The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexandria: An Animated Introduction

in History | August 15th, 2018

The demise of the Library of Alexan­dria has for cen­turies been cast as one of history’s great­est tragedies, an incal­cu­la­ble and sense­less loss of ancient knowl­edge in an act of war. “Once the largest library in the ancient world,” writes Bri­an Haughton at Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, “con­tain­ing works by the great­est thinkers and writ­ers of antiq­ui­ty, includ­ing Homer, Pla­to, Socrates and many more, the Library of Alexan­dria, north­ern Egypt, is pop­u­lar­ly believed to have been destroyed in a huge fire around 2000 years ago and its volu­mi­nous works lost.”

Ancient accounts, includ­ing those of Julius Cae­sar him­self, that detail the mul­ti­ple burn­ings of Alexan­dria seem to sup­port this sto­ry. But in truth, the Library’s dis­ap­pear­ance has been a his­tor­i­cal mys­tery, “per­pet­u­at­ed by the fact that no archi­tec­tur­al remains or archae­o­log­i­cal finds that can def­i­nite­ly be attrib­uted to the ancient Library have ever been recov­ered.” The TED-Ed les­son above tells the sto­ry of the Library’s rise and fall, which is, as his­to­ry tends to be, “much more com­plex.”

Built 2300 years ago by Alexan­der the Great’s suc­ces­sor, Ptole­my I, the Library was intend­ed to rival any schol­ar­ly insti­tu­tion in Athens, and by all accounts, it did. Alexandria’s rulers attempt­ed to col­lect a copy of every man­u­script in the world. Any ship that docked in the city had to “turn over its books for copy­ing.” Book hunters were sent all over the Mediter­ranean. The Library was in fact, notes Haughton, “two or more libraries,” one of them named the “Tem­ple of the Mus­es,” or “the Musaeum,” (Greek, Mou­seion), from which the mod­ern word “muse­um” derives.

As a cul­tur­al cen­ter, it was unusu­al­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic. “Unlike the many pri­vate libraries that exist­ed in the palaces of the wealthy in the ancient world,” writes Annalee Newitz at io9, “the library at Alexan­dria was open to any­one who could prove them­selves a wor­thy schol­ar.” Among them were Cal­li­machus of Cyrene, who cre­at­ed the first library cat­a­log to help nav­i­gate the vast col­lec­tion, and Eratos­thenes, one of the Library’s direc­tors, who cal­cu­lat­ed the Earth’s cir­cum­fer­ence and diam­e­ter (and knew that it was round) with­in only a few miles of their actu­al size.

The Library thrived for around 300 years before it went into a very long peri­od of decline. Though Julius Caesar’s siege of Alexan­dria in 45 BCE has been blamed for its destruc­tion, and may have dec­i­mat­ed part of its col­lec­tion, we know that it sur­vived and that schol­ars con­tin­ued to vis­it it for sev­er­al hun­dred more years. Its last record­ed direc­tor was schol­ar and math­e­mati­cian Theon, father of famed female philoso­pher Hypa­tia, who was mur­dered by a Chris­t­ian mob in 415 CE. As the city became ruled by a suc­ces­sion of empires—Greek, Roman, Chris­t­ian, and Muslim—the Library seemed increas­ing­ly to pose a threat to its rulers.

The TED-Ed video impli­cates the rav­ages of time and the fear of knowl­edge as his­tor­i­cal cul­prits in the Library’s demise. Newitz points to a much more mun­dane cause, bud­get cuts. She quotes library his­to­ri­an Heather Phillips’ expla­na­tion of its down­fall as “grad­ual, often bureau­crat­ic, and by com­par­i­son to our cul­tur­al imag­in­ings, some­what pet­ty.” The caus­es of its fall includ­ed abol­ish­ing stipends and expelling for­eign schol­ars. While we have imag­ined the Library burn­ing down or torn to pieces by reli­gious fanat­ics, the truth may be that it slow­ly fell vic­tim to oth­er ancient ills: insti­tu­tion­al­ized greed, short-sight­ed­ness, big­otry, and igno­rance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Rea­son and Math, Fig­ured Out the Earth Isn’t Flat, Over 2,000 Years Ago

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

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Did Lennon or McCartney Write the Beatles 1965 Song “In My Life”? A Math Professor, Using Statistics, Solves the Decades-Old Mystery

in Math, Music | August 14th, 2018


In 2009, gui­tarist Randy Bach­man of the Guess Who and Bach­man-Turn­er Over­drive had the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear the indi­vid­ual tracks that make up that myth­ic open­ing chord in the Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” an enig­ma that has baf­fled musi­cians for decades. Bach­man found that it’s actu­al­ly made up of a com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent chords played all at once by George, John, and Paul. The dis­cov­ery made for a great sto­ry, and Bach­man told it the fol­low­ing year on his CBC radio show. Unbe­knownst to him, it seems, anoth­er Cana­di­an Bea­t­les lover, Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty math pro­fes­sor Jason Brown, claimed he had cracked the code the pre­vi­ous year, with­out set­ting foot in Abbey Road.

