Free Online Drawing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illustrators

in Art, Books, Creativity, K-12, Life | March 23rd, 2020

When I became the Kennedy Cen­ter Edu­ca­tion Artist-in-Res­i­dence, I didn’t real­ize the most impact­ful word in that title would be “Res­i­dence.” —illus­tra­tor Mo Willems

Even as schools regroup and online instruc­tion gath­ers steam, the scram­ble con­tin­ues to keep cooped-up kids engaged and hap­py.

These COVID-19-prompt­ed online draw­ing lessons and activ­i­ties might not hold much appeal for the sin­gle-mind­ed sports nut or the junior Feyn­man who scoffs at the trans­for­ma­tive prop­er­ties of art, but for the art‑y kid, or fans of cer­tain children’s illus­tra­tors, these are an excel­lent diver­sion.

Mo Willems, author of Knuf­fle Bun­ny and the Kennedy Center’s first Edu­ca­tion Artist-in-Res­i­dence, is open­ing his home stu­dio every week­day at 1pm EST for approx­i­mate­ly twen­ty min­utes worth of LUNCHDOODLES. Episode 5, finds him using a fat mark­er to doo­dle a Can­dy­land-ish game board (sans trea­cle).

Once the design is com­plete, he rolls the dice to advance both his piece and that of his home view­er. A 5 lands him on the crowd-pleas­ing direc­tive “fart.” Clear­ly the online instruc­tor enjoys cer­tain lib­er­ties the class­room teacher would be ill-advised to attempt.

Check out the full playlist on the Kennedy Center’s YouTube chan­nel and down­load activ­i­ty pages for each episode here.

#MoL­unch­Doo­dles

If the dai­ly LUNCHDOODLES leaves ‘em want­i­ng more, there’s just enough time for a quick pee and snack break before Lunch Lady’s Jar­rett J. Krosocz­ka takes over with Draw Every­day with JJK, a basic illus­tra­tion les­son every week­day at 2pm EST. These are a bit more nit­ty grit­ty, as JJK, the kid who loved to draw and grew up to be an artist, shares prac­ti­cal tips on pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and draw­ing faces. Pro tip: resis­tant Star Wars fans will like­ly be hooked by the first episode’s Yoda, a char­ac­ter Krosocz­ka is well versed in as the author and illus­tra­tor of the Star Wars Jedi Acad­e­my series.

Find the com­plete playlist here.

Illus­tra­tor Car­son Ellis eschews video lessons to host a Quar­an­tine Art Club on her Insta­gram page. Her most recent assign­ment is car­tog­ra­phy based chal­lenge, with help­ful tips for cre­at­ing an “impact­ful page turn” for those who wish to share their cre­ations on Insta­gram:

DRAW A MAP: When we think of trea­sure maps, we think of sea mon­sters, islands with palm trees, pirate ships, anthro­po­mor­phic clouds blow­ing gales upon white-capped seas. YOUR map can be of any­where: an enchant­ed wood, a dystopi­an sub­urb, your back­yard, your apart­ment that has nev­er felt so small, all of the above, none of the above. Or your map can be a tra­di­tion­al trea­sure map lead­ing to a pirate’s hoard. It’s total­ly up to you. Three things that you MUST include are: a com­pass rose (very important—look this up if you don’t know what it is), the name of the place you are map­ping, and a red X.

DRAW THE TREASURE: The first part of this assign­ment is to draw a map with a red X to mark the loca­tion of hid­den trea­sure. The sec­ond part of this assign­ment is to draw the trea­sure. I don’t know what the trea­sure is. Only you know what the trea­sure is. Draw it on a sep­a­rate piece of paper from the map.

BONUS POINTS: If you’re going to post this on insta­gram, I rec­om­mend for­mat­ting it with two images. Post the map first, then the trea­sure which the view­er will swipe to see. This will cre­ate what we in the kids book world call AN IMPACTFUL PAGE TURN. That’s the thing that hap­pens when you’re read­ing a pic­ture book and you turn the page to dis­cov­er some­thing fun­ny or sur­pris­ing. It’s kind of hard to explain, but you know a good page turn when you’ve expe­ri­enced one.

#Quar­an­ti­n­eArt­Club

Wendy McNaughton, who spe­cial­izes in drawn jour­nal­ism, also likes the Insta­gram plat­form, host­ing a live Draw Togeth­er ses­sion every school day, from 10–10.30 am PST. Her approach is a bit more freeform, with impromp­tu dance par­ties, spe­cial guests, and field trips to the back­yard.

