Explore Harvard’s Iconic Spaces with 360° Interactive Videos

in Education, Harvard, Life, Technology, Travel, Web/Tech | June 15th, 2016

For me, noth­ing cap­tures those occa­sion­al feel­ings of post-grad­u­ate yearn­ing like “I Wish I Could Go Back to Col­lege,” a N‑quite-SFW track from the Broad­way musi­cal, Avenue Q.

With all due respect, it feels like the five mem­bers of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s just-grad­u­at­ed Class of 2016 shar­ing their rec­ol­lec­tions in the inter­ac­tive 360° video project, Har­vard Stu­dents Say Farewell, left a few cru­cial details out. (Note: Youtube 360 videos only work in Chrome, Fire­fox, Inter­net Explor­er, or Opera browsers.)

It’s com­plete­ly safe for prospec­tive par­ents, not a keg or con­dom wrap­per in sight. (The project is host­ed on Harvard’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel.)

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Har­vard appears to have been the par­tic­i­pants’ uni­ver­sal first choice of col­lege. Hasty Pud­ding per­former, Joshuah Camp­bell, above, a self-described “Black kid from the coun­try,” con­fides that it was the only place he applied to.

He may have arrived won­der­ing how he would fit in, but four years lat­er, his grub­by dorm room is one of the “icon­ic” Har­vard loca­tions view­ers can explore dig­i­tal­ly as he briefly reflects upon his expe­ri­ence.

That’s about as down and dirty as this series gets. The human sub­jects seem to have been select­ed with an eye toward diver­si­ty and humil­i­ty, rather than the clenched Boston Brah­min jaw that once defined the insti­tu­tion.

Mean­while, the libraries, quads, and the­aters through which this new breed of Har­vard men and women wan­der attest to the place’s ongo­ing exclu­siv­i­ty.

Sree­ja Kala­pu­rakkel, above, a mem­ber of the Har­vard South Asian Dance Com­pa­ny, knew what she was get­ting into, as a stu­dent at a respect­ed Boston sec­ondary school. Short­ly after grad­u­a­tion, she sung Har­vard’s prais­es some­what more frankly on her Face­book page:

Each day of my time at Har­vard was filled with every­thing that makes life beau­ti­ful: dark­ness, strug­gle, despair, lone­li­ness, friend­ship, hope, per­se­ver­ance, light. Every expe­ri­ence, every les­son, every friend trans­formed me into some­one more human and gave me some­thing new to fight for.

Har­vard, like every oth­er col­lege in the land, has relaxed its pol­i­cy on end­ing a sen­tence in a prepo­si­tion.

Ana-Maria Con­stan­tin arrived sight unseen from her native Roma­nia to pull us out onto the deck of the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry.

On to the lock­er room! Hock­ey cap­tain Kyle Criscuo­lo joins the Detroit Red Wings, reflect­ing that Har­vard stu­dent ath­letes enjoy no spe­cial treat­ment. In future, the uni­ver­si­ty may want to require them to lis­ten to Will Stephen’s lec­ture, “How to Sound Smart in a TED Talk.” Criscuo­lo sounds sin­cere, but also stiff, as if read­ing from a sheet of paper, or the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent there­of.

(There­of is an adverb, by the way. Not a prepo­si­tion. I checked.)

Har­vard Art Muse­ums Stu­dent Board mem­ber Rachel Thomp­son paints her­self so meek­ly, I’m tempt­ed to check with her fresh­man year room­mate. Was she real­ly so filled with self doubt? I’ve always assumed Har­vard accep­tance let­ters would puff the recip­i­ent up. Good lord, imag­ine the effect the rejec­tion let­ters must have!

Use a mouse to explore the immer­sive envi­ron­ment on your com­put­er, or the YouTube app to nav­i­gate on a mobile device. Use a vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­set and the Har­vard Crim­son staff’s vocab­u­lary list to enhance the expe­ri­ence even more.

The com­plete playlist is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

The Har­vard Clas­sics: Down­load All 51 Vol­umes as Free eBooks

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and a North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty grad. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The History of Electronic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Catalogues the Theremin, Fairlight & Other Instruments That Revolutionized Music

in Music, Technology | June 15th, 2016

Hang around this site long enough and you’ll learn a thing or two about elec­tron­ic music, whether it’s a very brief his­to­ry of the Moog syn­the­siz­er, or the Theremin, or an enor­mous, obscure ancient ances­tor, the Tel­har­mo­ni­um. These mini-lessons are dwarfed, how­ev­er, by the amount of infor­ma­tion you’ll find on the site 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music, where­in you can read about such strange crea­tures as the Choral­celo, the Stac­ca­tone, the Pianorad, Cellu­phone, Elec­tronde, and Vibroex­pona­tor. Such odd­i­ties abound in the very long his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ments, which the site defines as “instru­ments that gen­er­ate sounds from a pure­ly elec­tron­ic source rather than elec­tro-mechan­i­cal­ly or elec­tro-acousti­cal­ly.”

