The Curious Death of Vincent van Gogh

in Art, History | September 15th, 2020

The sto­ry of Vin­cent van Gogh’s sui­cide, like the removal of his ear, has been inte­gral to his mythos for a long time, immor­tal­ized by Kirk Dou­glas in the final scene of Vin­cente Minnelli’s film Lust for Life and in the 1934 bio­graph­i­cal nov­el of the same name by Irv­ing Stone. We’ve all accept­ed this as brute his­tor­i­cal fact, but, appar­ent­ly, “it’s all bunk,” Gre­go­ry White Smith and Steven Naifeh wrote in a 2014 Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle based on a decade of research for a new biog­ra­phy (Van Gogh: The Life).

“Though eager­ly embraced by a pub­lic in love with a hand­ful of mem­o­rable images and spell­bound by the thought of an artist who would cut off his own ear,” the authors argue, “Stone’s sui­cide yarn was based on bad his­to­ry, bad psy­chol­o­gy, and, as a defin­i­tive new expert analy­sis makes clear, bad foren­sics.” An expert analy­sis, you say? Yes. the world’s biggest posthu­mous art star has become an unsolved mys­tery, the sub­ject of a Buz­zfeed video above, part a series that also includes Edgar Allan Poe, JFK, Jim­my Hof­fa, and Natal­ie Wood.

Van Gogh’s sui­cide seems accept­ed as a fact by the Van Gogh Muse­um, at least accord­ing to their web­site, evi­denced by the mor­bid gloom of his late let­ters to his broth­er. But Van Gogh wrote “not a word about his final days,” Smith and Naifeh point out, and he left behind no sui­cide note, “odd for a man who churned out let­ters so prof­li­gate­ly.” A piece of writ­ing found on him turned out to be an ear­ly draft of his last let­ter to Theo, which was “upbeat—even ebullient—about the future.” He had every rea­son to be, giv­en the glow­ing suc­cess of his first show. “He had placed a large order for more paints only a few days before a bul­let put a hole in his abdomen.”

The sto­ry of how the hole got there involves a then-16-year-old Paris phar­ma­cist named René Secré­tan, who cru­el­ly bul­lied Van Gogh dur­ing his 1890 sum­mer in Auvers. (He also sat for some paint­ings and a draw­ing.) His involve­ment explains the “stud­ied silence” the com­mu­ni­ty main­tained after Van Gogh’s death. No one men­tioned sui­cide, but no one would say much of any­thing else either. Secré­tan became a wealthy banker and lived to see Kirk Dou­glas por­tray the eccen­tric artist he mocked as “Toto.” He lat­er admit­ted to own­ing the gun that killed Van Gogh, but denied fir­ing the shot.

The new evi­dence sur­round­ing Van Gogh’s pos­si­ble mur­der has been in the pub­lic eye for sev­er­al years now, but it hasn’t made much of a dent in the Van Gogh sui­cide leg­end. Still, we must admit, that sto­ry has always made lit­tle sense. Even schol­ars at the Van Gogh muse­um pri­vate­ly admit­ted to the artist’s biog­ra­phers that they had seri­ous doubts about it. These were dis­missed, they claimed, as being “too con­tro­ver­sial.” Now that Van Gogh has become a YouTube true crime unsolved mys­tery, there’s no shut­ting the door on spec­u­la­tion about his untime­ly and trag­ic demise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Self Por­traits: Explore & Down­load a Col­lec­tion of 17 Paint­ings Free Online

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Favorite Books

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

Discover the Longest Song in the World: A 639-Year Performance of the John Cage Composition Called “Organ/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible)”

in Music | September 9th, 2020

In 2016, Lau­rie Ander­son recre­at­ed the expe­ri­ence of Lou Reed’s Met­al Machine Music in Saint Mark’s chapel in Brighton. The five-day-long per­for­mance piece involved “some eight unmanned gui­tars lean­ing on a sim­i­lar num­ber of vin­tage amps,” Mark Sheerin writes, all of them cranked up, feed­ing back, and echo­ing around the Angli­can church’s vault­ed ceil­ing. It was a fit­ting trib­ute to Reed, a sus­tained, dis­so­nant drone that also invokes “the mys­ter­ies of faith and the incar­na­tion of rebel angels.”

If five days seems like a long time to hold a sin­gle note, how­ev­er, con­sid­er the per­for­mance of John Cage’s com­po­si­tion “ORGAN/ASLSP” or “A Slow as Pos­si­ble” that began in the St. Bur­char­di church, in the Ger­man town of Hal­ber­stadt, on Sep­tem­ber 5th, 2001, what would have been Cage’s 89th birth­day. The artists stag­ing this piece intend it to last for 639 years. If the organ doesn’t fall apart and if a new gen­er­a­tion of cura­tors con­tin­ues to take the place of the old, it will play until the year 2640.

