Mashup Artist “Kutiman” Travels to Tokyo and Creates an Incredible Musical Postcard

in Life, Music, Travel | October 25th, 2013

Israeli musi­cian and video artist Ophir Kutiel, aka Kuti­man, gained notice culling and remix­ing unre­lat­ed per­form­ers’ Youtube videos for his extreme­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive-feel­ing Thru You project.

With 2011’s Thru Jerusalem, the urge to con­nect fel­low musi­cians went live, as he left his com­put­er to film local instru­men­tal­ists per­form­ing tunes of their choice in var­i­ous city set­tings. Back in Tel Aviv, he edit­ed the results into one of his sig­na­ture mashups, not to men­tion a vir­tu­oso musi­cal trav­el­ogue.

Now he’s trav­eled even fur­ther afield to Tokyo, cap­tur­ing forms both tra­di­tion­al and ultra-mod­ern, for the first in a new series of orig­i­nal shorts from PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios.

Mayuko Kobayashi plucks serene­ly at the strings of a koto. Turntab­list KEIZOma­chine!, half of the break­beat duo Hifana, scratch­es in his stu­dio. The diminu­tive Ishii Chizu­ru pounds a taiko drum. Inven­tor May­wa Den­ki (aka Novu­michi Tosa) demon­strates his adorable Ota­ma-Tone. (Cur­rent­ly marked down in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s gift shop, for those look­ing ahead to their hol­i­day shop­ping lists.)

The desire to inte­grate the ancient and the new is best embod­ied by kimono-clad Mako­to Takei, who clos­es his eyes on a high-rise bal­cony as he plays a shakuhachi flute, the ver­ti­cal city serv­ing as back­drop.

Add a pink haired Hara­juku girl, a string of red lanterns, innu­mer­able cell phones, some pixel­lat­ed video game char­ac­ters, an aged tem­ple or two, and sev­er­al teem­ing inter­sec­tions, then blend at top speed!

The prod­uct may be a bit ear­split­ting at times, but that in itself is fit­ting giv­en the loca­tion. Thru Tokyo is a mar­velous audio-visu­al post­card from 21st-cen­tu­ry Edo, Japan.

Relat­ed Kuti­man Videos:

Kuti­man Mash­es Led Zep’s Black Dog: 80 Clips Stitched into One

The Moth­er of All Funk Chords

The Sounds of Jerusalem

Ayun Hal­l­i­day feels the trav­el bug bit­ing yet again. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Be His Guest: David Sedaris at Home in Rural West Sussex, England

in Architecture, Books, Life, Travel | October 20th, 2013

Note:  Watch the entire 25-minute inter­view here. There’s a brief intro­duc­tion in Dutch, after which the con­ver­sa­tion switch­es to Eng­lish.

Dutch TV jour­nal­ist Wim Brands looks a bit dour to be inhab­it­ing the role of World’s Luck­i­est Man, but that’s sure­ly how bazil­lions of David Sedaris fans will view him, wish­ing they too had been invit­ed to cozy up to their favorite author’s kitchen table. Par­tic­u­lar­ly since that table is sit­u­at­ed in the rus­tic, six­teenth-cen­tu­ry West Sus­sex house that pro­vid­ed the set­ting for “Com­pa­ny Man”, one of his more delight­ful New York­er sto­ries of late.

Sedaris has made a for­tune pass­ing him­self off as a self-involved fuss-pot, but in this episode of Boeken op Reis (Dutch for “Books on Tour”) he’s the per­fect host.

He sup­plies thought­ful respons­es to Brands’ unsmil­ing ques­tions and affa­bly points out the home­’s notable fea­tures, includ­ing off-kil­ter door­ways and a taxi­der­mied lap­dog (“We call him Casey because he’s in a case.”)

He brings a plas­tic bag on a stroll through the sur­round­ing coun­try­side in order to col­lect lit­ter  — an endear­ing rou­tine, even if it’s a scoop Brands must share with the BBC’s Clare Bald­ing.

Best of all, he oblig­es his guest with a cou­ple of live read­ings, the first from the afore­men­tioned  New York­er piece, the oth­er hav­ing to do with his youngest sis­ter’s sui­cide this sum­mer.