Despite these rather strict tech­ni­cal para­me­ters, the site’s author Simon Crab admits that the bound­aries “do become blurred with, say, Tone Wheel Gen­er­a­tors and tape manip­u­la­tion of the Musique Con­crete era.” Then there are pre­cur­sor instru­ments that pre­date the dis­cov­ery and har­ness­ing of elec­tric­i­ty, such as the Clavecin Mag­ne­tique, above, invent­ed by Abbé Bertholon de Saint-Lazare in 1789, a “sim­ple instru­ment which pro­duced sounds by attract­ing met­al clap­pers to strike tuned bells by rais­ing and low­er­ing mag­nets oper­at­ed by a key­board.”

Yet the pri­ma­ry focus of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music is a peri­od of growth and devel­op­ment from the late 1800s to the 1970s, when ear­ly dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers like the Fairlight (top) appeared. Thus, we should not expect here “an exhaus­tive list of recent com­mer­cial syn­the­siz­ers or soft­ware packages”—the stuff of mod­ern dance, pop, hip-hop, etc. Crab’s intent is aca­d­e­m­ic, “ency­clo­pe­dic, ped­a­gog­i­cal,” and pitched to musi­col­o­gists as well as “Syn­the­siz­er Geeks” like­ly to appre­ci­ate the niceties of the 1961 DIMI & Helsin­ki Elec­tron­ic Music Stu­dio.

But even non-aca­d­e­mics and non-geeks can learn much from the his­to­ry of such unusu­al instru­ments as the Klaviatur­sphäraphon (above), one of sev­er­al cre­ations of Ger­man com­pos­er Jörg Mager in his pur­suit of “a new type of utopi­an ‘free’ music by means of new elec­tron­ic cath­ode-ray musi­cal instru­ments.”

Amidst the weird obscu­ri­ties and high-con­cept musi­cal the­o­ry, you’ll also find old favorites that rev­o­lu­tion­ized pop music, like the Ham­mond Organ (see a mak­ing-of pro­mo­tion­al video above), the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Moog syn­the­siz­ers, and of course the Fairlight CMI (short for Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment). Invent­ed by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel in Aus­tralia in 1979, the Fairlight is affec­tion­ate­ly known as the “moth­er of all sam­plers,” and its tech­nol­o­gy jump­start­ed the rev­o­lu­tion in com­put­er music from the 80s to today. You can see Vogel demon­strate the first ver­sion of his Fairlight in this video, or—for a slight­ly less geeky intro—see Peter Gabriel demon­strate it below (or watch Her­bie Han­cock and Quin­cy Jones show you how it’s done in a clip from Sesame Street.)

The Ham­mond, Moogs, and Fairlight aside, very few of the instru­ments fea­tured on 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music had any kind of direct impact on pop­u­lar music. But many of them, like Hugh Le Caine’s 1945 Elec­tron­ic Sack­but, influ­enced the influ­encers, and they all rep­re­sent some evo­lu­tion­ary step for­ward, or side­ways, in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we hear all around us now in every pos­si­ble genre.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Crab’s his­tor­i­cal project explores what he calls “the dichoto­my between rad­i­cal cul­ture and rad­i­cal social change,” with dis­cus­sions on the links between Bol­she­vism and the avant-garde and mod­ernism and fascism—discussions of keen inter­est to cul­tur­al his­to­ri­ans and crit­i­cal the­o­rists. Oh, and the name? “The project,” Crab explains, “was begun in 1996; con­sid­er­ing elec­tron­ic music start­ed around 1880 this was quite an accu­rate title for the time.” It’s now “a bit out of date but… some­thing of a brand-name.” We’ll for­give him this minor chrono­log­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cy for the tremen­dous ser­vice his open access ency­clo­pe­dia offers to schol­ars and enthu­si­asts alike. Explore it here.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear the Great­est Hits of Isao Tomi­ta (RIP), the Father of Japan­ese Elec­tron­ic Music

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

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

Filmmaker Ken Burns Urges Stanford Graduates to Defeat Trump & the Retrograde Forces Threatening the U.S.

in Graduation Speech, History, Politics | June 14th, 2016

This time of year, we see grad­u­a­tion speech­es pop­ping up all over the web. The com­mence­ment address as a genre focus­es on the oppor­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges, and respon­si­bil­i­ties grad­u­ates will face post-col­lege, and often espous­es time­less life lessons and philoso­phies. But this year, as you may have seen, esteemed doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Ken Burns took the oppor­tu­ni­ty of his grad­u­a­tion speech, pre­sent­ed to the 2016 class at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, to address the timeli­est of issues: the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and the threat of “an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism.” The grad­u­a­tion just hap­pened to fall on the same day as the dead­liest mass-shoot­ing in recent Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Vot­ers are angry at the sys­tem, we’re told again and again, and frankly the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have every rea­son to be. But anger can be intox­i­cat­ing, and the seg­ment of the elec­torate that car­ried Don­ald Trump to pow­er seems drunk with rage and hos­til­i­ty. The promise of Trump­ism puts me in mind of his­to­ri­an and crit­ic Richard Slotkin’s clas­sic study of U.S. mythol­o­gy, Regen­er­a­tion Through Vio­lence, which describes the nation’s com­pul­sion to purge the coun­try of threat­en­ing oth­ers in order to restore some myth of lost inno­cence. “I will give you every­thing, I’m the only one,” the can­di­date vows, while scape­goat­ing group after group for the coun­try’s prob­lems.

