Scenes of New York City in 1945 Colorized & Revived with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History, Travel | October 28th, 2021

Are you irked when a movie or video you’re attempt­ing to enjoy is con­stant­ly inter­rupt­ed by the com­men­tary of a chat­ty fel­low audi­ence mem­ber?

If so, don’t watch archivist Rick Prelinger’s 2017 assem­blage, Lost Land­scapes of New York, in the com­pa­ny of a New York­er.

Unlike Open Cul­ture favorite NASS’s five minute sam­ple of Lost Land­scapes of New York, above, which adds col­or and ambi­ent audio to the unvar­nished found footage,  Prelinger — described by the New York Times’ Manohla Dar­gis as a “col­lec­tor extraordinaire…one of the great, under­sung his­to­ri­ans of 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma” — rel­ish­es such mouthi­ness from the audi­ence. His black and white com­pi­la­tions are most­ly silent.

If you are a New York­er, view that as an invi­ta­tion here.

For every­one else, on behalf of New York­ers every­where, we con­cede that our con­fi­dent utter­ances may indeed dri­ve you out of your gourd…

Tourists with just one vis­it to their name can be for­giv­en for flaunt­ing their per­son­al brush­es with such hall of famers as the Brook­lyn Bridge and the Wash­ing­ton Square Arch, but there’s no com­pet­ing with long time res­i­dents’ inti­mate knowl­edge of the city’s geog­ra­phy.

It’s snob­bery of a type, but have pity on us long time res­i­dents, who know we will be viewed as sub­or­di­nates by those who were born with­in the five Bor­oughs.

(We sub­mit that there are lay­ers to this…a native of, say, the Hoosier State, who can remem­ber the orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion should be con­sid­ered to have at least as much street cred as a mil­len­ni­al whose  birth in Brook­lyn, Harlem or the West Vil­lage con­fers native New York­er sta­tus.)

How­ev­er you slice it, con­sid­er this fair warn­ing that some of us, view­ing Lost Land­scapes of New York in your com­pa­ny, will not be able to stop our­selves from tri­umphant­ly crow­ing, “That’s 8th between 43rd and 44th!”

Again, it’s some­thing Prelinger courts in local live screen­ings of his Lost Land­scapes series. 

The phe­nom­e­non is not lim­it­ed to New York.

Be the set­ting San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les, or Detroit, he views audi­ence out­bursts as the sound­tracks to his most­ly silent, non-nar­ra­tive pas­tich­es drawn from his vast archive of vin­tage home movies, gov­ern­ment-pro­duced films, and back­ground footage shot with an eye toward com­posit­ing into a fea­ture film.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with The Essay Review’s Lucy Schiller, he remarked:

I’ve dis­cov­ered that home movies become some­thing else when blown up to the­ater-screen size. The change of scale pro­vokes a role change in the audi­ence, who with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly expect­ing it become more than sim­ple com­men­ta­tors. They turn into ethno­g­ra­phers, notic­ing and often remark­ing on every vis­i­ble detail of kin­ship, word and ges­ture and every inter­per­son­al exchange. They also respond as cul­tur­al geo­g­ra­phers, call­ing out streets and neigh­bor­hoods and build­ings, read­ing signs aloud, repeat­ing trade­names and brands and mark­ing extinct details in the cityscape. If I could cap­ture them (and I gen­er­al­ly can­not, because it is hard to intel­li­gi­bly record the voic­es of hun­dreds of peo­ple in one room), it would play back like an urban research project dis­trib­uted through a crowd of inves­ti­ga­tors. Each suc­cess­ful iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, each nam­ing achieved, is an endor­phin trig­ger.

