NASA & Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Record Cosmic Sounds of the Universe on New Album

in Music, Science | July 3rd, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured UC San­ta Cruz’s new Grate­ful Dead Archive Online. There you’ll find a wealth of mate­ri­als about the band from their incep­tion in 1965 until their dis­band­ment in 1995. But over the past 17 years, the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Dead have pur­sued all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing projects, musi­cal and oth­er­wise. Mick­ey Hart, the group’s drum­mer between 1967 and 1971 and again between 1974 to the end, has put out a par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al new album that takes its basic mate­ri­als from the heav­ens. As both a musi­cian and musi­col­o­gist, Hart has estab­lished a prece­dent for such son­ic exper­i­ments. Craft­ing his 1989 album Music to Be Born By, he record­ed his yet-unborn son’s heart­beat with­in the womb — the most nat­ur­al of all per­cus­sion, you might say — and record­ed tracks on top of it. For his lat­est record, Mys­teri­um Tremen­dum, he lis­tened not to the core of a human being but as far in the oth­er direc­tion from human­i­ty as pos­si­ble, col­lect­ing and com­pos­ing with “cos­mic sounds” made in out­er space.

To make music like this, you need some unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tors. Hart went to NASA, Penn State, and the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, work­ing with sci­en­tists like George Smoot, win­ner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Math­er. They helped con­vert light, radio waves, and oth­er elec­tro­mat­ic radi­a­tion into sound waves that Hart and his band could put to musi­cal use. After get­ting a sam­ple of the result­ing extrater­res­tri­al grooves in the videos above, you might con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to this recent inter­view with Hart on KQED’s Forum. Why go to all the trou­ble of sam­pling the bil­lons-of-years-old sounds of the infi­nite uni­verse? Because the Big Bang, Hart thinks, marked the very first beat. “Four words: it’s the rhythm, stu­pid,” he explains. “That’s what I always say to any­one, and myself as well. It all goes back to that. We are rhythm machines, embed­ded in a uni­verse of rhythm.” Spo­ken like a true drum­mer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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Amelia Earhart: In Her Own Words

in History | July 2nd, 2012

It was 75 years ago today that Amelia Earhart van­ished. The famous Amer­i­can fli­er and her nav­i­ga­tor, Fred Noo­nan, took off on July 2, 1937 from Lae, Papua New Guinea in a cus­tom-made Lock­heed Elec­tra 10E air­plane on the most per­ilous leg of their attempt­ed round-the-world jour­ney.

Their goal was to reach tiny How­land Island in the cen­tral Pacif­ic Ocean, more than 2,500 miles from Lae. As Earhart and Noo­nan neared the end of their 20-hour flight (it was still July 2–they had crossed the Inter­na­tion­al Date­line) they planned to make con­tact with the U.S. Coast Guard cut­ter Itas­ca, sta­tioned just off the island, and use radio sig­nals to guide their way in. How­land Island is only a half mile wide and a mile and a half long. The com­mu­ni­ca­tions crew of the Itas­ca heard sev­er­al radio trans­mis­sions from Earhart, but for some rea­son she and Noo­nan were appar­ent­ly unable to hear the ship’s respons­es. “We must be on you,” Earhart said, “but we can­not see you. Fuel is run­ning low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are fly­ing at 1,000 feet.” They nev­er made it.

The pre­vail­ing assump­tion is that Earhart and Noo­nan sim­ply ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacif­ic. But there is some evi­dence to sug­gest they may have made it to Gard­ner Island (now called Niku­maro­ro), some 350 nau­ti­cal miles south­east of How­land. Tomor­row an expe­di­tion to Niku­maro­ro will set out from Hawaii on a mis­sion to explore the ocean floor around the small island, search­ing for evi­dence of Earhart’s plane. Expe­di­tion orga­niz­ers hope to final­ly solve the mys­tery. In the mean­time you can learn more about Earhart’s extra­or­di­nary achieve­ments, includ­ing her tri­umphant 1932 solo trans-Atlantic flight, by lis­ten­ing to Earhart her­self (above) in a fas­ci­nat­ing news­reel. And below you can watch the very last footage of Earhart, made as she and Noo­nan took off from Papua New Guinea on that fate­ful day exact­ly 75 years ago.

