MIT’s Introduction to Poker Theory: A Free Online Course

in Economics, MIT | July 21st, 2015

Taught by Kevin Desmond, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in MIT’s Sloan School of Man­age­ment, Pok­er The­o­ry and Ana­lyt­ics intro­duces “stu­dents to pok­er strat­e­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, and deci­sion-mak­ing in eleven lec­tures.” Along with giv­ing stu­dents the chance to play end­less rounds of pok­er, the class–according to MIT News–fea­tured guest speak­ers  “Bill Chen, a pro­fes­sion­al play­er best known for his appear­ances on the Game Show Network’s High Stakes Pok­er tele­vi­sion show, Matt Hawrilenko, a Prince­ton grad­u­ate who won more than $1 mil­lion at the World Series of Pok­er in 2009, and Aaron Brown, chief risk man­ag­er at AQR Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment.” And it cul­mi­nat­ed with a live tour­na­ment.

You can access all of the lec­tures for the Pok­er The­o­ry and Ana­lyt­ics course on YouTube, iTunes or Archive.org. (You can watch the com­plete playlist of lec­tures above.) And if you click here, you can get the syl­labus, lec­tures notes, assign­ments, pok­er soft­ware, and more.

Pok­er The­o­ry and Ana­lyt­ics  will be added to our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, in both the Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics sec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neuroscience of Reading Great Literature

in Health, Literature, Neuroscience, Science | July 14th, 2015

I freely admit it—like a great many peo­ple these days, I have a social media addic­tion. My drug of choice, Twit­ter, can seem like a par­tic­u­lar­ly schizoid means of acquir­ing and shar­ing infor­ma­tion (or knee-jerk opin­ion, rumor, innu­en­do, non­sense, etc.) and a par­tic­u­lar­ly accel­er­at­ed form of dis­tractibil­i­ty that nev­er, ever sleeps. Giv­en the pro­found degree of over-stim­u­la­tion such out­lets pro­vide, we might be jus­ti­fied in think­ing we owe our short atten­tion spans to 21st cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal advances. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, says Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Natal­ie Phillips—who stud­ies 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture from the per­spec­tive of a 21st cen­tu­ry cog­ni­tive the­o­rist, and who cau­tions against “adopt­ing a kind of his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia, or assum­ing those of the 18th cen­tu­ry were less dis­tract­ed than we are today.”

Ear­ly mod­ern writ­ers were just as aware of—and as con­cerned about—the prob­lem of inat­ten­tion as con­tem­po­rary crit­ics, Phillips argues, “amidst the print-over­load of 18th-cen­tu­ry Eng­land.” We might refer, for exam­ple, to Alexan­der Pope’s epic satire “The Dun­ci­ad,” a hilar­i­ous­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic jere­mi­ad against the pro­lif­er­a­tion of care­less read­ing and writ­ing in the new media envi­ron­ment of his day. (A world “drown­ing in print, where every­thing was ephemer­al, of the moment.”)

Phillips focus­es on the work of Jane Austen, whom, she believes, “was draw­ing on the con­tem­po­rary the­o­ries of cog­ni­tion in her time” to con­struct dis­tractible char­ac­ters like Pride and Prej­u­dice’s Eliz­a­beth Ben­nett. Tak­ing her cues from Austen and oth­er Enlight­en­ment-era writ­ers, as well as her own inat­ten­tive nature, Phillips uses con­tem­po­rary neu­ro­science to inform her research, includ­ing the use of brain imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and com­put­er pro­grams that track eye move­ments.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive and Bio­log­i­cal Imag­ing (CNI), Phillips devised an exper­i­ment in 2012 in which she asked lit­er­ary PhD candidates—chosen, writes Stan­ford News, “because Phillips felt they could eas­i­ly alter­nate between close read­ing and plea­sure reading”—to read a full chap­ter from Austen’s Mans­field Park, pro­ject­ed onto a mir­ror inside an MRI scan­ner. At times, the sub­jects were instruct­ed to read the text casu­al­ly, at oth­ers, to read close­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly. After­wards, they were asked to write an essay on the pas­sages they read with atten­tion. As you’ll hear Phillips describe in the short NPR piece above, the neu­ro­sci­en­tists she worked with told her to expect only the sub­tlest of dif­fer­ences between the two types of read­ing. The data showed oth­er­wise. Phillips describes her sur­prise at see­ing “how much the whole brain, glob­al acti­va­tions across a num­ber of dif­fer­ent regions, seems to be trans­form­ing and shift­ing between the plea­sure and the close read­ing.” As CNI neu­ro­sci­en­tist Bob Dougher­ty describes it, “a sim­ple request to the par­tic­i­pants to change their lit­er­ary atten­tion can have such a big impact on the pat­tern of activ­i­ty dur­ing read­ing,” with close read­ing stim­u­lat­ing many more areas of the brain than the casu­al vari­ety. What are we to make of these still incon­clu­sive results? As with many such projects in the emerg­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary field of “lit­er­ary neu­ro­science,” Phillips’ goal is in part to demon­strate the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance of the human­i­ties in the age of STEM. Thus, she the­o­rizes, the prac­tice and teach­ing of close read­ing “could serve—quite literally—as a kind of cog­ni­tive train­ing, teach­ing us to mod­u­late our con­cen­tra­tion and use new brain regions as we move flex­i­bly between modes of focus.”

