How to Make Comics: A Four-Part Series from the Museum of Modern Art

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Education, Museums | October 7th, 2021

A paint­ing? “Mov­ing. Spir­i­tu­al­ly enrich­ing. Sub­lime. ‘High’ art.” The com­ic strip? “Vapid. Juve­nile. Com­mer­cial hack work. ‘Low’ art.” A paint­ing of a com­ic strip pan­el? “Sophis­ti­cat­ed irony. Philo­soph­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing. ‘High’ art.” So says Calvin of Bill Wat­ter­son­’s Calvin and Hobbes, whose ten-year run con­sti­tutes one of the great­est artis­tic achieve­ments in the his­to­ry of the news­pa­per com­ic strip. The larg­er medi­um of comics goes well beyond the fun­ny pages, as any num­ber of trend pieces have told us, but as an art form it remains less than per­fect­ly under­stood.  Per­haps, as else­where, one must learn by doing: hence “How to Make Comics,” a “four-part jour­ney through the art of comics” from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art.

Cre­at­ed by comics schol­ar and writer Chris Gavaler, this edu­ca­tion­al series begins with the broad­est pos­si­ble ques­tion: “What Are Comics?” That sec­tion offers two answers, the first being that comics are “car­toons in the fun­nies sec­tions of news­pa­pers and the pages of com­ic books” telling sto­ries “about super­heroes or talk­ing ani­mals” — or they’re longer-for­mat “graph­ic nov­els,” which “can be more seri­ous and include per­son­al mem­oirs.”

The sec­ond, broad­er answer con­ceives of comics as noth­ing more spe­cif­ic than “jux­ta­posed images. Any work of art that divides into two or more side-by-side parts is for­mal­ly a com­ic. So if an artist cre­ates two images and places them next to each oth­er, they’re work­ing in the comics form.”

That sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion of comics includes, say, Andy Warhol’s Jacque­line Kennedy III — a work of art that con­ve­nient­ly hap­pens to be owned by MoMA. The muse­um’s visu­al resources fig­ure heav­i­ly into the whole “How to Make Comics,” in which Gavaler explains not just the process of cre­at­ing comics but the rela­tion­ship between comics and oth­er (often longer insti­tu­tion­al­ly approved) forms of art. And to what­ev­er degree they jux­ta­pose images, the works of art in MoMA’s online col­lec­tion — rich as so many of them are with action, char­ac­ter, nar­ra­tive, humor, and even words — offer inspi­ra­tion to com­ic artists bud­ding and expe­ri­enced alike. The bet­ter part of two cen­turies into its devel­op­ment, this thor­ough­ly mod­ern medi­um has the pow­er to incor­po­rate ideas from any oth­er art form; the high-and-low dis­tinc­tions can take care of them­selves. Enter “How to Make Comics” here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Com­ic Books, Com­pli­ments of the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Fol­low Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s 2017 “Mak­ing Comics” Class Online, Pre­sent­ed at UW-Wis­con­sin

Watch Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Barry’s Two-Hour Draw­ing Work­shop

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

MoMA’s Online Cours­es Let You Study Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Art and Earn a Cer­tifi­cate

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Medieval Ban Against the “Devil’s Tritone”: Debunking a Great Myth in Music Theory

in Music | October 4th, 2021

Music lives deep with­in us, in the mar­row of our evo­lu­tion­ary bones, tap­ping into “this very prim­i­tive sys­tem,” says British musi­col­o­gist John Deathridge, “which iden­ti­fies emo­tion on the basis of a vio­la­tion of expectan­cy.” In oth­er words, our brains are pre­dis­posed to hear cer­tain com­bi­na­tions of sounds as sooth­ing and oth­ers as dis­turb­ing. When we plot those sounds on a staff, we find one of the most dis­so­nant, yet intrigu­ing, com­bi­na­tions, what can be called an aug­ment­ed 4th or dimin­ished 5th but isn’t quite either one. But it’s much bet­ter known by its medieval nick­name, “the devil’s tri­tone” (or “devil’s inter­val”), a sequence of notes so sin­is­ter, they were once banned in the belief that they might con­jure Lucifer him­self…. Or so the sto­ry goes.

