What Did the Roman Emperors Look Like?: See Photorealistic Portraits Created with Machine Learning

in Art, History, Technology | August 27th, 2020

We can spend a life­time read­ing his­to­ries of ancient Rome with­out know­ing what any of its emper­ors looked like. Or rather, with­out know­ing exact­ly what they looked like: being the lead­ers of the might­i­est polit­i­cal enti­ty in the West­ern world, they had their like­ness­es stamped onto coins and carved into busts as a mat­ter of course. But such artist’s ren­der­ings inevitably come with a cer­tain degree of artis­tic license, a ten­den­cy to mold fea­tures into slight­ly more impe­r­i­al shapes. See­ing the faces of the Roman Emper­ors as we would if we were pass­ing them on the street is an expe­ri­ence made pos­si­ble only by high tech­nol­o­gy, and high tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped six­teen cen­turies after the fall of the Roman Empire at that.

“Using the neur­al-net tool Art­breed­er, Pho­to­shop and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, I have cre­at­ed pho­to­re­al por­traits of Roman Emper­ors,” writes design­er Daniel Voshart. “For this project, I have trans­formed, or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) 800 images of busts to make the 54 emper­ors of The Prin­ci­pate (27 BC to 285 AD).”

The key tech­nol­o­gy that enables Art­breed­er to con­vinc­ing­ly blend images of faces togeth­er is what’s called a “gen­er­a­tive adver­sar­i­al net­work” (GAN). “Some call it Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence,” writes Voshart, “but it is more accu­rate­ly described as Machine Learn­ing.” The Verge’s James Vin­cent writes that Voshart fed in “images of emper­ors he col­lect­ed from stat­ues, coins, and paint­ings, and then tweaked the por­traits man­u­al­ly based on his­tor­i­cal descrip­tions, feed­ing them back to the GAN.”

Into the mix also went “high-res images of celebri­ties”: Daniel Craig into Augus­tus, André the Giant into Max­imi­nus Thrax (thought to have been giv­en his “a lantern jaw and moun­tain­ous frame” by a pitu­itary gland dis­or­der like that which affect­ed the colos­sal wrestler). This par­tial­ly explains why some of these uncan­ni­ly life­like emper­ors — the biggest celebri­ties of their time and place, after all — look faint­ly famil­iar. Though mod­eled as close­ly as pos­si­ble after men who real­ly lived, these exact faces (much like those in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed mod­ern pho­tographs pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. Still, one can imag­ine the emper­ors who inspired Voshart’s Prin­ci­pate rec­og­niz­ing them­selves in it. But what would they make of the fact that it’s also sell­ing briskly in poster form on Etsy?

Vis­it the Roman Emper­or Project here. For back­ground on this project, vis­it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Five Hard­core Deaths Suf­fered By Roman Emper­ors

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

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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The Massive Harrods Catalogue from 1912 Gets Digitized: Before Amazon, Harrods Offered “Everything for Everyone, Everywhere”

in Business, Economics, History | August 26th, 2020

A cou­ple years ago, obit­u­ar­ies began appear­ing online for the depart­ment store Sears after the 130-year-old Amer­i­can com­pa­ny announced its bank­rupt­cy. Many of the trib­utes focused on Sears, Roe­buck & Co’s cat­a­log, and for good rea­son. Their mas­sive mail-order busi­ness, the Ama­zon of its day, trans­formed the U.S., sell­ing gui­tars to Delta blues and rock and roll musi­cians and ship­ping thou­sands of build-it-your­self hous­es to rur­al home­stead­ers and sub­ur­ban­ites. The sheer reach and scope of the Sears’ cat­a­log can seem over­whelm­ing…. That is, until we turn to the 1912 Har­rods for Every­thing.

This 1,525-page cat­a­logue from London’s world-famous depart­ment store, Har­rods, does seem to mean every­thing, with over 15,000 prod­ucts avail­able for pur­chase at the store’s loca­tion, by mail, or by phone (“any­thing, at any time, day or night”).