The study also pro­vides us with a fas­ci­nat­ing picture—quite literally—of the ways in which the imag­i­na­tive expe­ri­ence of read­ing takes place in our bod­ies as well as our minds. Close, sus­tained, and atten­tive read­ing, Phillips found, acti­vates parts of the brain respon­si­ble for move­ment and touch, “as though,” writes NPR, “read­ers were phys­i­cal­ly plac­ing them­selves with­in the sto­ry as they ana­lyzed it.” Phillips’ study offers a sci­en­tif­ic look at a mys­te­ri­ous expe­ri­ence seri­ous read­ers know well—“how the right pat­terns of ink on a page,” says Dougher­ty, “can cre­ate vivid men­tal imagery and instill pow­er­ful emo­tions.” As with the so-called “hard prob­lem of con­scious­ness,” we may not under­stand exact­ly how this hap­pens any­time soon, but we can observe that the expe­ri­ence of close read­ing is a reward­ing one for our entire brain, not just the parts that love Jane Austen. While not every­one needs con­vinc­ing that “lit­er­ary study pro­vides a tru­ly valu­able exer­cise of peo­ple’s brains,” Phillips’ research may prove exact­ly that.

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen, Game The­o­rist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strat­e­gy in “Clue­less­ness”

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

What Hap­pens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitch­cock: The Neu­ro­science of Film

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

Venice in Beautiful Color Images 125 Years Ago: The Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basilica, Doge’s Palace & More

in History, Photography | July 1st, 2015

A few months ago, Men­tal Floss put up a post of “Fan­tas­tic 120-Year-Old Col­or Pic­tures of Ire­land.” Fan­tas­tic pic­tures indeed, although the nature of the tech­nol­o­gy that pro­duced them seems as inter­est­ing to me as the 19th-cen­tu­ry Irish life cap­tured in the images them­selves. They came from the Library of Con­gress’ geo­graph­i­cal­ly orga­nized archive of pho­tocrom prints, a method per­haps known only to die-hard his­tor­i­cal pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts. For the rest of us, the Library of Con­gress’ page on the pho­tocrom process explains it: “Pho­tochrom prints are ink-based images pro­duced through ‘the direct pho­to­graph­ic trans­fer of an orig­i­nal neg­a­tive onto litho and chro­mo­graph­ic print­ing plates.’ ”

Its inven­tor Hans Jakob Schmid came up with the tech­nique in the 1880s, a decade that began with col­or pho­tog­ra­phy con­signed to the realm of the­o­ry. While Pho­tocrom prints may look an awful lot like col­or pho­tographs, look at them through a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and “the small dots that com­prise the ink-based pho­to­me­chan­i­cal image are vis­i­ble.” “The pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process per­mit­ted mass pro­duc­tion of the vivid col­or prints,” each col­or requir­ing “a sep­a­rate asphalt-coat­ed lith­o­graph­ic stone, usu­al­ly a min­i­mum of six stones and often more than ten stones.”

But that unwieldy-sound­ing tech­nol­o­gy and labo­ri­ous-sound­ing process has giv­en us, among oth­er strik­ing pieces of visu­al his­to­ry, these lush images of fin de siè­cle Venice, which the writer of place Jan Mor­ris once described as “less a city than an expe­ri­ence.”

At the top of the post, we have a view of the Rial­to Bridge, which spans one of the city’s famous canals; below that a scene of pigeon-feed­ing in St. Mark’s Piaz­za; the image just above leaves the pigeons behind to view the inte­ri­or of St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca.

