The 25 Principles for Adult Behavior: John Perry Barlow (R.I.P.) Creates a List of Wise Rules to Live By

in Life, Music, Technology | February 9th, 2018

Image by the Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The most suc­cess­ful out­laws live by a code, and in many ways John Per­ry Bar­low, founder of the Elec­tron­ic Free­dom Foun­da­tion, Wyoming ranch­er, and erst­while song­writer for the Grate­ful Dead—who died on Wednes­day at the age of 70—was an arche­typ­al Amer­i­can out­law all of his life. He might have worn a white hat, so to speak, but he had no use for the gov­ern­ment telling him what to do. And his charis­mat­ic defense of unfet­tered inter­net lib­er­ty inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of hack­ers and activists, includ­ing a 12-year-old Aaron Swartz, who saw Bar­low speak at his mid­dle school and left the class­room changed.

Few peo­ple get to leave as last­ing a lega­cy as Bar­low, even had he not pio­neered ear­ly cyber­cul­ture, pen­ning the “Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence of the Inter­net,” a techo-utopi­an doc­u­ment that con­tin­ues to influ­ence pro­po­nents of open access and free infor­ma­tion. He intro­duced the Grate­ful Dead to Dr. Tim­o­thy Leary, under whose guid­ance Bar­low began exper­i­ment­ing with LSD in col­lege. His cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the Dead’s Bob Weir stretch­es back to their high school days in Col­orado, and he became an unof­fi­cial mem­ber of the band and its “junior lyri­cist,” as he put it (after Robert Hunter).

“John had a way of tak­ing life’s most dif­fi­cult things and fram­ing them as chal­lenges, there­fore adven­tures,” wrote Weir in a suc­cinct­ly poignant Twit­ter eulo­gy for his friend. We might think of Bar­low’s code, which he laid out in a list he called the “25 Prin­ci­ples of Adult Behav­ior,” as a series of instruc­tions for turn­ing life’s dif­fi­cul­ties into chal­lenges, an adven­tur­ous refram­ing of what it means to grow up. For Bar­low, that meant defy­ing author­i­ty when it imposed arbi­trary bar­ri­ers and pro­pri­etary rules on the once-wild-open spaces of the inter­net.

But being a grown-up also meant accept­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s behav­ior, life’s pur­pose, and the eth­i­cal treat­ment of one­self and oth­ers. See his list below, notable not so much for its orig­i­nal­i­ty but for its plain­spo­ken reminder of the sim­ple, shared wis­dom that gets drowned in the assaultive noise of mod­ern life. Such uncom­pli­cat­ed ide­al­ism was at the cen­ter of Perry’s life and work.

1. Be patient. No mat­ter what.
2. Don’t bad­mouth: Assign respon­si­bil­i­ty, not blame. Say noth­ing of anoth­er you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Nev­er assume the motives of oth­ers are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the pos­si­ble.
5. Don’t trou­ble your­self with mat­ters you tru­ly can­not change.
6. Expect no more of any­one than you can deliv­er your­self.
7. Tol­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty.
8. Laugh at your­self fre­quent­ly.
9. Con­cern your­self with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Nev­er for­get that, no mat­ter how cer­tain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remem­ber that your life belongs to oth­ers as well. Don’t risk it friv­o­lous­ly.
13. Nev­er lie to any­one for any rea­son. (Lies of omis­sion are some­times exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Seek to define your mis­sion and pur­sue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first per­son­al pro­noun.
17. Praise at least as often as you dis­par­age.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less sus­pi­cious of joy.
20. Under­stand humil­i­ty.
21. Remem­ber that love for­gives every­thing.
22. Fos­ter dig­ni­ty.
23. Live mem­o­rably.
24. Love your­self.
25. Endure.

Bar­low the “cow­boy, poet, roman­tic, fam­i­ly man, philoso­pher, and ulti­mate­ly, the bard of the dig­i­tal revolution”—as Stephen Levy describes him at Wired—“became a great explain­er” of the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in new media. He watched the inter­net become a far dark­er place than it had ever been in the 90s, a place where gov­ern­ments con­duct cyber­wars and impose cen­sor­ship and bar­ri­ers to access; where bad actors of all kinds manip­u­late, threat­en, and intim­i­date.