Those are some big Ifs, but as long as it lasts, the piece should draw crowds every few years when a chord changes, as just hap­pened recent­ly, despite the pan­dem­ic, after the organ had played the same chord for almost 7 years. The change occurred on Sep­tem­ber 5th, 2020, Cage’s birth­day, 19 years after the per­for­mance began. Lest we think its length insane­ly per­verse, we should bear in mind that Cage him­self nev­er spec­i­fied a tem­po for “As Slow as Pos­si­ble.” The score itself only “con­sists of eight pages of music, to be played,” writes Kyle Mac­don­ald at Clas­sic FM, “well, very, very slow­ly.”

Typ­i­cal­ly, organ­ists and pianists have inter­pret­ed this direc­tion with­in the space of an hour. Some have stretched sin­gle per­for­mances “up to, and beyond, 12 hours.” Obvi­ous­ly, no sin­gle per­son, or even team of peo­ple, could sus­tain play­ing the piece for 233,235 days. Nor, how­ev­er, has the extreme slow­ness of the John Cage Organ Project ver­sion been made pos­si­ble by dig­i­tal means. Instead, a group of artists built a spe­cial pipe organ for the task. Each time a chord changes, new pipes are added man­u­al­ly. On Sat­ur­day, a masked crowd gath­ered “to see the G sharp and E notes metic­u­lous­ly installed.”

The organ is auto­mat­ed, by mechan­i­cal means. No one needs to sit and hold keys for sev­er­al years. But can the long-term coor­di­na­tion need­ed to main­tain this solemn­ly quixot­ic instal­la­tion extend over six hun­dred years for a grand finale in 2640 (IF the organ, the church, and the plan­et, sur­vive)? The ques­tion seems almost irrel­e­vant since no one liv­ing can answer it with any degree of cer­tain­ty. It depends on whether future gen­er­a­tions see the St. Buruchar­di “As Slow as Pos­si­ble” as a phe­nom­e­non that should con­tin­ue to exist. But why, we might ask, should it?

Maybe one way of think­ing of the John Cage Organ Project is through the lens of the Long Now Project’s 10,000 Year Clock, a device being con­struct­ed (“no com­ple­tion date sched­uled”) to rad­i­cal­ly change humans’ rela­tion­ship to time, to push us to think beyond—hundreds and thou­sands of years beyond—our mea­ger life­times. Cage, I think, would appre­ci­ate the effort to turn his eight page com­po­si­tion into a musi­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the future’s longue durée.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Impres­sive Audio Archive of John Cage Lec­tures & Inter­views: Hear Record­ings from 1963–1991

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

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

The Fall of Civilizations Podcast Engagingly Explores the Collapse of Civilizations & Empires Throughout History

in History, Podcasts | September 8th, 2020

Now the coun­try does not even boast a tree.

—Robert Brown­ing, “Love Among the Ruins”

Every empire seems to think (as much as empires seem to think) that it will be the one to out­last them all. And all of them have end­ed up more or less the same way in the end. This isn’t just a gloomy fact of human his­to­ry, it’s a fact of entropy, mor­tal­i­ty, and the lin­ear expe­ri­ence of time. If impe­r­i­al rulers forget—begin to think them­selves immortal—there have always been poets to remind them, though maybe not so direct­ly. Epic poet­ry often legit­imizes the found­ing of empires. Anoth­er form, the poet­ry of ruin, inter­prets their inevitable demise.

All the Roman­tics were doing it, and so too was an unknown 8th cen­tu­ry British poet who encoun­tered Roman ruins dur­ing the so-called “Dark Ages.” The poem they left behind “gives us a glimpse of a world of mys­tery,” says Paul Coop­er above in episode one of his Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions pod­cast, which begins with Roman Britain and con­tin­ues, in each sub­se­quent (but not chrono­log­i­cal) episode, to explore the col­lapse of empires around the world through lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture. “Every ruin,” says Coop­er in an inter­view with the North Star Pod­cast, “is a place where a phys­i­cal object was torn apart, and that hap­pened because of some his­tor­i­cal force.”

We are enthralled with ruins, though this can seem like the prod­uct of a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern sensibility—that of the poets who inhab­it­ed what nov­el­ist Rose Macaulay called in her 1953 study Plea­sure of Ruins “a ruined and ruinous world.”

But as our Old Eng­lish poet above demon­strates, the fas­ci­na­tion pre­dates Shake­speare and Mar­lowe. Coop­er would know. He has ded­i­cat­ed his life to study­ing and writ­ing about ruins, earn­ing a PhD in their cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary sig­nif­i­cance. Along the way, he has writ­ten for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine, and the BBC.

Coop­er also began pub­lish­ing one of the most intrigu­ing Twit­ter feeds in 2017, detail­ing in “sev­er­al nest­ed threads” var­i­ous “ruin-relat­ed thoughts and feel­ings,” as Shru­ti Ravin­dran writes at Tim­ber Media. His tweets became so pop­u­lar that he turned them into a pod­cast, and it is not your stan­dard infor­mal­ly chat­ty pod­cast fare. Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions engages deeply with its sub­jects on their own terms, and avoids the sen­sa­tion­al­ist clich­es of so much pop­u­lar his­to­ry. Coop­er “knew, for cer­tain, what he want­ed to avoid,” when he began: the “focus on grue­some tor­ture tech­niques, exe­cu­tions, and the sex­ca­pades of nobles.”