In his Stan­ford com­mence­ment speech on Sun­day, Burns decried “the dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies of the can­di­date with zero expe­ri­ence in the much maligned but sub­tle art of gov­er­nance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for any­thing, offer­ing only bom­bas­tic and con­tra­dic­to­ry promis­es and ter­ri­fy­ing Orwellian state­ments.” The Repub­li­can can­di­date for pres­i­dent is “a per­son,” Burns said in his impas­sioned speech, “who eas­i­ly lies, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where truth doesn’t seem to mat­ter.”

As a stu­dent of his­to­ry, I rec­og­nize this type. He emerges every­where and in all eras. We see nur­tured in his cam­paign an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism, a nativist anti-immi­grant Know Noth­ing-ism, a dis­re­spect for the judi­cia­ry, the prospect of women los­ing author­i­ty over their own bod­ies, African-Amer­i­cans again asked to go to the back of the line, vot­er sup­pres­sion glee­ful­ly pro­mot­ed, jin­go­is­tic saber-rat­tling, a total lack of his­tor­i­cal aware­ness, a polit­i­cal para­noia that, pre­dictably, points fin­gers, always mak­ing the oth­er wrong. These are all vir­u­lent strains that have at times infect­ed us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again — all hap­pen­ing at once. We know from our his­to­ry books that these are the dis­eases of ancient and now fall­en empires. The sense of com­mon­wealth, of shared sac­ri­fice, of trust, so much a part of Amer­i­can life, is erod­ing fast, spurred along and ampli­fied by an amoral inter­net that per­mits a lie to cir­cle the globe three times before the truth can get start­ed.

We no longer have the lux­u­ry of neu­tral­i­ty or “bal­ance,” or even of bemused dis­dain. Many of our media insti­tu­tions have large­ly failed to expose this char­la­tan, torn between a nag­ging respon­si­bil­i­ty to good jour­nal­ism and the big rat­ings a media cir­cus always deliv­ers. In fact, they have giv­en him the abun­dant air­time he so des­per­ate­ly craves, so much so that it has actu­al­ly worn down our nat­ur­al human revul­sion to this kind of behav­ior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing some­thing right. He is not. Edward R. Mur­row would have exposed this naked emper­or months ago. He is an insult to our his­to­ry. Do not be deceived by his momen­tary “good behav­ior.” It is only a spoiled, mis­be­hav­ing child hop­ing some­how to still have dessert.

And do not think that the tragedy in Orlan­do under­scores his points. It does not. We must “dis­en­thrall our­selves,” as Abra­ham Lin­coln said, from the cul­ture of vio­lence and guns. And then “we shall save our coun­try.”

The words of Lin­coln that Burns quotes come from the president’s annu­al remarks to con­gress in 1862, in which Lin­coln made the case for the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, one month before sign­ing it. (A doc­u­ment, iron­i­cal­ly, that Slotkin says “rad­i­cal­ly expand­ed the exist­ing pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy” in its pur­suit of a just cause.) In his address, Lin­coln makes a force­ful moral argu­ment, all the more elo­quent for its char­ac­ter­is­tic brevi­ty.

Fel­low-cit­i­zens, we can­not escape his­to­ry. We of this Con­gress and this admin­is­tra­tion, will be remem­bered in spite of our­selves. No per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance, or insignif­i­cance, can spare one or anoth­er of us.

Like­wise, Burns—addressing future lead­ers at an elite institution—makes his case for heed­ing the lessons of his­to­ry, con­sid­er­ing pos­ter­i­ty, and reject­ing Trump, inde­pen­dent of par­ti­san inter­ests: “This is not a lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive issue, a red state-blue state divide. This is an Amer­i­can issue.” He also implores “those ‘Vichy Repub­li­cans’ who have endorsed him to please, please recon­sid­er.” The hor­rif­ic mass mur­der in Orlan­do has fur­ther inflamed what Burns calls “the trou­bling, unfil­tered Tourette’s of [Trump’s] tribalism”—with renewed calls for bans on all Mus­lims, more inflam­ma­to­ry insin­u­a­tions that the pres­i­dent col­ludes with ter­ror­ists, and bizarre alle­ga­tions that a Clin­ton aide is a Sau­di agent.

