Follow Open Culture on Mastodon–the Open Source Alternative to Twitter

in Technology | November 18th, 2022

If you fol­low us on Twit­ter, and if you’re con­cerned about the mount­ing lev­els of chaos inside the com­pa­ny, then find us on Mastodon, where we now also share our dai­ly posts, plus favorites from our archive. You can start fol­low­ing Open Cul­ture on Mastodon here, or get our posts via Dai­ly Email, RSS Feed and Post.

If you’re not already famil­iar with Mastodon, you can explore these resources:

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon, the Open Source Twit­ter Alter­na­tive

How to Get Start­ed on Mastodon

How to Move From Twit­ter to Mastodon

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Isolated Vocal Tracks of the B‑52s “Roam”: Enjoy the Angelic Harmonies of Kate Pierson & Cindy Wilson

in Music | November 18th, 2022

The B‑52s’ debut sin­gle “Rock Lob­ster” brought the par­ty and a play­ful sense of the absurd
to New Wave.

The New York Times nailed the band’s appeal as “70s punks mold­ed not from the syringes and leather of New York City, but from the campy detri­tus you might have found in the thrift stores and garage sales of their home of Athens, Ga.: bright clothes, toy pianos, old issues of Vogue, tall wigs and dis­card­ed vinyl:”

They chan­neled spy sound­tracks, exot­i­ca, surf music, long-aban­doned dance crazes and garage rock …The B‑52s were a sui gener­is clash of sounds that help bring punk to the sub­ur­ban kids more like­ly to watch Sat­ur­day Night Live than vis­it CBGB:  Fred Schnei­der’s sing-shout poet­ry, Cindy Wil­son and Kate Pierson’s alien girl-group har­monies, Ricky Wilson’s tricky gui­tar riffs and Kei­th Strickland’s art-funky drums. Even demo­graph­i­cal­ly they were noth­ing like the new world of new wave being built by Talk­ing Heads and Devo: 40 per­cent female, 60 per­cent South­ern, 80 per­cent queer, 100 per­cent fun.

Their quirky sense of humor found favor with a wider audi­ence thanks to 1989’s Cos­mic Thing, with its irre­sistible “Love Shack.”

“It’s a fic­ti­tious place, but the whole idea is that everyone’s wel­come to the par­ty,” Kate Pier­son told The Guardian.

“Roam,” Cos­mic Thing’s oth­er chart top­per offers a sim­i­lar­ly boun­cy groove, well suit­ed to road trips and oth­er adven­tures.  “We were on the bus,” Pier­son explains:

We par­tied with each oth­er – we had some epic bus par­ties, and the bus dri­ver cre­at­ed a dance called the Bore Hog. We would do our con­cert then get on the bus and keep rolling. It was a wild ride though. We were tired of being this under­ground band – this was a con­fir­ma­tion of some­thing.

Pier­son and Cindy Wilson’s iso­lat­ed “Roam” har­monies, above, strike us as aur­al con­fir­ma­tion of  some­thing else.

Not just Clas­sic Pop’s apt descrip­tion of the pair’s tight har­monies as a com­bi­na­tion of “Appalachi­an folk music” and “teenage Motown fan­tasies of hair­brush­es for micro­phones…”

With the instru­ments removed (and Schnei­der tem­porar­i­ly benched), “Roam” evinces a haunt­ing qual­i­ty that sup­ports Cindy Wilson’s asser­tion that “it’s a beau­ti­ful song about death:”

It’s about when your spir­it leaves your body and you can just roam.

Wil­son, whose broth­er and band­mate, Ricky, died from AIDS in 1985 at the age of 32, recalled the record­ing process:

When we start­ed jam­ming, it felt like Ricky was in the room with us. I was hav­ing a real­ly hard time with the griev­ing and sor­row, but cre­at­ing this music was such a won­der­ful thing. Ricky’s spir­it was there and it was amaz­ing. We did that music for our­selves, and it real­ly helped me.

Imag­ine the after­life as a great after par­ty, where auto-tune has­n’t been invent­ed yet, and the har­monies are tru­ly angel­ic.