The truth is less sen­sa­tion­al. “To the cha­grin of many a musi­cian want­i­ng to tap into a badass rebel streak in music’s DNA,” James Ben­nett writes at WQXR, “there aren’t any records to sug­gest any rogue medieval com­posers took a hike to Perdi­tion after using this spooky, dev­il­ish inter­val.” In oth­er words, no one seems to have been tor­tured, impris­oned, or excom­mu­ni­cat­ed for a musi­cal arrange­ment, all inter­net asser­tions to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing. But the asso­ci­a­tion with the dev­il is his­tor­i­cal. In the 18th cen­tu­ry, the tri­tone acquired the name dia­bo­lus in musi­ca, or “the dev­il in music,” part of a mnemon­ic: “Mi con­tra fa est dia­bo­lus in musi­ca” or “mi against fa is the dev­il in music.”

If you’re already versed in music the­o­ry, you’ll find this tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion of the “devil’s inter­val” by musi­cian Jer­ry Tachoir help­ful. In the video above, bass play­er Adam Neely debunks the myth of the dev­il’s tri­tone as an actu­al curse. But his expla­na­tion is more than “one long, ‘Um, Actu­al­ly,’ ” he says. Instead, he tells us why the tri­tone is a musi­cal bless­ing, and was thought of as such a thou­sand years ago. His expla­na­tion also gets a lit­tle tech­ni­cal, but his visu­al and musi­cal demon­stra­tions make it fair­ly easy to fol­low, and if you don’t absorb the the­o­ry, you’ll pick up the true his­to­ry of the “dev­il’s tri­tone,” begin­ning with the Greek thinker Aris­tox­enus of Tar­en­tum, one of the first to write about the uncom­fort­able dis­so­nance of a note sit­ting between two oth­ers.

The tri­tone is what musi­col­o­gist Carl E. Gard­ner called a “depen­dent” chord, one char­ac­ter­is­tic of ten­sion. We may not reg­is­ter it con­scious­ly, but it primes our brains with anx­ious expec­ta­tion. “The rea­son it’s unset­tling is that it’s ambigu­ous, unre­solved,” says Ger­ald Moshell, Pro­fes­sor of Music at Trin­i­ty Col­lege in Hart­ford, Conn. “It wants to go some­where. It wants to set­tle here, or [there]. You don’t know where it’ll go, but it can’t stop where it is.” We hear this irres­o­lu­tion, this “dev­il” of musi­cal doubt in com­po­si­tions rang­ing from The Simp­sons theme to the cho­rus of Pearl Jam’s “Even­flow” to Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse macabre,” a piece of music that may not actu­al­ly con­jure evil, but sure sounds like it could if it want­ed to.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Lis­ten to Music: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

How Ornette Cole­man Freed Jazz with His The­o­ry of Har­molod­ics

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

Nirvana Refuses to Mime Along to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Top of the Pops (1991)

in Music | September 29th, 2021

This month marks the 30th anniver­sary of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind, first released on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1991, “the day,” writes Michael Ted­der at Stere­ogum, “that col­lege radio-nur­tured types and arty hard rock offi­cial­ly became rebrand­ed as Alter­na­tive Rock, and, accord­ing to leg­end, every­thing changed for­ev­er.” You might believe that leg­end even if you remem­ber the real­i­ty. Yes, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” was just as huge as every­body says — and, yes, you like­ly recall where you were when you first saw the video or heard the song explode with Pix­ies-inspired qui­et-loud feroc­i­ty from the radio. But the change was already on the way.