“His­to­ry writ­ers often don’t trust their audi­ence will be inter­est­ed in the past if they don’t Hol­ly­wood­ize it,” says Coop­er. Instead, in the lat­est episode on the Byzan­tine Empire he recruits the choir from the Greek Ortho­dox Cathe­dral in Lon­don, “and a num­ber of musi­cians play­ing tra­di­tion­al Byzan­tine instru­ments such as the Byzan­tine lyra, the Qanun and the Greek San­tur,” he explains. In his episode on the Han dynasty, Coop­er looks back through “ancient Chi­nese poet­ry, songs and folk music” to the empire’s rise, “its remark­able tech­no­log­i­cal advances, and its first, ten­ta­tive attempts to make con­tact with the empires of the west.”

This is a rich jour­ney through ancient his­to­ry, guid­ed by a mas­ter sto­ry­teller ded­i­cat­ed to tak­ing ruins seri­ous­ly. (Coop­er has pub­lished a nov­el about ruins, Riv­er of Ink, “inspired by time spent in UNESCO sites in Sri Lan­ka,” Ravin­dran reports.) There is “love among the ruins,” wrote Robert Brown­ing, and there is poet­ry and music and sto­ry and song—all of it brought to bear in Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions to “make sense about what must have hap­pened,” says Coop­er. Find more episodes, on fall­en civ­i­liza­tions all around the world, on YouTube or head to Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions to sub­scribe through the pod­cast ser­vice of your choice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture Pod­cast Takes You on a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney: From Ancient Epics to Con­tem­po­rary Clas­sics

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture Pod­cast Takes You on a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney: From Ancient Epics to Con­tem­po­rary Clas­sics

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

Watch an Epic Drum Battle, Pitting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fighter Dave Grohl

in K-12, Music | September 7th, 2020

Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl, for­mer­ly of Nir­vana, and Nan­di Bushell, an Ipswich ele­men­tary school­er, have some­thing in com­mon besides their incred­i­ble com­mand of the drums.

By all appear­ances, both seem to have ben­e­fit­ed from being reared by ground­ed, encour­ag­ing par­ents.

Nan­di, at 10, like­ly has a few more years under her folks’ roof despite her grow­ing renown—she’s jammed with Lenny Kravitz, gone viral in last year’s Argos Christ­mas advert, and most recent­ly, matched Grohl beat for beat in an epic drum bat­tle, above.

Nan­di demon­strat­ed a nat­ur­al rhyth­mic ear at an ear­ly age, bob­bing along to the Tele­tub­bies while still in dia­pers.

Of course, every­thing she’s achieved thus far can be con­sid­ered to have occurred at an ear­ly age.

On the oth­er hand, it was half a life­time ago when her father, a soft­ware engi­neer and self-described “mas­sive music fan” intro­duced the then-5-year-old to “Hey, Jude,” as part of a week­ly tra­di­tion where­in he makes pan­cakes with his chil­dren while shar­ing YouTube links to favorite songs.

She was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with Ringo Starr, and the joy he exud­ed behind his kit.

Short­ly there­after, she passed a math exam, earn­ing a trip to Toys “R” Us to pick out a promised treat. Her eye went imme­di­ate­ly to a £25 kid­die drum set.

The plas­tic toy was a far cry from the pro­fes­sion­al kit she uses today, but she’s shown her­self to be adapt­able in a recent series of video tuto­ri­als for Daniel Bedingfield’s “Gonna Get Through This,” encour­ag­ing view­ers who lack equip­ment to bang on whatever’s handy—colanders, pot lids, bis­cuit tins… She rec­om­mends kebab skew­ers tipped with cel­lo­phane tape for the stick­less.

Her YouTube chan­nel def­i­nite­ly reveals a pref­er­ence for hard rock.

Her father, John, dis­likes play­ing pub­licly, but occa­sion­al­ly accom­pa­nies her on gui­tar, hop­ing she’ll grow accus­tomed to play­ing with oth­er peo­ple.

Doc­u­ment­ing his daughter’s per­for­mances lies more with­in his com­fort zone as he told Drum Talk TV in a very glitchy, ear­ly-pan­dem­ic vir­tu­al inter­view. Asked by host Dan Shin­der to share tips for oth­er par­ents of young drum­mers, par­tic­u­lar­ly girls, he coun­sels expos­ing them to as many musi­cal gen­res as pos­si­ble, nur­tur­ing their desire to play, and resolv­ing to have as much fun as pos­si­ble.

It’s clear that Nan­di is hav­ing a ball twirling her sticks and whal­ing on the drum part of Foo Fight­ers’ hit “Ever­long,” in a video uploaded last month.

Grohl got wind of the video and the chal­lenge con­tained there­in.

He took the bait, respond­ing with an “epic” video of his own, play­ing a set of drums bor­rowed from his 11-year-old daugh­ter:

I haven’t played that song since the day I record­ed it in 1997, but Nan­di, in the last week I’ve got­ten at least 100 texts from peo­ple all over the world say­ing ‘This girl is chal­leng­ing you to a drum-off, what are you going to do?’

