The Birdsong Project Features 220 Musicians, Actors, Artists & Writers Paying Tribute to Birds: Watch Performances by Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costello and Beck

in Music, Nature | July 20th, 2022

Birds are the orig­i­nal musi­cians. This, at least, is a premise of the Audubon Soci­ety’s Bird­song Project, “a move­ment inspir­ing bird con­ser­va­tion through art.” There could thus be no more nat­ur­al art form in which to cel­e­brate our fine feath­ered (and in many cas­es, now endan­gered) friends than music, which the Bird­song Project has com­mis­sioned for its first release, and in no small quan­ti­ty. They’ve so far put out the first two vol­umes of For the Birds, which in its total­i­ty will involve “more than 220 music artists, actors, lit­er­ary fig­ures, and visu­al artists, all com­ing togeth­er to cel­e­brate the joy birds bring to our lives” — and remind us of “the envi­ron­men­tal threats we all face.”

Those con­trib­u­tors include Yo‑Yo Ma, Elvis Costel­lo, and Beck, whose work on For the Birds you can hear in the videos in this post. And in the case of Yo-Yo Ma, who per­forms a piece called “In the Gale” (by com­pos­er Anna Clyne), you can see him play not in a con­cert hall but out in the midst of gen­uine nature.

This under­scores what’s heard bright­ly and clear­ly on the record­ing: that Ma and Clyne were just two of many col­lab­o­ra­tors on the track, the oth­ers being what sound like a for­est full of birds. Oth­er artists take dif­fer­ent approach­es: Beck­’s “Archangel” is a lush stu­dio sound­scape, and Costel­lo com­bines his own “The Birds Will Still Be Singing” with “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the most appro­pri­ate Bea­t­les cov­er imag­in­able (apart from “Black­bird,” at least).

Orga­nized by Ran­dall Poster, by day a music super­vi­sor for film­mak­ers like Wes Ander­son and Mar­tin Scors­ese, For the Birds also fea­tures music from, Jarvis Cock­er, The Flam­ing Lips, Kaoru Watan­abe, Stephin Mer­ritt, and Seu Jorge. And those are just the con­trib­u­tors known pri­mar­i­ly for their music: oth­ers involved in the project include Jeff Gold­blum, Til­da Swin­ton, and Jonathan Franzen. You can now stream the first two vol­umes on most major ser­vices, and pre-order the full 20-LP box set that will con­tain the mate­r­i­al musi­cal and lit­er­ary from all five vol­umes, the last of which is sched­uled to come out this Sep­tem­ber. Give it a lis­ten, and after­ward you’ll per­haps find your­self that much more able to appre­ci­ate the avian sym­pho­ny con­duct­ed all around us.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Sound Of Endan­gered Birds Get Turned Into Elec­tron­ic Music

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Bird­Cast: You Can Now Fore­cast the Migra­tion of Birds Across the U.S. Just Like the Weath­er

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

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

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Listen to Earth.fm, a Free Archive of Natural Soundscapes That Can Re-Connect You with Nature & Improve Your Wellbeing

in Nature | July 12th, 2022

“Just lis­ten. Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place…. Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing.” – acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton

The study of acoustic ecol­o­gy does­n’t get much main­stream atten­tion. But if you’ve been a read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’ve like­ly come across a post about pre­serv­ing nat­ur­al sounds by stream­ing record­ings of the world’s many envi­ron­ments. These projects all, in one way or anoth­er, con­tribute to goals artic­u­lat­ed by Cana­di­an com­pos­er and writer R. Mur­ray Schafer, the “self-declared father” of acoustic ecol­o­gy, which involves the study, con­ser­va­tion, and appre­ci­a­tion of envi­ron­men­tal sound.

