Watch a Transfixing Demonstration of Kumihimo, the Ancient Japanese Artform of Making Braids & Cords

in Art, History, Travel | April 4th, 2023

It’s easy to see why kumi­hi­mo, the ancient Japan­ese art of silk braid­ing, is described as a med­i­ta­tive act.

The weaver achieves an intri­cate design by get­ting into a rhyth­mic groove, over­lap­ping hand-dyed silken threads on a cir­cu­lar or rec­tan­gle wood­en loom, from which up to 50 weight­ed-wood­en bob­bins dan­gle.

If the mind wan­ders too far from the task, the weaver risks screw­ing up the pat­tern or the uni­for­mi­ty of the threads’ ten­sion. The word kumi­hi­mo trans­lates to “gath­er­ing threads” — one mustn’t let them get snarled by a lack of atten­tion.

While sim­ple braids of tree bark or plant fiber have been found in Japan­ese bur­ial sites dat­ing back six thou­sand years, the Gold­en Age of kumi­hi­mo occurred dur­ing the Heian peri­od (794‑1185), when exquis­ite­ly detailed cords began to be incor­po­rat­ed into the nobility’s gar­ments, dec­o­ra­tive fur­nish­ings, musi­cal instru­ments, reli­gious imple­ments, and, most famous­ly, samu­rai arms and armor.

Ani­me fans may recall how kumi­hi­mo shows up and serves as a major metaphor in Mako­to Shinkai’s hit ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Your Name - the braid­ed cords rep­re­sent­ing the threads of time and the strength of the lovers’ bond.

Kumi­hi­mo is still in use today in jew­el­ry and dec­o­ra­tive sou­venirs, and fas­ten­ing obi to for­mal kimono, though 95% of obi­jime are now machine-made.

There are plen­ty of online tuto­ri­als for novices inter­est­ed in mak­ing sim­ple kumi­hi­mo friend­ship bracelets on a light­weight foam disk, but to appre­ci­ate the beau­ty inher­ent in every step of tra­di­tion­al kumi­hi­mo  cre­ation, watch Japan House’s above video, released in cel­e­bra­tion of their recent exhib­it, KUMIHIMO: The Art of Japan­ese Silk Braid­ing by DOMYO.

ASMR fans, pre­pare to be riv­et­ed by the sounds of the silken threads being swished through a dye bath, the gen­tle clack tama bob­bins, and the tap­ping of the bam­boo hera as it snugs the threads of the grow­ing braid sus­pend­ed from the rec­tan­gu­lar stand, or takadai.

The cir­cu­lar loom, or maru­dai, seen lat­er in the video pro­duces a round­ed cord via a cen­tral hole, an engi­neer­ing feat that takes us back to our child­hood pas­sion for fin­ger knit­ting.

Japan House reports that the indus­tri­al sec­tor has tak­en inspi­ra­tion from kumi­hi­mo for braid­ing car­bon fiber and fiber-rein­forced plas­tic:

The con­ti­nu­ity of the kumi­hi­mo braid struc­ture as well as the vari­abil­i­ty of the fiber ori­en­ta­tion angle and the rigid­i­ty of the braids help pro­duce extreme­ly strong cords that can be used in prod­ucts as diverse as air­craft, golf clubs, and arti­fi­cial limbs.

Mean­while sev­er­al schools in Japan are keep­ing kumi­hi­mo alive as a tra­di­tion­al art, as is the Amer­i­can Kumi­hi­mo Soci­ety, in the West.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Japan­ese Tra­di­tions of Sashiko & Boro: The Cen­turies-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sus­tain­able, Artis­tic Way

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Michelangelo’s David Still Draws Admiration and Controversy Today

in Art, History | April 4th, 2023

Life imi­tates art, and by art, I mean, of course, The Simp­sons. More than thir­ty years ago, the show took on the issue of cen­sor­ship with a sto­ry in which Marge Simp­son launch­es an impas­sioned cam­paign against car­toon vio­lence, only to find her­self on the oth­er side of the fence when asked to sup­port a protest against the exhi­bi­tion of Michelan­gelo’s David. This episode returned to cul­tur­al rel­e­vance just last month, when a par­en­t’s com­plaint about an image of that most renowned nude sculp­tures — indeed, that most renowned sculp­ture of any kind — being shown in a sixth-grade art-his­to­ry class led to the fir­ing of a Flori­da school prin­ci­pal.