Trump did not invent this rhetoric of big­otry, con­spir­a­cy, and para­noia, but he has manip­u­lat­ed and exploit­ed it more effec­tive­ly than any­one else, to poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous effect. “The next few months of your ‘com­mence­ment,’ ” Burns says, “that is to say, your future, will be crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of our repub­lic.” He urges the grad­u­at­ing Stan­ford class to take action: “before you do any­thing with your well-earned degree, you must do every­thing you can to defeat the ret­ro­grade forces that have invad­ed our demo­c­ra­t­ic process.” Those process­es may already be deeply com­pro­mised by mon­eyed inter­ests, but destroy­ing the edi­fice on which they’re built, Burns sug­gests, will hard­ly restore any sup­pos­ed­ly lost “great­ness.” Watch Burns’ full com­mence­ment speech above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Burns on the Art of Sto­ry­telling: “It’s Lying Twen­ty-Four Times a Sec­ond”

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Prince­ton His­to­ri­an Sean Wilentz on How Trump May Change (If Not Destroy) the GOP

J.K. Rowl­ing Defends Don­ald Trump’s Right to Be “Offen­sive and Big­ot­ed”

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

Malcolm Gladwell Has Launched a New Podcast, Revisionist History: Hear the First Episode

in History, Podcasts | June 10th, 2016

Mal­colm Glad­well has a pod­cast. Some of you will require no fur­ther infor­ma­tion, and in fact have already clicked over to iTunes (or anoth­er pod­cast down­load­ing appli­ca­tion of your choice), des­per­ate to down­load the first episode. Allow me to inform those cool­er heads who remain that Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry won’t begin its ten-week run, with one episode out per week, until June 16th. (Update: The first episode is now live and you can stream it below.) But you can sub­scribe right now (iTunes — Stitch­er — RSS), and while you wait over the next few days, you can lis­ten to the pre­view that Glad­well has already post­ed.

You can also get a lit­tle a taste of Glad­well’s new project by watch­ing the trail­er at the top of the post. “Every week, I’m going to take you back into the past,” Glad­well promis­es in the video’s nar­ra­tion, “to exam­ine some­thing that I think has been over­looked and mis­un­der­stood.”

He gets into more detail on the Bri­an Lehrer Show seg­ment below, in which he describes the first episode of Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry as about the ques­tion of what it means to be “the first out­sider to enter a closed world,” start­ing from the career of British painter Eliz­a­beth Thomp­son, whose 1874 can­vas The Roll Call became, for a time, the most famous image in the coun­try. It broke its female artist into the male-dom­i­nat­ed world of paint­ing, and seemed, for an even short­er time, to her­ald a new era rich with high-pro­file female painters. “Every­one waits and waits for the rev­o­lu­tion to hap­pen,” Glad­well says, already into his char­ac­ter­is­tic sto­ry­telling mode, “and it nev­er hap­pens.”

Lehrer reacts to Glad­well’s choice of the sto­ry of “the first woman to break through in a male-dom­i­nat­ed field” with the obvi­ous ques­tion: “Is that a coin­ci­dence?” It is absolute­ly not a coin­ci­dence, Glad­well replies, going on to con­nect the phe­nom­e­non in ques­tion to not just mod­ern fig­ures like Hillary Clin­ton but Barack Oba­ma, Julia Gillard, and Mar­garet Thatch­er as well, and in the pod­cast itself sure­ly many oth­ers besides. He also hints at an episode lat­er in the sea­son that begins with an obscure Elvis Costel­lo song — and a “ter­ri­ble” one at that, he adds — and uses it “as a way of find­ing out how cre­ativ­i­ty works, and how an awful lot of what we con­sid­er works of genius had an incred­i­bly cir­cuitous path to great­ness,” end­ing up at a gallery look­ing at Cézannes.

You can sign up for episode updates at the offi­cial Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry site. The show comes as a prod­uct of Panoply, the pod­cast net­work of The Slate Group, and its first sea­son promis­es slick pro­duc­tion in addi­tion to the kind of com­pelling sto­ries and mem­o­rable social-sci­ence insights with which Glad­well has made him­self famous. And we should­n’t ignore his tal­ent for mar­ket­ing, either, ful­ly in evi­dence from noth­ing more than the tagline he speaks in the trail­er: “Because some­times the past deserves a sec­ond chance.” All this togeth­er sounds like more than a good rea­son to give his pod­cast a first one.

Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry is list­ed in our new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Jump Into the “Pod­cast­ing Renais­sance” with These Intel­li­gent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

Mal­colm Glad­well: What We Can Learn from Spaghet­ti Sauce

Mal­colm Glad­well: Tax­es Were High and Life Was Just Fine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Moby Lets You Download 4 Hours of Ambient Music to Help You Sleep, Meditate, Do Yoga & Not Panic

in Health, Music | June 8th, 2016

Back in May, I wrote about the dam­ag­ing effects stress has on the body, and the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-val­i­dat­ed pow­er of yoga and med­i­ta­tion to undo them. Fol­low­ing close behind stress as a chron­ic con­trib­u­tor to ill­ness is sleep­less­ness, which the Divi­sion of Sleep Med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School links to dia­betes, high blood pres­sure, heart dis­ease, and short­ened life expectan­cy. Add to all these risks the prob­lems of poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dis­or­ga­nized think­ing, and you’ll begin to see insom­nia for the dan­ger­ous con­di­tion it is.

What to do with that anx­ious, over­worked, over­tired self? Well, again, I’d hearti­ly rec­om­mend a yoga or med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. Pow­er naps through­out the day can boost your endurance and brain­pow­er as well. But I’d also rec­om­mend music—music that calms the body and helps wash away the men­tal gunk that accu­mu­lates through­out the day. Com­pos­er Max Richter recent­ly released an eight-hour piece of music intend­ed to lull lis­ten­ers to sleep and keep them there. His efforts are now joined by elec­tron­i­ca super­star Moby, who has spo­ken frankly about the insom­nia that has plagued him since the age of four.