Instead, Brown used what is called a Fouri­er Analy­sis, based on work done in the 1820s by French sci­en­tist Joseph Fouri­er, which reduces sounds into their “con­stituent sine or cosine waves.” The prob­lem with Bachman’s expla­na­tion, as Eliot Van Buskirk notes at Wired, is that the chord “con­tains a note that would be impos­si­ble for the Bea­t­les’ two gui­tarists and bassist to play in one take.” Since there was no over­dub­bing involved, some­thing else must have been hap­pen­ing. Through his math­e­mat­i­cal analy­sis, Brown deter­mined that some­thing else to have been five notes played on the piano, appar­ent­ly by George Mar­tin, “who is known to have dou­bled on piano George Harrison’s solo on the track.”

After ten years of work, Brown has returned with the solu­tion to anoth­er long­time Bea­t­les mys­tery, this time with a lit­tle help from his col­leagues, Har­vard math­e­mati­cians Mark Glick­man and Ryan Song. The prob­lem: who wrote the melody for “In My Life,” Rub­ber Soul’s nos­tal­gic bal­lad? The song is cred­it­ed to the crack team of Lennon-McCart­ney, but while the two agreed that Lennon penned the lyrics, both sep­a­rate­ly claimed in inter­views to have writ­ten the music. Brown and his col­lab­o­ra­tors used sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods to deter­mine that it was, in fact, Lennon who wrote the whole song.

They present their research in a paper titled “Assess­ing Author­ship of Bea­t­les Songs from Musi­cal Con­tent: Bayesian Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Mod­el­ing from Bags-Of-Words Rep­re­sen­ta­tions.” In the NPR Week­end Edi­tion inter­view above, you can hear Stan­ford math­e­mati­cian Kei­th Devlin break down the terms of their project, includ­ing that odd phrase “bags-of-words rep­re­sen­ta­tions,” which “actu­al­ly goes back to the 1950s,” he says. “Bags-of-words”—like the word clouds we now see on websites—take text, “ignore the gram­mar” and word order and pro­duce a col­lec­tion of words. The method was used to gen­er­ate the first spam fil­ters. Rather than use words, how­ev­er, the math­e­mati­cians decon­tex­tu­al­ized snip­pets of sound.

In an analy­sis of “about 70 songs from Lennon and McCart­ney… they found there were 149 very dis­tinct tran­si­tions between notes and chords.” These are unique to one or the oth­er song­writ­ers. “When you do the math,” Devlin says, it turns out “the prob­a­bil­i­ty that McCart­ney wrote it was .o18—that’s essen­tial­ly zero.” Why might Paul have mis­re­mem­bered this—even say­ing specif­i­cal­ly in a 1984 Play­boy inter­view that he recalled “going off for half an hour and sit­ting with a Mel­lotron… writ­ing the tune”? Who knows. Mash­able has reached out to McCartney’s pub­li­cist for com­ment. But in the final analy­sis, says Devlin, “I would go with math­e­mat­ics” over faulty human mem­o­ry.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of The Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night”

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

The Bea­t­les “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gets a Dreamy New Music Video from Cirque du Soleil

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

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How Leonard Cohen Wrote a Love Song

in Music | August 14th, 2018

So many songs take love as their top­ic, almost by default, that we hard­ly even think of the “love song” as a dis­tinct type of musi­cal work any­more. And when we do, we often do it out of a desire for alter­na­tives: lyrics and com­po­si­tions of a more com­plex, cere­bral, and icon­ic nature, escapes from the sim­ple paeans to infat­u­a­tion, romance, and cou­ple­hood with which we can eas­i­ly feel fed up. Few singer-song­writ­ers in recent his­to­ry would seem more capa­ble of pro­vid­ing such escapes than Leonard Cohen, who nev­er shied away from look­ing at life (and when the time came, death) straight on, refus­ing to shrink from its infi­nite emo­tion­al chiaroscuro.

But Leonard Cohen, too, wrote love songs now and again. In “How Leonard Cohen Writes a Love Song,” the video essay from Poly­phon­ic above, we learn just how he tack­led that most com­mon of all musi­cal sub­jects with­out aban­don­ing his inim­itable sen­si­bil­i­ty. It first exam­ines Cohen’s song “Suzanne,” which has its ori­gins in a poem he wrote in 1966 and appeared on his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen the fol­low­ing year. Unlike almost all love songs, “Suzanne” deals with a Pla­ton­ic rela­tion­ship, in this case the one between Cohen and a woman with whom he reg­u­lar­ly drank tea and took walks around his native Mon­tre­al.