Her How to Watch Draw Togeth­er high­light is a hilar­i­ous crash course in Insta­gram Live, scrawled in mag­ic mark­er by some­one who’s pos­si­bly only now just get­ting a grip on the plat­form. Don’t see it? Maybe it’s the week­end, or “maybe ask a mil­len­ni­al for help?”

#Draw­To­geth­er

And bless E.B. Goodale, an illus­tra­tor, first time author and moth­er of a young son, who hav­ing coun­ter­act­ed the heart­break of a can­celled book tour with a hasti­ly launched week of dai­ly Insta­gram Live Tod­dler Draw­ing Club meet­ings, made the deci­sion to scale back to just Tues­days and Thurs­days:

It was fun doing it every­day but turned out to be a bit too much to han­dle giv­en our family’s new sched­ule. We’re all fig­ur­ing it out, right? I hope you will con­tin­ue to join me in our unchar­tered ter­ri­to­ry next week as we draw to stay sane. Tune in live to make requests or watch it lat­er and fol­low along at home.

(Her How to Draw a Cat tuto­r­i­al, above, was like­ly intend­ed for in-per­son book­store events relat­ing to her just pub­lished Under the Lilacs…)

#draw­ing­with­tod­dlers

Our per­son­al favorite is Stick­ies Art School, whose online children’s class­es are led not by mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist Nina Katchadouri­an, whose Face­book page serves as the online insti­tu­tion’s home, but rather her senior tuxe­do cat, Stick­ies.

Stick­ies, who comes to the gig with an impres­sive com­mand of Eng­lish, honed no doubt by fre­quent appear­ances on Katchadourian’s Insta­gram page, affects a dif­fi­dent air to dole out assign­ments, the lat­est of which is above.

He allows his stu­dents ample time to com­plete their tasks—thus far all por­traits of him­self. The next one, to ren­der Stick­ies in a cos­tume of the artist’s choice, is due Wednes­day by 9am, Berlin time.

Stick­ies also offers pos­i­tive feed­back on sub­mit­ted work in delight­ful fol­low up videos, a respon­si­bil­i­ty that Katchadouri­an takes seri­ous­ly:

There have been so many con­ver­sa­tions at NYU Gal­latin where I’m on the fac­ul­ty about online teach­ing, how to do it, how to think of a stu­dio course in this new form, etc, and I think per­haps that crossed over with the desire to cheer up some peo­ple with kids, many of whom are already Stick­ies fans, or so I have been told. 

His child pro­teges are no doubt unaware that Stick­ies looked ready to leave the plan­et sev­er­al weeks ago, a fact whose import will res­onate with many pet own­ers in these dark days:

Maybe a third ele­ment was just being so glad he is still around, that hav­ing him active­ly “out there” feels good and life-affirm­ing at the moment.

Stick­ies Art School is mar­velous fun for adults to audit from afar, via Katchadourian’s pub­lic Face­book posts. If you are a par­ent whose child would like to par­tic­i­pate, send her a friend request and men­tion that you’re doing so on behalf of your child artist.

Search­ing on the hash­tag #art­teach­er­sofin­sta­gram will yield many more resources.

Art of Edu­ca­tion Uni­ver­si­ty has sin­gled out 12 accounts to get you start­ed, as well as lots of help­ful infor­ma­tion for class­room art teach­ers who are fig­ur­ing out how to teach effec­tive­ly online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Sim­ple Lines

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Giv­en the can­cel­la­tion of every­thing, she’s tak­en to Insta­gram to doc­u­ment her social dis­tance strolls through New York City’s Cen­tral Park, using the hash­tag #queenoftheapeswalk  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Are Video Games an Effective Vehicle for Storytelling? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #35 Featuring Don Marshall

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | March 18th, 2020

Do you play video games for the plot? Giv­en that most peo­ple don’t actu­al­ly fin­ish most games, it would be unex­pect­ed if sto­ry­telling were the most impor­tant ele­ment. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by for­mer video game pro­fes­sion­al (and cur­rent TV devel­op­ment exec­u­tive) Don­ald E. Mar­shall to talk through types of plots (lin­ear, “string-of-pearls,” and branch­ing), ways of weav­ing sto­ry into a game, bal­anc­ing game­play and nar­ra­tive, and more.

We touch on Death Strand­ing, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Skyrim, Fall­out, Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, Eri­ca, Bioshock, Tell­tale Games, Jour­ney, Ban­der­snatch, Days Gone, Por­tal, and more. (That casu­al game Mark jokes about is Simon’s Cat Pop Time.)

