The Coen Brothers Make a TV Commercial — Ridiculing “Clean Coal”

in Comedy, Film, Technology, Television | November 26th, 2012

When famous movie direc­tors shoot tele­vi­sion spots, they usu­al­ly focus on the mer­its of a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct: Wim Wen­ders and Stel­la Artois, Wes Ander­son and the Hyundai Azera, Jean-Luc Godard and Schick after­shave. Above, you’ll see one by Joel and Ethan Coen meant not to endorse but to oppose. Premised on the notion that the name “clean coal” masks a not-espe­cial­ly-clean tech­nol­o­gy, “Clean Coal Clean” dish­es it out against the coal indus­try — “the most trust­ed name in coal” — with a satir­i­cal pas­tiche of house­hold clean­ing spray com­mer­cials. I’ll say this: if any pair of film­mak­ers can get me to watch a video about the pol­i­tics of coal, the guys behind Rais­ing Ari­zona, Bar­ton Fink, and A Seri­ous Man can. The clip just below offers a look into the pro­duc­tion of anoth­er “Clean Coal Clean” par­o­dy com­mer­cial, and a rare chance to see the Coen broth­ers at work.

Mar­la Dick­er­son in the Los Ange­les Times pro­vides back­ground on this “lat­est sal­vo in the media bat­tle between the coal indus­try and envi­ron­men­tal­ists over the role that car­bon fuels should play in the Unit­ed States’ ener­gy future.” Dick­er­son quotes a coal spokesman on how the “the indus­try spent more than $50 bil­lion since the 1970s installing pol­lu­tion-con­trol equip­ment and design­ing plants that are more effi­cient.” She also lays out the envi­ron­men­tal­ists’ argu­ment: “the coal indus­try’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign has left Amer­i­cans with the impres­sion that such ‘clean coal” tech­nol­o­gy already exists. Such a break­through has yet to be devel­oped,” she quotes the Sier­ra Cub’s coal cam­paign direc­tor as say­ing, “and may nev­er be at a cost that makes eco­nom­ic sense.” Of course, not even a genius auteur — not even two of them — can make up your mind on this issue. But with these spots, the Coen broth­ers and the Alliance for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion reit­er­ate an invalu­able point: whether about house­hold clean­ers or ener­gy sources, nev­er believe the hype.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the World’s Oldest Working Digital Computer — the 1951 Harwell Dekatron — Get Fired Up Again

in Technology | November 23rd, 2012

The next time you feel frus­trat­ed with your aging per­son­al com­put­er, just watch the video above. In these fifty sec­onds, the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing fires up the Har­well Deka­tron, also known as the Wolver­hamp­ton Instru­ment for Teach­ing Com­pu­ta­tion — or, nat­u­ral­ly, the WITCH. Hold­er of the title of the world’s old­est work­ing orig­i­nal dig­i­tal com­put­er, the WITCH, first built in 1951, went into retire­ment from Wolver­hamp­ton’s Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege in 1973. A three-year restora­tion of the com­put­er — all two-and-a-half tons, 828 flash­ing Deka­tron valves, and 480 relays of it — began in 2008. Now, hav­ing just fin­ished return­ing the machine to tip-top shape, they’ve actu­al­ly boot­ed it up, as you can see. “In 1951 the Har­well Deka­tron was one of per­haps a dozen com­put­ers in the world,” The Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing’s press release quotes its trustee Kevin Mur­rell as say­ing, “and since then it has led a charmed life sur­viv­ing intact while its con­tem­po­raries were recy­cled or destroyed.”

The Har­well Atom­ic Ener­gy Research Estab­lish­ment pro­vid­ed the Deka­tron its first tasks, crank­ing out cal­cu­la­tions for­mer­ly done by hand. When it passed into obso­les­cence there in 1957, Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege took the mas­sive com­put­er off Har­well’s hands, and there it became the WITCH, used for teach­ing pur­pos­es over the next six­teen years. When it out­lived even its edu­ca­tion­al use, the WITCH went on dis­play at the Birm­ing­ham Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try, and final­ly to dis­man­tle­ment and stor­age. Now it offers a whirring, clat­ter­ing, flash­ing, retro-tech­no­log­i­cal spec­ta­cle to new gen­er­a­tions of com­put­er enthu­si­asts. Some of them may be shocked to learn that, by virtue of sheer age, it does­n’t adhere to some of the very qual­i­ties of dig­i­tal com­put­ing they take for grant­ed: it does­n’t cal­cu­late in bina­ry code, but dec­i­mal code, hence the name “Deka­tron.” Though its prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions would seem lim­it­ed in the mod­ern world, rest assured that some young hob­by­ist is even now pon­der­ing how to get the thing onto the web.