From “Suzanne” the analy­sis moves on to “Famous Blue Rain­coat” from Cohen’s 1971 album Songs of Love and Hate. The nec­es­sary bal­ance between those forces implied in the album’s title reflects Cohen’s world­view, which in the 1970s led him into an involve­ment with Bud­dhism. But he’d also looked into Sci­en­tol­ogy, which explains the song’s then-cryp­tic ques­tion “Did you ever go clear?” That counts as only one of the many cul­tur­al ref­er­ences with which Cohen lay­ers “Famous Blue Rain­coat,” as he lay­ered so much of his work; even a song osten­si­bly about love was also about much else in the world besides love.

After an unpromis­ing ini­tial release in 1984, “Hal­lelu­jah,” would go on to become Cohen’s sig­na­ture song. (Mal­colm Glad­well tells the sto­ry on his pod­cast Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry). Despite the reli­gious themes on its sur­face, “Hal­lelu­jah” has a deep­er mean­ing, so the video reveals, as a love song, albeit a love song of a mul­ti­va­lent kind. Last comes “I’m Your Man,” the title track from Cohen’s unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly syn­the­siz­er-heavy 1988 album, and itself an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly love song-like love song. But, in the words of Pitch­fork’s Dori­an Lynksey, it takes its “sen­ti­men­tal clichés — I’m addict­ed to love, I’ll do any­thing for love — to bru­tal extremes.” Though Cohen ulti­mate­ly had to admit his inabil­i­ty to ful­ly under­stand, much less tame, the forces of love, nev­er did he give up try­ing to mas­ter it in song, approach­ing it in all the ways typ­i­cal love songs teach us nev­er to expect.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hal­lelu­jah!: You Can Stream Every Leonard Cohen Album in a 22-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist (1967–2016)

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Say Good­bye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hal­lelu­jah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Oth­er Tracks

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Aretha Franklin’s Most Powerful Early Performances: “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “Say a Little Prayer” & More

in Music | August 14th, 2018

Sure­ly you’ve heard, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, is grave­ly ill with ter­mi­nal can­cer and has been moved to hos­pice care. The news has brought tear­ful trib­utes from celebri­ties and fans; lengthy ret­ro­spec­tives of her almost six­ty-year career will fol­low. In a life as rich, trou­bled, and glam­orous as hers, with so many intense highs and lows, it’s almost impos­si­ble to know where to begin, though a num­ber of biog­ra­phers have already told her story—or sto­ries. She kept many of the details of her life pri­vate for years, and denied the sen­sa­tion­al details in a recent biog­ra­phy by David Ritz, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on an ear­li­er bio, 1999’s Aretha: From These Roots.

Her strug­gles with alco­hol and overeat­ing, preg­nan­cies at 12 and 14 years old, tumul­tuous and abu­sive rela­tion­ships… describ­ing her chal­lenges and her wilder times, claims Ritz in his defense, throws her incred­i­ble tal­ent and suc­cess into even high­er relief. It prob­a­bly won’t hurt sales, either. In any case, there’s no doubt that Aretha is a sur­vivor. She sang anthems of self-reliance like “Respect” and “Think” from deep wells of per­son­al feel­ing and expe­ri­ence. Music, she told Essence mag­a­zine in 1973, “is my way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing that part of me I can get out front and share. It’s what I have to give; my way of say­ing, ‘Let’s find one anoth­er.’”

A musi­cal prodi­gy as a singer and pianist, America’s reign­ing diva “grew up sur­round­ed by gospel greats,” notes Biography.com, “such as Mahalia Jack­son, Sam Cooke and Clara Ward, as well as civ­il rights icons includ­ing Mar­tin Luther King Jr.,” whom she mourned in song at his funer­al. She’s won 18 Gram­mys, sung at the inau­gu­ra­tion of three pres­i­dents, became the first woman induct­ed into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, had 43 sin­gles in the top 40 charts… this list of accom­plish­ments seems to just scratch the sur­face. What mat­ters in the end, and what will endure, are not the hon­ors, awards, and chart posi­tions, but her incred­i­ble musi­cian­ship and voice. Her gospel roots drove every per­for­mance, giv­ing even the light­est of songs, like Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer,” a stir­ring pow­er and con­vic­tion.