Roam if you want to

Roam around the world

Roam if you want to

With­out wings, with­out wheels

Roam if you want to

Roam around the world

Roam if you want to

With­out any­thing but the love we feel

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Very Ear­ly Con­cert Footage of the B‑52s, When New Wave Music Was Actu­al­ly New (1978)

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

The Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks of the Talk­ing Heads’ “Once In A Life­time” Turn David Byrne into a Wild-Eyed Holy Preach­er

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and the soon to be released Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Did Psychedelic Mushrooms Appear in Medieval Christian Art?: A Video Essay

in Art, History, Psychology, Religion | November 18th, 2022

His­tor­i­cal research reveals psy­choac­tive sub­stances to have been in use longer than most of us would assume. But did Adam and Eve do mush­rooms in the Gar­den of Eden? Unsur­pris­ing­ly, that ques­tion is fraught on more than one lev­el. But if you wish to believe that they did, spend some time with the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry art­work above, known as the Plain­cour­ault fres­co. In it, writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Emma Betuel, “Adam and Eve stand in the Gar­den of Eden, both of them face­less.” Between them “stands a large red tree, crowned with a dot­ted, umbrel­la-like cap. The tree’s branch­es end in small­er caps, each with their own pat­tern of tiny white spots” — just like you’d see on cer­tain species of fun­gus. “Tourists, schol­ars, and influ­encers come to see the tree that, accord­ing to some enthu­si­asts, depicts the hal­lu­cino­genic mush­room Amani­ta mus­caria.”

This image, more than any oth­er piece of evi­dence, sup­ports the the­o­ry that “ear­ly Chris­tians used hal­lu­cino­genic mush­rooms.” Sup­ports is prob­a­bly the wrong word, though there have been true believ­ers since at least since 1911, “when a mem­ber of the French Myco­log­i­cal Soci­ety sug­gest­ed the thing sprout­ing between Adam and Eve was a ‘bizarre’ and ‘arbores­cent’ mush­room.” The video essay just below, “Psy­che­delics in Chris­t­ian Art,” presents the cas­es for and against the Tree of Life being a bunch of mag­ic mush­rooms. It comes from Youtu­ber Hochela­ga, whose videos pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture have cov­ered sub­jects like the Voyn­ich Man­u­script and the Bib­li­cal apoc­a­lypse.  This par­tic­u­lar episode comes as part of a minis­eries on “strange Chris­t­ian art” whose pre­vi­ous install­ments have focused on hell­mouths and the three-head­ed Jesus.

Nev­er­the­less, Hochela­ga can’t come down on the side of the mush­rooms-seers. Sim­i­lar veg­e­ta­tion appears in oth­er pieces of medieval art, but “in real­i­ty, these are draw­ings of trees, ren­dered with strange forms and bright col­ors,” as dic­tat­ed by the rel­a­tive­ly loose and exag­ger­at­ed aes­thet­ic of the era. But that does­n’t mean the Plain­cour­ault fres­co has noth­ing to teach us, and the same holds for oth­er “psy­che­del­ic” Chris­t­ian cre­ations, like the paint­ings of Hierony­mus Bosch or the art-inspir­ing music of Hilde­gard von Bin­gen. Judg­ing by the inves­ti­ga­tions this sort of thing has inspired — Tom Hat­sis’ “The Psy­che­del­ic Gospels, The Plain­cour­ault fres­co, and the Death of Psy­che­del­ic His­to­ry,” Jer­ry B. Brown and Julie M. Brown’s Jour­nal of Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies arti­cle “Entheogens in Chris­t­ian Art: Was­son, Alle­gro, and the Psy­che­del­ic Gospels” — the rel­e­vant his­to­ry con­sti­tutes quite a trip by itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pipes with Cannabis Traces Found in Shakespeare’s Gar­den, Sug­gest­ing the Bard Enjoyed a “Not­ed Weed”

The Drugs Used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Michael Pol­lan, Sam Har­ris & Oth­ers Explain How Psy­che­delics Can Change Your Mind

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The First Live Performance of Springsteen’s “Jungleland” After Clarence Clemons’ Death, with His Nephew Jake on Sax (July 28, 2012)

in Life, Music | November 17th, 2022

When you think “Jun­gle­land,” you think of Clarence Clemons and his icon­ic sax solo, which stretch­es on over two glo­ri­ous min­utes. It’s hard to imag­ine any­one else play­ing that solo. But, after Clarence’s death in 2011, the hon­ors went, fit­ting­ly, to his nephew Jake, who joined the E Street Band and per­formed “Jun­gle­land” live in Swe­den, on July 28, 2012. It was an emo­tion­al per­for­mance for all.

