Eudora Welty’s Handwritten Eggnog Recipe, and Charles Dickens’ Recipe for Holiday Punch

in Food & Drink, Letters, Life, Literature | December 22nd, 2017

’Tis the sea­son to break out the fam­i­ly recipes of beloved rel­a­tives, though often their prove­nance is not quite what we think.

(Imag­ine the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance upon dis­cov­er­ing that Moth­er swiped “her” Ital­ian Zuc­chi­ni Cres­cent Pie from Pills­bury Bake-Off win­ner, Mil­li­cent Nathan of Boca Raton, Flori­da…)

When it came to cred­it­ing the eggnog she dubbed “the taste of Christ­mas Day,” above, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Eudo­ra Wel­ty shared it out equal­ly between her moth­er and author Charles Dick­ens:

In our house while I was grow­ing up, I don’t remem­ber that hard liquor was served at all except on one day in the year. Ear­ly on Christ­mas morn­ing, we woke up to the sound of the egg­beat­er: Moth­er in the kitchen was whip­ping up eggnog. All in our bathrobes, we began our Christ­mas before break­fast. Through­out the day Moth­er made batch­es afresh. All our callers expect­ed her eggnog.

It was ladled from the punch bowl into punch cups and sil­ver gob­lets, and had to be eat­en with a spoon. It stood up in peaks. It was rich, creamy and strong. Moth­er gave full cred­it for the recipe to Charles Dick­ens.

Nice, but per­haps Dick­ens is unde­serv­ing of this hon­or? The con­tents of his punch­bowl bore lit­tle resem­blance to Moth­er Welty’s, as evi­denced by an 1847 let­ter to his child­hood friend, Amelia Fil­loneau, in which he shared a recipe he promised would make her “a beau­ti­ful Punch­mak­er in more sens­es than one”:

Peel into a very strong com­mon basin (which may be bro­ken, in case of acci­dent, with­out dam­age to the owner’s peace or pock­et) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin, and with as lit­tle as pos­si­ble of the white coat­ing between the peel and the fruit, attached. Add a dou­ble-hand­full of lump sug­ar (good mea­sure), a pint of good old rum, and a large wine-glass full of brandy — if it not be a large claret-glass, say two. Set this on fire, by fill­ing a warm sil­ver spoon with the spir­it, light­ing the con­tents at a wax taper, and pour­ing them gen­tly in. Let it burn for three or four min­utes at least, stir­ring it from time to Time. Then extin­guish it by cov­er­ing the basin with a tray, which will imme­di­ate­ly put out the flame. Then squeeze in the juice of the three lemons, and add a quart of boil­ing water. Stir the whole well, cov­er it up for five min­utes, and stir again.

This sounds very like the “seething bowls of punch” the jol­ly Ghost of Christ­mas Present shows Ebenez­er Scrooge in A Christ­mas Car­ol, dim­ming the cham­ber with their deli­cious steam.

It’s also veg­an, in con­trast to what you might have been served in the Wel­ty ladies’ home.

Why not serve both? In the words of Tiny Tim, “Here’s to us all!”

Eudo­ra Welty’s Mother’s Eggnog (Attrib­uted, Per­haps Erro­neous­ly, to Charles Dick­ens)

6 egg yolks, well beat­en

Add 3 tbsp. pow­dered sug­ar

Add 1 cup whiskey, added slow­ly, beat­ing all the while

Fold in 1 pint whipped cream

Whip 6 whipped egg whites and add to the mix­ture above.

Charles Dick­ens’ Hol­i­day Punch (adapt­ed from Punch by David Won­drich)

3/4 cup sug­ar

3 lemons

2 cups rum

1 1/4 cups cognac

5 cups black tea (or hot water)

Gar­nish: lemon and orange wheels, fresh­ly grat­ed nut­meg

In the basin of an enam­eled cast-iron pot or heat­proof bowl, add sug­ar and the peels of three lemons.

Rub lemons and sug­ar togeth­er to release cit­rus oils. For more greater infu­sion, let sit for 30 min­utes.

Add rum and cognac to the sug­ar and cit­rus.

Light a match, and, using a heat­proof spoon (stain­less steel is best), pick up a spoon­ful of the spir­it mix.

Care­ful­ly bring the match to the spoon to light.

Care­ful­ly bring the lit spoon to the spir­its in the bowl.

Let the spir­its burn for about three min­utes. The fire will melt the sug­ar and extract the oil from the lemon peels.