Some arti­cles and oth­er sources:

• “When Video Games Tell Sto­ries: A Mod­el of Video Game Nar­ra­tive Archi­tec­tures” by Mar­cel­lo Arnal­do Picuc­ci (2014)
• “The Evo­lu­tion of Video Games as a Sto­ry­telling Medi­um, and the Role of Nar­ra­tive in Mod­ern Games” by Chris Stone
• “Writ­ing for Video Games: A Con­ver­sa­tion with E. Lily Yu, Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Reed, Seth Dick­in­son, and Karl Schroed­er” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
• “How to Write a Video Game Sto­ry” by Col­in Camp­bell
• “A Hugo Award for Best Game or Inter­ac­tive Expe­ri­ence” by Ira Alexan­dre
• The Dia­log Pod­cast: s1e08 “Video Game Nar­ra­tive Design and Writ­ing Sci­ence Fan­ta­sy Nov­els with Car­rie Patel”

You can also read some lists of games that sup­pos­ed­ly have the best plots at Games­Radar, Ranker, and The Gamer.

Don is also a pod­cast­er, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been a host of Geek­sOn and now on The Big Fat Gay Pod­cast. Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show. One rel­e­vant Geek­sOn episode is #102.  Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show.

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.

A 5‑Hour, One-Take Cinematic Tour of Russia’s Hermitage Museum, Shot Entirely on an iPhone

in Museums, Technology | March 17th, 2020

In 2002, Russ­ian film­mak­er Alexan­der Sokurov made cin­e­ma his­to­ry with Russ­ian Ark, which dra­ma­tizes a wide swath of his home­land’s his­to­ry in a sin­gle, unbro­ken 96-minute shot. What’s more, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors shot it all in a sin­gle loca­tion, one both rich with his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance and not exact­ly wide-open to movie shoots: St Peters­burg’s State Her­mitage Muse­um, whose com­plex includes the for­mer Win­ter Palace, offi­cial res­i­dence of Rus­si­a’s emper­ors from 1732 to until the 1917 rev­o­lu­tion. What view­er could for­get Russ­ian Ark’s breath­tak­ing final scene, which opens as the cam­era floats into the midst of a grand ball set in 1913 — tak­ing place in the very hall it would have in 1913?

Now, at least in terms of dura­tion, Apple has gone to the Her­mitage and done Sokurov one bet­ter: its new adver­tise­ment for the iPhone 11 Pro is a five-hour jour­ney through the entire muse­um, shot by film­mak­er Axinya Gog in one con­tin­u­ous take — all, of course, on the phone itself. Like Russ­ian Ark, it con­sti­tutes a cin­e­mat­ic achieve­ment not pos­si­ble before recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances. Sokurov demon­strat­ed the new pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal video cam­era that could cap­ture film-like images; Gog demon­strates the new pos­si­bil­i­ties of a cam­era-phone with not only the bat­tery life to shoot five straight hours of video, but at a res­o­lu­tion that looks at least as good as the cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal video of 2002.

Just above appears the trail­er for the ad, which hints that what the full pro­duc­tion might lack in sto­ry­telling ambi­tions com­pared to a film like Russ­ian Ark, it makes up for in not just dura­tion but oth­er human ele­ments. Gog’s cam­era — or rather, iPhone — cap­tures a Her­mitage Muse­um with­out the usu­al crowds, strik­ing enough in itself, but also with the addi­tion of skilled dancers and musi­cians (even beyond those who record­ed the video’s score). This in addi­tion to no few­er than 588 works of art spread across 43 gal­leries, includ­ing paint­ings by Rem­brandt, Raphael, Car­avag­gio, and Rubens. The deep­er you go, the more you’ll real­ize that, even if you’ve spent seri­ous time in the Her­mitage your­self, you’ve nev­er had this kind of aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence there before. It may sound exces­sive to say “watch to the end,” but if any five-hour video has ever mer­it­ed that insis­tence, here it is.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Romanovs’ Last Spec­tac­u­lar Ball Brought to Life in Col­or Pho­tographs (1903)

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um & Its Arti­facts: Google Dig­i­tized the Museum’s Col­lec­tion Before the Fate­ful Fire

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

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 or on Face­book.