The pho­tos below, all also tak­en between 1890 and 1900, depict the exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or of the Doge’s Palace, as well as its view of San Gior­gio Island by moon­light.

We may not con­sid­er these “real” col­or pho­tographs, but the col­ors they present, vivid­ly applied in the print­ing process, some­how more accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the spir­it of late 19th-cen­tu­ry Europe — one of his­to­ry’s tru­ly vivid peri­ods, in one of its endur­ing­ly vivid human envi­ron­ments. More col­or images of fin-de-siecle Venice can be viewed here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

How Venice Works: A Short Film

Venice in a Day: From Day­break to Sun­set in Time­lapse

Venice is Way Under Water…

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

The First Col­or Pho­tos From World War I: The Ger­man Front

The Old­est Col­or Movies Bring Sun­flow­ers, Exot­ic Birds and Gold­fish Back to Life (1902)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Two Documentaries Introduce Delia Derbyshire, the Pioneer in Electronic Music

in Music | July 1st, 2015

With her but­toned-up style, work with the UN, and name like a plucky char­ac­ter in a cer­tain Eng­lish wiz­ard series, Delia Der­byshire may not seem a like­ly pio­neer of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music. But her work in the six­ties and sev­en­ties indeed made her a fore­run­ner of so much con­tem­po­rary elec­tron­ic music that most every cur­rent leg­end in the business—from Aphex Twin and the Chem­i­cal Broth­ers to Paul Hart­noll of Orbital, who calls her work “quite amaz­ing” and “time­less”—cred­its her in some way or anoth­er. If you’ve nev­er heard of Der­byshire, you can learn about her life and work in the 2010 BBC Radio 4 doc­u­men­tary above, “Sculp­tress of Sound.”

As we recent­ly not­ed in an ear­li­er post, Der­byshire occu­pies a promi­nent place in the his­to­ry of women in the field. She has also worked with every­one from Doc­tor Who com­pos­er Ron Grain­er (who took sole cred­it for their work togeth­er) to Paul McCart­ney. Well almost. McCartney—a huge fan of Der­byshire’s work with the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Workshop—considered col­lab­o­rat­ing with her on an ear­ly ver­sion of “Yes­ter­day,” then went with strings instead. But her near hit with the Bea­t­les showed just how far she had come since join­ing the BBC as a trainee stu­dio man­ag­er in 1960. The pre­vi­ous year, Dec­ca records reject­ed her appli­ca­tion, telling her point blank that they did not hire women for stu­dio work.

For con­trac­tu­al rea­sons, Der­byshire made many of her radio com­po­si­tions under pseu­do­nyms, and she may have been frus­trat­ed by her near-obscu­ri­ty. She did with­draw from music in the mid-sev­en­ties, not to reap­pear until a few years before her death in 2001. But per­haps her depar­ture had noth­ing to do with lack of fame. Der­byshire had the high­est of tech­ni­cal stan­dards and a math­e­mat­i­cal approach to mak­ing music. Once com­mer­cial syn­the­siz­ers became avail­able, she felt that mak­ing elec­tron­ic music had become too easy and her enthu­si­asm waned. The new music bored her, and instead of try­ing to hold on to her rel­e­vance, she made a grace­ful exit.

It’s only in recent years that Der­byshire has become rec­og­nized for the pio­neer she was. See her above pro­filed in a 2009 short doc­u­men­tary, “The Delian Mode,” by Kara Blake. Fea­tured are Der­byshire’s inno­v­a­tive tech­niques with manip­u­lat­ed tape machines and found sounds for her TV and film scores and her orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions under her own name and with influ­en­tial ear­ly elec­tro-pop band White Noise. The Guardian called Der­byshire’s way of mak­ing music “an ana­lyt­i­cal approach to synthesiz[ing] com­plex sounds from elec­tron­ic sources.” Her degree in math­e­mat­ics informed her way of work­ing, as did her con­cep­tion of her­self not pri­mar­i­ly as a com­pos­er, but also as a sci­en­tist. “I sup­pose in a way,” she said of her painstak­ing­ly-cre­at­ed scores, “I was exper­i­ment­ing in psy­cho-acoustics.” Many of her exper­i­ments sound as fresh today as they did at the time, ready to inspire sev­er­al more gen­er­a­tions of com­posers and musi­cians.