As Neil Clarke notes at Earth.fm, Schaf­fer­’s com­plex dis­ci­pline can seem dif­fi­cult to grasp, as it “strad­dles ‘acoustics, archi­tec­ture, lin­guis­tics, music, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy and urban plan­ning.’ ” Maybe all we need to know to appre­ci­ate the goals of Earth.fm — anoth­er excel­lent entry in a grow­ing list of nat­ur­al-sound stream­ing sites – comes through in Clarke’s descrip­tion of Schaffer’s World Sound­scape Project (WSP):

It was hoped that, even­tu­al­ly, the WSP would be able to cre­ate a bal­ance “between the human com­mu­ni­ty and its son­ic envi­ron­ment.” To this end, lis­ten­ing and “ear-clean­ing” prac­tices, includ­ing “sound­walks” – a walk­ing med­i­ta­tion where a high son­ic aware­ness is main­tained – were designed to increase indi­vid­u­als’ con­scious­ness of the sounds around them. By prompt­ing engage­ment with the real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary sound­scapes, lis­ten­ers were intend­ed to gain aware­ness of their part in these sound­scapes’ cre­ation, and there­fore appre­ci­ate their respon­si­bil­i­ty towards them.

Schaf­fer began record­ing sound­scapes (a word he coined) in Van­cou­ver in the ear­ly 70s. Since then, his work has inspired and com­ple­ment­ed that of oth­er field recordists/acoustic theorists/sound archivists like Bernie Krauss and Gor­don Hemp­ton. Although the ear­ly acoustic ecol­o­gists could not have fore­seen stream­ing media, it has with­out a doubt become for many of us a dom­i­nant vehi­cle for sound in our dai­ly lives, includ­ing sounds of the nat­ur­al world.

With­out an appre­ci­a­tion for the sounds of nat­ur­al silence (which we know, since John Cage, does not mean absolute qui­et), our under­stand­ing of rain­forests, deserts, and oceans as liv­ing, breath­ing real­i­ties can become dulled, just as much as we lose touch with the green spaces out­side our win­dows. Recon­nect­ing through sound has the dual effect of calm­ing our inner states and attun­ing us more close­ly to the out­er world as it is, with­out the dis­trac­tions of record­ed music and video laid over­top.

Billing itself as “like Spo­ti­fy, but for nat­ur­al sound­scapes,” Earth.fm, offers not a rival stream­ing ser­vice, but an alter­na­tive in which users can make their own playlists, The Verge explains, “zip­ping from Brazil to Egypt in a mat­ter of min­utes.” New sounds are added every three days. “You can lis­ten to bird species in Malaysia or India or for­est sounds in Ghana. The sounds are gath­ered from numer­ous con­trib­u­tors who have expe­ri­ence record­ing the nat­ur­al world in places includ­ing Brazil, Spain, Nor­way, New Zealand, and the Unit­ed King­dom.”

We can intu­it Earth.fm’s mis­sion not only as ther­a­peu­tic and preser­va­tion­ist but also as an eth­i­cal attempt to approach the cri­sis stream­ing media has intro­duced in the arts. Human-made sounds (or “anthro­pophy”) are just as much a part of our envi­ron­ment as those made by frogs, rivers, and ante­lope. Our con­stant, often mind­less stream­ing, how­ev­er — made pos­si­ble by infi­nite dig­i­tal repos­i­to­ries and cheap (for now) ener­gy — can be seen as a form of noise pol­lu­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to ener­gy over­con­sump­tion.

The ethics of stream­ing must account for the impact on the beings (in this case, us) who make these sounds. Big Tech com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of music requires a “vast con­ver­sa­tion,” argues an essay on the Earth.fm site, that includes “the for­mat’s impact on those at the heart of this whole under­tak­ing: those who cre­ate music.” By impli­ca­tion, Earth.fm and oth­er sites that stream acoustic record­ings of nat­ur­al sounds (like those in the links below), offer an eth­i­cal alter­na­tive to music stream­ing — one that recon­nects us, Eliz­a­beth Wadding­ton writes on the site, to “the music of a chang­ing world.” Learn more about Earth.fm’s activ­i­ties here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

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

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Why 99% Of Smithsonian’s Specimens Are Hidden In High-Security

in Museums, Nature | June 28th, 2022

Muse­ums are the mem­o­ry of our cul­ture and they’re the mem­o­ry of our plan­et. — Dr. Kirk John­son, Direc­tor, Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

For many of us nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­ums are emblem­at­ic of school field trips, or rainy day out­ings with (or as) chil­dren.

There’s always some­thing to be gleaned from the recon­struct­ed dinosaur skele­tons, daz­zling min­er­als, and 100-year-old spec­i­mens on dis­play.

