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

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:

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.

The Tree of Languages Illustrated in a Big, Beautiful Infographic

in Art, Language Lessons | June 9th, 2015

Click image, then click again, to enlarge

Call it coun­ter­in­tu­itive click­bait if you must, but Forbes’ Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry made an intrigu­ing argu­ment when he grant­ed the title of “Lan­guage of the Future” to French, of all tongues. “French isn’t most­ly spo­ken by French peo­ple and hasn’t been for a long time now,” he admits,” but “the lan­guage is grow­ing fast, and grow­ing in the fastest-grow­ing areas of the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly sub-Saha­ran Africa. The lat­est pro­jec­tion is that French will be spo­ken by 750 mil­lion peo­ple by 2050. One study “even sug­gests that by that time, French could be the most-spo­ken lan­guage in the world, ahead of Eng­lish and even Man­darin.”

I don’t know about you, but I can nev­er believe in any wave of the future with­out a trace­able past. But the French lan­guage has one, of course, and a long and sto­ried one at that. You see it visu­al­ized in the infor­ma­tion graph­ic above (also avail­able in suit­able-for-fram­ing prints!) cre­at­ed by Min­na Sund­berg, author of the web­com­ic Stand Still. Stay Silent. 

“When lin­guists talk about the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between lan­guages, they use a tree metaphor,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Ari­ka Okrent. “An ancient source (say, Indo-Euro­pean) has var­i­ous branch­es (e.g., Romance, Ger­man­ic), which them­selves have branch­es (West Ger­man­ic, North Ger­man­ic), which feed into spe­cif­ic lan­guages (Swedish, Dan­ish, Nor­we­gian).”

Sund­berg takes this tree metaphor to a delight­ful­ly lav­ish extreme, trac­ing, say, how Indo-Euro­pean lin­guis­tic roots sprout­ed a vari­ety of mod­ern-day liv­ing lan­guages includ­ing Hin­di, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Ital­ian — and, of course, our Lan­guage of the Future. The size of the branch­es and bunch­es of leaves rep­re­sent the num­ber of speak­ers of each lan­guage at dif­fer­ent times: the likes of Eng­lish and Span­ish have sprout­ed into mighty veg­e­ta­tive clus­ters, while oth­ers, like, Swedish, Dutch, and Pun­jabi, assert a more local dom­i­nance over their own, sep­a­rate­ly grown region­al branch­es. Will French’s now-mod­est leaves one day cast a shad­ow over the whole tree? Per­haps — but I’m not can­cel­ing my plans to attend Span­ish prac­tice group tonight.

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 Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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.

Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer

in Books | May 23rd, 2015

Bill Gates — Microsoft CEO turned phil­an­thropist, life­long learn­er and fan of The Great Cours­es — is rec­om­mend­ing sev­en texts you should read this sum­mer. They’re not exact­ly light beach read­ing. But you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll get more dialed into issues on Gates’ mind. On his web­site, the video above comes accom­pa­nied by rea­sons for read­ing each work.:

Hyper­bole and A Half , by Allie Brosh:The Book, based on Brosh’s wild­ly pop­u­lar web­site, con­sists of brief vignettes and com­ic draw­ings her young About Life. The adven­tures she recounts are most­ly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in pub­lic. You will rip through it in three hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s fun­ny and smart as hell. I must have inter­rupt­ed Melin­da a dozen times to read to her pas­sages that made ​​me laugh out loud.

The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, an evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Oxford, has a gift for mak­ing sci­ence enjoy­able. This Book is as acces­si­ble as the TV series Cos­mos is for Younger Audi­ences-and as Rel­e­vant for Old­Er Audi­ences. It’s an engag­ing, well-illus­trat­ed sci­ence text­book offer­ing com­pelling answers to big ques­tions, like “how did the uni­verse form?” And “what caus­es earth­quakes?” It’s also a plea for read­ers of all ages to approach mys­ter­ies with rig­or and curiosity.Dawkins’s antag­o­nis­tic (and, to me, overzeal­ous) view of reli­gion has earned him a lot of angry crit­ics, but I con­sid­er him to be one of the great sci­en­tif­ic writer / explain­ers of all time.