You can dip into an archive of Der­byshire’s music over at UBU.com.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

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

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Breakdown of the Director’s Filmmaking

in Film | June 30th, 2015

“What is Bres­son’s genre? He does­n’t have one. Bres­son is Bres­son,” wrote mas­ter film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky in his sem­i­nal book Sculpt­ing in Time. “The very con­cept of genre is as cold as the tomb.”

Nonethe­less, Tarkovsky made two of the most praised, best-regard­ed sci­ence fic­tion films in cin­e­ma. Stalk­er (watch it online) is a meta­phys­i­cal rid­dle wrapped in the trap­pings of a sci-fi thriller. In the ver­dant area called the Zone, ringed off by miles of barbed wire and armed sol­diers, pil­grims come to behold an uncan­ny land­scape ruled by a pow­er­ful, oth­er­world­ly intel­li­gence. The film seemed to pre­fig­ure the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter that hap­pened years lat­er and proved to be the unlike­ly inspi­ra­tion for a video game.

Adapt­ed from a nov­el by Stanis­law Lem, Solaris (watch online) is about a space sta­tion that orbits a sen­tient plan­et that caus­es hal­lu­ci­na­tions in the cos­mo­nauts. The hyper-ratio­nal pro­tag­o­nist, Kris Kelvin, is thrown for a loop when he is con­front­ed by a dop­pel­ganger of his dead wife who killed her­self years ear­li­er. The log­i­cal side of him knows that this is a hal­lu­ci­na­tion but he falls in love any­way, only to lose her again. Kelvin is caught in a hell of repeat­ing the mis­takes of his past.

Solaris was seen as a Cold War-era response to Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both movies are mind-alter­ing deep-space epics that raise more ques­tions than they answer. Yet Tarkovsky hat­ed 2001’s osten­ta­tious use of cut­ting-edge spe­cial effects. “For some rea­son, in all the sci­ence-fic­tion films I’ve seen, the film­mak­ers force the view­er to exam­ine the details of the mate­r­i­al struc­ture of the future,” he told Russ­ian film jour­nal­ist Naum Abramov in 1970. “More than that, some­times, like Kubrick, they call their own films pre­mo­ni­tions. It’s unbe­liev­able! Let alone that 2001: A Space Odyssey is pho­ny on many points, even for spe­cial­ists. For a true work of art, the fake must be elim­i­nat­ed.”

Indeed, Tarkovsky seemed to delib­er­ate­ly half-ass the gener­ic ele­ments of film. He used leisure­ly shots of tun­nels and high­ways of 1971 Tokyo to depict the city of the future. He devot­ed only a cou­ple min­utes of the film’s near­ly three hour run­ning time to things like space­ships. And you have to love the fact that the space sta­tion in Solaris has such dis­tinct­ly unfu­tur­is­tic design ele­ments as a chan­de­lier and a wood-pan­eled library.

Tarkovsky, of course, isn’t inter­est­ed in sci­ence. He’s inter­est­ed in art and its way to evoke the divine. And his pri­ma­ry way of doing this is with long takes; epic shots that res­onate pro­found­ly even if the mean­ing of those images remains elu­sive. Solaris opens with a shot of water flow­ing in a brook and then, lat­er in the scene, there is a sud­den down­pour. The cam­era press­es into a shot of a teacup fill­ing with rain. It’s a beau­ti­ful, mem­o­rable, evoca­tive shot. Maybe the image means some­thing. Maybe its beau­ty is, in and of itself, its mean­ing. Either way, Tarkovsky forces you to sur­ren­der to his delib­er­ate cin­e­mat­ic rhythm and his pan­the­is­tic view of the world.

In a piece called Tarkovsky Shot by Shot, video essay­ist Anto­nios Papan­to­niou dis­sects a few scenes from Solaris, break­ing down each accord­ing to cam­era angle, shot type and dura­tion while point­ing out recur­ring visu­al motifs. “Dia­met­ri­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from Hollywood’s extrav­a­gant moviemak­ing Tarkovsky’s Solaris is in a cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse of its own,” writes Papan­to­niou in one of the video’s copi­ous inter­ti­tles. “Sym­bol­ic images and meta­phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions are cre­at­ed and expressed in a poet­ic way where every visu­al detail mat­ters.” Watch­ing Shot by Shot, you get a real sense of just how beau­ti­ful­ly his films unfold with those gor­geous­ly chore­o­graphed long takes. You can watch the full video above.

