How Some of the World’s Most Famous Cheeses Are Made: Camembert, Brie, Gorgonzola & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | October 19th, 2020

Atten­tion cheese lovers!

Do you sali­vate at the thought of a Cheese Chan­nel?

Care­ful what you wish for.

Food pho­tog­ra­phers employ all man­ner of dis­gust­ing tricks to make junky pan­cakes and fast food burg­ers look irre­sistibly mouth­wa­ter­ing.

Food Insid­ers’ Region­al Eats tour of the Ital­ian Gor­gonzo­la-mak­ing process inside a ven­er­a­ble, fam­i­ly-owned Ital­ian cream­ery is the inverse of that.

The fin­ished prod­uct is wor­thy of a still life, but look out!

Despite the delib­er­ate­ly gen­tle motion of the cus­tom-made machin­ery into which the milk is poured, get­ting there is a stom­ach churn­ing prospect.

Per­son­al­ly, we don’t find the smell of that ven­er­a­ble, veined cheese offen­sive. The pun­gent aro­ma is prac­ti­cal­ly music to our nose, stim­u­lat­ing the cil­ia at the tips of our sen­so­ry cells, alert­ing our tongue that a rare and favorite fla­vor is in range.

Nor is it a mold issue.

Mar­co Inv­ernizzi, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Trecate’s hun­dred-year-old Caseifi­cio Si Inv­ernizzi, exudes such deep respect for Peni­cil­li­um roque­for­ti and the oth­er par­tic­u­lars of Gorgonzola’s pedi­gree, it would sure­ly be our hon­or to sam­ple one of the 400 wheels his cream­ery pro­duces every day.

Just give us a sec for the visu­als of that griz­zly birth video to fade from our mem­o­ry.

With the excep­tion of a close up on a faucet gush­ing milk into a buck­et, the peek inside the Camem­bert-mak­ing process is a bit eas­i­er to stom­ach.

There are curds, but they’re con­tained.

The cheese at Le 5 Frères, a fam­i­ly farm in the vil­lage of Bermonville, is made by old fash­ioned means, ladling micro-organ­ism-rich milk to which ren­net has been added into per­fo­rat­ed forms, that are topped off a total of five times in an hour.

The steamy tem­per­a­tures inside the arti­sanal brie mold­ing room at Seine-et-Marne’s 30 Arpents caus­es Food Insid­ers’ cam­era lens to fog, mak­ing for an impres­sion­is­tic view, swagged in white.

Near­ly 20 years ago, Mad Cow dis­ease came close to wip­ing this oper­a­tion out.

The cur­rent herd of friend­ly Hol­steins were all born on 30 Arpents’ land. Each pro­duces about 30 liters of milk (or slight­ly more than one dai­ly wheel of brie de Meaux) per day.

Get the scoop on Swiss Emmen­taler, Italy’s largest buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la balls, and oth­er world cheese MVPs on Food Insider’s 87-video Cheese Insid­er playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Min­utes

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parme­san Cheese: A Delight­ful, 15-Minute Primer

Does Play­ing Music for Cheese Dur­ing the Aging Process Change Its Fla­vor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smelli­er, and Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Makes It Milder

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

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A Long, Guided Tour of New York City Captured in Original Color Film (1937)

in Current Affairs, Film, History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

So much clas­sic black and white footage has been dig­i­tal­ly col­orized recent­ly, it’s hard to remem­ber that the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny’s Kodachrome film debuted way back in 1935.

The above footage of New York City was shot by an unknown enthu­si­ast in and around 1937.

Dick Hoef­s­loot, the Nether­lands-based video­g­ra­ph­er who post­ed it to YouTube after tweak­ing it a bit for motion sta­bi­liza­tion and speed-cor­rec­tion, is not averse to arti­fi­cial­ly col­or­ing his­toric footage using mod­ern soft­ware, but in this case, there was no need.

It was shot in col­or.