Spanish Flu: A Warning from History

in History | March 12th, 2020

Two years ago his­to­ri­ans marked the 100th anniver­sary of the Span­ish Flu, a world­wide pan­dem­ic that seemed to be dis­ap­pear­ing down the mem­o­ry hole. Not so fast, said his­to­ri­ans, we need to remem­ber the hor­ror. Hap­py belat­ed anniver­sary, said 2020, hold my beer. And so here we are. As I write this, the Pres­i­dent wheezed through an Address to the Nation which calmed no fears and sent Dow futures tum­bling. I scrolled down my news feed to see that Tom Han­ks and his wife both have it. Our god is an amoral one, and its nood­ly appendages touch all.

So let’s put our cur­rent moment into per­spec­tive with this 10+ minute his­to­ry on the Span­ish Flu from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. Here are the num­bers: it killed 20 mil­lion peo­ple accord­ing to con­tem­po­rary accounts. Lat­er sci­en­tists and his­to­ri­ans revised that num­ber to some­where between 50 to 100 mil­lion.

“This virus killed more peo­ple in the first 25 weeks than HIV/AIDS has killed in 25 years,” says histo­ri­an of med­i­cine Dr. Mary Dob­son. And unlike our cur­rent COVID-19 strain, this strain of flu went after 20 to 40 year olds with a vengeance. The symp­toms were graph­ic and unpleasant–people drown­ing in their own phlegm, blood shoot­ing out of noses and ears, peo­ple drop­ping down dead in the street.

Where did it start? Cer­tain­ly not in Spain–it gained that nick­name because the first cas­es were record­ed in the Span­ish press. One the­o­ry is that it start­ed in Kansas and found its way over­seas, from bar­racks to the front­lines. It might has come from birds or pigs, but sci­en­tists still don’t know how it jumps from species to species and how it quick­ly evolves with­in humans to infect each oth­er.

Right now, it seems like COVID-19 can sub­side if coun­tries can work quick­ly, like in Chi­na. But his­to­ry has a warn­ing too. As Europe and Amer­i­ca cel­e­brat­ed Armistice Day at the end of the war, the flu seemed to be going away too. Instead it came roar­ing back in a sec­ond wave, dead­lier than the first.

Some famous folks who got the virus but sur­vived includ­ed movie stars Lil­lian Gish and Mary Pick­ford, right at the height of their fame; Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son, who was so out of it (though recov­er­ing) that some his­to­ri­ans blame the weak­ness­es in the Treaty of Ver­sailles on him. Artist Edvard Munch con­tract­ed it (which seems fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing his obses­sions) and paint­ed sev­er­al self-por­traits dur­ing his ill­ness. Ray­mond Chan­dler, Walt Dis­ney, Gre­ta Gar­bo, Franz Kaf­ka, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, and Kather­ine Anne Porter all sur­vived.

Oth­ers weren’t so lucky: painter of sen­su­ous, gold leaf paint­ings Gus­tav Klimt died from it, as did poet and pro­to-sur­re­al­ist Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, and artist Egon Schiele. (And so did Don­ald Trump’s grand­pa).

The Span­ish Flu nev­er real­ly went away. There were still cas­es in the ‘50s, but we humans evolved with it and it became a sea­son­al type of flu like many oth­ers. Flu virus­es con­stant­ly evolve and mutate, and that’s why it is very dif­fi­cult to cre­ate vac­cines that can stop them.

If you’ve read this far, one last thing: GO WASH YOUR HANDS AND STOP TOUCHING YOUR FACE!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Hear the Sounds of World War I: A Gas Attack Record­ed on the Front Line, and the Moment the Armistice End­ed the War

Peter Jackson’s New Film on World War I Fea­tures Incred­i­ble Dig­i­tal­ly-Restored Footage From the Front Lines: Get a Glimpse

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Watch the Spectacular Hieronymus Bosch Parade, Which Floats Through the Garden of Earthly Delights Painter’s Hometown Every Year

in Art | February 25th, 2020

Whether paint­ing scenes of par­adise, damna­tion, or some­where in between, Hierony­mus Bosch real­ized elab­o­rate­ly grotesque visions that fas­ci­nate us more than 500 years lat­er. But no mat­ter how long we gaze upon his work, espe­cial­ly his large-for­mat altar­piece trip­tychs, most of us would­n’t want to spend our lives in his world. But a group of ded­i­cat­ed Bosch fans has made it pos­si­ble to live in it for three days a year, when the annu­al Bosch Parade floats down the Dom­mel Riv­er. Last year that small water­way host­ed “a sto­ry in motion, pre­sent­ed on 14 sep­a­rate tableaux. They shape a uni­ver­sal tale of pow­er and coun­ter­force, bat­tle and rap­proche­ment, chaos and hope. From the chaos after the bat­tle a new order shall emerge.”