via Indie Wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Animated Introductions to Three Sociologists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

in Economics, Education, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology | June 24th, 2015

Is soci­ol­o­gy an art or a sci­ence? Is it phi­los­o­phy? Social psy­chol­o­gy? Eco­nom­ics and polit­i­cal the­o­ry? Sur­vey­ing the great soci­ol­o­gists since the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, one would have to answer “yes” to all of these ques­tions. Soci­ol­o­gists like Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Theodor Adorno con­duct­ed seri­ous schol­ar­ly and social-sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses, and wrote high­ly spec­u­la­tive the­o­ry. Though it may seem like we’re all soci­ol­o­gists now, mak­ing crit­i­cal judg­ments about large groups of peo­ple, the soci­ol­o­gists who cre­at­ed and car­ried on the dis­ci­pline gen­er­al­ly did so with sound evi­dence and well-rea­soned argu­ment. Unlike so much cur­rent knee-jerk com­men­tary, even when they’re wrong they’re still well worth read­ing.

Hav­ing already sur­veyed Marx in his series on Euro-Amer­i­can polit­i­cal philoso­phers, School of Life founder Alain de Bot­ton now tack­les the oth­er three illus­tri­ous names on the list above, start­ing with Durkheim at the top, then Weber above, and Adorno below. The first two fig­ures were con­tem­po­raries of Marx, the third a lat­er inter­preter. Like that beard­ed Ger­man scourge of cap­i­tal­ism, these three—in more mea­sured or pes­simistic ways—levied cri­tiques against the dom­i­nant eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Durkheim took on the prob­lem of sui­cide, Weber the anx­ious reli­gious under­pin­nings of cap­i­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy, and Adorno the con­sumer cul­ture of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s so far, at least, as de Bot­ton’s very cur­so­ry intro­duc­tions get us. As with his oth­er series, this one more or less ropes the thinkers rep­re­sent­ed here into the School of Life’s pro­gram of pro­mot­ing a very par­tic­u­lar, mid­dle class view of hap­pi­ness. And, as with the oth­er series, the thinkers sur­veyed here all seem to more or less agree with de Bot­ton’s own views. Per­haps oth­ers who most cer­tain­ly could have been includ­ed, like W.E.B. Dubois, Jane Addams, or Han­nah Arendt, would offer some very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.

De Bot­ton again makes his points with pithy gen­er­al­iza­tions, num­bered lists, and quirky, cut-out ani­ma­tions, breezi­ly reduc­ing life­times of work to a few obser­va­tions and moral lessons. I doubt Adorno would approach these less-than-rig­or­ous meth­ods char­i­ta­bly, but those new to the field of soci­ol­o­gy or the work of its prac­ti­tion­ers will find here some tan­ta­liz­ing ideas that will hope­ful­ly inspire them to dig deep­er, and to per­haps improve their own soci­o­log­i­cal diag­noses.

Note: For those inter­est­ed, Yale has a free open course on Soci­ol­o­gy called “Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry,” which cov­ers most of the fig­ures list­ed above. You can always find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein & Sartre Explained with Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tions by The School of Life

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

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

David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Queen & Elvis Presley Star in Delightfully Absurd Musicless Music Videos

in Comedy, Music, Random | June 10th, 2015

Some­time in the last decade, as both YouTube and smart phones became our pri­ma­ry means of cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion, the iso­lat­ed vocal track meme came into being, reach­ing its sum­mit in the sub­lime ridicu­lous­ness of David Lee Roth’s unadorned “Run­ning With the Dev­il” vocal tics. His yelps, howls, and “Whoooohoooos!” pro­duced the very best ver­sion of that vir­tu­al nov­el­ty known as the sound­board app, and wel­comed many a caller to many a kooky voice­mail greet­ing. The iso­lat­ed track has since become a phe­nom­e­non wor­thy of study, and we’ve done our share here of por­ing over var­i­ous voic­es and instru­ments stripped from their song’s con­text and placed before us in ways we’d nev­er heard before.

