Japanese Musicians Turn Obsolete Machines Into Musical Instruments: Cathode Ray Tube TVs, Overhead Projectors, Reel-to-Reel Tape Machines & More

in Music, Technology | August 29th, 2018

In the 1940s and 50s, exper­i­men­tal com­posers like Hal­im El-Dabh, Pierre Scha­ef­fer, and Pierre Hen­ry began mak­ing exper­i­men­tal com­po­si­tions that Scha­ef­fer would call musique con­crete. They used tape recorders, phono­graphs, micro­phones and oth­er ana­log elec­tro-acoustic devices to cre­ate music, as Hen­ry put it, from “non-musi­cal sounds.” These tech­niques became main­stays of more famil­iar audio art, such as the radio and tele­vi­sion sound designs of the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop. With the advent of syn­the­siz­ers, elec­tron­ic music over­took these sound exper­i­ments, just as oth­er new tech­nolo­gies replaced the play­back and record­ing devices used to make them.

A Japan­ese group called Open Reel Ensem­ble recalls this lega­cy of musique con­crete, deploy­ing reel-to-reel tape machines, cath­ode ray tube TVs, over­head pro­jec­tors, and oth­er ana­log tech­nol­o­gy to make 21st cen­tu­ry music with “non-musi­cal sounds.” Head­ed by pro­gram­mer-turned-com­pos­er Ei Wada, the group embraces a very dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tion­al phi­los­o­phy than the exper­i­men­tal elec­tro-acoustic com­posers of the past, who worked in reac­tion to Euro­pean clas­si­cal music, oppos­ing “con­crete” sounds to abstract musi­cal ideas. Wada, on the oth­er hand, was first inspired by hear­ing a game­lan ensem­ble at a per­for­mance in Indone­sia as a very small child.

Giv­en a col­lec­tion of 70s reel-to-reel recorders by a fam­i­ly friend, he attempt­ed to re-cre­ate the polypho­ny of those tra­di­tion­al Javanese gong ensem­bles. He has, writes Moth­er­board, “been on a quest to repro­duce oth­er­world­ly sounds with tech that nobody wants.” But he freely com­bines these out­dat­ed machines with con­tem­po­rary mix­ers, ampli­fiers, light shows, beats, and tem­pos. Formed with friends Haru­ka Yoshi­da and Masaru Yoshi­da, Wada’s Open Reel Ensem­ble might be com­pared to both the avant-garde exper­i­ments of com­posers like John Cage and the pop­u­lar exper­i­ments of hip hop turntab­lists, both of whom used ana­log tech­nol­o­gy in inno­v­a­tive, uncon­ven­tion­al ways.

Some of the group’s work is a kind of exper­i­men­tal dance music, as you can see in the live per­for­mance fur­ther up; some is more ambi­ent sound art, as in Wada’s solo ven­ti­la­tion fan per­for­mance above, with implic­it com­men­tary on Japan’s econ­o­my and the dis­pos­able nature of con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy. “All these tech objects are a sym­bol of Japan’s eco­nom­ic growth,” says Wada. “but they also get thrown away in great num­bers. It’s good to not just say bye to things that are thrown away but to instill old things with new mean­ing, and cel­e­brate their unique points.”

The detourn­ing of tech­nol­o­gy that would oth­er­wise end up as land­fill requires some inge­nu­ity, giv­en the increas­ing rar­i­ty of such instru­ments. In the per­for­mance above, we see Wada play with invent­ed devices his group calls in Eng­lish the “Exhaust Fan­cil­la­tor” and in Japan­ese a kankisen­thiz­er, a neol­o­gism formed from the word for ven­ti­la­tion fan. “We used laser cut­ters and 3D print­ers to design the ven­ti­la­tion fans,” he says. This will­ing­ness to impro­vise, invent, and repur­pose what­ev­er works makes for some fas­ci­nat­ing exper­i­ments that are as much per­for­mance art as sound com­po­si­tion.

In the Wada per­for­mance above from 2010, he uses old tube TVs as drums, hit­ting the screens to trig­ger both sound and light effects and bring­ing to mind not only the sound art of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, but also the 1980s video instal­la­tions of Nam June Paik, ful­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences that fore­ground their tech­no­log­i­cal arti­fice even as they pro­duce an inex­plic­a­ble kind of mag­ic.

via This is Colos­sal 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to an Archive of Record­ings by Delia Der­byshire, the Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer & Com­pos­er of the Dr. Who Theme Song

Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Togeth­er in Con­cert (1986)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

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

NASA Creates a Visualization That Sets Breathtaking Footage of the Moon to Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” (Moonlight)

in Astronomy, Music | August 15th, 2018

From NASA’s Ernie Wright comes “Moon­light (Clair de Lune),” a visu­al­iza­tion that takes beau­ti­ful images of the lunar ter­rain and sets them to Claude Debussy’s 1905 com­po­si­tion, Clair de Lune (1905). Here’s how Wright describes the project:

This visu­al­iza­tion attempts to cap­ture the mood of Claude Debussy’s best-known com­po­si­tion, Clair de Lune (moon­light in French). The piece was pub­lished in 1905 as the third of four move­ments in the com­poser’s Suite Berga­masque, and unlike the oth­er parts of this work, Clair is qui­et, con­tem­pla­tive, and slight­ly melan­choly, evok­ing the feel­ing of a soli­tary walk through a moon­lit gar­den. The visu­als were com­posed like a nature doc­u­men­tary, with clean cuts and a most­ly sta­tion­ary vir­tu­al cam­era. The view­er fol­lows the Sun through­out a lunar day, see­ing sun­ris­es and then sun­sets over promi­nent fea­tures on the Moon. The sprawl­ing ray sys­tem sur­round­ing Coper­ni­cus crater, for exam­ple, is revealed beneath reced­ing shad­ows at sun­rise and lat­er slips back into dark­ness as night encroach­es. The visu­al­iza­tion was cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny a per­for­mance of Clair de Lune by the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Pops, led by con­duc­tor Emil de Cou, at the Kennedy Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on June 1 and 2, 2018, as part of a cel­e­bra­tion of NASA’s 60th anniver­sary. The visu­al­iza­tion uses a dig­i­tal 3D mod­el of the Moon built from Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter glob­al ele­va­tion maps and image mosaics. The light­ing is derived from actu­al Sun angles dur­ing lunar days in 2018.

Enjoy…

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1913

Pianist Plays Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Rav­el & Debussy for Blind Ele­phants in Thai­land

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Watch the Original TV Coverage of the Historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing: Recorded on July 20, 1969

in History, Science, Television | July 24th, 2018

Dur­ing a recent din­ner a few friends and I found our­selves rem­i­nisc­ing about for­ma­tive moments in our col­lec­tive youth. The con­ver­sa­tion took a decid­ed­ly down­beat turn when a nation­al­ly tele­vised moment we all remem­bered all too well came up: the 1986 explo­sion of the space shut­tle Chal­lenger. Like mil­lions of oth­er schoolkids at the time we had been glued to the live broad­cast, and became wit­ness­es to hor­ror. “It was NASA’s dark­est tragedy,” writes Eliz­a­beth How­ell at Space.com, an acci­dent that “changed the space pro­gram for­ev­er.”

