The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973–2023)

in History, Music | November 29th, 2024

Hip-hop was once a sub­cul­ture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unques­tion­ably dom­i­nant forms of pop­u­lar music — not just in Amer­i­ca, and not just among young peo­ple. There are, of course, still a fair few hip-hop hold­outs, but even they’ve come to know a thing or two about it through cul­tur­al osmo­sis alone. They’re aware, for exam­ple — whether or not they approve of it — that rap­pers usu­al­ly per­form over music con­struct­ed through sam­pling: that is, stitched togeth­er out of pieces of oth­er songs. If you’re not sure how it works, you can see the process clear­ly visu­al­ized in the video above from sam­ple provider Track­lib.

Offer­ing a break­down of sam­pling as it’s hap­pened through “fifty years of hip-hop,” the video begins even before the genre real­ly took shape, in 1973. It was then that DJ Kool Herc devel­oped what he called “the ‘Mer­ry-Go-Round’ Tech­nique,” an ear­ly exam­ple of which involved using dual turnta­bles to switch back and forth between the instru­men­tal breaks of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Tur­nit a Loose” and the Incred­i­ble Bon­go Band’s “Bon­go Rock.” The orig­i­nal idea was to give dancers more time to do their thing, but when the MCs picked up their micro­phones and start­ed get­ting cre­ative, a new music took shape almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Main­stream Amer­i­ca got its first taste of hip-hop in 1979, with the release of “Rap­per’s Delight” by the Sug­arhill Gang. In its repeat­ing rhythm part, many would have rec­og­nized Chic’s “Good Times,” which actu­al­ly was­n’t a sam­ple but an inter­po­la­tion, i.e. a re-record­ing. This drew a law­suit — hard­ly the last of its kind in hip-hop — but it also set thou­sands of DJs-to-be dig­ging through their record col­lec­tions in search of usable breaks. Dis­co proved a fount of inspi­ra­tion for ear­ly hip-hop, but so did jazz and even elec­tron­ic music, as demon­strat­ed by Afri­ka Bam­baataa and the Soul Son­ic Force’s “Plan­et Rock,” which sam­pled Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express.”

As sam­pling goes, noth­ing is artis­ti­cal­ly off-lim­its; in some sense, the less imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able, the bet­ter. With the evo­lu­tion of audio edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, hip-hop artists have long gone even fur­ther in mak­ing these bor­rowed clips their own by slow­ing them down; speed­ing them up; chop­ping them into pieces and rear­rang­ing them; and lay­er­ing them one atop anoth­er. This some­times caus­es prob­lems, as when the dif­fi­cul­ty of licens­ing De La Soul’s many and var­ied source mate­ri­als kept their cat­a­log out of offi­cial avail­abil­i­ty. Along with A Tribe Called Quest, also fea­tured in this video, De La Soul are, of course, known as hip-hop groups beloved by music nerds. But if you seri­ous­ly break down any major work of hip-hop, you’ll find that all its artists are music nerds at heart.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

How Sam­pling Trans­formed Music and Cre­at­ed New Tapes­tries of Sound: An Inter­ac­tive Demon­stra­tion by Producer/DJ Mark Ron­son

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

The Sur­pris­ing­ly Long His­to­ry of Auto-Tune, the Vocal-Pro­cess­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Music Crit­ics Love to Hate

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Bou­tique – and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

Hear De La Soul’s High­ly Acclaimed & Influ­en­tial Hip-Hop Albums Stream­ing Free for the First Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Explore and Download 14,000+ Woodcuts from Antwerp’s Plantin-Moretus Museum Online Archive

in Archives, Books, Design, History, Museums | November 27th, 2024

We appre­ci­ate illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts and his­tor­i­cal books here on Open Cul­ture, adhere though we do to a much more restrained aes­thet­ic style in our own texts. But that’s not to deny the temp­ta­tion to start this para­graph with one of those over­sized ini­tial let­ters that grew ever larg­er and more elab­o­rate over cen­turies past. The online archive of Antwer­p’s Plan­tin-More­tus Muse­um offers plen­ty of wood­cut Ws to choose from, includ­ing designs sober and bare­ly leg­i­ble, as well as Ws that incor­po­rate a sprout­ing plant, some kind of saint, and even a scene of what looks like impend­ing mur­der.