The edu­ca­tion­al prospects are even greater for research sci­en­tists.

The above entry in Busi­ness Insid­er’s Big Busi­ness series takes us behind the scenes of the Smith­son­ian Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, a fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed insti­tu­tion where more than 99% of its vast col­lec­tion is housed in the base­ment, on upper floors and employ­ees-only wings of exhi­bi­tion floors, or at an off­site facil­i­ty in neigh­bor­ing Mary­land.

The lat­ter is poised to pro­vide safe space for more of these trea­sures as cli­mate change-relat­ed flood­ing pos­es an increas­ing­ly dire threat. The museum’s Nation­al Mall loca­tion, which draws more than 6 mil­lion vis­i­tors annu­al­ly, is now vir­tu­al­ly at sea lev­el, and Con­gress is mov­ing at a pace for­mer­ly known as glacial to approve the expen­sive but nec­es­sary struc­tur­al improve­ments that would safe­guard these pre­cious col­lec­tions.

The muse­um cur­rent­ly boasts some 147 mil­lion spec­i­mens, and is con­tin­u­al­ly adding more, by means of field col­lec­tions, dona­tions, and pur­chas­es made with endow­ments, though as a non-prof­it insti­tu­tion, it’s rarely able to out­bid deep-pock­et­ed pri­vate col­lec­tors at auc­tions of hot-tick­et items like large dinosaur bones.

The Divi­sion of Birds’ dai­ly mail brings sam­ples of “snarge” — whatever’s left over when a bird makes impact with an air­craft.

Upon arrival at the Smith­son­ian, what­ev­er its size or mar­ket val­ue, every item is sub­ject­ed to a process of inspec­tion known as “acces­sion­ing”.

After that, it is metic­u­lous­ly cleaned.

Bee­tles in an off­site Osteo Prep Lab get to work on resid­ual organ­ic mate­ri­als like skin and tis­sue.

Human experts use a hand­held air scrape tool to incre­men­tal­ly sep­a­rate fos­sils from the rocky matrix in which they were dis­cov­ered

The goal is per­ma­nent stor­age state.

Geo­log­i­cal spec­i­mens are clas­si­fied accord­ing to Dana’s Sys­tem of Min­er­al­o­gy and stored in draw­ers. High-val­ue items are assigned to the Blue Room or the Gem Vault.

Bones that are look­ing to spend the bet­ter part of eter­ni­ty on a shelf are fit­ted for cus­tom fiber­glass and plas­tic cra­dles to pro­tect against pests, mois­ture, and grav­i­ty-relat­ed stress frac­tures.

The Depart­ment of Ento­mol­o­gy dries and pins incom­ing insects, arach­nids, and myr­i­apods, and stores them in hydraulic car­riages.

Mam­mals, rep­tiles, fish and birds are stuffed or pick­led in alco­hol.

Many items in the museum’s col­lec­tion date back to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

These days, staff strive to pre­serve as much as they can, using every tool and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment at their dis­pos­al. As ornithol­o­gist and feath­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Car­la Dove, states, “It’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to do as much as we can with the spec­i­men if we’re going to take it from the wild for research.”

These care­ful prepa­ra­tions ensure that the world’s largest nat­ur­al his­to­ry col­lec­tion can con­tin­ue to serve as a liv­ing library for thou­sands of vis­it­ing scientists…climate change per­mit­ting.

Access to the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al History’s col­lec­tions and data­bas­es result in the pub­li­ca­tion of hun­dreds of research papers and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of hun­dreds of new species every year.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing valu­able intel­li­gence for research ini­tia­tives on such top­ics as dis­ease trans­mis­sion, vol­canic activ­i­ty, and of course, the effects of bird strikes on air­planes, muse­um staff is work­ing toward a goal of pre­serv­ing each item with a dig­i­tal scan — 9 mil­lion and count­ing…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

The Smith­son­ian Puts 2.8 Mil­lion High-Res Images Online and Into the Pub­lic Domain

Smith­son­ian Dig­i­tizes & Lets You Down­load 40,000 Works of Asian and Amer­i­can Art

The Smith­son­ian Picks “101 Objects That Made Amer­i­ca”

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a New Animation of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

in Animation, Music, Nature, Physics | May 2nd, 2022

…I would like not to under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of the world view which is the result of sci­en­tif­ic effort. We have been led to imag­ine all sorts of things infi­nite­ly more mar­velous than the imag­in­ings of poets and dream­ers of the past.