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The History of Philosophy Visualized

in Philosophy | July 2nd, 2012

Simon Rap­er at Drunks & Lamp­posts has com­posed a data visu­al­iza­tion of the rela­tions of influ­ence among philoso­phers. This was put togeth­er to demon­strate Rap­er’s data extrac­tion algo­rithm; he col­lect­ed the con­tents of all the “influ­enced by” fields on Wikipedia, dis­play­ing each philoso­pher as a node con­nect­ed to all oth­er philoso­phers that he or she influ­enced. The more con­nec­tions, the big­ger the node. The result is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and an inter­est­ing touch­stone for phi­los­o­phy fans.

Who was more impor­tant, Edmund Husserl or Jean-Paul Sartre? Well, you may not have heard of Husserl, but the size of his node is a bit big­ger than Sartre’s, so accord­ing to the graph, he’s had more of an influ­ence on the pro­fes­sion. The fact that Husser­l’s hey­day was thir­ty years ear­li­er than Sartre’s may explain that fact, but as Mark De Sil­va at the New York Times Opin­ion­ater points out, it’s also unclear how well these “influ­enced by” rela­tions in Wikipedia cor­re­late with real influ­ences in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Rap­er’s graph seems to pro­vide an excel­lent start for pon­der­ing the ques­tion. More graphs by his­tor­i­cal peri­od can be found here.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er appears on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, offer­ing live­ly, in-depth intro­duc­tions to Husserl, Sartre, and many oth­er fig­ures in phi­los­o­phy.

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A History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

in Music | July 2nd, 2012

Give the tal­ent­ed Alex Chad­wick 12 min­utes, and he’ll give you A Brief His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll, with each defin­ing moment rep­re­sent­ed by a famous gui­tar riff. Our jour­ney starts in 1953, with “Mr. Sand­man” by Chet Atkins. Pret­ty soon, and quite seam­less­ly, we get to The Bea­t­les and The Rolling Stones, Hen­drix and Led Zep­pelin, Queen and The Ramones, and even­tu­al­ly some more con­tem­po­rary pair­ings — Green Day and White Stripes. The video is spon­sored by the Chica­go Music Exchange, a store spe­cial­iz­ing in vin­tage gear, like the $32,995 1958 Fend­er Strat played in the clip. A full list of riffs appears below the jump.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

 

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UC Santa Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grateful Dead Archive is Now Online

in Archives, Internet Archive, Music | July 2nd, 2012

“They’re not the best at what they do,” said respect­ed rock pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham of the Grate­ful Dead. “They’re the only ones that do what they do.” The band devel­oped such an idio­syn­crat­ic musi­cal style and per­son­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that their legion of devot­ed fans, known as “Dead­heads,” tend­ed to fol­low them every­where they toured. The Dead with­stood more than their fair share of clas­sic-rock tur­bu­lence in the thir­ty years from their for­ma­tion in 1965, but did­n’t dis­solve until the 1995 death of found­ing mem­ber and unof­fi­cial front­man Jer­ry Gar­cia. The bereft Dead­heads, still in need of a con­stant flow of their eclec­tic, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, psy­che­del­ic-tra­di­tion­al, jam-inten­sive sound of choice, took a few dif­fer­ent paths: some began fol­low­ing oth­er, com­pa­ra­ble groups; some would go on to rely on acts formed by ex-Dead mem­bers, like Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s Furthur; some made it their life’s mis­sion to col­lect every­thing in the band’s incom­pa­ra­bly vast col­lec­tion of demos, live record­ings, and son­ic mis­cel­lany.