If you’re not in the mar­ket for fan­cy let­ters, you can also browse the Plan­tin-More­tus wood­cut archive through the cat­e­gories of plants, ani­mals, and sci­ences. Some of these illus­tra­tions are tech­ni­cal, and oth­ers more fan­ci­ful; in cer­tain cas­es, the cen­turies have prob­a­bly ren­dered them less real­is­tic-look­ing than once they were.

Not all the more than 14,000 wood­cuts now in the archive would seem to fit neat­ly in one of those cat­e­gories, but if you take a look at par­tic­u­lar entries, you’ll find that the muse­um has also labeled them with more spe­cif­ic tags, like “clas­si­cal antiq­ui­ty,” “map/landscape,” or “aure­ole” (the bright medieval-look­ing halo that marks a fig­ure as holy).

All these wood­cuts, in any case, have been made free to down­load (just click the cloud icon in the upper-right of the win­dow that opens after you click on the image itself) and use as you please. Back in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, Christophe Plan­tin and Jan More­tus, for whom the Plan­tin-More­tus Muse­um was named, were well-placed to col­lect such things. The Plan­tin-More­tus Muse­um’s web­site describes them as “a rev­o­lu­tion­ary duo.

They were the first print­ers on an indus­tri­al scale — the Steve Jobs and Mark Zucker­berg of their day.” And if these decon­tex­tu­al­ized arti­facts of the print rev­o­lu­tion strike us as a bit strange to us today, just imag­ine how our sur­viv­ing inter­net memes will look four cen­turies hence. Enter the wood­block col­lec­tion here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load 215,000 Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters Span­ning the Tradition’s 350-Year His­to­ry

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

Stephen Fry Takes Us Inside the Sto­ry of Johannes Guten­berg & the First Print­ing Press

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

Clas­sic Films and Film­mak­ers, Ren­dered in Wood­cut By a Los Ange­les Artist-Cinephile

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon Became the First Sci-Fi Film & Changed Cinema Forever (1902)

in Film, History | November 26th, 2024

If you hap­pen to vis­it the Ciné­math­èque Française in Paris, do take the time to see the Musée Méliès locat­ed inside it. Ded­i­cat­ed to la Magie du ciné­ma, it con­tains arti­facts from through­out the his­to­ry of film-as-spec­ta­cle, which includes such pic­tures as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Run­ner. Its focus on the evo­lu­tion of visu­al effects guar­an­tees a cer­tain promi­nence to sci­ence fic­tion, which, as a genre of “the sev­enth art,” has its ori­gins in France: specif­i­cal­ly, in the work of the muse­um’s name­sake Georges Méliès, whose A Trip to the Moon (Le voy­age dans la lune) from 1902 we now rec­og­nize as the very first sci-fi movie.

Every­one has seen at least one image from A Trip to the Moon: that of the land­ing cap­sule crashed into the irri­tat­ed man-on-the-moon’s eye. But if you watch the film at its full length — which, in the ver­sion above, runs about fif­teen min­utes — you can bet­ter under­stand its impor­tance to the devel­op­ment of cin­e­ma.

For Méliès did­n’t pio­neer just a genre, but also a range of tech­niques that expand­ed the visu­al vocab­u­lary of his medi­um. Take the approach to the moon (played by the direc­tor him­self) imme­di­ate­ly before the land­ing, a kind of shot nev­er before seen in those days of prac­ti­cal­ly immo­bile movie cam­eras — and one that neces­si­tat­ed real tech­ni­cal inven­tive­ness to pull off.

What some­one watch­ing A Trip to the Moon in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will first notice, of course, is less the ways in which it feels famil­iar than the ways in which it does­n’t. In an era when the­ater was still the dom­i­nant form of enter­tain­ment, Méliès adhered to the­atri­cal forms of stag­ing: he uses few cuts, and prac­ti­cal­ly no vari­ety in the cam­era angles. It would hard­ly seem worth not­ing that a film from 1902 is silent and in black-and-white, but what few know is that col­orized prints — labo­ri­ous­ly hand-paint­ed, frame by frame, on an assem­bly line — exist­ed even at the time of its orig­i­nal release; one such restored ver­sion appears just above.