- Richard Feyn­man

In 1955, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man gave a talk on the val­ue of sci­ence to mem­bers of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the wake of the destruc­tion of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, his involve­ment with the Man­hat­tan Project had been cause for seri­ous depres­sion and soul search­ing.

He con­clud­ed that the pur­suit of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge remained valu­able to soci­ety, even though such knowl­edge comes with­out oper­at­ing instruc­tions, and thus can be put to evil pur­pos­es.

In the Cal­tech speech, he cit­ed the life improv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and med­ical break­throughs that are the result of sci­en­tif­ic explo­rations, as well as the sci­en­tif­ic field­’s alle­giance to the con­cept that we must be free to dis­sent, ques­tion, and dis­cuss:

If we sup­press all dis­cus­sion, all crit­i­cism, pro­claim­ing “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom human­i­ty for a long time to the chains of author­i­ty, con­fined to the lim­its of our present imag­i­na­tion.

(This strikes a pro­found chord in 2022, remem­ber­ing how some extreme­ly vocal politi­cians and cit­i­zens took chang­ing pub­lic health man­dates as evi­dence of con­spir­a­cy, rather than an ever-deep­en­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of how an unfa­mil­iar virus was oper­at­ing.)

Any child with an inter­est in STEM will be grat­i­fied to learn that Feyn­man also found much to admire in “the fun …which some peo­ple get from read­ing and learn­ing and think­ing about (sci­ence), and which oth­ers get from work­ing in it.

Through­out his speech, he refrained from tech­ni­cal jar­gon, using lan­guage that those whose pas­sions skew more toward the arts can under­stand to invoke the expe­ri­ence of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.

His med­i­ta­tions con­cern­ing the inter­con­nect­ed­ness between every mol­e­cule “stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness” and every­thing else in the known uni­verse, includ­ing him­self, a human stand­ing beside the sea, try­ing to make sense of it all, is of a piece with Shake­speare and Walt Whit­man.

Unti­tled Ode to the Won­der of Life

by Richard Feyn­man

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.

There are the rush­ing waves

moun­tains of mol­e­cules

each stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness

tril­lions apart

yet form­ing white surf in uni­son.

Ages on ages before any eyes could see

year after year

thun­der­ous­ly pound­ing the shore as now.

For whom, for what?

On a dead plan­et

with no life to enter­tain.

Nev­er at rest

tor­tured by ener­gy

wast­ed prodi­gious­ly by the sun

poured into space.

A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea

all mol­e­cules repeat

the pat­terns of one anoth­er

till com­plex new ones are formed.

They make oth­ers like them­selves

and a new dance starts.

Grow­ing in size and com­plex­i­ty

liv­ing things

mass­es of atoms

DNA, pro­tein

danc­ing a pat­tern ever more intri­cate.

Out of the cra­dle

onto dry land

here it is

stand­ing: atoms with con­scious­ness;

mat­ter with curios­i­ty.

Stands at the sea,

won­ders at won­der­ing: I

a uni­verse of atoms

an atom in the uni­verse

The Mar­gin­a­lian’s (for­mer­ly Brain Pick­ings) Maria Popo­va seizes on this inter­lude for the final install­ment of her video series, The Uni­verse in Verse, above, col­lab­o­rat­ing with ani­ma­tor Kel­li Ander­son on a “per­spec­tive-broad­en­ing, mind-deep­en­ing” visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Feynman’s excerpt­ed remarks.

Flow­ing under and around Feynman’s nar­ra­tion is an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion by cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, whose renown in the field of music is on par with Feynman’s in physics, and who notes in the intro­duc­tion to The Quotable Feyn­man:

While he paid close atten­tion to prob­lems we face and gen­er­ate, he also knew that humans are a sub­set of nature, and nature held for him the great­est fas­ci­na­tion — for the imag­i­na­tion of nature is far, far greater than the imag­i­na­tion of man, and nature guards her secrets jeal­ous­ly.