As mil­lions around the world offer prayers for Aretha, revis­it some of the finest live moments in her ear­ly career in the clips here— “Respect” in 1967, at the top, the year she won her first Gram­my for best R&B record­ing. See her per­form “Chain of Fools” in 1968—the year she appeared on the cov­er of Time mag­a­zine under the head­line “The Sound of Soul”—and “Say a Lit­tle Prayer” on The Cliff Richard Show in 1970. Just above, catch a stun­ning per­for­mance of one of her most beloved hits, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Nat­ur­al Woman.” And below, see her soul­ful take on Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” at the Fill­more West in 1971. Our thoughts are with Aretha and her fam­i­ly. May she con­tin­ue to inspire new gen­er­a­tions for many decades more after she leaves us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Women of the Blues: Hear a Playlist of Great Blues Singers, from Bessie Smith & Etta James, to Bil­lie Hol­i­day & Janis Joplin

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track

Reli­gious Songs That Sec­u­lar Peo­ple Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, John­ny Cash & Your Favorites

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

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The Surreal Paintings of the Occult Magician, Writer & Mountaineer, Aleister Crowley

in Art | August 13th, 2018

I am not equipped to judge whether the noto­ri­ous Aleis­ter Crow­ley—whom the British press once called “the wickedest man in the world”—was an over­rat­ed magi­cian (or “Mag­ick-ian”). His ban­ish­ment from the Her­met­ic Order of the Gold­en Dawn, by none oth­er than William But­ler Yeats, may not speak well of him. But this is an area of debate best left to experts in the mys­tic arts.

Nor do I feel qual­i­fied to ven­ture an opin­ion on Crowley’s moun­taineer­ing. It’s true, he did not reach the sum­mit of K2, but he gets more than par­tial cred­it as part of the first expe­di­tion to make the attempt in 1902.

As for Crow­ley the poet… well, he was a less­er lit­er­ary tal­ent than his rival Yeats, whom he sup­pos­ed­ly envied. One writer remarks of the con­flict between them that Crow­ley “was nev­er able to speak the lan­guage of poet­ic sym­bol with the con­fi­dence of a native speak­er in the way Yeats def­i­nite­ly could.”

Still, many of his poems have an unde­ni­ably enchant­i­ng qual­i­ty. Their obscure myth­ic depths show the promi­nent influ­ence of William Blake. Oth­ers, like the obscene­ly puerile “Leah Sub­lime” derive from the lib­er­tine tra­di­tion of John Wilmot.

What of Crow­ley the painter? I must say, until recent­ly, I knew lit­tle of this side of him, though I’ve had many encoun­ters with this weird character’s life and work. While long­time fans and fol­low­ers sure­ly know his visu­al art well, the casu­al­ly curi­ous rarely get a glimpse.

Crow­ley, writes Robert Burat­ti at Raw Vision, “has nev­er been as well known for his artis­tic pur­suits as for his more eso­teric inter­ests,” and that espe­cial­ly goes for his paint­ing. His art appar­ent­ly did not pique the pruri­ent inter­est of the tabloids, the pri­ma­ry source of his pop­u­lar fame, but maybe it deserves at least as much atten­tion as his spell­work and sex mag­ic.

Burat­ti, a Crow­ley dis­ci­ple of Thele­ma and mem­ber of the Art Guild of Ordo Tem­pli Ori­en­tis Aus­tralia, curat­ed a 2013 exhi­bi­tion called Win­dows to the Sacred that fea­tured sev­er­al of Crowley’s paint­ings. He argues that Crowley’s “sig­nif­i­cance as an artist lies in his recon­sid­er­a­tion of art as a cen­tral com­po­nent in his mag­i­cal the­o­ry of the uni­verse and, in par­tic­u­lar, its abil­i­ty to awak­en, as he put it, ‘our Secret Self—our Sub­con­scious Ego, whose mag­i­cal Image is our indi­vid­u­al­i­ty expressed in men­tal and bod­i­ly form.”

As for the for­mal prop­er­ties of the paint­ings them­selves, Burat­ti ref­er­ences the Sur­re­al­ists, and notes in an inter­view that Crow­ley “was quite inspired by Paul Gau­guin.” The paint­ings’ rough, child­like prim­i­tivism also resem­bles the tech­nique of artists like Georges Rouault and the ear­ly, pre-abstrac­tion Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky.

Who knows whether “The Great Beast 666,” as Crow­ley liked to call him­self, would take these com­par­isons as a com­pli­ment. But I expect it takes a true adept to unrav­el the mys­ter­ies of enig­mat­ic works from 1920–21 like The Sun (Auto Por­trait), at the top, The Moon (Study for Tarot), fur­ther down, or The Hiero­phant, below. Avant-garde film­mak­er Ken­neth Anger is such an adept, a con­vert to Crowley’s reli­gion, which exert­ed much influ­ence on his work.

