Explore the Largest Online Archive Exploring the Genius of Leonard da Vinci

in Art, Computer Science, Design, Science, Technology | July 10th, 2023

We dare not spec­u­late as to what Leonar­do DaVin­ci would make of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

We are, how­ev­er, fair­ly con­fi­dent that he would love the Inter­net.

The Renais­sance-era genius applied his sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of the human body and the nat­ur­al world to oth­er types of sys­tems, includ­ing plans for civ­il engi­neer­ing projects, mil­i­tary pro­jec­tiles, and fly­ing machines.

Google Arts & Culture’s new ini­tia­tive Inside a Genius Mind offers an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence of the codices in which Da Vin­ci made his sketch­es, dia­grams, and notes.

It’s also a cura­to­r­i­al col­lab­o­ra­tion between a human — Oxford art his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Kemp  — and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

Pro­fes­sor Kemp, author of Liv­ing with Leonar­do: Fifty Years of San­i­ty and Insan­i­ty in the Art World and Beyond, brings a life­time of rig­or­ous study and pas­sion for the sub­ject.

His non-human coun­ter­part used machine learn­ing to delve into the note­books’ con­tents, inves­ti­gat­ing some 1040 pages from 6 vol­umes and “draw­ing the­mat­ic con­nec­tions across time and sub­ject mat­ter to reflect Leonardo’s spir­it of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary imag­i­na­tion, inno­va­tion and the pro­found uni­ty at the heart of his appar­ent­ly diverse pur­suits.”

Upon launch­ing the exper­i­ment, you bush­whack your way through the indi­vid­ual codices by click­ing on the sketch­es float­ing toward you like ele­ments in a clas­sic space-themed video game, or choose to enjoy one of five curat­ed sto­ries.


We went with Earth as Body, which gath­ers sev­en pages from the UK’s Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust’s Codex Wind­sor, and one from the Codex Leices­ter, which inspired an ani­mat­ed mod­el that should sure­ly please its cur­rent own­er, Bill Gates.

 

Using a dis­creet and some­what fid­dly nav­i­ga­tion bar on the left side of the screen, we toured Leonardo’s ren­der­ings of the flayed mus­cles of the upper spine, the ves­sels and nerves of the neck and liv­er, the Arno val­ley with the route of a pro­posed canal that would run from Flo­rence to Pisa, a view of the Alps from Milan, the fall of light on a face, stud­ies of optics and men in action, and obser­va­tions of the moon and earth­shine.

How are these things relat­ed?

“Leonar­do believed that the human body rep­re­sent­ed the whole nat­ur­al world in minia­ture” and the selec­tions do offer food for thought that Leonardo’s pas­sion for the under­ly­ing laws of nature is the com­mon thread run­ning through his research and art.

Each image is accom­pa­nied a but­ton invit­ing you to “explore” the work fur­ther. Click it for infor­ma­tion about dimen­sions, prove­nance, and media, as well as some tan­ta­liz­ing bio­graph­i­cal tid­bits, such as this, adapt­ed from the cat­a­logue for the 2019 exhib­it Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A Life in Draw­ing:

Leonar­do had first stud­ied anato­my in the late 1480s. By the end of his life he claimed to have per­formed 30 human dis­sec­tions, intend­ing to pub­lish an illus­trat­ed trea­tise on the sub­ject, but this was nev­er com­plet­ed, and Leonardo’s work thus had no dis­cernible impact on the dis­ci­pline. His only doc­u­ment­ed dis­sec­tion was car­ried out in the win­ter of 1507–8, when he per­formed an autop­sy on an old man whose death he had wit­nessed in a hos­pi­tal in Flo­rence. The stud­ies on this page from Leonardo’s note­book are based on that dis­sec­tion: on the ver­so Leonar­do depicts the ves­sels of the liv­er; and in notes else­where in the note­book he gives the first known clin­i­cal descrip­tion of cir­rho­sis of the liv­er.

Per­haps you’d like to cir­cum­vent the machine learn­ing and use your own genius mind to make  con­nec­tions a la Da Vin­ci?