It seems that the prob­lem was­n’t just David: that same les­son includ­ed Bot­ti­cel­li’s paint­ing The Birth of Venus, anoth­er glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the unclothed human body — and so much more besides, accord­ing to the Great Art Explained video about it pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

That same chan­nel’s cre­ator, gal­lerist James Payne, has also put out a video on David, which you can watch at the top of the post. Though com­mis­sioned as a depic­tion of the Goliath-slay­ing Bib­li­cal hero, Payne tells us, “in Michelan­gelo’s hands it becomes some­thing else entire­ly,” a simul­ta­ne­ous study and expres­sion of the poten­tial of mankind.

David’s ori­gin pre­fig­ured noth­ing of its lega­cy. Orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned to dec­o­rate the Flo­rence Cathe­dral (which already fea­tured Brunelleschi’s inge­nious dome), the sculp­ture had to be carved out of a much-less-than-pris­tine block of mar­ble already owned by the insti­tu­tion, already miss­ing chunks removed by sculp­tors who’d pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed the job. But to Michelan­ge­lo, as to all true artists, such lim­i­ta­tions were the stuff of inspi­ra­tion: the pro­por­tions of David’s body, and even his icon­ic pose, were ulti­mate­ly dic­tat­ed less by Michelan­gelo’s imag­i­na­tion than by the nature of the stone itself.

httvs://youtu.be/basNf0KaOrc

Michelan­ge­lo was also pay­ing trib­ute to clas­si­cal Greek and Roman sculp­ture, hence the stat­ue’s nudi­ty. But as Payne says, it is a myth that “Renais­sance Euro­peans were com­fort­able with nude bod­ies in art, par­tic­u­lar­ly when dis­played in pub­lic.” Flo­rence’s city fathers “had a gar­land of 28 gild­ed cop­per leaves made, to pro­tect David’s mod­esty, and in lat­er years he wore a fig leaf.” 2023 may not be the first of David’s 500 years of exis­tence to sub­ject him to alter­ation in order to pro­tect the sup­posed sen­si­tiv­i­ties of his view­ers, but nev­er before, sure­ly, has such an inci­dent brought him on Sat­ur­day Night Live.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelan­ge­lo Entered a Com­pe­ti­tion to Put a Miss­ing Arm Back on Lao­coön and His Sons — and Lost

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

What Made Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ing

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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Ryuichi Sakamoto, RIP: Watch Him Create Groundbreaking Electronic Music in 1984

in Music | April 3rd, 2023

Ryuichi Sakamo­to was born and raised in Japan. He rose to promi­nence as a mem­ber of Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra, the most influ­en­tial Japan­ese band in pop-music his­to­ry. Last week, he died in Japan. But he also claimed not to con­sid­er him­self Japan­ese. That reflects the ded­i­ca­tion of his life’s work as a com­pos­er and per­former to cross-cul­tur­al inspi­ra­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and syn­the­sis. How fit­ting that the announce­ment of his death this past week­end should elic­it an out­pour­ing of trib­utes from fans and col­leagues around the world, shar­ing his work from a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent styl­is­tic and tech­no­log­i­cal peri­ods in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

Fit­ting, as well, that the first doc­u­men­tary made about Sakamo­to as a solo artist should have been direct­ed by a French­woman, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eliz­a­beth Lennard. Shot in 1984, Tokyo melody: un film sur Ryuichi Sakamo­to cap­tures not only Sakamo­to him­self on the rise as an inter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al fig­ure, but also a Japan that had recent­ly become the red-hot cen­ter — at least in the glob­al imag­i­na­tion — of wealth, tech­nol­o­gy, and even for­ward-look­ing imag­i­na­tion. It was in the Japan­ese cap­i­tal that Sakamo­to record­ed Ongaku Zukan, or Illus­trat­ed Musi­cal Ency­clo­pe­dia, the album that showed the lis­ten­ing pub­lic, in Japan and else­where, what it real­ly sound­ed like to make music not just in but of the late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Or per­haps it was music for the End of His­to­ry. “Japan has become the lead­ing cap­i­tal­ist coun­try,” Sakamo­to says in Tokyo Melody. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad. The sea­son of pol­i­tics is over. Peo­ple don’t think of rebelling. On the oth­er hand they have a real hunger for cul­ture.” Then comes the footage of wax mod­el food and obses­sive­ly ersatz nine­teen-fifties-style greasers: clichéd rep­re­sen­ta­tions of urban Japan at the time, yes, but also gen­uine reflec­tions of the some­how refined mix-and-match retro-kitsch sen­si­bil­i­ty that had come to pre­vail there. “Main­stream cul­ture has lost its author­i­ty,” Sakamo­to adds. “There is a float­ing notion of val­ues. Tech­nol­o­gy is pro­gress­ing by itself. The gears move more and more effi­cient­ly. We feel pos­si­bil­i­ties appear­ing that exceed our imag­i­na­tion and our hori­zons.”