Extin­guish the bowl by cov­er­ing it with a heat­proof pan or tray.

Skim off the lemon peels (leav­ing them too long in may impart a bit­ter fla­vor).

Squeeze in the juice of the three peeled lemons, and add hot tea or water.

If serv­ing the punch hot, skip to the next step. If serv­ing cold, cool punch in the refrig­er­a­tor and, when cooled, add ice.

Gar­nish with cit­rus wheels and grat­ed nut­meg.

Ladle into indi­vid­ual glass­es.

Learn more about these and oth­er fes­tive hol­i­day drinks in Mas­ter of Wine Eliz­a­beth Gabay’s essay “Cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas and New Year With Punch.”

Image above via Gar­den and Gun

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Min­gus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog Recipe Con­tains “Enough Alco­hol to Put Down an Ele­phant”

Blue Christ­mas: Feed Your Sea­son­al Depres­sion with Hol­i­day Mas­ter­pieces

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

Salvador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reissued: Sensual Viticulture Meets Surreal Art

in Art, Books, Food & Drink | November 6th, 2017

Pop­u­lar food cul­ture is dom­i­nat­ed by sta­tus sym­bols of restau­rant-inspired con­sumer kitchen­ware and appli­ances, thanks in large part to real­i­ty tele­vi­sions shows about cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions which can make the prepa­ra­tion of haute cui­sine seem more acces­si­ble to the aver­age home chef than it may actu­al­ly be.

Many would argue, how­ev­er, that we’ve come a long way since the 70s, when the mass-mar­ket prod­ucts that held sway over best-sell­ing cook­ing guides went by names like Ham­burg­er Helper, Cool Whip, and Jel­lo. Back then, will­ful anachro­nism Sal­vador Dali stepped into this com­mer­cial land­scape with his 1973 cook­book Les Din­ers de Gala, offer­ing aris­to­crat­ic, extrav­a­gant recipes—next to even more extrav­a­gant art—with exot­ic ingre­di­ents often impos­si­ble to find at the local super­mar­ket both then and now.

Dali made it plain that his object was to bring back pure plea­sure to din­ing, the adven­tur­ous opu­lence he and his wife, Gala, so appre­ci­at­ed in their own out­sized social lives. A few years lat­er, Dali did the same thing with the fine-din­ing bev­er­age of choice, pub­lish­ing The Wines of Gala, an “eccen­tric guide to wine grapes and their ori­gin,” writes This is Colos­sal. The book’s “group­ings are appro­pri­ate imag­i­na­tive clas­si­fi­ca­tions.”

The Wines of Gala splits into two parts: “Ten Divine Dali Wines” and “Ten Gala Wines.” The lat­ter includes cat­e­gories like “Wines of Friv­o­li­ty,” “Wines of Joy,” “Wines of Sen­su­al­i­ty,” “Wines of Pur­pose,” and “Wines of Aes­theti­cism.” Among the Divine Dali Wines, we find “The Wine of King Minos,” “Lacrima Christi,” “Chateauneuf-du-Pape,” and “Sher­ry.” In an appen­dix, Dali sur­veys “Vine­yards of the World,” gen­er­al­ly, and “Vine­yards of France,” specif­i­cal­ly, and offers “Advice to the Wine-Lov­ing Gourmet.”

While some of Dali’s wine advice may go over our heads, maybe the real rea­son we’re drawn to his cook­book and wine guide is the art­work they con­tain with­in their pages, like­ly also the prin­ci­ple rea­son arts pub­lish­er Taschen has reis­sued both of these pub­li­ca­tions. The Wines of Gala is due out on Novem­ber 21, but you can pre-order a hard copy now (or find used copies of the orig­i­nal 1970s edi­tion here). In it you’ll find much bewitch­ing orig­i­nal art to com­ple­ment the pas­sion­ate descrip­tions of wine.

The “rich and extrav­a­gant wine bible fea­tures 140 illus­tra­tions by Dali,” notes Rebec­ca Ful­leylove. “Many of the art­works fea­tured are appro­pri­at­ed pieces, includ­ing… a work from Dali’s late Nuclear Mys­tic phase, The Sacra­ment of the Last Sup­per.” Even to this solemn affair, Dali brings “his abil­i­ty to seek out plea­sure and beau­ty in every­thing.”

via This is Colos­sal/It’s Nice That

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Sal­vador Dalí’s Melt­ing Clocks Paint­ed on a Lat­te

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

The Power of Introverts: Author Susan Cain Explains Why We Need to Appreciate the Talents & Abilities of the Quiet Ones

in Psychology, TED Talks | October 18th, 2017

Ours is a loud cul­ture of non­stop per­son­al shar­ing, end­less chat­ter, and 24-hour news, opin­ion, and enter­tain­ment. Even those peo­ple who pre­fer read­ing alone to the over­stim­u­lat­ing car­ni­val of social media feel pres­sured to par­tic­i­pate. How else can you keep up with your family—whose Face­book posts you’d rather see die than have to read? How else to build a pro­file for employers—whom you des­per­ate­ly hope won’t check your Twit­ter feed?