“I always fig­ure that what­ev­er most embar­rass­es you is some­thing that every­one can relate to,” he mus­es, effec­tive­ly sum­ming up the secret of his suc­cess. If you ever feel like Sedaris is over­do­ing the craven com­plain­er bit, this vis­it will set the record straight.

Watch the entire inter­view here. Non-Dutch speak­ers, please be advised that the seg­ment switch­es to Eng­lish once Brands sets the scene for his intend­ed audi­ence.

-Tip of the hat to Michael Ahn for the idea.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s teenage daugh­ter wrote David Sedaris a fan let­ter and David Sedaris sent a hand­writ­ten reply on a post­card. Classy!  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

David Sedaris and Ian Fal­con­er Intro­duce “Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk”

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Rocky’s Famous Trip up the Art Museum Steps Spoofed by the Pranksters of Improv Everywhere

in Comedy, Film, Theatre, Travel | October 11th, 2013

I believe some movies are so clas­sic, they should be con­sid­ered untouch­able, an opin­ion I wish more Broad­way pro­duc­ers shared.

Brace your­self. Rocky, Sylvester Stal­lone’s heart­warm­ing tale about a small-pota­toes box­er in 1970s Philadel­phia, has been turned into a musi­cal.

No! Why!? Adri­an!!!

It’s like­ly not as bad as I fear. Stal­lone him­self is co-pro­duc­ing, young direc­tor Alex Tim­bers is deserved­ly hot, and lyri­cist Lynn Ahrens is respon­si­ble, in large degree, for School­house Rock.

All the same, prank col­lec­tive Improv Every­where’s take on one of Rock­y’s most icon­ic scenes falls more square­ly with­in my com­fort zone. The first install­ment in the group’s week­ly Movies in Real Life series, this Rocky fea­tures looka­like come­di­an Dan Black run­ning through the streets of Philly, a crowd of kids tail­ing him on the final leg. (“So, uh, you have par­ents?” he gasps, atop the art muse­um steps.)

As with the annu­al No-Pants Sub­way Ride and many oth­er Improv Every­where stunts, a great deal of fun comes from the reac­tions of unsus­pect­ing passers­by. Some of my favorites are view­able in the prank’s Mis­sion Report, a fol­low up with less need to stick to the script. Still in char­ac­ter, Black demands roy­al­ty checks from street ven­dors sell­ing Rocky t‑shirts and screws with tourists pos­ing in front of the famed Rocky stat­ue. Small won­der Improv Every­where’s mot­to is “we cause scenes.”

For those in need of refresh­ment, here is the orig­i­nal:

The most recent Movies in Real Life fea­tures a boul­der chas­ing Indi­ana Jones through Cen­tral Park to the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. Tune in to the col­lec­tive’s Youtube chan­nel every Tues­day this fall for anoth­er fresh but faith­ful take on a famil­iar film.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

The Do’s and Don’ts of Improv Com­e­dy with Liam Nee­son, Ricky Ger­vais, Tina Fey, and Del Close

Whose Line Is It Any­way? The Com­plete Improv Series Now Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s most recent book is the graph­ic nov­el, Peanut . Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

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Synchronized, Timelapse Video Shows Train Traveling from London to Brighton in 1953, 1983 & 2013

in History, Travel | September 3rd, 2013

In 1953, the BBC filmed a train jour­ney from Lon­don to Brighton, “squeezed into just four min­utes.”  30 years lat­er, in 1983, they record­ed the same jour­ney again. And then for a third time in 2013. Above, you can watch all three jour­neys side by side. The videos are per­fect­ly in sync, which makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly easy to see what has changed — and what hasn’t — over the course of 60 years. You will see sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in the land­marks along the routes. But the biggest con­trast? It’s the peo­ple who get off of the train at the end. Enjoy the ride.
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The Atlas of True Names Restores Modern Cities to Their Middle Earth-ish Roots

in Life, Random, Travel | June 26th, 2013

atlas 2

I was born in the City of the Flow­land Peo­ple, made my way to Stink Onion upon reach­ing matu­ri­ty, then onward to New Yew Tree Vil­lage where I have lived for the last 217 moons.

