Robert Fripp & King Crimson Perform a Stirring Cover of “Heroes,” Shortly after David Bowie’s Death (2016)

in Music | May 20th, 2020

In 2016, King Crim­son per­formed “Heroes” at the Admi­ralspalast in Berlin, just after David Bowie’s death, and near­ly forty years after the song was writ­ten and record­ed next to the Berlin Wall. It was “a cel­e­bra­tion, a remem­branc­ing and an homage,” gen­tle­man gui­tarist Robert Fripp wrote in a state­ment. The fol­low­ing year, they released the live ver­sion on an EP called Heroes, in hon­or of the clas­sic Bowie album’s 40th anniver­sary.

King Crim­son sounds absolute­ly amaz­ing in the con­cert record­ing. Yet it’s Fripp’s keen­ing gui­tar line—part vio­lin, part theremin—that most calls out to us, a gor­geous­ly heav­en­ly wail. Like many Bowie songs, the writ­ing and record­ing of “Heroes” pro­duced many a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. Fripp’s con­tri­bu­tion, as a leg­endary char­ac­ter and prog-rock genius, is no excep­tion.

Frip­p’s angel­ic tone on “Heroes,” as Tony Vis­con­ti tells it above (at 2:15), came about most­ly by hap­py acci­dent. Vis­con­ti explains more ful­ly in a Sound Opin­ions inter­view:

Fripp was avail­able only one week­end. So he came to Berlin, brought his gui­tar, no ampli­fi­er. He record­ed his gui­tar in the stu­dio. We had to play the track very very loud because he was rely­ing on the feed­back from the stu­dio mon­i­tors. So it was deaf­en­ing work­ing with him.

Where­as every­one thinks it’s an ebow, this mag­i­cal gui­tar gad­get called an ebow. In fact it was­n’t an ebow, it was just the feedback–Fripp play­ing this “dah uhh­hh dahh uhhh” that beau­ti­ful motif. And Fripp record­ed a sec­ond time with­out hear­ing the first one. It was a lit­tle bit more cohe­sive, but still quite was­n’t right, and he said, “Let me do it again. Just give me anoth­er track. I’ll do it again.” And we silenced the first two tracks and he did a third pass, which was real­ly great. He nailed it. And then I had the bright idea: I said, “Look let me just hear what it sounds like with the oth­er two tracks. You nev­er know.”

We played it, all three tracks togeth­er, and you know, I must reit­er­ate Fripp did not hear the oth­er two tracks when he was doing the third one so he had no way of being in sync. But he was strange­ly in sync. And all his lit­tle out-of-tune wig­gles sud­den­ly worked with the oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed gui­tars. It seemed to tune up. It got a qual­i­ty that none of us antic­i­pat­ed. It was this dreamy, wail­ing qual­i­ty, almost cry­ing sound in the back­ground. And we were just flab­ber­gast­ed.

It was a typ­i­cal­ly Eno-Vis­con­ti way to find a new sound. That sound, Vis­con­ti says above, is all over the track. For this rea­son, Fripp has been engaged in legal bat­tles with David Bowie’s estate over his cred­it, insist­ing that he should have “fea­tured play­er” sta­tus, a legal des­ig­na­tion that would give him greater rights to remu­ner­a­tion. Always a shame when wran­gling over mon­ey comes between the cre­ators of great music, but in this case, Bri­an Eno and Tony Vis­con­ti both sup­port Fripp’s claims, and so per­haps would Bowie if he were here.

What­ev­er it takes to be a “fea­tured play­er,” Fripp sailed over the thresh­old on “Heroes.” He demon­strates it again in the King Crim­son trib­ute, mak­ing one gui­tar sound like three onstage, and in the video above, which he released with his wife Toy­ah for VE Day. The back­ing track is from the Berlin per­for­mance at the top, with dubbed vocals by Toy­ah and gui­tar, of course, by Fripp, play­ing the same Gib­son Les Paul he flew into the stu­dio with in 1977, and look­ing just as sin­gu­lar­ly unim­pressed by the pro­ceed­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