Per­haps seri­ous analy­sis too shall be the fate of a goofy visu­al meme that also thrives on the ridicu­lous­ness of pop music’s pre­sen­ta­tion: the musi­c­less music video. The idea is a sim­i­lar one, iso­lat­ing the image instead of the sound: pop­u­lar videos, already weird­ly over the top, become exer­cis­es in chore­o­graphed awk­ward­ness or voy­ages into uncan­ny val­leys as we watch their stars pose, preen, and con­tort them­selves in weird cos­tumes for seem­ing­ly no rea­son, accom­pa­nied only by the mun­dane sounds of their shuf­fling feet and grunts, belch­es, ner­vous laugh­ter, etc. Take the par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny exam­ples here: Mick Jag­ger and David Bowie pranc­ing through the bizarre “Danc­ing in the Streets” video (orig­i­nal here); the mem­bers of Queen per­form­ing domes­tic chores in “I Want to Break Free” (orig­i­nal); Elvis Pres­ley squeak­ing and spas­ming onstage in a TV take of “Blue Suede Shoes”; Nir­vana mop­ing and sway­ing in that high school gym while a near­by cus­to­di­an goes about his busi­ness…..

Though these skewed re-eval­u­a­tions of famous moments in pop his­to­ry make use of a sim­i­lar premise as the iso­lat­ed track, the sounds we hear are not—as they some­times seem—vérité audio record­ings from the videos’ sets. They are the cre­ation of Aus­tri­an sound design­er, edi­tor, and mix­er Mario Wienerroither, who, The Dai­ly Dot informs us, “works from a sound library that he’s spent years amass­ing.” The results, as you will hear for your­self, “range from humor­ous to dis­turb­ing and every­where in between.” Musi­c­less music videos remind us of how sil­ly and arti­fi­cial these kinds of staged, mimed pseu­do-per­for­mances real­ly are—they only become con­vinc­ing to us through the mag­i­cal edit­ing togeth­er sound and image on cue and on beat.

Wienerroither began his project with the Queen video, inspired when he caught it play­ing while his TV was on mute. The moment, he says, was “a vital spark.” Since then, dozens of musi­c­less music videos, and TV and film clips, have popped up on YouTube (see a size­able playlist here.) One of the most awk­ward, The Prodi­gy’s “Firestarter,” helped rock­et the phe­nom­e­non into major pop­u­lar­i­ty. Imi­ta­tors have since post­ed musi­c­less videos of the Friends intro and Miley Cyrus’ “Wreck­ing Ball.” What can we learn from these videos? Noth­ing, per­haps, we did­n’t already know: that pop cul­ture’s most endur­ing moments are also its most absurd, that nos­tal­gia is a dish best served remixed, that the internet—a pow­er­ful force for good as well as ill—is often at its best when it is a pow­er­ful force for weird. Though the medi­um may be friv­o­lous, these are mes­sages worth remem­ber­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

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

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recreate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

in Design, Magazines, Music | June 1st, 2015

Per­form an inter­net search on the phrase “David Bowie Paper Doll” and what do you get? Hint: it’s not a cov­er of the Mills Broth­ers hit. David Bowie paper dolls are pro­lif­er­at­ing in aston­ish­ing num­bers.

Sharp­en your scis­sors and behold!

The most com­pre­hen­sive career rep­re­sen­ta­tion is the Thin White Paper Doll Cutout Heather Col­lett designed for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (above). There’s even a print­er friend­ly ver­sion for those who are seri­ous about play­ing with Aladdin Sane, Zig­gy Star­dust, Labyrinth’s Gob­lin King, and oth­er Bowie alter egos.

But wait! There’s more…

Elu­sive design­er Vod­ka Caramel’s Amaz­ing 70’s Bowie Paper Doll cel­e­brates some of our hero’s most glam­orous looks, but sad­dles him with the crotch of a Ken doll and no few­er than four inter­change­able heads! And we thought the Thin White Paper Doll’s crew socks were an indig­ni­ty.

A Span­ish fan observed Bowie’s 65th birth­day by updat­ing the abbre­vi­at­ed tighty whities of a noto­ri­ous 1973 pho­to shoot to a mod­est pair of stan­dard issue Y‑fronts. Inter­est­ing­ly, this paper dol­l’s sus­pendered Hal­loween Jack suit arrives with bulge intact.

Points to Serge Baeken above for rec­og­niz­ing the paper doll pos­si­bil­i­ties in the Pier­rot cos­tume Bowie sport­ed in the video for 1980’s “Ash­es to Ash­es.” (Fun fact: Bowie made his the­atri­cal debut—and wrote the music for—a bizarre 1968 pan­tomime about Pier­rot.… His char­ac­ter’s name was “Cloud”)

Artist Clau­dia Varo­sio’s entry in the Bowie paper doll stakes could pass as illus­tra­tions for a 1970’s children’s book. Title? Boys Keep Swing­ing, after a cut from Bowie’s 1979 Lodger album. Chaste young girls would love the t‑shirted, non-threat­en­ing Bowie.

