Harper Lee Gets a Request for a Photo; Offers Important Life Advice Instead (2006)

in Letters, Life, Literature | July 27th, 2015

Harp­er Lee wrote To Kill a Mock­ing­bird in 1960. More than a half decade lat­er, the nov­el remains one of the most wide­ly-read books in Amer­i­can class­rooms. And stu­dents still write the 89-year-old author, request­ing pho­tographs and auto­graphs.

Occa­sion­al­ly, they get a lit­tle more than they bar­gained for. Take, for exam­ple, a stu­dent named “Jere­my,” who wrote Lee in 2006 and request­ed a pho­to. In return, he got some­thing more valu­able and endur­ing: some pithy life advice. The let­ter Harp­er sent to Jere­my reads as fol­lows:

06/07/06

Dear Jere­my

I don’t have a pic­ture of myself, so please accept these few lines:

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to oth­ers, and don’t think you are the most impor­tant being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look any­one in the eye and say, “I’m prob­a­bly no bet­ter than you, but I’m cer­tain­ly your equal.”

(Signed, ‘Harp­er Lee’)

Lee’s sec­ond nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man, was just released last week — 55 years after her debut. You can read the first chap­ter (and also hear Reese With­er­spoon read it aloud) here.

via Let­ters of Note

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Harp­er Lee on the Joy of Read­ing Real Books: “Some Things Should Hap­pen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Met­al”

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents a Brief History of Everything in an 8.5 Minute Animation

in Astronomy, Creativity, Physics | July 24th, 2015

Patre­on, a crowd fund­ing site where fans can auto­mat­i­cal­ly tithe a set amount to their fave artist every time that per­son uploads con­tent, is a great way for pas­sion­ate, under-rec­og­nized indi­vid­u­als to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty and a bit of dough.

So what’s astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson doing there? He’s already famous, and one would think his gig as direc­tor of New York City’s Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, cou­pled with the pro­ceeds from his books and dvds, would prove suf­fi­cient to any finan­cial needs.

(Is it some sort of Aman­da Palmer thing?)

Nope. Turns out Dr. Tyson is there on some­one else’s behalf, nar­rat­ing an episode of Har­ry Reich’s Minute Physics. The video series often employs white­board ani­ma­tions to explain such sci­en­tif­ic phe­nom­e­na as dark mat­ter, wave/particle dual­i­ty, and bicy­cles.

The lat­est Tyson-nar­rat­ed episode, above, shoots the moon by cram­ming the entire His­to­ry of the Uni­verse (and some com­pli­men­ta­ry Stravin­sky) into an 8.5‑minute frame­work (a neg­li­gi­ble amount when you con­sid­er phe­nom­e­na like light years, but still many times the series’ stan­dard minute).

Thus far, 1075 fans of Minute Physics have anted up, result­ing in a take of $2,992.66 per video. (Click here to see how that amount com­pares to the var­i­ous wages and salaries of Dr. Tyson’s cowork­ers at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry…it’s clear Reich devotes a lot of labor to every episode.)

If you’re feel­ing flush (or ner­vous about the upcom­ing school year), you can join these 1075 fans, earn­ing admis­sion to a sup­port­ers-only activ­i­ty feed where you can ask ques­tions, watch out­takes, pre­view upcom­ing attrac­tions, and pos­si­bly even get your name in the cred­its.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awe­some 3 Bil­lion-Mile Jour­ney to Plu­to

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

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

School Teachers Turn Old Lockers Into Literary Works of Art

in Art, Books | July 22nd, 2015

At Biloxi Junior High School, the teach­ers are spend­ing their sum­mer pret­ty pro­duc­tive­ly. They’re tak­ing an entire hall­way lined with dull green (cur­rent­ly unused) lock­ers and they’re repaint­ing each and every­one of them — 189 in total. By the time stu­dents return in the fall, each lock­er will look like the spine of a famous book, and the hall­way will be known as the “Avenue of Lit­er­a­ture.” One teacher told WLOX, “We want stu­dents to come back to school in August and … be absolute­ly amazed with what we’ve done and be curi­ous. We want that to be the spark for read­ing in our class­rooms… We’re hop­ing the stu­dents come and they become com­plete­ly immersed in a col­lec­tion” that con­tains every­thing from Water­ship Down and John­ny Tremain to books in the Twi­light series, reports Elec­tric Lit.

