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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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Vincent van Gogh Visits a Modern Art Gallery & Gets to See His Artistic Legacy: A Touching Scene from Doctor Who

in Art, Television | November 15th, 2022

“By the time of his death”—almost two years before, in fact—“Van Gogh’s work had begun to attract crit­i­cal atten­tion,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, who point out that Van Gogh’s works shown “at the Salon des Indépen­dants in Paris between 1888 and 1890 and with Les XX in Brus­sels in 1890… were regard­ed by many artists as ‘the most remark­able’” in both exhibits. Crit­ics wrote glow­ing appre­ci­a­tions, and Van Gogh seemed poised to achieve the recog­ni­tion every­one knows he deserved in his life­time. Still, Van Gogh him­self was not present at these exhi­bi­tions. He was first in Arles, where he set­tled in near-seclu­sion (save for Gau­guin), after cut­ting off part of his ear. Then, in 1889, he arrived at the asy­lum near Saint-Rémy, where he furi­ous­ly paint­ed 150 can­vas­es, then shot him­self in the chest, think­ing his life’s work a fail­ure, despite the pub­lic recog­ni­tion and praise his broth­er Theo poignant­ly tried to com­mu­ni­cate to him in his final let­ters.

Now imag­ine that Van Gogh had actu­al­ly been able to expe­ri­ence the acclaim bestowed on him near the end—or the acclaim bestowed on him hun­dreds of times over in the more than 100 years since his death. Such is the premise of the clip above from Doc­tor Who, Series 5, Episode 10, in which Van Gogh—who strug­gled to sell any of his work through most of his lifetime—finds him­self at the Musée d’Or­say in Paris in 2010, cour­tesy of the TARDIS. Grant­ed, the scene milks the inher­ent pathos with some maudlin musi­cal cues, but watch­ing actor Tony Cur­ran react as Van Gogh, see­ing the gallery’s col­lec­tions of his work and the wall-to-wall admir­ers, is “unex­pect­ed­ly touch­ing,” as Kot­tke writes. To dri­ve the emo­tion­al point even fur­ther home, the Doc­tor calls over a docent played by Bill Nighy, who explains why “Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all.” Lay­ing it on thick? Fair enough. But try not get­ting a lit­tle choked up at the end, I dare you.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

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:

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Free Libraries Shaped Like Doc­tor Who’s Time-Trav­el­ing TARDIS Pop Up in Detroit, Saska­toon, Macon & Oth­er Cities

Down­load Free Doc­tor Who Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings (Plus Many Oth­er BBC TV Shows)

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

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

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Joni Mitchell Tells Elton John the Stories Behind Her Iconic Songs: “Both Sides Now,” “Carey” & More

in Apple, Life, Music | November 14th, 2022

When Joni Mitchell heard the great cabaret artist Mabel Mer­cer in con­cert, she was so struck by the old­er woman’s ren­di­tion of “Both Sides Now,” the endur­ing bal­lad Mitchell wrote at the ten­der age of 23, that she went back­stage to show her appre­ci­a­tion:

… but I didn’t tell her that I was the author. So, I said, y’know, I’ve heard var­i­ous record­ings of that song, but you bring some­thing to it, y’know, that oth­er peo­ple haven’t been able to do. You know, it’s not a song for an ingenue. You have to bring some age to it. 

Well, she took offense. I insult­ed her. I called her an old lady, as far as she was con­cerned. So I got out of there in a hell of a hur­ry! 

But I think I final­ly became an old lady myself and could sing the song right.

This is just one of many can­did treats to be found in Mitchell’s inter­view with Elton John, for his Apple Music 1 show Rock­et Hour.

For the most part, Mitchell’s rem­i­nis­cences coa­lesce around var­i­ous icon­ic tracks from her near­ly six­ty years in the music indus­try.

“Carey,” off Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue, sparks mem­o­ries of an explod­ing stove dur­ing a hip­pie-era sojourn in Mata­la on Crete’s south coast, with an Odyssey ref­er­ence thrown in for good mea­sure.

“Amelia” was hatched, as were most of the tunes on 1976’s Heji­ra, while Mitchell was on a solo road trip in a sec­ond­hand Mer­cedes, an expe­ri­ence that caused her to dwell on the first female avi­a­tor to cross the Atlantic solo. (She scrib­bled down lyrics that had come to her at the wheel when­ev­er she pulled over for lunch.)