For near­ly forty years ther­after, Sakamo­to would con­tin­ue to explore this range of pos­si­bil­i­ties — sub­lime, bizarre, or even threat­en­ing — through his music, whether on his own releas­es, his projects with oth­er artists, or his many film sound­tracks for a range of auteurs includ­ing Nag­isa Ōshi­ma (for whom he also act­ed, along­side David Bowie, in Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mr. Lawrence), Bri­an De Pal­ma, Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci, and Ale­jan­dro Iñar­ritu. In Tokyo Melody he reveals one secret of his suc­cess: “When I work with Japan­ese, I become Japan­ese. When I work with West­ern­ers, I try to be like them.” Hence the way, no mat­ter the artis­tic or cul­tur­al con­text, Sakamo­to’s music was nev­er iden­ti­fi­able as either Japan­ese or West­ern, but always iden­ti­fi­able as his own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra, the Japan­ese Band That Became One of the Most Inno­v­a­tive Elec­tron­ic Music Acts of All Time

Infi­nite Esch­er: A High-Tech Trib­ute to M.C. Esch­er, Fea­tur­ing Sean Lennon, Nam June Paik & Ryuichi Sakamo­to (1990)

Hear the Great­est Hits of Isao Tomi­ta (RIP), the Father of Japan­ese Elec­tron­ic Music

The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music For­ev­er, Is Back! And It’s Now Afford­able & Com­pact

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

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 Most Popular Song from Each Month Since January 1980: 40+ Years of Changing Musical Tastes in 50 Minutes

in History, Music | April 3rd, 2023

As Helen Red­dy sang in the 70s:

You live your life in the songs you hear

On the rock n’ roll radio…

The 80s ush­ered in a new era, leav­ing the music indus­try for­ev­er changed, though the songs them­selves retained their pow­er to speak to us on a deeply per­son­al lev­el.

In 1979, the Eng­lish New Wave band The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” — which famous­ly became the very first song played on MTV the fol­low­ing year (1980) — was get­ting a lot of atten­tion.

40 years lat­er Puer­to Rican rap­per and reg­gae­ton artist Bad Bun­ny dom­i­nates, which speaks not only to the public’s evolv­ing musi­cal tastes but also to the expand­ed access and oppor­tu­ni­ties of the Inter­net age.

Lis­ten­ing to all 512 songs on Boogiehead’s mashup Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 in their entire­ty would take over 24 hours, so Boo­giehead set­tles instead on a sin­gle rep­re­sen­ta­tive phrase, get­ting the job done in a whirl­wind 50 min­utes. Watch it above.

For many of us, that’s all it takes to unleash a flood of mem­o­ries.

Queen, Madon­na, David Bowie, and Michael Jack­son make strong show­ings, as do, more recent­ly, Rhi­an­na, Bey­on­cé, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, and Ari­ana Grande.

Else­where, there are reminders that fame is not just fleet­ing, but often teth­ered to a sin­gle hit.

That said, some­times those hits have remark­able stay­ing pow­er.

Wit­ness Dexys Mid­night Run­ners’ Come On Eileen from 1982, with its pre­scient lyric “I’ll hum this tune for­ev­er…”

And some songs turn out to be an unex­pect­ed slow burn. How else to explain one of the third-to-last ear­worms on Boogiehead’s list, “Run­ning Up That Hill” from Eng­lish singer-song­writer Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love?


Its appear­ance on the hit series Stranger Things led it to go viral on Tik­Tok, net­ting the 64-year-old Bush a host of new fans in their teens and 20s as well as a cou­ple mil­lion dol­lars. Talk about old wine in new bot­tles!