Prelinger is hap­py to play fast and loose with chrono­log­i­cal order, scram­bling peri­od fash­ions, and col­or and black-and-white stock. This crazy quilt approach is in step with his resis­tance to con­struct­ing nar­ra­tives (“the curse of con­tem­po­rary doc­u­men­tary”) and admi­ra­tion for the way enthu­si­as­tic ama­teurs’ footage ren­ders “caste dis­tinc­tions between ani­mals and humans, between places and their inhab­i­tants” moot:

I am much less inter­est­ed in the minu­ti­ae of local his­to­ry than I am in the process of day­light­ing it, in the rela­tion­ship of his­to­ry and con­tem­po­rary life.

His approach allows those of us who live or have lived here to rev­el in New York City’s long stand­ing capac­i­ty for rein­ven­tion.

Like the anony­mous tide of human­i­ty bustling along our side­walks (and dart­ing into traf­fic, mid-block), the mar­quees, restau­rant names and words on the deliv­ery trucks aren’t fixed. We claim to hate it, but philoso­phers might sug­gest it’s what keeps us engaged.

You won’t find many street ven­dors hawk­ing frumpy cot­ton undies these days, but there are plen­ty of cor­ners where you can buy fruit and veg… and iPhone cas­es, ear­buds, and COVID-19 era face masks.

As excit­ing as it is to suc­cess­ful­ly peg the quin­tes­sen­tial­ly New York things that remain, there’s an equal thrill to rec­og­niz­ing and shout­ing out the things that don’t, espe­cial­ly if there’s a sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al con­nec­tion.

It makes us feel like we’re notable, con­tribut­ing in some way.

You con­tribute, too, by watch­ing Lost Land­scapes of New York (2017) here, while simul­tanous­ly keep­ing your eyes peeled for grat­i­fy­ing­ly well attend­ed, high­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed live screen­ings.

If vin­tage ama­teur footage you’re in pos­ses­sion of is gath­er­ing dust, con­sid­er donat­ing it to expand Prelinger’s archive, already some 60,000 films strong.

Watch Prelinger’s Lost Land­scapes com­pi­la­tions of oth­er cities here and here (see episode 7 of his San Fran­cis­co series above).

Explore his mas­sive archive on the Inter­net Archive.

And if you want to prac­tice sound­ing like a “real New York­er,” head back up to the top of the page, skip to the end, and inform every­one with­in earshot that that build­ing is the old James A. Far­ley Post Office at 32nd and 8th:

“Now it’s Moyni­han Train Hall! It opened on Jan­u­ary 1! It’s part of Penn Sta­tion! Don’t for­get to look up inside the 33rd street entrance, or you’ll miss Kehinde Wiley’s incred­i­ble stained-glass ceil­ing! And if you want a snack for the ride, you should hit H‑Mart on 32nd just east of Gree­ley Square!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breath­tak­ing Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

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

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William Shatner in Tears After Becoming the Oldest Person in Space: ‘I’m So Filled with Emotion … I Hope I Never Recover from This”

in Travel | October 14th, 2021

Yes­ter­day Star Trek’s William Shat­ner, now 90 years old, final­ly became a Rock­et Man, tak­ing a trip to space. And upon his return he said: “I hope I nev­er recov­er from this.” “I’m so filled with emo­tion about what just hap­pened. It’s extra­or­di­nary, extra­or­di­nary. It’s so much larg­er than me and life. It hasn’t got any­thing to do with the lit­tle green men and the blue orb. It has to do with the enor­mi­ty and the quick­ness and the sud­den­ness of life and death.” “To see the blue col­or whip by you, and now you’re star­ing into black­ness … every­body in the world needs to do this. Every­body in the world needs to see this.” What. A. Trip.