The con­trast with our par­ents’ indeli­ble mem­o­ries of a tele­vised space broad­cast from sev­en­teen years ear­li­er could not be stark­er. On July 20, 1969, the nation wit­nessed what could eas­i­ly be called NASA’s great­est tri­umph, the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing, which not only real­ly hap­pened, but was broad­cast live on CBS, with com­men­tary by Wal­ter Cronkite and for­mer astro­naut Wal­ly Schirra and live audio from Mis­sion Con­trol in Hous­ton and Buzz Aldrin him­self, “whose job dur­ing the land­ing,” Jason Kot­tke writes, “was to keep an eye on the LM (lunar module)’s alti­tude and speed.”

We don’t hear much from Neil Armstrong—“he’s busy fly­ing and furi­ous­ly search­ing for a suit­able land­ing site. But it’s Arm­strong that says after they land, ‘Hous­ton, Tran­quil­i­ty Base here. The Eagle has land­ed.’” Kottke’s fas­ci­nat­ing descrip­tion of the events points out details that height­en the dra­ma, such as the fact that Armstrong’s heartrate “peaked at 150 beats per minute at land­ing” (his rest­ing heartrate was 60 bpm). At around 10 min­utes to land­ing, the astro­nauts link to Mis­sion Con­trol cut out briefly, which must have been ter­ri­fy­ing.

“Then there were the inter­mit­tent 1201 and 1202 pro­gram alarms, which nei­ther the LM crew nor Hous­ton had encoun­tered in any of the train­ing sim­u­la­tions.” These turn out “to be a sim­ple case,” notes NASA, “of the com­put­er try­ing to do too many things at once.” Giv­en that the Lunar Module’s com­put­er only had 4KB of mem­o­ry, this is hard­ly a sur­prise. What is aston­ish­ing is that such a rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive machine could han­dle the task at all.

The film view­ers saw on their screens was not, of course, a live feed—CBS did not have cam­eras in space or on the moon—but rather an ani­ma­tion.

The CBS ani­ma­tion shows the fake LM land­ing on the fake Moon before the actu­al land­ing — when Buzz says “con­tact light” and then “engine stop”. The ani­ma­tion was based on the sched­uled land­ing time and evi­dent­ly couldn’t be adjust­ed. The sched­uled time was over­shot because of the crater and boul­ders sit­u­a­tion men­tioned above.

There were, how­ev­er, cam­eras mount­ed on the Lunar Mod­ule, and that 16mm footage of the land­ing, which you can see above, was lat­er released. And then there’s that moon walk (which real­ly hap­pened), which you can see below—blurry and indis­tinct but no less amaz­ing.

Just a lit­tle over eight years “since the flights of Gagarin and Shep­ard,” NASA writes, “fol­lowed quick­ly by Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s chal­lenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out,” it hap­pened. Arm­strong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins land­ed on the moon. Arm­strong and Aldrin walked around and col­lect­ed sam­ples for two hours, then returned safe­ly to Earth. In a post-flight press con­fer­ence, Arm­strong called the suc­cess­ful mis­sion “a begin­ning of a new age,” and it was, though his opti­mism would seem almost quaint when a cou­ple decades lat­er, the U.S. turned its sights on weaponiz­ing space.

Read more about this extra­or­di­nary event at NASA and Kot­tke.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Land­ing Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry

The Source Code for the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Mis­sion Is Now Free on Github

Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Cus­toms and Sign Immi­gra­tion Form After the First Moon Land­ing (1969)

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

Noam Chomsky Defines The Real Responsibility of Intellectuals: “To Speak the Truth and to Expose Lies” (1967)

in Politics | July 18th, 2018

Image by Andrew Rusk, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The nov­el medi­um of social media—and the nov­el use of Twit­ter as the offi­cial PR plat­form for pub­lic figures—allows not only for end­less amounts of noise and dis­in­for­ma­tion to per­me­ate our news­feeds; it also allows read­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to refute state­ments in real time. Whether cor­rec­tions reg­is­ter or sim­ply get drowned in the sea of infor­ma­tion is per­haps a ques­tion for a 21st cen­tu­ry Mar­shall McLuhan to pon­der.

Anoth­er promi­nent the­o­rist of old­er forms of media, Noam Chom­sky, might also have an opin­ion on the mat­ter. In his 1988 book Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent, writ­ten with Edward Her­man, Chom­sky details the ways in which gov­ern­ments and media col­lude to delib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the pub­lic and social­ly engi­neer sup­port for wars that kill mil­lions and enrich a hand­ful of prof­i­teers.

More­over, in mass media com­mu­ni­ca­tions, those wars, inva­sions, “police actions,” regime changes, etc. get con­ve­nient­ly erased from his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry by pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who serve the inter­ests of state pow­er. In one recent exam­ple on the social medi­um of record, Twit­ter, Richard N. Haas, Pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, expressed dis­may about the dis­turbing­ly cozy state of affairs between the U.S. Admin­is­tra­tion and Putin’s Rus­sia by claim­ing that “Inter­na­tion­al order for 4 cen­turies has been based on non-inter­fer­ence in the inter­na­tion­al affairs of oth­ers and respect for sov­er­eign­ty.”

One recent cri­tique of for­eign pol­i­cy bod­ies like CFR would beg to dif­fer, as would the his­to­ry of hun­dreds of years of colo­nial­ism. In a very Chom­sky-like rejoin­der to Haas, jour­nal­ist Nick Turse wrote, “This might be news to Iraqis and Afghans and Libyans and Yeme­nis and Viet­namese and Cam­bo­di­ans and Lao­tians and Kore­ans and Ira­ni­ans and Guatemalans and Chileans and Nicaraguans and Mex­i­cans and Cubans and Domini­cans and Haitians and Fil­ipinos and Con­golese and Rus­sians and….”

Gen­uine con­cerns about Russ­ian elec­tion tam­per­ing notwith­stand­ing, the list of U.S. inter­ven­tions in the “affairs of oth­ers” could go on and on. Haas’ ini­tial state­ment offers an almost per­fect exam­ple of what Chom­sky iden­ti­fied in anoth­er essay, “The Respon­si­bil­i­ty of Intel­lec­tu­als,” as not only a “lack of con­cern for truth” but also “a real or feigned naiveté about Amer­i­can actions that reach­es star­tling pro­por­tions.”

“It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of intel­lec­tu­als to speak the truth and to expose lies,” wrote Chom­sky in his 1967 essay. “This, at least, may seem enough of a tru­ism to pass over with­out com­ment. Not so, how­ev­er. For the mod­ern intel­lec­tu­al, it is not at all obvi­ous.” Chom­sky pro­ceeds from the pro-Nazi state­ments of Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger to the dis­tor­tions and out­right false­hoods issued rou­tine­ly by such thinkers and shapers of for­eign pol­i­cy as Arthur Schlesinger, econ­o­mist Walt Ros­tow, and Hen­ry Kissinger in their defense of the dis­as­trous Viet­nam War.