The com­par­a­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, full-faced Bowie above comes to us via Swedish fam­i­ly mag­a­zine Året Runt. I may nev­er learn anoth­er word of Swedish, but thanks to David Bowie, I can now say paper doll (klip­p­dock­or). In appre­ci­a­tion, allow me to share anoth­er exam­ple of David Bowie klip­p­dock­or…

If it all starts seem­ing a bit rote, mix things up by hav­ing artist Mel Elliot’s paper doll Bowie swap  duds with fel­low pop star / style icon paper dolls, Bey­once, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Rihan­na.

(image by Elec­tric Sor­bet)

There is only one David Bowie, but there can nev­er be too many David Bowie paper dolls. Make your own today!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

The Musi­cal Career of David Bowie in One Minute … and One Con­tin­u­ous Take

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

High School Teacher Reads Allen Ginsberg’s Explicit Poem “Please Master” and Loses His Job

in Current Affairs, Education, Poetry | June 1st, 2015

Image by Michiel Hendryckx.

Although the bound­aries of what should pass for free speech in high school Eng­lish class­rooms will be for­ev­er in debate, most every­one would agree some bound­aries must exist. But what of the speech of famous authors? Of tow­er­ing fig­ures of 20th cen­tu­ry poet­ry? Should their speech be sub­ject to review? What of an Eng­lish teacher who allows the most risqué Beat poem you’ve ever heard to be read aloud in class by the poet him­self, Allen Gins­berg, via an online video (per­haps this one)? Award-win­ning Eng­lish teacher David Olio, a beloved 19-year vet­er­an, did just that when a stu­dent asked to share Ginsberg’s ecsta­t­ic, and very explic­it, poem “Please Mas­ter” with the class.

After com­plaints from sev­er­al stu­dents, the school admin­is­tra­tion sus­pend­ed Olio, then forced him to resign. Whether or not this deci­sion was just is a debate that extends beyond the scope of this post. The vari­ables are many, as Slate’s sym­pa­thet­ic Mark Joseph Stern admits, includ­ing the fact that Olio did not exact­ly pre­pare his stu­dents for what was to come, nor give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt out. The high school seniors—on the thresh­old of adult­hood and some already with one foot in college—may not have had their “emo­tion­al health” endan­gered, as Olio’s ter­mi­na­tion let­ter alleged, but it’s lit­tle won­der some of them found the mate­r­i­al shock­ing.

Ginsberg’s poem, which you can hear him read above, describes a “fan­ta­sized sex­u­al encounter between Gins­berg and Neal Cas­sady, the inspi­ra­tion for the Dean Mori­ar­ty char­ac­ter in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” It is graph­ic, writes Stern, but “not obscene.” Instead—in its allu­sions to St. Teresa’s angel­ic vis­i­ta­tion in a “pro­fane descrip­tion of anal sex as a near­ly divine act”—Ginsberg’s poem is “dan­ger­ous because it jux­ta­pos­es ten­der­ness with masochism; dan­ger­ous because it rap­tur­ous­ly cel­e­brates a vision of same-sex inti­ma­cy we are only sup­posed to whis­per about.” Read the poem, lis­ten to Gins­berg read it, and judge for your­self.

Of course, this is hard­ly the first time Ginsberg’s work has caused con­tro­ver­sy. His Beat epic “Howl” (1955), with its sex­u­al­ly charged lines, irked the U.S. gov­ern­ment, who seized copies of the poem and put its pub­lish­er, poet and City Lights’ book­seller Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. Well over six­ty years lat­er, Fer­linghet­ti has writ­ten in defense of David Olio. We can safe­ly assume that Gins­berg, who died in 1997, also would approve. And while we have every right to be shocked by Ginsberg’s poem, or not, and find the deci­sion to fire Olio war­rant­ed, or not, I tend to agree with Stern when he writes “if every Eng­lish teacher were that enthu­si­as­tic about his sub­ject, Amer­i­ca would be a much more lit­er­ate, edu­cat­ed and inter­est­ing place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Allen Gins­berg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buck­ley

Allen Gins­berg Talks About Com­ing Out to His Fam­i­ly & Fel­low Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

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

The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

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