Above, see Anger’s “Brush of Bapho­me­nt,” a short film in which his cam­era zooms and pans over Crowley’s paint­ings, pick­ing up mys­ti­cal sym­bols and intrigu­ing­ly inde­ci­pher­able sym­bol­ism. And learn more about Crow­ley’s visu­al art in this radio inter­view with Burat­ti and his edit­ed col­lec­tion of Crow­ley’s work, The Night­mare Paint­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley

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

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Ken Burns Teaches Documentary Filmmaking with His New Online Masterclass

in Film, History | August 13th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

The his­to­ri­an Stephen Ambrose once said that “more Amer­i­cans get their his­to­ry from Ken Burns than from any oth­er source.” That quote sounds plau­si­ble enough, and Burns’ com­pa­ny Flo­ren­tine Films cer­tain­ly has­n’t hes­i­tat­ed to put it to pro­mo­tion­al use. For almost four decades now, Burns has indeed demon­strat­ed not just his skill at craft­ing long-form doc­u­men­taries about Amer­i­can his­to­ry — most famous­ly, 11 hours on the Civ­il War, 18 hours on base­ball, and 19 hours on jazz — but his skill at plac­ing his work, and that of his col­lab­o­ra­tors, cen­tral­ly in the cul­ture as well. What can we learn from his career in doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing, with its seem­ing infini­tude of both his­tor­i­cal mate­r­i­al and crit­i­cal acclaim? Mas­ter­class now offers one set of answers to that ques­tion with the online course “Ken Burns Teach­es Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ing.”

Priced at $90, the course cov­ers every step of the doc­u­men­tary-film­mak­ing process, from writ­ing a script to find­ing source mate­ri­als to inter­view­ing sub­jects to design­ing sounds and record­ing voiceovers. Most of this has, in a tech­ni­cal sense, become vast­ly eas­i­er since Burns began his career in the late 1970s, and iMovie has made his sig­na­ture pans across still pho­tos effort­less­ly imple­mentable with the “Ken Burns Effect” option.

But it takes much more than pans across pho­tographs to make the kind of impact Burns does with his doc­u­men­taries, and the most valu­able insight pro­vid­ed by a course like this one is the insight into how its teacher sees the world.

“Peo­ple are real­iz­ing that there’s as much dra­ma in what is and what was as any­thing that the human imag­i­na­tion dreams of,” says Burns in the course’s trail­er, “and you have the added advan­tage of it being true.” But at the same time, Burns also believes that “there’s no objec­tive truth. This is human expe­ri­ence. We see things from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. And that’s okay.” This brings to mind a line from Burns’ Jazz, orig­i­nal­ly spo­ken by Wyn­ton Marsalis but quot­ed by Burns in a New York­er pro­file last year: “Some­times a thing and the oppo­site of a thing are true at the same time.” A tol­er­ance for con­tra­dic­tion, in Burns’ book, makes you a bet­ter doc­u­men­tar­i­an, but it may also make you a sharp­er observ­er of the world around you. Now, in what Burns calls “one of the most chal­leng­ing moments in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States,” the world needs the sharpest observers it can get. You can sign up for Burns’ course here.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Ken Burns Urges Stan­ford Grad­u­ates to Defeat Trump & the Ret­ro­grade Forces Threat­en­ing the U.S.

How to Tell a Good Sto­ry, as Explained by George Saun­ders, Ira Glass, Ken Burns, Scott Simon, Cather­ine Burns & Oth­ers

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Spike Lee to Teach an Online Course on Film­mak­ing; Get Ready By Watch­ing His List of 95 Essen­tial Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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 13 Comedians Take “The Bob Ross Challenge” & Help Raise Money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

in Art, Comedy, How to Learn for Free, Television | August 13th, 2018

The late Bob Ross, the almost laugh­ably calm host of PBS’ pop­u­lar how-to series, the Joy of Paint­ing, was a boss of many things—business, brand­ing, the 16th-cen­tu­ry wet-on-wet ”Alla Pri­ma” tech­nique…

Also speed, as thir­teen New York City come­di­ans recent­ly dis­cov­ered first­hand.

Invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in The Bob Ross Chal­lenge, a web series-cum-fundrais­er hatched by come­di­ans Mic­ah Sher­man and Mark Stet­son, they game­ly plunged ahead, regard­less of artis­tic tal­ent or famil­iar­i­ty with the mas­ter.

Some like, Julia Duffy, are sim­ply too young to have encoun­tered Ross in his pub­lic tele­vi­sion hey­day.

(For the record, all 403 episodes of Ross’ paint­ing show are now view­able online for free.)