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

1930s Phonograph Doubled as an Alarm Clock, Letting People Start Their Day with Their Favorite Record

in Music, Technology | May 19th, 2020

The Deutsches Uhrens­mu­se­um intro­duces the French-made Peter Pan clock above as fol­lows:

Even as ear­ly as 1930, peo­ple were try­ing to find a way to replace the unpleas­ant sound of the alarm clock. The inven­tor of this gramo­phone alarm clock had a bril­liant idea. The gramo­phone works like the stan­dard alarm clock of those days; how­ev­er, instead of a bell, the gramo­phone motor switch­es on when the alarm goes off and your favourite record begins to play to the live­ly crack­ling sound of a typ­i­cal gramo­phone. The motor plays this side of the record twice in suc­ces­sion. The opened lid of the box serves as a res­onator. Even the name is what dreams are made of: Peter Pan Alarm Clock. Who would not want to be a child again and fly off to Nev­er Nev­er Land?

This great find comes from the always inter­est­ing Twit­ter feeds of jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France. You can watch the clock in action below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Library of Congress Makes Its Archives Free for DJs to Remix: Introducing the “Citizen DJ” Project

in Music | May 1st, 2020

Since the begin­ning of hip hop and turntab­lism, the best DJs have been the best crate dig­gers, peo­ple who would spend hours flip­ping thru old vinyl, unknown titles, rare cuts, and some­times seri­ous­ly out-of-fash­ion, embar­rass­ing old records for those brief moments of music that when looped, could be spun into mod­ern mag­ic.

At the same time, hip hop sam­pling has also been a mine­field for copy­right law, so much that mod­ern DJs shy away from sam­pling lest they spend months and or years seek­ing clear­ing rights.

Artist and com­put­er sci­en­tist Bri­an Foo knows where there are plen­ty of crates that have yet to be dug: the Library of Con­gress. Already the author of sev­er­al projects that turn data into music, Foo received a grant from the Library this year to do some­thing amaz­ing with their col­lec­tion and offer it to the pub­lic.

Cit­i­zen DJ is the result and cur­rent­ly you can play around with the beta ver­sion. The above video fea­tures Foo lead­ing you through the site, and I high­ly rec­om­mend you watch it before div­ing in.

Sound sources come from the Library’s many col­lec­tions: Edi­son sound record­ings, Vari­ety Stage record­ings, Joe Smith’s inter­views with ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry celebri­ties, a col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can dialect record­ings, gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion films, and their more mod­ern free music archives.

You can browse these as a col­or-cod­ed graph­ic tapes­try or as a list, with plen­ty of fil­ters to nar­row down your search. Once you find a sound you like you can chop it up in a sequencer and then bring in loops, change the bpm, and cre­ate some very, very odd mod­ern music. (If you’re lucky it will also be funky!) Every­thing can be down­loaded off­site into a (dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion) DAW of your choice.

What­ev­er you make, by the way, is yours to do with what­ev­er you want, and that includes sell­ing it as your own track. (Although it’s best-prac­tice to cred­it the source and the Library).

Foo notes that the project is ful­ly launch­ing in late sum­mer, but is real­ly look­ing for your feed­back, whether you are a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian or a curi­ous cit­i­zen. (We also want to hear any­thing that you wind up mak­ing, so let us know.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Fair Use?: A Short Intro­duc­tion from the Mak­er of Every­thing is a Remix

The Library of Con­gress Makes Thou­sands of Fab­u­lous Pho­tos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

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.

When David Bowie Launched His Own Internet Service Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

in History, Music, Technology | April 29th, 2020

When we con­sid­er the many iden­ti­ties of David Bowie — Zig­gy Star­dust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke — we often neglect to include his trans­for­ma­tion into an inter­net entre­pre­neur. In line with Bowie’s rep­u­ta­tion for being ahead of his time in all endeav­ors, it hap­pened sev­er­al tech booms ago, in the late 1990s. Fore­see­ing the inter­net’s poten­tial as a cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial force, he got ahead of it by launch­ing not just his own web site (which some major artists lacked through the end of the cen­tu­ry), but his own inter­net ser­vice provider. For $19.95 a month (£10.00 in the UK), BowieNet offered fans access not just to “high-speed” inter­net but to “David Bowie, his world, his friends, his fans, includ­ing live chats, live video feeds, chat rooms and bul­letin boards.”