But Bar­low stood by his vision, of “a world that all may enter with­out priv­i­lege or prej­u­dice accord­ed by race, eco­nom­ic pow­er, mil­i­tary force, or sta­tion of birth… a world where any­one, any­where may express his or her beliefs, no mat­ter how sin­gu­lar, with­out fear of being coerced into silence or con­for­mi­ty.”

This may sound naïve, yet as Cindy Cohn writes in EFF’s obit­u­ary for its founder, Bar­low “knew that new tech­nol­o­gy could cre­ate and empow­er evil as much as it could cre­ate and empow­er good. He made a con­scious deci­sion to move toward the lat­ter.” His 25-point code urges us to do the same.

via Kot­tke/Hack­er News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

The Hobo Eth­i­cal Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Liv­ing a Self-Reliant, Hon­est & Com­pas­sion­ate Life

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

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An Animated Introduction to Epicurus and His Answer to the Ancient Question: What Makes Us Happy?

in Life, Philosophy | February 9th, 2018

These days the word Epi­cure­an tends to get thrown around in regard to things like olive oil, cut­ting boards, and wine aer­a­tors. The real Epi­cu­rus, an ancient Greek philoso­pher of the third and fourth cen­tu­ry BCE, might not have approved, know­ing as he did that hap­pi­ness does­n’t come from prod­ucts that sig­nal one’s appre­ci­a­tion of high-end comestibles. But where, then, does hap­pi­ness come from? Epi­cu­rus devot­ed his school of phi­los­o­phy to find­ing an answer to that ancient ques­tion, and these two brief ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tions, one by Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life and one from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy, will give you a sense of what he dis­cov­ered.

Epi­cu­rus pro­posed, as de Bot­ton puts it, that “we typ­i­cal­ly make three mis­takes when think­ing about hap­pi­ness.” Num­ber one: “We think hap­pi­ness means hav­ing roman­tic, sex­u­al rela­tion­ships,” nev­er con­sid­er­ing the like­li­hood of them being “marred by jeal­ousy, mis­un­der­stand­ing, cheat­ing, and bit­ter­ness.”

Num­ber two: “We think that what we need to be hap­py is a lot of mon­ey,” with­out fac­tor­ing in “the unbe­liev­able sac­ri­fices we’re going to have to make to get this mon­ey: the jeal­ousy, the back­bit­ing, the long hours.” Num­ber three: We obsess over lux­u­ry, “espe­cial­ly involv­ing hous­es and beau­ti­ful serene loca­tions” (and, nowa­days, that with which we stock their kitchens).

Only three things, Epi­cu­rus con­clud­ed, can tru­ly ensure our hap­pi­ness. Num­ber one: “Your friends around,” which led the philoso­pher to buy a big house and share it with all of his. (“No sex, no orgy,” de Bot­ton empha­sizes, “just your mates.”) Num­ber two: Stop work­ing for oth­ers and do your own work, which the mem­bers of Epi­cu­rus’ com­mune did in the form of farm­ing, cook­ing, pot­ting, and writ­ing. Num­ber three: Find calm not in the view out your win­dow, but cul­ti­vat­ed with­in your own mind by “reflect­ing, writ­ing stuff down, read­ing things, med­i­tat­ing.” The big meta-les­son: “Human beings aren’t very good at mak­ing them­selves hap­py, chiefly because they think it’s so easy.”

Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy’s video, nar­rat­ed by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Monte John­son, draws more rules for hap­pi­ness from the teach­ings of Epi­cu­rus, break­ing down his “tetraphar­makos,” or four-part cure for unhap­pi­ness:

  1. God is noth­ing to fear
  2. Death is noth­ing to wor­ry about
  3. It is easy to acquire the good things in life
  4. It is easy to endure the ter­ri­ble things

John­son expands on the fine points of each of these dic­tates while accom­pa­ny­ing his expla­na­tions with illus­tra­tions, includ­ing one draw­ing of the bread on which, so his­to­ry has record­ed, Epi­cu­rus lived almost entire­ly. That and water made up most of his meals, sup­ple­ment­ed with the occa­sion­al olive or pot of cheese so that he could “indulge.” Not exact­ly the diet one would casu­al­ly describe as Epi­cure­an in the 21st cen­tu­ry, but dig into Epi­cure­anism itself and you’ll see that Epi­cu­rus, who described him­self as “mar­ried to phi­los­o­phy,” under­stood sen­su­al plea­sure more deeply than most of us do today — and a cou­ple mil­len­nia before the advent of Williams-Sono­ma at that.