In truth, Méliès opened up much deep­er pos­si­bil­i­ties for cin­e­ma than most of us acknowl­edge. As point­ed out in the A Mat­ter of Film video above, the motion pic­tures made before this amount­ed to exhibits of dai­ly life: impres­sive as tech­no­log­i­cal demon­stra­tions (and, so the leg­end goes, har­row­ing for the view­ers of 1896, who feared a train approach­ing onscreen would run them over), but noth­ing as nar­ra­tives. Like Méliès’ oth­er work, A Trip to the Moon proved that a movie could tell a sto­ry. It also proved some­thing more cen­tral to the medi­um’s pow­er: that it could tell that sto­ry in such a way that its images linger more than 120 years lat­er, even when the details of what hap­pens have long since lost their inter­est.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Watch 194 Films by Georges Méliès, the Film­mak­er Who “Invent­ed Every­thing” (All in Chrono­log­i­cal Order)

The First Hor­ror Film, Georges Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch Georges Méliès’ The Drey­fus Affair, the Con­tro­ver­sial Film Cen­sored by the French Gov­ern­ment for 50 Years (1899)

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662)

in History, Physics, Religion, Science | November 25th, 2024

Sir Isaac New­ton, arguably the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial sci­en­tist in his­to­ry, dis­cov­ered the laws of motion and the uni­ver­sal force of grav­i­ty. For the first time ever, the rules of the uni­verse could be described with the supreme­ly ratio­nal lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics. Newton’s ele­gant equa­tions proved to be one of the inspi­ra­tions for the Enlight­en­ment, a shift away from the God-cen­tered dog­ma of the Church in favor of a world­view that placed rea­son at its cen­ter. The many lead­ers of the Enlight­en­ment turned to deism if not out­right athe­ism. But not New­ton.

In 1936, a doc­u­ment of Newton’s dat­ing from around 1662 was sold at a Sothe­by’s auc­tion and even­tu­al­ly wound up at the Fitzwilliam Muse­um in Cam­bridge, Eng­land. The Fitzwilliam Man­u­script has long been a source of fas­ci­na­tion for New­ton schol­ars. Not only does the note­book fea­ture a series of increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems but also a cryp­tic string of let­ters read­ing:

Nabed Efy­hik
Wfn­zo Cpm­fke

If you can solve this, there are some peo­ple in Cam­bridge who would like to talk to you.

But what makes the doc­u­ment real­ly inter­est­ing is how incred­i­bly per­son­al it is. New­ton rat­tles off a laun­dry list of sins he com­mit­ted dur­ing his rel­a­tive­ly short life – he was around 20 when he wrote this, still a stu­dent at Cam­bridge. He splits the list into two cat­e­gories, before Whit­sun­day 1662 and after. (Whit­sun­day is, by the way, the Sun­day of the feast of Whit­sun, which is cel­e­brat­ed sev­en weeks after East­er.) Why he decid­ed on that par­tic­u­lar date to bifur­cate his time­line isn’t imme­di­ate­ly clear.

Some of the sins are rather opaque. I’m not sure what, for instance, “Mak­ing a feath­er while on Thy day” means exact­ly but it sure sounds like a long-lost euphemism. Oth­er sins like “Peev­ish­ness with my moth­er” are imme­di­ate­ly relat­able as good old-fash­ioned teenage churl­ish­ness. You can see the full list below. And you can read the full doc­u­ment over at the New­ton Project here.