All images © Bosch Parade, Ben Niehuis

In prac­ti­cal terms, writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, that meant “a musi­cal per­for­mance played on a par­tial­ly sub­merged piano and a scene with two peo­ple strad­dling enor­mous horns,” as well as a dozen oth­er water-based vignettes that passed through the Dutch town of ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, Bosch’s birth­place and lat­er his name­sake.

Every­thing that rolled down the Dom­mel was designed by a group of artists select­ed, accord­ing to the parade’s web site, “on the basis of their com­ple­men­tary char­ac­ter­is­tics, the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines they rep­re­sent and their clear match with the Bosch Parade artis­tic ‘DNA’ in the way they work and per­form.” As you can see in the 2019 Bosch Parade’s pro­gram, the artists’ cre­ations draw on 15th-cen­tu­ry con­cep­tions of life, art, tech­nol­o­gy, and the human body while also tak­ing place unmis­tak­ably in the 21st.

Though Bosch’s paint­ings look alive even in their motion­less­ness, to appre­ci­ate a parade requires see­ing it in action. Hence the videos here of the 2015 Bosch Parade: at the top of the post is a short teas­er; just above is a longer com­pi­la­tion of some of the even­t’s most Boschi­an moments, which puts the painter’s images side-by-side with the floats they inspired. View­ers will rec­og­nize ele­ments of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Bosch’s sin­gle best-known work, but also of The Hay­wain Trip­tych, The Sev­en Dead­ly Sins and the Four Last Things, and The Temp­ta­tions of St. Antho­ny. As art his­to­ry buffs know, some of those paint­ings may or may not have been paint­ed by Bosch him­self, but by one of his fol­low­ers or con­tem­po­rary imi­ta­tors.

But to the extent that all these images can inspire mod­ern-day painters, sculp­tors, musi­cians, dancers, and spec­ta­cle-mak­ers, they enrich the Boschi­an real­i­ty — a real­i­ty of water and fire, bod­ies and body parts, men and mon­sters, con­trap­tions and pro­jec­tions, and even video games and the inter­net — that comes to life every sum­mer in ‘s‑Hertogenbosch. Or rather, most every sum­mer: the next Bosch Parade is sched­uled not for June of this year but June of 2021. But when that time comes around around it will last for four days, from the 17th through the 20th. That infor­ma­tion comes from the parade’s Twit­ter account, which in the run-up to the event will pre­sum­ably also post answers to all the most impor­tant ques­tions — such as whether next year will fea­ture any live but­tock music.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

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 or on Face­book.

Electronic Musician Shows How He Uses His Prosthetic Arm to Control a Music Synthesizer with His Thoughts

in Health, Music, Neuroscience, Technology | February 20th, 2020

The tech­no-futur­ist prophets of the late 20th cen­tu­ry, from J.G. Bal­lard to William Gib­son to Don­na Har­away, were right, it turns out, about the inti­mate phys­i­cal unions we would form with our machines. Har­away, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of the His­to­ry of Con­scious­ness and Fem­i­nist Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, pro­claimed her­self a cyborg back in 1985. Whether read­ers took her ideas as metaphor or pro­lep­tic social and sci­en­tif­ic fact hard­ly mat­ters in hind­sight. Her voice was pre­dic­tive of the every­day bio­met­rics and mechan­ics that lay just around the bend.

It can seem we are a long way, cul­tur­al­ly, from the decade when Haraway’s work became required read­ing in “under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum at count­less uni­ver­si­ties.” But as Hari Kun­zru wrote in 1997, “in terms of the gen­er­al shift from think­ing of indi­vid­u­als as iso­lat­ed from the ‘world’ to think­ing of them as nodes on net­works, the 1990s may well be remem­bered as the begin­ning of the cyborg era.” Three decades lat­er, net­worked implants that auto­mate med­ical data track­ing and analy­sis and reg­u­late dosages have become big busi­ness, and mil­lions feed their vitals dai­ly into fit­ness track­ers and mobile devices and upload them to servers world­wide.

So, fine, we are all cyborgs now, but the usu­al use of that word tends to put us in mind of a more dra­mat­ic meld­ing of human and machine. Here too, we find the cyborg has arrived, in the form of pros­thet­ic limbs that can be con­trolled by the brain. Psy­chol­o­gist, DJ, and elec­tron­ic musi­cian Bertolt Mey­er has such a pros­the­sis, as he demon­strates in the video above. Born with­out a low­er left arm, he received a robot­ic replace­ment that he can move by send­ing sig­nals to the mus­cles that would con­trol a nat­ur­al limb. He can rotate his hand 360 degrees and use it for all sorts of tasks.