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 Con­tent

A Cult Clas­sic: William Shat­ner Sings Elton John’s “Rock­et Man” at 1978 Sci­Fi Awards Show

Watch City Out of Time, A Short Trib­ute to Venice, Nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner in 1959

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

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Behold the Photographs of John Thomson, the First Western Photographer to Travel Widely Through China (1870s)

in History, Photography, Travel | October 13th, 2021

In the ear­ly 1860s, a few West­ern­ers had seen Chi­na — but near­ly all of them had seen it for them­selves. The still-new medi­um of pho­tog­ra­phy had yet to make images of every­where avail­able to view­ers every­where else, which meant an oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el­ing prac­ti­tion­ers like John Thom­son. “The son of a tobac­co spin­ner and shop­keep­er,” says BBC.com, ” he was appren­ticed to an Edin­burgh opti­cal and sci­en­tif­ic instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er where he learned the basics of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

In 1862 Thom­son sailed from Lei­th “with a cam­era and a portable dark room. He set up in Sin­ga­pore before explor­ing the ancient civ­i­liza­tions of Chi­na, Thai­land — then known as Siam — and Cam­bo­dia.” It is for his exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy of Chi­na in the late 1860s and ear­ly 1870s that he’s best known today.

First lav­ish­ly pub­lished in a series of books titled Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na and Its Peo­ple (now avail­able to read free online at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library: vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three, vol­ume four), they now con­sti­tute some of the ear­li­est and rich­est direct visu­al records of Chi­nese land­scapes, cityscapes, and soci­ety as they were in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The first West­ern pho­tog­ra­ph­er to trav­el wide­ly through the length and breadth of Chi­na,” Thom­son brought his cam­era on jour­neys “far more exten­sive than those under­tak­en by most West­ern­ers of his gen­er­a­tion,” extend­ing “beyond the rel­a­tive com­fort and safe­ty of the coastal treaty ports.” Those words come from schol­ar of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Allen Hock­ley, whose five-part visu­al essay “John Thom­son’s Chi­na” at MIT Visu­al­iz­ing Cul­tures pro­vides a detailed overview and his­tor­i­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of Thom­son’s work in Asia.

Thom­son’s pho­tographs, writes Hock­ley, “fall into two broad cat­e­gories: scenic views and types. Views encom­passed both nat­ur­al land­scapes and built envi­ron­ments. They could be panoram­ic, tak­ing in large swaths of scenery, or they might high­light spe­cif­ic nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na or indi­vid­ual struc­tures.”

Types “focused on the man­ners and cus­toms of Chi­nese peo­ple and tend­ed to high­light the defin­ing fea­tures of gen­der, age, class, eth­nic­i­ty, and occu­pa­tion.” A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, both Thom­son’s views and types have giv­en schol­ars in a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines much to dis­cuss.

“It is clear from his com­men­tary to Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na that, how­ev­er sym­pa­thet­ic he was towards Chi­nese peo­ple, he could often be supe­ri­or and high-hand­ed,” writes Andrew Hiller at Visu­al­iz­ing Chi­na. “If Thom­son nev­er sought to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of Britain’s pres­ence, his atti­tude towards Chi­na was ambiva­lent. Whilst crit­i­cal of what he saw as the cor­rup­tion and obfus­ca­tion of Qing offi­cials, he nev­er­the­less could see the country’s poten­tial.”

Thom­son also helped oth­ers to see that poten­tial — or at least those who could afford to buy his books, whose prices matched the qual­i­ty of their pro­duc­tion. But today, thanks to online archives like His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs of Chi­na and Well­come Col­lec­tion, they’re free for every­one to behold. Chi­na itself has become much more acces­si­ble since Thom­son’s day, of course, but it’s famous­ly a much dif­fer­ent place than it was 25 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. The land through which he trav­eled — and of which he took so many of the very ear­li­est pho­tographs — is now infi­nite­ly less acces­si­ble to us than it ever was to his fel­low West­ern­ers of the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Hear a lec­ture on Thom­son’s pho­tog­ra­phy in Chi­na from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don here.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

How Vivid­ly Col­orized Pho­tos Helped Intro­duce Japan to the World in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

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 or on Face­book.