Try mess­ing around with the AI tags. See what you can cob­ble togeth­er to forge a cohe­sive alliance between such ele­ments as wing, horse, map, musi­cal instru­ments, and spi­ral.

Or cleanse your palate by putting a mash-up of two codex sketch­es on a dig­i­tal sticky with the help of Google AI, mind­ful that the mas­ter, who lived to the ripe old age of 67, was prob­a­bly a bit more inten­tion­al with his time…

Begin your explo­rations of Google Arts & Culture’s Inside a Genius Mind here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490)

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

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

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The 1920s Lie Detector That Forced Suspected Criminals to Confess to a Skeleton

in Design, Law, Psychology, Technology | May 30th, 2023

“In the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” the ever­green Law & Order’s open­ing cred­its remind us, “the peo­ple are rep­re­sent­ed by two sep­a­rate, yet equal­ly impor­tant, groups: the police, who inves­ti­gate crime; and the dis­trict attor­neys, who pros­e­cute the offend­ers.”

They fail to men­tion the life-sized skele­ton with ghast­ly glow­ing eyes and a cam­era tucked away inside its skull.

That’s because no police depart­ment ever saw fit to put Helene Ade­laide Shelby’s 1930 patent for a high­ly unusu­al “appa­ra­tus for obtain­ing crim­i­nal con­fes­sions and pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly record­ing them” into prac­tice.

Ms. Shelby’s vision sought to trans­form the police inter­ro­ga­tion room into a haunt­ed house where the sud­den appear­ance of the afore­men­tioned skele­ton would shock a guilty sus­pect into con­fes­sion.

(Pre­sum­ably an inno­cent per­son would have noth­ing to fear, oth­er than sit­ting in a pitch black cham­ber where a truth-seek­ing skele­ton was soon to man­i­fest before their very eyes.)

The idea may have seemed slight­ly less far-fetched imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing a decade when belief in Spir­i­tu­al­ism flour­ished.

False medi­ums used sophis­ti­cat­ed stage­craft to con­vince mem­bers of a gullible pub­lic that they were in the pres­ence of the super­nat­ur­al.

Per­haps Ms. Shel­by took inspi­ra­tion from Mys­ter­ies of the Seance and Tricks and Traps of Bogus Medi­ums: A Plea for Hon­est Medi­ums and Clean Work by “life­long spir­i­tu­al­ist” Edward D. Lunt. The sec­tion on “form mate­ri­al­iza­tion” pro­vides plen­ty of con­crete ideas for enact­ing such trick­ery.

Ms. Shelby’s pro­posed appa­ra­tus con­sist­ed of a “struc­ture divid­ed into two cham­bers:”

…one cham­ber of which is dark­ened to pro­vide quar­ters in which the sus­pect is con­fined while being sub­ject­ed to exam­i­na­tion, the oth­er cham­ber being pro­vid­ed for the exam­in­er, the two cham­bers being sep­a­rat­ed from each oth­er by a par­ti­tion which is pro­vid­ed with a pan­el upon one side of which is mount­ed a fig­ure in the form of a skele­ton, the said skele­ton hav­ing the rear J por­tion of the skull removed and the record­ing appa­ra­tus insert­ed there­in.


The exam­in­er was also tasked with voic­ing the skele­ton, using appro­pri­ate­ly spooky tones and a well-posi­tioned mega­phone.

As sil­ly as Ms. Shel­by’s inven­tion seems near­ly a hun­dred years after the patent was filed, it’s impres­sive for its robust embrace of tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it per­tains to cap­tur­ing the pre­sum­ably spooked suspect’s reac­tion:


The rear por­tion of the skull of the skele­ton is removed and a cam­era cas­ing is mount­ed in the pan­el extend­ing into the skull, said cam­era being prefer­able of the con­tin­u­ous­ly-mov­ing film-type an hav­ing pro­vi­sions for simul­ta­ne­ous­ly record­ing pic­tures and sound waves, or repro­duc­ing these, as may be desired or required, the said cam­era impres­sion upon the hav­ing an objec­tive adapt­ed to reg­is­ter with the nose, or oth­er open­ing, in the skull. The eye-sock­ets are pro­vid­ed with bulbs adapt­ed to impress dif­fer­ent light inten­si­ties on the mar­gins of the film, the cen­tral sec­tion of the film being arranged to receive the pic­tures, the vari­a­tions in the light inten­si­ties of the bulbs being gov­erned by means of the micro­phones, and sele­ni­um cells (not shown), which are includ­ed in the light cir­cuit and tend to cause the fluc­tu­a­tions of the cur­rent to vary the inten­si­ty of the light for sound record­ing pur­pos­es, the den­si­ty of the light film vary­ing with the inten­si­ty of the light thus trans­mit­ted.

Ms. Shel­by believed that a sus­pect whose con­fes­sion had been record­ed by the skele­ton would have dif­fi­cul­ty mak­ing a retrac­tion stick, espe­cial­ly if pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing the big reveal caught them with a guilty-look­ing coun­te­nance.

Writ­ing on officer.com, Jonathan Kozlows­ki applauds Ms. Shelby’s impulse to inno­vate, even as he ques­tions if “scar­ing a con­fes­sion out of a guy by being real­ly real­ly creepy (should) be con­sid­ered coer­cion:”

Shel­by does­n’t seem to have got­ten any cred­it for it and nor am I sure that Shel­by was even the first to think of the idea, BUT if you remove the skele­ton fig­ure and the red light­bulbs star­ing into the crim­i­nal’s soul was this the inspi­ra­tion of a mount­ed sur­veil­lance cam­era? 

Allow me to push it even fur­ther … imag­ine your depart­men­t’s inter­view room. If you’ve got the cam­era in the cor­ner (or mul­ti­ple) let that be. Instead of the skele­ton fig­ure just put an offi­cer stand­ing in the cor­ner with a record­ing body cam­era. The offi­cer is just stand­ing there. Star­ing. Sure that’s a MASSIVE waste of time and mon­ey — of course. I may be wrong, but if I’m being hon­est this seems like intim­i­da­tion.

It also strikes us that the ele­ment of sur­prise would be a chal­lenge to keep under wraps. All it would take is one freaked-out crook (inno­cent or guilty) blab­bing to an under­world con­nec­tion, “You wouldn’t believe the crazy thing that hap­pened when they hauled me down to the sta­tion the oth­er night…”

What sort of hor­rif­ic spe­cial effect could force a guilty par­ty to con­fess in the 21st cen­tu­ry? Some­thing way more dread­ful than a skele­ton with glow­ing red eyes, come­di­an Tom Scott’s exper­i­ment below sug­gests.

Hav­ing enlist­ed cre­ative tech­nol­o­gist Charles Yarnold to build Ms. Shelby’s appa­ra­tus, he invit­ed fel­low YouTu­bers Chloe Dun­gate, Tom Ridgewell, and Daniel J Lay­ton to step inside one at a time, hop­ing to iden­ti­fy which of them had nicked the cook­ie with which he had bait­ed his crime-catch­ing hook.

The par­tic­i­pants’ reac­tions at the crit­i­cal moment ranged from delight­ed gig­gles to a sat­is­fy­ing yelp, but the results were utter­ly incon­clu­sive. Nobody ‘fessed up to steal­ing the cook­ies.

That’s not to say the appa­ra­tus couldn’t work with a sub­set of crim­i­nals on the low­er end of ele­men­tary school age. Did they or didn’t they? Why not scar ‘em for life and find out?

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: A Toolk­it That Can Help You Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Sep­a­rate Sense from Non­sense

The Poly­graph: The Pro­to-Pho­to­copy Machine Machine Invent­ed in 1803 That Changed Thomas Jefferson’s Life

The Strange Sto­ry of Won­der Woman’s Cre­ator William Moul­ton Marston: Polyamorous Fem­i­nist, Psy­chol­o­gist & Inven­tor of the Lie Detec­tor

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

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Google & Coursera Create a Career Certificate That Prepares Students for Cybersecurity Jobs in 6 Months

in Online Courses, Technology | May 25th, 2023

This spring, Google has launched sev­er­al online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams designed to help stu­dents land an entry-lev­el job, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing a col­lege degree. The tech com­pa­ny’s lat­est pro­gram cov­ers Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, a field that stands poised to grow as com­pa­nies become more dig­i­tal, and cyber­at­tacks inevitably con­tin­ue.