h/t: Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of Roman­ian Com­put­ing: From 1961 to 1989

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Brian Eno Once Composed Music for Windows 95; Now He Lets You Create Music with an iPad App

in iPad, iPhone, Music, Technology | November 20th, 2012

Now run­ning through my speak­ers, even as I write this: Bri­an Eno’s lat­est album, Lux. The disc offers four pieces of ambi­ent music, a style that, even if Eno did­n’t tech­ni­cal­ly invent it, he cer­tain­ly took it to a new lev­el of fas­ci­na­tion and pop­u­lar­i­ty. He com­posed these tracks — if “com­posed” is indeed the word — as gen­er­a­tive music, a process rather than a style, but one he named and has pro­mot­ed since the nineties. For a def­i­n­i­tion of gen­er­a­tive music, I turn to Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, a book that does not leave my night­stand. “One of my long-term inter­ests has been the inven­tion of ‘machines’ and ‘sys­tems,’ ” he writes, “to make music with mate­ri­als and process­es I spec­i­fied, but in com­bi­na­tions and inter­ac­tions I did not. My first released piece of this kind was Dis­creet Music (1975), in which two sim­ple melod­ic cycles of dif­fer­ent dura­tions sep­a­rate­ly repeat and are allowed to over­lay each oth­er arbi­trar­i­ly.”

In Lux, we have the lat­est iter­a­tion of that musi­cal mod­el. But even if this new record or its pre­de­ces­sors won’t make your playlist, there’s at least one Bri­an Eno com­po­si­tion with which you’ll already feel inti­mate­ly famil­iar. I refer, of course, to the Win­dows 95 start­up sound. Eno describes the musi­cal chal­lenge as fol­lows: “The thing from the agency said,‘We want a piece of music that is inspir­ing, uni­ver­sal, blah- blah, da-da-da, opti­mistic, futur­is­tic, sen­ti­men­tal, emo­tion­al,’ this whole list of adjec­tives, and then at the bot­tom it said ‘and it must be three and one quar­ter sec­onds long.’ ”

From that list of 150 vague words, Eno craft­ed 84 minia­ture pieces of music. You may have heard the one Microsoft ulti­mate­ly went with hun­dreds, or thou­sands, of times. Obvi­ous­ly they’ve sound­ed the same on every play, and this very fact dis­pleas­es their cre­ator, espe­cial­ly when he cre­ates with gen­er­a­tive sys­tems in the first place. “What I always want­ed to do was sell the sys­tem itself, so that a lis­ten­er would know that the music was always unique,” Eno con­tin­ues in A Year. “With com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy I began to think there might be a way of doing it.” Com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, which has come a long way since the days of Win­dows 95, has brought us to the release of Scape, the first gen­er­a­tive music iPad app ($5.99) from Eno and Peter Chil­vers. “The idea is that you assem­ble pieces of music out of son­ic build­ing blocks — we call them ‘ele­ments’ — which then respond intel­li­gent­ly to each oth­er,” Eno says in the intro­duc­to­ry video just above. Scape fol­lows Bloom and Trope, the duo’s pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tive music apps for the iPhone. Does it strike you as strange that the man behind such an icon­ic Microsoft theme now releas­es apps only for Apple devices? It’s no big sur­prise: Eno even com­posed the Win­dows 95 sound on a Mac.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Celebration of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cassettes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

in Media, Music, Technology | November 7th, 2012

In going dig­i­tal, we’ve gained some con­ve­nience. That’s unde­ni­able. But we’ve lost much when it comes to aes­thet­ics and qual­i­ty too. (Neil Young makes that point again and again.) Increas­ing­ly, we’re real­iz­ing what we’ve left behind, and there’s a move­ment afoot to recov­er old school media — things you can see, touch and feel and mar­vel over. Vinyl records. Tape cas­settes. VHS tapes. 8mm Film. Polaroid Pho­tos. All of that good stuff gets revis­it­ed in the lat­est short film pro­duced in the PBS Off Book series. Pre­vi­ous install­ments have cov­ered:

Art in the Era of the Inter­net

The Art of Film and TV Title Design

The Art of Glitch

The Cre­ativ­i­ty of Indie Video Games 

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The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

in Art, Design, Museums, Technology | November 2nd, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam is one of the grand Euro­pean muse­ums. Home to many of the Dutch mas­ters (Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which seems to glow from its cen­ter, and Vermeer’s Milk­maid, to name just a few), the muse­um is locat­ed on the city’s Muse­umplein, sur­round­ed by the small­er Vin­cent Van Gogh muse­um and mod­ern Stedelijk.

All those mas­ter­pieces are now avail­able for close-up view online at the Rijksmu­se­um’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry. The new dig­i­tal archive has all the same great learn­ing poten­tial as any oth­er online col­lec­tion. It’s search­able, as is the muse­um’s library.

But the Dutch are a whim­si­cal peo­ple, so it seems right that, in dig­i­tiz­ing its col­lec­tion, the muse­um went a step fur­ther than fur­ther. Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts. (Note: users will need to cre­ate a free account to get start­ed.)

By vis­it­ing the muse­um’s Rijksstu­dio, art lovers can cre­ate their own “sets” of Rijksmu­se­um works. Sets can include images of just flow­ers (think of the lus­cious ros­es and tulips in Dutch still life paint­ings of the 1600s), faces appear­ing in por­traits, or paint­ings of Ams­ter­dam itself through the ages. Just select a work of art and drop it into your own image col­lec­tion. Then use these select­ed images to cre­ate your own per­son­al­ized prod­ucts. From tat­toos to wall­pa­per to scoot­ers (yes, scoot­ers) to smart phone skins. Unusu­al yet every­day items of all shapes and sizes can now bear the image of gor­geous art. The art is free and the object could be as sim­ple as a T‑shirt.

All of this can be done with the bless­ings and sup­port of the muse­um, which pro­vides links to sites that offer var­i­ous forms of print­ing on demand.

What bet­ter way to make the col­lec­tion acces­si­ble to the pub­lic? Some might say it is sac­ri­lege to put Rembrandt’s face on the side of a van; the Rijksmu­se­um encour­ages it. None of the artists are alive any­way to claim copy­right infringe­ment, now are they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Watch James Burke’s TV Series Connections, and Discover the Unexpected History of Innovation

in History, Science, Technology, Television | October 30th, 2012

Even if we did­n’t grow up as sci­ence fans, all of us caught at least the occa­sion­al tele­vi­sion show on sci­ence his­to­ry. Some came expert­ly pro­duced. Oth­ers packed the infor­ma­tion to a very high den­si­ty (by TV’s stan­dards, at least). Oth­ers cracked jokes to keep our wits engaged. Oth­ers got us intrigued enough about a par­tic­u­lar dis­cov­ery to per­form our own fur­ther research at the library or on the inter­net. But those of us who came of age dur­ing a run of one of James Burke’s Con­nec­tionsseries got all of that at once, exe­cut­ed on a high­er plane, and with quite dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal premis­es. Design­ing each of his pro­grams to exam­ine a dif­fer­ent nexus between sev­er­al ele­ments of sci­ence, nature, and  engi­neer­ing, Burke premis­es these nar­ra­tives on the insep­a­ra­bil­i­ty of human inge­nu­ity, his­tor­i­cal coin­ci­dence, and sheer acci­dent. How, for instance, did we end up in a world of film pro­jec­tors (cur­rent­ly being dis­placed by dig­i­tal pro­jec­tors though they may be)? For the answer, Burke argues, you’ve got to start with medieval cas­tle for­ti­fi­ca­tions. Then you work your way through can­nons, map­ping, lime­light, bil­liard-ball ivory, gun­cot­ton, the zooprax­is­cope, Morse code, and the phono­graph. These tech­no­log­i­cal threads all con­verge to give us the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence we enjoy today — or enjoyed in 1978, any­way.

