­ful inven­tors must have imag­ined, but the mes­mer­iz­ing ele­gance of Leonar­do’s designs in par­tic­u­lar, such as the video’s over­bal­anced wheel. On a note­book page from 1494, Leonar­do told the seek­ers of per­pet­u­al motion to “go and take your place with the alchemists.” But now, with the aid of tech­nol­o­gy unimag­ined in Leonar­do’s time — even by Leonar­do him­self — we can see just how com­pelling that vision must have been.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ele­gant Design for a Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine

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 or on Face­book.

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Witness Rush Drummer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen

in Music | January 13th, 2020

Rush drum­mer and lyri­cist Neil Peart died this past Tues­day at age 67. Trib­utes have poured in from bands like Tool, Foo Fight­ers, and Super­chunk and appeared in the pages of The New York­er, a tes­ta­ment to Peart’s sta­tus as both a musi­cian and writer. Drum­mers of all gen­res revere him, even if they don’t quite get the breadth of lit­er­ary, mytho­log­i­cal, and philo­soph­i­cal ref­er­ences in the band’s dense, epic song cycles.

Nor have Peart’s lit­er­ary admir­ers always under­stood his tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty behind the kit. But it was nev­er nec­es­sary to ful­ly grok his bril­liant con­tri­bu­tions to Rush’s out­put to appre­ci­ate them—from his first album with the band, 1975’s Fly by Night, to his last, 2012’s Clock­work Angels. Cer­tain­ly not all Rush fans shared Peart’s one­time fond­ness for the work of Ayn Rand, which influ­enced the band’s 1976 break­out album, 2112. Peart lat­er claimed her work “no longer res­onat­ed with him,” as Annie Zales­ki writes at NPR, and called him­self a “bleed­ing heart lib­er­tar­i­an.”

Yet even fans who loathe Atlas Shrugged don’t seem to feel the influ­ence undu­ly com­pro­mised Peart’s cre­ativ­i­ty. His influ­ences were vast and his “love of lit­er­a­ture and rev­er­ence for his­to­ry deeply informed his song­writ­ing… he became known for his philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings on road life and rest­less souls; cri­tiques of pow­er and greed; fan­ta­sy-tinged vignettes; and inci­sive polit­i­cal and social com­men­tary, cloaked in metaphor.” For all their self-seri­ous­ness, Rush wasn’t immune to humor either.

2012 was all of these things, with a sprawl­ing, epic fan­ta­sy/s­ci-fi, 20-minute open­ing title track, fol­lowed by an ode to pot called “A Pas­sage to Bangkok,” in which Peart names “var­i­ous cities and coun­tries around the world where it is cul­ti­vat­ed,” The New York­er’s Aman­da Petru­sich writes, and pro­claims “We only stop for the best!” Rush could wink at their goofi­ness while also ful­ly embrac­ing it with­out reser­va­tion, in “a kind of fuck-it aban­don.”

Rush assem­bled an audi­ence not by “exten­sive radio play or crit­i­cal adu­la­tion or cor­po­rate posi­tion­ing” but good old word of mouth from dumb­struck fans. They did secure their first U.S. record deal through radio play, how­ev­er, right after Peart joined the band in 1974. Don­na Halper—then a DJ at Cleve­land radio sta­tion WMMS, now an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of media stud­ies at Les­ley Uni­ver­si­ty—played their sin­gle “Work­ing Man,” which “prompt­ly took off,” notes Zales­ki.

Halper explains why Peart earned the nick­name “The Pro­fes­sor,” say­ing that “above all, his lyrics made peo­ple think—Rush fans were lib­er­al, con­ser­v­a­tive, reli­gious, non-religious—but they all unit­ed around their respect for the band and their admi­ra­tion for how Neil could artic­u­late their expe­ri­ences, or give them a new way to look at an issue.”

As a musi­cian, Peart made thou­sands of drum­mers feel the same way. “I still vivid­ly remem­ber my first lis­ten of 2112, when I was young,” Dave Grohl wrote on the Foo Fight­ers Insta­gram page. “It was the first time I real­ly lis­tened to a drum­mer. And since that day, music has nev­er been the same.” Foo Fight­ers’ drum­mer Tay­lor Hawkins had a more suc­cinct state­ment: “Neil Peart had the hands of God. End of sto­ry.”

Peart’s own sto­ry may have end­ed but his musi­cal and lyri­cal lega­cy will out­live us all. See clips of his incred­i­ble per­for­mances over the years above—on stages around the world and the set of David Let­ter­man, in tours de force that show off not only his tech­ni­cal mas­tery, but also show how his drum­ming drew on as broad a range of influ­ences as his song­writ­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Leg­endary Per­for­mances by Neil Peart (RIP), John Bon­ham, Kei­th Moon, Ter­ry Bozzio & More

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Watch John Bonham’s Blis­ter­ing 13-Minute Drum Solo on “Moby Dick,” One of His Finest Moments Live Onstage (1970)

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

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