The back­ground for all of these fig­ures’ dis­tor­tions of fact, Chom­sky argues, is the per­pet­u­al pre­sump­tion of inno­cence on the part of the U.S., a fea­ture of the doc­trine of excep­tion­al­ism under which “it is an arti­cle of faith that Amer­i­can motives are pure, and not sub­ject to analy­sis.” We have seen this arti­cle of faith invoked in hagiogra­phies of past Admin­is­tra­tions whose domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al crimes are con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten in order to turn them into foils, stock fig­ures for an order to which many would like to return. (As one for­mer Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date put it, “Amer­i­ca is great, because Amer­i­ca is good.”)

Chom­sky would include the rhetor­i­cal appeal to a nobler past in the cat­e­go­ry of “impe­ri­al­ist apologia”—a pre­sump­tion of inno­cence that “becomes increas­ing­ly dis­taste­ful as the pow­er it serves grows more dom­i­nant in world affairs, and more capa­ble, there­fore, of the uncon­strained vicious­ness that the mass media present to us each day.”

We are hard­ly the first pow­er in his­to­ry to com­bine mate­r­i­al inter­ests, great tech­no­log­i­cal capac­i­ty, and an utter dis­re­gard for the suf­fer­ing and mis­ery of the low­er orders. The long tra­di­tion of naiveté and self-right­eous­ness that dis­fig­ures our intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, how­ev­er, must serve as a warn­ing to the third world, if such a warn­ing is need­ed, as to how our protes­ta­tions of sin­cer­i­ty and benign intent are to be inter­pret­ed.

For those who well recall the events of even fif­teen years ago, when the U.S. gov­ern­ment, with the aid of a com­pli­ant press, lied its way into the sec­ond Iraq war, con­don­ing tor­ture and the “extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion” of sup­posed hos­tiles to black sites in the name of lib­er­at­ing the Iraqi peo­ple, Chomsky’s Viet­nam-era cri­tiques may sound just as fresh as they did in the mid-six­ties. Are we already in dan­ger of mis­re­mem­ber­ing that recent his­to­ry? “When we con­sid­er the respon­si­bil­i­ty of intel­lec­tu­als,” Chom­sky writes, the issue at hand is not sole­ly indi­vid­ual moral­i­ty; “our basic con­cern must be their role in the cre­ation and analy­sis of ide­ol­o­gy.”

What are the ide­o­log­i­cal fea­tures of U.S. self-under­stand­ing that allow it to recre­ate past errors again and again, then deny that his­to­ry and sink again into com­pla­cen­cy, per­pet­u­at­ing crimes against human­i­ty from the Cam­bo­di­an bomb­ings and My Lai mas­sacre, to the grotesque scenes at Abu Ghraib and the drone bomb­ings of hos­pi­tals and wed­dings, to sup­port­ing mass killings in Yemen and mur­der of unarmed Pales­tin­ian pro­tes­tors, to the kid­nap­ping and caging of chil­dren at the Mex­i­can bor­der?

The cur­rent rul­ing par­ty in the U.S. presents an exis­ten­tial threat, Chom­sky recent­ly opined, on a world his­tor­i­cal scale, dis­play­ing “a lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty that is almost hard to find words to describe.” It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of intel­lec­tu­als, Chom­sky argues in his essay—including jour­nal­ists, aca­d­e­mics, and pol­i­cy mak­ers and shapers—to tell the truth about events past and present, no mat­ter how incon­ve­nient those truths may be.

Read Chomsky’s full essay, “The Respon­si­bil­i­ty of Intel­lec­tu­als,” at The New York Review of Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

5 Ani­ma­tions Intro­duce the Media The­o­ry of Noam Chom­sky, Roland Barthes, Mar­shall McLuhan, Edward Said & Stu­art Hall

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

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

Watch “The Hangman,” a Classic Animated Film That Explores What Happens When No One Dares to Stand Up to Evil

in Film | July 13th, 2018

Last Fri­day, I was down­town at an open air cin­e­ma to watch a col­lec­tion of ani­mat­ed shorts. It was also a beast­ly hot night with roar­ing sun­down­ers, a very present dan­ger of being clocked in the head by falling palm fronds, and an exis­ten­tial dan­ger of fire in the hills. The oth­er exis­ten­tial dan­ger was that of the author­i­tar­i­an turn of this coun­try that, at that moment, seemed so far away from our pic­nic bas­kets and wine in a can.

In the mid­dle of the pro­gram of well made but light and fluffy shorts came the above ani­mat­ed film, “The Hang­man.” The ver­sion above is not the restored ver­sion we saw, but it’s pret­ty much the same, give or take a scratch. Les Gold­man and Paul Julian’s 1964 short deliv­ers a moral mes­sage along the same lines as anti-Nazi pas­tor Mar­tin Niemöller’s “First they came for the Social­ists” statement–currently a meme you’ve prob­a­bly seen pass through your social feed. And though the nar­ra­tive, based on the poem by Mau­rice Ogden, is easy to suss out as it trun­dled towards its mor­tal con­clu­sion, it did not stop the fact that the ram­bunc­tious Fri­day night audi­ence fell dead silent upon its con­clu­sion. You may too.

The poem first appeared in a 1954 issue of Mass­es and Main­stream, a month­ly Marx­ist pub­li­ca­tion that con­tin­ued pub­lish­ing through the worst excess­es of the McCarthy hear­ings to an under­stand­ably van­ish­ing read­er­ship. The poem has occa­sion­al­ly been taught in the con­text of the Holo­caust, but any kind of creep­ing fas­cism will do. Not much is real­ly known about Ogden, who wrote the poem under the pseu­do­nym Jack Denoya in its orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion. (He is pos­si­bly the same man who taught at Coast Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in Cos­ta Mesa, CA, and min­is­tered at Orange Coast Uni­tar­i­an Uni­ver­sal­ist Church.)

The ani­mat­ed ver­sion, with its mod­ernist look influ­enced by UPA’s ani­ma­tion stu­dio, came out one year after Mass­es and Main­stream fold­ed. Dur­ing that Fri­day night view­ing, I sus­pect­ed the nar­ra­tor to be Ken Nor­dine, who record­ed a vocal jazz album around that time. But actu­al­ly the voice belongs to Her­schel Bernar­di, a film and the­ater actor who would have been known to Broad­way fans for his star­ring role in Fid­dler on the Roof but to tele­vi­sion fans as Char­lie Tuna in the Stark­ist com­mer­cials. Before all that, how­ev­er, he was a vic­tim of the Hol­ly­wood black­list, which made him a per­fect choice to nar­rate “The Hang­man.”

Direc­tor Paul Julian illus­trat­ed much of the back­ground art used in Warn­er Bros. car­toons, and his claim to pop cul­ture fame is pro­vid­ing the “beep beep” sound for the Road Run­ner car­toons by the same stu­dio. Pro­duc­er Les Gold­man went on to pro­duce sev­er­al oth­er influ­en­tial ani­mat­ed shorts, such as “The Dot and the Line” and “The Phan­tom Toll­booth.”