So announced the ini­tial BowieNet press release pub­lished in August 1998, which also promised “live in-stu­dio video feeds,” “text, audio and video mes­sages from Bowie,” “Desk­top themes includ­ing Bowie screen­savers, wall­pa­per and icons,” and best of all, a “david­bowie e‑mail address (your na**@********ie.com).” While the dial-up of the inter­net con­nec­tions of the day was­n’t quite equal to the task of reli­ably stream­ing video, many of BowieNet’s approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 mem­bers still fond­ly remem­ber the com­mu­ni­ty cul­ti­vat­ed on its mes­sage boards. “This was in effect a music-cen­tric social net­work,” writes The Gar­dian’s Kei­th Stu­art, “sev­er­al years before the emer­gence of sec­tor lead­ers like Friend­ster and Myspace.”

Unlike on the the vast social net­works that would lat­er devel­op, the man him­self was known to drop in. Under the alias “Sailor,” writes Newsweek’s Zach Schon­feld, “Bowie would some­times share updates and rec­om­men­da­tions or respond to fan queries.” He might endorse an album (Arcade Fire’s debut Funer­al earned a rave), express increduli­ty at rumors (of, say, his play­ing a con­cert with Paul McCart­ney and Michael Jack­son to be beamed into out­er space), crack jokes, or tell sto­ries (of, say, the time he and John Lennon sat around call­ing into radio sta­tions togeth­er). As Ars Tech­ni­ca’s inter­view with BowieNet co-founder Ron Roy con­firms, Bowie did­n’t just lend the enter­prise his brand but was “tremen­dous­ly involved from day one.” As Roy tells it, Bowie kept BowieNet fresh “by explor­ing new tech­nolo­gies to keep fans engaged and excit­ed. He always preached [that] it’s about the expe­ri­ence, the new.”

It helped that Bowie was­n’t sim­ply look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the rise of the inter­net. As the 1999 ZDTV inter­view at the top of the post reveals, he was already hooked on it him­self. “The first thing I do is get e‑mails out of the way,” he says, describ­ing the aver­age day in his online life. “I’m e‑mail crazy. And then I’ll spend prob­a­bly about an hour, maybe more, going through my site.” Even in the ear­ly days of “the con­tro­ver­sial mp3 for­mat,” he showed great enthu­si­asm for putting his music online. He con­tin­ued doing so even after tech­nol­o­gy sur­passed BowieNet, which dis­con­tin­ued its inter­net ser­vice in 2006. Now, as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keeps much of the world at home, many high-pro­file artists have tak­en to the inter­net to keep the show going. David Bowie fans know that, were he still with us, he’d have been the first to do it — and do it, no doubt, the most inter­est­ing­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

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.

Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

in K-12, Life, Literature, Theatre | April 28th, 2020

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Vintage Book & Record Covers Brought to Life in a Mesmerizing Animated Video

in Art, Books, Design | April 22nd, 2020

The state of vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy has reached the thresh­old of a time in which VR meet­ings will be the norm. Apart from oth­er appli­ca­tions, this may soon allow con­sumers to stroll through vir­tu­al aisles rather than click­ing box­es on a screen, pick­ing up prod­ucts and view­ing them from every angle. Still, design­ers rec­og­nize that an essence of the human expe­ri­ence is lost with­out the sense of touch. There may even be a future in which we wear clothes with hap­tic feed­back sys­tems embed­ded in them, to feel the pages of a vir­tu­al book beneath our fin­gers…

Yet our slow tran­si­tion from the phys­i­cal to the vir­tu­al world leaves out intan­gi­bles. Some­thing is lost from both. Big box stores still devote sig­nif­i­cant floor space to books and records, for exam­ple. But I sub­mit that a glossi­ness pre­vails in print design, per­haps a con­se­quence of com­pet­ing with screens. There’s a wabi-sabi qual­i­ty to brows­ing a used book­store or record shop in per­son, thumb­ing through an old col­lec­tion of vin­tage paper­backs and LPs, that can­not be sim­u­lat­ed or enhanced in any way. On the inter­net, how­ev­er, where video is king, it can be made the sub­ject of some hyp­not­ic video art.