Look up some of your key co-ordi­nates in The Atlas of True Names and you too can have a per­son­al his­to­ry as myth­ic-sound­ing as mine. The maps—for the UK, USA, Cana­da, and World—replace mod­ern geo­graph­i­cal names with the orig­i­nal ety­mo­log­i­cal roots of cities, coun­tries, and bod­ies of water, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Their web­site picks the “Sahara desert” to illus­trate the true name selec­tion process. Their cho­sen label “The Tawny One” has its basis in es-sahra, trans­lat­ed from the Ara­bic as “the fawn col­ored desert”. It would be inter­est­ing to learn how many pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tors lent a hand with the ety­mo­log­i­cal pars­ing. There are a lot of lan­guages in this world and we all know the hav­oc Google Trans­late can wreak.

Mar­ried car­tog­ra­phers (and Lord of the Rings fans) Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust acknowl­edge that there could be alter­nates to their trans­la­tions. This should come as a relief to the civic boost­ers of Philadel­phia. Quib­blers will no doubt enjoy tak­ing issue with Hormes and Peust’s choic­es. Hope­ful­ly, any result­ing inter­net brawls will take place on a higher—and dustier—plateau than those where vul­tures pick hap­less celebri­ties to shreds.

Order one of these maps and pack it along on your sum­mer road trip. Even if younger fam­i­ly mem­bers can’t be both­ered to learn how to nav­i­gate with­out a phone, the nar­ra­tive­ly rich names are sure to leav­en those long hours in the car. (How bad­ly do you have to go, Jason? Can you hold out until Table or should Dad­dy pull over in the Val­ley of the Dark­land Dweller?) 

It’s liv­ing his­to­ry in trav­el ver­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books includ­ing the increas­ing­ly obso­lete Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! and Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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Five Cultural Tours of Los Angeles

in Travel | May 9th, 2013

As an Open Cul­ture read­er, you sure­ly enjoy a vast range of inter­ests, and what serves as a more robust nexus of inter­ests than the mod­ern city? Each city pro­duces an infini­tude of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies in archi­tec­ture, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, and social psy­chol­o­gy. But even when you exam­ine the less obvi­ous­ly city-rel­e­vant intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits — lan­guage, film, lit­er­a­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, style — count­less more con­nec­tions reveal them­selves. Because I’ve found orga­niz­ing cul­tur­al inter­ests by city so fruit­ful, I offer you here a set of resources to do with Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. These are just a few of the count­less pos­si­ble per­cep­tions of the cap­i­tal of main­stream cin­e­ma, the ter­mi­nus of mankind’s west­ward push, the cre­ator and destroy­er of new urban forms, and above all the great divider of opin­ion. Archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham voic­es his own at the top of Reyn­er Ban­ham Loves Los Ange­les, a 1972 BBC tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary in which the archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an gives a per­son­al tour of the city: “I love the place with a pas­sion that goes beyond sense or rea­son.”

“They make movies here,” says CalArts pro­fes­sor Thom Ander­sen in the nar­ra­tion of Los Ange­les Plays Itself. “I live here. Some­times I think that gives me the right to crit­i­cize the way movies depict my city.” But he does much more than crit­i­cize in his video essay’s near­ly three-hour analy­sis of the roles Los Ange­les has played onscreen: as itself, as oth­er cities, and, most often, as no city in par­tic­u­lar. Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s Huell Hows­er Archive col­lects the late Cal­i­for­nia-explor­er’s non­fic­tion­al video jour­neys in places like Venice Beach, the ever-ris­ing down­town, and even in a heli­copter above the city. For a sim­i­lar­ly aer­i­al per­spec­tive, but a his­tor­i­cal one, watch this 1958 footage of Hol­ly­wood from above. And for a point of view more force­ful­ly expressed, look no fur­ther than Ice Cube’s cel­e­bra­tion of Los Ange­les as mid­cen­tu­ry design mec­ca, espe­cial­ly for the work of aes­thet­ic lumi­nar­ies (and Pow­ers of Ten film­mak­ers) Charles and Ray Eames. “A lot of peo­ple think L.A. is just eye­sore after eye­sore, full of mini-malls, palm trees and bill­boards,” he says. “So what? They don’t know the L.A. I know.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Climb Three of the World’s Highest Peaks on Google Street View

in Google, Photography, Travel | March 24th, 2013

Google Peak

What’s sur­pris­ing about Ever­est Base Camp is the col­or. It’s a flinty, gray place lit­tered with shards of Himalayan sand­stone and shale. Here and there appears a vivid green pool of alpine water. And then there’s the red, blue and green prayer flags hung by Himalayans to blow bless­ings in the wind.

