Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sitcom Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

in Music, Television | January 10th, 2018

For a good long while, or at least a few decades, the best things on TV in the U.S. hap­pened out­side the major broad­cast and nation­al cable net­works. And like a great many oth­er cul­tur­al hap­pen­ings of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, you would have to live in New York to expe­ri­ence them. I mean, of course, the weird, won­der­ful world of Man­hat­tan pub­lic access cable TV. Here you could watch, for exam­ple, Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty, cre­at­ed by the tit­u­lar host as “a drug-fueled re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Hugh Hefner’s Play­boy After Dark”—as we not­ed in a recent post—and fea­tur­ing the most cut­ting-edge artists and musi­cians of the day.

Around the same time, Andy Warhol con­duct­ed his ver­sion of a celebri­ty inter­view show on local cable, and as the banal info­tain­ment of day­time talk show and 24-hour-cable news devel­oped on main­stream TV, a dozen bizarre, hilar­i­ous, raunchy, and ridicu­lous inter­view and call-in shows took hold on New York cable access in the years to fol­low (some of them still exist).

I hap­pened to catch the tail end of this gold­en era, which tapered off in the nineties as the inter­net took over for the com­mu­ni­ties these shows served. But oh, what it must have been like to watch the thriv­ing down­town scene doc­u­ment itself on TV from week-to-week, along­side the leg­en­dar­i­ly flam­boy­ant Man­hat­tan sub­cul­tures that found their voic­es on cable access?

Quite a few peo­ple remem­ber it well, and were thrilled when the video at the top emerged from obscu­ri­ty: an episode of TV-CBGB shot in 1981, “an odd glimpse,” writes Mar­tin Schnei­der at Dan­ger­ous Minds, “of a CBGB iden­ti­ty that nev­er took shape, as a cable access main­stay.” It is unclear how many episodes of the show were shot, or aired, or still exist in some form, but what we do have above seems rep­re­sen­ta­tive, accord­ing to two Bill­board arti­cles describ­ing the show. The first, from July 11, 1981, called the project “the first rock’n’roll sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy on cable tele­vi­sion.”

Cre­at­ed by CBG­Bs own­er, Hilly Kristal, the show aimed to give view­ers slices of life from the Bow­ery insti­tu­tion, which was already famous, accord­ing to Bill­board, as “the club that pio­neered new music.” Kristal told the trade mag­a­zine, “There will always be a plot, though a sim­ple plot. It will be about what hap­pens in the club, or what could hap­pen.” He then goes on to describe a series of plot ideas which, thank­ful­ly, didn’t dom­i­nate the show—or at least what we see of it above. The episode is “90% per­for­mance,” though “not true con­cert footage,” Schnei­der writes.

After an odd open­ing intro, we’re thrown into a song from Idiot Savant. Oth­er acts include The Roustabouts, The Hard, Jo Mar­shall, Shrap­nel, and Sic Fucks. While not among the best or most well-known to play at the club, these bands put on some excel­lent per­for­mances. By Novem­ber of the fol­low­ing year, it seems the first episode had still not yet aired. Bill­board quotes Kristal as call­ing TV-CBGB “one step fur­ther in expos­ing new tal­ent. Radio and reg­u­lar tv aren’t doing it. MTV is good, but it’s show­ing most­ly top 40.”

Had the show migrat­ed to MTV, Schnei­der spec­u­lates, it might have become a “nation­al TV icon,” ful­fill­ing Kristal’s vision for a new means of bring­ing obscure down­town New York musi­cians to the world at large. It might have worked. Though the sketch­es are lack­lus­ter, notable as his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, the music is what makes it worth­while, and there’s some real­ly fun stuff here—vital and dra­mat­ic. While these bands may not have had the mass appeal of, say, Blondie or the Ramones, they were stal­warts of the ear­ly 80s CBGB scene.

The awk­ward, strange­ly earnest, and often down­right goofy skits por­tray­ing the goings-on in the lives of club reg­u­lars and employ­ees are both some­how touch­ing and tedious, but with a lit­tle pol­ish and bet­ter direc­tion, the whole thing might have played like a punk rock ver­sion of Fame—which maybe no one need­ed. As it stands, giv­en the enthu­si­asm of sev­er­al YouTube com­menters who claim to have watched it at the time or been in the club them­selves, the episode con­sti­tutes a strange and rare doc­u­ment of what was, if not what could have been.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

Pat­ti Smith Plays at CBGB In One of Her First Record­ed Con­certs, Joined by Sem­i­nal Punk Band Tele­vi­sion (1975)

CBGB is Reborn … As a Restau­rant in Newark Air­port

When Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty Brought Klaus Nomi, Blondie & Basquiat to Pub­lic Access TV (1978–82)

Ian McK­ellen Recites Shakespeare’s Son­net 20, Backed by Garage Rock Band, the Flesh­tones, on Andy Warhol’s MTV Vari­ety Show (1987)

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

Free, Open Source Modular Synth Software Lets You Create 70s & 80s Electronic Music—Without Having to Pay Thousands for a Real-World Synthesizer

in Music, Technology | January 3rd, 2018

In the past decade or so, the ana­log mod­u­lar synth—of the kind pio­neered by Robert Moog and Don Buch­la—has made a come­back, cre­at­ing a boom­ing niche mar­ket full of musi­cians chas­ing the sounds of the 70s and 80s. These inscrutable racks of patch­bays, oscil­la­tors, fil­ters, etc. look to the non-ini­ti­at­ed more like tele­phone oper­a­tor sta­tions of old than musi­cal instru­ments. But the sounds they pro­duce are sub­lime and oth­er­world­ly, with a sat­u­rat­ed warmth unpar­al­leled in the dig­i­tal world.