For the intro­vert, main­tain­ing an always-on façade can be pro­found­ly enervating—and the prob­lem goes far beyond the per­son­al, argues author Susan Cain, reach­ing into every area of our lives.

“If you take a group of peo­ple and put them into a meet­ing,” says Cain in the short RSA video above, “the opin­ions of the loud­est per­son, or the most charis­mat­ic per­son, or the most assertive person—those are the opin­ions that the group tends to fol­low.” This despite the fact that research shows “zero cor­re­la­tion” between being the loud­est voice in the room and hav­ing the best ideas. Don’t we know this all too well.

Cain is the author of Qui­et: The Pow­er of Intro­verts in a World That Can’t Stop Talk­ing, a book about lead­er­ship for intro­verts, the group least like­ly to want the social demands lead­er­ship requires. And yet, she argues, we nonethe­less need intro­verts as lead­ers. “We’re liv­ing in a soci­ety now that is so over­ly extro­vert­ed,” she says. Cain iden­ti­fies the phe­nom­e­non as a symp­tom of cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism over­com­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly agri­cul­tur­al ways of life. Aside from the sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion of whether we can change the cul­ture with­out chang­ing the econ­o­my, Cain makes a time­ly and com­pelling argu­ment for a soci­ety that val­ues dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty types equal­ly.

But can there be a “world where it’s yin and yang” between intro­verts and extro­verts? That depends, per­haps on how much cre­dence we lend these well-worn Jun­gian cat­e­gories, or whether we think of them as exist­ing in bina­ry oppo­si­tion rather than on a spec­trum, a cir­cle, a hexa­gram, or what­ev­er. Cain is not a psy­chol­o­gist but a for­mer cor­po­rate lawyer who at least seems to believe the bal­anc­ing act between extro­vert­ed and intro­vert­ed can be achieved in the cor­po­rate world. She has giv­en talks on “Net­work­ing for Intro­verts,” addressed the engi­neers at Google, and tak­en to the TED stage, the thought leader are­na that accom­mo­dates all kinds of per­son­al­i­ties, for bet­ter or worse.

Cain’s TED talk above may be one of the bet­ter ones. Open­ing with a mov­ing and fun­ny per­son­al nar­ra­tive, she walks us through the bar­rage of mes­sages intro­verts receive con­demn­ing their desire for qui­etude as some­how per­verse and self­ish. Nat­u­ral­ly soli­tary peo­ple are taught to think of their intro­ver­sion as “a sec­ond-class per­son­al­i­ty trait,” Cain writes in her book, “some­where between a dis­ap­point­ment and a pathol­o­gy.” Intro­verts must swim against the tide to be them­selves. “Our most impor­tant insti­tu­tions,” she says above, “our schools and our work­places, they are designed most­ly for extro­verts, and for extro­verts’ need for stim­u­la­tion.”

The bias is deep, reach­ing into the class­rooms of young chil­dren, who are now forced to do most of their work by com­mit­tee. But when intro­verts give in to the social pres­sure that forces them into awk­ward extro­vert­ed roles, the loss affects every­one. “At the risk of sound­ing grandiose,” Cain says, “when it comes to cre­ativ­i­ty and to lead­er­ship, we need intro­verts doing what they do best.” Para­dox­i­cal­ly, that can look like intro­verts tak­ing the helm, but out of a gen­uine sense of duty rather than a desire for the spot­light.