If things have a green­ish cast, that’s owing to the film on which it was shot. Three-col­or film, which added blue to the red-green mix, was more expen­sive and more com­mon­ly used lat­er on.

Hoefsloot’s best guess is that this film was shot by a mem­ber of a wealthy fam­i­ly. It’s con­fi­dent­ly made, but also seems to be a home movie of sorts, giv­en the pres­ence of an old­er woman who appears a half dozen times on this self-guid­ed tour of New York sites.

There’s plen­ty here that remains famil­iar: the Wool­worth Build­ing and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, trussed up Christ­mas trees propped against makeshift side­walk stands, the New York Pub­lic Library’s lions, Patience and For­ti­tude.

Oth­er aspects are more a mat­ter of nos­tal­gia.

Over in Times Square, Bull­dog Drum­mond Comes Back star­ring John Bar­ry­more was play­ing at the Cri­te­ri­on (now the site of a Gap store), while the Para­mount The­ater, now a Hard Rock Cafe, played host to True Con­fes­sion with Bar­ry­more and Car­ol Lom­bard.

Oys­ters were still food for the mass­es, though records show that local­ly har­vest­ed ones had been deemed too pol­lut­ed for human con­sump­tion for at least a decade.

A bag of peanuts cost 15¢. A new Oldsmo­bile went for about $914 plus city tax.

Laun­dry could be seen strung between build­ings (still can be on occa­sion), but peo­ple dressed up care­ful­ly for shop­ping trips and oth­er excur­sions around town. Heav­en for­bid they step out­side with­out a hat.

Though the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty makes an appear­ance, the film doesn’t depict the neigh­bor­hoods where new and estab­lished immi­grants were known to con­gre­gate. Had the cam­era trav­eled uptown to the Apol­lo—by 1937, the largest employ­er of black the­atri­cal work­ers in the coun­try and the sole venue in the city in which they were hired for back­stage positions—the over­all com­po­si­tion would have proved less white.

The film, which was uploaded a lit­tle over a year ago, has recent­ly attract­ed a fresh vol­ley of atten­tion, lead­ing Hoef­s­loot to reis­sue his request for view­ers to “refrain from (post­ing) polit­i­cal, reli­gious or racist-relat­ed com­ments.”

In this fraught elec­tion year, we hope you will par­don a New York­er for point­ing out the legion of com­menters flout­ing this polite request, so eager are they to fan the fires of intol­er­ance by express­ing a pref­er­ence for the “way things used to be.”

With all due respect, there aren’t many peo­ple left who were present at the time, who can accu­rate­ly recall and describe New York City in 1937. Our hunch is that those who can are not spend­ing such time as remains rab­ble-rous­ing on YouTube.

So enjoy this his­toric win­dow on the past, then take a deep breath and con­front the present that’s reveal­ing itself in the YouTube com­ments.

A chrono­log­i­cal list of New York City sites and cit­i­zens appear­ing in this film cir­ca 1937:

00:00 Low­er Man­hat­tan sky­line seen from Brook­lyn Heights Prom­e­nade

00:45 Stat­en Island steam fer­ry

01:05 RMS Carinthia

01:10 Old three-stack pass.ship, maybe USS Leviathan

01:28 One-stack pass.ship, name?

01:50 HAL SS Volen­dam or SS Veen­dam II

02:18 West­field II steam fer­ry to Stat­en Island, built 1862?

02:30 Floyd Ben­nett Air­field, North Beach Air Ser­vice inc. hangar

02:43 Hoey Air Ser­vices hangar at  F.B. Air­field

02:55 Ladies board mono­plane, Stin­son S Junior, NC10883, built 1931

03:15 Fly­ing over New York: Cen­tral Park & Rock­e­feller Cen­ter

03:19 Empire State Build­ing (ESB)

03:22 Chrysler build­ing in the dis­tance

03:26 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty island

03:30 Air­craft, Waco ZQC‑6, built 1936

03:47 Reg.no. NC16234 becomes read­able

04:00 Arrival of the “Fly Eddie Lyons” air­craft

04:18 Dutch made Fokker 1, packed

04:23 Dou­glas DC3 “Dako­ta”, also packed, new

04:28 Green mono- or tri-engine air­craft, type?