Prob­lem is, the tech­nol­o­gy has not quite caught up with Meyer’s need for speed and pre­ci­sion in manip­u­lat­ing the tiny con­trols of his mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­ers. So Mey­er, his artist hus­band Daniel, and synth builder Chrisi of KOMA Elek­tron­ik set to work on bypass­ing man­u­al con­trol alto­geth­er, with a pros­thet­ic device that attach­es to Meyer’s arm where the hand would be, and works as a con­troller for his syn­the­siz­er. He can change para­me­ters using “the sig­nals from my body that nor­mal­ly con­trol the hand,” he writes on his YouTube page. “For me, this feels like con­trol­ling the synth with my thoughts.”

Mey­er walks us through the process of build­ing his first pro­to­types in an Inspec­tor Gad­get-meets-Kraftwerk dis­play of ana­logue inge­nu­ity. We might find our­selves won­der­ing: if a hand­ful of musi­cians, artists, and audio engi­neers can turn a pros­thet­ic robot­ic arm into a mod­u­lar synth con­troller that trans­mits brain­waves, what kind of cyber­net­ic enhancements—musical and otherwise—might be com­ing soon from major research lab­o­ra­to­ries?

What­ev­er the state of cyborg tech­nol­o­gy out­side Meyer’s garage, his bril­liant inven­tion shows us one thing: the human organ­ism can adapt to being plugged into the unlike­li­est of machines. Show­ing us how he uses the Syn­Limb to con­trol a fil­ter in one of his syn­the­siz­er banks, Mey­er says, “I don’t even have to think about it. I just do it. It’s zero effort because I’m so used to pro­duc­ing this mus­cle sig­nal.”

Advance­ments in bio­me­chan­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy have giv­en dis­abled indi­vid­u­als a sig­nif­i­cant amount of restored func­tion. And as gen­er­al­ly hap­pens with major upgrades to acces­si­bil­i­ty devices, they also show us how we might all become even more close­ly inte­grat­ed with machines in the near future.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Inge­nious Sign Lan­guage Inter­preters Are Bring­ing Music to Life for the Deaf: Visu­al­iz­ing the Sound of Rhythm, Har­mo­ny & Melody

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

Twerk­ing, Moon­walk­ing AI Robots–They’re Now Here

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

A Medical Student Creates Intricate Anatomical Embroideries of the Brain, Heart, Lungs & More

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Science | January 20th, 2020

My first thought upon see­ing the del­i­cate, anato­my-based work of the 23-year-old embroi­dery artist and med­ical stu­dent Emmi Khan was that the Girl Scouts must have expand­ed the cat­e­gories of skills eli­gi­ble for mer­it badges.

(If mem­o­ry serves, there was one for embroi­dery, but it cer­tain­ly didn’t look like a cross-sec­tioned brain, or a sinus cav­i­ty.)

Clos­er inspec­tion revealed that the cir­cu­lar views of Khan’s embroi­deries are not quite as tiny as the round badges stitched to high achiev­ing Girl Scouts’ sash­es, but rather still framed in the wood­en hoops that are an essen­tial tool of this artist’s trade.

Meth­ods both sci­en­tif­ic and artis­tic are a source of fas­ci­na­tion for Khan, who began tak­ing needle­work inspi­ra­tion from anato­my as an under­grad study­ing bio­med­ical sci­ences. As she writes on her Mol­e­c­u­lart web­site:

Sci­ence has par­tic­u­lar meth­ods: it is fun­da­men­tal­ly objec­tive, con­trolled, empir­i­cal. Sim­i­lar­ly, art has par­tic­u­lar meth­ods: there is an empha­sis on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and explo­ration, but there is also an ele­ment of reg­u­la­tion regard­ing how art is cre­at­ed… e.g. what type of nee­dle to use to embroi­der or how to prime a can­vas.

The pro­ce­dures and tech­niques adopt­ed by sci­en­tists and artists may be very dif­fer­ent. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, they both have a com­mon aim. Artists and sci­en­tists both want to 1) make sense of the vast­ness around them in new ways, and 2) present and com­mu­ni­cate it to oth­ers through their own vision. 