How­ev­er, “The Hang­man” is seri­ous food for thought in these fraught times, and it’s good to see it back in cir­cu­la­tion, thanks to cura­tor Ron Dia­mond. Here’s to hop­ing his­to­ry doesn’t repeat itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Sur­re­al 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” Vot­ed the 24th Best Car­toon of All Time

A Short Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Karl Marx

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

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.

French Bookstore Blends Real People’s Faces with Book Cover Art

in Art, Books, Literature, Photography, Travel | July 13th, 2018

You can lead the I‑generation to a book­store, but can you make them read?

Per­haps, espe­cial­ly if the vol­ume has an eye-catch­ing cov­er image that bleeds off the edge.

If noth­ing else, they can be enlist­ed to pro­vide some stun­ning free pub­lic­i­ty for the titles that appeal to their high­ly visu­al sense of cre­ative play. (An author’s dream!)

France’s first indie book­store, Bordeaux’s Librairie Mol­lat, is reel­ing ‘em in with Book Face, an irre­sistible self­ie chal­lenge that harkens back to DJ Carl Mor­ris’ Sleeve­face project, in which one or more peo­ple are pho­tographed “obscur­ing or aug­ment­ing any part of their body or bod­ies with record sleeve(s), caus­ing an illu­sion.”

The results are pro­lif­er­at­ing on the store’s Insta­gram, as fetch­ing young things (and oth­ers) apply them­selves to find­ing the best angles and cos­tumes for their lit-based Trompe‑l’œil mas­ter­strokes.

…even the ones that don’t quite pass the forced per­spec­tive test have the capac­i­ty to charm.

…and not every shot requires intense pre-pro­duc­tion and pre­ci­sion place­ment.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ll see more kids get­ting into the act soon. In fact, if some young­sters of your acquain­tance are express­ing a bit of bore­dom with their vacances d’été, try turn­ing them loose in your local book­store to iden­ti­fy a like­ly can­di­date for a Book Face of their own.

(Remem­ber to sup­port the book­seller with a pur­chase!)

Back state­side, some librar­i­ans shared their pro tips for achiev­ing Book Face suc­cess in this 2015 New York Times arti­cle. The New York Pub­lic Library’s Mor­gan Holz­er also cites Sleeve­face as the inspi­ra­tion behind #Book­face­Fri­day, the hash­tag she coined in hopes that oth­er libraries would fol­low suit.

With over 50,000 tagged posts on Insta­gram, looks like it’s caught on!

See Librairie Mol­lat’s patrons’ gallery of Book Faces here.

Read­ers, if you’ve Book Faced any­where in the world, please share the link to your efforts in the com­ments sec­tion.

via This is Colos­sal/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. In hon­or of her son’s 18th birth­day, she invites you to Book Face your baby using The Big Rum­pus, her first book, for which he served as cov­er mod­el. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

New Web Site Showcases 700,000 Artifacts Dug Up from the Canals of Amsterdam, Some Dating Back to 4300 BC

in Archives, History | July 12th, 2018

Ams­ter­dam has many plea­sures to offer, not least boat­ing through its hun­dred-kilo­me­ter net­work of canals. First laid out in the ear­ly 17th cen­tu­ry, they con­sti­tute a rich his­to­ry les­son in and of them­selves. But Ams­ter­dam is also, of course, a mod­ern city with mod­ern infra­struc­ture, such as a metro sys­tem with a new line set to open this month. Ams­ter­dammers have been wait­ing for that line for fif­teen years now, and the rea­sons for the pro­longed con­struc­tion have to do with the old canals, or rather part of the Riv­er Ams­tel that feeds them.

Bor­ing the tun­nels entailed drain­ing the riv­er, and drain­ing the riv­er turned out to offer anoth­er his­to­ry les­son, and a much deep­er one than expect­ed. “It is not often that a riverbed, let alone one in the mid­dle of a city, is pumped dry and can be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly exam­ined,” says the web site Below the Sur­face. “The exca­va­tions in the Ams­tel yield­ed a del­uge of finds, some 700,000 in all: a vast array of objects, some bro­ken, some whole, all jum­bled togeth­er.”

The unin­tend­ed archae­o­log­i­cal ben­e­fit of drain­ing the riv­er amounts to “a mul­ti-faceted pic­ture of dai­ly life in the city of Ams­ter­dam. Every find is a frozen moment in time, con­nect­ing the past and the present. The pic­ture they paint of their era is extreme­ly detailed and yet entire­ly ran­dom due to the chance of objects or remains sink­ing down into the riverbed and being retrieved from there.” At Below the Sur­face you can browse the exten­sive cat­a­log of all these arti­facts, the old­est of which date to around 4300 BC, more than five and a half mil­len­nia before the found­ing of Ams­ter­dam itself.

Below the Sur­face’s col­lec­tion is orga­nized into ten dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories includ­ing “inte­ri­ors and acces­sories,” “crafts and indus­try,” “arms and armor,” “com­mu­ni­ca­tion and exchange,” and “games and recre­ation.” On your dig­i­tized object-based his­tor­i­cal jour­ney there, you’ll encounter objects from all of those realms of human life across time, from 13th-cen­tu­ry coins, 15th-cen­tu­ry keys, 18th-cen­tu­ry tiles, and 20th-cen­tu­ry med­i­cine tins. To we humans of the 21st cen­tu­ry, in the Nether­lands or else­where, some of these might look sur­pris­ing­ly con­tem­po­rary — or at least not near­ly as ancient as a mobile phone from the 1990s. Enter Below the Sur­face here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

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

20,000 Endan­gered Archae­o­log­i­cal Sites Now Cat­a­logued in a New Online Data­base

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

Teaching Tolerance to Activists: A Free Course Syllabus & Anthology

in Current Affairs, Education, Life, Politics | July 9th, 2018

The waters of acad­e­mia have grown chop­py of late, and many vet­er­an sailors have found them­selves ill-equipped to nav­i­gate the brave new world stu­dent activists are forg­ing at a break­neck pace.

Trig­ger warn­ings. Safe spaces. Cur­ric­u­la restruc­tured with an eye toward iden­ti­ty. Swift judg­ments for those who fail to com­ply.

Admis­sions brochures and cam­pus tours make fre­quent men­tion of their institution’s com­mit­ment to social jus­tice. They have to—many high school­ers share the under­grads’ beliefs.

Those of us whose col­lege years are but a dis­tant mem­o­ry should­n’t depend on our school’s alum­ni mag to paint an accu­rate pic­ture of the bat­tles that may be rag­ing with­in. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, pre­ferred pro­nouns, and inclu­sive bath­room facil­i­ties may get a men­tion, but the offi­cial organ’s unlike­ly to peek into the abyss where tol­er­ance goes to die.

Cul­tur­al schol­ar Frances Lee, a queer trans per­son of col­or recov­er­ing from a forced con­ver­sion to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty, took a hard look at the prob­lem of intol­er­ance with­in activist cir­cles as a sec­ond year Mas­ters stu­dent in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton.

