Sci-Fi “Portal” Connects Citizens of Lublin & Vilnius, Allowing Passersby Separated by 376 Miles to Interact in Real Time

in Art, Technology, Travel | June 9th, 2021

Can we ever tran­scend our ten­den­cy to divide up the world into us and them? The his­to­ry of Europe, which polit­i­cal the­o­rist Ken­neth Minogue once called “plau­si­bly summed up as prepar­ing for war, wag­ing war, or recov­er­ing from war,” offers few con­sol­ing answers. But per­haps it isn’t for his­to­ry, much less for the­o­ry or pol­i­tics, to dic­tate the future prospects for the uni­ty of mankind. Art and tech­nol­o­gy offer anoth­er set of views on the mat­ter, and it’s art and tech­nol­o­gy that come togeth­er in Por­tal, a recent­ly launched project that has con­nect­ed Vil­nius, Lithua­nia and Lublin, Poland with twin instal­la­tions. More than just a sculp­tur­al state­ment, each city’s por­tal offers a real-time, round-the-clock view of the oth­er.

“In both Vil­nius and Lublin,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Sara Barnes, “the por­tals are with­in the urban land­scape; they are next to a train sta­tion and in the city cen­tral square, respec­tive­ly. This allows for plen­ty of engage­ment, on either end, with the peo­ple of a city 376 miles apart. And, in a larg­er sense, the por­tals help to human­ize cit­i­zens from anoth­er place.”

Images released of the inter­ac­tion between passer­by and their local por­tal show, among oth­er actions, wav­ing, cam­era phone-shoot­ing, syn­chro­nized jump­ing, and just plain star­ing. Though more than one com­par­i­son has been made to the Star­gate, the image also comes to mind of the apes around the mono­lith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, react­ing as best they can to a pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined pres­ence in their every­day envi­ron­ment.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the basic tech­nol­o­gy employed by the Por­tal project is noth­ing new. At this point we’ve all looked into our phone and com­put­er screens and seen a view from per­haps much far­ther than 376 miles away, and been seen from that dis­tance as well. But the coro­n­avirus-induced world­wide expan­sion of tele­con­fer­enc­ing has, for many, made the under­ly­ing mechan­ics seem some­what less than mirac­u­lous. Con­ceived years before trav­el restric­tions ren­dered next to impos­si­ble the actu­al vis­it­ing of human beings else­where on the con­ti­nent, let alone on the oth­er side of the world, Por­tal has set up its first instal­la­tions at a time when they’ve come to feel like some­thing the world needs. “Res­i­dents in Reyk­javik, Ice­land, and Lon­don, Eng­land can expect a por­tal in their city in the future,” notes Barnes — and if those two can feel tru­ly con­nect­ed with Europe, there may be hope for the one­ness of the human race yet.

via Colos­sal/MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Street Artist Cre­ates an Opti­cal Illu­sion That Lets Peo­ple See the Art Inside a Shut­tered Muse­um in Flo­rence

This Huge Crash­ing Wave in a Seoul Aquar­i­um Is Actu­al­ly a Gigan­tic Opti­cal Illu­sion

See Web Cams of Sur­re­al­ly Emp­ty City Streets in Venice, New York, Lon­don & Beyond

Dis­cov­er Euro­peana Col­lec­tions, a Por­tal of 48 Mil­lion Free Art­works, Books, Videos, Arti­facts & Sounds from Across Europe

The His­to­ry of Europe from 400 BC to the Present, Ani­mat­ed in 12 Min­utes

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Nov­els Sold in Pol­ish Vend­ing Machines

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Psychology of Video Game Engagement — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #94 with Jamie Madigan

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Psychology, Video Games | June 4th, 2021

Why do peo­ple play video games, and what keeps them play­ing? Do we want to have to think through inno­v­a­tive puz­zles or just lose our­selves in mind­less reac­tiv­i­ty? Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Dr. Jamie Madi­gan, an orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist who runs the Psy­chol­o­gy of Video Games pod­cast, to dis­cuss what sort of a thing this is to research, the evo­lu­tion of games, play­er types, moti­va­tion vs. engage­ment, incen­tives and feed­back, as well as the gam­i­fi­ca­tion of work or school envi­ron­ments. Some games we touch on include Don­key Kong, Dark Souls, It Takes Two, Retur­nal, Hades, Sub­nau­ti­ca, Fort­nite, and Age of Z.

Some of the episodes of Jamie’s pod­cast rel­e­vant for our dis­cus­sion are:

• Ep. 3 on psy­cho­log­i­cal flow in games
• Ep. 6 on using psy­chol­o­gy to craft user expe­ri­ences
• Ep. 9 on how games dif­fer from oth­er media

Check out his books and arti­cles too. Here are a cou­ple of addi­tion­al sources about engage­ment:

• “The Play­er Engage­ment Process– An Explo­ration of Con­tin­u­a­tion Desire in Dig­i­tal Games” by Hen­rik Schoe­nau-Fog
• “Under­stand­ing Video Gaming’s Engage­ment” by Eric Gre­go­ry

The site Eri­ca men­tions about dis­abled modes in gam­ing is caniplaythat.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Download 1,000+ Beautiful Woodblock Prints by Hiroshige, the Last Great Master of the Japanese Woodblock Print Tradition

in Art, History | June 3rd, 2021

For 200 years, begin­ning in the 1630s, Japan closed itself off from the world. In its cap­i­tal of Edo the coun­try boast­ed the largest city in exis­tence, and among its pop­u­la­tion of more than a mil­lion not a sin­gle one was for­eign-born. “Prac­ti­cal­ly the only Euro­peans to have vis­it­ed it were a hand­ful of Dutch­men,” writes pro­fes­sor of Japan­ese his­to­ry Jor­dan Sand in a new Lon­don Review of Books piece, “and so it would remain until the mid-19th cen­tu­ry. No for­eign­ers were per­mit­ted to live or trade on Japan­ese soil except the Dutch and Chi­nese, who were con­fined to enclaves in the port of Nagasa­ki, 750 miles from Edo. No Japan­ese were per­mit­ted to leave: those who dis­obeyed did so on pain of death.”