Forbes’ Peter Suciu observes how songs’ shelf lives and in-roads are longer and wider than they were in the 80s and 90s:

Run­ning Up That Hill has cer­tain­ly become more pop­u­lar now than it was when it was released – and one fac­tor could be that social media has changed the way peo­ple lis­ten to music. In 1985, when Michael Jack­son was the undis­put­ed King of Pop, Kate Bush would have been rel­e­gat­ed to “alter­na­tive” music radio sta­tions, which were few and far between, or col­lege radio.

Read­ers, what song from Boo­giehead­’s Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 do you most wish would make a come­back? Which of the new­er songs could you imag­ine lis­ten­ing to forty years from now? Let us know in the com­ments.

Lis­ten to the playlist of every song fea­tured on the Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

Hear a Neu­ro­sci­en­tist-Curat­ed 712-Track Playlist of Music that Caus­es Fris­son, or Musi­cal Chills

How Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” Went from 80s Pop Smash to Bas­tion of Inter­net Cul­ture: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Wes Anderson Goes Sci-Fi in 1950s America: Watch the Trailer for His New Film Asteroid City

in Film | March 31st, 2023

Wes Ander­son has been mak­ing fea­ture films for 27 years now, and in that time his work has grown more tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic. Though shot in his native Texas in the late nine­teen-nineties, his break­out pic­ture Rush­more seemed to take place in no one part of the Unit­ed States — and even more strik­ing­ly, no one iden­ti­fi­able era. Few film­go­ers had seen any­thing like Ander­son­’s clean-edged retro sen­si­bil­i­ty before, and in sub­se­quent projects like The Roy­al Tenen­baums and The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, it inten­si­fied con­sid­er­ably. Then, in 2012, came Moon­rise King­dom, which took the Ander­son­ian aes­thet­ic to a par­tic­u­lar time and place: New Eng­land in the fall of 1965.

Since then, Ander­son and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have told sto­ries in their dis­tinc­tive visions of East­ern Europe, Japan, and France — but always, explic­it­ly or implic­it­ly, in one peri­od or anoth­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Judg­ing by its new­ly released trail­er, the events of Ander­son­’s next film Aster­oid City occur in per­haps the most mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry year imag­in­able, 1955, and in small-town Amer­i­ca at that.

Or rather, very small-town Amer­i­ca: Aster­oid City itself appears to be locat­ed in the mid­dle of the Ari­zona desert (though shot in Spain, in keep­ing with Ander­son­’s increas­ing­ly Europe-ori­ent­ed pro­duc­tion habits), and with noth­ing more excit­ing going on — apart from the occa­sion­al dis­tant nuclear-weapons test — than an annu­al “junior stargaz­er com­pe­ti­tion.”

The film “tells the sto­ry of a belea­guered wid­ow­er (Jason Schwartz­man) who’s busy schlep­ping his four chil­dren across the coun­try to see their grand­fa­ther (Tom Han­ks) when their car sud­den­ly breaks down,” writes The Verge’s Charles Pul­liam-More. This strands the fam­i­ly in the tit­u­lar town, with its “strange earth­quakes that no one knows the true cause of, fears about whether aliens might be lurk­ing among the humans liv­ing in Aster­oid City, and mul­ti­ple sight­ings of a celebri­ty (Scar­lett Johans­son).” As fans can already guess from this sum­ma­ry, the ensem­ble cast includes more than a few Ander­son reg­u­lars, also includ­ing Edward Nor­ton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Gold­blum, and Bob Bal­a­ban. A case of COVID-19 kept Bill Mur­ray from par­tic­i­pat­ing, but even so, nobody who sees the trail­er can doubt that the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Aster­oid City will be high­ly Ander­son­ian indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Why Do Wes Ander­son Movies Look Like That?

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

Wes Anderson’s Break­through Film, Rush­more, Revis­it­ed in Five Video Essays: It Came Out 20 Years Ago Today

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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Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Reason & Math, Discovered That the Earth Isn’t Flat Over 2,000 Years Ago

in History, Science | March 31st, 2023

The denial of sci­ence suf­fus­es Amer­i­can soci­ety, and no mat­ter what the data says, some con­ser­v­a­tive forces refuse efforts to cur­tail, or even study, cli­mate change. Astro­physi­cist Katie Mack calls this retrench­ment a form of “data nihilism,” writ­ing in an exas­per­at­ed tweet, “What is sci­ence? How can a thing be known? Is any­thing even real???” Indeed, what can we expect next from what Isaac Asi­mov called the Unit­ed States’ anti-intel­lec­tu­al “cult of igno­rance”? A flat earth lob­by?