As the sen­si­ble major­i­ty of us are hope­ful­ly stay­ing put for the long haul (if we can), we may find our­selves curi­ous­ly edi­fied by the video art of Hen­ning M. Led­er­er. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Lederer’s ani­ma­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry min­i­mal­ist book cov­ers and vin­tage psy­chol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy books. He turns the abstract geo­met­ric pat­terns beloved by book and record com­pa­ny design­ers of the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry into mov­ing images that hint at how prop­er cov­er design can set the imag­i­na­tion whirring (even if it’s a cov­er design for Basic Account­ing).

If Lederer’s mes­mer­iz­ing videos sim­u­late any­thing, it’s the expe­ri­ence of wan­der­ing into a used book­store next to a lib­er­al arts college—full of pro­fes­sors’ fas­ci­nat­ing­ly out­dat­ed hand-me-downs—after hav­ing ingest­ed a small quan­ti­ty of LSD. Maybe you’ll have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent asso­ci­a­tion. But the point is that Lederer’s art sug­gests a sce­nario rather than attempt­ing to recre­ate one. His stud­ies of mod­ernist cov­er designs also recall Mar­cel Duchamp’s Rotore­liefs, con­cep­tu­al art pieces intend­ed for pop­u­lar use as opti­cal illu­sions.

Duchamp’s spin­ning disks became fea­tures of ear­ly Sur­re­al­ist cin­e­ma, icon­ic sym­bols of dreams on film. There is a mys­te­ri­ous opac­i­ty to his phys­i­cal objects onscreen, just as Lederer’s book and record cov­ers seem to have a weight of their own, a use of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to high­light the strange unique­ness of phys­i­cal objects, rather than their end­less repro­ducibil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

36 Abstract Cov­ers of Vin­tage Psy­chol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­ma­tion

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

Watch Mar­cel Duchamp’s Hyp­not­ic Rotore­liefs: Spin­ning Discs Cre­at­ing Opti­cal Illu­sions on a Turntable (1935)

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

See Web Cams of Surreally Empty City Streets in Venice, New York, London & Beyond

in Current Affairs, Travel | April 16th, 2020

The lack of human pres­ence in major­ly pol­lut­ed cities these past cou­ple months has had some peo­ple see­ing utopias as the skies begin to clear. But emp­ty cities seem a lit­tle more dystopi­an to me. Dystopias are “a kind of sur­re­al­ism,” writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son. They unearth the dream­like dread beneath the veneer of the nor­mal. No mat­ter when they’re set, dystopias don’t depict the future so much as “the feel­ing of the present… height­ened by exag­ger­a­tion to a kind of dream or night­mare.” The events in dystopi­an fic­tion approach the truth of someone’s sit­u­a­tion some­where in the world and make vis­i­ble what has been hid­den.

We know ghost cities exist as ancient dis­as­ters like Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum and mod­ern ones like Pripy­at, Ukraine, out­side Cher­nobyl. But there are more of them than many of us know. Gleam­ing cities like Ash­ga­bat, Turk­menistan, which broke ground in 1991 and con­tains the largest num­ber of mar­ble build­ings in the world.

The 4.5 mil­lion square meter metrop­o­lis has almost no inhab­i­tants, an enor­mous gov­ern­ment fol­ly. Towns and cities around the world have been aban­doned for for all sorts of rea­sons, and they con­tin­ue to as sea lev­els rise. Which is what makes view­ing live cam­era footage of some of the world’s most icon­ic streets—almost com­plete­ly emp­tied by the pan­dem­ic at the height of tourist season—so… sur­re­al.

It’s true that peo­ple haven’t fled these cities, but made cozy bunkers of their apart­ments. Yet see­ing the vacant streets live on cam­era, in Venice, Lon­don, New York, and else­where in the world,  I get the uncan­ny feel­ing of look­ing at pro­to-sur­re­al­ist painter Gior­gio de Chirico’s The Enig­ma of a Day, a depic­tion of a shad­owy, unin­hab­it­ed street through which we expect the Ital­ian ver­sion of a tum­ble­weed to roll. Sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy has inad­ver­tent­ly become a medi­um of mod­ernist art.