Regard­ing “Sex Kills” from 1994’s Tur­bu­lent Indi­go, John quotes a Rolling Stone arti­cle in which Mitchell dis­cussed the “ugli­ness” she was detect­ing in pop­u­lar music:

I think it’s on the increase. Espe­cial­ly towards women. I’ve nev­er been a fem­i­nist, but we haven’t had pop songs up until recent­ly that were so aggres­sive­ly dan­ger­ous to women.

“What did you mean by that?” John asks. “ Peo­ple say­ing rap music with ‘my hos’ and stuff like that?”

“Oh, well, y’know, yeah,” Mitchell says, “Hos and booty, y’know, haha­hah.”

She may not seem over­ly fussed about it now, but don’t get her start­ed on what young women wear to the Gram­mys!

John also invit­ed Mitchell to dis­cuss three songs that have influ­enced her.

Her picks:

Lam­bert, Hen­dricks & Ross’s “Charleston Alley” (a musi­cal epiphany as a high school­er at a col­lege par­ty)

Edith Piaf’s “Les Trois Cloches” (a musi­cal epiphany as an 8‑year-old at a birth­day  par­ty)

And Chuck Berry’s “John­ny B. Goode” (danc­ing ‘round the juke­box at Saska­toon swim­ming pool)

Cir­cling back to “Both Sides Now,” Mitchell prefers the orches­tral arrange­ment she record­ed as an alto in 2002 to the orig­i­nal’s girl­ish sopra­no, with its pos­si­bly unearned per­spec­tive. (“It’s not a song for an ingenue…”)

When I per­formed it, the orches­tra gath­ered around me and I’ve played with clas­si­cal musi­cians before and they were always read­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal behind their sheet music and they always treat you like it’s a con­de­scen­sion to be play­ing with you, but every­body, the men — Eng­lish­men! — were weep­ing!

Per­haps you too will be moved to tears, as singer-song­writer Bran­di Carlile was dur­ing a per­for­mance of “Both Sides Now” as part of the 2022 New­port Folk Festival’s Joni Jam, Mitchell’s first show in 22 years, owing to a peri­od of major dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the music busi­ness as well as a 2015 brain aneurysm.

Tune into more episodes of Elton John’s Rock­et Hour here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch the Full Set of Joni Mitchell’s Amaz­ing Come­back Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

Hear Demos & Out­takes of Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the 50th Anniver­sary of the Clas­sic Album

How Joni Mitchell Learned to Play Gui­tar Again After a 2015 Brain Aneurysm–and Made It Back to the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

- 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.

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How to Argue Effectively: Harvard Negotiation Expert Shares Techniques for Arguing Effectively, Especially About Politics

in Psychology | November 14th, 2022

Big Think uploaded the video on how to argue above at the end of last month, just in time for the Unit­ed States midterm elec­tion. Where pol­i­tics — or rather, polit­i­cal­ly inflect­ed con­flicts — have become more or less anoth­er nation­al sport, every­one is always look­ing for an edge. But the expert who stars in the video, Harvard’s Inter­na­tion­al Nego­ti­a­tion pro­gram head and Nego­ti­at­ing the Non­nego­tiable author Daniel Shapiro, has an unusu­al­ly capa­cious notion of what it means to win an argu­ment. Our goal, as he con­ceives of it, is to have “more effec­tive con­ver­sa­tions,” and this entails under­stand­ing three keys to hav­ing those con­ver­sa­tions: iden­ti­ty, appre­ci­a­tion, and affil­i­a­tion.

“The moment your iden­ti­ty gets hooked in these con­flicts,” Shapiro says, “all of a sud­den your emo­tions become a hun­dred times more pow­er­ful” — and the debate at hand becomes a hun­dred times less tractable. You there­fore must “know who you are and what you stand for,” the “val­ues and beliefs” dri­ving you to argue for your par­tic­u­lar posi­tion.

Ide­al­ly, you’ll also put some effort toward find­ing out the same things about your oppo­nent, or rather your inter­locu­tor. This is where appre­ci­a­tion comes in. Shapiro’s advice: “When you’re in the midst of the con­flict, don’t talk. Take the first ten min­utes to con­scious­ly lis­ten to the oth­er side. What’s the val­ue behind their per­spec­tive? What’s the log­ic, the ratio­nale?”