Look, I’ve seen all your videos. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re an incred­i­ble drum­mer. I’m real­ly flat­tered that you picked some of my songs… and you’ve done them all per­fect­ly. So today, I’m gonna give you some­thing you may not have heard before. This is a song called “Dead End Friends” from a band called Them Crooked Vul­tures… now the ball is in your court.

(Fast for­ward to the final thir­ty sec­onds if you want to see the ulti­mate in hap­py dances.)

The young chal­lenger calls upon the rock Gods of old—Bon­zo, Bak­er, Peart, Moon—to back her side for “THE GREATEST ROCK BATTLE IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK!!!”

(In addi­tion to drum lessons, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ipswich Rock Project and  junior jam ses­sions, it looks like her act­ing class­es at Stage­coach Per­form­ing Arts Ipswich are so pay­ing off.)

Five days after Grohl threw down his gaunt­let, she’s back on her drum throne, clad in a pre­teen ver­sion of Grohl’s buf­fa­lo check shirt and black pants, her snare bear­ing the leg­end “Grohl rocks.”

That sen­ti­ment would sure­ly please Grohl’s moth­er, Vir­ginia, author of From Cra­dle to Stage: Sto­ries from the Moth­ers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars.

A born enter­tain­er in his mother’s opin­ion, Grohl didn’t take up music until he was around the age Nan­di is now, after which it monop­o­lized his focus and ener­gy, lead­ing to a dis­as­trous 6th grade report card.

Rather than freak­ing out about gen­er­al edu­ca­tion dips, Vir­ginia, a pub­lic school teacher, was sup­port­ive when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose for him to tour Europe at 17 with the Wash­ing­ton, DC band Scream after the depar­ture of drum­mer Kent Stax.

Wise move. Her son may be a high school drop-out, but he’s using his fame to shine a spot­light on the con­cerns of teach­ers, who are essen­tial work­ers in his view. Check out his essay in The Atlantic, in which he writes that he wouldn’t trust the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Per­cus­sion to tell him how to play “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” if they had nev­er sat behind a drum set:

It takes a cer­tain kind of per­son to devote their life to this dif­fi­cult and often-thank­less job. I know because I was raised in a com­mu­ni­ty of them. I have mowed their lawns, paint­ed their apart­ments, even babysat their chil­dren, and I’m con­vinced that they are as essen­tial as any oth­er essen­tial work­ers. Some even raise rock stars! Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine, Adam Levine, Josh Groban, and Haim are all chil­dren of school work­ers (with hope­ful­ly more aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly reward­ing results than mine).

He’s also leav­ing time in his sched­ule for anoth­er drum bat­tle:

Ok, @Nandi_Bushell .…..you win round one.…but it ain’t over yet! Buck­le up, cuz I have some­thing spe­cial in mind…

Stay tuned, Dave https://t.co/THyApmHHep — Foo Fight­ers (@foofighters) Sep­tem­ber 4, 2020

Watch more of Nan­di Bushell’s drum and gui­tar cov­ers on her par­ent-mon­i­tored YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fun­da­men­tals of Jazz & Rock Drum­ming Explained in Five Cre­ative Min­utes

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

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

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

in Education, Technology | September 5th, 2020

Update: You can find the first of the Google Career Cer­tifi­cates here. They’re also added to our col­lec­tion 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies. 

I used to make a point of ask­ing every col­lege-apply­ing teenag­er I encoun­tered why they want­ed to go to col­lege in the first place. Few had a ready answer; most, after a deer-in-the-head­lights moment, said they want­ed to be able to get a job — and in a tone imply­ing it was too obvi­ous to require artic­u­la­tion. But if one’s goal is sim­ply employ­ment, does­n’t it seem a bit exces­sive to move across the state, coun­try, or world, spend four years tak­ing tests and writ­ing papers on a grab-bag of sub­jects, and spend (or bor­row) a large and ever-inflat­ing amount of mon­ey to do so? This, in any case, is one idea behind Google’s Career Cer­tifi­cates, all of which can be com­plet­ed from home in about six months. Find the first ones here.

Any such remote edu­ca­tion­al process looks more viable than ever at the moment due to the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, a con­di­tion that also has today’s col­lege-apply­ing teenagers won­der­ing whether they’ll ever see a cam­pus at all. Nor is the broad­er eco­nom­ic harm lost on Google, whose Senior Vice Pres­i­dent for Glob­al Affairs Kent Walk­er frames their Career Cer­tifi­cates as part of a “dig­i­tal jobs pro­gram to help Amer­i­ca’s eco­nom­ic recov­ery.” He writes that “peo­ple need good jobs, and the broad­er econ­o­my needs their ener­gy and skills to sup­port our future growth.” At the same time, “col­lege degrees are out of reach for many Amer­i­cans, and you shouldn’t need a col­lege diplo­ma to have eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty.”

Hence Google’s new Career Cer­tifi­cates in “the high-pay­ing, high-growth career fields of Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, and User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design,” which join their exist­ing IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion in Python Cer­tifi­cates.