Grate­ful Dead com­pletists now have anoth­er source of solace in the Grate­ful Dead Archive Online from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Lest you assume your­self Dead-savvy enough to have already seen and heard every­thing this archive could pos­si­bly con­tain, behold the new­ly added item fea­tured on the front page as I type this: Jer­ry Gar­ci­a’s Egypt­ian tour lam­i­nate. Accord­ing to the press release, the archive’s inter­net pres­ence fea­tures “near­ly 25,000 items and over 50,000 scans” from the uni­ver­si­ty’s phys­i­cal archive, includ­ing “works by some of the most famous rock pho­tog­ra­phers and artists of the era, includ­ing Herb Greene, Stan­ley Mouse, Wes Wil­son and Susana Mill­man.” Rest assured that it offers plen­ty of non-obscu­ran­tist Dead-relat­ed plea­sures, includ­ing tele­vi­sion appear­ances, radio broad­casts, posters, and fan record­ings of con­certs. Like any rich sub­ject, the Grate­ful Dead pro­vides its enthu­si­asts a life­time of mate­r­i­al to study. UC San­ta Cruz, a school often asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion with the Dead­’s greater San Fran­cis­co Bay Area ori­gins as well as their pen­chant for laid-back good times, has just made it that much eas­i­er to plunge into.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Van Mor­ri­son, Jef­fer­son Air­plane & The Grate­ful Dead: Watch Clas­sic Con­certs from Wolfgang’s Vault

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Evolver: A Darwinist Reimagination of The Beatles’ 1966 album

in Music, Science | July 2nd, 2012

The Evolver T‑Shirt, it’s the per­fect gift for the sci­ence believin’ Bea­t­les fan.  It’s obvi­ous­ly a play on The Bea­t­les’ great 1966 album Revolver. And, over at Boing­Bo­ing, Mark Frauen­felder asked read­ers to rethink the titles of var­i­ous songs on the album — to imag­ine them in evo­lu­tion­ary terms. Here are some of the cre­ative sug­ges­tions:

Tax­man = Macaques, Man

And Your Bird Can Sing = And Your Chimp Can Swing

I’m Only Sleep­ing = I’m Only Simi­an

Doc­tor Robert = Doc­tor Fos­sey

I Want to Tell You = I Want to Groom You

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows = Too Many Bono­bos

Per­son­al­ly, I think “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” could stay just as it is. Does­n’t it already cap­ture the Dar­win­ian spir­it in its own way?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Lit­er­ary T‑Shirts

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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William Shatner Sings O Canada (and Happy Canada Day)

in Television | July 1st, 2012

There’s some­thing time­less about William Shat­ner. The man hard­ly looks his age — 81 — though syn­thet­ic enhance­ments prob­a­bly have some­thing to do with it. And he has­n’t lost his gift for shtick. Back in the 1960s, Shat­ner began talk-singing his way through var­i­ous songs. Per­haps you’ll recall his ren­di­tion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” record­ed in 1968, which we recent­ly fea­tured on our list of The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs Ever. A good four decades lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. For Cana­da Day, eh, we have the Shat recit­ing the nation­al anthem, O Cana­da, is his inim­itable way. The clip was record­ed in 2011 when Canada’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al gave Shat­ner a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. Thanks to Denise for the tip.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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Time Travel Back to 1926 and Watch Wassily Kandinsky Make Art in Some Rare Vintage Video

in Art | June 29th, 2012

Have you ever won­dered what it would be like to trav­el back in time and look over the shoul­der of one of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry’s great­est artists to watch him work? In this brief film from 1926, we get to see the Russ­ian painter Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky as he turns a blank can­vas into one of his dis­tinc­tive abstract com­po­si­tions.

The film was made at the Galerie Neu­mann-Nieren­dorf in Berlin by Hans Cürlis, a pio­neer in the mak­ing of art doc­u­men­taries. At the time the film was made Kandin­sky was teach­ing at the Bauhaus. It was the same year he pub­lished his sec­ond major trea­tise, On Point and Line to Plane. The con­trast­ing straight lines and curves that Kandin­sky paints in the movie are typ­i­cal of this peri­od, when his approach was becom­ing less intu­itive and more con­scious­ly geo­met­ric.