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Japanese Guided Tours of the Louvre, Versailles, the Marais & Other Famous French Places (English Subtitles Included)

in Art, Travel | October 1st, 2021

“As tourist sea­son here in Paris winds to a close and the air once again becomes crisp, fresh, and new,” writes The Atlantic’s Chelsea Fagan, “we must unfor­tu­nate­ly acknowl­edge that it does not end with­out a few casu­al­ties.” That piece was pub­lished at this time of year, albeit a decade ago, when “tourist sea­son” any­where had a bit more bus­tle. But the world­wide down­turn in trav­el has­n’t done away with the object of her con­cern: Paris Syn­drome, “a col­lec­tion of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal symp­toms expe­ri­enced by first-time vis­i­tors real­iz­ing that Paris isn’t, in fact, what they thought it would be.” This dis­or­der, one often hears, is espe­cial­ly preva­lent among the Japan­ese.

Japan, writes Fagan, is rich with por­tray­als of the French cap­i­tal as a city “filled with thin, gor­geous, unbe­liev­ably rich cit­i­zens. The three stops of a Parisian’s day, accord­ing to the Japan­ese media, are a cafe, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and Louis Vuit­ton.” To some­one who knows it only through such images, a con­fronta­tion with the real Paris — with its ser­vice-indus­try work­ers who treat tourists “like some­thing they recent­ly scraped from the bot­tom of their shoes” to its sub­way cars “filled with grop­ing cou­ples, scream­ing chil­dren, and unimag­in­ably loud accor­dion music” — can trig­ger “acute delu­sions, hal­lu­ci­na­tions, dizzi­ness, sweat­ing, and feel­ings of per­se­cu­tion.”

Not all Japan­ese vis­i­tors to Paris, of course, come down with Paris Syn­drome. Some plunge into an even more over­whelm­ing con­di­tion of love for the City of Light, as might well have been the case with the Youtu­ber France Guide Naka­mu­ra. “I stud­ied art his­to­ry at a uni­ver­si­ty in France and was amazed at how inter­est­ing it was,” he writes on his about page. “When you study art, there is a moment of rev­e­la­tion! Some­thing that was not vis­i­ble until now sud­den­ly appears. It is the ‘plea­sure’ of ‘know­ing’ and ‘under­stand­ing.’ I think this is the ‘core’ of tourism.” It is on that basis that he cre­ates videos like the hour-long Lou­vre tour above, a smooth first-per­son walk through the world’s most famous muse­um that he nar­rates with a high degree of artic­u­la­cy, knowl­edge, and enthu­si­asm.

Expe­ri­enced in lead­ing tours for his coun­try­men, he describes all his videos in his native Japan­ese. But in the case of his Lou­vre tour, you can turn on Eng­lish sub­ti­tles by click­ing the CC but­ton in the tool­bar at the bot­tom of the video. His oth­er pop­u­lar Eng­lish-sub­ti­tled videos include walks through Mont­martre, Marais, and the Latin Quar­ter, as well as cer­tain excur­sions out­side of Paris, such as this vis­it to Ver­sailles. If you do speak Japan­ese, you’ll also be able to enjoy Naka­mu­ra’s many pre­vi­ous videos dig­ging into the nature, his­to­ry, and cul­tur­al con­text of oth­er things French, from neigh­bor­hoods to works of art to con­ve­nience stores, but not, as yet, the Eif­fel Tow­er — or for that mat­ter, Louis Vuit­ton.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Long Vir­tu­al Tour of the Lou­vre in Three High-Def­i­n­i­tion Videos

The Louvre’s Entire Col­lec­tion Goes Online: View and Down­load 480,00 Works of Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

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 or on Face­book.