A glimpse at the flow­ers, intri­cate stitch­es, and oth­er dain­ties that pop­u­late her Pin­ter­est boards offers a fur­ther peek into Khan’s meth­ods, and might prompt some read­ers to pick up a nee­dle them­selves, even those with no imme­di­ate plans to embroi­der a kary­otype or The Cir­cle of Willis, the cir­cu­lar anas­to­mo­sis of arter­ies at the base of the brain.

The Cardiff-based med­ical stu­dent delights in embell­ish­ing her thread­ed obser­va­tions of inter­nal organs with the occa­sion­al dec­o­ra­tive element—sunflowers, posies, and the like…

She makes her­self avail­able on social media to answer ques­tions on sub­jects rang­ing from embroi­dery tips to her rela­tion­ship to sci­ence as a devout Mus­lim, and to share works in progress, like a set of lungs that embody the Four Sea­sons, com­mis­sioned by a cus­tomer in the States.

To see more of Emmi Khan’s work, includ­ing a down­load­able anatom­i­cal flo­ral heart embroi­dery pat­tern, vis­it Mol­e­c­u­lart, her Insta­gram page, or her Etsy shop.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

Watch Nina Paley’s “Embroi­der­ma­tion,” a New, Stun­ning­ly Labor-Inten­sive Form of Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #26 Discusses Alan Moore’s Watchmen Comic and the HBO Show with Cornell Psychology Professor David Pizarro

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 9th, 2020

Per­haps the most laud­ed graph­ic nov­el has been sequelized for HBO, and amaz­ing­ly, it turned out pret­ty darn well (with a 96% Rot­ten Toma­toes rat­ing!).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by the Cor­nel­l’s David Pizarro, host of the pop­u­lar Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast. We con­sid­er Alan Moore’s 1986 graph­ic nov­el, the 2009 Zack Sny­der film, and of course most­ly the recent­ly com­plet­ed (we hope) show by Damon Lin­de­lof, the cre­ator of Lost and The Left­overs.

How does Moore’s idio­syn­crat­ic writ­ing style trans­late to the screen? Did the show make best use of its nine hours? Are there oth­er sto­ries in this alter­nate his­to­ry that should still be told, per­haps to reflect on oth­er recur­rent social ills or crises of what­ev­er moment might be depict­ed? Was Lin­de­lof real­ly the guy to tell this sto­ry about race, and does mak­ing the show about racism (which is bad!) under­mine Moore’s rejec­tion of (moral­ly) black-and-white heroes and vil­lains?

Some of the arti­cles we used to warm up for this dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

• “Some Watch­men Fans Are Mad that HBO’s Ver­sion Is Polit­i­cal. But Watch­men Has Always Been Polit­i­cal” by Alex Abad-San­tos
• “How HBO’s ‘Watch­men’ Can Avoid the Misog­y­nis­tic Mis­steps of Its Past” by Rosie Knight
• “The Right-Wing Troll Back­lash Against HBO’s Watch­men Is Hilar­i­ous­ly Stu­pid” by Matt Miller
• “How ‘Watchmen’s’ Mis­un­der­stand­ing of Viet­nam Under­cuts its Vision of Racism” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• “Why We Don’t Want to Watch Watch­men Sea­son 2” by David Opie
• “When Sex Scenes Go Wrong: Zack Snyder’s Watch­men“ by Jim Vorel

You might want to also check out HBO’s Watch­men page, which includes extra essays and the offi­cial pod­cast with Damon Lin­de­lof com­ment­ing on the episodes.

Fol­low Dave @peez. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, undoubt­ed­ly the apex of his pro­fes­sion­al career.

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.

A Map of the Disney Entertainment Empire Reveals the Deep Connections Between Its Movies, Its Merchandise, Disneyland & More (1967)

in Business, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Television | January 8th, 2020

We all remem­ber the first Dis­ney movie we ever saw. In most of our child­hoods, one Dis­ney movie led to anoth­er, which stoked in us the desire for Dis­ney toys, Dis­ney games, Dis­ney comics, Dis­ney music, and so on. If we were lucky, we might also take a trip to Dis­ney­land or one of its descen­dants else­where in the world. Many of us spent the bulk of our youngest years as hap­py res­i­dents of the Dis­ney enter­tain­ment empire; some of us, into adult­hood or even old age, remain there still.

Die-hard Dis­ney fans appre­ci­ate that the world of Dis­ney — com­pris­ing not just films and theme parks but tele­vi­sion shows, print­ed mat­ter, attrac­tions on the inter­net, and mer­chan­dise of near­ly every kind — is too vast ever to com­pre­hend, let alone ful­ly explore.