But while ana­log tech­nol­o­gy may have per­fect­ed cer­tain tones, one can’t beat the con­ve­nience of dig­i­tal record­ing, with its near­ly unlim­it­ed mul­ti-track­ing capa­bil­i­ty, abil­i­ty to save set­tings, and the ease of edit­ing and arrang­ing in the com­put­er. Dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed, able to emu­late with “plug-ins” the capa­bil­i­ties of sought-after ana­log stu­dio gear of the past. It has tak­en a bit longer for vir­tu­al instru­ments to meet this same stan­dard, but they may be near­ly there.

Only the most fine­ly-tuned ears, for exam­ple, can hear the dif­fer­ence between the high­est-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal­ly mod­eled gui­tar ampli­fiers and effects and their real-world coun­ter­parts in the mix. Even the most high-end mod­el­ing pack­ages don’t cost as much as their real life coun­ter­parts, and many also come free in lim­it­ed ver­sions. So too the wealth of ana­log synth soft­ware, mod­eled to sound con­vinc­ing­ly like the old and new­ly reis­sued ana­log box­es that can run into the many thou­sands of dol­lars to col­lect and con­nect.

One such col­lec­tion of synths, the VCV Rack, offers open-source vir­tu­al mod­u­lar synths almost entire­ly free, with only a few at very mod­est prices. The stand­alone vir­tu­al rack works with­out any addi­tion­al soft­ware. Once you’ve cre­at­ed an account and installed it, you can start adding dozens of plug-ins, includ­ing var­i­ous syn­the­siz­ers, gates, reverbs, com­pres­sors, sequencers, key­boards, etc. “It’s pret­ty trans­for­ma­tive stuff,” writes CDM. “You can run vir­tu­al mod­ules to syn­the­size and process sounds, both those emu­lat­ing real hard­ware and many that exist only in soft­ware.”

The learn­ing curve is plen­ty steep for those who haven’t han­dled this per­plex­ing tech­nol­o­gy out­side the box. A series of YouTube tuto­ri­als, a few of which you can see here, can get you going in short order. Those already expe­ri­enced with the real-world stuff will delight in the expand­ed capa­bil­i­ties of the dig­i­tal ver­sions, as well as the fideli­ty with which these plug-ins emu­late real equipment—without the need for a room­ful of cables, unwield­ly racks, and sol­dier­ing irons and spare parts for those inevitable bad con­nec­tions and bro­ken switch­es and inputs.

You can down­load the vir­tu­al rack here, then fol­low the instruc­tions to load as many plug-ins as you like. CDM has instruc­tions for the devel­op­er ver­sion (find the source code here), and a YouTube series called Mod­u­lar Curios­i­ty demon­strates how to install the rack and use the var­i­ous plu­g­ins (see their first video fur­ther up and find the rest here). Mod­u­lar Sys­tem Begin­ner Tuto­r­i­al is anoth­er YouTube guide, with five dif­fer­ent videos. See num­ber one above and the rest here. The longer video at the top of the post offers a “first look and noob tuto­r­i­al.”

VCV Rack is only the lat­est of many vir­tu­al mod­u­lar synths, includ­ing Native Instru­ments’ Reak­tor Blocks and Softube’s Mod­u­lar. “But these come with a hefty price tag,” notes FACT mag­a­zine. “VCV Rack can be down­loaded for free on Lin­ux, Mac and Win­dows plat­form.” And if you’re won­der­ing how it stacks up against the real-life box­es it emu­lates, check out the video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Hear What Music Sounds Like When It’s Cre­at­ed by Syn­the­siz­ers Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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

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

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Life, Television | January 3rd, 2018

Whether your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion involves tak­ing up paint­ing, man­ag­ing stress, cul­ti­vat­ing a more pos­i­tive out­look, or build­ing a busi­ness empire, the late tele­vi­sion artist Bob Ross can help you stick it out.

Like Fred Rogers’ Mr Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, Ross’ long-run­ning PBS show, The Joy of Paint­ing, did not dis­ap­pear from view fol­low­ing its creator’s demise. For over twen­ty years, new fans have con­tin­ued to seek out the half-hour long instruc­tion­al videos, along with its mes­mer­iz­ing­ly mel­low, eas­i­ly spoofed host.

Now all 403 episodes have been made avail­able for free on Ross’ offi­cial Youtube chan­nel. That cov­ers all 31 sea­sons.

It’s said that 90% of the reg­u­lar view­ers tun­ing in to watch Ross crank out his sig­na­ture “wet-on-wet” land­scapes nev­er took up a brush, despite his belief that, with a bit of encour­age­ment, any­one can paint.