To fur­ther delve into this phi­los­o­phy, read Epi­cu­rus’ clas­sic work The Art of Hap­pi­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Botton’s Doc­u­men­tary Shows How Niet­zsche, Socrates & 4 Oth­er Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read the Poignant Letter Sent to Anne Frank by George Whitman, Owner of Paris’ Famed Shakespeare & Co Bookshop (1960): “If I Sent This Letter to the Post Office It Would No Longer Reach You”

in Books, History, Letters, Life, Literature | February 5th, 2018

Be not inhos­pitable to strangers, lest they be angels in dis­guise.

More than a few vis­i­tors to Paris’ fabled Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny book­shop assume that the quote they see paint­ed over an arch­way is attrib­ut­able to Yeats or Shake­speare.

In fact, its author was George Whit­man, the store’s late own­er, a grand “hobo adven­tur­er” in his 20s who made such an impres­sion that he spent the rest of his life wel­com­ing trav­el­ers and encour­ag­ing young writ­ers, who flocked to the shop. A great many became Tum­ble­weeds, the nick­name giv­en to those who trad­ed a few hours of vol­un­teer work and a pledge to read a book a day in return for spar­tan accom­mo­da­tion in the store itself.

In light of this gen­eros­i­ty, Whitman’s 1960 let­ter to Anne Frank (1929–1945) is all the more mov­ing.

One won­ders what inspired him to write it. It’s a not an uncom­mon impulse, but usu­al­ly the authors are stu­dents close to the same age as Anne was at the time of her death.

Per­haps it was an inter­ac­tion with a Tum­ble­weed.

Had she sur­vived the hor­rors of the Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps that exter­mi­nat­ed all but one inhab­i­tant of the Secret Annex in which she penned her famous diary, she would have made a great one.

He refrained from men­tion­ing his own ser­vice in World War II, pos­si­bly because he was post­ed to a remote weath­er sta­tion in Green­land. Unlike oth­er Amer­i­can vet­er­ans, he had­n’t wit­nessed with his own eyes the sort of hell she endured. If he had, he might not have been able to address her with such ini­tial light­ness of tone.

One can’t help but think how delight­ed the ram­bunc­tious young teen would have been by his sense of humor, his descrip­tions of his bohemi­an booklovers’ paradise—then called Le Mistral—and ref­er­ences to his dog, François Vil­lon, and cat, Kit­ty, named in hon­or of Anne’s pet name for her diary.

His pro­found obser­va­tions on the imper­ma­nence of life and the pol­i­tics of war con­tin­ue to res­onate deeply with those who read the let­ter as its intend­ed recip­i­ents’ prox­ies:

Le Mis­tral

37 rue de la Bûcherie

Dear Anne Frank,

If I sent this let­ter to the post office it would no longer reach you because you have been blot­ted out from the uni­verse. So I am writ­ing an open let­ter to those who have read your diary and found a lit­tle sis­ter they have nev­er seen who will nev­er entire­ly dis­ap­pear from earth as long as we who are liv­ing remem­ber her.

You want­ed to come to Paris for a year to study the his­to­ry of art and if you had, per­haps you might have wan­dered down the quai Notre-Dame and dis­cov­ered a lit­tle book­store beside the gar­den of Saint-Julien-le-Pau­vre. You know enough French to read the notice on the door—Chien aimable, Priere d’en­tr­er. The dog is not real­ly a dog at all but a poet called Fran­cois Vil­lon who has returned to the city he loved after many years of exile. He is sit­ting by the fire next to a kit­ten with a very unusu­al name. You will be pleased to know she is called Kit­ty after the imag­i­nary friend to whom you wrote the let­ters in your jour­nal.

Here in our book­store it is like a fam­i­ly where your Chi­nese sis­ters and your broth­ers from all lands sit in the read­ing rooms and meet the Parisians or have tea with the writ­ers from abroad who are invit­ed to live in our Guest House.