You can see the enor­mous mon­u­ment to com­merce for your­self at Project Guten­berg. The cat­a­logue took 13 years to scan. “Some idea of the vast quan­ti­ty of items that Har­rods stocked or had avail­able can be tak­en from the gen­er­al index,” notes Eric Hut­ton, one of the vol­un­teer edi­tors on the project, “which runs for 68 pages, five columns to a page.”

Men and women could order cus­tom-tai­lored cloth­ing, fine jew­el­ry, clocks, watch­es, fur­ni­ture. Nat­u­ral­ists and hunters could have their tro­phies dressed and mount­ed. Police­men and, well, any­one, could order pis­tols, “knuck­le dusters,” and hand­cuffs. “You could also hire bands or musi­cians, plus tents or mar­quees for out­door gath­er­ings. You could rent steam, elec­tric, or petrol launch­es to go down a riv­er, or, if you set your sights fur­ther afield, there were ‘explor­ing, sci­en­tif­ic and shoot­ing expe­di­tions… com­plete­ly equipped and pro­vi­sioned for any part of the world”… per­haps the Edwar­dian British ver­sion of the Sears House.

A MetaFil­ter user points out how much glob­al­iza­tion and empire play into the mar­ket­ing. These are “not just lux­u­ry goods but com­modi­ties. I noticed wheat could come from at least three con­ti­nents…. Over and over it explains how Har­rods will out­fit any­one abroad who needs a social or mil­i­tary or explorato­ry uni­form: tele­graph Har­rods for shoe buck­les appro­pri­ate to your sta­tions.” Har­rods also repeat­ed­ly empha­sizes they will ship any­where in the world. Colo­nial offi­cials in India or Ugan­da could live like kings. We must con­fess, we doubt this mer­chan­dise was tru­ly meant for every­one.

This was also a time when mir­a­cle cures and var­i­ous unsci­en­tif­ic treat­ments abound­ed. “You could buy things like chlo­ro­form or throat pastilles in dozens of vari­eties,” notes Hut­ton, “even those con­tain­ing cocaine!”

A few of the com­modi­ties fea­tured in Har­rods for Every­thing are a lot hard­er to come by these days. Some of them, like the pages of guns, are easy to get in the US but not so read­i­ly avail­able in the UK and many of its for­mer colonies. (Though you can find cat­a­logues for just about any­thing if you look hard enough.)

But aside from cer­tain obvi­ous his­tor­i­cal dif­fer­ences, the cat­a­logue isn’t that much dif­fer­ent from the pages of online retail­ers who will also sell you almost any­thing, at any time of day, and ship it to you any­where in the world. What we thought of as unprece­dent­ed inno­va­tion was com­mon­place in the days of Queen Vic­to­ria, only ship­ping took a lot longer. Har­rods’ uni­ver­sal­iz­ing Latin mot­to even sounds par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern, in Eng­lish, at least: Omnia Omnibus Ubique, or “every­thing for every­one, every­where.” Yet much, too, has changed. Har­rods, out­fit­ter of the British Empire, is now owned by the state of Qatar.

See the ful­ly scanned 1,525-page Har­rods for Every­thing cat­a­logue at Project Guten­berg.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sears Sold 75,000 DIY Mail Order Homes Between 1908 and 1939, and Trans­formed Amer­i­can Life

How the Sears Cat­a­log Dis­rupt­ed the Jim Crow South and Helped Give Birth to the Delta Blues & Rock and Roll

What It Cost to Shop at the Gro­cery Store in 1836, and What Goods You Could Buy

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

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The Face of Bill Murray Adds Some Joy to Classic Paintings

in Art, Comedy, Film, History | August 21st, 2020

Bill Mur­ray isn’t one of those actors who dis­ap­pears into a role.

Nor is he much of a chameleon on can­vas, how­ev­er icon­ic, as artist Eddy Tori­goe demon­strates with a series that grafts Murray’s famous mug onto a num­ber of equal­ly well-known paint­ings.