Per­haps they pre­ferred sad clowns or big-eyed chil­dren to scenic land­scapes of the sort that would not have looked out of place in a 1970’s motel.… Or per­haps Ross, him­self, was the big draw.

Like Mis­ter Rogers, Ross spoke soft­ly, using direct address to cre­ate an impres­sion of inti­ma­cy between him­self and the view­er. Twen­ty years in the mil­i­tary had soured him on barked-out, rigid instruc­tions. Instead, Ross reas­sured less expe­ri­enced painters that the 16th-cen­tu­ry ”Alla Pri­ma” tech­nique he brought to the mass­es could nev­er result in mis­takes, only “hap­py acci­dents.” He was patient and kind and he did­n’t take his own abil­i­ties too seri­ous­ly, though he seemed like he would cer­tain­ly have tak­en plea­sure in yours.

Ross’ Land of Make Believe was a char­ac­ter-free nat­ur­al world, in which many of the same ele­ments appear over and over.  Accord­ing to Five Thir­ty Eight cul­ture edi­tor Walt Hickey’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, trees reigned supreme. The real life land­scapes he observed as first sergeant of the U.S. Air Force Clin­ic at Eiel­son Air Force Base in Alas­ka became his life­long sub­ject, and by exten­sion, that of untold num­bers of home view­ers.

His devo­tees may be con­tent just see­ing “hap­py lit­tle trees” and “pret­ty lit­tle moun­tains” bloom on can­vas, but in an inter­view with NPR, Ross’ busi­ness part­ner, Annette Kowal­s­ki, sug­gests that he would not have been.

The gen­tle, for­est-and-cloud-lov­ing host was also an ambi­tious and high­ly focused busi­ness­man, who used TV as the medi­um for his suc­cess. Every folksy com­ment was rehearsed before film­ing and he stuck with the permed hair­do he loathed, rather than scrap­ping what had become a high­ly visu­al brand iden­ti­fi­er.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Watch all 31 sea­sons of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing here, or right here on this page. Offi­cial Bob Ross paint­ing kits are wide­ly avail­able online, or source your own using a cob­bled togeth­er sup­ply list.

Sea­son Three

Sea­son Four

Sea­son Five

Sea­son Six

We will con­tin­u­ing adding sea­sons to this list as they become avail­able.

Sea­son Sev­en

Sea­son Eight

Sea­son Nine

Sea­son Ten

Sea­son 11

Sea­son 12

Sea­son 13

Sea­son 14

Sea­son 15

Sea­son 16

Sea­son 17

Sea­son 18

Sea­son 19

Sea­son 20

Sea­son 21

Sea­son 22

Sea­son 23

Sea­son 24

Sea­son 25

Sea­son 26

Sea­son 27

Sea­son 28

Sea­son 29

Sea­son 30

Sea­son 31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing, Sea­sons 1–3, Free Online

Mr. Rogers Goes to Con­gress and Saves PBS: Heart­warm­ing Video from 1969

Stream 23 Free Doc­u­men­taries from PBS’ Award-Win­ning Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her res­o­lu­tion is to spend less time online, but you can still fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The 10 Most Popular Courses on Coursera in 2017 (and 2,000 Courses You Can Take for Free in January, 2018)

in Online Courses | January 2nd, 2018

Back in 2012, Cours­era start­ed offer­ing MOOCS (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) to the world at large. And they’ve since amassed some 28 mil­lion reg­is­tered users, a cat­a­logue of 2,000 cours­es, and reams of data about what peo­ple want to learn. In the wan­ing days of Decem­ber, Cours­era pub­lished a list of their 1o most pop­u­lar cours­es of 2017. (Find below, and enroll in any of these cours­es for free.) From this list, it drew some larg­er con­clu­sions about trends in edu­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.

The list shows, writes Nikhil Sin­ha, Cours­er­a’s Chief Con­tent Offi­cer, that “cut­ting-edge tech skills con­tin­ue to be the most sought after in online edu­ca­tion.” Arti­fi­cial intelligence–encompassing Machine Learn­ing, Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing–topped the list of cours­es. Mean­while “Blockchain has also burst onto the scene, putting Princeton’s Bit­coin and Cryp­tocur­ren­cy course at num­ber five on the list.” But, Sin­ha adds, it’s “not just tech­nol­o­gy skills that are trend­ing.” The “basic learn­ing and infor­ma­tion-reten­tion skills taught in our pop­u­lar Learn­ing How to Learn course are extreme­ly sought-after by peo­ple of all ages.” The same applies to the prob­lem-solv­ing skills taught by Stan­ford’s Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Think­ing.

You can review the Top 10 list below, and enroll in any of those reg­u­lar­ly-offered cours­es.