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Stephen Colbert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awesome 3 Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto

in Astronomy | July 20th, 2015

The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert won’t hit the air­waves until Sep­tem­ber 8th, but Col­bert is already get­ting his Late Show Youtube chan­nel up and run­ning. That’s where you will find this video break­ing down NASA’s amaz­ing fly­by of Plu­to last week, a jour­ney that involved the New Hori­zons space­craft trav­el­ing a stag­ger­ing 3 bil­lion miles. (See pho­tos here.) Join­ing Col­bert is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who needs no intro­duc­tion around here. Enjoy the ban­ter, and don’t for­get that you can down­load Tyson’s short course, The Inex­plic­a­ble Uni­verse. It’s free from The Great Cours­es for a lim­it­ed time.

If the con­cept of Col­bert inter­view­ing Tyson intrigues you, don’t miss this lengthy inter­view orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on OC in 2011.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Reads Ray Brad­bury Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry “The Veldt”

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Read the First Chapter of Harper Lee’s New Book, Then Hear It Read by Reese Witherspoon

in Audio Books, Books | July 10th, 2015

After much press and debate, Harp­er Lee’s new nov­el — a sequel of sorts to her beloved book, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird — will be released on July 14th. You can pre-order Go Set a Watch­man: A Nov­el (already #1 on Ama­zon’s best­seller list). But, even bet­ter, you can head over to the The Wall Street Jour­nal or The Guardian and read the first chap­ter online. The Guardian also fea­tures an audio ver­sion read by the Oscar-win­ning actress Reese With­er­spoon. Stream it right below. (And, fyi, you can always down­load a free audio copy of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird through the free tri­al pro­grams run by Audiobooks.com and Audible.com.)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Note: There’s now a way to make sure that our posts show up in your Face­book news­feed. Find info on that here.

Watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and 2001: A Space Odyssey Get Run Through Google’s Trippy Deep Dream Software

in Film, Technology | July 7th, 2015

Last week, The Guardian report­ed:

Google has made its “incep­tion­ism” algo­rithm avail­able to all, allow­ing coders around the world to repli­cate the process the com­pa­ny used to cre­ate mes­meris­ing dream­scapes with its image pro­cess­ing neur­al-net­work.

The sys­tem, which works by repeat­ed­ly feed­ing an image through an AI which enhances fea­tures it recog­nis­es, was first demon­strat­ed by Google two weeks ago. It can alter an exist­ing image to the extent that it looks like an acid trip, or begin with ran­dom noise to gen­er­ate an entire­ly orig­i­nal dream­scape.

Since then a coder, Roelof Pieters, began mess­ing around with the pub­licly-avail­able soft­ware, and decid­ed to take the “Great San Fran­cis­co Acid Wave” scene from Ter­ry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and run it through “Deep Dream,” as the soft­ware is known. The results (below), now going viral across the inter­net, are pret­ty trip­py and intense. Just when you thought Hunter S. Thomp­son could­n’t get more “out there,” this comes along.

We noticed that Pieters ran a sim­i­lar exper­i­ment with pieces of Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we could­n’t help but put them on dis­play. Watch above.

via Giz­mo­do

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

2,200 Radical Political Posters Digitized: A New Archive

in Archives, History, Politics | July 2nd, 2015

I recent­ly heard some­one say his col­lege-bound nephew asked him, “What’s a union?” Whether you love unions, loathe them, or remain indif­fer­ent, the fact that an osten­si­bly edu­cat­ed young per­son might have such a sig­nif­i­cant gap in their knowl­edge should cause con­cern. A his­toric labor con­flict, after all, pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for Ronald Rea­gan to prove his bona fides to the new con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that swept him into pow­er. His crush­ing of the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PATCO) in 1981 set the tone for the ensu­ing 30 years or so of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, with the labor move­ment fight­ing an uphill bat­tle all the way. Pri­or to that defin­ing event, unions held sway over pol­i­tics local and nation­al, and had con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er blocks in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape through decades of strug­gle against oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing work­ing con­di­tions.