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Watch Anthony Bourdain’s First Food-and-Travel Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

in Food & Drink, Television, Travel | August 24th, 2021

At the time of his death in 2018, Antho­ny Bour­dain was quite pos­si­bly the most famous cook in the world. With­out ques­tion he held the title of the most famous cook-trav­el­er, a sta­tus rest­ing pri­mar­i­ly on No Reser­va­tions and Parts Unknown, the tele­vi­sion shows he host­ed on the Trav­el Chanel and CNN, respec­tive­ly. But it all began with A Cook’s Tour, which the Food Net­work orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 2002 and 2003. That series, Bour­dain’s very first, took him from Japan to Moroc­co to Mex­i­co to Aus­tralia to Thai­land — and through many points in between — in search of the world’s most stim­u­lat­ing eat­ing expe­ri­ences.

Now A Cook’s Tour has come avail­able free to watch on Youtube, thanks to the stream­ing chan­nel GoTrav­el­er (who also offer the show through their own ser­vice).

A Por­tuguese slaugh­ter­ing-and-roast­ing par­ty; vod­ka-fueled ice fish­ing in St. Peters­burg; an explo­ration of the Amer­i­can “Bar­be­cue Tri­an­gle” con­sti­tut­ed by Kansas City, Hous­ton, and North Car­oli­na; and a best-faith effort to lose him­self in Chi­ang Mai: if you caught these or oth­er of Bour­dain’s ear­ly inter­na­tion­al culi­nary adven­tures those near­ly twen­ty years ago, you can relive them, and if you missed out, you can enjoy them for the first time.

Dur­ing the launch phase of his rise to fame (after decades of restau­rant work and years of writ­ing, an effort that first pro­duced a cou­ple of food-themed mur­der-mys­tery nov­els), Bour­dain man­aged to tap into a new wave of gas­tro­nom­ic inter­est then ris­ing in Amer­i­ca. He did so with a street-smart sense of humor that appealed even to view­ers with no par­tic­u­lar invest­ment in the world of cook­ing and din­ing, as long as they had an inter­est in the world itself. With A Cook’s Tour, he took food tele­vi­sion out of the kitchen — way out of the kitchen — and over the eigh­teen years since its con­clu­sion, the series’ influ­ence has become so per­va­sive as almost to be invis­i­ble. Antho­ny Bour­dain may be gone, but parts of his per­son­al­i­ty live on in every high-pro­file trav­el­er out there cook­ing, eat­ing, and get­ting lost today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show Raw Craft, Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Antho­ny Bour­dain Talks About the Big Break That Changed His Life — at Age 44

Life Lessons from Antho­ny Bour­dain: How He Devel­oped His Iron Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Achieved Cre­ative Free­dom & Learned from Fail­ure

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

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 or on Face­book.

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360 Degree Virtual Tours of the Hagia Sophia

in Architecture, Art, History, Travel | August 23rd, 2021

Last year, when Turk­ish pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Hagia Sophia would be recon­vert­ed into a mosque, he assured a con­cerned UNESCO that changes to the 1,500-year-old for­mer cathe­dral-turned-mosque would have “no neg­a­tive impact” on its sta­tus as World Her­itage Site. “A state must make sure that no mod­i­fi­ca­tion under­mines the out­stand­ing uni­ver­sal val­ue of a site list­ed on its ter­ri­to­ry,” the world body has said. Claims to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, the “uni­ver­sal val­ue” of the site does seem to have been under­mined.

Des­ig­nat­ed a muse­um by the sec­u­lar Turk­ish Repub­lic in 1934, the site con­tains hun­dreds of years of his­to­ry for both the Chris­t­ian and Islam­ic worlds, and the shared her­itage between them in the shift­ing mix of peo­ples who con­quered, set­tled, and moved through the city first called Byzan­tium, then Con­stan­tino­ple, then Istan­bul.

“The World Her­itage site was at the cen­tre of both the Chris­t­ian Byzan­tine and Mus­lim Ottoman empires and is today one of Turkey’s most vis­it­ed mon­u­ments,” Reuters not­ed last year.