Nir­vana emerged in a pop music land­scape slow­ly becom­ing sat­u­rat­ed with alter­na­tive music. You might also remem­ber where you were the first time you saw the video for Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence,” for exam­ple, or R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” or Sinéad O’Connor’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” — or when you first expe­ri­enced the dynamic/melodic assault of the afore­men­tioned Pix­ies, vir­tu­al alt-rock elders by the time they released Trompe Le Monde, their fourth stu­dio album, in the same Sep­tem­ber week that Nev­er­mind appeared. (You may remem­ber where you were the first time you heard the word “Lol­la­palooza,” first orga­nized in 1991.)

The fate­ful week in Sep­tem­ber also saw the release of 90s-defin­ing albums like Pri­mal Scream’s Screa­madel­i­ca, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ Blood Sug­ar Sex Magik, and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End The­o­ry. In the year that Nev­er­mind sup­pos­ed­ly sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed “grunge,” Soundgar­den released Bad­mo­torfin­ger and Pearl Jam released Ten. It’s fair to say Nir­vana were one of just many bands rein­vent­ing them­selves and the cul­ture. Even the hair met­al bands and teen pop idols Nir­vana put out of busi­ness were already try­ing to make more seri­ous, “authen­tic” music before Nev­er­mind turned every executive’s head.

Kurt Cobain was already well aware — and wary — of the dan­gers of hero wor­ship and blind alle­giance to style over sub­stance. It was an atti­tude he came by nat­u­ral­ly giv­en that, in 1991, his friends in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton found­ed an indie record label called Kill Rock Stars. He’d writ­ten an anthem, “In Bloom,” about it before any­one heard the open­ing pow­er chords of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” As he pur­sued, with rig­or­ous ambi­tion, the pow­er of rock star­dom, he reject­ed its trap­pings and pre­ten­sions, as when the band appeared on Top of the Pops and took the piss out of the show, rather than mime along duti­ful­ly, as Mark Beau­mont writes at NME:

Pre­tend­ing to strum his gui­tar like a robot and mak­ing no attempt to go any­where near an actu­al chord – pre­sum­ably a state­ment about being asked to per­form like a mechan­i­cal pup­pet – Kurt launch­es into his vocal in deep, the­atri­cal bari­tone, an homage to Mor­ris­sey that comes across more like Jim Mor­ri­son on mogadon. Mean­while Krist Novosel­ic flails his bass around his head like he’s wrestling a live wolf and Dave Grohl’s ‘drum­ming’ is more like an inter­pre­tive dance to rep­re­sent ‘goofy imp’. Oh, and heav­en knows what the TOTP cen­sors thought of Kurt chang­ing the open­ing lyrics to “load up on drugs, kill your friends” before try­ing to eat the micro­phone. 

In light of the groundswell of alter­na­tive bands emerg­ing — or still plug­ging away — at the time of Nev­er­mind’s release, the myth of Nir­vana as the sin­gle-hand­ed inven­tors of 90s alt-rock is more than a lit­tle overblown. This is espe­cial­ly so in a decade that saw elec­tron­ic dance music and hip hop cross over into rock and vice-ver­sa, a trend Nir­vana had noth­ing to do with. They were a thun­der­ing­ly great band, and Kurt Cobain was a rare and gift­ed song­writer, but the heart of Nirvana’s pop­u­lar appeal was extra-musi­cal. The band — mean­ing, prin­ci­pal­ly, Cobain — most hon­est­ly embod­ied the spir­it of the time: painful­ly ambiva­lent and at war with its aspi­ra­tions. “Kurt — I would call him a wind­mill,” says bassist Krist Novosel­ic. “He want­ed to be a rock star — and he hat­ed it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s Head­bang­ing Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

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

A 10-Course Introduction to Data Science from Johns Hopkins

in Data, Online Courses | September 12th, 2021

Data is now every­where. And those who can har­ness data effec­tive­ly stand poised to inno­vate and make impact­ful deci­sions. This holds true in busi­ness, med­i­cine, health­care, edu­ca­tion and oth­er spheres of life.