Oth­ers, like Aparna Nancher­la, above, chanced upon reruns screened for iron­ic effect in dive bars…

Or, like Keisha Zol­lar, they’re in a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with some­one who uses The Joy of Paint­ing to com­bat insom­nia.

The major­i­ty seem to share a latch key kid’s fond­ness for the gen­tle Ross, whose show proved a chill pair­ing with after­school snacks.

“We spent about $1000 on offi­cial Bob Ross sup­plies,” She­man reports. From easel to the fan brush, every­thing was set up for the par­tic­i­pat­ing come­di­ans’ suc­cess. Like Ross, who typ­i­cal­ly shot a sea­son’s worth of episodes over a sin­gle week­end, the first sea­son’s shoot tran­spired over a few days.

The ground rules were sim­ple. Armed with an arse­nal of offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned sup­plies, each come­di­an entered a stu­dio where a Joy of Paint­ing episode was screen­ing, charged with recre­at­ing that can­vas in real time. At the end of the episode, it was “brush­es down” whether or not the can­vas bore pass­ing resem­blance to Bob’s.

“Our orig­i­nal title was Bob Ross Fails, but peo­ple were actu­al­ly suc­ceed­ing,” Sher­man con­fess­es.

That said, there’s a def­i­nite edge. The par­tic­i­pants may be trained in improv, but as per­form­ers, there’s an imper­a­tive to get over, and, as stat­ed, Ross moves fast. In the time it takes an aver­age mor­tal to apply a sky wash, he’s like­ly fan brushed in a cou­ple of hap­py lit­tle trees.

Tough nuts.

The rules of the game decree that the stop­watch abides.

As Ralf Jean-Pierre observes, it’s a race against time.

Though not every­one plays by the rules…

David Carl, above, cre­ator of Trump Lear, declares (in char­ac­ter) that he not only defeat­ed Bob Ross, but that “no one’s ever had a bet­ter tree than that” and that his clouds are “beau­ti­ful­ly tremen­dous.”

Sher­man and his co-cre­ator Mark Stet­son have con­ceived of The Bob Ross Chal­lenge as a fundrais­er for the Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety. Like Ross, Stetson’s father was pre­ma­ture­ly claimed by lym­phoma. Make a dona­tion in their hon­or here.

Watch the first sea­son of The Bob Ross Chal­lenge here.

#BobRossIs­A­Boss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Chris Rock Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Standup Com­e­dy Spe­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her recent trip to Mex­i­co City is the inspi­ra­tion for her lat­est short play at The Tank in New York City on August 23, Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Free Course from MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once

in Food & Drink, MIT, Online Courses | August 13th, 2018

At MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co usu­al­ly teach­es physics to fresh­men. But, on behalf of the MIT Exper­i­men­tal Study Group, Rebus­co has devised an appeal­ing course — Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — where she com­bines teach­ing two things many peo­ple love: learn­ing to speak Ital­ian and cook­ing Ital­ian food. The course sum­ma­ry reads:

The par­tic­i­pants in this sem­i­nar will dive into learn­ing basic con­ver­sa­tion­al Ital­ian, Ital­ian cul­ture, and the Mediter­ranean diet. Each class is based on the prepa­ra­tion of a deli­cious dish and on the bite-sized acqui­si­tion of parts of the Ital­ian lan­guage and cul­ture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also root­ed in healthy habits and in cul­ture. At the end of the sem­i­nar the par­tic­i­pants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to under­stand and speak basic Ital­ian.

As Rebus­co explains in a short video, this course has the advan­tage of mak­ing the lan­guage lessons a lit­tle less abstract. It gives stu­dents a chance to apply what they’ve learned (new vocab­u­lary words, pro­nun­ci­a­tions, etc.) in a fun, prac­ti­cal con­text.

Above, we start you off with the first lan­guage les­son in the sem­i­nar. It begins where all basic cours­es start — with how to say your name. Below, you can watch the class learn to cook fresh pas­ta. Along the way, the course also teach­es stu­dents how to make espres­so, risot­to, home­made piz­za, bruschet­ta, and bis­cot­ti. Lec­tures for the course can be found on the MIT web site, YouTube and iTunes. Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons and 1200 Free Cours­es Online. Buon Appeti­to!

Ingre­di­ents & Cook­ing Instruc­tion:

Food Prepa­ra­tion

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site way back in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

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Hear Singers from the Metropolitan Opera Record Their Voices on Traditional Wax Cylinders

in History, Music, Opera, Technology | August 10th, 2018

Vinyl is back in a big way.

Music lovers who boot­ed their record col­lec­tions dur­ing the com­pact disc’s approx­i­mate­ly 15 year reign are scram­bling to replace their old favorites, even in the age of stream­ing. They can’t get enough of that warm ana­log sound.