Google Street View’s lat­est project, the World’s High­est Peaks, takes us to Ever­est and two oth­er moun­tains includ­ed in the Sev­en Summits—the high­est moun­tains on each of the sev­en con­ti­nents.

Teams of moun­taineers tot­ed dig­i­tal cam­eras on treks to the top of each moun­tain and inte­grat­ed their images into Google maps so we can trek along with them from the com­fort of our lap­tops, iPhones or Android devices. Like Google Street View’s Ocean gallery, the moun­tain images bring us to places we may nev­er see with our own eyes.

It’s easy to imag­ine the dry, cold cli­mate at Camp Col­era, where hik­ers wait for the weath­er to per­mit a climb of Aconagua, the high­est moun­tain in the Andes. The views of Tan­za­nia from Arrow Glac­i­er are breath­tak­ing. Hik­ers camp here before mak­ing the treach­er­ous ascent to Uhu­ru—the “rooftop of Africa” and the sum­mit of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro.

One of the things Google does real­ly well is cre­ate gal­leries of images that are the kind we might take our­selves, not fil­tered-lens pro­fes­sion­al shots that belong on cal­en­dars. We see moun­taineers rest­ing and hang­ing out at the frosty Casa de Piedra, on the way up to Aconagua, hik­ers pic­nick­ing at Lemosho Glades as they switch from jeep to foot on the climb up Kil­i­man­jaro, and the weird, aban­doned diesel bar­rels that serve as shel­ter for folks climb­ing Mount Elbrus in Rus­sia.

As usu­al, Google lets us in on the process of col­lect­ing all these images with a fun blog writ­ten by the pho­tog­ra­phers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

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

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Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Television Travels Online. It’s California Gold!

in Television, Travel | February 21st, 2013

When tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er Huell Hows­er passed away last month, we South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans real­ized just how far his per­sona reached. The cliché “larg­er than life” seems, in this light, almost apt; it describes his famous­ly vol­u­ble enthu­si­asm, larg­er than the broad­ly local life he explored on cam­era. Though fol­low­ers iden­ti­fy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold as Howser’s flag­ship series, he host­ed spe­cial­ized ones as well, such as Down­town, focus­ing on Los Ange­les’ his­toric core, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mis­sions (sub­ject obvi­ous), and Road Trip, which took him far­ther afield. Above, you’ll find an episode of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold shot in Palm Springs. Hows­er hap­pened to own a home out there, but more to the point, so did Frank Sina­tra; it’s the Chair­man of the Board­’s house that Hows­er devotes his con­sid­er­able curios­i­ty to walk­ing through and find­ing out every­thing about. Below, you can join him for a look at Vin­cent Price’s art col­lec­tion on a Vis­it­ing… broad­cast that con­tains an inter­view Hows­er record­ed with Price back in the eight­ies.

“I don’t have an agent,” said Hows­er in a 2009 Los Ange­les Times pro­file. “I don’t have a man­ag­er, I don’t have a press agent, I don’t have a wardrobe guy, a make­up guy, a park­ing space, a dress­ing room. It’s basi­cal­ly me and a cam­era­man and an edi­tor and a cou­ple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talk­ing to peo­ple on the street and have it on the air tonight.” You can watch all these shows on Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Huell Hows­er Archive; just click on a series title under the “Shows” col­umn, then through to each episode’s indi­vid­ual post. For a pub­lic tele­vi­sion icon, Hows­er had a pro­duc­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty ide­al­ly suit­ed for the inter­net, domain of the cheap and cheer­ful — well, domain of the cheap, any­way. “We have shrugged our way into a world where every­one is sup­posed to be a crit­ic of every­thing, all the time,” actor Thomas Lennon wrote in a remem­brance titled “Why Huell Hows­er Was the Oppo­site of the Inter­net.” “Huell, on the oth­er hand, would get into his car, dri­ve for hours, and show us things… just so he could tell us how won­der­ful they were.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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