Before Whit­sun­day 1662

1. Vsing the word (God) open­ly
2. Eat­ing an apple at Thy house
3. Mak­ing a feath­er while on Thy day
4. Deny­ing that I made it.
5. Mak­ing a mouse­trap on Thy day
6. Con­triv­ing of the chimes on Thy day
7. Squirt­ing water on Thy day
8. Mak­ing pies on Sun­day night
9. Swim­ming in a kim­nel on Thy day
10. Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him.
11. Care­less­ly hear­ing and com­mit­ting many ser­mons
12. Refus­ing to go to the close at my moth­ers com­mand.
13. Threat­ning my father and moth­er Smith to burne them and the house over them
14. Wish­ing death and hop­ing it to some
15. Strik­ing many
16. Hav­ing uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese.
17. Steal­ing cher­ry cobs from Eduard Stor­er
18. Deny­ing that I did so
19. Deny­ing a cross­bow to my moth­er and grand­moth­er though I knew of it
20. Set­ting my heart on mon­ey learn­ing plea­sure more than Thee
21. A relapse
22. A relapse
23. A break­ing again of my covenant renued in the Lords Sup­per.
24. Punch­ing my sis­ter
25. Rob­bing my moth­ers box of plums and sug­ar
26. Call­ing Dorothy Rose a jade
27. Glutiny in my sick­ness.
28. Peev­ish­ness with my moth­er.
29. With my sis­ter.
30. Falling out with the ser­vants
31. Divers com­mis­sions of alle my duties
32. Idle dis­course on Thy day and at oth­er times
33. Not turn­ing near­er to Thee for my affec­tions
34. Not liv­ing accord­ing to my belief
35. Not lov­ing Thee for Thy self.
36. Not lov­ing Thee for Thy good­ness to us
37. Not desir­ing Thy ordi­nances
38. Not long {long­ing} for Thee in {illeg}
39. Fear­ing man above Thee
40. Vsing unlaw­ful means to bring us out of dis­tress­es
41. Car­ing for world­ly things more than God
42. Not crav­ing a bless­ing from God on our hon­est endeav­ors.
43. Miss­ing chapel.
44. Beat­ing Arthur Stor­er.
45. Peev­ish­ness at Mas­ter Clarks for a piece of bread and but­ter.
46. Striv­ing to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
47. Twist­ing a cord on Sun­day morn­ing
48. Read­ing the his­to­ry of the Chris­t­ian cham­pi­ons on Sun­day

Since Whit­sun­day 1662

49. Glu­tony
50. Glu­tony
51. Vsing Wil­fords tow­el to spare my own
52. Neg­li­gence at the chapel.
53. Ser­mons at Saint Marys (4)
54. Lying about a louse
55. Deny­ing my cham­ber­fel­low of the knowl­edge of him that took him for a sot.
56. Neglect­ing to pray 3
57. Help­ing Pet­tit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Sat­ur­day night

via JF Ptak Sci­ence Books/Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dict­ed That the World Will End in 2060

Isaac New­ton The­o­rized That the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Revealed the Tim­ing of the Apoc­a­lypse: See His Burnt Man­u­script from the 1680s

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies

in Film, History, Law | November 25th, 2024

“This is a work of fic­tion,” declares the dis­claimer we’ve all noticed dur­ing the end cred­its of movies. “Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or actu­al events, is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.” In most cas­es, this may seem so triv­ial that it hard­ly mer­its a men­tion, but the very same dis­claimer also rolls up after pic­tures very clear­ly intend­ed to rep­re­sent actu­al events or per­sons, liv­ing or dead. Most of us would write it all off as one more absur­di­ty cre­at­ed by the elab­o­rate pan­tomime of Amer­i­can legal cul­ture, but a clos­er look at its his­to­ry reveals a much more intrigu­ing ori­gin.

As told in the Ched­dar video above, the sto­ry begins with Rasputin and the Empress, a 1932 Hol­ly­wood movie about the tit­u­lar real-life mys­tic and his involve­ment with the court of Nicholas II, the last emper­or of Rus­sia. Hav­ing been killed in 1916, Rasputin him­self was­n’t around to get liti­gious about his vil­lain­ous por­tray­al (by no less a per­former than Lionel Bar­ry­more, inci­den­tal­ly, act­ing along­side his sib­lings John and Ethel as the prince and cza­ri­na). It was actu­al­ly one of Rasputin’s sur­viv­ing killers, an exiled aris­to­crat named Felix Yusupov, who sued MGM, accus­ing them of defam­ing his wife, Princess Iri­na Yusupov, in the form of the char­ac­ter Princess Natasha.