Offered on Cours­er­a’s edu­ca­tion­al plat­form, the new Google Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures eight online cours­es, which col­lec­tive­ly help stu­dents learn how to:

  • Under­stand the impor­tance of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices and their impact for orga­ni­za­tions.
  • Iden­ti­fy com­mon risks, threats, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, as well as tech­niques to mit­i­gate them.
  • Pro­tect net­works, devices, peo­ple, and data from unau­tho­rized access and cyber­at­tacks using Secu­ri­ty Infor­ma­tion and Event Man­age­ment (SIEM) tools.
  • Gain hands-on expe­ri­ence with Python, Lin­ux, and SQL.

The Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate joins a larg­er col­lec­tion of cer­tifi­cate pro­grams cre­at­ed by Google, with sub­jects cov­er­ing User Expe­ri­ence Design, Busi­ness Intel­li­gence, Data Ana­lyt­ics, Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, IT Sup­port and final­ly IT Automa­tion.

Stu­dents can take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. (Above, you can watch video from the first course in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram, enti­tled “Foun­da­tions of Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.”) How­ev­er, if you would like to receive a cer­tifi­cate, Cours­era will charge $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, designed to be com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost rough­ly $300 in total.

Once stu­dents com­plete the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. As a perk, stu­dents in the U.S. can also con­nect with 150+ employ­ers (e.g., Amer­i­can Express, Col­gate-Pal­mo­live, T‑Mobile, Wal­mart, and Google) who have pledged to con­sid­er cer­tifi­cate hold­ers for open posi­tions. Accord­ing to Cours­era, this cer­tifi­cate can pre­pare stu­dents to become an entry-lev­el “cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst and SOC (secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions cen­ter) ana­lyst.”

You can start a 7‑day free tri­al of the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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The First Full 3D Scan of the Titanic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Capturing the Wreck’s Every Detail

in History, Technology | May 18th, 2023

Even the most ardent ship­wreck enthu­si­asts among us must make peace with the fact that, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, we’ll nev­er get to see the Titan­ic for our­selves. But now, at least, we have a sub­sti­tute in the form of the ship’s “dig­i­tal twin,” based on more than 700,000 images col­lect­ed under­wa­ter over 200 hours.“It pro­vides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away,” report BBC News’ Rebec­ca Morelle and Ali­son Fran­cis. “The scan was car­ried out in sum­mer 2022 by Mag­el­lan Ltd, a deep-sea map­ping com­pa­ny, and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions, who are mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the project.”

You can catch a glimpse of how the scan looks in the clip from the Times at the top of the post, but it only hints at its true lev­el of detail. “The joint mis­sion by Mag­el­lan and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions deployed two sub­mersibles nick­named Romeo and Juli­et to map every mil­lime­ter of the wreck, includ­ing the debris field span­ning some three miles,” writes Ars Techi­ca’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette.

“The result was a whop­ping 16 ter­abytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to cre­ate the 3D dig­i­tal twin. The res­o­lu­tion is so good, one can make out part of the ser­i­al num­ber on one of the pro­pellers.”