If what?, by Ran­dall Munroe. The sub­ti­tle of the book is “Seri­ous Sci­en­tif­ic Answers to Absurd Hypo­thet­i­cal Ques­tions,” and that’s exact­ly what it is. Peo­ple write Munroe with ques­tions that range over all fields of sci­ence: physics, chem­istry, biol­o­gy. Ques­tions like, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” (The answer, it turns out, is “high enough that it would dis­in­te­grate before it hit the ground.”) Munroe’s expla­na­tions are fun­ny, but the sci­ence under­pin­ning his answers is very accu­rate. It’s an enter­tain­ing read, and you’ll also learn a bit about things like bal­lis­tics, DNA, the oceans, the atmos­phere, and light­ning along the way.

XKCD, by Ran­dall Munroe. A col­lec­tion of posts from Munroe’s Blog XKCD, which is made up of Car­toons he Draws mak­ing fun of things-Most­ly Sci­en­tists and Com­put­ers, But lots of Oth­er things too. There’s One About Sci­en­tists hold­ing A Press Con­fer­ence to Reveal Their dis­cov­ery That Life is arsenic-based. They research press con­fer­ences and find out that some­times it’s good to serve food that’s relat­ed to the sub­ject of the con­fer­ence. The last pan­el is all the reporters dead on the floor because they ate arsenic. It’s that kind of humor, which not every­body loves, but I do.

On Immu­ni­ty , by Eula Biss. When I stum­bled across this book on the Inter­net, I thought it might be a worth­while read. I had no idea what a plea­sure read­ing it would be. Biss, an essay­ist and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er, exam­ines what lies behind peo­ple’s fears of vac­ci­nat­ing their chil­dren. Like many of us, she con­cludes that vac­cines are safe, effec­tive, and almost mirac­u­lous tools for pro­tect­ing chil­dren against need­less suf­fer­ing. But she is not out to demo­nize any­one who holds oppos­ing views. This is a thought­ful and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book about a very impor­tant top­ic.

How to Lie With Sta­tis­tics , by Dar­rell Huff. I Picked up this Short, Easy-to-Read Book after See­ing it on A Wall Street Jour­nal list of good Books for Investors . I enjoyed it so much That it WAS One of A Hand­ful of Books I rec­om­mend­ed to every­one at TED this year. It was first pub­lished in 1954, but aside from a few anachro­nis­tic exam­ples (it has been a long time since bread cost 5 cents a loaf in the Unit­ed States), it does not feel dat­ed. One chap­ter shows you how visu­als can be used to exag­ger­ate trends and give dis­tort­ed comparisons‑a time­ly reminder, giv­en how often info­graph­ics show up in your Face­book and Twit­ter feeds these days. A use­ful intro­duc­tion to the use of sta­tis­tics, and a help­ful refresh­er for any­one who is already well versed in it.

Should We Eat Meat?, by Vaclav Smil. The rich­er the world gets, the more meat it eats. And the more meat it eats, the big­ger the threat to the plan­et. How do we square this cir­cle? Vaclav Smil takes his usu­al clear-eyed view of the whole land­scape, from meat’s role in human evo­lu­tion to hard ques­tions about ani­mal cru­el­ty. While it would be great if peo­ple want­ed to eat less meat, I do not think we can expect large num­bers of peo­ple to make dras­tic reduc­tions. I’m bet­ting on inno­va­tion, includ­ing high­er agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the devel­op­ment of meat sub­sti­tutes, to help the world meet its need for meat. A time­ly book, though prob­a­bly the least beach-friend­ly one on this list.

You can get more ideas from Bill Gates at Gates Notes.