Welp… at least a cou­ple celebri­ty fig­ures have come out as flat-earth­ers, per­haps the van­guard of an anti-round earth move­ment. Notably, [Dal­las Mav­er­icks] guard Kyrie Irv­ing made the claim on a pod­cast, insist­ing, Chris Matyszczyk writes, that “we were being lied to about such basic things by the glob­al elites.” Is this a joke? I hope so. Neil DeGrasse Tyson—who host­ed the recent Cos­mos remake to try and dis­pel such sci­en­tif­ic ignorance—replied all the same, not­ing that Irv­ing should “stay away from jobs that require… under­stand­ing of the nat­ur­al world.” The weird affair has played out like a sideshow next to the main­stage polit­i­cal cir­cus, an unset­tling reminder of Carl Sagan’s pre­dic­tion in his last book, The Demon Haunt­ed World, that Amer­i­cans would soon find their “crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties in decline, unable to dis­tin­guish between what feels good and what’s true.”

Sagan devot­ed much of his life to coun­ter­ing anti-sci­ence trends with warmth and enthu­si­asm, park­ing him­self “repeat­ed­ly, arguably com­pul­sive­ly, in front of TV cam­eras,” writes Joel Achen­bach at Smith­son­ian. We most remem­ber him for his orig­i­nal 1980 Cos­mos minis­eries, his most pub­lic role as a “gate­keep­er of sci­en­tif­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty,” as Achen­bach calls him. I think Sagan may have chafed at the descrip­tion. He want­ed to open the gates and let the pub­lic into sci­en­tif­ic inquiry. He char­i­ta­bly lis­tened to unsci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries, and patient­ly took the time to explain their flaws.

In the very first episode of Cos­mos, Sagan addressed the flat-earth­ers, indi­rect­ly, by explain­ing how Eratos­thenes (276–194 BC), a Libyan-Greek schol­ar and chief librar­i­an at the Library of Alexan­dria, dis­cov­ered over 2000 years ago that the earth is a sphere. Giv­en the geo­g­ra­ph­er, math­e­mati­cian, poet, his­to­ri­an, and astronomer’s incred­i­ble list of accomplishments—a sys­tem of lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude, a map of the world, a sys­tem for find­ing prime numbers—this may not even rank as his high­est achieve­ment.

In the Cos­mos clip above, Sagan explains Eratos­thenes’ sci­en­tif­ic method: he made obser­va­tions of how shad­ows change length giv­en the posi­tion of the sun in the sky. Esti­mat­ing the dis­tance between the cities of Syene and Alexan­dria, he was then able to math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cal­cu­late the cir­cum­fer­ence of the earth, as Cyn­thia Stokes Brown explains at Khan Acad­e­my. Although “sev­er­al sources of error crept into Eratos­thenes’ cal­cu­la­tions and our inter­pre­ta­tion of them,” he nonethe­less suc­ceed­ed almost per­fect­ly. His esti­ma­tion: 250,000 sta­dia, or 25,000 miles. The actu­al cir­cum­fer­ence: 24,860 miles (40.008 kilo­me­ters).

No, of course the Earth isn’t flat. But Sagan’s les­son on how one sci­en­tist from antiq­ui­ty came to know that isn’t an exer­cise in debunk­ing. It’s a jour­ney into the move­ment of the solar sys­tem, into ancient sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ry, and most impor­tant­ly, per­haps, into the sci­en­tif­ic method, which does not rely on hearsay from “glob­al elites” or shad­owy fig­ures, but on the tools of obser­va­tion, infer­ence, rea­son­ing, and math. Pro­fes­sion­al sci­en­tists are not with­out their bias­es and con­flicts of inter­est, but the most fun­da­men­tal intel­lec­tu­al tools they use are avail­able to every­one on Earth.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017. This ver­sion has been light­ly edit­ed and updat­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

 

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

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David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Making Sense Was Inspired by Japanese Kabuki Theatre

in Fashion, Film, Music | March 30th, 2023

In the nine­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies, the name of David Byrne’s band was Talk­ing Heads — as the title of their 1982 live album per­pet­u­al­ly reminds us. But their over­all artis­tic project arguably had less to do with the head than the body, a propo­si­tion mem­o­rably under­scored in Stop Mak­ing Sense, the Jonathan Demme-direct­ed con­cert film that came out two years lat­er. “Music is very phys­i­cal and often the body under­stands it before the head,” Byrne says in a bizarre con­tem­po­rary self-inter­view pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. To make that fact vis­i­ble onstage, “I want­ed my head to appear small­er, and the eas­i­est way to do that was to make my body big­ger.”