1. Machine Learn­ing: A primer from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty on get­ting com­put­ers to act with­out being explic­it­ly pro­grammed.
2. Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing: Build­ing on the course above, this course will teach you to feed a com­put­er sys­tem a lot of data, which it can then use to make deci­sions about oth­er data.
3. Learn­ing How to Learn: Pow­er­ful Men­tal Tools to Help You Mas­ter Tough Sub­jects: The most pop­u­lar MOOC ever, this course devel­oped by Dr. Bar­bara Oak­ley gives you access to the invalu­able learn­ing tech­niques used by experts in art, music, lit­er­a­ture, math, sci­ence, sports, and many oth­er dis­ci­plines.
4. Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Think­ing: Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty will teach you a style of think­ing that will help you think out­side the box and solve real prob­lems in the every­day world.
5. Bit­coin and Cryp­tocur­ren­cy Tech­nolo­gies: From Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty comes a course that explains what is spe­cial about Bit­coin, and how it works at a tech­ni­cal lev­el.
6. Pro­gram­ming for Every­body (Get­ting Start­ed with Python): The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan offers a course every­one should take–a primer on the basics of pro­gram­ming com­put­ers, using Python.
7. Algo­rithms, Part I: Prince­ton’s course cov­ers “essen­tial infor­ma­tion that every seri­ous pro­gram­mer needs to know about algo­rithms and data struc­tures, with empha­sis on appli­ca­tions and sci­en­tif­ic per­for­mance analy­sis of Java imple­men­ta­tions.”
8. Eng­lish for Career Devel­op­ment: Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers “inter­est­ed in advanc­ing their careers in the glob­al mar­ket­place.” Along the way, you’ll learn about the job search, appli­ca­tion, and inter­view process in the U.S., and also explore your own glob­al career path.
9. Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing:  The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to gives you the chance to “learn about arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works and how they’re being used for machine learn­ing, as applied to speech and object recog­ni­tion, image seg­men­ta­tion, mod­el­ing lan­guage and human motion, etc.”
10. Finan­cial Mar­kets: Cre­at­ed by Yale’s Robert Shiller (win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics), this course offers an overview of the finan­cial mar­kets, which allow human soci­ety to man­age risks and fos­ter enter­prise. It includes an intro­duc­tion to risk man­age­ment and behav­ioral finance prin­ci­ples under­ly­ing the secu­ri­ties, insur­ance, and bank­ing indus­tries.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn­ing How to Learn: The Most Pop­u­lar MOOC of All Time

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Cours­era Part­ners with Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Afford­able Price

Invisible Cities Illustrated: Artist Illustrates Each and Every City in Italo Calvino’s Classic Novel

in Art, Books | December 28th, 2017

If you want to read a book about cities, you still can’t do much bet­ter than a slim, plot­less work of fic­tion by Ita­lo Calvi­no where­in the explor­er Mar­co Polo tells the emper­or Kublai Khan of what he’s seen in his trav­els across the world. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Ital­ian in 1972, Invis­i­ble Cities has inspired gen­er­a­tions of read­ers, hail­ing from all across the world them­selves, to think in entire­ly new ways not just about cities but about trav­el, place, per­cep­tion, real­i­ty, myth, and lit­er­a­ture itself. Though very much a work con­cerned with what’s seen only in the imag­i­na­tion, the book has also inspired artists to try their hand at ren­der­ing the 55 fic­ti­tious cities Polo describes with­in.

A few years ago we fea­tured “See­ing Calvi­no,” a joint effort by artists Matt Kish, Leighton Con­nor, Joe Kuth to illus­trate, among oth­er ele­ments of the Calvi­no canon, each and every one of Invis­i­ble Cities’ fan­tas­ti­cal, often impos­si­ble col­lec­tions of struc­tures, lives, and, ideas. More recent­ly, the Peru-based archi­tect and artist Kari­na Puente has, with her Invis­i­ble Cities Project, put her­self to work on a sim­i­lar endeav­or. Each of Puente’s intri­cate ren­der­ings takes about a week to pro­duce, and as she tells Arch­dai­ly, “they are not only drawn – I use dif­fer­ent types of paper and draw on each one before cut­ting them out with exac­to knives. All the draw­ings are com­posed of lay­ers of paper which are cut out and glued.”

At the top we have Puente’s city of Dorotea where, bear­ing in mind the rules of its infra­struc­tur­al divi­sion by gates, draw­bridges, and canals and those of the mar­riages between the trad­ing fam­i­lies that reside there, “you can then work from these facts until you learn every­thing you wish about the city in the past, present, and future.” In the mid­dle is Isaura, a city built on a deep sub­ter­ranean lake whose gods, “accord­ing to some peo­ple, live in the depths,” and to oth­ers live in the asso­ci­at­ed buck­ets, pump han­dles, wind­mill blades, pipes, and every oth­er built ele­ment of this “city that moves entire­ly upward.”

Just above you can see Zobei­de, laid out accord­ing to a series of dreams of “a woman run­ning at night through an unknown city,” pur­sued but nev­er found, altered to con­form to each dream until new arrivals “could not under­stand what drew these peo­ple to Zobei­de, this ugly city, this trap.” While at first Polo’s descrip­tions of the cities all across Khan’s empire may strike read­ers as com­plete­ly fan­tas­ti­cal, they’ll soon hear echoes of the places they live in in these metaphor­i­cal metrop­o­lis­es. And if they take a look at Puente’s illus­tra­tions as they read, they’ll see them as well.

Vis­it Puente’s Invis­i­ble Cities Project here.

via Arch­dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Invis­i­ble Cities Illus­trat­ed: Three Artists Paint Every City in Ita­lo Calvino’s Clas­sic Nov­el

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Two Ita­lo Calvi­no Sto­ries: “The False Grand­moth­er” and “The Dis­tance from the Moon”

Ita­lo Calvi­no Offers 14 Rea­sons We Should Read the Clas­sics

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.