“The bow, now cov­ered in sta­lac­tites of rust, is still instant­ly rec­og­niz­able even 100 years after the ship was lost,” write Morelle and Fran­cis. “Sit­ting on top is the boat deck, where a gap­ing hole pro­vides a glimpse into a void where the grand stair­case once stood.” As one might expect, the Titan­ic has come through twelve decades at the bot­tom of the North Atlantic ocean some­what worse for wear, and get­ting worse all the time. “Microbes are eat­ing away at it and parts are dis­in­te­grat­ing. His­to­ri­ans are well aware that time is run­ning out to ful­ly under­stand the mar­itime dis­as­ter.” Indeed, there will come a day when the remains of the Titan­ic will have van­ished com­plete­ly. But even then, its dig­i­tal twin — or, per­haps, dig­i­tal ghost — will have more to teach us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the First 8K Footage of the Titan­ic, the High­est-Qual­i­ty Video of the Ship­wreck Yet

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

Watch 80 Min­utes of Nev­er-Released Footage Show­ing the Wreck­age of the Titan­ic (1986)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

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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DJ Cummerbund’s Astonishing Mashups Create Unexpected Collaborations Between Rock, Soul & Hip Hop Icons

in Comedy, Creativity, Music, Technology | May 17th, 2023

“His­to­ry in the mak­ing,” Jay‑Z calls out a few bars into Beyoncé’s debut solo sin­gle “Crazy in Love.”

The sen­ti­ment may be even more ger­mane, when he does it in remix mas­ter DJ Cum­mer­bund’s irre­sistible mashup “Crazy Togeth­er,” above.

The recent assem­blage finds Queen Bey split­ting screen time with The Bea­t­les, as DJ Cum­mer­bund weaves “Crazy in Love” togeth­er with “Come Togeth­er.”

The video is as much fun as the seam­less audio, with a ham­my cameo from Ringo Starr, cour­tesy of the 1981 com­e­dy Cave­man, and Yoko Ono and James Brown doing some heavy lift­ing.

John Lennon’s take as Brown fires up his Sex Machine is price­less. It real­ly feels as if these unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tors were active, rather than pas­sive con­trib­u­tors.

Here’s a peek into how DJ Cum­mer­bund arranged the audio clips.

Asked in a 2020 inter­view with Dig­i­tal Jour­nal about the source of his inspi­ra­tion, he respond­ed:

I’m not sure if you can call it inspi­ra­tion exact­ly, but I have a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion that caus­es me to hear and feel melodies and fre­quen­cies where most can­not (in the wind, the soil, celes­tial bod­ies, etc.) This ulti­mate­ly caus­es me to con­stant­ly hear songs on top of oth­er songs to the point of extreme frus­tra­tion and the only way to sub­due that is to actu­al­ly cre­ate what I’m hear­ing in my head. It’s almost ther­a­peu­tic for me, and I was even told I could die if I don’t con­tin­ue to cre­ate my works. It’s def­i­nite­ly like a curse some­times but can also be a bless­ing as my music seems to bring a great deal of joy to mil­lions of peo­ple.

An under­sung ele­ment of these crowd pleas­ing remix­es is how skill­ful­ly DJ Cum­mer­bund ties things togeth­er by record­ing sup­ple­men­tal vocals and instru­men­tals.

Ozzy Osbourne fronts “Earth, Wind and Ozzys,” which mar­ries his 1980 solo hit “Crazy Train” with Earth Wind & Fire’s ever­green “Sep­tem­ber” so suc­cess­ful­ly, it’s a let down to remem­ber that a gor­geous, har­mo­nized “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train” is an invent­ed, not sam­pled dis­co cho­rus.

The com­bi­na­tions the DJ comes up with can’t help but force a fresh per­spec­tive on artists who would nev­er in a mil­lion years have shared a stage or fan­base.

Step into a no man’s land where the rapid fire punk brat­ti­ness of the Ramones can coex­ist with the Han­son broth­ers’ lemon fresh, Tul­sa whole­some­ness, and Cot­ton Eye Joe comes in out of nowhere.

When a title like “Me and Coo­lio Down by the School­yard” pops into your head, it arrives as a self-thrown gaunt­let. You can’t not see it through to fruition.

The late rapper’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” infus­es Paul Simon’s gen­tly nos­tal­gic “Me And Julio Down By The School Yard” with some NSFW lyrics and a much hard­er out­look.

The lo-fi joys of dou­ble dutch and play­ground hoops from the orig­i­nal Julio video present a plau­si­ble  vision of a “place where (Coo­lio’s) kids can play out­side with­out livin’ in fear of a dri­ve-by.”