• Google UX Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate
• Google Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate
• Google Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate
• Google IT Sup­port Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate
• Google IT Automa­tion Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate

Host­ed on the online edu­ca­tion plat­form Cours­era, these pro­grams (which run about $300-$400) are devel­oped in-house and taught by Google employ­ees and require no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. To help cov­er their cost Google will also fund 100,000 “need-based schol­ar­ships” and offer stu­dents “hun­dreds of appren­tice­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties” at the com­pa­ny “to pro­vide real on-the-job train­ing.” None of this guar­an­tees any giv­en stu­dent a job at Google, of course, but as Walk­er empha­sizes, “we will con­sid­er our new career cer­tifi­cates as the equiv­a­lent of a four-year degree.”

Biggest tech & high­er ed sto­ry of the last 2 weeks — #Google enter­ing high­er ed, offer­ing BA-equiv­­a­­lent degrees@YahooFinance pic.twitter.com/bsGgwHsnRn

— Scott Gal­loway (@profgalloway) August 30, 2020

Tech­nol­o­gy-and-edu­ca­tion pun­dit Scott Gal­loway calls that bach­e­lor’s-degree equiv­a­lence the biggest sto­ry in his field of recent weeks. It’s per­haps the begin­ning of a trend where tech com­pa­nies dis­rupt high­er edu­ca­tion, cre­at­ing afford­able and scal­able edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams that will train the work­force for 21st cen­tu­ry jobs. This could con­ceiv­ably mean that uni­ver­si­ties lose their monop­oly on the train­ing and vet­ting of stu­dents, or at least find that they’ll increas­ing­ly share that respon­si­bil­i­ty with big tech.

This past spring Gal­loway gave an inter­view to New York mag­a­zine pre­dict­ing that “ulti­mate­ly, uni­ver­si­ties are going to part­ner with com­pa­nies to help them expand.” He adds: “I think that part­ner­ship will look some­thing like MIT and Google part­ner­ing. Microsoft and Berke­ley. Big-tech com­pa­nies are about to enter edu­ca­tion and health care in a big way, not because they want to but because they have to.” Whether such uni­ver­si­ty part­ner­ships will emerge as falling enroll­ments put the strain on cer­tain seg­ments of the uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem remains to be seen, but so far Google seems con­fi­dent about going it alone. And where Google goes, as we’ve all seen before, oth­er insti­tu­tions often fol­low.

Note: You can lis­ten to Gal­loway elab­o­rate on how Google may lead to the unbundling of high­er ed here. Lis­ten to the episode “State of Play: The Shar­ing Econ­o­my” from his Prof G pod­cast:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

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

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

Mal­colm Glad­well Asks Hard Ques­tions about Mon­ey & Mer­i­toc­ra­cy in Amer­i­can High­er Edu­ca­tion: Stream 3 Episodes of His New Pod­cast

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

William Blake’s Paintings Come to Life in Two Animations

in Animation, Art, Museums, Poetry | September 4th, 2020

The poet and painter William Blake toiled in obscu­ri­ty, for the most part, and died in pover­ty.

Twen­ty some years after his death, his rebel­lious spir­it gained trac­tion with the Pre-Raphaelites.

By the dawn­ing of the Age of Aquar­ius, Blake was ripe to be ven­er­at­ed as a counter-cul­tur­al hero, for hav­ing flown in the face of con­ven­tion, while cham­pi­oning gen­der and racial equal­i­ty, nature, and free love.

Reclin­ing half-naked on a “a fab­u­lous couch in Harlem,” poet Allen Gins­burg had a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry encounter where­in Blake recit­ed to him “in earth­en mea­sure.”

Dit­to poet Michael McClure, though in his case, Bob Dylan’s “Gates of Eden” served as some­thing of a medi­um:

I had the idea that I was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing, that it was William Blake’s voice com­ing out of the walls and I stood up and put my hands on the walls and they were vibrat­ing.

Blake’s work (and world view) con­tin­ues to exert enor­mous influ­ence on graph­ic nov­el­ists, the­ater­mak­ers, and cre­atives of every stripe.

He’s also a dab hand at ani­ma­tion, col­lab­o­rat­ing from beyond the grave.

The short above, a com­mis­sion for a late ‘70s Blake exhi­bi­tion at The Tate, envi­sions a roundtrip jour­ney from Heav­en to Hell. Ani­ma­tor Sheila Graber parked her­self in the Sculp­ture Hall to cre­ate it in pub­lic view, pair­ing Blake’s line “Ener­gy is Eter­nal delight” with a per­son­al obser­va­tion:

Whether we use it to cre­ate or destroy—it’s the same ener­gy. The prac­tice of art can turn a per­son from a van­dal to a builder!

More recent­ly, the Tate gave direc­tor Sam Gains­bor­ough access to super high-res imagery of Blake’s orig­i­nal paint­ings, in order to cre­ate a pro­mo for last year’s block­buster exhi­bi­tion.

Gains­bor­ough and ani­ma­tor Renald­ho Pelle worked togeth­er to bring the cho­sen works to life, frame by frame, against a series of Lon­don build­ings and streets that were well known to Blake him­self.