Read Feynman’s com­plete speech to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty here.

Watch all nine chap­ters of The Uni­verse in Verse here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Video

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Awesome Human Choreography That Reproduces the Murmurations of Starling Flocks

in Dance, Nature, Sports | December 24th, 2021

A num­ber of chore­o­g­ra­phers have tak­en inspi­ra­tion from the move­ment of birds.

Sadek Waff, cre­ator of thrilling­ly pre­cise “mur­mu­ra­tions” such as the one above, is also inspired by street dance — par­tic­u­lar­ly the pop­ping hip hop moves known as Tut­ting and Toy­Man.

The nature lover and founder of the dance troupe Géométrie Vari­able uses both to excel­lent effect, chan­nel­ing a star­ling flock­’s hive mind with human dancers, whose low­er halves remain firm­ly root­ed. It’s all about the hands and arms, punc­tu­at­ed with the occa­sion­al neck flex.

As he observes on his Insta­gram pro­file:

There is mag­ic every­where, the key is know­ing how to look and lis­ten in silence. Like a cloud of birds form­ing waves in the sky, each indi­vid­ual has their own iden­ti­ty but also has an irre­place­able place in the whole.

To achieve these kalei­do­scop­ic mur­mu­ra­tions, Waff’s dancers drill for hours, count­ing aloud in uni­son, refin­ing their ges­tures to the point where the indi­vid­ual is sub­sumed by the group.

The use of mir­rors can height­en the illu­sion:

The reflec­tion brings a sym­met­ri­cal dimen­sion, like a calm body of water con­tem­plat­ing the spec­ta­cle from anoth­er point of view, adding an addi­tion­al dimen­sion, an exten­sion of the image.

The larg­er the group, the more daz­zling the effect, though a video fea­tur­ing a small­er than usu­al group of dancers — 20 in total — is help­ful for iso­lat­ing the com­po­nents Waff brings to bear in his avian-inspired work.

We’re par­tic­u­lar­ly enthralled by the mur­mu­ra­tion Waff cre­at­ed for the 2020 Par­a­lympic Games’ clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Tokyo, using both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs in match­ing black COVID-pre­cau­tion masks to embody the event’s themes of “har­mo­nious cacoph­o­ny” and “mov­ing for­ward.” (Notice that the front row of dancers are wheel­chair users.)

See more of Sadek Waff’s mur­mu­ra­tions on his YouTube chan­nel and on Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Dancer Pays a Grav­i­ty-Defy­ing Trib­ute to Claude Debussy

The Evo­lu­tion of Dance from 1950 to 2019: A 7‑Decade Joy Ride in 6 Min­utes

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: Discover One of the Most Prized Natural History Books of All Time (1734–1765)

in Biology, Books, Nature | December 13th, 2021

In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, a Euro­pean could know the world in great detail with­out ever leav­ing his home­land. Or he could, at least, if he got into the right indus­try. So it was with Alber­tus Seba, a Dutch phar­ma­cist who opened up shop in Ams­ter­dam just as the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry began. Giv­en the city’s promi­nence as a hub of inter­na­tion­al trade, which in those days was most­ly con­duct­ed over water, Seba could acquire from the crew mem­bers of arriv­ing ships all man­ner of plant and ani­mal spec­i­mens from dis­tant lands. In this man­ner he amassed a ver­i­ta­ble pri­vate muse­um of the nat­ur­al world.

The “cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties” Seba put togeth­er — as col­lec­tors of won­ders did in those days — ranked among the largest on the con­ti­nent. But when he died in 1736, his mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion did not sur­vive him. He’d already sold much of it twen­ty years ear­li­er to Peter the Great, who used it as the basis for Rus­si­a’s first muse­um, the Kun­stkam­mer in St. Peters­burg.

What remained had to be auc­tioned off in order to fund one of Seba’s own projects: the Locu­pletis­si­mi rerum nat­u­ral­i­um the­sauri accu­ra­ta descrip­tio, or “Accu­rate descrip­tion of the very rich the­saurus of the prin­ci­pal and rarest nat­ur­al objects,” pages of which you can view at the Pub­lic Domain Review and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art.