Intro­vert­ed lead­ers are more like­ly to share pow­er and give oth­ers space to express ideas, Cain argues. Gand­hi, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, and Rosa Parks exem­pli­fy such intro­vert­ed lead­er­ship, and a qui­eter, more bal­anced and thought­ful cul­ture would pro­duce more lead­ers like them. Maybe this is a propo­si­tion any­one can endorse, whether they pre­fer Fri­day nights with hot tea and a nov­el or in the crush and bus­tle of the crowds.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in a Rare Inter­view (1957)

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

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

The Hummingbird Whisperer: Meet the UCLA Scientist Who Has Befriended 200 Hummingbirds

in Environment, Life, Nature | October 6th, 2017

Com­mon wis­dom, and indeli­ble mem­o­ries of The Birds, warn that feed­ing seag­ulls, pigeons and oth­er crea­tures who trav­el in flocks is a can of worms best left unopened.

But what about hum­ming­birds?

Melanie Bar­boni is research geo­chemist in UCLA’s Depart­ment of Earth, Plan­e­tary and Space Sci­ences. Near the UCLA Court of Sci­ences she took a break from vol­canos and the moon long enough to hang a feed­er filled with sug­ar water out­side her ground floor office win­dow.

This com­pli­men­ta­ry buf­fet proved such a hit, she hung up more.

Two years lat­er, Bar­boni is serv­ing a colony of over 200 hum­ming­birds from four 80-ounce feed­ers. Their metab­o­lism requires them to con­sume 8 to 10 times their body weight on a dai­ly basis.

Barboni’s ser­vice to her tiny jew­el-toned friends extends well beyond the feed­ers. She’s divert­ed cam­pus tree trim­mers from inter­fer­ing with them dur­ing nest­ing sea­son, and giv­en pub­lic talks on the habi­tat-destroy­ing effects of cli­mate change. She’s col­lab­o­rat­ing with anoth­er pro­fes­sor and UCLA’s Chief Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Offi­cer Nurit Katz to estab­lish a spe­cial gar­den on cam­pus for hum­ming­birds and their fel­low pol­li­na­tors.

The inti­ma­cy of this rela­tion­ship is some­thing she’s dreamed of since her bird­watch­ing child­hood in Switzer­land where the only hum­ming­birds avail­able for her view­ing were the ones in books. Her dream came true when a fel­low­ship took her from Prince­ton to Los Ange­les, where hum­ming­birds live year-round.

Some long­time favorites now perch on their benefactor’s hand while feed­ing, or even per­mit them­selves to be held and stroked. A few like to hang out inside the office, where the warm glow of Barboni’s com­put­er mon­i­tor is a com­fort­ing pres­ence on inclement days.

She’s bestowed names on at least 50: Squeak, Star­dust, Tiny, Shy…

(Show of hands from those who wish she’d named them all after not­ed geol­o­gists: Mary Anning, Eugene Mer­le Shoe­mak­er, Cecil­ia Hele­na Payne-Gaposchkin…)

Get to know the UCLA hum­ming­birds bet­ter through Melanie Barboni’s up-close-and-per­son­al doc­u­men­tary pho­tos. Learn more about the species itself through the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary below.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Free Enter­tain­ment for Cats and Dogs: Videos of Birds, Squir­rels & Oth­er Thrills

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

Watch Brian Eno’s Experimental Film “The Ship,” Made with Artificial Intelligence

in Art, Music, Technology | September 27th, 2017

“How is Bri­an Eno still find­ing unchart­ed waters after half a cen­tu­ry spent mak­ing music?” asked The Verge’s Jamieson Cox after the release of Eno’s 25th album, The Ship. Call­ing it a “dark near-mas­ter­piece,” The Onion’s A.V. Club expressed sim­i­lar aston­ish­ment. The album “can hold its own among the very best in a career full of bril­liant work…. Forty-one years after Anoth­er Green World, Eno is still for­ag­ing for new musi­cal ground, and what he’s able to come up with is noth­ing short of mirac­u­lous. When lis­ten­ing to The Ship, we get the sense that he will nev­er stop.”

Should you think that an exag­ger­a­tion, note that since The Ship, Eno has already released yet anoth­er crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed ambi­ent album, Reflec­tion—like its pre­de­ces­sor, a somber sound­track for somber times. And like anoth­er end­less­ly pro­duc­tive mul­ti­me­dia artist of his gen­er­a­tion, Lau­rie Ander­son, Eno hasn’t only con­tin­ued to make work that feels deeply con­nect­ed to the moment, but he has adapt­ed to wave after wave of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, this time around, har­ness­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to cre­ate a “gen­er­a­tive film” drawn from The Ship’s title track (below).