Enter the 10-course Intro­duc­tion to Data Sci­ence from Johns Hop­kins. Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, this course sequence cov­ers “the con­cepts and tools you’ll need through­out the entire data sci­ence pipeline, from ask­ing the right kinds of ques­tions to mak­ing infer­ences and pub­lish­ing results.” The pro­gram includes cours­es cov­er­ing The Data Scientist’s Tool­box, R Pro­gram­ming, Get­ting and Clean­ing Data, Devel­op­ing Data Prod­ucts and more. There’s also a Cap­stone Project where stu­dents can build a data prod­uct using real-world data.

Stu­dents can for­mal­ly enroll in the Intro­duc­tion to Data Sci­ence spe­cial­iza­tion and receive a cer­tifi­cate for each course they complete–a cer­tifi­cate they can share with prospec­tive employ­ers and their pro­fes­sion­al net­works. They’ll also leave with a port­fo­lio demon­strat­ing mas­tery of the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in the sequence. Hop­kins esti­mates that most learn­ers can com­plete the sequence in 3–7 months, dur­ing which time stu­dents will be charged $49 per month.

Alter­na­tive­ly, stu­dents can audit indi­vid­ual cours­es for free. When you enroll in a course, look care­ful­ly for the Audit option. Note: Audi­tors can­not receive a cer­tifi­cate for each com­plet­ed course.

If would like to for­mal­ly enroll in the Intro­duc­tion to Data Sci­ence sequence, you can start a 7‑Day Free Tri­al and size things up here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate: 8 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

100 Days of Dante: Join the Largest Divine Comedy Reading Group in the World (Starts September 8)

in History, Literature, Religion | September 6th, 2021

This year marks the 700th anniver­sary of Dante Alighier­i’s death — which means it also marks the 701st anniver­sary of his great work the Div­ina Com­me­dia, known in Eng­lish as the Divine Com­e­dy. We’ve all got to go some time, and it’s some­how suit­able that Dante went not long after telling the tale of his own jour­ney through the after­life, com­plete with stops in Hell, Pur­ga­to­ry, and Par­adise. It remains a jour­ney we can all take and re-take — and inter­pre­tive­ly grap­ple with — still these sev­en cen­turies lat­er. Start­ing this month, you can take it as a group tour, so to speak, by join­ing 100 Days of Dante, the largest Dante read­ing group in the world.

A project of Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty’s Hon­ors Col­lege (with sup­port from sev­er­al oth­er Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions), 100 Days of Dante has launched a web site “through which mod­ern seek­ers and pil­grims can fol­low the great epic poem with free video pre­sen­ta­tions three times a week.”

So writes Aleteia’s John Burg­er, who explains that “the three books of the Divine Com­e­dy, known in Ital­ian as Infer­no, Pur­ga­to­rio, and Par­adiso, are divid­ed into 33 chap­ters known as can­tos. [Infer­no actu­al­ly had 34.] Each video will present one can­to, with com­men­tary on it from lead­ing experts in Dante stud­ies.” You can also read the entire work on 100 Days of Dan­te’s web site, in Eng­lish or Ital­ian — a lan­guage Dan­te’s own poet­ry did much to shape.

Nobody inter­est­ed in the lan­guage of Italy, let alone the coun­try’s his­to­ry and cul­ture, can do with­out expe­ri­enc­ing the Divine Com­e­dy. One of 100 Days of Dante’s aims is a re-empha­sis of its nature as a thor­ough­ly reli­gious work, one that ren­ders in vivid, some­times har­row­ing detail the world­view held by Chris­tians of Dan­te’s place and time. But believ­er or oth­er­wise, you can join in the read­ing from when it begins on Sep­tem­ber 8, to when it con­cludes on East­er 2022. You may well find, as the long Italy-res­i­dent Eng­lish writer and trans­la­tor Tim Parks observes, that Dante has a way of slip­ping through con­ve­nient inter­pre­ta­tive frame­works cul­tur­al, his­tor­i­cal, and even reli­gious. “Long after the fires of Hell have burned them­selves out,” he writes, “the debate about the Div­ina Com­me­dia rages on.” Find more edu­ca­tion­al resources on Dante and The Divine Com­e­dy below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Online Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Why Should We Read Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Google Data Analytics Certificate: 8 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Data, Education, Online Courses, Technology | September 5th, 2021

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” The new career ini­tia­tive includes cer­tifi­cates con­cen­trat­ing on Project Man­age­ment and UX Design. And now also Data Ana­lyt­ics, a bur­geon­ing field that focus­es on “the col­lec­tion, trans­for­ma­tion, and orga­ni­za­tion of data in order to draw con­clu­sions, make pre­dic­tions, and dri­ve informed deci­sion mak­ing.”