In prac­ti­cal terms, unions have stood in the way of cap­i­tal’s unceas­ing search for cheap labor and new con­sumer mar­kets; in social and cul­tur­al terms, the pol­i­tics of labor have rep­re­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenge to con­ser­v­a­tives as well, by way of a vibrant assem­blage of anar­chists, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans, anti-colo­nial­ists, com­mu­nists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, paci­fists, fem­i­nists, social­ists, etc. A host of rad­i­cal isms flour­ished among orga­nized work­ers espe­cial­ly in the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, find­ing their voice in newslet­ters, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, leaflets, and posters—fragile medi­ums that do not often weath­er well the rav­ages of time. Thus the advent of dig­i­tal archives has been a boon for stu­dents and his­to­ri­ans of work­ers’ move­ments and oth­er pop­ulist polit­i­cal groundswells. One such archive, the Joseph A. Labadie Col­lec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Library, has recent­ly announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of over 2,200 posters from their col­lec­tion, a data­base that spans the globe and the spec­trum of left­ist polit­i­cal speech and iconog­ra­phy.

We have clev­er­ly-designed visu­al puns like the Chica­go Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World poster just above, titled “What is what in the world of labor?” Pro­mot­ing itself as “One Big Union of All Labor,” the IWW made some of the most ambi­tious pro­pa­gan­da, like the 1912 poster (mid­dle) in which an “Indus­tri­al Co-Oper­a­tive Com­mon­wealth” replaces the tyran­ny of the cap­i­tal­ist, who is told by his “trust man­ag­er” peer, “Our rule is end­ed, dis­mount and go to work.” In this post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fan­ta­sy, the IWW promis­es that “A few hours of use­ful work insure all a lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing,” though it only hints at the details of this utopi­an arrange­ment. Up top, we have an ornate May Day poster from 1895 by Wal­ter Crane, hop­ing for a “Mer­rie Eng­land” with “No Child Toil­ers,” “Pro­duc­tion for Use Not For Prof­it,” and “The Land For the Peo­ple,” among oth­er, more nation­al­ist, sen­ti­ments like “Eng­land Should Feed Her Own Peo­ple.”

“While all of the posters were scanned at high res­o­lu­tion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “they appear online as thumb­nails with nav­i­ga­tion to zoom.” You can down­load the images, but only the small­er, thumb­nail size in most cas­es. These hun­dreds of posters rep­re­sent “just a por­tion of the mate­r­i­al in the Labadie Collection”—named for a “Detroit-area labor orga­niz­er, anar­chist, and author” who “had the idea for the social protest archive at the uni­ver­si­ty in 1911.” You can view oth­er polit­i­cal arti­facts in the UMich library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here, includ­ing anar­chist pam­phlets, polit­i­cal but­tons, and a dig­i­tal pho­to col­lec­tion. The col­lec­tion as a whole gives us a poten­tial­ly inspir­ing, or infu­ri­at­ing, mosa­ic of polit­i­cal thought at its bold­est and most graph­i­cal­ly assertive from a time before online peti­tions and hash­tag cam­paigns took over as the pri­ma­ry cir­cu­la­tors of pop­u­lar rad­i­cal thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic (where you can find some oth­er big, visu­al­ly strik­ing posters)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

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

Venice in Beautiful Color Images 125 Years Ago: The Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basilica, Doge’s Palace & More

in History, Photography | July 1st, 2015

A few months ago, Men­tal Floss put up a post of “Fan­tas­tic 120-Year-Old Col­or Pic­tures of Ire­land.” Fan­tas­tic pic­tures indeed, although the nature of the tech­nol­o­gy that pro­duced them seems as inter­est­ing to me as the 19th-cen­tu­ry Irish life cap­tured in the images them­selves. They came from the Library of Con­gress’ geo­graph­i­cal­ly orga­nized archive of pho­tocrom prints, a method per­haps known only to die-hard his­tor­i­cal pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts. For the rest of us, the Library of Con­gress’ page on the pho­tocrom process explains it: “Pho­tochrom prints are ink-based images pro­duced through ‘the direct pho­to­graph­ic trans­fer of an orig­i­nal neg­a­tive onto litho and chro­mo­graph­ic print­ing plates.’ ”

Its inven­tor Hans Jakob Schmid came up with the tech­nique in the 1880s, a decade that began with col­or pho­tog­ra­phy con­signed to the realm of the­o­ry. While Pho­tocrom prints may look an awful lot like col­or pho­tographs, look at them through a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and “the small dots that com­prise the ink-based pho­to­me­chan­i­cal image are vis­i­ble.” “The pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process per­mit­ted mass pro­duc­tion of the vivid col­or prints,” each col­or requir­ing “a sep­a­rate asphalt-coat­ed lith­o­graph­ic stone, usu­al­ly a min­i­mum of six stones and often more than ten stones.”