For his own ben­e­fit, Moby began mak­ing what he describes on his web­site as “real­ly real­ly real­ly qui­et music to lis­ten to when I do yoga or sleep or med­i­tate or pan­ic.” He “end­ed up with 4 hours of music,” he says, and “decid­ed to give it away.” The col­lec­tion con­sists of 11 “Long Ambi­ent” pieces between around 20 and 30 min­utes each. You can hear them all—or not, if they put you to sleep—at the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, or down­load them at Moby’s site. (He also gives you the option to play the record­ings on Apple Music, Sound­cloud, Deez­er and oth­er plat­forms.) “It’s real­ly qui­et,” he reit­er­ates, “no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pret­ty chords and sounds and things.”

Con­sist­ing of rum­bling drone notes with reverb-drenched synths float­ing atop, Moby’s “Long Ambi­ent” com­po­si­tions remind me of the sound­scapes of Bri­an Eno or William Basin­s­ki, and like the work of those com­posers, his sleep music feels both ocean­ic and cin­e­mat­ic. Per­haps in his move a few years back from his native New York to L.A., Moby found him­self musi­cal­ly inspired by the Pacif­ic and the movies. (You might remem­ber his gor­geous, dra­mat­ic sound­track to the L.A.-set Michael Mann film Heat.) Wher­ev­er this music comes from, it’s a peace­ful way to com­bat insom­nia, stress, or pan­ic.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

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

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

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

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

in Archives, History, Literature, Media, Music | May 26th, 2016

Online archives, gal­leries, and libraries offer Vegas-sized buf­fets for the sens­es (well two of them, any­way). All the art and pho­tog­ra­phy your eyes can take in, all the music and spo­ken word record­ings your ears can han­dle. But per­haps you’re still miss­ing some­thing? “Geordies bang­ing spoons” maybe? Or “Tawang lamas blow­ing conch shell trum­pets… Ton­gan tribes­men play­ing nose flutes…,” the sound of “the Assamese wood­worm feast­ing on a win­dow frame in the dead of night”?

No wor­ries, the British Library’s got you cov­ered and then some. In 2009, it “made its vast archive of world and tra­di­tion­al music avail­able to every­one, free of charge, on the inter­net,” amount­ing to rough­ly 28,000 record­ings and, The Guardian esti­mates “about 2,000 hours of singing, speak­ing, yelling, chant­i­ng, blow­ing, bang­ing, tin­kling and many oth­er verbs asso­ci­at­ed with what is a unique­ly rich sound archive.”

But that’s not all, oh no! The com­plete archive, titled sim­ply and author­i­ta­tive­ly “Sounds,” also hous­es record­ings of accents and dialects, envi­ron­ment and nature, pop music, “sound maps,” oral his­to­ry, clas­si­cal music, sound record­ing his­to­ry, and arts, lit­er­a­ture, and per­for­mance (such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s short dis­course on “Wire­less,” ani­mat­ed in the video below).

The 80,000 record­ings avail­able to stream online rep­re­sent just a selec­tion of the British Library’s “exten­sive col­lec­tions of unique sound record­ings,” but what a selec­tion it is. In the short video at the top of the post, The Wire Mag­a­zine takes us on a mini-tour of the phys­i­cal archive’s metic­u­lous dig­i­ti­za­tion meth­ods. As with all such wide-rang­ing col­lec­tions, it’s dif­fi­cult to know where to begin.

One might browse the range of unusu­al folk sounds on aur­al dis­play in the World & Tra­di­tion­al music sec­tion, cov­er­ing every con­ti­nent and a daunt­ing meta­cat­e­go­ry called “World­wide.” For a more spe­cif­ic entry point, Elec­tron­ic Beats rec­om­mends a col­lec­tion of “around 8,000 Afropop tracks” from Guinea, record­ed on “the state-sup­port­ed Syli­phone label” and “released between 1958 and 1984.”

Oth­er high­lights include “Between Two Worlds: Poet­ry & Trans­la­tion,” an ongo­ing project begun in 2008 that fea­tures read­ings and inter­views with “poets who are bilin­gual or have Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, or who oth­er­wise reflect the project’s theme of dual cul­tures.” Or you may enjoy the exten­sive col­lec­tion of clas­si­cal music record­ings, includ­ing “Hugh Davies exper­i­men­tal music,” or the “Oral His­to­ry of Jazz in Britain.”

The cat­e­go­ry called “Sound Maps” orga­nizes a diver­si­ty of recordings—including region­al accents, inter­views with Holo­caust sur­vivors, wildlife sounds, and Ugan­dan folk music—by ref­er­ence to their loca­tions on Google maps.

Not all of the mate­r­i­al in “Sounds” is sound-based. Record­ing and audio geeks and his­to­ri­ans will appre­ci­ate the large col­lec­tion of “Play­back & Record­ing Equip­ment” pho­tographs (such as the 1912 Edi­son Disc Phono­graph, above ), span­ning the years 1877 to 1992. Also, many of the recordings—such as the won­der­ful first ver­sion of “Dirty Old Town” by Alan Lomax and the Ram­blers, with Ewan Mac­Coll and Peg­gy Seeger (below)—feature album cov­ers, front and back, as well as disc labels.

