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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Cambridge University Professor Cooks 4000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Mesopotamia, and Lets You See How They Turned Out

in Books, Food & Drink, History, Life, Travel | July 13th, 2020

Those of us who’ve ded­i­cat­ed a por­tion of our iso­la­tion to the art of sour­dough have not suf­fered for a lack of infor­ma­tion on how that par­tic­u­lar sausage should get made.

The Inter­net har­bors hun­dreds, nay, thou­sands of com­pli­cat­ed, con­trary, often con­tra­dic­to­ry, extreme­ly firm opin­ions on the sub­ject. You can lose hours…days…weeks, ago­niz­ing over which method to use.

The course for Bill Suther­land’s recent culi­nary exper­i­ment was much more clear­ly chart­ed.

As doc­u­ment­ed in a series of now-viral Twit­ter posts, the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Con­ser­va­tion Biol­o­gy decid­ed to attempt a Mesopotami­an meal, as inscribed on a 3770-year-old recipe tablet con­tain­ing humankind’s old­est sur­viv­ing recipes.

As Suther­land told Bored Pan­da’s Liu­ci­ja Ado­maite and Ilona Bal­iū­naitė, the trans­lat­ed recipes, found in Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: High­lights of the Yale Baby­lon­ian Col­lec­tion, were “aston­ish­ing­ly terse” and “per­plex­ing,” lead­ing to some guess work with regard to onions and gar­lic.

In addi­tion to 25 recipes, the book has pho­tos and illus­tra­tions of var­i­ous arti­facts and essays that “present the ancient Near East in the light of present-day dis­cus­sion of lived expe­ri­ences, focus­ing on fam­i­ly life and love, edu­ca­tion and schol­ar­ship, iden­ti­ty, crime and trans­gres­sion, demons, and sick­ness.”

Kind of like a cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion Martha Stew­art Liv­ing, just a bit less user friend­ly with regard to things like mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­ture, and cook­ing times. Which is not to say the instruc­tions aren’t step-by-step:

Stew of Lamb

Meat is used. 

You pre­pare water. 

You add fat. 

You add fine-grained salt, bar­ley cakes, onion, Per­sian shal­lot, and milk. 

You crush and add leek and gar­lic.

The meal, which required just a cou­ple hours prep in Sutherland’s non-ancient kitchen sounds like some­thing he might have ordered for deliv­ery from one of Cam­bridge’s Near East­ern restau­rants.

The lamb stew was the hit of the night.

Unwind­ing, a casse­role of leeks and spring onion, looked invit­ing but was “a bit bor­ing.”

Elamite Broth was “pecu­liar but deli­cious,” pos­si­bly because Suther­land sub­sti­tut­ed toma­to sauce for sheep’s blood.

It’s an admit­ted­ly meaty propo­si­tion. Only 2 of the 25 recipes in the col­lec­tion are veg­e­tar­i­an (“meat is not used.”)

And even there, to be real­ly authen­tic, you’d have to sauté every­thing in sheep fat.

(Suther­land swapped in but­ter.)

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her iso­la­tion projects are sour­dough and an ani­ma­tion with free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing the use of face cov­er­ings to stop the spread of COVID-19. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Introduction to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Museum, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

in Architecture, History, Travel | July 13th, 2020

No tour of Istan­bul can fail to include Hagia Sophia. The same is true enough of the British Muse­um in Lon­don or the Lou­vre in Paris, but Hagia Sophia is more than a muse­um: it’s also spent dif­fer­ent stretch­es of its near-mil­len­ni­um-and-a-half of exis­tence as an East­ern Ortho­dox cathe­dral, a Roman Catholic cathe­dral, and a mosque. Stripped of its reli­gious func­tion in the mid-1930s by the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, remem­bered for his cre­ation of a sec­u­lar Turk­ish repub­lic, the majes­tic build­ing has spent the past 85 years as not just a muse­um but the coun­try’s top tourist attrac­tion. Now, accord­ing to a decree issued last week by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, Hagia Sophia will become a mosque again.

“Erdo­gan, like his pre­de­ces­sor Ataturk, appears to be using the fate of the Hagia Sophia to make a polit­i­cal state­ment and score some points with his sup­port­ers,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Kiona N. Smith. But so did Emper­or Jus­tin­ian I of the East­ern Roman Empire, who “ordered the cathedral’s con­struc­tion in the first place for sim­i­lar rea­sons.”

Built on the site where two cathe­drals had pre­vi­ous­ly stood, both burned down in dif­fer­ent revolts, “the Hagia Sophia has always been as much a polit­i­cal land­mark as a reli­gious or cul­tur­al one — so it’s not sur­pris­ing that it has also changed hands, and func­tions, at least four times in its his­to­ry.” Ataturk’s sec­u­lar­iza­tion of Hagia Sophia entailed a restora­tion of its his­toric fea­tures: “Chris­t­ian mosaics that had been plas­tered over in the late 1400s were care­ful­ly uncov­ered, and they shared the domed space with Mus­lim prayer nich­es and pul­pits.”