Hence cos­tume design­er Gail Black­er’s cre­ation of what Talk­ing Heads fans have long referred to as the “big suit.” Byrne has always been will­ing dis­cuss its ori­gins, which he traces back to a trip to Japan. There, as he put it to Enter­tain­ment Week­ly in 2012, he’d “seen a lot of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese the­ater, and I real­ized that yes, that kind of front-fac­ing out­line, a suit, a businessman’s suit, looked like one of those things, a rec­tan­gle with just a head on top.”

A friend of his, the fash­ion design­er Jur­gen Lehl, said that “every­thing is big­ger on stage.” “He was refer­ring to, I think, ges­tures and the way you walk and what not,” Byrne told David Let­ter­man in 1984. But he took it lit­er­al­ly, think­ing, “Well, that solves my cos­tume prob­lem right there.”

Though Byrne only wore the big suit for one num­ber, “Girl­friend Is Bet­ter” (from whose lyrics Stop Mak­ing Sense takes its title), it became the acclaimed film’s sin­gle most icon­ic ele­ment, ref­er­enced even in chil­dren’s car­toons. New York­er crit­ic Pauline Kael called it “a per­fect psy­cho­log­i­cal fit,” remark­ing that “when he dances, it isn’t as if he were mov­ing the suit — the suit seems to move him.” The asso­ci­a­tion has­n’t been with­out its frus­tra­tions; he once spec­u­lat­ed that his tomb­stone would be inscribed with the phrase “Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?” But now that Stop Mak­ing Sense is return­ing to the­aters in a new 4K restora­tion, near­ly 40 years after its first release, he’s accept­ed that the time has final­ly come to pick it up from the clean­er’s. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it still fits.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

An Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre, Fea­tur­ing 20th-Cen­tu­ry Mas­ters of the Form (1964)

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

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 Complete “Everything is a Remix”: An Hour-Long Testament to the Brilliance & Beauty of Human Creativity

in Creativity, Film, Music | March 30th, 2023

Let me quote myself: “From 2010 to 2012, film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son released Every­thing is a Remix, a four-part series that explored art and cre­ativ­i­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. In the ini­tial series, Fer­gu­son focused on musi­cians, film­mak­ers, writ­ers and even video game mak­ers. Now, a lit­tle more than a decade lat­er, Fer­gu­son has resur­faced and released a fifth and final chap­ter in his series, with this episode focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent kind of artist: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” Above, you can watch the com­plete edi­tion of “Every­thing is a Remix,” with all parts com­bined into a sin­gle, hour-long video. A tran­script of the entire pro­duc­tion can be found here. Watch. Pon­der. Cre­ate.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

 

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Enroll Today for Online Courses with Stanford Continuing Studies: Open Culture Readers Get 15% Off

in Deals, Education | March 29th, 2023

A heads up for Open Cul­ture read­ers: This spring, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies has a rich line­up of online cours­es, and they’re offer­ing a spe­cial 15% dis­count to our read­ers. Just use the pro­mo code CULTURE dur­ing check­out.

Serv­ing life­long learn­ers every­where, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will launch its spring cur­ricu­lum next week (the week of April 3), let­ting you choose from over 100 cours­es. Among the cours­es, you will find some notable men­tions:

Defend­ing Democ­ra­cy at Home and Abroad fea­tures three Stan­ford schol­ars (includ­ing the for­mer US ambas­sador to Rus­sia Mike McFaul) who will exam­ine the uncer­tain state of democ­ra­cy at home and abroad. Togeth­er, they will explore 1) the mer­its of democ­ra­cy com­pared with the alter­na­tives, 2) chal­lenges to democ­ra­cy both in the US and across the globe, and 3) solu­tions for pro­tect­ing and advanc­ing democ­ra­cy every­where.

