The Making of Japanese Handmade Paper: A Short Film Documents an 800-Year-Old Tradition

in Art, Life, Travel | May 2nd, 2016

For many of us, washi paper is the art sup­ply equiv­a­lent of a dish that’s “too pret­ty to eat.” I love to look at it, but would be loathe to mar its beau­ty with my ama­teur cre­ative efforts.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for use in lanterns and sho­ji screens in Japan, its sim­plic­i­ty makes it a stand out among the far more orna­men­tal dec­o­ra­tive sheets pop­u­lat­ing the fan­cy inter­na­tion­al paper selec­tions. Though there is no short­age of machine-pro­duced washi on the mar­ket these days, the loveli­est exam­ples are still hand­made in Kurotani, a small town near Kyoto.

Kurotani has the dis­tinc­tion of being Japan’s old­est paper-mak­ing town, and as doc­u­ment­ed by film­mak­er Kuroy­ana­gi Takashi, above, the washi process has changed lit­tle in 800 years.

In the pre-indus­tri­al age, washi-mak­ing was sea­son­al. Farm­ers plant­ed the paper mul­ber­ry (kozo), mit­suma­ta, and gampi plants essen­tial to the process along with their food crops. Come havest-time, they would soak these plants’ fibrous inner barks until they were soft enough to be cleaned and pound­ed.

Then as now, the result­ing pulp was added mixed with liq­uid and a mucilage to yield a (not par­tic­u­lar­ly deli­cious sound­ing, and def­i­nite­ly not too pret­ty to eat…) spread­able paste.

The sheets are formed on bam­boo screens, then stacked and pressed until dry.

The end result is both strong and flex­i­ble, mak­ing it a favorite of book­binders. Its absorben­cy is prized by print­mak­ers, includ­ing Rem­brandt.

If you have a yen to wit­ness the labor-inten­sive, tra­di­tion­al process up close, Dutch washi crafts­man Rogi­er Uiten­boogaart runs a guest house as part of his stu­dio in near­by Kamikoya.

The rest of us must con­tent our­selves with Takashi’s med­i­ta­tive 5‑minute doc­u­men­tary.

via The Kid Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

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

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She writes a month­ly col­umn about peo­ple who love their jobs for Mainichi Week­ly, a bilin­gual Japan­ese news­pa­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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In Search of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Secluded Hut in Norway: A Short Travel Film

in Philosophy, Travel | April 25th, 2016

If you like phi­los­o­phy and road trip­ping, then you’ll want to put Wittgen­stein in Nor­way in your YouTube queue. Post­ed this month by Kirsten Dirk­sen, the short film takes through the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side of Nor­way, in search of the hut where Lud­wig Wittgen­stein exiled him­self from soci­ety from time to time, first start­ing in 1913. Dirk­sen gives this pref­ace to the film:

Over 100 years ago, philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein went to the fjords of Nor­way to escape the schol­ar­ly world of Cam­bridge. His for­mer teacher Bertrand Rus­sell wrote, “I said it would be lone­ly, and he said he pros­ti­tut­ed his mind talk­ing to intel­li­gent peo­ple.”

Not con­tent with sim­ply mov­ing to the iso­la­tion of rur­al Nor­way- at the end of the Sogne­fjord (the deep­est and sec­ond longest fjord)- Wittgen­stein built his hut across the lake and halfway up a moun­tain from the near­est town (Skjold­en). Mea­sur­ing just 7 by 8 meters, the small cab­in dubbed “Lit­tle Aus­tria” (his native coun­try) became his home on and off through­out his life (his longest stay here was 13 months).

Wittgen­stein was flee­ing the dis­trac­tions and inter­rup­tions of a more social lifestyle and hop­ing to con­front only his own thoughts. “Who­ev­er is unwill­ing to descend into him­self,” he wrote, “because it is too painful, will of course remain super­fi­cial in his writ­ing.’” He wrote some of his most impor­tant work here (a pre­cur­sor to his “Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus” and some of his “Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions”).