The mosque is open to the pub­lic for prayers, and any­one can vis­it. What they’ll find — as you can see in this recent tour video — is ugly green car­pet­ing cov­er­ing the floor, and screens, pan­els, and ply­wood obscur­ing the Byzan­tine Chris­t­ian art. (The same thing was done in the small­er Hagia Sophia in the city of Tra­b­zon.) These changes are not only dis­tress­ing for UNESCO, but also for lovers of art and his­to­ry around the world, myself includ­ed, who had hoped to one day see the mil­len­nia-and-a-half of blend­ed reli­gious and aes­thet­ic tra­di­tions for them­selves.

It’s pos­si­ble Turk­ish pol­i­tics will allow Hagia Sophia to return to its sta­tus as a muse­um in the future, restor­ing its “uni­ver­sal val­ue” for world his­to­ry and cul­ture. If not, we can still vis­it the space vir­tu­al­ly — as it was until last year — in the 360 degree video views above, both of which allow you to look around in any direc­tion as they play. You can also swiv­el around a spher­i­cal panoram­ic image at 360 cities.

The BBC video at the top nar­rates some of the sig­nif­i­cant fea­tures of the incred­i­ble build­ing, once the largest church in the world, includ­ing its “col­ored mar­ble from around the Roman Empire” and “10,000 square meters of gold mosa­ic.” Learn much more about Hagia Sophia his­to­ry in the video above from Khan Academy’s exec­u­tive direc­tors (and for­mer deans of art and his­to­ry), Dr. Steven Zuck­er and Dr. Beth Har­ris.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

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

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

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

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

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Banksy’s Great British Spraycation: The Artist Spray Paints England’s Favorite Summer-Holiday Destinations

in Art, Travel | August 18th, 2021

“We’re all going on a sum­mer hol­i­day / no more work­ing for a week or two,” sings Cliff Richard in one of his most famous songs. “Fun and laugh­ter on a sum­mer hol­i­day / no more wor­ries for me or you.” Like The Bea­t­les’ ultra-north­ern “When I’m Six­ty-Four,” with its cot­tage rentals on the Isle of Wight (“if it’s not too dear”), Richard’s “Sum­mer Hol­i­day” dates from a time in Britain when tourism was, as a rule, domes­tic. And so it has become again over the past cou­ple of years, what with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and its severe cur­tail­ment of inter­na­tion­al trav­el. Ever tuned in to cur­rent events, the pseu­do­ny­mous graf­fi­ti artist Banksy has tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go on a “Great British Spray­ca­tion.”

This was a bus­man­’s hol­i­day for Banksy, who appears to have had a detailed plan of exact­ly which east-coast resort towns to vis­it, and exact­ly where in each of them to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly cre­ate anoth­er of his sig­na­ture pieces of high-con­trast satir­i­cal art.

“The sten­ciled pieces are often inte­grat­ed with repur­posed objects from the area, high­light­ing the pre-planned and per­fect­ly posi­tioned nature of the work,” writes Design­boom’s Kat Barandy. “In Low­est­oft, a mas­sive seag­ull dines on a box of ‘chips’ ren­dered by a dump­ster filled with insu­la­tion mate­r­i­al. Near­by a child is depict­ed build­ing a sand­cas­tle with a crow­bar, front­ed by a mound of sand on the pave­ment.”

That work, Arts Uni­ver­si­ty Bournemouth pro­fes­sor Paul Gough tells the BBC for its guide to the Great British Spray­ca­tion, may be a ref­er­ence to the 1968 Paris stu­dent upris­ing and its slo­gan “Sous les pavés, la plage!” You can see these and oth­er fresh works doc­u­ment­ed in the video at the top of the post, which also catch­es the reac­tions of pass­ing locals and tourists. “That looks all like mind­less van­dal­ism, that,” says one woman, artic­u­lat­ing a com­mon assess­ment of Banksy’s artis­tic state­ments. “It looks a lot bet­ter from far away than it does when you get this close,” says anoth­er. But the most telling com­ment, in a vari­ety of respects, comes from a man regard­ing Banksy’s addi­tion of a car­toon­ish tongue and ice cream cone to the stat­ue of 19th-cen­tu­ry may­or Fred­er­ick Sav­age in King’s Lynn: “Yeah, some­one’s done that, ain’t they?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Banksy Strikes Again in Lon­don & Urges Every­one to Wear Masks

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

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 or on Face­book.