Kandin­sky believed that an artist could reach deep­er truths by dis­pens­ing with the depic­tion of exter­nal objects and by look­ing with­in, and despite his ana­lyt­ic turn at the Bauhaus he con­tin­ued to speak of art in deeply mys­ti­cal terms. In On Point and Line to Plane, Kandin­sky writes:

The work of Art mir­rors itself upon the sur­face of our con­scious­ness. How­ev­er, its image extends beyond, to van­ish from the sur­face with­out a trace when the sen­sa­tion has sub­sided. A cer­tain trans­par­ent, but defini­nite glass-like par­ti­tion, abol­ish­ing direct con­tact from with­in, seems to exist here as well. Here, too, exists the pos­si­bil­i­ty of enter­ing art’s mes­sage, to par­tic­i­pate active­ly, and to expe­ri­ence its pul­sat­ing life with all one’s sens­es.

kandinsky 1926

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Mir­ren Tells Us Why Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Act­ing & Mod­ern Art Have in Com­mon)

The Inner Object: See­ing Kandin­sky

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

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Sonny Rollins Plays Jazz on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1977 Pioneer Electronics Ad

in Music | June 29th, 2012

In this 1977 tele­vi­sion ad for Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics, jazz sax­o­phone great Son­ny Rollins wails into the New York City night air while stand­ing on the Brook­lyn Bridge. A voice-over announc­er tells view­ers of Rollins’ 1959–61 hia­tus from the jazz scene, when he took his sound to the streets to redis­cov­er him­self musi­cal­ly. It’s most­ly a true sto­ry. Only trou­ble is, Rollins actu­al­ly retired to the Williams­burg Bridge—admit­ted­ly not quite as pic­turesque! Here’s the sto­ry as Rollins tells it:

In the 50s and 60s, Lucille and I had a small apart­ment on Grand Street on the Low­er East Side of New York. It was a nice time. I had a lot of friends there and I was wel­comed by the neigh­bor­hood peo­ple. Like most of New York, the Low­er East Side has under­gone gen­tri­fi­ca­tion but back then, it was a much more eth­nic place.

I start­ed prac­tic­ing in the house because I had to prac­tice, but I felt guilty because I’m a sen­si­tive per­son and I know that peo­ple need qui­et in their apart­ments.

I was walk­ing on Delancey Street one day, not far from where I lived on Grand Street and I just hap­pened to look up and see these steps that I decid­ed to check out. And there, of course, was the bridge, the Williams­burg Bridge. It was this nice big expanse going over the East Riv­er. There was nobody up there. So I start­ed walk­ing across the bridge and said, “Wow. This is what I have been look­ing for. This is a pri­vate place. I can blow my horn as loud as I want.” Because the boats are com­ing under, and the sub­way is com­ing across, and cars, and I knew it was per­fect, just serendip­i­ty. Then, I began get­ting my horn and going up there reg­u­lar­ly. I would be up there 15 or 16 hours at a time spring, sum­mer, fall and win­ter.

Rollins’ per­fec­tion­ism paid off. He returned to the music busi­ness with his bril­liant 1962 album The Bridge, a chron­i­cle of where he’d been those four years, some­times in freez­ing cold tem­per­a­tures, alone or with friends. British doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Dick Fontaine cap­tured Rollins dis­cussing his bridge sab­bat­i­cal and has released a 2012 film about Rollins called Beyond the Notes, which fea­tures live per­for­mances of the jazz great in his 80s, and has been show­ing in the UK since last spring. Rollins recent­ly took home three tro­phies from the annu­al Jazz Awards in New York, includ­ing a best-record award for his lat­est album of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 2.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Science Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open University on the Eve of the Tour de France