The film casts Princess Natasha as a sup­port­er of Rasputin, writes Slate’s Dun­can Fyfe, “but the mys­tic, wary of her hus­band, hyp­no­tizes and rapes her, ren­der­ing Natasha — by his log­ic, with which she agrees — unfit to be a wife. Yusupov con­tend­ed that as view­ers would equate Chegodi­eff with Yusupov, so would they link Natasha with Iri­na,” though in real­i­ty Iri­na and Rasputin nev­er even met. In an Eng­lish court, “the jury found in her favor, award­ing her £25,000, or about $125,000. MGM had to take the film out of cir­cu­la­tion for decades and purge the offend­ing scene for all time,” though a small piece of it remains in Rasputin and the Empress’ orig­i­nal trail­er.

Things might have gone in MGM’s favor had the film not includ­ed a title card announc­ing that “a few of the char­ac­ters are still alive — the rest met death by vio­lence.” The stu­dio was advised that they’d have done well to declare the exact oppo­site, a prac­tice soon imple­ment­ed across Hol­ly­wood. It did­n’t take long for the movies to start hav­ing fun with it, intro­duc­ing jokey vari­a­tions on the soon-famil­iar boil­er­plate. Less than a decade after Rasputin and the Empress, one non­sen­si­cal musi­cal com­e­dy pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) opened with the dis­claimer that “any sim­i­lar­i­ty between HELLZAPOPPIN’ and a motion pic­ture is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal” — a tra­di­tion more recent­ly upheld by South Park.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Watch an 8‑Part Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na Free Online

Watch the Huge­ly Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

An Intro­duc­tion to Ivan Ilyin, the Philoso­pher Behind the Author­i­tar­i­an­ism of Putin’s Rus­sia & West­ern Far Right Move­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How the Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps

in History, Maps, Travel | November 22nd, 2024

In an age when many of us could hard­ly make our way to an unfa­mil­iar gro­cery store with­out rely­ing on a GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, we might well won­der how the Romans could estab­lish and sus­tain their mighty empire with­out so much as a prop­er map. That’s the ques­tion addressed by the His­to­ria Mil­i­tum video above, “How Did Ancient Peo­ple Trav­el With­out Maps?” Or more to the point, how did they trav­el with­out scaled maps — that is, ones “in which the map’s dis­tances were pro­por­tion­al to their actu­al size in the real world,” like almost all those we con­sult on our screens today?

The sur­viv­ing maps from the ancient Roman world tend not to take great pains adher­ing to true geog­ra­phy. Yet as the Roman Empire expand­ed, lay­ing roads across three con­ti­nents, more and more Romans engaged in long-dis­tance trav­el, and for the most part seem to have arrived at their intend­ed des­ti­na­tions.

To do so, they used not maps per se but “itin­er­aries,” which tex­tu­al­ly list­ed towns and cities along the way and the dis­tance between them. By the fourth cen­tu­ry, “all main Roman roads along with 225 stop­ping sta­tions were com­piled in a doc­u­ment called the Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni, the Itin­er­ary of Emper­or Anto­nius Pius.”

This high­ly prac­ti­cal doc­u­ment includes most­ly roads that “passed through large cities, which pro­vid­ed bet­ter facil­i­ties for hous­ing, shop­ping, bathing, and oth­er trav­el­er needs.” With this infor­ma­tion, “a trav­el­er could copy the spe­cif­ic dis­tances and sta­tions they need­ed to reach their des­ti­na­tion.” Still today, some sev­en­teen cen­turies lat­er, “most peo­ple would­n’t use a paper scaled map for trav­el, but would instead break their jour­ney down into a list of sub­way sta­tions, bus stops, and inter­sec­tions.” And if you were to attempt to dri­ve across Europe, mak­ing a mod­ern-day Roman Empire road trip, you’d almost cer­tain­ly rely on the dis­tances and points of inter­est pro­vid­ed by the syn­the­sized voice read­ing aloud from the vast Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Down­load 131,000 His­toric Maps from the Huge David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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An Introduction to the Astonishing Book of Kells, the Iconic Illuminated Manuscript