But that unwieldy-sound­ing tech­nol­o­gy and labo­ri­ous-sound­ing process has giv­en us, among oth­er strik­ing pieces of visu­al his­to­ry, these lush images of fin de siè­cle Venice, which the writer of place Jan Mor­ris once described as “less a city than an expe­ri­ence.”

At the top of the post, we have a view of the Rial­to Bridge, which spans one of the city’s famous canals; below that a scene of pigeon-feed­ing in St. Mark’s Piaz­za; the image just above leaves the pigeons behind to view the inte­ri­or of St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca.

The pho­tos below, all also tak­en between 1890 and 1900, depict the exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or of the Doge’s Palace, as well as its view of San Gior­gio Island by moon­light.

We may not con­sid­er these “real” col­or pho­tographs, but the col­ors they present, vivid­ly applied in the print­ing process, some­how more accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the spir­it of late 19th-cen­tu­ry Europe — one of his­to­ry’s tru­ly vivid peri­ods, in one of its endur­ing­ly vivid human envi­ron­ments. More col­or images of fin-de-siecle Venice can be viewed here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

How Venice Works: A Short Film

Venice in a Day: From Day­break to Sun­set in Time­lapse

Venice is Way Under Water…

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

The First Col­or Pho­tos From World War I: The Ger­man Front

The Old­est Col­or Movies Bring Sun­flow­ers, Exot­ic Birds and Gold­fish Back to Life (1902)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Metropolis II: Discover the Amazing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinetic Sculpture by Chris Burden

in Art | June 18th, 2015

Recent­ly deceased artist Chris Bur­den had a long his­to­ry of work­ing with auto­mo­biles in his art. In his ear­ly days he cru­ci­fied him­self to the top of a VW Bee­tle (a piece called Trans Fixed). He set about design­ing and build­ing a 100 mph and 100 mpg auto­mo­bile based on intu­ition called the B‑Car. In Big Wheel he used a motor­cy­cle to power…a big wheel. And in Porsche with Mete­orite he sus­pend­ed the two objects above the muse­um floor on each end of a gigan­tic scale.

But his mas­sive kinet­ic sculp­ture Metrop­o­lis II is some­thing else: a child’s fever dream of a Hot Wheels-scale city, with 1,100 cars dri­ving end­less­ly on 18 road­ways, with two ramps that are 12 feet high and three con­vey­or sys­tems that feed the cars back into the loop. The met­al and the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed to run the sculp­ture means that the thing is not just a sight to behold, but it’s stag­ger­ing­ly loud.

The title of the kinet­ic sculp­ture gives away its ref­er­ence, that of Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metrop­o­lis (watch it online) and its imag­i­nary city scapes of ele­vat­ed free­ways and train tracks and peo­ple movers and planes that fly in between:

Burden’s work has its own struc­tures too, some of which are made from build­ing blocks, Lego, and Lin­coln Logs, turned into hous­es and sky­scrap­ers. Don’t expect sen­si­ble urban plan­ning in this city: seen from above, Metrop­o­lis II is a chaos of roads, and closed sys­tems from which there is no escape.

There was a tri­al run of the sculp­ture called Metrop­o­lis I, a small­er ver­sion that was soon sold to a Japan­ese col­lec­tor and tak­en out of the pub­lic view.

For the sequel, Bur­den went big­ger, enlist­ing eight peo­ple full time for five and a half years to build the piece. Said the artist:

“We want­ed to expand it and make it tru­ly over­whelm­ing — the noise and lev­el of activ­i­ty are both mes­mer­iz­ing and anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing.”

But instead of a night­mare com­men­tary, Bur­den want­ed the piece to be utopi­an. The cars are mov­ing at 240 mph, accord­ing to scale, and there’s no grid­lock. He was look­ing ahead to a future of dri­ver­less cars, as he shared a hatred like many Ange­lenos of end­less traf­fic jams.

The 30 foot wide sculp­ture was bought for an undis­closed sum by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Nicholas Berggre­un, who also sits on LACMA’s board. He’s loaned it to the muse­um until 2022 and it is cur­rent­ly now sit­u­at­ed in a spe­cial wing where vis­i­tors can see it both at ground lev­el and from above. It takes one assis­tant to keep it free of hic­cups and it only runs for a few hours at a time, and only on week­ends.