04:40 DC3 again. DC3’s flew first on 17 Dec.1935

04:44 Back side of Wool­worth Build­ing

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:12 Brook­lyn across East Riv­er, view from Pier 11

05:13 Water plane, Grum­man G‑21A Goose

05:38 Street with bus, Stan­dard Oil Build­ing ®

05:40 Truck, mod­el?

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:46 Old truck, “Engels”, mod­el?

05:48 Flag USA with 48 stars!

05:50 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green, DeSto­to Sun­shine cab 1936

05:52 Truck, “Bier Mard Bros”, mod­el?

05:56 Ford Mod­el AA truck 1930

05:58 Open truck, mod­el?

06:05 Stan­dard Oil Build­ing

06:25 Bus 366 & Ford Mod­el A 1930

06:33 South Street & Coen­ties Slip

06:35 See 07:19, Black car?

06:45 Cities Ser­vice Build­ing at 70 Pine St. right. Left: see 07:12

06:48 Small ves­sels in the East Riv­er

06:50 Owned by Har­ry F. Rear­don

07:05 Shack on Coen­ties Slip, Pier 5

07:12 City Bank-Farm­ers Trust Build­ing, 20 Exchange Place

07:15 Oys­ter bar, near Coen­ties Slip

07:19 South Street, look­ing North towards the old Seaman’s Church Insti­tute

07:31 Hol­land Amer­i­ca Line, Volendam‑I, built 1922

07:32 Chrysler Ply­mouth P2 De Luxe

07:34 Oys­ter ven­dor

08:05 Ven­dor shows oys­ter in pot

08:16 Wall st.; Many cars, mod­els?

08:30 Look­ing down Wall st.

08:52 More cars, mod­els?

09:00 Near the Erie Fer­ry, 1934/35 Ford s.48 De Luxe

09:02 Rows of Christ­mas tree sales, loca­tion?

09:15 Erie Rail­road build­ing, loca­tion? Quay 21? Taxi, mod­el?

09:23 1934 Dodge DS

09:25 See 09:48

09:27 Bal­ti­more and Ohio (B&O) Rail­road

09:29 Clyde Mal­lo­ry Lines

09:48  South end of West Side High­way

09:49, 10:08, 10:11, 10:45 Loca­tion?

10:25 Hen­ry Hud­son Park­way

11:30 George Wash­ing­ton Bridge with­out the Low­er Lev­el

12:07 Pres­by­ter­ian Hos­pi­tal, Wash­ing­ton Heights

12:15 Rock­e­feller Insti­tute of Med­ical Research

12:49 New York Hos­pi­tal at 68th St. & East Riv­er

13:14 dit­to

13:35 dit­to

13:42 Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

14:51 Rock­e­fel­la Plaza & RCA build­ing

16:33 Saint Patrick­’s Cathe­dral

16:50 Pub­lic Library

17:24 Panoram­ic view, from ESB

17:45 RCA Build­ing, 30 Rock­e­feller Plaza

18:16 Orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion

19:27 Movie True Con­fes­sion, rel. 24 Dec.1937

19:30 Slop­py Joes

20:12 Neon lights & Xmas

26:34 Her­ald Square

29:48 Police Emer­gency Ser­vice (B&W)

31:00 SS Nor­mandie, French Line, Pier 88

32:06 RMS Queen Mary, White Star Line, Pier 92

32:43 Depar­ture Queen Mary

33:45 Ital­ian Line, Pier 84, Ter­mi­nal, dd.1935

34:00 SS Con­te Di Savoia, Ital­ian Line, Pier 84

34:25 Peanut sell­er, near the piers

34:35 Feed­ing the pid­geons

34:52 SS Nor­mandie, exte­ri­or & on deck

35:30 View from Pier 88

35:59 Inte­ri­or

37:06 From Pier 88

37:23 North­ern, East­ern, South­ern or West­ern Prince, built 1929

37:32 Tug, William C. Gaynor

38:20 Depar­ture

38:38 Blue Riband!