You can see a trail­er for the film at the top of the post, but this hard­ly does the expe­ri­ence jus­tice, since each viewer’s—or user’s—expe­ri­ence of it will be dif­fer­ent. As Pitch­fork describes the project: “On a web­site, ‘The Ship’ plays, and the user can click on tweets of news sto­ries, which appear along­side his­tor­i­cal pho­tos.” The film uti­lizes “a bespoke arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gramme,” the site explains, “devel­oped by the Dentsu Lab Tokyo,” explor­ing “var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal pho­to­graph­ic images and real-time news feeds to com­pose a col­lec­tive pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry of humankind.” (Dentsu received a pres­ti­gious prize nom­i­na­tion from the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion for their work.)

It’s a con­cep­tu­al­ly grandiose project—which makes sense giv­en its source mate­r­i­al. The Ship, the musi­cal project, takes its inspi­ra­tion from the Titan­ic, “the ship that could nev­er sink,” Eno told The New York Times, “and… the First World War was the war that we couldn’t pos­si­bly lose—this men­tal­i­ty suf­fused pow­er­ful men. They get this idea that, ‘We’re unstop­pable, so there­fore, we’ll go ahead and do it….’ And they can’t.” Eno con­tin­ues in this vein of trag­ic explo­ration with the film, remark­ing in a state­ment:

Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and para­noia: the hubris of our ever-grow­ing pow­er con­trasts with the para­noia that we’re per­ma­nent­ly and increas­ing­ly under threat. At the zenith we realise we have to come down again… we know that we have more than we deserve or can defend, so we become ner­vous. Some­body, some­thing is going to take it all from us: that is the dread of the wealthy. Para­noia leads to defen­sive­ness, and we all end up in the trench­es fac­ing each oth­er across the mud.

The inter­ac­tive visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion takes these themes even fur­ther, ask­ing how much we as spec­ta­tors of hubris and para­noia are com­plic­it in per­pet­u­at­ing them, or per­haps chang­ing and shap­ing their direc­tion through tech­nol­o­gy: “Does the machine intel­li­gence pro­duce a point of view inde­pen­dent of its mak­ers or its view­ers? Or are we—human and machine—ultimately co-cre­at­ing new and unex­pect­ed mean­ings?”

You be the judge. See your own per­son­al­ized ver­sion of Eno’s The Ship film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Lau­rie Ander­son Intro­duces Her Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Lets You Fly Mag­i­cal­ly Through Sto­ries

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

Musician Taryn Southern Is Composing Her New Album with Artificial Intelligence: Hear the First Track

in Music, Technology | September 21st, 2017

“Break Free” is a new song by Taryn and Amper. The for­mer, Taryn South­ern, is a musi­cian and singer pop­u­lar on Youtube. The lat­ter, how­ev­er, is not human at all. Instead, Amper is an arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent music com­pos­er, pro­duc­er and per­former, devel­oped by a com­bi­na­tion of “music and tech­nol­o­gy experts” and now put to the test, being the engine behind Taryn’s sin­gle and even­tu­al­ly a full album, ten­ta­tive­ly called I AM AI.

To under­stand what is Taryn and what is Amper in this project, the singer talks about it in this Verge inter­view:

The way it works is to give the plat­form cer­tain input like BPM, instru­men­ta­tion that I like, genre, key, etc. The plat­form will spit a song out at me, and then I can iter­ate from there, mak­ing adjust­ments to the instru­ments and the key. I can even change the genre or emo­tion­al feel or the song, until I get some­thing that I’m rel­a­tive­ly hap­py with. Once I have that, I down­load all the stems of the instru­men­ta­tion to build actu­al song struc­ture.

What Amper’s real­ly good at is com­pos­ing and pro­duc­ing instru­men­ta­tion, but it doesn’t yet under­stand song struc­ture. It might give you a verse or the cho­rus and it’s up to me to stitch these pieces togeth­er so that it sounds like some­thing famil­iar you would hear on the radio. Once I’m hap­py with the song, then I write the vocal melody and lyrics.

The key sen­tence for cyn­ics is the sec­ond to last one. Amper deliv­ers the famil­iar, or rather, Taryn makes Amper work until she gets some­thing famil­iar. AI is not at the stage yet where it might sur­prise us with a deci­sion, except in the cas­es where it goes spec­tac­u­lar­ly wrong. Right now it’s very good at learn­ing pat­terns, at imi­tat­ing, at deliv­er­ing a vari­a­tion on a theme. (That’s why it’s real­ly good at imi­ta­tion Bach, for exam­ple.)