You can get a clear­er sense of what the build­ing’s archi­tec­ture and dec­o­ra­tion reveal in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son at the top of the post. Edu­ca­tor Kel­ly Wall points to, among oth­er fea­tures, the ancient for­ti­fi­ca­tions that “hint at the strate­gic impor­tance of the sur­round­ing city, found­ed as Byzan­tium by Greek colonists in 657 BCE.”; the foun­da­tion stones that “mur­mur tales from their home­lands of Egypt and Syr­ia, while columns tak­en from the Tem­ple of Artemis recall a more ancient past”; and, beneath the gold­en dome that “appears sus­pend­ed from heav­en,” rein­forc­ing Corinthi­an columns, “brought from Lebanon after the orig­i­nal dome was par­tial­ly destroyed by an earth­quake in 558 CE,” that offer a reminder of “fragili­ty and the engi­neer­ing skills such a mar­vel requires.” The BBC 360-degree vir­tu­al tour just above goes into greater detail on these ele­ments and oth­ers.

Accord­ing to reports cit­ed by Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Hakim Bishara, “tourists will still have access to the site, although it might be closed to vis­i­tors dur­ing prayer time.” Still, “art his­to­ri­ans and con­ser­va­tion­ists wor­ry that the Turk­ish author­i­ties might decide to cov­er up or remove the cen­turies-old Byzan­tine mosaics and Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy that adorn the cel­e­brat­ed struc­ture, as was done in oth­er con­vert­ed church­es in Turkey in the past.” Good job, then, that irre­press­ible tele­vi­sion trav­el­er Rick Steves has already shot his episode on Istan­bul, which (from 9:34) nat­u­ral­ly fea­tures a vis­it to Hagia Sophia. But whether as a muse­um, cathe­dral, a mosque, or what­ev­er it becomes next, the build­ing will sure­ly remain what Steves called “the high point of Byzan­tine archi­tec­ture” and “the pin­na­cle of that soci­ety’s sixth-cen­tu­ry glo­ry days.” And no leader of Turkey, no mat­ter what their beliefs about church and state, will want the tourists to stop com­ing.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recre­at­ed in Authen­tic Byzan­tine Chant

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Take a Virtual Drive through London, Tokyo, Los Angeles & 45 Other World Cities

in Radio, Travel | June 15th, 2020

When asked once about his beliefs, This Amer­i­can Life cre­ator Ira Glass replied that he believes “the car is the best place to lis­ten to the radio.” That seems to be a cul­tur­al­ly sup­port­ed per­cep­tion, or at least it has been in over the past half-cen­tu­ry in Amer­i­ca. But does it hold true in oth­er coun­tries? Does lis­ten­ing to the radio in the car feel as good in Lon­don, Buenos Aires, Mum­bai, and Tokyo as it does in Chica­go, New York, Mia­mi, and Los Ange­les?

You can see and hear for your­self with the wealth of vir­tu­al urban-dri­ving-and-radio-lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences on offer at Dri­ve & Lis­ten, where you can take your pick from any of the afore­men­tioned cities and 40 oth­ers besides. The site makes this pos­si­ble by bring­ing togeth­er two forms of media that have come into their own on the inter­net of the 21st cen­tu­ry: stream­ing radio and stream­ing video.

In most every major met­ro­pol­i­tan area, radio sta­tions now make their broad­casts avail­able online. At the same time, Youtu­bers have by now shot and uploaded a great many through-the wind­shield views of all those places, cre­at­ing the once-unlike­ly enter­tain­ment genre of the dri­ving video.

Here we’ve includ­ed some prime exam­ples from pop­u­lar Youtube dri­ver J Utah, whose scope includes Amer­i­can cities large and small as well as such world cap­i­tals as Tokyo, Paris, Sin­ga­pore, Hong Hong, and São Paulo. All in 4K video.

Click on one of the cities on Dri­ve & Lis­ten’s menu, and chances are you’ll see one of J Utah’s videos. It will come with a stream­ing-radio sound­track, sourced from one of the sta­tions in the city or coun­try on dis­play. Your vir­tu­al Havana dri­ve may be accom­pa­nied by announce­ments of the news of the day, your vir­tu­al Istan­bul dri­ve by Turk­ish rock, your vir­tu­al Chica­go dri­ve by an NPR affil­i­ate (per­haps even WBEZ, home of This Amer­i­can Life), your vir­tu­al Guadala­jara dri­ve by soc­cer scores, your vir­tu­al Mia­mi dri­ve by straight-ahead jazz, your vir­tu­al Berlin dri­ve by Pat­ti Smith.

Each time you select a city, you’ll get a dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of radio sta­tion and dri­ving footage. As every dri­ver knows, day dri­ving and night dri­ving — to say noth­ing of rush hour ver­sus the wee hours — feels com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, and so the dri­vers of Youtube have shot at all pos­si­ble times. Some of their routes thread right between down­town sky­scrap­ers, while oth­ers stick to free­ways along the out­skirts. As a res­i­dent of Seoul, I can tell you that Dri­ve & Lis­ten accu­rate­ly con­veys the expe­ri­ence of rid­ing in a cab through that city — pro­vid­ed you first crank the video speed up to 2x.