With Stan­ford Mon­day Uni­ver­si­ty: 2023, five Stan­ford schol­ars will focus on impor­tant trends cur­rent­ly shap­ing our soci­ety, espe­cial­ly after the pan­dem­ic. What’s the future of work­ing from home, and how will remote work affect the econ­o­my of the Unit­ed States? Why have addictions—including to devices and screens—skyrocketed in the US, and how can a dopamine fast help bring them under con­trol? Why has the mod­ern econ­o­my left behind so many work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties in Amer­i­ca, and how can invest­ment in these com­mu­ni­ties help address the wealth inequal­i­ties in our coun­try? These, and oth­er ques­tions, will be explored in the course.

Final­ly, in The Book of Change: Ovid, Art, and Us, art his­to­ri­an Alexan­der Nemerov–voted one of Stanford’s top 10 pro­fes­sors by Stan­ford students–will exam­ine Ovid’s Meta­mor­phoses and the great works of art inspired by the Roman clas­sic. Along the way, he will explore paint­ings by Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and Nico­las Poussin, plus sculp­tures by Gian Loren­zo Berni­ni.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers a large num­ber of online cre­ative writ­ing cours­es and online busi­ness cours­es. See the com­plete line­up of cours­es here. And remem­ber to use the pro­mo code CULTURE dur­ing check­out to get your 15% dis­count. The code expires on April 30.

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Watch the World’s First Film Made in Babylonian, the Language of Ancient Mesopotamia

in Film, History, Language | March 29th, 2023

“Enable sub­ti­tles,” says the noti­fi­ca­tion that appears before The Poor Man of Nip­pur — and you will need them, unless, of course, you hap­pen to hail from the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion. The short film is adapt­ed from “a folk­tale based on a 2,700-year-old poem about a pau­per,” says the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge’s alum­ni news, act­ed out word-for-word by “Assyri­ol­o­gy stu­dents and oth­er mem­bers of the Mesopotami­an com­mu­ni­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty.” The result qual­i­fies as the world’s very first film in Baby­lon­ian, a lan­guage that has “been silent for 2,000 years.”

“Found on a clay tablet at the archae­o­log­i­cal site of Sul­tan­te­pe, in south-east Turkey,” the sto­ry of The Poor Man of Nip­pur has­n’t come down to us in per­fect­ly com­plete form. The film rep­re­sents the points of break­age in the tablet with VHS-style glitch­es, a neat par­al­lel of forms of media degra­da­tion across the mil­len­nia.

That isn’t the only notice­able anachro­nism — tak­ing the build­ings of Cam­bridge for Mesopotamia in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry BC demands a cer­tain sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief — but we can rest assured of the Baby­lon­ian dia­logue’s his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy, or at least that this is the most accu­rate Baby­lon­ian dia­logue we’re like­ly to get.

Accord­ing to Cam­bridge Assyri­ol­o­gist Mar­tin Wor­thing­ton, who over­saw the Poor Man of Nip­pur project (after serv­ing as Baby­lon­ian con­sul­tant for The Eter­nals), deter­min­ing its pro­nun­ci­a­tion involves “a mix of edu­cat­ed guess­work and care­ful recon­struc­tion,” but one that ben­e­fits from exist­ing “tran­scrip­tions into the Greek alpha­bet” as well as con­nec­tions with sta­bler lan­guages like Ara­bic and Hebrew. The result is an unprece­dent­ed his­tor­i­cal-lin­guis­tic attrac­tion, a com­pelling adver­tise­ment for the study of Baby­lon­ian at Cam­bridge, and also — in depict­ing the impov­er­ished pro­tag­o­nist’s revenge on a thug­gish town may­or — a demon­stra­tion that the under­dog sto­ry tran­scends time, cul­ture, and lan­guage.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lis­ten to The Epic of Gil­gamesh Being Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

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

Trigonom­e­try Dis­cov­ered on a 3700-Year-Old Ancient Baby­lon­ian Tablet

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

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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Discover Edo, the Historic Green/Sustainable City of Japan

in Environment, History, Nature | March 29th, 2023

When you pic­ture mod­ern day Tokyo, what comes to mind?

The elec­tron­ic bill­boards of Shibuya and Shin­juku?

The teem­ing streets?

The maid cafes?

The robot hotel?

A 97 square foot micro apart­ment?

Bernard Guer­ri­ni’s doc­u­men­tary Natur­opo­lis — Tokyo, from mega­lopo­lis to gar­den-city describes Tokyo as “a giant city, a city which nev­er stops grow­ing:”

It has destroyed its nat­ur­al spaces. It has cre­at­ed its own weath­er. It’s too big for its own good. They say Tokyo is like an amoe­ba that absorbs every­thing in its path.