This four-vol­ume set of books con­sti­tut­ed an attempt to cat­a­log the vari­ety of liv­ing things on Earth, a for­mi­da­ble endeav­or that Seba was nev­er­the­less well-placed to under­take, ren­der­ing each one in engrav­ings made life­like by their depth of col­or and detail. The lav­ish pro­duc­tion of the The­saurus (more recent­ly repli­cat­ed in the con­densed form of Taschen’s Cab­i­net of Nat­ur­al Curiosi­ties) pre­sent­ed a host of chal­lenges both phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic. But there was also the intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem of how, exact­ly, to orga­nize all its tex­tu­al and visu­al infor­ma­tion. As orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished, it groups its spec­i­mens by phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties, in a man­ner vague­ly sim­i­lar to the much more influ­en­tial sys­tem pub­lished by Swedish sci­en­tist Carl Lin­naeus in 1735.

Lin­naeus, as it hap­pens, twice vis­it­ed Seba to exam­ine the lat­ter’s famous col­lec­tion. It sure­ly had an influ­ence on his think­ing on how to name every­thing in the bio­log­i­cal realm: not just the likes of trees, owls, snakes, and jel­ly­fish, but also the “parax­o­da,” crea­tures whose exis­tence was sus­pect­ed but not con­firmed. These includ­ed not only the hydra and the phoenix, but also the rhi­noc­er­os and the pel­i­can.

Eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Euro­peans pos­sessed much more infor­ma­tion about the world than did their ances­tors, but facts were still more than occa­sion­al­ly inter­mixed with fan­ta­sy. Giv­en the strange­ness of what had recent­ly been doc­u­ment­ed, no one dared put lim­its on the strange­ness of what had­n’t.

Note: A num­ber of the vibrant images on this page come from the Taschen edi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

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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Carl Sagan Warns Congress about Climate Change (1985)

in Current Affairs, Nature, Television | November 18th, 2021

With­out cli­mate change, we could­n’t inhab­it the Earth as we do today. The green­house effect, by which gas­es in a plan­et’s atmos­phere increase the heat of that plan­et’s sur­face, “makes life on Earth pos­si­ble.” So says Carl Sagan in the video above. He adds that with­out it, the tem­per­a­ture would be about 30 degrees centi­grade cool­er: “That’s well below the freez­ing point of water every­where on the plan­et. The oceans would be sol­id.” A lit­tle of the cli­mate change induced by the green­house effect, then, is a good thing, but “here we are pour­ing enor­mous quan­ti­ties of CO2 and these oth­er gas­es into the atmos­phere every year, with hard­ly any con­cern about its long-term and glob­al con­se­quences.”

It’s fair to say that the lev­el of con­cern has increased since Sagan spoke these words in 1985, when “cli­mate change” was­n’t yet a house­hold term. But even then, his audi­ence was Con­gress, and his fif­teen-minute address, pre­served by C‑SPAN, remains a suc­cinct and per­sua­sive case for more research into the phe­nom­e­non as well as strate­gies and action to mit­i­gate it.

What audi­ence would expect less from Sagan, who just five years ear­li­er had host­ed the hit PBS tele­vi­sion series Cos­mos, based on his book of the same name. Its broad­cast made con­ta­gious his enthu­si­asm for sci­en­tif­ic inquiry in gen­er­al and the nature of the plan­ets in par­tic­u­lar. Who could for­get, for exam­ple, his intro­duc­tion to the “thor­ough­ly nasty place” that is Venus, research into whose atmos­phere Sagan had con­duct­ed in the ear­ly 1960s?

Venus is “the near­est plan­et — a plan­et of about the same mass, radius, den­si­ty, as the Earth,” Sagan tells Con­gress, but it has a “sur­face tem­per­a­ture about 470 degrees centi­grade, 900 Fahren­heit.” The rea­son? “A mas­sive green­house effect in which car­bon diox­ide plays the major role.” As for our plan­et, esti­mates then held that, with­out changes in the rates of fos­sil fuel-burn­ing and “infrared-absorb­ing” gas­es released into the atmos­phere, there will be “a sev­er­al-centi­grade-degree tem­per­a­ture increase” on aver­age “by the mid­dle to the end of the next cen­tu­ry.” Giv­en the poten­tial effects of such a rise, “if we don’t do the right thing now, there are very seri­ous prob­lems that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren will have to face.” It’s impos­si­ble to know how many lis­ten­ers these words con­vinced at the time, though they cer­tain­ly seem to have stuck with a young sen­a­tor in the room by the name of Al Gore.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