If you’re look­ing to do some more DIY edu­ca­tion this sum­mer, don’t miss the fol­low­ing rich col­lec­tions:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recreated in an Adorable Paper Animation

in Animation, Television | May 19th, 2015

Yea, and there was a rejoic­ing all round the land last week when Show­time and David Lynch final­ly worked out a deal to bring back Twin Peaks after ini­tial reports that Lynch had backed out.

So while we wait for 2016, check out Matthew Fuller’s re-cre­ation of the Twin Peaks title sequence in ani­mat­ed paper cut outs. Fuller’s rough hewn cre­ation is adorable, stay­ing true to the lan­guid pace and dreamy objects of the orig­i­nal. (I had kind of for­get­ten that very large log on dis­play at the one minute mark.)

Fuller just start­ed this YouTube chan­nel And the World Was Paper two weeks ago, kick­ing it off with a recre­ation of the new Star Wars trail­er. He is also promis­ing a new paper video every fort­night, so be sure to sub­scribe.

Mean­while, this paper ver­sion of Twin Peaks isn’t the first time the titles has been recre­at­ed. Check out Filthy Frack­ers 8‑bit ver­sion here:

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed con­tent:

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

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 Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Electric Live Performances

in Music | May 15th, 2015

One of the last great Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­men, Riley B. King, is gone, passed away last night at the age of 89. King made per­haps the most suc­cess­ful crossover of any blues artist into main­stream rock and roll, record­ing with Clap­ton and play­ing for rock audi­ences for decades. But his sound remained root­ed firm­ly in the very blues he cut his teeth on in the fields of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta and in Mem­phis, where he hitch­hiked at 22, with $3 in his pock­et, and quick­ly became a hit as a song­writer and D.J. called the Beale Street Blues Boy—B.B. for short. He “was paid four cents,” writes Buz­zfeed, “for every album he made.”

“By his 80th birth­day,” writes The New York Times, “he was a mil­lion­aire many times over. He owned a man­sion in Las Vegas, a clos­et full of embroi­dered tuxe­does and smok­ing jack­ets, a chain of nightclubs…and the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing endured.” King’s sig­na­ture gui­tars, cus­tomized Gib­son 355s he named Lucille, are as ele­gant and styl­ish as the man him­self. I once stood in front of one of them in a glass case at the Stax muse­um in Mem­phis, star­ing in awe, exam­in­ing the places where his hands had worn into the wood, try­ing to absorb a lit­tle of the mag­ic. King’s sto­ry is one of suc­cess far beyond what most of his peers could imag­ine. But it is also one of pro­found ded­i­ca­tion to the blues, and of over­com­ing racism, pover­ty, and pain—suffering he chan­neled into his music and nev­er lost sight of through the wealth and fame.

Well-deserved trib­utes from fans and fel­low musi­cians are every­where today—to King’s per­son­al warmth and charm, to his impas­sioned singing, and, of course, his incred­i­bly expres­sive vibra­to gui­tar play­ing. “The tone he got out of that gui­tar, the way he shook his left wrist, the way he squeezed the strings,” says gui­tarist Bud­dy Guy, “… man, he came out with that and it was all new to the whole gui­tar playin’ world. The way BB did it is the way we all do it now. He was my friend and father to us all.” See and hear B.B. do it above in live per­for­mances of “The Thrill is Gone” and “Blues Boys Tune.” And just above, see him play and tell his sto­ry in a short 1972 doc­u­men­tary called “Sound­ing Out.” It may be too late now to see the great man per­form live, but it’s nev­er to late to learn about his lega­cy as the undis­put­ed “king of the blues.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

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

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Parody of David Lynch’s Iconic TV Show (1990)

in Comedy, K-12, Television | May 11th, 2015

Who killed Lau­ra Palmer?

If the answer comes unbid­den to your lips, you’re no doubt old enough to have spent much of 1990 glued to Twin Peaks, cult direc­tor David Lynch’s supreme­ly creepy series. (Note: US-based view­ers can watch the show for free on Hulu.)