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The Sound of Subways Around the World: A Global Collection of Subway Door Closing Announcements, Beeps & Chimes

in Life, Technology, Travel | August 16th, 2021

The next L train is now arriv­ing on the Man­hat­tan bound track. Please stand away from the plat­form edge. 

Thus begins Brook­lyn sax­o­phone-per­cus­sion trio Moon Hooch’s “Num­ber 9.”

Any­one who’s tak­en the train into the city from Bush­wick or Williams­burg two or three times, you should be able to chant along with no trou­ble.

“Mind the gap!” is a sen­ti­men­tal favorite of both native Lon­don­ers and first time vis­i­tors nav­i­gat­ing The Tube with fresh­ly pur­chased Oys­ter Cards.

Res­i­dents of Mon­tre­al are just­ly proud that their Metro’s clos­ing doors sig­nal is a near twin of Aaron Copland’s “Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.”

Civ­il engi­neer Ted Green has been doc­u­ment­ing the mass tran­sit sounds that cue pas­sen­gers that the sub­way doors are about to close since 2004, when he logged 26 sec­onds on the Pic­cadil­ly Line in Lon­don’s Rus­sell Square Sta­tion:

In 2003 I used the Rus­sell Square sta­tion dai­ly for a week and it’s the first announce­ment that caught my atten­tion… Back then the Pic­cadil­ly Line did not have on-train sta­tion and door clos­ing announce­ments, it had the beeps, but the sta­tions in cen­tral Lon­don had auto­mat­ic announce­ments from plat­form speak­ers aimed at the open train door. Once the Pic­cadil­ly Line received on-train announce­ments a few years lat­er, this announce­ment was phased out.

Over the course of a decade, the project has expand­ed to encom­pass announce­ments on sub­ur­ban rail, rail­ways, trams, and light rail.

His trav­els have tak­en him to Asia, Aus­tralia, Europe, and North Amer­i­ca, where curios­i­ty com­pels him to doc­u­ment what hap­pens dur­ing “dwell time,” the brief peri­od when a train is dis­gorg­ing some rid­ers and tak­ing on oth­ers.

Whether the canned record­ing is ver­bal or non-ver­bal, the intent is to keep things mov­ing smooth­ly, and pre­vent injuries, though pas­sen­gers can become blasé, attempt­ing to force their way on or off by thrust­ing a limb between clos­ing doors at the absolute last minute.

Green’s incred­i­bly pop­u­lar video com­pi­la­tions aren’t near­ly so har­row­ing.

As he told The New York Times’ Sophie Haigney and Denise Lu:

I think the appeal is the sim­plic­i­ty. You won­der, how can there be so many dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of beeps? And then you lis­ten, and they’re all so dif­fer­ent.

The pan­dem­ic only increased his audi­ence, as locked down com­muters found them­selves long­ing for the sound­track of nor­mal life.

It’s the same impulse that led soft­ware devel­op­er Evan Lewis to make an app of New York City sub­way sounds.

For those who want to bone up on their lines, infor­ma­tion design­er Ilya Bir­man, author of Design­ing Tran­sit Maps, has script­ed lists of Lon­don Under­ground and New York City sub­way announce­ments.

And Brook­lyn-based Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty work­er Fred Argoff’s zine Watch the Clos­ing Doors ush­ered civil­ians behind the scenes, some­times explor­ing oth­er cities’ sub­way sys­tems or, in the case of Cincin­nati, lack there­of.

Read­ers, do you have a fond­ness for a par­tic­u­lar under­ground sound? Tell us what and why in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

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

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

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