39:15 Tugs push Nor­mandie into fair­way

39:50 Under own steam.

40:00 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty

40:15 SS Nor­mandie leaves NYC

View more of Dick Hoefsloot’s his­toric uploads on his YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

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

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High-Resolution Walking Tours of Italy’s Most Historic Places: The Colosseum, Pompeii, St. Peter’s Basilica & More

in History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

The glob­al tourism indus­try has seen bet­ter days than these. In regions like west­ern Europe, to which trav­el­ers from all parts have long flocked and spent their mon­ey, the coro­n­avirus’ cur­tail­ment of world trav­el this year has sure­ly come as a severe blow. This goes even more so for a coun­try like Italy, whose stock of his­toric struc­tures, both ruined and immac­u­late­ly pre­served, has long assured it touris­tic pre­em­i­nence in its part of the world. So much the worse, then, when Italy became one of the coun­tries hard­est hit by the virus this past spring. But its recov­ery is well under­way, as is Europe’s reopen­ing to trav­el­ers.

Or at least Europe is reopen­ing to cer­tain trav­el­ers: much of the con­ti­nent has remained closed to those from cer­tain afflict­ed coun­tries, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Of course, the U.S. has also banned entry to trav­el­ers who have recent­ly been in many of those Euro­pean coun­tries, and how­ev­er you look at it, this sit­u­a­tion will take some time to untan­gle.

Until that hap­pens, those of us who’ve had to indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend our planned trips to Italy — or even those of us who’d nev­er con­sid­ered going before the option was removed from the table — can con­tent our­selves with this set of high-res­o­lu­tion jour­neys on foot from the Youtube chan­nel ProWalk Tours, all shot at length in real tourist spots amid vis­i­tors and locals alike.

Whether the Colos­se­um and Pala­tine Hill in Rome, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca in Vat­i­can City, and the towns of Pom­peii (in two parts) and Her­cu­la­neum both ruined and pre­served by Mt. Vesu­vius, ProWalk’s videos show you all you’d see on an in-per­son wak­ing tour. But they also include fea­tures like maps, marks in the time­line denot­ing each impor­tant site, and onscreen facts and expla­na­tions of the fea­tures of these his­toric places. Com­bine these with the immer­sive vir­tu­al muse­um tours pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, as well as the recre­ations of ancient Rome in its prime and Pom­peii on the day of Vesu­vius erup­tion, and you’ll have the kind of under­stand­ing you could­n’t get in per­son — and with no dan­ger of being whacked by your fel­low tourists’ self­ie sticks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

See the Expan­sive Ruins of Pom­peii Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Them Before: Through the Eyes of a Drone

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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A New Interactive Map Shows All Four Million Buildings That Existed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

in Architecture, History, Maps, Photography, Travel | August 19th, 2020

New York­ers have borne wit­ness to a notice­able uptick in the num­ber of shiny, new build­ings going up in the city over the last few years, crowd­ing the water­front, ris­ing from the ash­es of com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and old­er, infi­nite­ly more mod­est struc­tures.

Their devel­op­ers have tak­en care to top load them with luxu­ry ameni­ties—rooftop cabanas, 24-hour fit­ness clubs, mar­ble coun­ter­tops, screen­ing rooms.

But one thing they can’t pro­vide is the sense of lived his­to­ry that imbues every old build­ing with a true sense of char­ac­ter, mys­tique, and oft-grub­by charm.

I fear that the occu­pants of these new­er build­ings won’t have near­ly as much fun as the rest of us search­ing for our cur­rent address­es on the NYC Munic­i­pal Archives’ inter­ac­tive map, above.

Every dot rep­re­sents a Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion pho­to­graph of a New York City build­ing, snapped between 1939 and 1941 as a means of stan­dard­iz­ing the way in which prop­er­ty val­ues were assessed and record­ed.