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and exclu­sive­ly devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in data ana­lyt­ics.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 130 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Wal­mart, Best Buy, and Astreya. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Cours­era and Google Launch an Online Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram to Help Stu­dents Become IT Pro­fes­sion­als & Get Attrac­tive Jobs

Google’s UX Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

The Brilliant 19th-Century Astronomical Drawings of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot

in Astronomy, Science | September 2nd, 2021

The first pho­to of the moon was tak­en in 1850 by Louis Daguerre, from whom the daguer­rotype gets its name. We have no idea what that first image looked like as it was lost in a stu­dio fire. But the need to cat­a­log the heav­ens with mod­ern tools had start­ed, and was both fas­ci­nat­ing as it was lack­ing. Into this evo­lu­tion of sci­ence and art stepped Éti­enne Léopold Trou­velot, the French immi­grant, liv­ing in the States, an ama­teur sci­en­tist and an illus­tra­tor. He would dis­miss pho­tog­ra­phy of the heav­ens as “so blurred and indis­tinct that no details of any great val­ue can be secured.” And by illus­trat­ing instead by he saw through tele­scopes, he secured a place in art *and* sci­ence his­to­ry.

Trou­velot might have thought his sci­en­tif­ic papers would be his lega­cy. He wrote fifty in his life­time. Instead it is his rough­ly 7,000 illus­tra­tions of plan­ets, comets, and oth­er phe­nom­e­na that still please us to this day. The New York Pub­lic Library has put 15 of his best up on their site, and over at this page, you can com­pare what Trou­velot saw—-the great astronomer Emma Con­verse called Trou­velot the “prince of observers”—-to pho­tos from NASA’s archive.

Even if his Mars is a bit fan­ci­ful, look­ing translu­cent like a fish egg, his under­stand­ing of the plan­et echoes in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry of sci-fi para­noia. Some­thing strange must be there, he sug­gests.

Har­vard hired him to sketch at their college’s obser­va­to­ry, and he used pas­tels to bring the plan­ets to life. Engrav­ing or ink would not have worked as well as these soft shapes and deter­mined lines. His ren­der­ing of the moon sur­face is accu­rate but also fan­ci­ful, like whipped cream. And his sun spots might not be accu­rate, but they repli­cat­ed the god-like forces at work on its tumul­tuous sur­face. His Sat­urn is the most real­is­tic of them all. Even the NASA image doesn’t look too dif­fer­ent to Trouvelot’s art.

These images also help reha­bil­i­tate Trouvelot’s oth­er legacy—-the dread­ed Gyp­sy Moth. Before his stint as ama­teur sci­en­tist, he was also an ama­teur ento­mol­o­gist, and while research­ing silk­worms and silk pro­duc­tion, acci­den­tal­ly let Euro­pean gyp­sy moths into North Amer­i­ca, where they wreaked hav­oc on the forests of North Amer­i­ca. Saturn’s rings may look the same back then as they do now, but so does the dam­age of the gyp­sy moth, which accord­ing to Wikipedia is up to $868 mil­lion in dam­ages per year.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 9th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­script Teach­es Astron­o­my by Mak­ing Sub­lime Pic­tures Out of Words

Joce­lyn Bell Bur­nell Changed Astron­o­my For­ev­er; Her Ph.D. Advi­sor Won the Nobel Prize for It

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Listen to Plato Invent the Myth of Atlantis (360 B.C)

in History, Philosophy | August 17th, 2021

Myths emerge from the murky depths of human pre­his­to­ry, leav­ing their sources shroud­ed in mys­tery. But on rare occa­sions, we can trace them to a sin­gle point of ori­gin. The myth of Atlantis, for exam­ple, the ancient civ­i­liza­tion that sup­pos­ed­ly sank into the sea, has one and only one source — Pla­to — who told the sto­ry in both the Timaeus and Critias, some­time around 360 BC, as an alle­go­ry for cor­rup­tion and civ­i­liza­tion­al decay.