in Physics, Science, Technology | June 29th, 2012

Right in time for the Tour de France (which gets under­way tomor­row) the Open Uni­ver­si­ty has released a new video series called Sci­ence Behind the Bike. Dur­ing the past two decades, sci­ence has tak­en cycling to new places — some­times good, some­times bad. The intro­duc­tion of per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs near­ly dam­aged the sport beyond repair, and it cer­tain­ly destroyed the careers and rep­u­ta­tions of many lead­ing cyclists. But all along, some­where out­side the pub­lic glare, many well-inten­tioned sci­en­tif­ic minds have toiled away, try­ing to find legit­i­mate ways to advance the sport. Phys­i­ol­o­gists, physi­cists, engi­neers, soft­ware design­ers, techies from For­mu­la 1 rac­ing — they’ve all brought a new per­spec­tive to cycling.

In the video above, Sci­ence Behind the Bike looks at how sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have influ­enced the mak­ing and break­ing of the pres­ti­gious World Hour Record first estab­lished in 1893. Then, below, Forces breaks down the physics of cycling; Phys­i­ol­o­gy explains, well, the phys­i­ol­o­gy that boosts per­for­mance; and Tech­nol­o­gy digs deep­er into the high-tech hard­ware that cyclists push along. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’ll undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate appear­ances by Chris Board­man, Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree and Rebec­ca Romero.

Forces

Phys­i­ol­o­gy

Tech­nol­o­gy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

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Two Vintage Films by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

in Film | June 29th, 2012

While study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Madrid in the late 1910s, a young Luis Buñuel befriend­ed an even younger Sal­vador Dalí. The first fruit of their asso­ci­a­tion, a short film called Un Chien Andalou, appeared a decade lat­er, in 1929, and quick­ly achieved the inter­na­tion­al renown it still has today. Sev­er­al ele­ments had to fall into place to bring this cin­e­mat­ic dream — or cin­e­mat­ic night­mare, or, most accu­rate­ly, some­thing neb­u­lous­ly in-between — into real­i­ty. First, Buñuel gained expe­ri­ence in the medi­um by assis­tant-direct­ing on major silent-era Euro­pean films like Mauprat, La chute de la mai­son Ush­er, and La Sirène des Tropiques. Then, Buñuel dreamt of the simul­ta­ne­ous image of a cloud slic­ing through the moon and a razor slic­ing through an eye. Then, Dalí dreamt of a human hand cov­ered in ants. With those two visu­als in place, they pro­ceed­ed to col­lab­o­rate on the rest of the film, work­ing under the prin­ci­ple that “no idea or image that might lend itself to a ratio­nal expla­na­tion of any kind would be accept­ed.”


We could dis­cuss Un Chien Andalou’s ratio­nal­ly inex­plic­a­ble images, but would­n’t that defeat the pur­pose? The moon, the eye, the hand, the ants, the cyclist in the nun’s habit — these non­sen­si­cal but endur­ing images must be seen, and you can do that free on YouTube. But at six­teen min­utes, the movie will only whet your aes­thet­ic appetite for Buñuel and Dalí’s par­tic­u­lar fla­vor of flam­boy­ant­ly non­sen­si­cal, grim­ly satir­i­cal imagery. Luck­i­ly, you can fol­low it up with 1930’s L’Age d’Or, which began as anoth­er Buñuel-Dalí joint ven­ture until the two sud­den­ly went their sep­a­rate ways after writ­ing the script. Buñuel took over, craft­ing a wry­ly sav­age five-part cri­tique of the Roman Catholic Church. Buñuel and Dalí had pre­pared them­selves for shock-induced phys­i­cal vio­lence at the pre­miere of Un Chien Andalou, only to find that the crowd had hearti­ly approved. But L’Age d’Or drew enough fire for both pic­tures and then some, get­ting banned in France and even­tu­al­ly with­drawn from dis­tri­b­u­tion until re-emerg­ing in 1979. Now you can watch it when­ev­er you like on the inter­net, sug­gest­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy has evap­o­rat­ed — yet the images remain as sur­re­al a way as any to begin your week­end. A restored ver­sion of the film can be viewed here.

You will find these sur­re­al films list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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