There are 4,282,000 dots, spread out between five bor­oughs.

Does that sound dense­ly packed?

You should see it today… there’s been a lot of ver­ti­cal build.

This unas­sum­ing fuel oil plant near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has giv­en way to a 430-unit build­ing boast­ing a yoga room, spin stu­dios, and valet ser­vices for those in need of dry-clean­ing, laun­dry, apart­ment clean­ing, or dog walking…though sad­ly, no on-premis­es motor oil. We find that omis­sion some­what sur­pris­ing for such a full-ser­vice res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment on the banks of a Super­fund site, whose clean up is esti­mat­ed to tip the scales at $500 mil­lion.

We also won­der what the occu­pants of the above build­ings would have made of the glassy 25-sto­ry com­plex that opened on their coor­di­nates ear­li­er this year. Is it just us, or does it seem a bit disin­gen­u­ous of its devel­op­ers to trum­pet that its loca­tion is “the epit­o­me of New York City’s authen­tic­i­ty, with over a cen­tu­ry of rich his­to­ry, where the world’s sar­to­r­i­al and culi­nary trends are born”?

(You can find us a few blocks away mut­ter­ing into our chopped liv­er at Russ and Daugh­ters, a ven­er­a­ble food shop that looks much the same today as it did in 1940, though you’ll have to con­firm with a bit of research on your own if you don’t want to take our word for it, the WPA “dot” reveal­ing lit­tle more than a man with a stick and sev­er­al mov­ing vehi­cles.)

Our final stop is one of many archi­tec­tur­al ghosts to haunt the Hud­son Yards colos­sus, the self-described “epi­cen­ter of Manhattan’s New West Side… a bea­con for cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, a hub for fash­ion, design, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and art.” In addi­tion to a much reviled $200 mil­lion shawar­ma-shaped “3‑dimensional pub­lic space” and state of the art wine fridges, ameni­ties now include diag­nos­tic and anti­body test­ing “per­formed by top med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.”

It’s telling that in the sum­mer of 2020, prospec­tive ten­ants were offered incen­tives includ­ing two months’ free rent and a $2,000 gift card.

Proof, per­haps, that New York will con­tin­ue as it always has—a city in con­stant flux. The preva­lence of mod­ern high rise build­ings in dystopi­an fic­tion gives us pause.…

Explore the Street View of 1940s New York here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Inter­ac­tive Map That Cat­a­logues the 700,000 Trees Shad­ing the Streets of New York City

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

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

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The Wine Windows of Renaissance Florence Dispense Wine Safely Again During COVID-19

in Architecture, Food & Drink, History, Life, Travel | August 10th, 2020

Every­thing old is new again and Tuscany’s buchette del vino—wine windows—are def­i­nite­ly rolling with the times.

As Lisa Har­vey ear­li­er report­ed in Atlas Obscu­ra, buchette del vino became a thing in 1559, short­ly after Cosi­mo I de’ Medici decreed that Flo­rence-dwelling vine­yard own­ers could bypass tav­erns and wine mer­chants to sell their prod­uct direct­ly to the pub­lic. Wealthy wine fam­i­lies eager to pay less in tax­es quick­ly fig­ured out a workaround that would allow them to take advan­tage of the edict with­out requir­ing them to actu­al­ly open their palace doors to the rab­ble:

Any­one on the street could use the wood­en or met­al knock­er … and rap on a wine win­dow dur­ing its open hours. A well-respect­ed, well-paid ser­vant, called a can­ti­niere and trained in prop­er­ly pre­serv­ing wine, stood on the oth­er side. The can­ti­niere would open the lit­tle door, take the customer’s emp­ty straw-bot­tomed flask and their pay­ment, refill the bot­tle down in the can­ti­na (wine cel­lar), and hand it back out to the cus­tomer on the street.