Speak­ing below, Jake Clemons remem­bers it as “an extreme­ly emo­tion­al moment. It felt like the most extreme emo­tion that I had ever expe­ri­enced…” He con­tin­ues: “Up to that show, all of the shows before then, I felt like I was fill­ing in for Clarence… That moment for me was a moment of like, he’s not com­ing back. Phys­i­cal­ly he would not be walk­ing on that stage again.”

Lat­er, he told Rolling Stone, the “moment was so sig­nif­i­cant that we couldn’t sound­check it. That moment was the first time that the band heard me play that song.” But, from there, it “became a huge part of the heal­ing process.” You can watch the poignant per­for­mance above, with the sax solo start­ing around the 5:10 mark.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bruce Spring­steen Per­forms Mov­ing Acoustic Ver­sions of “Thun­der Road,” “The Ris­ing” & “Land of Hope & Dreams” on the Howard Stern Show

Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band Impro­vis­es and Plays, Com­plete­ly Unre­hearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Videos for 10 Songs on Brian Eno’s Brand New Album, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE

in Music | November 17th, 2022

Those who have only casu­al­ly appre­ci­at­ed Bri­an Eno’s music may not think of him as a singer. Giv­en that his best-known solo record­ing Music for Air­ports not only has no lyrics but con­tains few rec­og­niz­able instru­ments, that per­cep­tion makes a cer­tain amount of sense. Still, it’s incor­rect: in fact, Eno has a great enthu­si­asm for singing, and indeed he has cred­it­ed the prac­tice with devel­op­ing “a good fig­ure, a sta­ble tem­pera­ment, increased intel­li­gence, new friends, super self-con­fi­dence, height­ened sex­u­al attrac­tive­ness and a bet­ter sense of humor” — though that last is sure­ly on dis­play in the remark itself.

Though Eno may still be most wide­ly con­sid­ered a pio­neer or pop­u­lar­iz­er of ambi­ent music, a lis­ten through his discog­ra­phy will reveal how well his singing skills have served him for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry now. Released just last month, his new album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE marks a return to lyri­cal songs, a form he has­n’t prac­ticed on an album since 2005’s Anoth­er Day on Earth.

As the now-74-year-old Eno says in its press mate­ri­als, “My voice has changed, it’s low­ered, it’s become a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty I can sing from. I don’t want to sing like a teenag­er.” And “as for writ­ing songs again — it’s more land­scapes, but this time with humans in them.” He’s been describ­ing his music and art this way for quite some time: here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve even fea­tured a 1989 doc­u­men­tary about it called Imag­i­nary Land­scapes.

Judg­ing by some of FOREVERAN­DE­V­ER­NOMORE’s lyrics, not to men­tion its title, the land­scapes he per­ceives seem to have become frag­ile; none of them, per­haps, are now espe­cial­ly long for exis­tence. That impres­sion may well be under­scored by the three song videos col­lect­ed in this playlist, “Gar­den of Stars,” “We Let It In,” and “There Were Bells.” Each has its own style: the first is kalei­do­scop­ic, the sec­ond is ver­bal, and the third is a full-fledged live shoot fea­tur­ing Eno and his broth­er-col­lab­o­ra­tor Roger per­form­ing amid the ruins of the Acrop­o­lis of Athens. Giv­en Eno’s pen­chant for con­cepts nov­el, expan­sive, and con­tra­dic­to­ry, one might call the sen­si­bil­i­ty of this lat­est album a kind of opti­mistic Ozy­man­di­an­ism.

Below you can also watch a playlist of ani­mat­ed tracks (or “visu­al­iz­ers”) for ten songs on the new album.

via Boing­Bo­ing
Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bri­an Eno Discog­ra­phy: Stream 29 Hours of Record­ings by the Mas­ter of Ambi­ent Music

Ambi­ent Kyoto: Bri­an Eno Stages His First Large-Scale Exhi­bi­tion in Japan

When David Bowie & Bri­an Eno Made a Twin Peaks-Inspired Album, Out­side (1995)

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

Hear Bri­an Eno Sing The Bea­t­les’ “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” as Part of The Best Live Album of the Glam/Prog Era (1976)

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Tour of Studio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Creates the Worlds of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Other Classics

in Animation, Travel | November 16th, 2022

Two and a half years ago, we fea­tured the con­cept art for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s theme park here on Open Cul­ture, and just two weeks ago it opened its doors. Locat­ed on the grounds of Expo 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Pre­fec­ture (a three- to four-hour train trip west from Tokyo, or a two-hour train trip east of Osa­ka), Ghi­b­li Park com­pris­es sev­er­al themed areas like the Grand Ware­house, the Hill of Youth, and Don­doko For­est. Just hear­ing those names sure­ly fires up the imag­i­na­tions of many a Ghi­b­li fan, even before they hear about the park’s vis­i­tor-ready recon­struc­tions of every­thing from Cas­tle in the Sky’s ruined gar­dens to Whis­per of the Heart’s antique shop to My Neigh­bor Totoro’s Cat­bus.