The record­ings in the Archive are unfor­tu­nate­ly not down­load­able (unless you are a licensed mem­ber of a UK HE/FE insti­tu­tion), but you can stream them all online and share any of them on your favorite social media plat­form. Per­haps the British Library will extend down­load priv­i­leges to all users in the future. For now, brows­ing through the sheer vol­ume and vari­ety of sounds in the archive should be enough to keep you busy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Blues & Folk Record­ings

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

1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Best­selling Book

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

Ursula K. Le Guin Names the Books She Likes and Wants You to Read

in Books, Literature | May 13th, 2016

Image by Gor­thi­an, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I’m sure I speak for many when I say that Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s nov­els and sto­ries changed what I thought sci­ence fic­tion could be and do. Raised on H.G. Wells, Isaac Asi­mov, Robert Hein­lein, and oth­er most­ly-white-male-cen­tered clas­sic sci-fi, I found Le Guin’s lit­er­ary thought exper­i­ments star­tling and refresh­ing. Now it seems like almost a mat­ter of course that sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy nar­ra­tives come from a diver­si­ty of peo­ples and per­spec­tives. But Le Guin remains the first to wake me from a dog­mat­ic slum­ber about the poten­tial of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion to imag­ine not only future tech­nolo­gies, but also expan­sive future iden­ti­ties.

Nov­els like The Left Hand of Dark­ness, The Dis­pos­sessed, and The Lathe of Heav­en reflect Le Guin’s very broad range of inter­ests in pol­i­tics and the human­i­ties and social sci­ences. She began her career as an aca­d­e­m­ic study­ing Renais­sance French and Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture, and her fic­tion syn­the­sizes years of care­ful read­ing in anthro­pol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, and East­ern and West­ern phi­los­o­phy. Like­wise, though she has been much influ­enced by tra­di­tion­al hard sci­ence fic­tion, Le Guin’s lit­er­ary loves are wide and deep. All that’s to say she’s as admirable and inter­est­ing a read­er as she is a writer. When she prais­es a book, I pay atten­tion. Thanks to her genial, loqua­cious online pres­ence for many years, her fans have had ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to find out what she’s read­ing and why.

Le Guin recent­ly made a few lists of books she likes, and made sure to pref­ace each one with a dis­claimer: “This list is not ‘my favorite books.’ It’s just a list of books I’ve read or re-read, recent­ly, that I liked and want­ed to tell peo­ple about.” She leaps from genre to genre, writ­ing mini-reviews of each book and link­ing each one to Powell’s, the inde­pen­dent book­store in her beloved city of Port­land, Ore­gon. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed some of Le Guin’s “Books I’ve Liked” from each list, along with her com­men­tary. Click on each date head­ing to see her com­plete lists of rec­om­men­da­tions.

Decem­ber 2006

See­ing, by José Sara­m­a­go. A sequel to his amaz­ing nov­el Blind­ness. Sara­m­a­go is not easy to read. He punc­tu­ates most­ly with com­mas, doesn’t pararaph often, doesn’t set off con­ver­sa­tion in quotes —; man­ner­isms I wouldn’t endure in a less­er writer; but Sara­m­a­go is worth it. More than worth it. Tran­scen­dent­ly worth it. Blind­ness scared me to death when I start­ed it, but it ris­es won­der­ful­ly out of dark­ness into the light. See­ing goes the oth­er way and is a very fright­en­ing book.

Chang­ing Ones, by Will Roscoe. An exam­i­na­tion of how gen­der has been con­struct­ed in Native Amer­i­can soci­eties. Respon­si­bly researched, very well writ­ten, gen­er­ous in spir­it, nev­er over­sim­pli­fy­ing a com­plex sub­ject, this is a won­der­ful­ly enlight­en­ing book.

Age of Bronze: The Sto­ry of the Tro­jan War. I: A Thou­sand Ships, and II: Sac­ri­fice by Eric Shanow­er. A graph­ic nov­el —; the first two vol­umes of a pro­ject­ed series. The draw­ing is excel­lent, the lan­guage live­ly, and the research awe­some. Shanow­er goes back to the very ori­gins of the war to fol­low the ear­ly careers of the var­i­ous heroes —; Agamem­non and Menelaus, Achilles, Odysseus, Hec­tor, Paris, Aeneas, and their fam­i­lies, par­ents, wives, lovers, chil­dren… Thus, by the end of Book Two, the actu­al siege of Troy, which the Ili­ad tells one part of, is yet to begin. I see a loom­ing prob­lem: the bat­tles (of which there have been a good many already) are visu­al­ly all alike, and there’s end­less­ly more to come —; bat­tle scenes in Homer are bru­tal­ly monot­o­nous and inter­minable (as war is). But these two vol­umes are visu­al­ly and nar­ra­tive­ly var­ied, and give a fas­ci­nat­ing back­ground­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion to the great sto­ries.