How the Japanese Practice of “Forest Bathing”—Or Just Hanging Out in the Woods—Can Lower Stress Levels and Fight Disease

in Health, Nature, Psychology | December 19th, 2017

When the U.S. media began report­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of “for­est bathing” as a ther­a­py for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the con­cept relent­less­ly as yet anoth­er pre­ten­tious, bour­geois repack­ag­ing of some­thing thor­ough­ly mun­dane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going out­side”?

Well, yes, if all “for­est bathing” means is “going out­side,” then it does sound like a grandiose and unnec­es­sary phrase. The term, how­ev­er, is not an Amer­i­can mar­ket­ing inven­tion but a trans­la­tion of the Japan­ese shin­rin-yoku. “Coined by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries in 1982,” writes Meeri Kim at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the word lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ‘tak­ing in the for­est atmos­phere’ or ‘for­est bathing’ and refers to the process of soak­ing up the sights, smells and sounds of a nat­ur­al set­ting to pro­mote phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

So what? We already have the exam­ples of thou­sands years of Bud­dhist monks (and Thich Nat Hanh), of Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the saints of the Sier­ra Club. But the old­est and most use­ful ideas and prac­tices can get care­less­ly dis­card­ed in the fran­tic pur­suit of inno­va­tion at all costs. The push­ing of hi-tech out­door gear, wear­able activ­i­ty track­ers, and health apps that ask us to log every move­ment can make going out­side feel like a daunt­ing, expen­sive chore or a com­pet­i­tive event.

For­est bathing involves none of those things. “Just be with the trees,” as Ephrat Livni describes the prac­tice, “no hik­ing, no count­ing steps on a Fit­bit. You can sit or mean­der, but the point is to relax rather than accom­plish any­thing.” You don’t have to hug the trees if you don’t want to, but at least sit under one for a spell. Even if you don’t attain enlight­en­ment, you very well may reduce stress and boost immune func­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al Japan­ese stud­ies con­duct­ed between 2004 and 2012.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment spent around four mil­lion dol­lars on stud­ies con­duct­ed with hun­dreds of peo­ple “bathing” on 48 des­ig­nat­ed ther­a­py trails. In his work, Qing Li, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Nip­pon Med­ical School in Tokyo, found “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in NK [nat­ur­al killer] cell activ­i­ty in the week after a for­est vis­it… pos­i­tive effects last­ed a month fol­low­ing each week­end in the woods.” Nat­ur­al killer cells fight virus­es and can­cers, and are appar­ent­ly stim­u­lat­ed by the oils that trees them­selves secrete to ward off germs and pests. See the pro­fes­sor explain in the video above (he trans­lates shin­rin-yoku as tak­ing a “for­est show­er,” and also claims to have bot­tled some of the effects).

Addi­tion­al­ly, exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Japan’s Chi­ba Uni­ver­si­ty found that for­est bathing low­ered heart rate and blood pres­sure and brought down lev­els of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone that can wreak hav­oc on every sys­tem when large amounts cir­cu­late through the body. Then there are the less tan­gi­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tak­ing in the trees. Sub­jects in one study “showed sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion scores” after a walk in the woods. These find­ings under­score that spend­ing time in the for­est is a med­ical inter­ven­tion as well as an aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al one, some­thing sci­en­tists have long observed but haven’t been able to quan­ti­fy.

In their review of a book called Your Brain on Nature, Moth­er Earth News quotes Franklin Hough, first chief of the U.S. Divi­sion of Forestry, who remarked in a 19th cen­tu­ry med­ical jour­nal that forests have “a cheer­ful and tran­quil­iz­ing influ­ence which they exert upon the mind, more espe­cial­ly when worn down by men­tal labor.” Hough’s hypoth­e­sis has been con­firmed, and despite what might sound to Eng­lish speak­ers like a slight­ly ridicu­lous name, for­est bathing is seri­ous ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly for the ever-increas­ing num­ber of urban­ites and those who spend their days in strip malls, office com­plex­es, and oth­er over­built envi­ron­ments.

What is a guid­ed for­est bathing expe­ri­ence like? You can lis­ten to NPR’s Ali­son Aubrey describe one above. She quotes Amos Clif­ford, founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nature & For­est Ther­a­py, the cer­ti­fy­ing orga­ni­za­tion, as say­ing that a guide “helps you be here, not there,” sort of like a med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor. Clif­ford has been push­ing health care providers to “incor­po­rate for­est ther­a­py as a stress-reduc­tion strat­e­gy” in the U.S., and there’s no ques­tion that more stress reduc­tion tools are sore­ly need­ed.