This being a DJ Cum­mer­bund pro­duc­tion, base­ball Hall of Famer, Mick­ey Man­tle and foot­ball coach John Mad­den, who were on hand for Julio, have to make room for his ever present muse, the late wrestling super­star Randy “Macho Man” Sav­age.

DJ Cum­mer­bund is will­ing to con­sid­er requests, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you do a bit of home­work to ensure that your cho­sen songs’ keys match up and their BPMs inhab­it the same realm.

See more of his mash ups, includ­ing Shaxi­c­u­la, the MTV Video Music Award-win­ning B‑52s/Britney Spears remix here.

In recent weeks, DJ Cum­mer­bund has been open­ing for the B‑52s dur­ing their res­i­den­cy at the Venet­ian.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

50 Songs from a Sin­gle Year, Mixed Togeth­er Into One 3‑Minute Song (1979–89)

The Peanuts Gang Per­forms Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Rock Opera in the Mashup “Char­lie Brown vs. The Wall“

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute 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 and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold the International Ink Library Created by the U.S. Secret Service: Features A Collection of 12,000 Ink Samples

in History, Technology | May 17th, 2023

Late though it may be in the age of print, we still envi­sion ran­som or oth­er threat­en­ing notes in the same way we have for gen­er­a­tions, with their demands incon­gru­ous­ly spelled out with indi­vid­ual let­ters, each one a dif­fer­ent size and font, tak­en from the pages of news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. This clas­sic cut-and-paste method of ran­som note con­struc­tion pre­sum­ably emerged as means of evad­ing minds like that of Trista Gins­berg, a doc­u­ment ana­lyst spe­cial­iz­ing in hand­writ­ing at the Secret Ser­vice. She appears in the Great Big Sto­ry above, which comes to focus on one facil­i­ty at the Ser­vice’s head­quar­ters in par­tic­u­lar: the Inter­na­tion­al Ink Library.

“The Secret Ser­vice has the largest ink library in the world,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. Its more than 12,000 sam­ples of dif­fer­ent inks include “pens, bot­tled ink, and print­er car­tridges.” These come in handy when, say, “some­one writes a threat­en­ing let­ter to the pres­i­dent.”

A doc­u­ment ana­lyst like Iri­na Geiman sam­ples the let­ter’s ink, and then, by com­par­ing it to the inks in the library, “she can fig­ure out what kind of ink was used, and, hope­ful­ly, it can help solve the case.” Geiman also explains a less dra­mat­ic type of case that comes across her desk rather more often: at-home inkjet coun­ter­feit­ing of $20 bills.

Though that may not be the high­est exam­ple of the coun­ter­feit­er’s art, the art itself moti­vat­ed the cre­ation of the Secret Ser­vice in 1865 as a branch of the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment. “Fol­low­ing the Civ­il War,” says the Secret Ser­vice’s FAQ, “it was esti­mat­ed that one-third to one-half of the cur­ren­cy in cir­cu­la­tion was coun­ter­feit.” It was in 1901, after the McKin­ley assas­si­na­tion, that “the Secret Ser­vice was first tasked with its sec­ond mis­sion: the pro­tec­tion of the pres­i­dent.” Hence the cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy of the image of the would-be pres­i­dent assas­sin evad­ing gov­ern­men­tal pur­suit while labo­ri­ous­ly assem­bling his mis­sives one let­ter at a time — sure­ly rea­son enough for the Secret Ser­vice to have put togeth­er a top-secret Inter­na­tion­al Glue Library.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ink is Made: The Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Books Made with Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink Strate­gi­cal­ly Fade Away

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

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

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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1,800 Hand-Cut Silhouettes of 19th-Century Historical Figures Get Digitized & Put Online by the Smithsonian

in Art, History, Life, Museums, Technology | May 1st, 2023

With the excep­tion of Kara Walker’s provoca­tive cut paper nar­ra­tives, sil­hou­ettes haven’t struck us as a par­tic­u­lar­ly reveal­ing art form.