Remem­ber how you wor­ried about your incon­sis­ten­cies, about your two selves—the gay flir­ta­tious super­fi­cial Anne that hid the qui­et serene Anne who tried to love and under­stand the world. We all of us have dual natures. We all wish for peace, yet in the name of self-defense we are work­ing toward self-oblit­er­a­tion. We have built arma­ments more pow­er­ful than the total of all those used in all the wars in his­to­ry. And if the mil­i­tarists who dis­like nego­ti­at­ing the minor dif­fer­ences that sep­a­rate nations are not under the wise civil­ian author­i­ty they have the pow­er to write man’s tes­ta­ment on a dead plan­et where radioac­tive cities are sur­round­ed by jun­gles of dying plants and poi­so­nous weeds.

Since a nuclear could destroy half the world’s pop­u­la­tion as well as the mate­r­i­al basis of civ­i­liza­tion, the Sovi­et Gen­er­al Niko­lai Tal­en­sky con­cludes that war is no longer con­ceiv­able for the solu­tion of polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences.

A young girl’s dreams record­ed in her diary from her thir­teenth to her fif­teenth birth­day means more to us today than the labors of mil­lions of sol­diers and thou­sands of fac­to­ries striv­ing for a thou­sand-year Reich that last­ed hard­ly more than ten years. The jour­nal you hid so that no one would read it was left on the floor when the Ger­man police took you to the con­cen­tra­tion camp and has now been read by mil­lions of peo­ple in 32 lan­guages. When most peo­ple die they dis­ap­pear with­out a trace, their thoughts for­got­ten, their aspi­ra­tions unknown, but you have sim­ply left your own fam­i­ly and become part of the fam­i­ly of man.

George Whit­man

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Anne Frank’s Diary: From Reject Pile to Best­seller

8‑Year-Old Anne Frank Plays in a Sand­box on a Sum­mer Day, 1937

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this Thurs­day for Necro­mancers  of the Pub­lic Domain, in which a long neglect­ed book is reframed as a low bud­get vari­ety show. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Do You Want to Do with Your Life?: Reflect with This Short Hand-Drawn Animation by Steve Cutts

in Life | February 4th, 2018

What do you want to do with your life? It’s a good ques­tion to ask any time. But par­tic­u­lar­ly as you watch the very short film, “In The Fall,” by the inim­itable Steve Cutts.

Enjoy. Reflect. Maybe make a change for the bet­ter.

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:

The Employ­ment: A Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion About Why We’re So Dis­en­chant­ed with Work Today

500,000 Years of Humans Degrad­ing Nature Cap­tured in a Bit­ing Three Minute Ani­ma­tion by Steve Cutts

Will You Real­ly Achieve Hap­pi­ness If You Final­ly Win the Rat Race? Don’t Answer the Ques­tion Until You’ve Watched Steve Cutts’ New Ani­ma­tion

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“The Artist Project” Reveals What 127 Influential Artists See When They Look at Art: An Acclaimed Video Series from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

in Art, Life, Museums | February 2nd, 2018

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nan Goldin’s cel­e­brat­ed series The Bal­lad of Sex­u­al Depen­den­cy would like­ly have sent por­traitist Julia Mar­garet Cameron reel­ing for her smelling salts, but the cen­tu­ry that divides these two pho­tog­ra­phers’ active peri­ods is less of a bar­ri­er than one might assume.

As Goldin notes in the above episode of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s online series, The Artist Project, both made a habit of pho­tograph­ing peo­ple with whom they were inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed.  (Cameron’s sub­jects includ­ed Vir­ginia Woolf’s moth­er and Alice Lid­dell, the inspi­ra­tion for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land.)

The trust between artist and sub­ject is evi­dent in both of their work.

And both were round­ly crit­i­cized for their lack of tech­ni­cal prowess, though that didn’t stop either of them from pur­su­ing their visions, in focus or not.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the six sea­son series, in which artists dis­cuss their influ­ences, chose to zero in on a sin­gle work.