Tori­goe told Digg that he was inspired by acci­dent, when he was struck by the uncan­ny resem­blance between Gilbert Stuart’s Lans­downe por­trait of George Wash­ing­ton, and a pho­to of Mur­ray post­ed by a Red­dit user.

He down­loaded both images and bus­ied him­self with Pho­to­shop.

The rest is his­to­ry.

The Pres­i­den­tial update is an improve­ment in ways. Mur­ray-faced Wash­ing­ton appears kind­ly, and not averse to a bit of fun. No teeth of enslaved peo­ples com­pro­mis­ing that mouth.

While Mur­ray is capa­ble of main­tain­ing a straight face—wit­ness his work in Lost in Trans­la­tion, The Razor’s Edge, Ham­let 2000, and Torigoe’s homage to Whistler’s Moth­er, above—more often than not a cer­tain puck­ish­ness shines through.

One won­ders what would have befall­en painter Jacques-Louis David had he bestowed The Emper­or Napoleon in His Study at the Tui­leries with Murray’s goofy expres­sion.

And it’s well estab­lished that a key ele­ment of Grant Wood’s oft-par­o­died Amer­i­can Goth­ic is the pok­er faced reserve of its male sub­ject.

Had they been alive today, it’s con­ceiv­able that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s por­trait of Mar­tin Luther might have depict­ed a lighter side of his friend, some­thing more Mur­ray-esque. Though giv­en the Ref­or­ma­tion and his 95 The­ses against Indul­gences, maybe not….

Explore more of Eddy Torigoe’s Bill Mur­ray-enriched mas­ter­pieces of art, includ­ing self-por­traits by Rem­brandt, Fri­da Kahlo, and Picas­so, on his web­site.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Mas­ter­pieces of West­ern Art with All Gluten Prod­ucts Removed: See Works by Dalí, Cézanne, Van Gogh & Oth­ers

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

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The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts

in History, Museums | August 21st, 2020

As crit­ics and fans wrote excit­ed­ly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Pan­ther did an excel­lent job of cre­at­ing sym­pa­thy for its vil­lain. Many found Erik Killmonger’s rad­i­cal­ism more appeal­ing than the hero’s mod­er­a­tion for some spe­cif­ic rea­sons, begin­ning with the heist at the “Muse­um of Great Britain,” a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized British Muse­um. “In one scene,” writes gal­lerist Lise Rag­bir at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “the block­buster super­hero movie touch­es on issues of prove­nance, repa­tri­a­tion, diver­si­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and oth­er debates cur­rent­ly shap­ing insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices.”

As a gallery direc­tor who is also black, I was awed by Killmonger’s dec­la­ra­tion to an over­con­fi­dent cura­tor that she was mis­tak­en. When the cura­tor con­de­scend­ing­ly informed Kill­mon­ger that items in the muse­um aren’t for sale, my hands began to sweat. And I was down­right thrilled when the vil­lain blunt­ly con­front­ed her: “How do you think your ances­tors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it like they took every­thing else?”

He does not exag­ger­ate. The scene “describes a cen­turies-old truth,” artist Deb­o­rah Roberts remarks”—“colonialists rob­bing black cul­ture to put on dis­play for Euro­pean con­sump­tion.” The issue, in oth­er words, is not only who gets to tell the sto­ries of African and oth­er non-Euro­pean peo­ple, but who gets to see and hear them, since so many non-white peo­ple have been exclud­ed from muse­ums and muse­um cul­ture.

As Casey Haugh­in wrote in the Hop­kins Exhi­bi­tion­ist, the film “pre­sent­ed [the muse­um] as an ille­gal mech­a­nism of colo­nial­ism, and along with that, a space which does not even wel­come those whose cul­ture it dis­plays.” So-called “dis­put­ed muse­um trea­sures,” the Vox video above shows, are essen­tial­ly stolen arti­facts, with claims of own­er­ship that elide, omit, or fab­ri­cate the his­to­ry of their acqui­si­tion.