Can a wax cylin­der revival be far behind?

A recent wax cylin­der exper­i­ment by Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera sopra­no Susan­na Phillips and tenor Piotr Becza­la, above, sug­gests no. This ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy is no more due for a come­back than the zoetrope or the steam pow­ered vibra­tor.

Becza­la ini­ti­at­ed the project, curi­ous to know how his voice would sound when cap­tured by a Thomas Edi­son-era device. If it yield­ed a faith­ful repro­duc­tion, we can assume that the voice mod­ern lis­ten­ers accept as that of a great such as Enri­co Caru­so, whose out­put pre­dat­ed the advent of the elec­tri­cal record­ing process, is fair­ly iden­ti­cal to the one expe­ri­enced by his live audi­ences.

Work­ing togeth­er with the New York Pub­lic Library’s Rodgers and Ham­mer­stein Archives of Record­ed Sound and the Thomas Edi­son Nation­al His­tor­i­cal Park, the Met was able to set up a ses­sion to find out.

The result is not with­out a cer­tain ghost­ly appeal, but the fac­sim­i­le is far from rea­son­able.

As Becza­la told The New York Times, the tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions under­mined his into­na­tion, dic­tion, or per­for­mance of the qui­eter pas­sages of his selec­tion from Verdi’s Luisa Miller. In a field where craft and tech­nique are under con­stant scruti­ny, the exis­tence of such a record­ing could be a lia­bil­i­ty, were it not intend­ed as a curios­i­ty from the get go.

Phillips, ear turned to the horn for play­back, insist­ed that she would­n’t have rec­og­nized this record­ing of “Per Pieta” from Mozart’s Così fan tutte as her own.

Learn more about wax cylin­der record­ing tech­nol­o­gy and preser­va­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

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

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See Ancient Greek Music Accurately Reconstructed for the First Time

in History, Literature, Music | August 10th, 2018

Imag­ine try­ing to recon­struct the music of the Bea­t­les 2,500 years from now, if noth­ing sur­vived but a few frag­ments of the lyrics. Or the operas of Mozart and Ver­di if all we had were pieces of the libret­tos. In a 2013 BBC arti­cle, musi­cian and clas­sics pro­fes­sor at Oxford Armand D’Angour used these com­par­isons to illus­trate the dif­fi­cul­ty of recon­struct­ing ancient Greek song, a task to which he has set him­self for the past five years.

The com­par­i­son is not entire­ly apt. Schol­ars have long had clues to help them inter­pret the ancient songs that served as vehi­cles for Home­r­ic and Sap­ph­ic verse or the lat­er dra­ma of Aeschy­lus, almost all of which was sung with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. In a recent arti­cle at The Con­ver­sa­tion, D’Angour points out that many lit­er­ary texts of antiq­ui­ty “pro­vide abun­dant and high­ly spe­cif­ic details about the notes, scales, effects, and instru­ments used,” the lat­ter includ­ing the lyre and the aulos, “two dou­ble-reed pipes played simul­ta­ne­ous­ly by a sin­gle per­former.”

But these musi­cal instruc­tions have proved elu­sive; “the terms and nota­tions found in ancient sources—mode, enhar­mon­ic, diesis, and so on—are com­pli­cat­ed and unfa­mil­iar,” D’Angour writes. Nonethe­less, using recre­ations of ancient instru­ments, close analy­sis of poet­ic meter, and care­ful inter­pre­ta­tion of ancient texts that dis­cuss melody and har­mo­ny, he claims to have accu­rate­ly deci­phered the sound of ancient Greek music.

D’Angour has worked to turn the “new rev­e­la­tions about ancient Greek music” that he wrote of five years ago into per­for­mances that recon­struct the sound of Euripi­des and oth­er ancient lit­er­ary artists. In the video at the top, see a choral and aulos per­for­mance of Athanaeus’ “Paean” from 127 BC and Euripi­des Orestes cho­rus from 408 BC. D’Angour and his col­leagues break in peri­od­i­cal­ly to talk about their method­ol­o­gy.

In the 2017 inter­view above from the Greek tele­vi­sion chan­nel ERT1, D’Angour dis­cuss­es his research into the music of ancient Greek verse, from epic, to lyric, to tragedy, to com­e­dy, “all of which,” he says, “was sung music, either entire­ly or part­ly.” Cen­tral to the insights schol­ars have gained in the past five years are “some very well pre­served auloi,” he notes, that “have been recon­struct­ed by expert tech­ni­cians” and which “pro­vide a faith­ful guide to the pitch range of ancient music, as well as to the instru­ments’ own pitch­es, tim­bres, and tun­ings.”