in Books, History | November 21st, 2024

What­ev­er set of reli­gious or cul­tur­al tra­di­tions you come from, you’ve prob­a­bly seen a Celtic cross before. Unlike a con­ven­tion­al cross, it has a cir­cu­lar ring, or “nim­bus,” where its arms and stem inter­sect. The sole addi­tion of that ele­ment gives it a high­ly dis­tinc­tive look, and indeed makes it one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of Insu­lar iconog­ra­phy — that is, iconog­ra­phy cre­at­ed with­in Great Britain and Ire­land in the time after the Roman Empire. Per­haps the most artis­ti­cal­ly impres­sive Celtic cross in exis­tence is found on one of the pages of the ninth-cen­tu­ry Book of Kells (view online here), which itself stands as the most cel­e­brat­ed of all Insu­lar illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts.

On what’s called the “car­pet page” of the Book of Kells, explains Smarthis­to­ry’s Steven Zuck­er in the video above, “we see a cross so elab­o­rate that it almost ceas­es to be a cross.” It has “two cross­beams, and these del­i­cate cir­cles with intri­cate inter­lac­ing in each of them, but the cir­cles are so large that they almost over­whelm the cross itself.”

That’s hard­ly the only image of note in the book, which con­tains the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment, among oth­er texts, as well as numer­ous and extrav­a­gant illus­tra­tions, all of them exe­cut­ed painstak­ing­ly by hand on its vel­lum pages back when it was cre­at­ed, cir­ca 800, in the scrip­to­ri­um of a medieval monastery. These illus­tra­tions include, as Zuck­er’s col­league Lau­ren Kil­roy puts it, “the ear­li­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Vir­gin and Child in a man­u­script in West­ern Europe.”

This is hard­ly a vol­ume one approach­es light­ly — espe­cial­ly if one approach­es it in per­son, as Zuck­er and Kil­roy did on their vis­it to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin. “When we were stand­ing in front of the book,” says Kil­roy, they “noticed how many folios formed the book itself” (which would have required the skin of more than 100 young calves). Com­ing to grips with the sheer quan­ti­ty of mate­r­i­al in the Book of Kells is one thing, but under­stand­ing how to inter­pret it is anoth­er still. Hence the free online course pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, which can help you more ful­ly appre­ci­ate the book in its dig­i­tized form avail­able online. Even if the cross, Celtic or oth­er­wise, stirs no par­tic­u­lar reli­gious feel­ings with­in you, the Book of Kells has much to say about the civ­i­liza­tion that pro­duced it: a civ­i­liza­tion that, insu­lar though it may once have been, would go on to change the shape of the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece the Book of Kells Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Take a Free Online Course on the Great Medieval Man­u­script the Book of Kells

Dis­cov­er the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Les Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” (1416)

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

in History, Politics | November 20th, 2024

I’ve always admired peo­ple who can suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Cas­tle,” a term of dread for the many gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate agen­cies that have an inor­di­nate amount of pow­er over our per­ma­nent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chill­ing­ly absurd as the labyrinth the char­ac­ter K nav­i­gates in Kafka’s last alle­gor­i­cal nov­el. Even if you haven’t read The Cas­tle, if you work for such an entity—or like all of us have reg­u­lar deal­ings with the IRS, the health­care and bank­ing sys­tem, etc.—you’re well aware of the dev­il­ish incom­pe­tence that mas­quer­ades as due dili­gence and ties us all in knots. Why do mul­ti-mil­lion and bil­lion dol­lar agen­cies seem unable, or unwill­ing, to accom­plish the sim­plest of tasks? Why do so many of us spend our lives in the real-life bureau­crat­ic night­mares sat­i­rized in The Office and Office Space?

One answer comes via Lau­rence J. Peter’s 1969 satire The Peter Prin­ci­ple—which offers the the­o­ry that man­agers and exec­u­tives get pro­mot­ed to the lev­el of their incompetence—then, David Brent-like, go on to ruin their respec­tive depart­ments. The Har­vard Busi­ness Review summed up dis­turb­ing recent research con­firm­ing and sup­ple­ment­ing Peter’s insights into the nar­cis­sism, over­con­fi­dence, or actu­al sociopa­thy of many a gov­ern­ment and busi­ness leader. But in addi­tion to human fail­ings, there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble rea­son for bureau­crat­ic dis­or­der; the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed among us may be for­giv­en for assum­ing that in many cas­es, insti­tu­tion­al incom­pe­tence is the result of delib­er­ate sab­o­tage from both above and below. The ridicu­lous inner work­ings of most orga­ni­za­tions cer­tain­ly make a lot more sense when viewed in the light of one set of instruc­tions for “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty,” name­ly the once top-secret Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al, writ­ten in 1944 by the CIA’s pre­cur­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS).