It’s a far cry from the urban space Toku­gawa Ieya­su, founder of the Toku­gawa Shogu­nate, intend­ed when plant­i­ng the seeds for Edo, as Tokyo was orig­i­nal­ly called.

As the above excerpt from Natur­opo­lis explains, the 16th-cen­tu­ry city was inno­v­a­tive in its incor­po­ra­tion of green space.

The daimyō, or mil­i­tary lords, were required by the shogu­nate to keep res­i­dences in Edo. Each of these homes was fur­nished with a gar­den­er and a land­scap­er to main­tain the beau­ty of its al fres­co areas.

Mean­while, crops were cul­ti­vat­ed in all com­mu­nal out­door open spaces, with irri­ga­tion canals sup­ply­ing the nec­es­sary water for grow­ing rice.

These plant-rich set­tings pro­vid­ed a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for ani­mals both wild and domes­tic. The care­ful­ly curat­ed nat­ur­al zones invit­ed qui­et con­tem­pla­tion of flo­ra and fau­na, giv­ing rise to the sea­son­al cel­e­bra­tions and rites that are still observed through­out Japan.

Whether admir­ing blos­soms and fire­flies in spring and sum­mer or autumn leaves and snowy win­ter scenes in the cold­er months, Edo’s cit­i­zens revered the nat­ur­al world out­side their doorsteps.

Bashō did the same in his haiku; Uta­gawa Hiroshige in his series of ukiyo‑e prints, One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo.

Some­what less poet­i­cal­ly cel­e­brat­ed was the impor­tance of night soil to this bio­dy­nam­ic, pre-indus­tri­al shogu­nate cap­i­tal. As envi­ron­men­tal writer Eisuke Ishikawa del­i­cate­ly notes in Japan in the Edo Peri­od — An Eco­log­i­cal­ly-Con­scious Soci­ety:

A long time ago, when excre­ment was a pre­cious fer­til­iz­er, it nat­u­ral­ly belonged to the per­son who pro­duced it. Farm­ers used to buy excre­ment for cash or trade it for a com­pa­ra­ble amount of veg­eta­bles. Fer­til­iz­er short­ages were a chron­ic prob­lem dur­ing the Edo peri­od. As the stan­dard of liv­ing in cities improved, sur­round­ing vil­lages need­ed an increas­ing amount of fer­til­iz­er…

(Any­one who’s shoul­dered the sur­pris­ing­ly heavy interactive–not THAT interactive–night soil buck­ets on dis­play in Tokyo’s Edo Muse­um will have a feel for just how much of this nec­es­sary ele­ment each block of the cap­i­tal city gen­er­at­ed on a dai­ly basis.)

The Mei­ji Restora­tion of 1868 brought many changes — a new gov­ern­ment, a new name for Edo, and a race toward West­ern-style indus­tri­al­iza­tion. Many parks and gar­dens were destroyed as Tokyo rapid­ly expand­ed beyond Edo’s orig­i­nal foot­print.

But now, the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment is look­ing to its past in an effort to com­bat the effects of cli­mate change with a push toward envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The goal is net zero CO2 emis­sions by 2050, with 2030 serv­ing as a bench­mark.

In addi­tion to hold­ing the busi­ness, finan­cial, and ener­gy sec­tors to envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble stan­dard, the zero emis­sion plan seeks to address the aver­age citizen’s qual­i­ty of life, with a lit­er­al return to more green spaces:

Accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change mea­sures is impor­tant to pre­serve bio­di­ver­si­ty and con­tin­ue to reap its boun­ty. In recent years, the idea of green infra­struc­ture that uti­lizes the func­tions of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment has attract­ed atten­tion. It is one of the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions for the future: achiev­ing both bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion and cli­mate change mea­sures.

A Unit­ed Nation report* point­ed out that COVID-19 is poten­tial­ly a zoonot­ic dis­ease derived from wildlife, such infec­tious dis­eases will increase in the future, and one of the rea­sons is the destruc­tion of nature by humans.

Read Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Government’s Zero Trans­mis­sion Strat­e­gy and Update here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

Down­load 1,000+ Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Mas­ter of the Japan­ese Wood­block Print Tra­di­tion

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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