John Baldessari, who chafes at the “Con­cep­tu­al­ist” label, has been a fan of Social Realist/Abstract Expres­sion­ist Philip Gus­ton since high school, when he would tear images of ear­ly works from his par­ents’ Life mag­a­zines.

His admi­ra­tion for Gustin’s night­mar­ish Sta­tion­ary Fig­ure reveals a major dif­fer­ence in atti­tude from muse­um goers sneer­ing that their kids could have paint­ed such a work. Baldessari sees both the big picture—the idea of death as a sort of cos­mic joke—and the sophis­ti­cat­ed brush­work.

Car­toon­ist Roz Chast chose to focus on Ital­ian Renais­sance paint­ing in her episode, savor­ing those teem­ing can­vas­es’ cre­ators’ imper­fect com­mand of per­spec­tive and three dimen­sion­al­i­ty.

May­haps she is also a fan of the Ugly Renais­sance Babies Tum­blr?

The max­i­mal­ist approach helps her believe that what she’s look­ing at is “real,” even as she grants her­self the free­dom to inter­pret the nar­ra­tive in the man­ner she finds most amus­ing, play­ful­ly sug­gest­ing that a UFO is respon­si­ble for The Con­ver­sion of Saint Paul.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants include Nina Katchadouri­an on Ear­ly Nether­lan­dish por­trai­ture, Nick Cave on Kuba cloths, John Cur­rin on Ludovi­co Car­rac­ci’s The Lamen­ta­tion, and Jeff Koons on Roman sculp­ture.

The series also spawned a book, The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look At Art.

See a list of all artists and episodes in the Artist Project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She tack­les artist Jules Bastien-Lep­age in New York City this Thurs­day, when Necro­mancers  of the Pub­lic Domain reframes his biog­ra­phy as a vari­ety show, Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How the Fences & Railings Adorning London’s Buildings Doubled (by Design) as Civilian Stretchers in World War II

in Design, History, Life, Travel | January 26th, 2018

Lon­don is a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich des­ti­na­tion for vis­i­tors with an inter­est in World War II:

Win­ston Churchill’s under­ground War Rooms…

The Roy­al Air Force Muse­um…

Blitz-spe­cif­ic walk­ing tours…

…and the scab­by steel fences/railings sur­round­ing a num­ber of South Lon­don hous­ing estates?

These mesh-and-pipe bar­ri­ers look utter­ly unre­mark­able until one hears their ori­gin story—as emer­gency stretch­ers for bear­ing away civil­ian casu­al­ties from the rub­ble of Luft­waffe raids.

The no-frills design was intend­ed less for patient com­fort than easy clean up. Kinks in the long stretch­er poles kept the injured off the ground, and allowed for easy pick up by vol­un­teers from the Civ­il Defence Ser­vice.

Some 600,000 of these stretch­ers were pro­duced in prepa­ra­tion for air­borne attacks. The Blitz killed over 28,000 Lon­don civil­ians. The num­ber of wound­ed was near­ly as high. The man­u­fac­ture of child-sized stretch­ers speaks to the cit­i­zens’ aware­ness that the human price would be ghast­ly indeed.

”I am almost glad we have been bombed,” Queen Eliz­a­beth “the Queen Mum” told a friend after Buck­ing­ham Palace was strafed in 1940. ”Now I feel I can look the East End in the face.”

Born of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, it’s fit­ting that the stretch­ers con­tin­ue to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, replac­ing more orna­men­tal fences that had been uproot­ed for scrap met­al as part of the war effort.

Few neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents, let alone tourists, seem aware of the fences’ his­to­ry, as evi­denced in the video above.

Per­haps the recent­ly formed Stretch­er Rail­ing Soci­ety—for the pro­mo­tion, pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of Lon­don’s Air Raid Pro­tec­tion Stretch­er Railings—will change that, or at the very least, put up some plaques.

See pho­tos of the stretch­ers in action, then fol­low the Stretch­er Rail­ing Society’s map to their present loca­tions.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

The Stag­ger­ing Human Cost of World War II Visu­al­ized in a Cre­ative, New Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

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

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Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” Animated

in Astronomy, Life | January 24th, 2018

Back in 1990, Voy­ager 1 snapped a pho­to of plan­et Earth from a record dis­tance – 3.7 bil­lion miles away. And there we saw it, our home, Plan­et Earth, a small blue dot almost swal­lowed by the vast­ness of space. This image inspired the title of Carl Sagan’s 1994 book, The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which cap­ti­vat­ed mil­lions of read­ers then, and still many more now.

A quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, The Pale Blue Dot con­tin­ues to give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to many, includ­ing film­mak­ers who have pro­duced ani­ma­tions that sync with Sagan’s nar­ra­tion of a famous pas­sage from his book. The lat­est ani­ma­tion comes from a class of stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design, locat­ed in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. Give it a watch. It will help you put every­thing in per­spec­tive.

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:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar Sys­tem: For Kids and Adults (1977)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

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Celebrate the Women’s March with 24 Goddess GIFs Created by Animator Nina Paley: They’re Free to Download and Remix

in Animation, Art, Life, Religion | January 19th, 2018

As mil­lions of women, men, and friends beyond the bina­ry gear up for Wom­en’s March events around the world this week­end, we can’t help but draw strength from the Venus of Wil­len­dorf in Graph­ics Inter­change For­mat, above.

Like the pussy hats that became the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of last year’s march, there’s a strong ele­ment of humor at play here.

Also respect for the female form.

As Dr. Bryan Zyg­mont notes in his Khan Acad­e­my essay on the Venus of Wil­len­dorf, her exis­tence is evi­dence that “nomadic peo­ple liv­ing almost 25,000 years ago cared about mak­ing objects beau­ti­ful. And … that these Pale­olith­ic peo­ple had an aware­ness of the impor­tance of the women.”

Ani­ma­tor Nina Paley has tak­en up our Pale­olith­ic ances­tors’ baton by cre­at­ing two dozen ear­ly god­dess GIFs, includ­ing the Venus.

As fur­ther proof that sis­ter­hood is pow­er­ful, Paley is shar­ing her unashamed­ly boun­cy pan­theon with the pub­lic. Vis­it her blog to down­load all 24 indi­vid­ual god­dess GIFs. Dis­sem­i­nate them wide­ly. Use them for good! No per­mis­sion need­ed.

Paley is no stranger to god­dess­es, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly placed the divine hero­ine of the Ramayana front and cen­ter in her semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fea­ture length ani­ma­tion, Sita Sings the Blues.

She’s also incred­i­bly famil­iar with rights issues, fol­low­ing mas­sive com­pli­ca­tions with some vin­tage record­ings her Bet­ty Boop-ish Sita lip-synchs in the film. (She had pre­vi­ous­ly believed them to be in the pub­lic domain.) Unable to pay the huge sum the copy­right hold­ers demand­ed to license the tunes, Paley ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to relin­quish all legal claims to her own film, plac­ing Sita Sings the Blues in the pub­lic domain, to be freely shared, exhib­it­ed, or even remixed.

If Paley’s the poster child for copy­right issues she’s also a shin­ing exam­ple of deriv­ing pow­er from unlike­ly sources.

As she wrote on her web­site near­ly ten years ago:

My per­son­al expe­ri­ence con­firms audi­ences are gen­er­ous and want to sup­port artists. Sure­ly there’s a way for this to hap­pen with­out cen­tral­ly con­trol­ling every trans­ac­tion. The old busi­ness mod­el of coer­cion and extor­tion is fail­ing. New mod­els are emerg­ing, and I’m hap­py to be part of that. But we’re still mak­ing this up as we go along. You are free to make mon­ey with the free con­tent of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share mon­ey with me. Peo­ple have been mak­ing mon­ey in Free Soft­ware for years; it’s time for Free Cul­ture to fol­low. I look for­ward to your inno­va­tions.

As for Paley’s own plans for her god­dess­es, they’ll be a part of her upcom­ing ani­mat­ed musi­cal, Seder-Masochism, not­ing that “all ear­ly peo­ples con­ceived the divine as female.”

Down­load Nina Paley’s God­dess GIFs here. Watch Sita Sings the Blues here. March ever onward!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her on Feb­ru­ary 8 for Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, when a host of New York City-based per­form­ers and musi­cians will res­ur­rect  a long for­got­ten work from 1911 as a low bud­get, vari­ety show. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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