The film opens with Blake’s Ghost of a Flea emerg­ing from the walls of Broad­wick Street, where its cre­ator was born, then stalk­ing off, bowl in hand, ced­ing the screen to God, The Ancient of Days, whose reach spreads like ink across the grit­ty facade of a white brick edi­fice.

Sey­mour Mil­ton’s orig­i­nal music and Jas­mine Black­borow’s nar­ra­tion of excerpts from Blake’s poem “Auguries of Inno­cence” seem to antic­i­pate the fraught cur­rent moment, as does the entire poem:

Auguries of Inno­cence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heav­en in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infin­i­ty in the palm of your hand 

And Eter­ni­ty in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heav­en in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons

Shud­ders Hell thr’ all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Mas­ters Gate

Pre­dicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse mis­usd upon the Road

Calls to Heav­en for Human blood 

Each out­cry of the hunt­ed Hare

A fibre from the Brain does tear 

A Sky­lark wound­ed in the wing 

A Cheru­bim does cease to sing 

The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight

Does the Ris­ing Sun affright 

Every Wolfs & Lions howl

Rais­es from Hell a Human Soul 

The wild deer, wan­dring here & there 

Keeps the Human Soul from Care 

The Lamb mis­usd breeds Pub­lic Strife

And yet for­gives the Butch­ers knife 

The Bat that flits at close of Eve

Has left the Brain that wont Believe

The Owl that calls upon the Night

Speaks the Unbe­liev­ers fright

He who shall hurt the lit­tle Wren

Shall nev­er be belovd by Men 

He who the Ox to wrath has movd

Shall nev­er be by Woman lovd

The wan­ton Boy that kills the Fly

Shall feel the Spi­ders enmi­ty 

He who tor­ments the Chafers Sprite

Weaves a Bow­er in end­less Night 

The Cat­ter­piller on the Leaf

Repeats to thee thy Moth­ers grief 

Kill not the Moth nor But­ter­fly 

For the Last Judg­ment draweth nigh 

He who shall train the Horse to War

Shall nev­er pass the Polar Bar 

The Beg­gars Dog & Wid­ows Cat 

Feed them & thou wilt grow fat 

The Gnat that sings his Sum­mers Song

Poi­son gets from Slan­ders tongue 

The poi­son of the Snake & Newt

Is the sweat of Envys Foot 

The poi­son of the Hon­ey Bee

Is the Artists Jeal­ousy

The Princes Robes & Beg­gars Rags

Are Toad­stools on the Misers Bags 

A Truth thats told with bad intent

Beats all the Lies you can invent 

It is right it should be so 

Man was made for Joy & Woe 

And when this we right­ly know 

Thro the World we safe­ly go 

Joy & Woe are woven fine 

A Cloth­ing for the soul divine 

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine 

The Babe is more than swadling Bands

Through­out all these Human Lands

Tools were made & Born were hands 

Every Farmer Under­stands

Every Tear from Every Eye

Becomes a Babe in Eter­ni­ty 

This is caught by Females bright

And returnd to its own delight 

The Bleat the Bark Bel­low & Roar 

Are Waves that Beat on Heav­ens Shore 

The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath

Writes Revenge in realms of Death 

The Beg­gars Rags flut­ter­ing in Air

Does to Rags the Heav­ens tear 

The Sol­dier armd with Sword & Gun 

Palsied strikes the Sum­mers Sun

The poor Mans Far­thing is worth more

Than all the Gold on Africs Shore

One Mite wrung from the Labr­ers hands

Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands 

Or if pro­tect­ed from on high 

Does that whole Nation sell & buy 

He who mocks the Infants Faith

Shall be mockd in Age & Death 

He who shall teach the Child to Doubt

The rot­ting Grave shall neer get out 

He who respects the Infants faith

Tri­umphs over Hell & Death 

The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Rea­sons

Are the Fruits of the Two sea­sons 

The Ques­tion­er who sits so sly 

Shall nev­er know how to Reply 

He who replies to words of Doubt

Doth put the Light of Knowl­edge out 

The Strongest Poi­son ever known

Came from Cae­sars Lau­rel Crown 

Nought can Deform the Human Race

Like to the Armours iron brace 

When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow

To peace­ful Arts shall Envy Bow 

A Rid­dle or the Crick­ets Cry

Is to Doubt a fit Reply 

The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile

Make Lame Phi­los­o­phy to smile 

He who Doubts from what he sees

Will neer Believe do what you Please 

If the Sun & Moon should Doubt 

Theyd imme­di­ate­ly Go out 

To be in a Pas­sion you Good may Do 

But no Good if a Pas­sion is in you 

The Whore & Gam­bler by the State

Licencd build that Nations Fate 

The Har­lots cry from Street to Street 

Shall weave Old Eng­lands wind­ing Sheet 

The Win­ners Shout the Losers Curse 

Dance before dead Eng­lands Hearse 

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Mis­ery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to End­less Night 