We could imag­ine, how­ev­er, a future where AI would be able to take a num­ber of musi­cal ele­ments, styles, and gen­res and come out with a hybrid that we’ve nev­er heard before. And would that be any bet­ter than hav­ing a human do so?

By the way, you can try out Amper your­self here. Your mileage may vary.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear What Music Sounds Like When It’s Cre­at­ed by Syn­the­siz­ers Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The Sex Pistols Make a Scandalous Appearance on the Bill Grundy Show & Introduce Punk Rock to the Startled Masses (1976)

in Music, Television | September 19th, 2017

The brain­less­ness and hypocrisy of tele­vi­sion has long been a source of fun and social com­men­tary in punk rock—from Black Flag’s “TV Par­ty” (“I don’t even both­er to use my brain any­more”) to the Dead Kennedys’ “M.T.V. –Get Off the Air” (“… feed­ing you end­less dos­es / of sug­ar-coat­ed mind­less garbage”). It’s fit­ting then that one of the sem­i­nal moments in punk his­to­ry hap­pened on tele­vi­sion, orches­trat­ed by Sex Pis­tols man­ag­er and arch provo­ca­teur Mal­colm McLaren, who knew as well as any­one how to manip­u­late the media. The noto­ri­ous Bill Grundy inter­view, which you can watch—likely not for the first or even sec­ond time—above, rock­et­ed the Sex Pis­tols to nation­al infamy overnight, sim­ply because of a few swear words and some slight­ly rude behav­ior.

Though the U.S. does its damn­d­est to keep up these days, no one in 1976 could match the out­rage machin­ery of the UK press. As rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er and man­ag­er Leee Black Childers put it in the oral his­to­ry of punk, Please Kill Me, the tabloids “can work the pop­u­lace into a fren­zy.” McLaren goes on record to say, “I knew the Bill Grundy show was going to cre­ate a huge scan­dal. I gen­uine­ly believed it would be his­to­ry in the mak­ing.” We might expect him to take cred­it after the fact, but in any case, it worked: the day after the band’s appear­ance on the Grundy-host­ed Today show on Thames Tele­vi­sion, every tabloid paper fea­tured them on the front page. The Dai­ly Mir­ror pro­vid­ed the title of Julien Temple’s 2000 doc­u­men­tary with their clever head­line, “The Filth and the Fury.”

Even in 2008, a sur­vey showed the Grundy inter­view as the most request­ed clip in UK tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. With all this hype, you might be dis­ap­point­ed if you’re one of the few who hasn’t seen it. Though f‑bombs on TV can still cause a minor stir, a few mum­bled curse words will hard­ly gar­ner the kind of pub­lic­i­ty they did forty years ago. McLaren claims punk rock began that day on the Today show, and that’s true, at least, for the view­ing pub­lic who would have been treat­ed to an appear­ance from Queen if Fred­die Mer­cury hadn’t devel­oped a crip­pling toothache. Instead, they were intro­duced to Paul Cook in a Vivi­enne West­wood naked breasts t‑shirt, and Glen Mat­lock, Steve Jones, and John­ny Rot­ten toss­ing insults at Grundy, who egged them on, hit on the teenage Siouxsie Sioux, part of the band’s entourage, and may have been drunk, though he denied it.

It may be one of the least wit­ty exchanges in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry, and that’s say­ing a lot. But for all the pearl-clutch­ing over the band’s cru­di­ty, it’s maybe Grundy who comes off look­ing the worse. More inter­est­ing than the inter­view itself is the hyper­bol­ic fall­out, as well as what hap­pened imme­di­ate­ly after­ward. The sta­tion was flood­ed with com­plaints, and for some rea­son, its tele­phone sys­tem rerout­ed unan­swered calls to the green room, where the band and their fol­low­ers had decamped. “A pro­duc­er on the pro­gramme ignored instruc­tions to remain in the room,” notes Jon Ben­nett at Team Rock. “The result? The group start­ed answer­ing the phones and dish­ing out even more abuse. How this evad­ed the press at the time remains a mys­tery.” Indeed. It’s doubt­ful McLaren could have planned it, but the image evokes the sneer of every punk who has ever spit on the pious insis­tence that TV spoon­feed its view­ers mid­dle-class deco­rum with their adver­tis­ing, sports, wish-ful­fill­ing fan­tasies, and info­tain­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

The Sex Pis­tols Play in Dal­las’ Long­horn Ball­room; Next Show Is Mer­le Hag­gard (1978)

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson is Creating a New Space Exploration Video Game with the Help of George R.R. Martin & Neil Gaiman

in Astronomy, Games, Science | August 25th, 2017

Although Neil deGrasse Tyson is some­what hes­i­tant to go in on plans to ter­raform and col­o­nize Mars, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like a good ol’–yet science-based–video game. Sev­er­al out­lets announced recent­ly that the videogame Space Odyssey, spear­head­ed by deGrasse Tyson–one of America’s main defend­ers of log­ic and Enlightenment–has sur­passed its Kick­starter fund­ing goal. The game promis­es to send play­ers on “real sci­ence-based mis­sions to explore space, col­o­nize plan­ets, cre­ate and mod in real time.”