Pla­to puts the tale of Atlantis nesos, the “island of Atlas,” in the mouth of the aged Critias, a char­ac­ter in both dia­logues, who says he heard the sto­ry sec­ond-hand from Solon — “not only the wis­est of men, but also the noblest of poets” — who in turn brought it from Egypt, where he sup­pos­ed­ly heard it from a priest in a city called Sais.

As you can hear in the dia­logue that bears his name, read above in the Voic­es of the Past video, Critias gives a lengthy descrip­tion of the island’s size (in Timaeus it is “larg­er than Libya and Asia put togeth­er”), its loca­tion (“the Pil­lars of Her­a­cles”), and its geog­ra­phy, cities, peo­ples, and so forth. In Timaeus, Socrates declares that this tale (unlike his imag­i­nary republics) “has the very great advan­tage of being fact not fic­tion.”

But there was nev­er such a place in the ancient world. While islands have dis­ap­peared after earth­quakes or vol­ca­noes, “I don’t think there’s any ques­tion,” says geol­o­gist Patrick Nunn, “that the sto­ry of Atlantis is a myth.” Pla­to made up the lost civ­i­liza­tion and for­mi­da­ble rival to Athens, who sound­ly defeat­ed the Atlanteans, as a dra­mat­ic foil. “It’s a sto­ry that cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion,” says Bard Col­lege pro­fes­sor of clas­sics James Romm. Its pur­pose is illus­tra­tive, not his­tor­i­cal.

[Pla­to] was deal­ing with a num­ber of issues, themes that run through­out his work. His ideas about divine ver­sus human nature, ide­al soci­eties, the grad­ual cor­rup­tion of human soci­ety — these ideas are all found in many of his works. Atlantis was a dif­fer­ent vehi­cle to get at some of his favorite themes.

Why has there been so much desire to find Plato’s account cred­i­ble? Ear­ly mod­ern Euro­pean read­ers of Pla­to like Fran­cis Bacon and Thomas More — authors of The New Atlantis and Utopia, respec­tive­ly — treat­ed Atlantis as philo­soph­i­cal alle­go­ry, a fic­tion like their own invent­ed soci­eties. But lat­er inter­preters believed it, from ama­teur schol­ars to colo­nial adven­tur­ers, explor­ers, and trea­sure hunters. Atlantis, wher­ev­er it is, some thought, must be full of sunken gold.

Nation­al Geo­graph­ic quotes Charles Ors­er, cura­tor of his­to­ry at the New York State Muse­um in Albany, who says, “Pick a spot on the map, and some­one has said that Atlantis was there. Every place you can imag­ine.” Yet what­ev­er sim­i­lar­i­ties it may have had to a real place, Pla­to’s yarn was strict­ly para­ble: Its inhab­i­tants were once divine. “Sired and ruled over by Posei­don, and thus half-gods and half-mor­tals,” writes Aeon, they “despised every­thing but virtue.”