But, you may won­der, do you have to call it “for­est bathing,” or pay for a cer­ti­fied guide, join a group, and buy some fan­cy out­er­wear to get the ben­e­fits hang­ing out with trees? I say, con­sid­er the words of John Muir, the inde­fati­ga­ble 19th nat­u­ral­ist, “father of the Nation­al Park Sys­tem,” and found­ing saint of the Sier­ra Club: In the eter­nal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go qui­et­ly, alone; no harm will befall you. The quote may under­es­ti­mate the amount of risk or over­state the ben­e­fits, but you get the idea. Muir was not one to get tan­gled up in seman­tics or over­ly detailed analy­sis. Nonethe­less, his work inspired Amer­i­cans to step in and pre­serve so much of the coun­try’s for­est in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. Maybe the pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine of “for­est bathing” can help do the same in the 21st.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

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

Underground Cartoonist Robert Crumb Creates an Illustrated Introduction to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | December 14th, 2017

The use of an author’s name as an adjec­tive to describe some kind of gen­er­al style can seem, well, lazy, in a wink-wink, “you know what I mean,” kind of way. One must leave it to read­ers to decide whether deploy­ing a “Bald­win­ian” or a “Woolfi­an,” or an “Orwellian” or “Dick­en­sian,” is jus­ti­fied. When it comes to “Kafkaesque,” we may find rea­son to con­sid­er aban­don­ing the word alto­geth­er. Not because we don’t know what it means, but because we think it means what Kaf­ka meant, rather than what he wrote. Maybe turn­ing him into short­hand, “a clever ref­er­ence,” writes Chris Barsan­ti, pre­pares us to seri­ous­ly mis­un­der­stand his work.

The prob­lem moti­vat­ed author David Zane Mairowitz and under­ground comics leg­end Robert Crumb to cre­ate a graph­ic biog­ra­phy, first pub­lished in 1990 as Kaf­ka for Begin­ners. “The book,” writes Barsan­ti of a 2007 Fan­to­graph­ics edi­tion called Kaf­ka, “states its case rather plain: ‘No writer of our time, and prob­a­bly none since Shake­speare, has been so wide­ly over-inter­pret­ed and pigeon holed… [Kafkaesque] is an adjec­tive that takes on almost myth­ic pro­por­tions in our time, irrev­o­ca­bly tied to fan­tasies of doom and gloom, ignor­ing the intri­cate Jew­ish Joke that weaves itself through the bulk of Kafka’s work.’” Or, as Maria Popo­va puts it, “Kafka’s sto­ries, how­ev­er grim, are near­ly always also… fun­ny.”

Much of that humor derives from “the author’s cop­ing mech­a­nisms amid Prague’s anti-Semit­ic cul­tur­al cli­mate.” Mairowitz describes Kafka’s Jew­ish humor as “healthy anti-Semi­tism.… but soon­er or lat­er, even the most hate­ful of Jew­ish self-hatreds has to turn around and laugh at itself.” Crumb pro­vides graph­ic illus­tra­tions of Kafka’s espe­cial­ly mor­dant, absur­dist humor in adap­ta­tions of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and The Judge­ment and brief sketch­es from The Tri­al, The Cas­tle, and Ameri­ka. These illus­tra­tions draw out the grotesque nature of Kafka’s humor from the start, Barstan­ti notes, “with a grue­some graph­ic ren­der­ing of Kafka’s night­mares of his own death.”

Kafka’s self-vio­lence leaps out at us in its incred­i­ble speci­fici­ty, which can pro­duce hor­rors, like the ghoul­ish exe­cu­tion of “In the Penal Colony,” and dark­ly fun­ny fan­tasies like a “pork butcher’s knife” send­ing thin slices of Kaf­ka fly­ing around the room, “due to the speed of the work.” Turned into cold cuts, as it were. Crumb’s illus­tra­tion (top), imag­ines this gris­ly joke with exquis­ite glee—halo of blood spurts like squig­gly excla­ma­tion marks and bowler hat tak­ing flight. Along with Mairowitz’s lit­er­ary analy­sis and bio­graph­i­cal detail, Crumb’s fine­ly ren­dered illus­tra­tions make Kaf­ka an “invalu­able book,” Barsan­ti writes, one that gives Kaf­ka “back his soul.”

One only wish­es they had paid more atten­tion to Kafka’s weird ani­mal sto­ries, some of the fun­ni­est he ever wrote. Sto­ries like “Inves­ti­ga­tions of a Dog” and “In Our Syn­a­gogue” express with more vivid imag­i­na­tion and wicked humor Kafka’s pro­found­ly ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship to Judaism and to him­self as a “tor­tured, gen­tle, cru­el, and bril­liant,” and yet very fun­ny, out­sider.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Three Charles Bukows­ki Books Illus­trat­ed by Robert Crumb: Under­ground Com­ic Art Meets Out­sider Lit­er­a­ture

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

How Scientology Works: A Primer Based on a Reading of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Film, The Master

in Film, Psychology, Religion | December 6th, 2017

Paul Thomas Ander­son­’s The Mas­ter focus­es, with almost unbear­able inten­si­ty, on two char­ac­ters: Joaquin Phoenix’s impul­sive ex-sailor Fred­die Quell, and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man’s Lan­cast­er Dodd, “the founder and mag­net­ic core of the Cause — a clus­ter of folk who believe, among oth­er things, that our souls, which pre­date the foun­da­tion of the Earth, are no more than tem­po­rary res­i­dents of our frail bod­i­ly hous­ing,” writes The New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in his review of the film. “Any rela­tion to per­sons liv­ing, dead, or Sci­en­to­log­i­cal is, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.”