Today all that remains of his hut are its stone foun­da­tion and a very faint hik­ers trail up the moun­tain, though some Nor­we­gians are try­ing to change this. Artists Mar­i­anne Bre­desen, Sebas­t­ian Makon­nen Kjølaas and Siri Hjorth (in col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Wittgen­stein Soci­ety in Skjold­en and fund­ed by Pub­lic Art Nor­way) threw an all-expens­es-paid vaca­tion to bring fel­low Oslo res­i­dents to the ruin. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s argu­ment that “philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems arise when lan­guage goes on hol­i­day”, they are call­ing their art hol­i­day “Wittgen­stein on Vaca­tion”. For part one, they enter­tained their guests with a week­end of lec­tures, meals and a Wittgen­stein inter­pre­ta­tion at the site of his cab­in. We cap­tured some of the show on our own jour­ney to this dis­ap­pear­ing piece of his­to­ry.

Oth­er videos about sim­ple liv­ing, self-suf­fi­cien­cy, small homes, and philoso­phies of life can be found on Dirk­sen’s YouTube chan­nel.

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!



Relat­ed Cours­es:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Short, Strange & Bru­tal Stint as an Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Gets Adapt­ed Into an Avant-Garde Com­ic Opera

Wittgen­stein and Hitler Attend­ed the Same School in Aus­tria, at the Same Time (1904)

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Download 14 Free Posters from NASA That Depict the Future of Space Travel in a Captivatingly Retro Style

in Science, Travel | February 19th, 2016

Mars_150

If I could send a mes­sage back in time, I might send it to the wide-eyed and sky­ward-look­ing chil­dren of 1960s Amer­i­ca, apol­o­giz­ing that we nev­er did build those jet­packs, fly­ing cars, and moon colonies, but also let­ting them know that at least we, the cit­i­zens of the 21st cen­tu­ry, have devel­oped such tech­nolo­gies as smart­phones and a myr­i­ad of ways for snack foods to taste both sweet and salty at once.

PSOJ318.5-22_screen

I prob­a­bly would­n’t tell them how many of us long for the spir­it of their own time, which Amer­i­can his­to­ry has labeled “the Space Age” for good rea­son. It had its share of awful­ness, start­ing with the apoc­a­lyp­tic ten­sions of the Cold War, but that com­pe­ti­tion between soci­eties did spur mankind to voy­age bold­ly and unhesi­tat­ing­ly out into the great beyond, at least for a while there.

GrandTour_150

“Back in the 1930s and ’40s, dur­ing the height of the Great Depres­sion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, “artists designed posters for the Works Projects Admin­is­tra­tion (WPA) to encour­age trav­el to nation­al parks and oth­er tourist sites in the Unit­ed States. NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry (JPL) design stu­dio is tak­ing a sim­i­lar approach to pro­mote a future of trav­el to oth­er plan­ets at a time when its fund­ing is up against bud­get con­straints and even a jour­ney to our galac­tic neigh­bor Mars may seem almost impos­si­ble.” And so we have this brand new series of four­teen Visions of the Future, free to down­load, print, and hang above your desk to fuel your own out­er-space day­dream­ing.

Enceladus_150

You’ll notice that all the artists com­mis­sioned have designed their space-trav­el posters—whether they pro­mote the high grav­i­ty of the “super Earth” exo­plan­et HD 40307g, the one-day “His­toric Sites of Mars,” or the “Grand Tour” of the Solar System—in a rich­ly retro style rem­i­nis­cent of 1930s air trav­el adver­tise­ments. This makes them artis­ti­cal­ly cap­ti­vat­ing, but also empha­sizes the con­ti­nu­ity between our present, the cen­tu­ry behind us, and the cen­turies ahead. “As you look through these images of imag­i­na­tive trav­el des­ti­na­tions,” says NASA/JPL’s site, “remem­ber that you can be an archi­tect of the future” — and every future wor­thy of the name comes built solid­ly upon a past.