“Unlike Dis­ney­land, Ghi­b­li Park does not fea­ture roller coast­ers or rides,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Margheri­ta Cole. “Instead, it wel­comes vis­i­tors to immerse them­selves in life-size sets that are har­mo­nious­ly inte­grat­ed with nature.” You can get a sense of how this con­cept has been exe­cut­ed in the fif­teen-minute video at the top of the post from Japan-based trav­el vlog­gers Didi and Bryan.

In it, they pass through the afore­men­tioned spaces as well as oth­ers includ­ing Cin­e­ma Ori­on, which screens ten short films once only view­able at the Ghi­b­li Muse­um, and the Siberia milk stand, which offers the epony­mous sponge cake from The Wind Ris­es, Ghi­b­li mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s final ani­mat­ed fea­ture — or rather, his penul­ti­mate ani­mat­ed fea­ture.

The repeat­ed­ly un-retired Miyaza­ki returned to the stu­dio in 2016 to begin a film called How Do You Live?. Though the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic slowed down its pro­duc­tion by forc­ing him and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to work from home, it seems not to have thrown the new theme park’s con­struc­tion far off track. In three years’ time, Cole writes, “Ghi­b­li Park will open its last two sec­tions — Mononoke no sato (‘Mononoke Vil­lage’) and Majo no tani (‘Val­ley of the Witch’) — which are ded­i­cat­ed to the films Princess Mononoke and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, respec­tive­ly. There may even be a future ride in store, as some of the con­cept art appears to depict spin­ning teacups inspired by Kik­i’s cat Jiji.” That will require care­ful design­ing: a cer­tain oth­er ani­ma­tion stu­dio with long-stand­ing theme parks has a teacup ride of its own — and lit­tle patience for appar­ent imi­ta­tors, no mat­ter the artis­tic heights to which they soar.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When the World Got Introduced to the Amazing Compact Disc (CD) in 1982

in Music, Technology | November 16th, 2022

The first com­pact discs and play­ers came out in Octo­ber of 1982. That means the for­mat is now 40 years old, which in turn means that most avid music-lis­ten­ers have nev­er known a world with­out it. In fact, all of today’s teenagers — that most musi­cal­ly avid demo­graph­ic — were born after the CD’s com­mer­cial peak in 2002, and to them, no phys­i­cal medi­um could be more passé. Vinyl records have been enjoy­ing a long twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry resur­gence as a pre­mi­um prod­uct, and even cas­sette tapes exude a retro appeal. But how many under­stand just what a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel the CD was when it made its debut, with (what we remem­ber as) its promise of “per­fect sound for­ev­er”?

“You could argue that the CD, with its vast data capac­i­ty, rel­a­tive­ly robust nature, and with the fur­ther devel­op­ments it spurred along, changed how the world did vir­tu­al­ly all media.” So says Alec Wat­son, host of the Youtube chan­nel Tech­nol­o­gy Con­nec­tions, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his five-part series on RCA’s Selec­taVi­sion video disc sys­tem.

But he’s also made a six-part minis­eries on the con­sid­er­ably more suc­cess­ful com­pact disc, whose devel­op­ment “solved the cen­tral prob­lem of dig­i­tal sound: need­ing a for-the-time-absurd­ly mas­sive amount of raw data.” Back then, com­put­er hard dri­ves had a capac­i­ty of about ten megabytes, where­as a sin­gle disc could hold up to 700 megabytes.