We are led to Believe a Lie

When we see not Thro the Eye

Which was Born in a Night to per­ish in a Night 

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Dis­play

To those who Dwell in Realms of day

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake Illus­trates Mary Wollstonecraft’s Work of Children’s Lit­er­a­ture, Orig­i­nal Sto­ries from Real Life (1791)

William Blake’s Mas­ter­piece Illus­tra­tions of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

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

Behold a Beautiful 400-Year-Old ‘Friendship Book’ Featuring the Signatures of Historic Figures

in Art, Books, History | September 2nd, 2020

Main­tain­ing the bal­ance of pow­er among Euro­pean states has always been a fraught affair, but it was espe­cial­ly so in the years when mer­can­til­ism made frag­ile alliances dur­ing the reli­gious wars of the 17th cen­tu­ry. This was a time when mer­chants made excel­lent diplo­mats, not only because they trav­eled exten­sive­ly and learned for­eign tongues and cus­toms, but because they spoke the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of trade.

Ger­man mer­chant and diplo­mat Philipp Hain­hofer from Augs­burg was such a fig­ure, trav­el­ing from court to court to meet with Europe’s renowned dig­ni­taries. As he did so, he would ask them to sign his album ami­co­rum, or “friend­ship book,” also called a stamm­buch. Each sign­er would then “com­mis­sion an artist to cre­ate a paint­ing accom­pa­ny­ing their sig­na­tures,” Ali­son Flood writes at The Guardian.

“There are around 100 draw­ings” in his auto­graph book, known as the Große Stamm­buch, “which took more than 50 years to com­pile.” After Hainhofer’s death in 1647, his friend August the Younger—who helped col­lect the hun­dreds of thou­sand of books in the Her­zog August Bibliothek—tried to acquire the book but failed. Now it has final­ly land­ed in the huge library, one of the world’s old­est, almost 400 years lat­er, after a pur­chase at a pri­vate auc­tion this week.

Friend­ship books were com­mon­ly used at the time to record the names of fam­i­ly and friends. Stu­dents used them as year­books, and Hain­hofer began his col­lec­tion of sig­na­tures as a col­lege stu­dent. He grad­u­al­ly gained a select clien­tele as his career advanced. Sig­na­to­ries, the His­to­ry Blog points out, “include Holy Roman Emper­or Rudolf II, anoth­er HRE Matthias, Chris­t­ian IV of Den­mark and Nor­way, Cosi­mo II de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tus­cany…” and many oth­ers.

Hainhofer’s Große Stamm­buch is, as you can see, a beau­ti­ful work of art—or almost 100 col­lect­ed works of art—in its own right. “The elab­o­rate­ness of the illus­tra­tions direct­ly cor­re­sponds to the signatory’s sta­tus and rank in soci­ety,” as Grace Ebert notes at Colos­sal. It is also a fas­ci­nat­ing record of Ear­ly Mod­ern Euro­pean pol­i­tics, trade, and diplo­ma­cy, a fine art all its own.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

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

What Did the Roman Emperors Look Like?: See Photorealistic Portraits Created with Machine Learning

in Art, History, Technology | August 27th, 2020

We can spend a life­time read­ing his­to­ries of ancient Rome with­out know­ing what any of its emper­ors looked like. Or rather, with­out know­ing exact­ly what they looked like: being the lead­ers of the might­i­est polit­i­cal enti­ty in the West­ern world, they had their like­ness­es stamped onto coins and carved into busts as a mat­ter of course. But such artist’s ren­der­ings inevitably come with a cer­tain degree of artis­tic license, a ten­den­cy to mold fea­tures into slight­ly more impe­r­i­al shapes. See­ing the faces of the Roman Emper­ors as we would if we were pass­ing them on the street is an expe­ri­ence made pos­si­ble only by high tech­nol­o­gy, and high tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped six­teen cen­turies after the fall of the Roman Empire at that.

“Using the neur­al-net tool Art­breed­er, Pho­to­shop and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, I have cre­at­ed pho­to­re­al por­traits of Roman Emper­ors,” writes design­er Daniel Voshart. “For this project, I have trans­formed, or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) 800 images of busts to make the 54 emper­ors of The Prin­ci­pate (27 BC to 285 AD).”

The key tech­nol­o­gy that enables Art­breed­er to con­vinc­ing­ly blend images of faces togeth­er is what’s called a “gen­er­a­tive adver­sar­i­al net­work” (GAN). “Some call it Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence,” writes Voshart, “but it is more accu­rate­ly described as Machine Learn­ing.” The Verge’s James Vin­cent writes that Voshart fed in “images of emper­ors he col­lect­ed from stat­ues, coins, and paint­ings, and then tweaked the por­traits man­u­al­ly based on his­tor­i­cal descrip­tions, feed­ing them back to the GAN.”

Into the mix also went “high-res images of celebri­ties”: Daniel Craig into Augus­tus, André the Giant into Max­imi­nus Thrax (thought to have been giv­en his “a lantern jaw and moun­tain­ous frame” by a pitu­itary gland dis­or­der like that which affect­ed the colos­sal wrestler). This par­tial­ly explains why some of these uncan­ni­ly life­like emper­ors — the biggest celebri­ties of their time and place, after all — look faint­ly famil­iar. Though mod­eled as close­ly as pos­si­ble after men who real­ly lived, these exact faces (much like those in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed mod­ern pho­tographs pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. Still, one can imag­ine the emper­ors who inspired Voshart’s Prin­ci­pate rec­og­niz­ing them­selves in it. But what would they make of the fact that it’s also sell­ing briskly in poster form on Etsy?