HD_40307g_39x27

You can down­load the full col­lec­tion of posters right here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Icon­ic 1968 “Earth­rise” Pho­to Was Made: An Engross­ing Visu­al­iza­tion by NASA

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

Free Inter­ac­tive e‑Books from NASA Reveal His­to­ry, Dis­cov­er­ies of the Hub­ble & Webb Tele­scopes

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936–66)

in Books, History, Life, Travel | January 18th, 2016

Green Book Cover

Pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment has roman­ti­cized the idea of the road trip as a whol­ly spon­ta­neous adven­ture, but for mid-cen­tu­ry African Amer­i­can motorists, plan­ning was essen­tial. The lodg­ings, restau­rants, and tourist attrac­tions where they could be assured of a warm wel­come were often few and far between in the era of seg­re­ga­tion.

The Negro Trav­el­ers’ Green Book, first print­ed in 1936, was an invalu­able resource for trav­el­ers of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their route took them out­side of urban areas. In the pre-Inter­net age, pub­lish­er Vic­tor Green, a Harlem-dwelling mail­man, relied on read­ers to sup­ply feed­back and new loca­tions for sub­se­quent edi­tions:

There are thou­sands of first class busi­ness places that we don’t know about and can’t list, which would be glad to serve the trav­el­er, but it is hard to secure list­ings of these places since we can’t secure enough agents to send us the infor­ma­tion. Each year before we go to press the new infor­ma­tion is includ­ed in the new edi­tion. When you are trav­el­ing please men­tion the Green Book, in order that they might know how you found their place of busi­ness, as they can see that you are strangers. If they haven’t heard about this guide, ask them to get in touch with us so that we might list their place. If this guide has proved use­ful to you on your trips, let us know. If not, tell us also as we appre­ci­ate your crit­i­cisms and ideas in the improve­ment of this guide from which you ben­e­fit. There will be a day some­time in the near future when this guide will not have to be pub­lished. That is when we as a race will have equal oppor­tu­ni­ties and priv­i­leges in the Unit­ed States. It will be a great day for us to sus­pend this pub­li­ca­tion for then we can go wher­ev­er we please, and with­out embar­rass­ment. But until that time comes we shall con­tin­ue to pub­lish this infor­ma­tion for your con­ve­nience each year.

- from the intro­duc­tion to the 1949 edi­tion

The New York Pub­lic Library’s Schom­burg Cen­ter for Research in Black Cul­ture has dig­i­tized 21 vol­umes of its Green Book col­lec­tion for your brows­ing plea­sure. It’s a trip back in time.

Green Book Points of Interest NYC

1936’s pre­mier edi­tion is geared toward vis­i­tors spend­ing time in and around New York City. In appear­ance, it resem­bles a church bul­letin or com­mu­ni­ty the­ater pro­gram, with busi­ness card ads for beau­ty salons spe­cial­iz­ing in mar­cel wav­ing and restau­rants serv­ing South­ern home cook­ing. Pub­lish­er Green extols the won­ders of Coney Island, Chi­na­town, and the The­atri­cal Dis­trict, even as he notes that “the col­ored show hous­es are in Harlem.” He also seeks to give read­ers a laugh with “How to Keep From Grow­ing Old,” a dri­ver-spe­cif­ic list that could be read aloud from the pas­sen­ger seat for the mer­ri­ment of every­one in the car. (“In slop­py weath­er, dri­ve close to pedes­tri­ans. Dry clean­ers appre­ci­ate this.”)

Green Book Westchester

The Green Book soon swelled to include nation­al list­ings, as tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers heed­ed Green’s call to beef up the info.

1961’s 25th anniver­sary edi­tion includes a his­to­ry of the enter­prise, a fair amount of typos, newsy updates on the staff, and a renewed promise to list the best places on the moon, should lunar trav­el become an option.