It was already big half a cen­tu­ry ago, but not too big to grasp. You can see the whole of the oper­a­tion laid out in this orga­ni­za­tion­al syn­er­gy dia­gram cre­at­ed by Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions in 1967. Depict­ing “the many and var­ied syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ships between the divi­sions of Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions,” the infor­ma­tion graph­ic reveals the links between each divi­sion.

Along the arrow­head­ed lines indi­cat­ing the flows of man­pow­er, mate­r­i­al, and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, “short tex­tu­al descrip­tions show what each divi­sion sup­plies and con­tributes to the oth­ers.” The motion pic­ture divi­sion “feeds tunes and tal­ent” to the music divi­sion, for exam­ple, which “pro­motes pre­mi­ums for tie-ins” to the mer­chan­dise licens­ing depart­ment, which “feeds ideas for retail items” to WED Enter­pris­es (the hold­ing com­pa­ny found­ed by Walt Dis­ney in 1950), which pro­duces “audio-ani­ma­tron­ics” for Dis­ney­land.

Some of the nexus­es on the dia­gram will be as famil­iar as Mick­ey Mouse, Goofy, Tin­ker­bell, and the char­ac­ters cavort­ing here and there around it. Oth­ers will be less so: the 16-mil­lime­ter films divi­sion, for instance, which would even­tu­al­ly be replaced by a colos­sal home-video divi­sion (itself sure­ly being eat­en into, now, by stream­ing). The Celebri­ty Sports Cen­ter, an indoor enter­tain­ment com­plex out­side Den­ver, closed in 1994. MAPO refers to a theme-park ani­ma­tron­ics unit formed in the 1960s with the prof­its of Mary Pop­pins (hence its name) and dis­solved in 2012. And as for Min­er­al King, a pro­posed ski resort in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sequoia Nation­al Park, it was nev­er even built.

“The ski resort was one of sev­er­al ambi­tious projects that Walt Dis­ney spear­head­ed in the years before his death in 1966,” writes Nathan Mas­ters at Giz­mo­do. But as the size of the Min­er­al King plans grew, wilder­ness-activist oppo­si­tion inten­si­fied. After years of oppo­si­tion by the Sier­ra Club, as well as the pas­sage of the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act 1970 and the Nation­al Parks and Recre­ation Act of 1978, cor­po­rate inter­est in the project final­ly fiz­zled out. Though that would no doubt have come as a dis­ap­point­ment to Walt Dis­ney him­self, he might also have known to keep the fail­ure in per­spec­tive. As he once said of the empire bear­ing his name, “I only hope that we nev­er lose sight of one thing — that it was all start­ed by a mouse.”

h/t Eli and via Howard Low­ery

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

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 or on Face­book.

Sportscaster Dave Revsine (Big 10 Network) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast to Discuss the Role of Sports in Pop Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports | January 2nd, 2020

How is spec­ta­tor sports dif­fer­ent from oth­er types of enter­tain­ment? Dave Rev­sine (lead stu­dio host for the Big Ten Net­work and for­mer ESPN anchor) joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the var­i­ous sources of appeal, team iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, exist­ing in a sports-filled world as a non-fan, watch­ing vs. play­ing, human inter­est sto­ries, sports films, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare includ­ed:

• “Why Do We Care About Sports So Much” by Chris­tine Emba
• “The Sci­ence Behind Our Love of March Mad­ness” by Mar­co Iacoboni
• “Try­ing to Under­stand 50% of Amer­i­ca: Sports Fans” by Car­olyn Canet­ti
• “5 Rea­sons Peo­ple Hate Sports — That Sports Fans Secret­ly Under­stand” by Logan Rhoad­es
• “The Art of Telling Human Inter­est Sto­ries at the Olympics” from The Frame
• “10 Great Sports Movies For Non-Sports Fans” by Jason Bai­ley (there are sev­er­al oth­er arti­cles out there on this if you want to search for them)
• “The Non-Foot­ball Fan’s Guide to Enjoy­ing the Super Bowl” by Dan Stein­berg

The first two links above were part of a series of 2016 edi­to­ri­als in the Wash­ing­ton Post coin­cid­ing with March Mad­ness. As the whole series is def­i­nite­ly worth a look, just fol­low the links at the bot­tom of those arti­cles.

Dave wrote a book you might want to look at called The Open­ing Kick­off: The Tumul­tuous Birth of a Foot­ball Nation. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @BTNDaveRevsine.

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.