If you enjoyed that episode of Con­nec­tions back then, know that you can now relive it on a Youtube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to Burke and his shows. If you nev­er watched any in the first place, you can now catch up on not just the ten episodes of the orig­i­nal Con­nec­tions, but 1994’s twice-as-long Con­nec­tions2, and the final series, 1997’s Con­nec­tions3. I rec­om­mend begin­ning at the begin­ning, with Con­nec­tions’ first episode, “The Trig­ger Effect,” embed­ded above. It gets you into the mind­set of Burke’s “alter­na­tive view of change” by break­ing down and illus­trat­ing the very con­cept of human reliance on com­plex­ly con­nect­ed net­works. The pro­gram’s clear and fast-mov­ing but no-stone-unturned method­ol­o­gy of expla­na­tion takes you through the New York Black­out of 1965, ancient Egypt­ian agri­cul­ture, and the oil fields of Kuwait. Reach the end of the third series, and you wind up learn­ing just how much the Eif­fel Tow­er has to do with the Elgin Mar­bles, Ben­jamin Franklin, Lon­don Bridge, and the ZIP code. Burke empha­sizes that none of the his­tor­i­cal agents involved in all these scat­tered small inno­va­tions that enabled the big ones — the ones with such effects on our mod­ern lives — could have planned for things to go the way they did. His sto­ries thus grant us more than a bit of humil­i­ty about pre­dict­ing the inno­va­tions of the future, built as they will be atop the kind of com­plex­i­ty that not even Con­nec­tions ever described.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Exquis­ite Paper Craft Ani­ma­tions Tell the Sto­ries of Words

The Sci­ence of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gadget That Will Save Music

in Music, Technology | October 26th, 2012

In the open­ing min­utes of his new mem­oir Wag­ing Heavy Peace (I lis­tened to the audio book, and you can too for free), Neil Young talks about his mod­el trains, his exten­sive col­lec­tion of vin­tage cars, and not much about music per se — although he does high­light his entre­pre­neur­ial effort to save the music indus­try with a new-fan­gled audio sys­tem called Pure­Tone. 

For quite some time now, Young has lament­ed the decline of music dur­ing the dig­i­tal age. It’s not pirat­ing that’s the cul­prit. It’s the MP3, a for­mat that degrades the qual­i­ty of the music we hear. Speak­ing at a Wall Street Jour­nal con­fer­ence ear­li­er this year (watch here), Young com­plained that the MP3 can’t “trans­fer the depth of the art.” “My goal,” he con­tin­ued, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

Enter Pure­Tone, which has actu­al­ly been renamed Pono more recent­ly. The device/music ser­vice will hit the mar­ket next year, and it essen­tial­ly promis­es to let fans hear record­ings in super high fideli­ty, as if they owned the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes cre­at­ed by var­i­ous artists. Not long ago, Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, raved about the sound of Pono, telling Rolling Stone: “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a dras­tic dif­fer­ence.”

If that’s right, Young may do a great ser­vice for musi­cians every­where, and make a lot of mon­ey for him­self and oth­ers along the way. I mean imag­ine the num­ber of remas­ters that could hit the mar­ket in the com­ings years, start­ing with two by Bob Dylan — The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan and High­way 61 Revis­it­ed. A per­fect place to begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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Amazing Human-Powered Helicopter Closes in on $250,000 Prize

in Technology | October 24th, 2012

A team of stu­dent engi­neers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land are clos­ing in on the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety’s $250,000 Siko­rsky Prize, which has remained unclaimed for over thir­ty years. The require­ments of the prize sound sim­ple enough. The win­ner must build and demon­strate a human-pow­ered heli­copter that can lift off the ground ver­ti­cal­ly and hov­er for one minute, reach­ing a height of three meters (about 10 feet) with­out drift­ing from a 10-square-meter area. But as this video from the NPR “Radio Pic­tures” series explains, those para­me­ters test the lim­its of light-weight air­craft design. After four years of tri­al and error, the Mary­land team has sat­is­fied two of the three require­ments. In one recent flight they kept their heli­copter, the Gam­era II, in the air for a world-record 65 sec­onds while stay­ing with­in the required 10-meter area–but only reach­ing a height of two feet. In short­er flights they’ve approached the 10 foot goal. To learn more about the project you can read and lis­ten to Adam Cole’s sto­ry at NPR, “Human-Pow­ered Heli­copter: Straight Up Dif­fi­cult.”

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