Fig­ur­ing out how to encode that much infor­ma­tion onto a thin 120-mil­lime­ter disc required seri­ous resources and engi­neer­ing prowess (avail­able thanks to the involve­ment of two elec­tron­ics giants, Sony and Philips), but it con­sti­tut­ed only one of the tech­no­log­i­cal ele­ments need­ed for the CD to become a viable for­mat. Wat­son cov­ers them all in this minis­eries, begin­ning with the inven­tion of dig­i­tal sound itself (includ­ing the Nyquist-Shan­non sam­pling the­o­rem on which it depends). He also explains such phys­i­cal process­es as how a CD play­er’s laser reads the “pits” and “lands” on a dis­c’s sur­face, pro­duc­ing a stream of num­bers sub­se­quent­ly con­vert­ed back into an audio sig­nal for our lis­ten­ing plea­sure.

The CD has also changed our rela­tion­ship to that plea­sure. “If CDs marked a new era, it is per­haps as much in the way they sug­gest spe­cif­ic ways of inter­act­ing with record­ed music as in ques­tions of fideli­ty,” writes The Qui­etus’ Daryl Wor­thing­ton. “The fact CDs can be pro­grammed, and tracks eas­i­ly skipped, is per­haps their most sig­nif­i­cant fea­ture when it comes to their lega­cy. They loos­ened up the album as a fixed doc­u­ment.” Para­dox­i­cal­ly, “they’re also the for­mat par excel­lence for the album as a com­pre­hen­sive, self-con­tained unit to be played from start to fin­ish.” Even if you can’t remem­ber when last you put one on, four­teen mil­lion of them were sold last year, as against five mil­lion vinyl LPs and 200,000 cas­settes. At 40, the CD may no longer feel like a mirac­u­lous tech­nol­o­gy, but we can hard­ly count it out just yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

Dis­cov­er Rare 1980s CDs by Lou Reed, Devo & Talk­ing Heads That Com­bined Music with Com­put­er Graph­ics

The Sto­ry of the Mini­Disc, Sony’s 1990s Audio For­mat That’s Gone But Not For­got­ten

When Movies Came on Vinyl: The Ear­ly-80s Engi­neer­ing Mar­vel and Mar­ket­ing Dis­as­ter That Was RCA’s Selec­taVi­sion

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Virtue of Owning Books You Haven’t Read: Why Umberto Eco Kept an “Antilibrary”

in Books | November 15th, 2022

When con­sid­er­ing whether to buy yet anoth­er book, you might well ask your­self when you’ll get around to read­ing it. But per­haps there are oth­er, even more impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions, such as the intel­lec­tu­al val­ue of the book in its still-unread state. In our per­son­al libraries we all keep at least a few favorites, vol­umes to which we turn again and again. But what would be the use of a book col­lec­tion con­sist­ing entire­ly of books we’ve already read? This is the ques­tion put to us by the read­ing (or at least acquir­ing) life of no less a man of let­ters than Umber­to Eco, seen in the video above walk­ing through his per­son­al library of 30,000 books — a fair few of which, we can safe­ly assume, he nev­er got through.

As Nas­sim Taleb tells it, Eco sep­a­rat­ed his vis­i­tors into two cat­e­gories: “those who react with ‘Wow! Sig­nore pro­fes­sore dot­tore Eco, what a library you have. How many of these books have you read’ and the oth­ers — a very small minor­i­ty — who get the point is that a pri­vate library is not an ego-boost­ing appendages but a research tool.”

One’s library should there­fore con­tain not just what one knows, but much more of what one does­n’t yet know. “Indeed, the more you know, the larg­er the rows of unread books. Let us call this col­lec­tion of unread books an antili­brary.” This pas­sage comes from Tale­b’s The Black Swan, a book all about the human ten­den­cy — defied by Eco — to over­val­ue the known and under­val­ue the unknown.

“The antilibrary’s val­ue stems from how it chal­lenges our self-esti­ma­tion by pro­vid­ing a con­stant, nig­gling reminder of all we don’t know,” writes Big Think’s Kevin Dick­in­son. “The titles lin­ing my own home remind me that I know lit­tle to noth­ing about cryp­tog­ra­phy, the evo­lu­tion of feath­ers, Ital­ian folk­lore, illic­it drug use in the Third Reich, and what­ev­er ento­mophagy is.” The New York Times’ Kevin Mims con­nects Tale­b’s con­cept of the antili­brary to the Japan­ese con­cept of tsun­doku, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, which cap­tures the way books tend to pile up unread in our homes. There’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with that, as long as we’ve stocked those piles with valu­able knowl­edge — and more of it than we can ever use.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

Umber­to Eco’s 36 Rules for Writ­ing Well (in Eng­lish or Ital­ian)

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.