In the game, accord­ing to deGrasse Tyson, “you con­trol the for­ma­tion of plan­ets, of comets, of life, civ­i­liza­tion. You could maybe tweak the force of grav­i­ty and see what effect that might have.” It will be, he says, “an explo­ration into the laws of physics and how they shape the world in which we live.”

The game has been form­ing for sev­er­al years now, and most impor­tant­ly to our read­ers, has called in sev­er­al sci-fi and fan­ta­sy writ­ers to help cre­ate the var­i­ous worlds in the game, as they have apt­ly demon­strat­ed their skills in doing so on the print­ed page. That includes George R.R. Mar­tin, cur­rent­ly ignor­ing what­ev­er HBO is doing to his cre­ation Game of Thrones; Neil Gaiman, who cre­ates a new uni­verse every time he drops a new nov­el; and Len Wein, who has had a hand in cre­at­ing both DC’s Swamp Thing and Marvel’s Wolver­ine. Also on board: deGrasse Tyson’s bud­dy Bill Nye, for­mer NASA astro­naut Mike Mas­simi­no, and astro­physi­cist Charles Liu.

The idea of world/­galaxy-build­ing is not new in video games, espe­cial­ly recent­ly. No Man’s Sky (2015) fea­tures “eigh­teen quin­til­lion full-fea­tured plan­ets” and Minecraft seems lim­it­less. But Space Odyssey (still a tem­po­rary title!) is the first to have deGrasse Tyson and friends work­ing the con­trols in the back­ground. And a game is as good as the vision­ar­ies behind it.

Accord­ing to the Kick­starter page, the raised funds will go into “the abil­i­ty to have this com­mu­ni­ty play the game and engage with it while the final build is under­way. As the Kick­starter gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty begins to beta test game-play and pro­vide feed­back, we can begin to use the funds raised via Kick­starter to incor­po­rate your mod­ding, map­ping and build­ing sug­ges­tions, togeth­er build­ing the awe­some gam­ing expe­ri­ence you helped to cre­ate.”

DeGrasse Tyson will be in the game him­self, urg­ing play­ers onward. There’s no indi­ca­tion whether Mr. Mar­tin will be pop­ping up, though.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Because of Pink Floyd, I’ve Spent Decades Undo­ing the Idea That There’s a Dark Side of the Moon”

David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Impor­tance of an Arts Edu­ca­tion (and How It Strength­ens Sci­ence & Civ­i­liza­tion)

Are We Liv­ing in a Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tion?: A 2‑Hour Debate with Neil Degrasse Tyson, David Chalmers, Lisa Ran­dall, Max Tegmark & More

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.

Figures from Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

in Art, Creativity | August 25th, 2017

Piñatas are a night­mare.

Oh sure, they look fes­tive, but seri­ous­ly, think twice before arm­ing a blind­fold­ed child (or a beer guz­zling adult guest) with a stur­dy stick and encour­ag­ing him to swing wild­ly.

There’s no need to wor­ry, how­ev­er, about any­one tak­ing a bat to the intri­cate Hierony­mus Bosch-inspired piñatas of Rober­to Benavidez, a self-described half-breed, South Tex­an, queer fig­u­ra­tive sculp­tor.

Even if you filled them with can­dy, the exte­ri­ors would be far more valu­able than any trea­sures con­tained with­in.

Bosch, of course, excelled at sce­nar­ios far more night­mar­ish than any­thing one might encounter in a back­yard par­ty. Benavidez seems less drawn to that aspect than the beau­ty of the fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures pop­u­lat­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

In fact, the major­i­ty of his papi­er-mâché homages are drawn from the par­a­disi­a­cal left pan­el of the famous trip­tych.

Not so the first in the series, 2013’s superbly titled Piña­ta of Earth­ly Delights #1, above

In the orig­i­nal, a mis­shapen water­bird uses its long beak to spear a cher­ry with which it tempts a pas­sel of weak-willed mor­tals, crowd­ed togeth­er inside a spiky pink blos­som.