But Atlantis grew cor­rupt in time, Critias tells us, “when the divine por­tion began to fade away, and became dilut­ed too often and too much with the mor­tal admix­ture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their for­tune, behaved unseem­ly, and to him who had an eye to see grew vis­i­bly debased, for they were los­ing the fairest of their pre­cious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true hap­pi­ness, they appeared glo­ri­ous and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unright­eous pow­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Para­bles of the Human Con­di­tion

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

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

200 Comic Book Adaptations of Classic Novels Created (1941–1971): Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Hamlet & More

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | August 13th, 2021

Thanks to “the rise of comics as a ‘respectable’ medi­um,” Ross John­son writes at Barnes and Noble, graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tions now con­stant­ly reimag­ine lit­er­ary clas­sics for young read­ers. One Goodreads list col­lects over 200 recent graph­ic adap­ta­tions of clas­sics from Austen to Kaf­ka. These adap­ta­tions “aim to hon­or and embell­ish rather than replace the books on which they are based,” writes John­son, “because how could they?” They do, how­ev­er, allow us to “see, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, the sto­ries we love from new angles.” They also give kids and adults who may not fan­cy them­selves read­ers new ways to access and enjoy lit­er­ary clas­sics.

But are graph­ic adap­ta­tions real­ly a new phe­nom­e­non? They may be new­ly respectable, but they’ve been around since the very dawn of com­ic books as a medi­um. Super­man debuted in 1938, Bat­man in 1939, and in 1941, the first issue of Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed appeared — an adap­ta­tion of The Three Mus­ke­teers, fol­lowed by Ivan­hoe and The Count of Monte Cristo. The series was found­ed by Russ­ian-born pub­lish­er Albert Kan­ter, who imme­di­ate­ly seized on the poten­tial of com­ic books as edu­ca­tion­al tools dur­ing what is now known as the Gold­en Age of Comics.

Even as a pres­tige series sup­pos­ed­ly pro­mot­ing “great lit­er­a­ture,” Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed did not escape the notice of Dr. Fredric Wertham, whose book Seduc­tion of the Inno­cent began the moral pan­ic over com­ic books in the 1950s. Wertham found fault with the graph­ic adap­ta­tions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Uncle Tom’s Cab­in for reduc­ing the nov­els to their most stereo­typ­i­cal and sen­sa­tion­al­ist ele­ments. It’s the kind of crit­i­cism we might find levied against graph­ic adap­ta­tions of lit­er­a­ture today, and in many cas­es, it may be war­rant­ed.

Few accused these graph­ic lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions of being great art in their own right. But they accom­plished Kanter’s pur­pose of get­ting comics read­ers excit­ed about clas­sic nov­els. The series ran for 30 years, end­ing in 1971, and became an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non. In Brazil and Greece, it pub­lished adap­ta­tions of authors from those coun­tries.

A Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed Junior series appeared in 1953, bring­ing chil­dren comics ver­sions of folk­tales and myths. After the series first run, spe­cial issues, reprints, and revivals appeared in lat­er decades, as well a series of tele­vi­sion films in the 70s and 80s. You can peruse over 200 of these adap­ta­tions dig­i­tal­ly scanned at the Inter­net Archive, arti­facts of the Gold­en Age and ances­tors of our cur­rent explo­sion of graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tions of clas­sic lit­er­a­ture. For a deep­er study of this pub­li­ca­tion, you can pur­chase the 2017 book, Clas­sics Illus­trat­ed: A Cul­tur­al His­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free: Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Com­ic Books, Com­pli­ments of the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

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

How Ramen Became the Currency of Choice in Prison, Beating Out Cigarettes

in Finance, Food & Drink, Life | July 5th, 2021

The last decade ush­ered in a slew of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese-style ramen restau­rants — enough to jus­ti­fy ramen maps to New York City, Chica­go, and the Bay Area.

Yet most Amer­i­cans still con­ceive of ramen as the pack of sea­son­ing and dehy­drat­ed instant noo­dles that have long sus­tained broke artists and col­lege stu­dents.

Add incar­cer­at­ed per­sons to the list of pack­aged ramen’s most ardent con­sumers.

In the above episode of Vox’s series, The Goods, we learn how those ubiq­ui­tous cel­lo­phane pack­ages have out­stripped cig­a­rettes and postage stamps as the pre­ferred form of prison cur­ren­cy.

Ramen is durable, portable, pack­aged in stan­dard units, avail­able in the prison com­mis­sary, and high­ly prized by those with a deep need to pad their chow hall meals.