Before The Mas­ter came out, rumor built up that the film mount­ed a scathing cri­tique of the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy; now, we know that it accom­plish­es some­thing, par for the course for Ander­son, much more fas­ci­nat­ing and artis­ti­cal­ly idio­syn­crat­ic.

Few of its glo­ri­ous­ly 65-mil­lime­ter-shot scenes seem to have much to say, at least direct­ly, about Sci­en­tol­ogy or any oth­er sys­tem of thought. But per­haps the most mem­o­rable, in which Dodd, hav­ing dis­cov­ered Fred­die stown away aboard his char­tered yacht, offers him a ses­sion of “infor­mal pro­cess­ing,” does indeed have much to do with the faith found­ed by L. Ron Hub­bard — at least if you believe the analy­sis of Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, who argues that the scene “bears an unmis­tak­able ref­er­ence to a vital activ­i­ty with­in Sci­en­tol­ogy called audit­ing.”

Just as Dodd does to Fred­die, “the audi­tor in Sci­en­tol­ogy asks ques­tions of the ‘pre­clear’ with the goal of rid­ding him of ‘engrams,’ the term for trau­mat­ic mem­o­ry stored in what’s called the ‘reac­tive mind.’ ” By thus “help­ing the pre­clear relive the expe­ri­ence that caused the trau­ma,” the audi­tor accom­plish­es a goal that, in a clip Puschak includes in the essay, Hub­bard lays out him­self: to “show a fel­low that he’s mock­ing up his own mind, there­fore his own dif­fi­cul­ties; that he is not com­plete­ly adrift in, and swamped by, a body.” Sci­en­to­log­i­cal or not, such notions do intrigue the des­per­ate, drift­ing Fred­die, and although the sto­ry of his and Dod­d’s entwine­ment, as told by Ander­son, still divides crit­i­cal opin­ion, we can say this for sure: it beats Bat­tle­field Earth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

The Career of Paul Thomas Ander­son: A 5‑Part Video Essay on the Auteur of Boo­gie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, The Mas­ter, and More

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

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.

The Vibrant Color Wheels Designed by Goethe, Newton & Other Theorists of Color (1665–1810)

in Art, Science | December 6th, 2017

Maybe it’s the clois­tered headi­ness of Rene Descartes, or the rig­or­ous aus­ter­i­ty of Isaac New­ton; maybe it’s all the leath­ern breach­es, gray waist­coats, sal­low faces, and pow­dered wigs… but we tend not to asso­ciate Enlight­en­ment Europe with an explo­sion of col­or the­o­ry. Yet, philoso­phers of the late 17th and 18th cen­turies were obsessed with light and sight. Descartes wrote a trea­tise on optics, as did New­ton.

New­ton first described in his 1672 Opticks the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary new the­o­ry of light and colour,” the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Whip­ple Library writes, “in which he claimed that exper­i­ments with prisms proved that white light was com­prised of light of sev­en dis­tinct colours.” Sci­en­tists debat­ed Newton’s the­o­ry “well into the 19th cen­tu­ry.”

One ear­ly oppo­nent famous­ly illus­trat­ed his rebut­tal. Poet, writer, and sci­en­tist Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe pub­lished The­o­ry of Col­ors (see here), with its care­ful­ly hand-drawn and col­ored dia­grams and wheels, in 1809. From New­ton’s time onward, col­or the­o­rists elab­o­rat­ed pre­vail­ing con­cepts with col­or wheels, the first attrib­uted to New­ton in 1704 (and drawn in black and white, above).

Newton’s wheel “arranged red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, indi­go, and vio­let into a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion on a rotat­ing disk.” Four years lat­er, painter Claude Boutet made his 7‑color and 12-col­or cir­cles (top), based on Newton’s the­o­ries. Artists, chemists, map­mak­ers, poets, even ento­mol­o­gists… every­one seemed to have a pet the­o­ry of col­or, gen­er­al­ly accom­pa­nied by elab­o­rate col­ored charts and dia­grams.

The col­or wheel was one among many forms—which often pre­sent­ed con­trast­ing the­o­ries, like that of Jacques-Fabi­en Gau­ti­er, who argued that black and white were pri­ma­ry col­ors. But the wheel, and Newton’s basic ideas about it, have endured almost unchanged. The wheel fur­ther up (third one from top) by British ento­mol­o­gist Moses Har­ris from 1776 shows Newton’s 7‑color scheme sim­pli­fied to the 6 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary col­ors we usu­al­ly see, arranged in the com­ple­men­tary and anal­o­gous scheme, with ter­tiary gra­da­tions between them. Anoth­er ento­mol­o­gist, Ignaz Schif­fer­müller, drew the 12-col­or wheel right above.

Col­or is always rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Newton’s orig­i­nal wheel includ­ed “musi­cal notes cor­re­lat­ed with col­or.” By the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry, col­or the­o­ry had become increas­ing­ly tied to psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries and typolo­gies, as in the wheel above, the “rose of tem­pera­ments,” made by Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in 1789 to illus­trate “human occu­pa­tions and char­ac­ter traits,” the Pub­lic Domain Review notes, includ­ing “tyrants, heroes, adven­tur­ers, hedo­nists, lovers, poets, pub­lic speak­ers, his­to­ri­ans, teach­ers, philoso­phers, pedants, rulers,” grouped into the four tem­pera­ments of humoral the­o­ry.