How­ev­er, LACMA’s entry­way is also home to a Bur­den piece one can see 24/7, the icon­ic Urban Light.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Chris Bur­den Get Shot for the Sake of Art (1971)

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Chris Bur­den (R.I.P.) Turns Late-Night TV Com­mer­cials Into Con­cep­tu­al Art

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.

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

in Music | June 16th, 2015

Image via Flickr Com­mons

Two years ago, in a post on the pio­neer­ing com­pos­er of the orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who theme, we wrote that “the ear­ly era of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music belonged to Delia Der­byshire.” Derbyshire—who almost gave Paul McCart­ney a ver­sion of “Yes­ter­day” with an elec­tron­ic back­ing in place of strings—helped invent the ear­ly elec­tron­ic music of the six­ties through her work with the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, the sound effects lab­o­ra­to­ry of the BBC. She went on to form one of the most influ­en­tial, if large­ly obscure, elec­tron­ic acts of the decade, White Noise. And yet, call­ing the ear­ly eras of the elec­tron­ic music hers is an exag­ger­a­tion. Of course her many col­lab­o­ra­tors deserve men­tion, as well as musi­cians like Bruce Haack, Pierre Hen­ry, Kraftwerk, Bri­an Eno, and so many oth­ers. But what gets almost com­plete­ly left out of many his­to­ries of elec­tron­ic music, as with so many oth­er his­to­ries, is the promi­nent role so many women besides Der­byshire played in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we now hear all around us all the time.

In recog­ni­tion of this fact, musi­cian, DJ, and “escaped housewife/schoolteacher” Bar­bara Gold­en devot­ed two episodes of her KPFA radio pro­gram “Crack o’ Dawn” to women in elec­tron­ic music, once in 2010 and again in 2013. She shares each broad­cast with co-host Jon Lei­deck­er (“Wob­bly”), and in each seg­ment, the two ban­ter in casu­al radio show style, offer­ing his­to­ry and con­text for each musi­cian and com­pos­er. Recent­ly high­light­ed on Ubu’s Twit­ter stream, the first show, “Women in Elec­tron­ic Music 1938–1982 Part 1” (above) gives Der­byshire her due, with three tracks from her, includ­ing the Doc­tor Who theme.

It also includes music from twen­ty one oth­er com­posers, begin­ning with Clara Rock­more, a refin­er and pop­u­lar­iz­er of the theremin, that weird instru­ment designed to sim­u­late a high, tremu­lous human voice. Also fea­tured is Wendy Carlos’s “Timesteps,” an orig­i­nal piece from her A Clock­work Orange score. (You’ll remem­ber her enthralling syn­the­siz­er recre­ations of Beethoven’s 9th Sym­pho­ny from the film).

The sec­ond show, above, fills in sev­er­al gaps in the orig­i­nal broad­cast and “could eas­i­ly be six hours” says co-host Lei­deck­er, giv­en the sheer amount of elec­tron­ic music out there com­posed and record­ed by women over the past sev­en­ty years. This show includes one of our host Golden’s own com­po­si­tions, “Melody Sum­n­er Car­na­han,” as well as music from Lau­rie Ander­son and musique con­crete com­pos­er Doris Hays. These two broad­casts alone cov­er an enor­mous range of styl­is­tic and tech­no­log­i­cal ground, but for even more disco­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, see the playlist below, com­piled by “Nerd­girl” Antye Greie-Ripat­ti for Women’s Day, 2014. Com­mis­sioned by Club Trans­me­di­ale Berlin, the mix includes such well-known names as Yoko Ono, Bjork, and M.I.A., as well as fore­moth­ers Der­byshire and Car­los, and dozens more.

In lieu of the radio-show chat­ter of Gold­en and Lei­deck­er, we have Greie-Ripatti’s post detail­ing each artist’s time peri­od, coun­try of ori­gin, and con­tri­bu­tions to elec­tron­ic music his­to­ry. Many of the com­posers rep­re­sent­ed here worked for major radio and film stu­dios, scored fea­ture films (like 1956’s For­bid­den Plan­et), invent­ed and inno­vat­ed new instru­ments and tech­niques, wrote for orches­tras, and passed on their knowl­edge as edu­ca­tors and pro­duc­ers. Greie-Ripatti’s page quotes a Dan­ish elec­tron­ic pro­duc­er and per­former say­ing “there is a lot of women in elec­tron­ic music… invis­i­ble women.” Thanks to efforts like hers and Golden’s, these pio­neer­ing cre­ators need no longer go unseen or, more impor­tant­ly, unheard.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

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