Some loot­ed trea­sures have been returned, but when it comes to the major­i­ty of the Museum’s “dis­put­ed” col­lec­tions, “so far, it isn’t giv­ing them back,” Vox explains, despite calls from for­mer­ly col­o­nized nations. It’s easy to see why. If they were to hon­or his­tor­i­cal claims of own­er­ship, the British Muse­um would lose some of its most cel­e­brat­ed and sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings, like the Roset­ta Stone or the Benin Bronzes, “some of the most con­tentious items in the muse­um.”

These bronzes, from the wealthy King­dom of Benin, locat­ed in mod­ern-day Nige­ria, were “loot­ed by British sol­diers dur­ing an 1897 raid,” Sarah Cas­cone writes at Art­net. Faced with calls from Nigeria’s Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Muse­ums and Mon­u­ments to return them, the British Muse­um held meet­ings that lead to more meet­ings and a “dec­la­ra­tion” that “out­lined an intention”—all stalling tac­tics that have not pro­duced results. Learn why these arti­facts are impor­tant to Nige­ri­ans and how the 19th-cen­tu­ry “scram­ble for Africa” cre­at­ed so much of the muse­um cul­ture we know today, one still heav­i­ly mired in its colo­nial­ist roots.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

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

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A New Interactive Map Shows All Four Million Buildings That Existed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

in Architecture, History, Maps, Photography, Travel | August 19th, 2020

New York­ers have borne wit­ness to a notice­able uptick in the num­ber of shiny, new build­ings going up in the city over the last few years, crowd­ing the water­front, ris­ing from the ash­es of com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and old­er, infi­nite­ly more mod­est struc­tures.

Their devel­op­ers have tak­en care to top load them with luxu­ry ameni­ties—rooftop cabanas, 24-hour fit­ness clubs, mar­ble coun­ter­tops, screen­ing rooms.

But one thing they can’t pro­vide is the sense of lived his­to­ry that imbues every old build­ing with a true sense of char­ac­ter, mys­tique, and oft-grub­by charm.

I fear that the occu­pants of these new­er build­ings won’t have near­ly as much fun as the rest of us search­ing for our cur­rent address­es on the NYC Munic­i­pal Archives’ inter­ac­tive map, above.

Every dot rep­re­sents a Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion pho­to­graph of a New York City build­ing, snapped between 1939 and 1941 as a means of stan­dard­iz­ing the way in which prop­er­ty val­ues were assessed and record­ed.

There are 4,282,000 dots, spread out between five bor­oughs.

Does that sound dense­ly packed?

You should see it today… there’s been a lot of ver­ti­cal build.

This unas­sum­ing fuel oil plant near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has giv­en way to a 430-unit build­ing boast­ing a yoga room, spin stu­dios, and valet ser­vices for those in need of dry-clean­ing, laun­dry, apart­ment clean­ing, or dog walking…though sad­ly, no on-premis­es motor oil. We find that omis­sion some­what sur­pris­ing for such a full-ser­vice res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment on the banks of a Super­fund site, whose clean up is esti­mat­ed to tip the scales at $500 mil­lion.

We also won­der what the occu­pants of the above build­ings would have made of the glassy 25-sto­ry com­plex that opened on their coor­di­nates ear­li­er this year. Is it just us, or does it seem a bit disin­gen­u­ous of its devel­op­ers to trum­pet that its loca­tion is “the epit­o­me of New York City’s authen­tic­i­ty, with over a cen­tu­ry of rich his­to­ry, where the world’s sar­to­r­i­al and culi­nary trends are born”?

(You can find us a few blocks away mut­ter­ing into our chopped liv­er at Russ and Daugh­ters, a ven­er­a­ble food shop that looks much the same today as it did in 1940, though you’ll have to con­firm with a bit of research on your own if you don’t want to take our word for it, the WPA “dot” reveal­ing lit­tle more than a man with a stick and sev­er­al mov­ing vehi­cles.)