In Benavidez’s ver­sion the lack of naked humans allows us to focus on the crea­ture, whose beak now pierces a sim­ple star-shaped piña­ta of its own.

Those with a fas­ci­na­tion for the antics of Bosch’s par­ty peo­ple are invit­ed to play a vari­a­tion of Where’s Wal­do, scour­ing the paint­ing for the inspi­ra­tion behind Can­dy Ass Bot­tom, above.

(Hint: if you’re grav­i­tat­ing toward those pos­te­ri­ors serv­ing as ves­sels for flutes, flocks of black­birds, or red hot pok­ers, you’re get­ting cold­er…)

While lit­tle is known about Bosch’s artis­tic train­ing, Benavidez majored in act­ing, before return­ing to his child­hood fas­ci­na­tion for sculpt­ing, tak­ing class­es in draw­ing, paint­ing, and bronze cast­ing at Pasade­na City Col­lege. Thrift and porta­bil­i­ty led him to begin explor­ing paper as his pri­ma­ry medi­um.

As he remarked on the blog of the crepe paper man­u­fac­tur­er Car­totec­ni­ca Rossi:

I was intrigued by the idea of tak­ing the piña­ta form, some­thing seen as cheap and dis­pos­able, and mov­ing it into the are­na of fine art.  I feel that my sculp­tur­al forms and fring­ing tech­niques set my work apart from what most peo­ple think of as a typ­i­cal piña­ta and the themes are more com­plex than is typ­i­cal.

Def­i­nite­ly.

View more of Rober­to Benavidez’ fine art piñatas, includ­ing those inspired by Hierony­mus Bosch on his web­site or Insta­gram feed.

via This Is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

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

The Web Site “Centuries of Sound” is Making a Mixtape for Every Year of Recorded Sound from 1860 to Present

in History, Music | August 24th, 2017

The vibra­tions of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Ele­vat­ed Rail­road in Man­hat­tan, a recita­tion of “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb,” the announce­ments issu­ing forth from an inven­tor’s attempt at a talk­ing clock — hard­ly a mix with which to get the par­ty start­ed, but one that pro­vides the clos­est expe­ri­ence we can get to trav­el­ing in a son­ic time machine. With Cen­turies of Sound, James Erring­ton has assem­bled those record­ings and a few oth­ers into its 1878–1885 mix, an ear­ly chap­ter in his project of cre­at­ing one lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence for each year in the his­to­ry of record­ed sound.

“Things get a lit­tle more lis­ten­able in 1887 with a record­ing of ‘Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star,’ ” writes The A.V. Club’s Matt Ger­ar­di. “It’s also with this third mix that we start to get a sense for Cen­turies Of Sound’s edit­ing style, as speech­es start to be lay­ered over musi­cal per­for­mances, cre­at­ing a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence that’s as plea­sur­able as it is edu­ca­tion­al.”

In so doing, “Erring­ton calls atten­tion to the issue of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, as one of his pri­ma­ry goals is to paint a glob­al, mul­ti-cul­tur­al pic­ture of record­ing his­to­ry,” dig­ging past all the “march­ing bands, sen­ti­men­tal bal­lads, nov­el­ty instru­men­tals and noth­ing much else” in the his­tor­i­cal archives while putting out the call for expert help sourc­ing and eval­u­at­ing “Rem­beti­ka, ear­ly micro­ton­al record­ings, French polit­i­cal speech­es, Tagore songs or any­thing else.”

Putting up anoth­er year’s mix each month, Cen­turies of Sound has so far made it up to 1893, the year of the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion in Chica­go which “set the tone for the next twen­ty-five years of archi­tec­ture, arts, cul­ture and the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the world,” and also the first age of “ ‘hits’ – music pro­duced with an eye to sell­ing, even if only as a sou­venir or a fun nov­el­ty.” With a decade remain­ing until Cen­turies of Sound catch­es up with the present moment, Erring­ton has put togeth­er a taste of what its son­ic dose of the almost-present will sound like with a 2016 pre­view mix fea­tur­ing the likes of the final album by A Tribe Called Quest and Lazarus, the musi­cal by David Bowie, both of whom took their final bows last year. We’re def­i­nite­ly a long way from the time of “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb.” But how will it all sound to the ears of 2027?

via The A.V. Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City Dur­ing the Roar­ing 20s

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.