Watch “Degrees of Uncer­tain­ty,” an Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary about Cli­mate Sci­ence, Uncer­tain­ty & Know­ing When to Trust the Experts

Bill Gates Lets Col­lege Stu­dents Down­load a Free Dig­i­tal Copy of His Book, How to Avoid a Cli­mate Dis­as­ter

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

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

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A Fascinating 3D Animation Shows the Depths of the Ocean

in Animation, Nature, Science | November 9th, 2021

Deep sea explo­ration and the sci­ence of oceanog­ra­phy began 150 years ago when British sur­vey ship HMS Chal­lenger set off from Portsmouth with 181 miles of rope. The Roy­al Soci­ety tasked the expe­di­tion, among oth­er things, with “investigat[ing] the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of the deep sea… in regard to depth, tem­per­a­ture cir­cu­la­tion, spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty and pen­e­tra­tion of light.” It was the first such voy­age of its kind.

To accom­plish its objec­tives, Chal­lenger swapped all but two of its guns for spe­cial­ized equip­ment, includ­ing — as assis­tant ship’s stew­ard Joseph Matkin described in a let­ter home — “thou­sands of small air tight bot­tles and lit­tle box­es about the size of Valen­tine box­es packed in Iron Tanks for keep­ing spec­i­mens in, insects, but­ter­flies, moss­es, plants, etc… a pho­to­graph­ic room on the main deck, also a dis­sect­ing room for carv­ing up Bears, Whales, etc.”

Find­ings from the four-year voy­age totaled almost thir­ty-thou­sand pages when pub­lished in a report. But the Chal­lenger’s most famous lega­cy may be its dis­cov­ery of the Mar­i­ana Trench. The ship record­ed a sound­ing of 4,475 fath­oms (26,850 ft.) in a south­ern part of the trench sub­se­quent­ly called Chal­lenger Deep, and now known as the deep­est part of the ocean and the “low­est point on Earth.” The most recent sound­ings using advanced sonar have mea­sured its depth at some­where between 35,768 to 36,037 feet, or almost 7 miles (11 kilo­me­ters).

Chal­lenger Deep is so deep that if Ever­est were sub­merged into its depths, the moun­tain’s peak would still be rough­ly a mile and a half under­wa­ter. In 1960, a manned crew of two descend­ed into the trench. Dozens of remote oper­at­ed vehi­cles (ROVs) have explored its depths since, but it would­n’t be until 2012 that anoth­er human made the 2.5 hour descent, when Avatar and The Abyss direc­tor James Cameron financed his own expe­di­tion. Then in 2019, explor­er Vic­tor Vescoso made the jour­ney, set­ting the Guin­ness world record for deep­est manned sub­ma­rine dive when he reached the East­ern Pool, a depres­sion with­in Chal­lenger Deep. Just last year, he best­ed the record with his mis­sion spe­cial­ist John Rost, explor­ing the East­ern Pool for over four hours.

Last year’s descent brings the total num­ber of peo­ple to vis­it Chal­lenger Deep to five. How can the rest of us wrap our heads around a point so deep beneath us it can swal­low up Mount Ever­est? The beau­ti­ful­ly detailed, 3D ani­ma­tion at the top of the post does a great job of con­vey­ing the rel­a­tive depths of oceans, seas, and major lakes, show­ing under­sea tun­nels and ship­wrecks along the way, with man­made objects like the Eif­fel Tow­er (which marks, with­in a few meters, the deep­est scu­ba dive) and Burj Khal­i­fa placed at inter­vals for scale.

By the time the ani­ma­tion — cre­at­ed by Meta­Ball­Stu­dios’ Alvaro Gra­cia Mon­toya– sub­merges us ful­ly (with boom­ing, echo­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment) in the Mar­i­ana Trench, we may feel that we have had a lit­tle taste of the awe that lies at the deep­est ocean depths.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Film­mak­er James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

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

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