Green Book Pg 5

Green Book 25th Anniversary

Arm­chair trav­el­ers can take the NYPL’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion out for a spin by enter­ing coor­di­nates into a map­ping fea­ture for 1947 or 1956.

Start­ing in my Indi­ana home­town with sights set on Man­hat­tan took me to the Cot­tage Restau­rant in Colum­bus, Ohio, the Jones Restau­rant in Grafton, West Vir­ginia, and the beau­ti­ful­ly named Trott Inn in Philadel­phia, before I final­ly lay my vir­tu­al head at the Amer­i­ca Hotel. (These days, it would be the Mil­len­ni­um Broad­way.)

Green Book 1956

Enjoy your trip. In the words of Vic­tor Green, “let’s all get togeth­er and make motor­ing bet­ter.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Robert Penn War­ren Archive Brings Ear­ly Civ­il Rights to Life

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She doc­u­ment­ed her mis­ad­ven­tures on the road in No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Brazil Gives Out Books That Double as Subway Tickets, Promoting Literacy & Mass Transit at Once

in Books, Design, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2016

One of the things I miss about liv­ing in a city with a sub­way sys­tem is the myr­i­ad thought­ful design ele­ments that go into man­ag­ing a per­pet­u­al flow of tourists and com­muters. New York’s sub­way map presents us with an icon­ic tan­gle of inter­lock­ing trib­u­taries resem­bling dia­grams of a cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem. The NYC system’s inge­nious­ly sim­ple graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of let­tered and num­bered trains, encir­cled in their cor­re­spond­ing col­ors, can be read by most any­one with a rudi­men­ta­ry grasp on the Eng­lish alphabet—from a new lan­guage learn­er to a small child. The Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­way sys­tem, though a much more pro­sa­ic affair over­all, whisks rid­ers through impres­sive­ly cav­ernous, cat­a­comb-like sta­tions, with bru­tal­ist tile and con­crete hon­ey­combs that seem to go on for­ev­er. The squig­gly lines of its col­or-cod­ed map like­wise promise ease of use and leg­i­bil­i­ty.

Ticket-Books_LPM-1-957x644

And then there are the hours of read­ing time grant­ed by a sub­way com­mute, a leisure I’ve relin­quished now that I rely on car and bike. So you can imag­ine my envi­ous delight in learn­ing about Brazil’s Tick­et Books, which are exact­ly what they sound like—books that work as sub­way tick­ets, designed with the min­i­mal­ist care that major tran­sit sys­tems do so well. And what’s more, they’re free: “To cel­e­brate World Book Day last April 23rd,” writes “future-for­ward online resource” PSFK, “[Brazil­lian pub­lish­er] L&PM gave away 10,000 books for free at sub­way sta­tions across São Paulo. Each book came with ten free trips.” Rid­ers could then recharge them and use the books again or pass them on to oth­ers to encour­age more read­ing, an impor­tant pub­lic ser­vice giv­en that Brazil­ians only read two books per year on aver­age.

Ticket-Books_LPM-3-968x516

With sub­way map-inspired cov­ers designed by firm Agên­cia Africa, the books include The Great Gats­by, The Art of War, Ham­let, Mur­der Alley by Agatha Christie, Hun­dred Love Son­nets by Pablo Neru­da, and more (includ­ing com­ic col­lec­tions from Charles Schulz and Garfield’s Jim Davis). Watch an explain­er video at the top of the post and see some love­ly images of the book cov­ers above. The cam­paign won three tro­phies at the Cannes Lions Fes­ti­val in the cat­e­gories “Pro­mo,” “Out­door,” and “Design,” and has proved so pop­u­lar that pub­lish­er L&PM has expand­ed the project to oth­er Brazil­ian cities, giv­ing me yet more rea­son to vis­it Brazil. And if Tick­et Books makes its way to a sub­way-enabled city near me, I may con­sid­er mov­ing.

via PSFK

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

Com­muters Can Down­load Free eBooks of Russ­ian Clas­sics While Rid­ing the Moscow Metro

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

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

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Patti Smith Creates a Detailed Packing List for Going on Tour: Haruki Murakami Books, Loquat Tea & More

in Life, Literature, Music, Poetry, Travel | January 1st, 2016

Patti Smith Packing List

Pack­ing lists are not inher­ent­ly punk rock.