There is so much beau­ty in the live view at the top of the Ponte delle Guglie in Venice from the Hotel Filù Venezia, and there is also such lone­ly melan­choly, depend­ing on the time of day and where the shad­ows fall. See a live view of Times Square, above, and anoth­er Times Square view at Earth­Cam, where you can also catch a feed of a most­ly emp­ty Abbey Road (some times of day emp­ti­er than oth­ers, as in the ear­ly-morn­ing screen­shot below). Sky­line Web­cams hosts even more live cam­era views of Venice, includ­ing feeds from the Rial­to Bridge and the Piaz­za San Mar­co, as well as live feeds from sev­er­al sites in Pad­ua and oth­er places in Italy.

These real-time visions are trans­port­ing in their strange­ness. Are we liv­ing in the present or the future? In a dystopi­an world, there isn’t any dif­fer­ence. All futures are fore­closed by cat­a­stro­phe, “all dis­tances in time and space are shrink­ing,” wrote Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, a thinker who under­stood dis­as­ter, and who fell in line behind it. In that same essay, “The Thing” (as trans­lat­ed by Albert Hof­s­tad­er), the Ger­man philoso­pher made his famous com­ment, “the ter­ri­ble has already hap­pened.”

The ter­ri­ble that has hap­pened to us is not only a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The virus is not like­ly to dis­ap­pear on its own; who knows how long this will go on? But not far behind the cur­rent cri­sis are more cli­mate events that threat­en to emp­ty streets. If we emp­ty cities not only as indica­tive of tem­porar­i­ly social dis­tanc­ing, but as images of the pos­si­ble near-future, maybe we’ll be far less inclined to come out of this sur­re­al expe­ri­ence and get right back to busi­ness-as-usu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

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

365 Free Movies Streaming on YouTube

in Film, YouTube | April 9th, 2020

The wail resounds in every cor­ner of the house, you can­not stop it—the books have all been read, the new releas­es streamed, every video game played to the end mul­ti­ple times. I’m bored… You gave up quar­an­tine home­school weeks ago. Just who did you think you were? Here’s an idea, par­ent at your wit’s end: sit the kids in front of Lone Wolf McQuade or Over the Top.

Tell them how every­thing used to look like that when you were young. No sec­ond or third screen to turn to when you lost inter­est. You’d catch a free movie on a Sun­day afternoon—streaming in real time, as it were—on one of four or five chan­nels. No pause, rewind, or save for lat­er. (Play it up—maybe you didn’t live this, they don’t know that.)

Oh, and there were com­mer­cials every ten min­utes or so—lots and lots and lots of ads. This is a les­son in media history—you’re an edu­ca­tor! They’ll read­i­ly admit how much bet­ter they have it as they watch Chuck Nor­ris and Stal­lone rack up the kills on YouTube, free to stream (and pause, rewind, and save for lat­er), with many few­er ad inter­rup­tions than in your day, and with 363 oth­er films to watch and more to come.

But say you find this con­tent objec­tion­able, or… well, bad. You could cer­tain­ly do much worse, believe me, as you’ll see in a cur­so­ry look at the many fea­ture enter­tain­ments avail­able to stream free with ads on YouTube. But, in all seri­ous­ness, you care about your children’s edu­ca­tion, and with some care­ful dig­ging, you’ll find quite a lot to give them a real cul­tur­al les­son, and to enlight­en the grown-ups, too.

Learn, for exam­ple, about the Wreck­ing Crew, in a doc­u­men­tary of the same name, the famous cohort of stu­dio musi­cians who played on hun­dreds of the best pop, rock, soul, etc. records in the 60s. As the Funk Broth­ers were to Motown, Book­er T. & the MGs to Stax, so were the Wreck­ing Crew to the West Coast Sound (and the sound of Elvis, The Beach Boys, Frank Sina­tra, Nat King Cole, the Mamas and the Papas, Son­ny & Cher, Simon & Gar­funkel, and so on).