Now declas­si­fied and freely avail­able on the CIA web­site, the man­u­al that the agency describes as “sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant” was once dis­trib­uted to OSS offi­cers abroad to assist them in train­ing “cit­i­zen-sabo­teurs” in occu­pied coun­tries like Nor­way and France. Such peo­ple, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “might already be sab­o­tag­ing mate­ri­als, machin­ery, or oper­a­tions of their own ini­tia­tive,” but may have lacked the devi­ous tal­ent for sow­ing chaos that only an intel­li­gence agency can prop­er­ly mas­ter. Gen­uine lazi­ness, arro­gance, and mind­less­ness may sure­ly be endem­ic. But the Field Man­u­al asserts that “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty is con­trary to human nature” and requires a par­tic­u­lar set of skills. The cit­i­zen-sabo­teur “fre­quent­ly needs pres­sure, stim­u­la­tion or assur­ance, and infor­ma­tion and sug­ges­tions regard­ing fea­si­ble meth­ods of sim­ple sab­o­tage.”

You can read the full doc­u­ment here. Or find an easy-to-read ver­sion on Project Guten­berg here. To get a sense of just how “timeless”—according to the CIA itself—such instruc­tions remain, see the abridged list below, cour­tesy of Busi­ness Insid­er. You will laugh rue­ful­ly, then maybe shud­der a lit­tle as you rec­og­nize how much your own work­place, and many oth­ers, resem­ble the kind of dys­func­tion­al mess the OSS metic­u­lous­ly planned dur­ing World War II.

Orga­ni­za­tions and Con­fer­ences

  • Insist on doing every­thing through “chan­nels.” Nev­er per­mit short-cuts to be tak­en in order to expe­dite deci­sions.
  • Make “speech­es.” Talk as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble and at great length. Illus­trate your “points” by long anec­dotes and accounts of per­son­al expe­ri­ences.
  • When pos­si­ble, refer all mat­ters to com­mit­tees, for “fur­ther study and con­sid­er­a­tion.” Attempt to make the com­mit­tee as large as pos­si­ble — nev­er less than five.
  • Bring up irrel­e­vant issues as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble.
  • Hag­gle over pre­cise word­ings of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, min­utes, res­o­lu­tions.
  • Refer back to mat­ters decid­ed upon at the last meet­ing and attempt to re-open the ques­tion of the advis­abil­i­ty of that deci­sion.
  • Advo­cate “cau­tion.” Be “rea­son­able” and urge your fel­low-con­fer­ees to be “rea­son­able” and avoid haste which might result in embar­rass­ments or dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er on.

Man­agers

  • In mak­ing work assign­ments, always sign out the unim­por­tant jobs first. See that impor­tant jobs are assigned to inef­fi­cient work­ers.
  • Insist on per­fect work in rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant prod­ucts; send back for refin­ish­ing those which have the least flaw.
  • To low­er morale and with it, pro­duc­tion, be pleas­ant to inef­fi­cient work­ers; give them unde­served pro­mo­tions.
  • Hold con­fer­ences when there is more crit­i­cal work to be done.
  • Mul­ti­ply the pro­ce­dures and clear­ances involved in issu­ing instruc­tions, pay checks, and so on. See that three peo­ple have to approve every­thing where one would do.

Employ­ees

  • Work slow­ly
  • Work slow­ly.
  • Con­trive as many inter­rup­tions to your work as you can.
  • Do your work poor­ly and blame it on bad tools, machin­ery, or equip­ment. Com­plain that these things are pre­vent­ing you from doing your job right.
  • Nev­er pass on your skill and expe­ri­ence to a new or less skill­ful work­er.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process”

 

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

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