The name prob­a­bly won’t mean much to those who entered the noughties with a wob­bly tod­dle, and why would it?  Mur­der vic­tim Palmer may have dri­ven the orig­i­nal series, but she did­n’t rank so much as a men­tion in Sesame Street’s 1991 par­o­dy, Twin Beaks, above.

The Mup­pets also steered clear of Sher­i­lyn Fenn’s teen vix­en cher­ry stem trick…

No Lynchi­an dream sequences…

No one armed men…

No scary owls…

What teth­ers this G‑rated kid­die ver­sion to the orig­i­nal, you may ask?

Hint: it car­ries a log.

Of course! The log lady is a sta­ple of Twin Peaks par­o­dies, show­ing up every­where from a Sat­ur­day Night Live skit star­ring Twin Peaks’ Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) to a 2.5 minute Lego homage that man­ages to pre­serve the sex, the vio­lence, and seem­ing­ly all of the char­ac­ters.

The Cook­ie Monster’s Spe­cial Agent Cook­ie does eat some “darn” fine pie, but ulti­mate­ly, his fix­a­tion on why the town was named “Twin Beaks” is far less com­pelling than his take on Mon­ster­piece Theatre’s host Alis­tair Cooke.

Mas­ter­piece Theatre’s icon­ic pre­sen­ter has proved even more irre­sistible to par­o­dists than the Log Lady.

(In Sesame Street’s case, it worked. There are 35 more Mon­ster­pieces, includ­ing num­ber-cen­tric spoofs of The 400 Blows and (gulp) The Post­man Always Rings Twice.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

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

96 Drawings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Comic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beaton & More

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Music | May 4th, 2015

There is a David Bowie for every sea­son. A Christ­mas David Bowie, a Hal­loween David Bowie, even a David Bowie East­er cel­e­bra­tion. But much more than that, there may be a David Bowie for every Bowie fan, espe­cial­ly for artists influ­enced by his chameleon­ic career. See for your­self how a whop­ping 96 Bowie-lov­ing artists—in this case main­ly what Bowie him­self calls the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”—see the changling rock star/actor/space alien.

“See my life in a com­ic… The lit­tle details in colour,” writes Bowie on his site of a web gallery of por­traits com­piled by “com­ic artist, writer and crit­ic, not to men­tion huge Bowie fan, Sean T. Collins.” It’s called The Thin White Sketch­book—a clever title that alludes to just one of the myr­i­ad Bowie per­son­ae rep­re­sent­ed in the size­able col­lec­tion of 96 draw­ings (see a nos­tal­gic one by pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Paul Pope at the top—the book’s first sketch).

Collins’ impres­sive col­lec­tion includes work from Michel Gondry (Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind), whose con­tri­bu­tion the edi­tor calls “pret­ty god­damn won­der­ful if you ask me.” See it above. And below, Kate Beat­on, cre­ator of web com­ic Hark, A Vagrant, gives us Bowie as a dandy, a char­ac­ter with whom, writes Collins, she has a “rich his­to­ry.”

Collins offers brief com­men­tary beneath each image in the col­lec­tion, which also gives us the strange inter­pre­ta­tion below by Bowie-inspired under­ground comics leg­end Charles Burns; the intense and Archie-esque con­tri­bu­tions fur­ther down by Broth­ers Jaime and Gilbert Her­nan­dez, cre­ators of the 80s New Wave clas­sic com­ic Love and Rock­ets; and the out­er space-pro­por­tioned Bowie at the bot­tom of the post, from vocal­ist Tunde Ade­bimpe of TV on the Radio, a band that has both cov­ered and record­ed with Bowie.

View the full set of Bowie draw­ings, no two remote­ly the same, at The Thin White Sketch­book’s Flickr page.

via Buz­zfeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Com­fort­ably Numb” Live (2006)

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