Sev­en­ty years fur­ther on, these lit­er­al holes-in-the-walls served as a means of con­tact­less deliv­ery for post-Renais­sance Ital­ians in need of a drink as the sec­ond plague pan­dem­ic raged.

Schol­ar Francesco Rondinel­li (1589–1665) detailed some of the extra san­i­ta­tion mea­sures put in place in the ear­ly 1630s:

A met­al pay­ment col­lec­tion scoop replaced hand-to-hand exchange

Imme­di­ate vine­gar dis­in­fec­tion of all col­lect­ed coins

No exchange of emp­ty flasks brought from home

Cus­tomers who insist­ed on bring­ing their own reusable bot­tles could do self-serve refills via a met­al tube, to pro­tect the essen­tial work­er on the oth­er side of the win­dow.

Sound famil­iar?

After cen­turies of use, the win­dows died out, falling vic­tim to flood, WWII bomb­ings, fam­i­ly relo­ca­tions, and archi­tec­tur­al ren­o­va­tion.

The nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has def­i­nite­ly played a major role in putting wine win­dows back on the public’s radar, but Babae, a casu­al year-old restau­rant gets cred­it for being the first to reac­ti­vate a dis­used buchet­ta del vino for its intend­ed pur­pose, sell­ing glass­es of red for a sin­gle hour each day start­ing in August 2019.

Now sev­er­al oth­er authen­tic buchette have returned to ser­vice, with menus expand­ed to accom­mo­date serv­ings of ice cream and cof­fee.

Giv­en this suc­cess, per­haps they’ll take a cue from Japan’s 4.6 mil­lion vend­ing machines, and begin dis­pens­ing an even wider array of items.

They may even take a page from the past, and send some of the mon­ey they take in back out, along with food and yes—wine—to sus­tain needy mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The Buchette del Vino Asso­ci­azi Cul­tur­ale cur­rent­ly lists 146 active and inac­tive wine win­dows in Flo­rence and the sur­round­ing regions, accom­pa­ny­ing their find­ings with pho­tos and arti­cles of his­tor­i­cal rel­e­vance.

Via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Quar­an­tined Ital­ians Send a Mes­sage to Them­selves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

A Free Course from MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once

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

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Revisit Scenes of Daily Life in Amsterdam in 1922, with Historic Footage Enhanced by Artificial Intelligence

in Computer Science, Data, Film, Technology, Travel | August 3rd, 2020

Welkom in Ams­ter­dam… 1922.

Neur­al net­work artist Denis Shiryaev describes him­self as “an artis­tic machine-learn­ing per­son with a soul.”

For the last six months, he’s been apply­ing him­self to re-ren­der­ing doc­u­men­tary footage of city life—Belle Epoque Paris, Tokyo at the start of the the Taishō era, and New York City in 1911—the year of the Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist Fire.

It’s pos­si­ble you’ve seen the footage before, but nev­er so alive in feel. Shiryaev’s ren­der­ings trick mod­ern eyes with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, boost­ing the orig­i­nal frames-per-sec­ond rate and res­o­lu­tion, sta­bi­liz­ing and adding color—not nec­es­sar­i­ly his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate.

The herky-jerky bustling qual­i­ty of the black-and-white orig­i­nals is trans­formed into some­thing fuller and more flu­id, mak­ing the human sub­jects seem… well, more human.

This Trip Through the Streets of Ams­ter­dam is tru­ly a blast from the past… the antithe­sis of the social dis­tanc­ing we must cur­rent­ly prac­tice.

Mer­ry cit­i­zens jos­tle shoul­der to shoul­der, unmasked, snack­ing, danc­ing, arms slung around each oth­er… unabashed­ly curi­ous about the hand-cranked cam­era turned on them as they go about their busi­ness.

A group of women vis­it­ing out­side a shop laugh and scatter—clearly they weren’t expect­ing to be filmed in their aprons.

Young boys look­ing to steal the show push their way to the front, cut­ting capers and throw­ing mock punch­es.