Pub­lished exact­ly one year ago, their essay, Kin Aes­thet­ics: Excom­mu­ni­cate Me from the Church of Social Jus­tice, was plain­spo­ken about the neg­a­tive side effects of social progress in activist cir­cles, and by exten­sion, on cam­pus:

Telling peo­ple what to do and how to live out their lives is endem­ic to reli­gious and to dog­mat­ic activism. It’s not that my com­rades are the boss­es of me, but that dog­mat­ic activism cre­ates an envi­ron­ment that encour­ages peo­ple to tell oth­er peo­ple what to do. This is espe­cial­ly promi­nent on Face­book. Scrolling through my news feed some­times feels Iike slid­ing into a pew to be blast­ed by a frag­ment­ed, fren­zied ser­mon. I know that much of the media post­ed there means to dis­ci­pline me to be a bet­ter activist and com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber. But when dic­tates aren’t fol­lowed, a com­mon pro­ce­dure of pun­ish­ment ensues. Pun­ish­ments for saying/doing/believing the wrong thing include sham­ing, scold­ing, call­ing out, iso­lat­ing, or evis­cer­at­ing someone’s social stand­ing. Dis­ci­pline and pun­ish­ment have been used for all of his­to­ry to con­trol and destroy peo­ple. Why is it being used in move­ments meant to lib­er­ate all of us? We all have made seri­ous mis­takes and hurt oth­er peo­ple, inten­tion­al­ly or not. We get a chance to learn from them when those around us respond with kind­ness and patience. Where is our humil­i­ty when exam­in­ing the mis­takes of oth­ers? Why do we posi­tion our­selves as moral­ly supe­ri­or to the low­ly un-woke?

The essay’s viral suc­cess gives extra oomph to “Wok­er Than Thou: Left­ist Activist Iden­ti­ty For­ma­tions,” a com­mu­ni­ty course Lee designed and taught ear­li­er this year.

Intend­ed for com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, polit­i­cal activists, and orga­niz­ers, Lee wel­comed any­one with any inter­est in the sub­ject, pro­vid­ed they were will­ing “to stay open to dis­sent­ing or unpop­u­lar ideas for the sake of dis­cus­sion, instead of fore­clos­ing cer­tain top­ics or ideas by judg­ing them as not wor­thy of atten­tion.”

The 10-week syl­labus delved into such rel­e­vant top­ics as Call-out Cul­ture, the False Promis­es of Empa­thy, and of course “wok­e­ness,” a term Lee takes care to attribute to Black cul­ture.

While not all of the required read­ings can be found online, Lee pro­vides a wealth of links to those that can.

Titles include Uni­ver­si­ty of San Fran­cis­co Pro­fes­sor Rhon­da Magee’s “Address­ing Social Injus­tice with Com­pas­sion,” author Andrea Smith’s “The Prob­lem with Priv­i­lege,” Trau­ma Stew­ard­ship Insti­tute founder Lau­ra van Der­noot Lipsky’s TEDx Talk on sys­tem­at­ic oppres­sion and lib­er­a­tion the­o­ry.

There’s even a Suf­jan Stevens song that evolved from cheap shots at skater Tonya Harding’s expense to some­thing that con­sid­ered the “whole­ness of the per­son… with dig­ni­ty and grace.”

Fol­low­ing Lee’s course mate­ri­als seems a much more ratio­nal way to con­front the cur­rent social cli­mate than bing­ing on con­fes­sion­al essays by lib­er­al arts pro­fes­sors who feel ham­strung by not-unfound­ed fears that their stu­dents could cost them their jobs … and the good rep­u­ta­tion required to secure anoth­er.

For fur­ther read­ing, Lee offers free down­loads of Toward An Ethics of Activism: A Com­mu­ni­ty Inves­ti­ga­tion of Humil­i­ty, Grace and Com­pas­sion in Move­ments for Jus­tice, an anthol­o­gy that “seeks to dis­rupt dog­mat­ic, exclu­sion­ary activist cul­ture with kind­ness and con­nec­tion.”

Find Frances Lee’s “Wok­er Than Thou” syl­labus here.

Down­load a PDF of the anthol­o­gy Toward An Ethics of Activism here. (A screen read­er acces­si­ble ver­sion is also avail­able.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Dr. Jane Goodall Is Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Con­ser­va­tion, Ani­mal Intel­li­gence & Activism

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

Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility”: The Code of Decency That Guided America’s First President

in History, Politics | July 2nd, 2018

Con­trary to a thor­ough­ly abused polit­i­cal metaphor, Wash­ing­ton, DC was not in fact built on a swamp, though any­one who has vis­it­ed in the sum­mer will find that sto­ry plau­si­ble. Hav­ing just returned to my home­town for a few days, I’ve had ample reminder of its stick­i­ness, and have expe­ri­enced its fig­u­ra­tive­ly over­heat­ed atmos­phere first­hand. I needn’t go over the polit­i­cal and moral crises turn­ing the cap­i­tal into a caul­dron of “inci­vil­i­ty.”

But what exact­ly is “civil­i­ty” and what does it entail? Is it just anoth­er word for polite­ness, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly insid­i­ous code for silenc­ing dis­sent? Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies recent­ly chose the word for its Week­ly Word Watch, cit­ing an Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary entry defin­ing it as “the min­i­mum degree” of deco­rum in social sit­u­a­tions. Deriv­ing from the Latin civis, or “cit­i­zen,” and relat­ed to “civics” and “civ­i­liza­tion,” the word first meant “cit­i­zen­ship,” and con­not­ed the treat­ment sup­pos­ed­ly due a per­son with said sta­tus. As often hap­pens, con­no­ta­tion became deno­ta­tion, and civil­i­ty came to stand for basic respect.

Ner­vous colum­nists now wor­ried about civility’s decline have pinned the prob­lem on cit­i­zen pro­test­ers exer­cis­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and their first amend­ment rights, rather than on the tor­rents of abuse, threats, and lies that pour forth dai­ly from the exec­u­tive, who seems inca­pable of treat­ing any­one with min­i­mal decen­cy. But the very first hold­er of the office—faced with a frac­tious and unciv­il pop­u­lace (some of whom toast­ed to his “speedy death”)—believed it was his duty to set “a stan­dard to which the wise and hon­est can repair.”

What, we might won­der, would George Wash­ing­ton, builder of DC, have thought of the city’s cur­rent state? We can spec­u­late by ref­er­ence to his “Farewell Address,” in which the depart­ing pres­i­dent wrote:

The alter­nate dom­i­na­tion of one fac­tion over anoth­er, sharp­ened by the spir­it of revenge nat­ur­al to par­ty dis­sention, which in dif­fer­ent ages & coun­tries has per­pe­trat­ed the most hor­rid enor­mi­ties, is itself a fright­ful despo­tism. But this leads at length to a more for­mal and per­ma­nent despo­tism. The dis­or­ders & mis­eries, which result, grad­u­al­ly incline the minds of men to seek secu­ri­ty & repose in the absolute pow­er of an Indi­vid­ual: and soon­er or lat­er the chief of some pre­vail­ing fac­tion more able or more for­tu­nate than his com­peti­tors, turns this dis­po­si­tion to the pur­pos­es of his own ele­va­tion, on the ruins of Pub­lic Lib­er­ty.