Vis­it the Roman Emper­or Project here. For back­ground on this project, vis­it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Five Hard­core Deaths Suf­fered By Roman Emper­ors

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

2020: An Isolation Odyssey–A Short Film Reenacts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

in Current Affairs, Film | August 17th, 2020

From New York City design­er Lydia Cam­bron comes 2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey, a short film that reen­acts the finale of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s icon­ic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But with a COVID-19 twist. “Restaged in the con­text of home quar­an­tine,” Cam­bron writes, “the jour­ney through time adapts to the mun­dane dra­mas of self-isolation–poking fun at the navel-gaz­ing saga of life alone and indoors.” If you’ve been a good cit­i­zen since March, you will sure­ly get the joke.

via Colos­sal/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Open­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Orig­i­nal, Unused Score

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Ballerina Misty Copeland Recreates the Poses of Edgar Degas’ Ballet Dancers

in Art, Dance, Photography | August 12th, 2020

“I am a man of motion,” trag­ic mod­ernist bal­let dancer Vaslav Nijin­sky wrote in his famous Diary, “I am feel­ing through flesh…. I am God in a body.” Nijin­sky suf­fered the unfor­tu­nate onset of schiz­o­phre­nia after his career end­ed, but in his lucid moments, he writes of the great­est pain of his illness—to nev­er dance again. A degree of his obses­sive devo­tion seems intrin­sic to bal­let.

Misty Copeland, who titled her auto­bi­og­ra­phy Life in Motion, thinks so. “All dancers are con­trol freaks a bit,” she says. “We just want to be in con­trol of our­selves and our bod­ies. That’s just what the bal­let struc­ture, I think, kind of puts inside of you. If I’m put in a sit­u­a­tion where I am not real­ly sure what’s going to hap­pen, it can be over­whelm­ing. I get a bit anx­ious.” As Nijin­sky did, Copeland is also “forc­ing peo­ple to look at bal­let through a more con­tem­po­rary lens,” writes Stephen Mooallem in Harper’s Bazaar.

Copeland has been can­did about her strug­gles on the way to becom­ing the first African Amer­i­can woman named a prin­ci­pal dancer at the Amer­i­can Bal­let The­atre, includ­ing cop­ing with depres­sion, a leg-injury, body-image issues, and child­hood pover­ty. She is also “in the midst of the most illu­mi­nat­ing pas de deux with pop cul­ture for a clas­si­cal dancer since Mikhail Barysh­nikov went toe-to-toe with Gre­go­ry Hines in White Nights” (a ref­er­ence that may be lost on younger read­ers, but trust me, this was huge).

Like anoth­er mod­ernist artist, Edgar Degas, Copeland has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the image of the bal­let dancer. Degas’ bal­let paint­ings, “which the artist began cre­at­ing in the late 1860s and con­tin­ued mak­ing until the years before his death, in 1917, were infused with a very mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ty. Instead of ide­al­ized visions of del­i­cate crea­tures pirou­et­ting onstage, he offered images of young girls con­gre­gat­ing, prac­tic­ing, labor­ing, danc­ing, train­ing….” He showed the unglam­orous life and work behind the cos­tumed pageantry, that is.

Pho­tog­ra­phers Ken Browar and Deb­o­rah Ory envi­sioned Copeland as sev­er­al of Degas’ dancers, pos­ing her in cou­ture dress­es in recre­ations of some of his famous paint­ings and sculp­tures. The pho­tographs are part of their NYC Dance Project, in part­ner­ship with Harper’s Bazaar. As Kot­tke points out, con­flat­ing the his­to­ries of Copeland and Degas’ dancers rais­es some ques­tions. Degas had con­tempt for women, espe­cial­ly his Parisian sub­jects, who danced in a sor­did world in which “sex work” between teenage dancers and old­er men “was a part of a ballerina’s real­i­ty,” writes author Julia Fiore (as it was too in Nijinsky’s day).

This con­text may unset­tle our view­ing, but the images also show Copeland in full con­trol of Degas’ scenes, though that’s not the way it felt, she says. “It was inter­est­ing to be on shoot and to not have the free­dom to just cre­ate like in nor­mal­ly do with my body. Try­ing to re-cre­ate what Degas did was real­ly dif­fi­cult.” Instead, she embod­ied his fig­ures as her­self. “I see a great affin­i­ty between Degas’s dancers and Misty,” says Thel­ma Gold­en, direc­tor of the Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem. “She has knocked aside a long-stand­ing music-box stereo­type of the bal­le­ri­na and replaced it with a thor­ough­ly mod­ern, mul­ti­cul­tur­al image of pres­ence and pow­er.”

See more of Copeland’s Degas recre­ations at Harper’s Bazaar.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

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