Sor­ry, lads, the award for Most Mem­o­rable Per­for­mance by a Juve­nile goes to the small fel­low at the 4:10 mark. He’s not ham­ming it up at all, mere­ly tak­ing a quick puff of his cig­a­rette while run­ning along­side a crowd of men on bikes, deter­mined to keep pace with the cam­era per­son.

Numer­ous YouTube view­ers have observed with some won­der that all the peo­ple who appear, with the dis­tant excep­tion of a baby or two at the end, would be in the grave by now.

They do seem so alive.

Mod­ern eyes should also take note of the absences: no cars, no plas­tic, no cell phones…

And, of course, every­one is white. The Nether­lands’ pop­u­la­tion would not diver­si­fy racial­ly for anoth­er cou­ple of decades, begin­ning with immi­grants from Indone­sia after WWII and Suri­nam in the 50s.

With regard to that, please be fore­warned that not all of the YouTube com­ments have to do with cheeky lit­tle boys and babies who would be push­ing 100…

The footage is tak­en from the archival col­lec­tion of the EYE film­mu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, with ambi­ent sound by Guy Jones.

See more of Denis Shiryaev’s  upscaled vin­tage footage in the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Vin­tage Footage of Tokyo, Cir­ca 1910, Get Brought to Life with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

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

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Hear the Sound Of Endangered Birds Get Turned Into Electronic Music

in Biology, Current Affairs, Music, Nature, Travel | July 27th, 2020

Bird-watch­ing is hav­ing a moment, thanks to the pan­dem­ic.

As non-essen­tial work­ers adjust­ed to spend­ing more time at home, their ears adjust­ed to the increas­ing­ly non-for­eign sound of bird­song out­side their win­dows.

Those sweet tweets are no doubt large­ly respon­si­ble for the record break­ing turnout at this year’s Glob­al Big Day, the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s annu­al bird­ing event, held ear­li­er this spring.

50,000 par­tic­i­pants logged 2.1 mil­lion indi­vid­ual obser­va­tions, and 6,479 species.

Appar­ent­ly, there are even more birds in this world than there are sour­dough starters…

…though for the imme­di­ate future, civic-mind­ed bird­watch­ers will be con­fin­ing their obser­va­tions to the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty, as a mat­ter of pub­lic health.

We look for­ward to the day when bird enthu­si­asts resid­ing out­side of Belize, Mex­i­co, or Guatemala can again trav­el to the Yucatán Penin­su­la in hopes of a face-to-face encounter with the Black Cat Bird.

Til then, the ani­mat­ed video above, in which a Black Cat­bird unwit­ting­ly duets with Belize’s Gar­i­fu­na Col­lec­tive, makes a sooth­ing place hold­er.

The cat­bird and the col­lec­tive appear along with nine oth­er elec­tron­ic musi­cian / endan­gered native bird teams on the fundrais­ing album, A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean.

A Black-cheeked Ant-Tan­ag­er joins NILLO, a pro­duc­er and DJ from Cos­ta Rica who draws musi­cal inspi­ra­tion from the trib­al com­mu­ni­ties around him.

Siete Catorce, a pro­duc­er who helped pop­u­lar­ize the pop­u­lar bor­der genre known as rui­dosón—a mix of cumbia and pre­his­pan­ic trib­al sounds—is paired with a Yel­low-head­ed Par­rot.

Jor­dan “Time Cow” Chung of Equiknoxx seam­less­ly inte­grates a Jamaican Black­bird into his unique brand of organ­ic, exper­i­men­tal dance­hall.

The album fol­lows 2015’s Guide to the Bird­song of South Amer­i­ca, and as with its pre­de­ces­sor, 100% of the prof­its will be donat­ed to region­al orga­ni­za­tions focused on birds and con­ser­va­tion—Birds Caribbean, La Aso­ciación Orni­tológ­i­ca de Cos­ta Rica, and Mexico’s Fun­da­cion TXORI.