Our final stop is one of many archi­tec­tur­al ghosts to haunt the Hud­son Yards colos­sus, the self-described “epi­cen­ter of Manhattan’s New West Side… a bea­con for cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, a hub for fash­ion, design, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and art.” In addi­tion to a much reviled $200 mil­lion shawar­ma-shaped “3‑dimensional pub­lic space” and state of the art wine fridges, ameni­ties now include diag­nos­tic and anti­body test­ing “per­formed by top med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.”

It’s telling that in the sum­mer of 2020, prospec­tive ten­ants were offered incen­tives includ­ing two months’ free rent and a $2,000 gift card.

Proof, per­haps, that New York will con­tin­ue as it always has—a city in con­stant flux. The preva­lence of mod­ern high rise build­ings in dystopi­an fic­tion gives us pause.…

Explore the Street View of 1940s New York here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

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

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Vincent Van Gogh’s Self Portraits: Explore & Download a Collection of 17 Paintings Free Online

in Art, History | August 18th, 2020

“They say — and I glad­ly believe it — that it is dif­fi­cult to know your­self,” Vin­cent Van Gogh once wrote to his broth­er Theo, “but it isn’t easy to paint one­self either.” This from one of the most pro­lif­ic self-por­traitists of all time. Between the years 1885 and 1889, Van Gogh paint­ed him­self more than 35 times, most of them dur­ing the two years in the mid­dle when he lived in Paris. Always short of funds, but espe­cial­ly strait­ened there, he saved the cost of hir­ing mod­els by invest­ing in a mir­ror instead.

That mir­ror, Van Gogh wrote in anoth­er let­ter, was “good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a mod­el, because if I can man­age to paint the col­or­ing of my own head, which is not to be done with­out some dif­fi­cul­ty, I shall like­wise be able to paint the heads of oth­er good souls, men and women.” At the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online col­lec­tion you can browse up close and in detail — as well as down­load — sev­en­teen exam­ples of the painter’s essays in his own head col­or, and much else about him­self besides.

We’ve all seen Van Gogh’s two or three most well-known self-por­traits. The most famous of those, 1889’s Self-Por­trait With a Ban­daged Ear (one of two paint­ed that year), hints at the act of self-muti­la­tion that fol­lowed one of his many quar­rels with his friend and col­league Paul Gau­guin. Held at the Cour­tauld Gallery, that paint­ing does­n’t appear on the Van Gogh Muse­um’s site, but those that do reveal aspects of the painter (lit­er­al­ly, in some cas­es) artis­ti­cal­ly unex­plored by his more wide­ly seen works.

Take Self-Por­trait as a Painter at the top of the post, an unusu­al depic­tion in that Van Gogh makes ref­er­ence in it to his pro­fes­sion. Cre­at­ed between Decem­ber 1887 and Feb­ru­ary 1888, this final Parisian work includes a palette, paint­brush­es, and an easel, but the way in which Van Gogh paint­ed it tells us some­thing more: “He showed that he was a mod­ern artist by using a new paint­ing style, with bright, almost unblend­ed col­ors,” says the Van Gogh Muse­um’s web site, “the blue of his smock, for instance, and the orange-red of his beard” cho­sen to inten­si­fy one anoth­er.

Dif­fer­ent self-por­traits empha­size dif­fer­ent dis­tinc­tive ele­ments of Van Gogh’s appear­ance and self-pre­sen­ta­tion. In 1887’s Self-Por­trait with Straw Hat he wears the tit­u­lar piece of head­wear that allows him to use his beloved col­or yel­low, even as he “exam­ines us with one blue and one green eye.” In some self-por­traits he goes not just with­out a hat but with­out any of the accou­trements of his work at all, includ­ing his artist’s smock. In oth­ers, as in the Adolphe Mon­ti­cel­li-inspired exam­ple here, he smokes a pipe; in the clear­ly Impres­sion­ist-influ­enced self-por­trait just above, he opts for both pipe and hat. Yet we can always rec­og­nize Van Gogh by the inten­si­ty of his expres­sion — or as Dou­glas Cou­p­land less rev­er­ent­ly put it, his “self­ie face.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore 1400 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh–and Much More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Col­lec­tion