This allows you to assess the “emo­tion­al con­nec­tion” between your­self and the oth­er per­son. The trick is to “turn that oth­er per­son from an adver­sary into a part­ner” by fram­ing the con­ver­sa­tion as not a con­flict but as “fac­ing a shared prob­lem,” not least by ask­ing their advice on how to solve it. You can learn more about Shapiro’s con­cept of “inter­est-based nego­ti­a­tion” in this oth­er short Big Think video, and much more about his prin­ci­ples of argu­men­ta­tion in his talk at Google just above. In it, he breaks down the ele­ments of the “tribes effect” that keeps us butting heads, includ­ing our atti­tudes about taboos and our ten­den­cy toward iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. And all of this is espe­cial­ly valu­able view­ing, of course, with the approach of that day of din­ner-table argu­men­ta­tive blood­sport known as Thanks­giv­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Win an Argu­ment (at the U.S. Supreme Court, or Any­where Else): A Primer by Lit­i­ga­tor Neal Katyal

Lit­er­ary The­o­rist Stan­ley Fish Offers a Free Course on Rhetoric, or the Pow­er of Argu­ments

How to Argue With Kind­ness and Care: 4 Rules from Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett

A Guide to Log­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es: The “Ad Hominem,” “Straw­man” & Oth­er Fal­lac­i­es Explained in 2‑Minute Videos

Read An Illus­trat­ed Book of Bad Argu­ments: A Fun Primer on How to Strength­en, Not Weak­en, Your Argu­ments

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.

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Behold Illustrations of Every Shakespeare Play Created by Artificial Intelligence

in Art, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Theatre | November 11th, 2022


William Shake­speare’s plays have endured not just because of their inher­ent dra­mat­ic and lin­guis­tic qual­i­ties, but also because each era has found its own way of envi­sion­ing and re-envi­sion­ing them. The tech­nol­o­gy involved in stage pro­duc­tions has changed over the past four cen­turies, of course, but so has the tech­nol­o­gy involved in art itself. A few years ago, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture an archive of 3,000 illus­tra­tions of Shake­speare’s com­plete works going back to the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. That site was the PhD project of Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty’s Michael Good­man, who has recent­ly com­plet­ed anoth­er dig­i­tal Shake­speare project, this time using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence: Paint the Pic­ture to the Word.

“Every image col­lect­ed here has been gen­er­at­ed by Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion, a pow­er­ful text-to-image AI,” writes Good­man on this new pro­jec­t’s About page. “To cre­ate an image using this tech­nol­o­gy a user sim­ply types a descrip­tion of what they want to see into a text box and the AI will then pro­duce sev­er­al images cor­re­spond­ing to that ini­tial tex­tu­al prompt,” much as with the also-new AI-based art gen­er­a­tor DALL‑E.

Each of the many images Good­man cre­at­ed is inspired by a Shake­speare play. “Some of the illus­tra­tions are expres­sion­is­tic (King John, Julius Cae­sar), while some are more lit­er­al (Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor).” All “offer a visu­al idea or a gloss on the plays: Hen­ry VIII, with the cen­tral char­ac­ters rep­re­sent­ed in fuzzy felt, is grim­ly iron­ic, while in Per­i­cles both Mar­i­ana and her father are seen through a watery prism, echo­ing that play’s con­cern with sea imagery.”

Select­ing one of his many gen­er­at­ed images per play, Good­man has cre­at­ed an entire dig­i­tal exhi­bi­tion whose works nev­er repeat a style or a sen­si­bil­i­ty, whether with a dog-cen­tric nine­teen-eight­ies col­lage rep­re­sent­ing Two Gen­tle­men of Verona, a stark­ly near-abstract vision of Mac­beth’s Weird Sis­ters or Much Ado About Noth­ing ren­dered as a mod­ern-day rom-com. The­ater com­pa­nies could hard­ly fail to take notice of these images’ poten­tial as pro­mo­tion­al posters, but Paint the Pic­ture to the Word also demon­strates some­thing larg­er: Shake­speare’s plays have long stim­u­lat­ed human intel­li­gence, but they turn out to work on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence as well. Vis­it Paint the Pic­ture to the Word here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Neat­ly Pre­sent­ed in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

John Austen’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Ham­let: A Mas­ter­piece of the Aes­thet­ic Move­ment (1922)

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library Puts 80,000 Images of Lit­er­ary Art Online, and They’re All Free to Use

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

DALL‑E, the New AI Art Gen­er­a­tor, Is Now Open for Every­one to Use

An AI-Gen­er­at­ed Paint­ing Won First Prize at a State Fair & Sparked a Debate About the Essence of Art

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.

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