Deter­min­ing tem­po can be tricky, as it can with any music com­posed before “the inven­tion of mechan­i­cal chronome­ters,” when “tem­po was in any case not fixed, and was bound to vary between per­for­mances.” Here, he relies on poet­ic meter, which gives indi­ca­tions through the pat­terns of long and short syl­la­bles. “It remains for me to real­ize,” D’Angour writes, “in the next few years, the oth­er few dozen ancient scores that exist, many extreme­ly frag­men­tary, and to stage a com­plete dra­ma with his­tor­i­cal­ly informed music in an ancient the­ater such as that of Epi­dau­rus.” We’ll be sure to bring you video of that extra­or­di­nary event.

via The Con­ver­sa­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Intro­duc­tion to Home­r­ic Greek 

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

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What Made Robin Williams a Uniquely Expressive Actor: A Video Essay Explores a Subtle Dimension of His Comic Genius

in Comedy, Film | August 10th, 2018

“He had admir­ers but no imi­ta­tors,” writes Dave Itzkoff in Robin, his new biog­ra­phy of Robin Williams. “No one com­bined the pre­cise set of tal­ents he had in the same alchem­i­cal pro­por­tions.” Though Itzkof­f’s book has received a great deal of acclaim, many fans may still feel that impor­tant ele­ments of Williams’ par­tic­u­lar genius remain less than ful­ly under­stood. Schol­ars of com­e­dy will sure­ly con­tin­ue to scru­ti­nize the beloved comic’s per­sona for decades to come, just as they have over the past four years since his death. The cin­e­ma-ana­lyz­ing video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing pro­duced one of the first such exam­i­na­tions of Williams’ tech­nique, “Robin Williams — In Motion,” and its insight still holds up today.

“Few actors could express them­selves as well through motion,” nar­ra­tor Tony Zhou says of Williams, “whether that motion was big or small. Even when he was doing the same move­ment in two dif­fer­ent scenes, you could see the sub­tle vari­a­tions he brought to the arc of the char­ac­ter.” This goes for Williams’ man­ic, impres­sion laden per­for­mances as well as his low-key, slow-burn­ing ones. “To watch his work,” Zhou says over a mon­tage of enter­tain­ing exam­ples, “is to see the sub­tle thing that an actor can do with his hands, his mouth, his right leg, and his facepalm. Robin Williams’ work is an ency­clo­pe­dia of ways that an actor can express him­self through move­ment, and he was for­tu­nate to work with film­mak­ers who used his tal­ents to their fullest.”

Those film­mak­ers includ­ed Bar­ry Levin­son (Good Morn­ing Viet­nam, Toys, Man of the Year), Peter Weir (Dead Poets Soci­ety), Ter­ry Gilliam (The Adven­tures of Baron Mun­chausen, The Fish­er King), and Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunt­ing). Zhou cred­its them and oth­ers with let­ting Williams “play it straight through” rather than adher­ing to the more com­mon stop-start shoot­ing method that only per­mits a few sec­onds of act­ing at a time; they gave him “some­thing phys­i­cal to do,” with­out which his skill with motion could­n’t come through in the first place; they used “block­ing,” mean­ing the arrange­ment of the actors in the space of the scene, “to tell their sto­ry visu­al­ly”; they “let him lis­ten,” a lit­tle-acknowl­edged but nonethe­less impor­tant part of a per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly a Williams per­for­mance.

Final­ly, these direc­tors “did­n’t let per­fec­tion get in the way of inspi­ra­tion.” While the qual­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual works in Williams’ impres­sive­ly large fil­mog­ra­phy may vary, his per­for­mances in them are almost all unfail­ing­ly com­pelling. Even dur­ing his life­time Williams was described as a com­ic genius, and he showed us that com­ic genius­es have to take risks. And even though every risk he took might not have paid off, his body of work, tak­en as a whole, teach­es us a les­son: “Be open. This was a man who impro­vised many of his most icon­ic moments. Maybe he was on to some­thing.” Or as Williams him­self put it on an Inside the Actors Stu­dio inter­view, “When the stuff real­ly hits you, it’s usu­al­ly some­thing that hap­pened, and it hap­pened then. That’s what film is about: cap­tur­ing a moment.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robin Williams Uses His Stand-Up Com­e­dy Genius to Deliv­er a 1983 Com­mence­ment Speech

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

Robin Williams & Bob­by McFer­rin Sing Fun Cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ “Come Togeth­er”

A Salute to Every Frame a Paint­ing: Watch All 28 Episodes of the Fine­ly-Craft­ed (and Now Con­clud­ed) Video Essay Series on Cin­e­ma

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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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