Birds, as the project’s founder, Robin Perkins, told Gizmodo’s Earth­er, are the most musi­cal ani­mals in the world:

There’s some­thing real­ly nice about focus­ing on endan­gered species and songs that are dis­ap­pear­ing and not being pre­served and to use music to raise aware­ness about the species. I believe music has a big pow­er for social activism and social change and for envi­ron­men­tal change.

Lis­ten to A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Buy the album or indi­vid­ual tracks on Band­camp to ben­e­fit the char­i­ties above.

Robin Perkins’ lim­it­ed edi­tion prints of the fea­tured birds also ben­e­fit the bird-focused region­al char­i­ties and can be pur­chased here.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

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

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

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

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Revisit Six of Elton John’s Most Iconic Concerts, Streaming in Their Entirety for 72 Hours

in Music, Travel | July 24th, 2020

Just as Bohemi­an Rhap­sody intro­duced Fred­dy Mer­cury to an unsus­pect­ing gen­er­a­tion of young fans, last year’s Elton John biopic, Rock­et­man, has net­ted its sub­ject a host of fresh admir­ers.

John’s newest fans were born into a far dif­fer­ent world than the one that was astound­ed when he declared, in a 1976 inter­view with Rolling Stone, that he was bisex­u­al.

Now a knight (the first open­ly gay musi­cian to be so anoint­ed), Sir Elton is using his enor­mous pub­lic plat­form to encour­age youth who may be strug­gling with their sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der iden­ti­ty and to end the glob­al AIDS epi­dem­ic.

To date, the Elton John AIDS Foun­da­tion has raised over $450,000,000 to sup­port HIV-relat­ed pro­grams in fifty-five coun­tries, and is now dou­bling down with coro­n­avirus relief efforts for the pop­u­la­tion it has long served.

To that end, Sir Elton is revis­it­ing six of his most icon­ic per­for­mances over the last half-cen­tu­ry, post­ing a con­cert in its entire­ty to his Youtube chan­nel every week in hope that view­ers will be moved to make a dona­tion at con­cert’s end.

(As fur­ther incen­tive, an anony­mous sup­port­er has pledged to match dona­tions up to $250,000.)

Each con­cert streams for 72 hours, but clips of indi­vid­ual songs linger longer.

Last week the Clas­sic Con­cert Series turned the dial back 30 years to find Sir Elton play­ing a 1st-cen­tu­ry Roman amphitheater—Italy’s Are­na di Verona—as part of his 130-show Reg Strikes Back tour. His inter­play with singers Mor­tonette Jenk­ins, Mar­lena Jeter, and Kud­is­an Kai dur­ing an 8‑minute gospel-tinged spin on “Sad Songs (Say So Much),” above, is a high­light of the 22-song set.

The series kicked off at the Play­house The­ater in Edin­burgh in 1976 as “Don’t Go Break­ing My Heart” was top­ping the charts, and con­tin­ues to the Syd­ney Enter­tain­ment Cen­ter ten years fur­ther on, when Sir Elton defied doc­tor’s orders, per­form­ing despite vocal nod­ules.

On July 24, John takes us along to Rio’s Esta­dio Do Fla­men­go when the release of 1995’s Made In Eng­land prompt­ed his first ever tour of Brazil.

The fol­low­ing week, we’ll enter the 21st-cen­tu­ry with a pit­stop at Madi­son Square Gar­den before the series comes to a close at the Great Amphithe­ater in Eph­esus, Turkey.

Watch Elton John’s Clas­sic Con­cert Series on his Youtube chan­nel, and even though it’s not oblig­a­tory,  seek out the blue dona­tion but­ton that appears on every post. You can also make a tax deductible dona­tion via the Elton John AIDS Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Elton John Proves He Can Turn any Text into a Song: Watch Him Impro­vise with Lines from Hen­rik Ibsen’s Play, Peer Gynt

Elton John Takes Us Through the Cre­ative Process of His Ear­ly Hit “Tiny Dancer” (1970)

Elton John Sings His Clas­sic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

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

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