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Por­trait Morphs Into a Pho­to­graph

Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night” and “Self Por­trait” Paint­ed on Dark Water, Using a Tra­di­tion­al Turk­ish Art Form

Dis­cov­ered: The Only Known Pic­ture of Vin­cent Van Gogh as an Adult Artist? (Maybe, Maybe Not)

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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One of the Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts Has Been Digitized & Put Online: Explore the Gandhara Scroll

in History, Religion | August 13th, 2020

Bud­dhism goes way back — so far back, in fact, that we’re still exam­in­ing impor­tant evi­dence of just how far back it goes. Take the exhib­it above, which may look like noth­ing more than a col­lec­tion of fad­ed scraps with writ­ing on them. In fact, they’re pieces of the labo­ri­ous­ly and care­ful­ly unrolled and scanned Gand­hara Scroll, which, hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been writ­ten about two mil­len­nia ago, ranks as one of the old­est Bud­dhist man­u­scripts cur­rent­ly known. You can read the scrol­l’s sto­ry at the blog of the Library of Con­gress, the insti­tu­tion that pos­sess­es it and only last year was able to put it online for all to see.

“The scroll orig­i­nat­ed in Gand­hara, an ancient Bud­dhist kind­gom locat­ed in what is today the north­ern bor­der areas of Afghanistan and Pak­istan,” writes the Library’s Neely Tuck­er. “Sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts from the Gand­ha­ran realm are rare; only a few hun­dred are known to still exist.” That realm “was under the rule of numer­ous kings and dynas­ties, includ­ing Alexan­der the Great, the Mau­ryan emper­or Ashoka and the Kushan emper­or Kan­ish­ka I,” and for a time “became a major seat of Bud­dhist art, archi­tec­ture and learn­ing. One of the region’s most notable char­ac­ter­is­tics is the Hel­lenis­tic style of its Bud­dhist sculp­tures, includ­ing fig­ures of the Bud­dha with wavy hair, defined facial fea­tures, and con­toured robes rem­i­nis­cent of Gre­co-Roman deities.”

Writ­ten in the Gand­hari vari­ant of San­skrit, the “Bahubud­dha Sutra” or “Many Bud­dhas Sutra,” as this scroll has been called, con­sti­tutes part of “the much larg­er Mahavas­tu, or ‘Great Sto­ry,’ a biog­ra­phy of the Bud­dha and his past lives.” Here Tuck­er draws from the schol­ar­ship of Richard G. Salomon, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of San­skrit and Bud­dhist stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, anoth­er insti­tu­tion that holds a piece of the Gand­ha­ran Bud­dhist texts. Many more reside at the British Library, which acquired them in 1994. The Library of Con­gress bought its Gand­hara Scroll from a British deal­er more recent­ly, in 2003, and it arrived in what Tuck­er describes as “an ordi­nary pen case, accom­pa­nied by a hand­writ­ten note: ‘Extreme­ly frag­ile, do not open unless nec­es­sary.’ ”

So began “sev­er­al years of thought and plan­ning to devise a treat­ment strat­e­gy,” an effort that at one point saw the Library’s con­ser­va­tor prac­tic­ing “her unrolling tech­nique on a dried-up cig­ar — an item that only approx­i­mates the dif­fi­cul­ty of work­ing with a com­pact­ed birch bark scroll.” Then came “grad­ual humid­i­fi­ca­tion over a few days, care­ful unrolling by hand with pre­ci­sion tools on a sheet of inert glass, fol­lowed by plac­ing anoth­er sheet of glass on top once the scroll was com­plete­ly unrolled,” a “dra­mat­ic and silent affair” described in greater detail by Atlas Obscu­ra’s Sab­ri­na Imbler.