Per­haps we would have felt dif­fer­ent­ly in the ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry, when sil­hou­ettes offered a quick and afford­able alter­na­tive to oil por­traits, and pho­tog­ra­phy had yet to be invent­ed.

Self-taught sil­hou­ette artist William Bache trav­eled the east­ern seaboard, and lat­er to New Orleans and Cuba, ply­ing his trade with a phys­iog­no­trace, a device that helped him out­line sub­jects’ pro­files on fold­ed sheets of light paper.

Once a pro­file had been cap­tured, Bache care­ful­ly cut inside the trac­ing and affixed the “hol­low-cut” sur­round­ing sheet to black paper, cre­at­ing the appear­ance of a hand-cut black sil­hou­ette on a white back­ground.

Cus­tomers could pur­chase four copies of these shad­ow like­ness­es for 25¢, which, adjust­ed for infla­tion, is about the same amount as a pho­to strip in one of New York City’s vin­tage pho­to­booths these days — $5.

Bache was an ener­getic pro­mot­er of his ser­vices, adver­tis­ing that if cus­tomers found it incon­ve­nient to vis­it one of his pop-up stu­dios, he would “at the short­est notice, wait upon them at their own Dwellings with­out any addi­tion­al expense.”

Nat­u­ral­ly, peo­ple were eager to lay hands on sil­hou­ettes of their chil­dren and sweet­hearts, too.

One of Bache’s com­peti­tors, Raphaelle Peale assumed the per­spec­tive of a sat­is­fied male cus­tomer to tout his own busi­ness:

‘Tis almost her­self, Eliza­’s shade,

Thus by the faith­ful faci­etrace pour­tray’d!

Her placid brow and pout­ing lips, whose swell

My fond impa­tient ardor would repell.

Let me then take that vacant seat, and there

Inhale her breath, scarce min­gled with the air:

And thou blest instru­ment! which o’er her face

Did’st at her lips one moment pause, retrace

My glow­ing form and leave, unequal­l’d bliss!

Bor­row’d from her, a sweet ethe­r­i­al Kiss.

Hot stuff, though hope­ful­ly besot­ted young lovers refrained from press­ing their lips to the sil­hou­ettes they loved best. Con­ser­va­tors in the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, which hous­es Bache’s sam­ple book, a ledger filled with like­ness­es of some 1,800 sit­ters, dis­cov­ered it to be suf­fused with arsenic, pre­sum­ably meant to repel invad­ing rodents and insects.

Most of the heads in Bache’s album arrived uniden­ti­fied, but by comb­ing through dig­i­tized news­pa­pers, his­to­ry books, bap­tismal records, wills, mar­riage cer­tifi­cates and Ancestry.com, lead cura­tor Robyn Asle­son and Get­ty-fund­ed research assis­tant Eliz­a­beth Isaac­son have man­aged to iden­ti­fy over 1000.

There are some whose names — and pro­files — remain well known more than 200 years lat­er. Can you iden­ti­fy George Wash­ing­ton, Martha Wash­ing­ton, and Thomas Jef­fer­son on the album page below?

Some pages con­tain entire fam­i­lies. Pedro Bide­tre­noul­leau coughed up $1.25 for his own like­ness, as well as those of his wife, and chil­dren Félix, Adele, and Zacharine, num­bers 638 through 642, below.

Bache’s trav­els to New Orleans and Cuba make for a racial­ly diverse col­lec­tion, though lit­tle is known about most of the Black sit­ters. Dr. Asle­son sus­pects some of these might be the only exist­ing por­traits of these indi­vid­u­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of New Orlea­ni­ans in mixed-race rela­tion­ships, whose descen­dants destroyed strate­gic evi­dence in the effort to “pass” as white:

As I was learn­ing more and more about this his­to­ry, I real­ly began to hope that some of the peo­ple who are try­ing to find their her­itage today, who real­ize it might have been delib­er­ate­ly erad­i­cat­ed to pro­tect their ances­tors from oppres­sion, might have the chance to dis­cov­er an image of a great-great-grand­fa­ther or grand­moth­er.