But the hand­writ­ten pack­ing list God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith scrawled upside down on a pho­to­copied receipt from a children’s book­store on the eve of a 40-date Euro­pean tour comes close. One can kind of imag­ine her stuff­ing her adap­tors, her Japan­ese pants, and her “9 under­wears” into a shop­ping bag or a dirty day pack, using it as a pil­low in the back of the van…

Behold the real­i­ty, below.

Patti Smith Suitcase

Smith’s hard shell case is kit­ted out with prac­ticed pre­ci­sion, its con­tents pared to the lean­est of  lux­u­ry-brand neces­si­ties to keep her hap­py and healthy on the road.

It’s not often you find a devo­tee of Ann Demeule­meester black jack­ets and $8 tooth­paste who’s will­ing to night­ly wring their socks and undies over a hotel room sink, but accord­ing to her Ban­ga tour diary, Smith is.

Oth­er essen­tials in Smith’s tour bag include loquat tea for her throat and plen­ty of read­ing mate­r­i­al. In addi­tion to the Hunger Games, she elect­ed to take along some old favorites from author Haru­ki Muraka­mi:

I decide this will be essen­tial­ly a Haru­ki Muraka­mi tour. So I will take sev­er­al of his books includ­ing the three vol­ume IQ84 to reread. He is a good writer to reread as he sets your mind to day­dream­ing while you are read­ing him. thus i always miss stuff.

Read­ers, use the com­ments sec­tion to let us know what indis­pens­able items you would pack when embark­ing on a 40-city tour with Pat­ti Smith.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Pat­ti Smith Doc­u­men­tary Dream of Life Beau­ti­ful­ly Cap­tures the Author’s Life and Long Career (2008)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Human: The Movie Features Interviews with 2,020 People from 60 Countries on What It Means to Be Human

in Environment, Film, Life, Travel | September 29th, 2015

What is it that makes us human? And how best to ensure that we all get our fair say?

For direc­tor, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and envi­ron­men­tal activist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the answers lay in fram­ing all of his inter­view sub­jects using the same sin­gle image lay­out. The for­mal sim­plic­i­ty and unwa­ver­ing gaze of his new doc­u­men­tary, Human, encour­age view­ers to per­ceive his 2,020 sub­jects as equals in the sto­ry­telling realm.

There’s a deep diver­si­ty of expe­ri­ences on dis­play here, arranged for max­i­mum res­o­nance.

The qui­et­ly con­tent first wife of a polyg­a­mist mar­riage is fol­lowed by a polyamorous fel­low, whose uncon­ven­tion­al lifestyle is a source of both tor­ment and joy.

There’s a death row inmate. A lady so con­fi­dent she appears with her hair in curlers.

Where on earth did he find them?

His sub­jects hail from 60 coun­tries. Arthus-Bertrand obvi­ous­ly went out of his way to be inclu­sive, result­ing in a wide spec­trum of gen­der and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions, and sub­jects with dis­abil­i­ties, one a Hiroshi­ma sur­vivor.

Tears, laugh­ter, con­flict­ing emo­tions… stu­dents of the­ater and psy­chi­a­try would do well to book­mark this page. There’s a lot one can glean from observ­ing these sub­jects’ unguard­ed faces.

The project was inspired by an impromp­tu chat with a Malian farmer. The direc­tor was impressed by the frank­ness with which this stranger spoke of his life and dreams:

I dreamed of a film in which the pow­er of words would res­onate with the beau­ty of the world. Putting the ills of human­i­ty at the heart of my work—poverty, war, immi­gra­tion, homophobia—I made cer­tain choic­es. Com­mit­ted, polit­i­cal choic­es. But the men talked to me about every­thing: their dif­fi­cul­ty in grow­ing as well as their love and hap­pi­ness. This rich­ness of the human word lies at the heart of Human. 