The result was six large frag­ments and more than 100 small­er ones, togeth­er con­sti­tut­ing rough­ly 80 per­cent of the scrol­l’s orig­i­nal text. You can see all those frag­ments of the Gand­hara Scroll, scanned in high res­o­lu­tion, at the Library of Con­gress’ web site. This will nat­u­ral­ly be a more edi­fy­ing expe­ri­ence if, like Salomon, you hap­pen to be able to read Gand­hari. Even if you can’t, there’s some­thing to be felt in the expe­ri­ence of sim­ply behold­ing a 2,000 year old text com­posed on birch bark through the dig­i­tal medi­um on which we do most of our read­ing here in the 21st cen­tu­ry — where inter­est in Bud­dhism shows no signs of wan­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Breath­tak­ing­ly-Detailed Tibetan Book Print­ed 40 Years Before the Guten­berg Bible

The World’s Largest Col­lec­tion of Tibetan Bud­dhist Lit­er­a­ture Now Online

2,000-Year-Old Man­u­script of the Ten Com­mand­ments Gets Dig­i­tized: See/Download “Nash Papyrus” in High Res­o­lu­tion

Google Dig­i­tizes Ancient Copies of the Ten Com­mand­ments and Gen­e­sis

Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Res­o­lu­tion)

Archae­ol­o­gists Think They’ve Dis­cov­ered the Old­est Greek Copy of Homer’s Odyssey: 13 Vers­es on a Clay Tablet

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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The Flying Train: A 1902 Film Captures a Futuristic Ride on a Suspended Railway in Germany

in Film, History | August 13th, 2020

We’ve been focus­ing a lot recent­ly on old films from the turn of the cen­tu­ry that a small group of enthu­si­asts have been “remas­ter­ing” using AI, smooth­ing out the herky-jerky fram­ing, upping the frame rate by inter­po­lat­ing between-frames, and more.

So what a sur­prise to find a recent look at a film in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s film col­lec­tion from 1902 that already has the fideli­ty and smooth­ness, no AI need­ed.

The above footage is tak­en from the Wup­per­taler Schwe­be­bahn, the sus­pen­sion rail­way built in the Ger­man city of Bar­men in 1901. The Bio­graph pro­duc­tion company—best known to film stu­dents as the place where D.W. Grif­fiths got his start—was one of the most pop­u­lar of the ear­ly film com­pa­nies, and pro­duced mini-docs like these, called Muto­scopes.

The Muto­scope used 68mm film, a film stock twice as large as most films at the time. (70mm film real­ly only came into its own dur­ing the 1950s.) The 30 frames per sec­ond shoot­ing rate was also faster than the usu­al 18fps or 24fps, which means the illu­sion of real­i­ty is clos­er to the video rate of today. The Muto­scope was also the name of the company’s view­er, where the frames were print­ed on cards and could be watched through a viewfind­er. So we are watch­ing a film that was nev­er meant to be pro­ject­ed. (If you’re think­ing that the Muto­scope was also used for pri­vate view­ings of What the But­ler Saw, you are cor­rect.)

Despite the fideli­ty our favorite upscaler Denis Shiryaev still had a go at improv­ing the footage and adding col­or and sound. (There’s also a com­peti­tor work­ing on their own upscale and col­oriza­tion ver­sion called Upscaled Stu­dio). Which one is bet­ter, do you think? And how much was the expe­ri­ence improved?

And in case you’re won­der­ing, the Wup­per­tal Schwe­be­bahn still oper­ates to this day, look­ing very much like it did back in 1902. The total route is just over eight miles long and fol­lows the riv­er Wup­per for a lot of it, and ser­vices 82,000 com­muters a day. (Less so dur­ing COVID of course.) You can check out footage below. It def­i­nite­ly looks fun fun fun on the Schwe­be­bahn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Revis­it Scenes of Dai­ly Life in Ams­ter­dam in 1922, with His­toric Footage Enhanced by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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