And as the Wreck­ing Crew were to the West Coast so was Mus­cle Shoals to the deep South. The tiny Alaba­ma town and its FAME Stu­dios fea­tured some of the great­est R&B, soul, and coun­try rhythm play­ers in the world, major con­trib­u­tors to records by Dylan, the Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Wil­son Pick­ett, and so many more. There’s a film about them too. (We can’t embed the full movies here, but you’ll find them in the links below.)

There are many oth­er qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ments about pop music his­to­ry, like the Dave Grohl-direct­ed Sound City. You’ll also find doc­u­men­taries like Super Size Me, Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry, and Freako­nom­ics. (An eco­nom­ics course!) Many oth­er plat­forms have intro­duced free stream­ing movies with ads. In YouTube’s case, as AdAge notes, the move to stream­ing free films comes as a way to recoup adver­tis­ers who increas­ing­ly found their ads run­ning “inside offen­sive videos, some with ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da and hate speech.”

The com­pa­ny is clean­ing up its image, and in the process becom­ing some­thing like the TV chan­nels of old, only with all the dig­i­tal ease that makes stream­ing so con­ve­nient. “They are now a TV net­work,” says an exec­u­tive for one video ad tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, mov­ing away from low-qual­i­ty, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and toward high dol­lar series and the gold­mine of old movies. Adver­tis­ing is every­thing, so, there’s anoth­er les­son for you—even in the new media busi­ness, his­to­ry repeats.

See a list of rec­om­mend­ed films avail­able to stream free on YouTube, with ads, below. Enter the gen­er­al col­lec­tion here. And feel free to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Super Size Me

The Wreck­ing Crew

Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry

Fred­die Mer­cury: The King of Queen

Mus­cle Shoals

Freako­nom­ics

Bob Mar­ley: The Roots of Man

Sound City

All Things Must Pass (Doc­u­men­tary on Tow­er Records)

The Bird Cage

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Cour­tesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al & More

60 Free Film Noir Movies 

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

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

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #37

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 2nd, 2020

Why has a chil­dren’s toy become a brand attached to vir­tu­al­ly every media type, part­ner­ing with the most ubiq­ui­tous fran­chis­es, and serv­ing as a pas­time for many adult hob­by­ists who will gut you if you call LEGO a “chil­dren’s toy.”

Bri­an Hirt (our res­i­dent AFOL, i.e. adult fan of LEGO) talks with co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres and Mark Lin­sen­may­er about cre­ative play vs. fol­low­ing the print­ed direc­tions, build­ing purists vs. anthro­po­mor­phiz­ers, LEGO qua cor­po­rate over­lord, the LEGO films and com­pet­i­tive build­ing TV show, and more.

Bri­an’s LEGO designs that we react to are the Man­del­brot frac­tal, baby Yoda, drei­del, and swim­ming pool. “AFOL” is but the first of many LEGO-spe­cif­ic ini­tialisms; see the glos­sary.

Here are some arti­cles we drummed up to pre­pare:

• “ ‘The Cult of LEGO’: Inside the World of a Devot­ed Com­mu­ni­ty” by Maria Popo­va
• “If You’re an Adult Play­ing With Legos, Just Don’t. Here’s Why.” by Seth Gar­ben
• “Lego Is the Per­fect Toy Even if no one can real­ly agree on what kind of toy it is any­more” by Genevieve Smith
•  “Why Adults Are Using Lego to Bat­tle Stress” from Game­Cen­tral
• “LEGO Writer Arie Kaplan Dis­cuss­es Click­ing with Star Wars and Bat­man” by Michal Schick
• “The LEGO Bat­man Movie Turns Bat Mythol­o­gy Into a Giant Toy­box” by Jesse Has­sen­ger
• “Can LEGO Be Con­sid­ered Art” by John Baich­tal
• “How Does Some­one Become a Full-Time LEGO Artist?” by Mari­ah Eakin
• “LEGO Turned Itself Around by Ana­lyz­ing Over­bear­ing Par­ents” by Mikkel Ras­mussen
• “Min­neso­ta Pro­fes­sor Explores Link Between Phi­los­o­phy and Lego” by Richard Chin
• “Top 5 LEGO Pod­casts You Must Fol­low in 2020” from Feedspot

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.