Enter Dri­ve & Lis­ten here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

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

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Read­ing While Dri­ving, Seri­ous­ly?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch a Mesmerizing Stream of Unwatched YouTube Videos: Astronaut.io Lets You Discover the Hidden Dimensions of the World’s Largest Video Platform

in Computer Science, Life, Technology, Travel, YouTube | June 8th, 2020

When times are hard, it often helps to zoom out for a moment—in search of a wider per­spec­tive, his­tor­i­cal con­text, the for­est full of trees…

Astronaut.io, an algo­rith­mic YouTube-based project by Andrew Wong and James Thomp­son, offers a big pic­ture that’s as restora­tive as it is odd:

Today, you are an Astro­naut. You are float­ing in inner space 100 miles above the sur­face of Earth. You peer through your win­dow and this is what you see.

If the stars look very dif­fer­ent today, it’s because they’re human, though not the kind who are prone to attract­ing the paparazzi. Rather, Astro­naut is pop­u­lat­ed by ordi­nary cit­i­zens, with occa­sion­al appear­ances by pets, wildlife, video game char­ac­ters, and hous­es, both inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or.

Launch Astro­naut, and you will be bear­ing pas­sive wit­ness to a parade of unevent­ful, unti­tled home video excerpts.

The expe­ri­ence is the oppo­site of earth­shak­ing.

And that is by design.

As Wong told Wired’s Liz Stin­son:

There’s this metaphor of being on a train …you see things out the win­dow and think, ‘Oh what is that?’ but it’s too late, it’s already gone by. Not let­ting some­one go too deep is pret­ty impor­tant.

After some tri­al and error on Twit­ter, where video con­tent rarely favors the rest­ful, Wong and Thomp­son real­ized that the sort of mate­r­i­al they sought resided on YouTube. Per­haps it’s been reflex­ive­ly dumped by users with no par­tic­u­lar pas­sion for what they’ve record­ed. Or the account is a new one, its own­er just begin­ning to fig­ure out how to post con­tent.

The videos on any giv­en Astro­naut jour­ney earn their place by virtue of gener­ic, cam­era-assigned file names (IMG 0034, MOV 0005, DSC 0165…), zero views, and an upload with­in the last week.

The over­all effect is one of mes­mer­iz­ing, unre­mark­able life going on whether it’s observed or not.

Chil­dren per­form in their liv­ing room

A woman assem­bles a bride’s bou­quet

A kit­ten bats a toy

A pre-fab home is moved into place

The vision is heart­warm­ing­ly glob­al.

Astro­naut is anti-star, but there are some fre­quent sight­ings, owing to the num­ber of name­less incon­se­quen­tial videos any one user uploads.

This week a Viet­namese fash­ion­ista, a karaoke space in Argenti­na, and a box­ing ring in Mon­tre­al make mul­ti­ple appear­ances, as do some very tired look­ing teach­ers.

The effect is most sooth­ing when you allow it to wash over you unim­ped­ed, but there is a red but­ton below the frame, if you feel com­pelled to linger with­in a cer­tain scene.

(You can also click on what­ev­er pass­es for the video’s title in the upper left cor­ner to open it on YouTube, from whence you might be able to suss out a bit more infor­ma­tion.)

A very young Super Mario fan has appar­ent­ly col­o­nized a parent’s account for his nar­rat­ed gam­ing videos.

Halfway around the world, a for­mal­ly dressed man sits behind a desk pri­or to his first-ever upload.

Some gift­ed dancers fail to rotate pri­or to upload­ing.

A recent­ly acquired night vision wildlife cam has already cap­tured a num­ber of coy­otes.

And every­one who comes through the door of a Chi­nese house­hold adores the hap­py baby with­in.

It’s unclear if the algo­rithm will alight on any cell phone footage doc­u­ment­ing the shock­ing scenes at recent protests sparked by the death of George Floyd. Per­haps not, giv­en the urgency to share such videos, titling them to clue view­ers in to the what, who, where, when, and why.

For now Astro­naut appears to be the same floaty trip Jake Swearin­gen described in a 2017 arti­cle for New York Mag­a­zine:

The inter­net is a place that often rewards the shock­ing, the sad, the rage-induc­ing — or the naked­ly ambi­tious and atten­tion-seek­ing. A morn­ing of watch­ing Astronaut.io is an anti­dote to all that.

Begin your explo­rations with Astro­naut here.

h/t to read­er Tom Hedrick

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Playlist of Songs to Get You Through Hard Times: Stream 20 Tracks from the Alan Lomax Col­lec­tion

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

An Art Gallery for Ger­bils: Two Quar­an­tined Lon­don­ers Cre­ate a Mini Muse­um Com­plete with Ger­bil-Themed Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Every day since March 15, she has uploaded a set of 10 micrhvi­sions of social­ly dis­tanced New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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