In Vol­ume I, above, the inter­vie­wees con­sid­er love, women, work, and pover­ty. Vol­ume II deals with war, for­give­ness, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, fam­i­ly, and the after­life. Hap­pi­ness, edu­ca­tion, dis­abil­i­ty, immi­gra­tion, cor­rup­tion, and the mean­ing of life are the con­cerns of the third vol­ume .

The inter­view seg­ments are bro­ken up by aer­i­al sequences, rem­i­nis­cent of the images in Arthus-Bertrand’s book, The Earth from Above. It’s a good reminder of how small we all are in the grand scheme of things.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, and the director’s long­time inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues, the film­ing and pro­mo­tion were accom­plished in the most sus­tain­able way, with the sup­port of the Good­Plan­et Foun­da­tion and the Unit­ed Car­bon Action pro­gram. It would be love­ly for all human­i­ty if this is a fea­ture of film­mak­ing going for­ward.

The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has a col­lec­tion of relat­ed mate­r­i­al, from the mak­ing of the sound­track to behind-the-scenes rem­i­nis­cences of the inter­view team.

Human will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her new play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Support “Where Is the City of the Future?”: A Journey Across the Pacific Rim Using a Brand New Model of Journalism

in Architecture, Current Affairs, Travel | September 15th, 2015

Apart from from writ­ing here on Open Cul­ture, I write about cities. Hav­ing men­tioned my city-relat­ed projects here from time to time (the pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, the City in Cin­e­ma video essays), I’d like to sub­mit for your approval my newest and most ambi­tious one yet: Where Is the City of the Future?, an in-depth search across the Pacif­ic Rim for the best city to lead us into the urban cen­tu­ry ahead — using a brand new mod­el of jour­nal­ism.

Not long after the turn of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the world’s urban pop­u­la­tion sur­passed its non-urban pop­u­la­tion for the first time ever. And the deep­er human­i­ty gets into the this cen­tu­ry, the more urban­ized our world becomes: devel­op­ing cities devel­op, neglect­ed cities revi­tal­ize them­selves, and the long-stand­ing great cities of the world con­tin­ue to find (or strug­gle to find) new ways of accom­mo­dat­ing all those who’ve nev­er stopped com­ing to live in them. How can the ever-grow­ing urban world pre­pare itself for things to come?

colin cities

This series of reports, com­bin­ing both text and pho­tographs, and informed by both exten­sive on-the-ground explo­ration and in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with those who know these fas­ci­nat­ing urban places best, aims to find out by tak­ing as close as pos­si­ble a look at cities all across the Pacif­ic Rim. These include 20th-cen­tu­ry metrop­o­lis­es look­ing toward the future like Los Ange­les, Seat­tle and Van­cou­ver, com­pact city-states like Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong, fast-devel­op­ing cap­i­tals like Jakar­ta and Bangkok, low­er-pro­file but nev­er­the­less inven­tive “sleep­er” cities like Welling­ton and San­ti­a­go, and east Asian megac­i­ties like Seoul, Tokyo, and Shang­hai.

I’ve launched “Where Is the City of the Future?” as one of the flag­ship projects on Byline, a new plat­form for crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism. For every $2000 raised there, I’ll go report on one Pacif­ic Rim city, seek­ing out the impor­tant lessons it has to teach every oth­er, from the urban­is­tic to the archi­tec­tur­al to the cul­tur­al and beyond. This will begin with reports on Los Ange­les and Seoul, and will con­tin­ue on indef­i­nite­ly to poten­tial cities of the future in an order vot­ed on the back­ers. (The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, you could keep me at this for quite a long time!) If you like, you can get involved at the project’s Byline page. Thanks very much indeed — and I look for­ward to find­ing the city of the future togeth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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