June 2007

The Yid­dish Police­men’s Union, by Michael Chabon. Of course if you haven’t read Kava­lier and Clay yet, go read it at once, what on earth have you been wait­ing for? Then read this. It is even a lit­tle cra­zier, maybe. Crazy like a genius.

Suf­fer the Lit­tle Chil­dren, by Don­na Leon. The 16th of Leon’s Venet­ian mys­tery nov­els is one of the finest. I reviewed this book for the Man­ches­ter Guardian

Some young adult books I like — I had to read a lot of them this spring, and these stood out:

The High­er Pow­er of Lucky by Susan Patron. This one has already won the New­bery Award and gone to Kid­dilit Book­sellers Heav­en for­ev­er, so it does­n’t need my endorse­ment… but it’s a love­ly, fun­ny, sweet book, set in a tru­ly god­for­sak­en desert town in Cal­i­for­nia.

Weed­flower by Cyn­thia Kado­ha­ta. A nov­el that goes with its young hero­ine to one of the prison camps where our gov­ern­ment sent all our cit­i­zens of Japan­ese ances­try in 1942 after Pearl Har­bor. It’s a beau­ti­ful book, under­stat­ed and strong and ten­der. If you read it you won’t for­get it.

Sep­tem­ber 2007

Charles Mann, 1491. A bril­liant sur­vey of what we know about the human pop­u­la­tions of the Amer­i­c­as before the arrival of the Euro­peans, and a brief, often scathing his­to­ry of how we’ve han­dled our knowl­edge. The author is not an arche­ol­o­gist or anthro­pol­o­gist, but he has done his home­work, and is a fine reporter and sum­ma­riz­er, writ­ing with clar­i­ty and flair, easy to read but nev­er talk­ing down. Dis­cussing intense­ly con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects such as dates of set­tle­ment and pop­u­la­tion sizes, he lets you know where he stands, but presents both sides fair­ly. A fas­ci­nat­ing, mind-expand­ing book.

Michael Pol­lan, The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma. I have nev­er eat­en an Ida­ho pota­to since I read Pol­lan’s arti­cle about what pota­to fields are “treat­ed” with, in his ear­li­er book The Botany of Desire. This one is scary in a dif­fer­ent way. It prob­a­bly won’t stop you from eat­ing any­thing, indeed it is a real cel­e­bra­tion of (real) food; but the first sec­tion is as fine a descrip­tion of the blind, incal­cu­la­ble pow­er of Growth Cap­i­tal­ism as I ever read. (Did you know that cat­tle can’t digest corn, and have to be chem­i­cal­ly poi­soned in order to pro­duce “corn­fed beef”? So, there being lots and lots of grass, why feed them corn? Read the book!) There are some depress­ing bits in the sec­tion on “organ­ic” food, too, but the last sec­tion, where he hunts and gath­ers his din­ner, is fun­ny and often touch­ing.

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, Nick­el and Dimed. Ehren­re­ich tries to get by on min­i­mum wage, in three dif­fer­ent towns, work­ing as a wait­ress, a house clean­er, in a Wal-Mart… Yes, it came out eight years ago, and yes, it’s just as true now, if not truer. (I just read in my home­town paper that 47% of work­ing peo­ple in Port­land have to rely on food stamps. Not “wel­fare queens” — peo­ple with jobs, work­ing peo­ple.) She writes her sto­ry with tremen­dous verve and exact­ness. It reads like a nov­el, and leaves you all shook up.

August 2008

[Le Guin devot­ed this list to “Some Graph­ic Nov­els,” and wrote about her dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing good “grown-up stuff.” Though most of it was not to her taste (“gross-out vio­lence, or hor­ror, or twee, or sex­ist, or oth­er­wise not down my alley”), she kept “hop­ing, because the form seems to me such a huge­ly promis­ing and adven­tur­ous one.” Below are two graph­ic nov­els she did like. Anoth­er, Age of Bronze, she men­tioned above in her 2006 list.]

Mar­jane Satrapi’s Perse­po­lis I and II, and her oth­er books. (The movie of Perse­po­lis was charm­ing but it real­ly didn’t add much to the book.) I admire her draw­ing, which is decep­tive­ly sim­ple but very sub­tly designed, using the pure con­trast-pow­er of black-and-white. The draw­ings and the text com­bine so seam­less­ly that I’m not aware of look­ing back and forth between them, I’m just tak­ing it all in at once — Which I think is pret­ty much my ide­al for a graph­ic nar­ra­tive?

Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat I and II. Three con­nect­ed sto­ries in each vol­ume. The first two sto­ries in the first vol­ume are pure delight. They are fun­ny and wise and show you a world you almost cer­tain­ly nev­er knew exist­ed. The rab­bi is a dear, the rabbi’s daugh­ter is a dear, and the rabbi’s cat is all cat, all through, all the way down. (I won­dered why Sfar drew him so strange­ly, until I looked at the pho­to­graph of Sfar’s cat on the cov­er.) The sec­ond vol­ume isn’t quite as great, but the first sto­ry in it is awful­ly fun­ny and well drawn, with the most irre­sistible lion, and it’s all enjoy­able. Sfar’s imag­i­na­tion and col­or are won­der­ful. His pub­lish­er should be pil­lo­ried in Times Square for print­ing the art in Vol II so small that you lit­er­al­ly need a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to read some of the con­ti­nu­ity. — I gath­er that Sfar and Satrapi are friends. Are we on the way to hav­ing a great school of graph­ic nov­els by For­eign­ers Liv­ing in Paris?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Nov­el, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, as a BBC Radio Play

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Sto­ry, “The End” Dra­ma­tized: A Rare Audio Treat

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

A Clever Supercut of Writers Struggling with Writer’s Block in 53 Films: From Barton Fink to The Royal Tenenbaums

in Film, Writing | May 10th, 2016

Quite patient­ly, Ben Watts cut apart and stitched togeth­er scenes from 53 films (find a com­plete list here) show­ing char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing through writer’s block. Adap­ta­tion, Bar­ton Fink, Shake­speare in Love, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, and, yes, Throw Mom­ma From the Train–they’re among the films fea­tured in the 4‑minute super­cut above. If you give the clip a lit­tle time, you’ll see that the super­cut has an arc to it. It tells a tale, and has an end­ing that Hol­ly­wood would love.

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

via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a 44-Minute Super­cut of Every Woody Allen Stam­mer, From Every Woody Allen Film

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

A Great Com­pi­la­tion of “The Lick” Found in Music Every­where: From Coltrane & Stravin­sky, to Christi­na Aguil­era

Young Patti Smith Rails Against the Censorship of Her Music: An Animated, NSFW Interview from 1976

in Music | April 28th, 2016

The lat­est install­ment from Blank on Blank’s series of ani­mat­ed videos drops us inside the bohemi­an Por­to­bel­lo Hotel in Lon­don. It’s May, 1976, and we hear a young Pat­ti Smith rail­ing against the cen­sor­ship of her music, using some colorful–that is to say, NSFW–words. She talks Rim­baud. The poet­ry and com­bat of rock. The dreams and hal­lu­ci­na­tions that feed her music. The stuff that would even­tu­al­ly earn her the cred to be called The God­moth­er of Punk.

The audio is part of a longer, two-hour inter­view with Mick Gold, which is avail­able through Ama­zon and iTunes. Enjoy.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

Call Me Burroughs: Hear William S. Burroughs Read from Naked Lunch & The Soft Machine in His First Spoken Word Album (1965)

in Literature | April 21st, 2016

Image by Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Where did you first hear the voice of William S. Bur­roughs? Weary yet vig­or­ous, flat yet pow­er­ful, wry yet haunt­ing, it has, to a good-sized seg­ment of sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions now, defined a cadence for the coun­ter­cul­ture. Many of those enthu­si­asts (most of whom would have come to know the grand old man of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion’s post­mod­ernist wing through his writ­ing, like the nov­els Naked Lunch and Junky) had their first gen­uine Bur­roughs lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence through the record album Call Me Bur­roughs, first released in 1965, and more recent­ly re-issued by Supe­ri­or Viaduct.

In these ses­sions, record­ed in the base­ment of The Eng­lish Book­shop in Paris, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch as well as Nova Express, the third book in the “Nova Tril­o­gy” that the author con­sid­ered a “math­e­mat­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion” of his best-known work. Both emerged as the fruits of the “cut-up” tech­nique of lit­er­ary com­po­si­tion Bur­roughs devel­oped with artist Brion Gysin, cre­at­ing new texts out of decon­tex­tu­al­ized and reassem­bled pieces of exist­ing text found in the mass media.

“Bur­roughs believed that lan­guage and image were viral and that the mass-dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion was part of an arch-con­spir­a­cy that restrict­ed the full poten­tial of the human mind,” writes Glenn O’Bri­an at Elec­tron­ic Beats. “With cut-up, Bur­roughs found a means of escape; an anti­dote to the sick­ness of ‘con­trol’ mes­sages that mutat­ed their orig­i­nal con­tent. If mass media already func­tioned as an enor­mous bar­rage of cut-up mate­r­i­al, the cut-up method was a way for the artist to fight back using its same tac­tics.”

Call Me Bur­roughs, which at one point became a deep-out-of-print col­lec­tor’s item, has now come avail­able free on Spo­ti­fy. (You can down­load its free soft­ware here.) You can also stream it on Youtube. Coun­ter­cul­ture chron­i­cler Bar­ry Miles notes that the Bea­t­les all had copies (and Paul McCart­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with it, went on to hire its pro­duc­er him­self), and “art deal­er Robert Fras­er bought ten copies to give to friends such as Bri­an Jones and Mick Jag­ger. Mar­i­anne Faith­ful and Kei­th Richards’ deal­er had copies, as did numer­ous painters and writ­ers.” So what­ev­er inspi­ra­tion you draw from this “tal­is­man of cool in Green­wich Vil­lage in the mid-1960s,” as Greil Mar­cus once called it, you’ll cer­tain­ly join a long line of dis­tin­guished lis­ten­ers.

Call Me Bur­roughs will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads & Sings His Exper­i­men­tal Prose in a Big, Free 7‑Hour Playlist

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.