Ramen can be used to pay for cloth­ing and hygiene prod­ucts, or ser­vices like laun­dry, bunk clean­ing, dic­ta­tion, or cus­tom illus­tra­tion. Gam­blers can use it in lieu of chips.

Ramen’s sta­tus as the pre­ferred form of exchange also speaks to a sharp decline in the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of food in Amer­i­can penal insti­tu­tions.

Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Michael Gib­son-Light, who spent a year study­ing home­grown mon­e­tary prac­tices among incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tions, notes that slashed prison bud­gets have cre­at­ed a cul­ture of “puni­tive fru­gal­i­ty.”

Called upon to mod­el a demon­stra­bly tough on crime stance and cut back on expen­di­tures, the insti­tu­tions are unof­fi­cial­ly shunt­ing many of their tra­di­tion­al costs onto the pris­on­ers them­selves.

In response, those on the inside have piv­ot­ed to edi­ble cur­ren­cy:

What we are see­ing is a col­lec­tive response — across inmate pop­u­la­tions and secu­ri­ty lev­els, across prison cliques and racial groups, and even across states — to changes and cut­backs in prison food services…The form of mon­ey is not some­thing that changes often or eas­i­ly, even in the prison under­ground econ­o­my; it takes a major issue or shock to ini­ti­ate such a change. The use of cig­a­rettes as mon­ey in U.S. pris­ons hap­pened in Amer­i­can Civ­il War mil­i­tary pris­ons and like­ly far ear­li­er. The fact that this prac­tice has sud­den­ly changed has poten­tial­ly seri­ous impli­ca­tions.

Ramen may be a rel­a­tive­ly new devel­op­ment in the prison land­scape, but culi­nary exper­i­men­ta­tion behind bars is not. From Pruno prison wine to Martha Stewart’s prison grounds crabap­ple jel­ly, it’s a noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained type of deal. Work with what you’ve got.

Gus­ta­vo “Goose” Alvarez, who appears in Vox’s video, col­lect­ed a num­ber of the most adven­tur­ous recipes in his book, Prison Ramen: Recipes and Sto­ries from Behind Bars. Any­one can bring some vari­ety on the spur of the moment by sprin­kling some of your ramen’s sea­son­ing pack­et into your drink­ing water, but amass­ing the ingre­di­ents for an ambi­tious dish like Orange Porkies — chili ramen plus white rice plus ½ bag of pork skins plus orange-fla­vored punch — takes patience and per­se­ver­ance.

Alvarez’s Egg Ramen Sal­ad Sand­wich recipe earns praise from actor Shia LeBoeuf, whose time served is both mul­ti­ple and min­i­mal.

Some­one serv­ing a longer sen­tence has a more com­pelling rea­son to search for the ramen-cen­tered sense of har­mo­ny and well­be­ing on dis­play in Tam­popo, the first “ramen west­ern”:

Appre­ci­ate its gestalt. Savor the aro­mas.

Joe Guer­rero, host of YouTube’s After­Pris­on­Show, is not immune to the plea­sures of some of his ramen-based con­coc­tions, below, despite being on the out­side for sev­er­al years now.

You’re free to wrin­kle your nose at the thought of snack­ing on a crum­bled brick of uncooked ramen, but Guer­rero points out that some­one serv­ing a long sen­tence craves vari­ety in any form they can get. Expe­ri­enc­ing it can tap into the same sense of pride as self-gov­er­nance.

Guerrero’s recipes require a microwave (and a block of ramen).

Even if you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on eat­ing the fin­ished prod­uct, there’s a sci­ence project appeal to his Ramen Noo­dle Cook­ie. It calls for no addi­tion­al  ingre­di­ents, just ten min­utes cook­ing time, an out­ra­geous prospect in a com­mu­nal set­ting with only one microwave.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

What Goes Into Ramen Noo­dles, and What Hap­pens When Ramen Noo­dles Go Into You

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

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