Wash­ing­ton, argues his­to­ri­an and con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Richard Brookhis­er, gov­erned his own behav­ior with a strict code of con­duct based on “The Rules of Civil­i­ty & Decent Behav­ior in Com­pa­ny and Con­ver­sa­tion,” a list he care­ful­ly copied out by hand as a school­boy in Vir­ginia. “Based on a 16th-cen­tu­ry set of pre­cepts com­piled for young gen­tle­men by Jesuit instruc­tors,” notes NPR, “the Rules of Civil­i­ty were one of the ear­li­est and most pow­er­ful forces to shape America’s first pres­i­dent,” as Brookhis­er claims in his 2003 book Rules of Civil­i­ty: The 110 Pre­cepts That Guid­ed Our First Pres­i­dent in War and Peace.

Many of these “rules” are out­mod­ed eti­quette, many are baroque in their lev­el of detail, some should nev­er go out of style, and many would be mocked and derid­ed today as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” Brookhis­er “warns against dis­miss­ing the max­ims” as mere polite­ness, not­ing that they “address moral issues, but they address them indi­rect­ly. Maybe they can work on us in our cen­tu­ry as the Jesuits intend­ed them to work in theirs—indirectly—by putting us in a more ambi­tious frame of mind.” Or maybe they could induce some humil­i­ty among the already polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious.

See all of the 110 “Rules of Civil­i­ty” below, with mod­ern­ized spelling and punc­tu­a­tion, cour­tesy of NPR:

1. Every action done in com­pa­ny ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
2. When in com­pa­ny, put not your hands to any part of the body not usu­al­ly dis­cov­ered.
3. Show noth­ing to your friend that may affright him.
4. In the pres­ence of oth­ers, sing not to your­self with a hum­ming voice, or drum with your fin­gers or feet.
5. If you cough, sneeze, sigh or yawn, do it not loud but pri­vate­ly, and speak not in your yawn­ing, but put your hand­ker­chief or hand before your face and turn aside.
6. Sleep not when oth­ers speak, sit not when oth­ers stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not on when oth­ers stop.
7. Put not off your clothes in the pres­ence of oth­ers, nor go out of your cham­ber half dressed.
8. At play and attire, it’s good man­ners to give place to the last com­er, and affect not to speak loud­er than ordi­nary.
9. Spit not into the fire, nor stoop low before it; nei­ther put your hands into the flames to warm them, nor set your feet upon the fire, espe­cial­ly if there be meat before it.
10. When you sit down, keep your feet firm and even, with­out putting one on the oth­er or cross­ing them.
11. Shift not your­self in the sight of oth­ers, nor gnaw your nails.
12. Shake not the head, feet, or legs; roll not the eyes; lift not one eye­brow high­er than the oth­er, wry not the mouth, and bedew no man’s face with your spit­tle by approach­ing too near him when you speak.
13. Kill no ver­min, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc. in the sight of oth­ers; if you see any filth or thick spit­tle put your foot dex­ter­ous­ly upon it; if it be upon the clothes of your com­pan­ions, put it off pri­vate­ly, and if it be upon your own clothes, return thanks to him who puts it off.
14. Turn not your back to oth­ers, espe­cial­ly in speak­ing; jog not the table or desk on which anoth­er reads or writes; lean not upon any­one.
15. Keep your nails clean and short, also your hands and teeth clean, yet with­out show­ing any great con­cern for them.
16. Do not puff up the cheeks, loll not out the tongue with the hands or beard, thrust out the lips or bite them, or keep the lips too open or too close.
17. Be no flat­ter­er, nei­ther play with any that delight not to be played with­al.
18. Read no let­ter, books, or papers in com­pa­ny, but when there is a neces­si­ty for the doing of it, you must ask leave; come not near the books or writ­tings of anoth­er so as to read them unless desired, or give your opin­ion of them unasked. Also look not nigh when anoth­er is writ­ing a let­ter.
19. Let your coun­te­nance be pleas­ant but in seri­ous mat­ters some­what grave.
20. The ges­tures of the body must be suit­ed to the dis­course you are upon.
21. Reproach none for the infir­mi­ties of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind of there­of.
22. Show not your­self glad at the mis­for­tune of anoth­er though he were your ene­my.
23. When you see a crime pun­ished, you may be inward­ly pleased; but always show pity to the suf­fer­ing offend­er.
24. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any pub­lic spec­ta­cle.
25. Super­flu­ous com­pli­ments and all affec­ta­tion of cer­e­monies are to be avoid­ed, yet where due they are not to be neglect­ed.
26. In putting off your hat to per­sons of dis­tinc­tion, as noble­men, jus­tices, church­men, etc., make a rev­er­ence, bow­ing more or less accord­ing to the cus­tom of the bet­ter bred, and qual­i­ty of the per­sons. Among your equals expect not always that they should begin with you first, but to pull off the hat when there is no need is affec­ta­tion. In the man­ner of salut­ing and resalut­ing in words, keep to the most usu­al cus­tom.
27. ‘Tis ill man­ners to bid one more emi­nent than your­self be cov­ered, as well as not to do it to whom it is due. Like­wise he that makes too much haste to put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to put it on at the first, or at most the sec­ond time of being asked. Now what is here­in spo­ken, of qual­i­fi­ca­tion in behav­ior in salut­ing, ought also to be observed in tak­ing of place and sit­ting down, for cer­e­monies with­out bounds are trou­ble­some.
28. If any one come to speak to you while you are are sit­ting stand up, though he be your infe­ri­or, and when you present seats, let it be to every­one accord­ing to his degree.
29. When you meet with one of greater qual­i­ty than your­self, stop and retire, espe­cial­ly if it be at a door or any straight place, to give way for him to pass.
30. In walk­ing, the high­est place in most coun­tries seems to be on the right hand; there­fore, place your­self on the left of him whom you desire to hon­or. But if three walk togeth­er the mid­dest place is the most hon­or­able; the wall is usal­ly giv­en to the most wor­thy if two walk togeth­er.
31. If any­one far sur­pass­es oth­ers, either in age, estate, or mer­it, yet would give place to a mean­er than him­self in his own lodg­ing or else­where, the one ought not to except it. So he on the oth­er part should not use much earnest­ness nor offer it above once or twice.
32. To one that is your equal, or not much infe­ri­or, you are to give the chief place in your lodg­ing, and he to whom it is offered ought at the first to refuse it, but at the sec­ond to accept though not with­out acknowl­edg­ing his own unwor­thi­ness.
33. They that are in dig­ni­ty or in office have in all places prece­den­cy, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or oth­er qual­i­ties, though they have no pub­lic charge.
34. It is good man­ners to pre­fer them to whom we speak before our­selves, espe­cial­ly if they be above us, with whom in no sort we ought to begin.
35. Let your dis­course with men of busi­ness be short and com­pre­hen­sive.
36. Arti­fi­cers and per­sons of low degree ought not to use many cer­e­monies to lords or oth­ers of high degree, but respect and high­ly hon­or then, and those of high degree ought to treat them with affa­bil­i­ty and cour­tesy, with­out arro­gance.
37. In speak­ing to men of qual­i­ty do not lean nor look them full in the face, nor approach too near them at left. Keep a full pace from them.
38. In vis­it­ing the sick, do not present­ly play the physi­cian if you be not know­ing there­in.
39. In writ­ing or speak­ing, give to every per­son his due title accord­ing to his degree and the cus­tom of the place.
40. Strive not with your supe­ri­or in argu­ment, but always sub­mit your judg­ment to oth­ers with mod­esty.
41. Under­take not to teach your equal in the art him­self pro­fess­es; it savors of arro­gan­cy.
42. Let your cer­e­monies in cour­tesy be prop­er to the dig­ni­ty of his place with whom you con­verse, for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince.
43. Do not express joy before one sick in pain, for that con­trary pas­sion will aggra­vate his mis­ery.
44. When a man does all he can, though it suc­ceed not well, blame not him that did it.
45. Being to advise or rep­re­hend any one, con­sid­er whether it ought to be in pub­lic or in pri­vate, and present­ly or at some oth­er time; in what terms to do it; and in reprov­ing show no signs of cholor but do it with all sweet­ness and mild­ness.
46. Take all admo­ni­tions thank­ful­ly in what time or place soev­er giv­en, but after­wards not being cul­pa­ble take a time and place con­ve­nient to let him know it that gave them.
47. Mock not nor jest at any thing of impor­tance. Break no jests that are sharp, bit­ing, and if you deliv­er any thing wit­ty and pleas­ant, abstain from laugh­ing there­at your­self.
48. Where­in you reprove anoth­er be unblame­able your­self, for exam­ple is more preva­lent than pre­cepts.
49. Use no reproach­ful lan­guage against any one; nei­ther curse nor revile.
50. Be not hasty to believe fly­ing reports to the dis­par­age­ment of any.
51. Wear not your clothes foul, or ripped, or dusty, but see they be brushed once every day at least and take heed that you approach not to any uncleaness.
52. In your appar­el be mod­est and endeav­or to accom­mo­date nature, rather than to pro­cure admi­ra­tion; keep to the fash­ion of your equals, such as are civ­il and order­ly with respect to time and places.
53. Run not in the streets, nei­ther go too slow­ly, nor with mouth open; go not shak­ing of arms, nor upon the toes, kick not the earth with your feet, go not upon the toes, nor in a danc­ing fash­ion.
54. Play not the pea­cock, look­ing every where about you, to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stock­ings sit neat­ly and clothes hand­some­ly.
55. Eat not in the streets, nor in the house, out of sea­son.
56. Asso­ciate your­self with men of good qual­i­ty if you esteem your own rep­u­ta­tion; for ’tis bet­ter to be alone than in bad com­pa­ny.
57. In walk­ing up and down in a house, only with one in com­pa­ny if he be greater than your­self, at the first give him the right hand and stop not till he does and be not the first that turns, and when you do turn let it be with your face towards him; if he be a man of great qual­i­ty walk not with him cheek by jowl but some­what behind him, but yet in such a man­ner that he may eas­i­ly speak to you.
58. Let your con­ver­sa­tion be with­out mal­ice or envy, for ’tis a sign of a tractable and com­mend­able nature, and in all caus­es of pas­sion per­mit rea­son to gov­ern.
59. Nev­er express any­thing unbe­com­ing, nor act against the rules moral before your infe­ri­ors.
60. Be not immod­est in urg­ing your friends to dis­cov­er a secret.
61. Utter not base and friv­o­lous things among grave and learned men, nor very dif­fi­cult ques­tions or sub­jects among the igno­rant, or things hard to be believed; stuff not your dis­course with sen­tences among your bet­ters nor equals.
62. Speak not of dole­ful things in a time of mirth or at the table; speak not of melan­choly things as death and wounds, and if oth­ers men­tion them, change if you can the dis­course. Tell not your dreams, but to your inti­mate friend.
63. A man ought not to val­ue him­self of his achieve­ments or rare qual­i­ties of wit; much less of his rich­es, virtue or kin­dred.
64. Break not a jest where none take plea­sure in mirth; laugh not aloud, nor at all with­out occa­sion; deride no man’s mis­for­tune though there seem to be some cause.
65. Speak not inju­ri­ous words nei­ther in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occa­sion.
66. Be not froward but friend­ly and cour­te­ous, the first to salute, hear and answer; and be not pen­sive when it’s a time to con­verse.
67. Detract not from oth­ers, nei­ther be exces­sive in com­mand­ing.
68. Go not thith­er, where you know not whether you shall be wel­come or not; give not advice with­out being asked, and when desired do it briefly.
69. If two con­tend togeth­er take not the part of either uncon­strained, and be not obsti­nate in your own opin­ion. In things indif­fer­ent be of the major side.
70. Rep­re­hend not the imper­fec­tions of oth­ers, for that belongs to par­ents, mas­ters and supe­ri­ors.
71. Gaze not on the marks or blem­ish­es of oth­ers and ask not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your friend, deliv­er not before oth­ers.
72. Speak not in an unknown tongue in com­pa­ny but in your own lan­guage and that as those of qual­i­ty do and not as the vul­gar. Sub­lime mat­ters treat seri­ous­ly.
73. Think before you speak, pro­nounce not imper­fect­ly, nor bring out your words too hasti­ly, but order­ly and dis­tinct­ly.
74. When anoth­er speaks, be atten­tive your­self and dis­turb not the audi­ence. If any hes­i­tate in his words, help him not nor prompt him with­out desired. Inter­rupt him not, nor answer him till his speech be end­ed.
75. In the midst of dis­course ask not of what one treats, but if you per­ceive any stop because of your com­ing, you may well entreat him gen­tly to pro­ceed. If a per­son of qual­i­ty comes in while you’re con­vers­ing, it’s hand­some to repeat what was said before.
76. While you are talk­ing, point not with your fin­ger at him of whom you dis­course, nor approach too near him to whom you talk, espe­cial­ly to his face.
77. Treat with men at fit times about busi­ness and whis­per not in the com­pa­ny of oth­ers.
78. Make no com­par­isons and if any of the com­pa­ny be com­mend­ed for any brave act of virtue, com­mend not anoth­er for the same.
79. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth there­of. In dis­cours­ing of things you have heard, name not your author. Always a secret dis­cov­er not.
80. Be not tedious in dis­course or in read­ing unless you find the com­pa­ny pleased there­with.
81. Be not curi­ous to know the affairs of oth­ers, nei­ther approach those that speak in pri­vate.
82. Under­take not what you can­not per­form but be care­ful to keep your promise.
83. When you deliv­er a mat­ter do it with­out pas­sion and with dis­cre­tion, how­ev­er mean the per­son be you do it to.
84. When your supe­ri­ors talk to any­body hear­ken not, nei­ther speak nor laugh.
85. In com­pa­ny of those of high­er qual­i­ty than your­self, speak not ’til you are asked a ques­tion, then stand upright, put off your hat and answer in few words.
86. In dis­putes, be not so desirous to over­come as not to give lib­er­ty to each one to deliv­er his opin­ion and sub­mit to the judg­ment of the major part, espe­cial­ly if they are judges of the dis­pute.
87. Let your car­riage be such as becomes a man grave, set­tled and atten­tive to that which is spo­ken. Con­tra­dict not at every turn what oth­ers say.
88. Be not tedious in dis­course, make not many digres­sions, nor repeat often the same man­ner of dis­course.
89. Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.
90. Being set at meat scratch not, nei­ther spit, cough or blow your nose except there’s a neces­si­ty for it.
91. Make no show of tak­ing great delight in your vict­uals. Feed not with greed­i­ness. Eat your bread with a knife. Lean not on the table, nei­ther find fault with what you eat.
92. Take no salt or cut bread with your knife greasy.
93. Enter­tain­ing any­one at table it is decent to present him with meat. Under­take not to help oth­ers unde­sired by the mas­ter.
94. If you soak bread in the sauce, let it be no more than what you put in your mouth at a time, and blow not your broth at table but stay ’til it cools of itself.
95. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand; nei­ther spit forth the stones of any fruit pie upon a dish nor cast any­thing under the table.
96. It’s unbe­com­ing to heap much to one’s mea. Keep your fin­gers clean and when foul wipe them on a cor­ner of your table nap­kin.
97. Put not anoth­er bite into your mouth ’til the for­mer be swal­lowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.
98. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full; nei­ther gaze about you while you are drink­ing.
99. Drink not too leisure­ly nor yet too hasti­ly. Before and after drink­ing wipe your lips. Breathe not then or ever with too great a noise, for it is unciv­il.
100. Cleanse not your teeth with the table­cloth, nap­kin, fork or knife, but if oth­ers do it, let it be done with a pick tooth.
101. Rinse not your mouth in the pres­ence of oth­ers.
102. It is out of use to call upon the com­pa­ny often to eat. Nor need you drink to oth­ers every time you drink.
103. In com­pa­ny of your bet­ters be not longer in eat­ing than they are. Lay not your arm but only your hand upon the table.
104. It belongs to the chiefest in com­pa­ny to unfold his nap­kin and fall to meat first. But he ought then to begin in time and to dis­patch with dex­ter­i­ty that the slow­est may have time allowed him.
105. Be not angry at table what­ev­er hap­pens and if you have rea­son to be so, show it not but on a cheer­ful coun­te­nance espe­cial­ly if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast.
106. Set not your­self at the upper of the table but if it be your due, or that the mas­ter of the house will have it so. Con­tend not, lest you should trou­ble the com­pa­ny.
107. If oth­ers talk at table be atten­tive, but talk not with meat in your mouth.
108. When you speak of God or His attrib­ut­es, let it be seri­ous­ly and with rev­er­ence. Hon­or and obey your nat­ur­al par­ents although they be poor.
109. Let your recre­ations be man­ful not sin­ful.
110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that lit­tle spark of celes­tial fire called con­science.

via Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

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

Color Film Was Designed to Take Pictures of White People, Not People of Color: The Unfortunate History of Racial Bias in Photography (1940–1990)

in Life, Photography, Science | July 2nd, 2018

In the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy and film, get­ting the right image meant get­ting the one which con­formed to preva­lent ideas of human­i­ty. This includ­ed ideas of white­ness, of what colour — what range of hue — white peo­ple want­ed white peo­ple to be. 

- Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Cul­ture

As the bride in the 2014 Inter­ra­cial Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er skit (see below) on her tit­u­lar sketch com­e­dy TV show, come­di­an Amy Schumer cast her­self in a small but essen­tial back­ground role. She is for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es a liv­ing Shirley card, an image of a young white woman that was for years the stan­dard pho­tog­ra­phy techs used to deter­mine “nor­mal” skin-col­or bal­ance when devel­op­ing film in the lab.

The Shirley card—named for its orig­i­nal mod­el, Kodak employ­ee Shirley Page–featured a suc­ces­sion of young women over the years, but skin tone-wise, the resem­blance was strik­ing.

As described by Syree­ta McFad­den in a Buz­zfeed essay that also touch­es on Car­rie Mae Weems’ 1988 four-pan­el por­trait, Peach­es, Liz, Tami­ka, Elaine, a col­or wheel meme fea­tur­ing actress Lupi­ta Nyong’o, and artists Adam Broomberg and Oliv­er Cha­narin’s 2013 project that trained an apartheid-era Polaroid ID2 cam­era and near­ly 40-year-old film stock on dark-skinned South African sub­jects as a lens for exam­in­ing racism:

She is wear­ing a white dress with long black gloves. A pearl bracelet adorns one of her wrists. She has auburn hair that drapes her exposed shoul­ders. Her eyes are blue. The back­ground is gray­ish, and she is sur­round­ed by three pil­lows, each in one of the pri­ma­ry col­ors we’re taught in school. She wears a white dress because it reads high con­trast against the gray back­ground with her black gloves. “Col­or girl” is the tech­ni­cians’ term for her. The image is used as a met­ric for skin-col­or bal­ance, which tech­ni­cians use to ren­der an image as close as pos­si­ble to what the human eye rec­og­nizes as nor­mal. But there’s the rub: With a white body as a light meter, all oth­er skin tones become devi­a­tions from the norm.

This explains why the por­trait ses­sion McFadden’s mom set up in a shop­ping mall stu­dio chain yield­ed results so dis­as­trous that McFad­den instinc­tive­ly grav­i­tat­ed toward black-and-white when she start­ed tak­ing pic­tures. Grayscale did a much bet­ter job of sug­gest­ing the wide vari­ety of mul­ti­cul­tur­al skin tones than exist­ing col­or film.

In her 2009 paper “Look­ing at Shirley, the Ulti­mate Norm: Colour Bal­ance, Image Tech­nolo­gies and Cog­ni­tive Equi­ty,” Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies pro­fes­sor Lor­na Roth went into the chem­istry of inher­ent, if uncon­scious, racial bias. The poten­tial to rec­og­nize a spec­trum of yel­low, brown and red­dish skin tones was there, but the film com­pa­nies went with emul­sions that catered to the per­ceived needs of their tar­get con­sumers, whose hides were notice­ably lighter than those of black shut­ter­bugs also seek­ing to doc­u­ment their fam­i­ly vaca­tions, mile­stones, and cel­e­bra­tions.

Indus­try progress can be chalked up to pres­sure from ven­dors of wood fur­ni­ture and choco­late, who felt their dark prod­ucts could look bet­ter on film.

Oprah Win­frey and Black Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion were ear­ly adopters of cam­eras equipped with two com­put­er chips, thus enabling them to accu­rate­ly por­tray a vari­ety of indi­vid­ual tones simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Who knew that Amy Schumer sketch, below, would turn out to have such his­toric sig­nif­i­cance? Once you know about the Shirley card, the com­e­dy becomes even dark­er. Gen­er­a­tions of real brides and grooms, whose skin tones fell to either side of Schumer’s TV groom, DJ Ali Sha­heed Muham­mad of A Tribe Called Quest fame, failed to show up in their own wed­ding pho­tos, through no fault of their own.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­tographs of Snowflakes: Dis­cov­er the Ground­break­ing Micropho­tog­ra­phy of Wil­son “Snowflake” Bent­ley (1885)

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

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