Read­ers, if you are the care­tak­er of passed down fam­i­ly sil­hou­ettes, per­haps you can help the cura­tors get clos­er to putting a name to some­one who cur­rent­ly exists as lit­tle more than a shad­ow in inter­est­ing head­gear.

Even if you’re not in pos­ses­sion of a sil­hou­ette, you may well be one of the tens of thou­sands liv­ing in the Unit­ed States today con­nect­ed to the album by blood.

Explore an arsenic-free, inter­ac­tive copy of William Bache’s sil­hou­ette ledger book here.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Behold 900+ Mag­nif­i­cent Botan­i­cal Col­lages Cre­at­ed by a 72-Year-Old Wid­ow, Start­ing in 1772

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

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A Medieval Arabic Manuscript Features the Designs for a “Perpetual Flute” and Other Ingenious Mechanical Devices

in History, Technology | March 27th, 2023

In the late twelfth and ear­ly thir­teenth cen­tu­ry there lived a mechan­i­cal­ly inclined poly­math named Badi’ al-Zaman Abu-‘l-‘Izz Ibn Isma’il Ibn al-Raz­zaz al-Jazari, whom we might pre­fer sim­ply to call Al-Jazari. A res­i­dent of Diyar-Bakir, in mod­ern-day Turkey, he was employed as a court engi­neer, and indeed, proved to be the finest engi­neer for which a Mesopotami­an ruler of that era could hope. He worked out a vari­ety of func­tion­al camshafts, crank­shafts, pumps, foun­tains, and clocks, not to men­tion his more ambi­tious designs, includ­ing a host of humanoid automa­ta meant to han­dle tasks like serv­ing bev­er­ages and even play­ing music.

Lying between the prac­ti­cal and the fan­ci­ful are such Al-Jazar­i­an inven­tions as the “per­pet­u­al flute,” a dia­gram of which you can see at the site of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. Involv­ing “two adja­cent tanks, each with a plug attached to a chain,” the set­up would work when “the pipe on an axle with a bowl fills with water from a chan­nel at the upper right and tips so that water flows into one tank. The air in the tank is thus forced through a pipe attached to a jar that plays a flute until the tank is filled. Then the pipe tilts to fill the oth­er tank with water, caus­ing the oth­er flute to play.” Like a pre-mod­ern Rube Gold­berg, Al-Jazari cre­at­ed mechan­i­cal con­cepts that are bet­ter seen than explained, and you’ll find many more of them illus­trat­ed at Flash­bak.

These works of schemat­ic art come not from Al-Jazari’s own hand, but from an Ara­bic man­u­script cre­at­ed some three to six cen­turies after his death. It appears to pay a kind of trib­ute to his pop­u­lar Book of Knowl­edge of Inge­nious Mechan­i­cal Devices, which itself drew upon a ninth-cen­tu­ry Book of Inge­nious Devices writ­ten by three Per­sian broth­ers known as the Banu Musa. All of these artis­tic and tech­ni­cal works, and their con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty in dif­fer­ent forms through the gen­er­a­tions, reflect the seri­ous work of intel­lec­tu­al cus­to­di­an­ship and devel­op­ment across the civ­i­liza­tions of the Mid­dle East after the fall of the Roman Empire — a project that great­ly ben­e­fit­ed from the occa­sion­al sui gener­is imag­i­na­tion like Al-Jazari’s.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold Fan­tas­ti­cal Illus­tra­tions from the 13th Cen­tu­ry Ara­bic Man­u­script Mar­vels of Things Cre­at­ed and Mirac­u­lous Aspects of Things Exist­ing

Down­load 10,000+ Books in Ara­bic, All Com­plete­ly Free, Dig­i­tized and Put Online

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

500+ Beau­ti­ful Man­u­scripts from the Islam­ic World Now Dig­i­tized & Free to Down­load

The Only Sur­viv­ing Text Writ­ten in Ara­bic by an Amer­i­can Slave Has Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Read the Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Enslaved Islam­ic Schol­ar, Omar Ibn Said (1831)

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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