It’s a fair­ly short leap from these psy­cholo­gies of col­or to those used by adver­tis­ers and com­mer­cial design­ers in the 20th century—or from the artists and sci­en­tists’ col­or the­o­ries to abstract expres­sion­ism, the Bauhaus school, and the chemists and pho­tog­ra­phers who recre­at­ed the col­ors of the world on film. (Goethe’s col­or wheel, below, from The­o­ry of Col­or, illus­trates his chap­ter on “Alle­gor­i­cal, sym­bol­ic, and mys­ti­cal use of colour.”) See more ear­ly col­or wheels, like Philipp Otto Runge’s 1810 Far­benkugel, as well as oth­er con­cep­tu­al col­or schemes, at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors: Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

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

Mister Rogers, Sesame Street & Jim Henson Introduce Kids to the Synthesizer with the Help of Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby & Bruce Haack

in K-12, Music | November 29th, 2017

Does your child have a musi­cal instru­ment? That’s good. Tak­en a few music lessons? Even bet­ter. If they’re so inclined, learn­ing music is one of the best things kids can do for their devel­op­ing brains, whether or not they make a career of the endeav­or. But one doesn’t need clas­si­cal train­ing or jazz chops to make music, or even to become a musi­cian. Those skills have served many an elec­tron­ic musi­cian, sure, but many oth­ers have cre­at­ed mov­ing, com­plex music with inge­nu­ity, fine­ly-tuned ears, tech smarts, and wild­ly exper­i­men­tal atti­tudes.

Then there are elec­tron­ic artists, like Bruce Haack, Her­bie Han­cock, and Thomas Dol­by, who com­bined fine musi­cian­ship with all of the above qual­i­ties and made peo­ple stop and won­der, peo­ple who were not nec­es­sar­i­ly fans of elec­tron­ic music, and who did­n’t know very much about it.

None of these artists felt it beneath them to bring their art fur­ther down to earth, to the lev­el of the kids who watched Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood or Sesame Street. On the con­trary, they’re nat­ur­al edu­ca­tors, with a performer’s instinct for tim­ing and audi­ence and a geek’s instinct for high­light­ing the coolest tech­ni­cal bits. But leave it to Mis­ter Rogers him­self, above, to cel­e­brate the music and the play­ful­ness of syn­the­sized sound in his mild-man­nered Cole Porter-ish way, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a good-old fash­ioned piano and one of his mother’s sig­na­ture hand­knit sweaters, in green.

Above, we have the weird wonky Haack, a musi­cal prodi­gy who stud­ied at Juil­liard, and who loved noth­ing more than mak­ing children’s records with his part­ner, children’s dancer Esther Nel­son, and cre­at­ing musi­cal instru­ments from house­hold objects and hand­wired cir­cuit­ry that was acti­vat­ed by human touch. Fred Rogers was so tak­en with Haack’s play­ful­ness that he had the com­pos­er and Nel­son on a long seg­ment of his show. You may or may not know that Haack’s work was inspired by pey­ote and that he record­ed a rock opera called The Elec­tric Lucifer about a war between heav­en and hell, but you’ll prob­a­bly sense there’s more to him than meets the eye. Rogers and the kids are mes­mer­ized (see Part 2 of the seg­ment here.)

Her­bie Hancock’s appear­ance on Sesame Street oper­ates much more on a get to know you lev­el than the gestalt dance ther­a­py per­for­mance art of Haack and Nel­son. He jams out; charms future Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Tatyana Ali by turn­ing her name into high-pitched cho­rus of voic­es; and explains the many func­tions of his Fairlight CMI, a dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er born in the same year as the young actress. The tech­nol­o­gy isn’t near­ly as inter­est­ing as Haack’s home­made curios, giv­en that every one of the Fairlight func­tions can be fit into an app these days. The joy lies in watch­ing the kids warm to Han­cock and the then-new tech­nol­o­gy.

When it comes to Thomas Dolby’s appear­ance on the Jim Hen­son Company’s The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall pro­gram, we are in the posi­tion of the child audi­ence. Dol­by, with his pecu­liar Eng­lish inten­si­ty, plays a mad sci­en­tist char­ac­ter who stares into the cam­era as he demon­strates his col­lec­tion of syn­the­siz­ers, ana­log and dig­i­tal, for view­ers. Dolby’s per­for­mance might have been aid­ed by some real kids to play off of, but his “fly in a match­box” exam­ple will eas­i­ly help you and your young ones under­stand the basic prin­ci­ples at work in syn­the­siz­ing sound. These play­ful tuto­ri­als were made for kids in 1968, 83, and 89 respec­tive­ly, and maybe they can still work mag­ic on young 21st cen­tu­ry minds. But, as Fred Rogers says, “grownups like to play too, sure. And if you look and lis­ten care­ful­ly through this world, you’ll find lots of things that are play­ful.” Few grownups have been bet­ter author­i­ties on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

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