These cen­turies of iso­la­tion in the Japan­ese cap­i­tal — known today as Tokyo — thus pro­duced next to noth­ing in the way of West­ern­er-com­posed accounts. But “the peo­ple of Edo them­selves left a rich archive,” Sand notes, giv­en the pres­ence among them of no few indi­vid­u­als high­ly skilled in the lit­er­ary and visu­al arts.

Such notable Edo chron­i­clers include Andō Hiroshige, the samu­rai-descend­ed son of a fire­man who grew up to become Uta­gawa Hiroshige, or sim­ply Hiroshige, one of the last mas­ters of the ukiyo‑e wood­block-print­ing tra­di­tion.

Hiroshige’s late “pic­tures of the float­ing world” are among the most vivid images of life in Japan just before it reopened, works that Sand quotes art his­to­ri­an Tim­on Screech as claim­ing “attest to a new sense of Edo’s place in the world.” For the his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal view of the sakoku (or “closed coun­try”) pol­i­cy has long since come in for revi­sion. The Japan of the mid-17th to late 19th cen­tu­ry may not actu­al­ly have been as closed as all that, or at least not as free of for­eign influ­ence as pre­vi­ous­ly assumed. The evi­dence for this propo­si­tion includes Hiroshige’s ukiyo‑e prints, espe­cial­ly his late series of mas­ter­works One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo.

Now, thanks to the Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion, you can take as long and as close a look as you’d like at — and even down­load — more than 1,000 of his works. That’s an impres­sive num­ber for a sin­gle insti­tu­tion, but bear in mind that Hiroshige pro­duced about 8,000 pieces in his life­time, cap­tur­ing not just the attrac­tions of Edo but views from all over his home­land as he knew it, which had already begun to van­ish in the last years of his life. More than a cen­tu­ry and a half on, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has prompt­ed Japan to put in place entry restric­tions that, for many if not most for­eign­ers around the world, have effec­tive­ly re-closed the coun­try. Japan itself has changed a great deal since the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, but to much of the world it has once again become a land of won­ders acces­si­ble only through its art. Explore 1,000+ wood­block prints by Hiroshige here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

The Real Loca­tions of Ukiyo‑e, His­toric Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, Plot­ted on a Google Map

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Sonic Explorations of Japanese Jazz: Stream 8 Mixes of Japan’s Jazz Tradition Free Online

in Music | May 11th, 2021

“Man,” a fel­low work­ing the check­out counter at Los Ange­les’ Amoe­ba Music once said to me, “you sure do like Japan­ese jazz.” His tone was one of faint dis­be­lief, but then, this par­tic­u­lar record-shop­ping trip hap­pened well over a decade ago. Since then the glob­al lis­ten­er­ship of Japan­ese jazz has increased enor­mous­ly, thanks to the expan­sion of audio­vi­su­al stream­ing plat­forms and the enter­pris­ing col­lec­tors and cura­tors who’ve used them to share the glo­ry of the most Amer­i­can of all art forms as mas­tered and re-inter­pret­ed by ded­i­cat­ed musi­cians in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun.

High-pro­file Japan­ese-jazz enthu­si­asts of the 2020s include the Turk­ish DJ Zag Erlat, cre­ator of the Youtube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal, whose short 70s mix of the stuff we fea­tured last year here on Open Cul­ture. But it was only a mat­ter of time before the musi­cal minds at Lon­don-based online radio sta­tion NTS broad­cast the defin­i­tive Japan­ese Jazz ses­sion to the world.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, NTS have ded­i­cat­ed large blocks of air­time to projects like the his­to­ry of spir­i­tu­al jazz and a trib­ute to the favorite music of nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi — a Japan­ese man and a jazz-lover, but one whose Amer­i­ca-inspired cul­tur­al ener­gy has­n’t been par­tic­u­lar­ly direct­ed toward jazz of the Japan­ese vari­ety.

“Japan­ese jazz” refers not to a sin­gle genre, but to a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent kinds of jazz giv­en Japan­ese expres­sion. Hence NTS’ Japan­ese Jazz Week, each of whose bilin­gual­ly announced broad­casts spe­cial­izes in a dif­fer­ent facet of the music. The first mix is ded­i­cat­ed to the late gui­tarist Ryo Kawasa­ki; the sec­ond, to tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese instru­ments like the shakuhachi, and the koto; the third, to Three Blind Mice, often described as “the Japan­ese Blue Note”; the fourth, to jazz fusion, one of the musi­cal cur­rents in Japan that gave rise to city pop in the 1980s; the fifth, to pianist Masabu­mi Kikuchi, who played with the likes of Son­ny Rollins and Miles Davis; the sixth, to modal jazz and bop from the 1960s to the 1980s; and the sev­enth, to free-impro­vis­ing sax­o­phon­ist Kaoru Abe, “a true mav­er­ick of late 70’s Japan­ese jazz.”

Japan­ese Jazz Week also includes a spe­cial on spir­i­tu­al and free jazz as played in Japan “from its ear­li­est stir­rings in the 1960s until it reached inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion in the 1970s.” The 70s, as the inter­na­tion­al fan con­sen­sus appears to reflect, was the gold­en age of Japan­ese jazz; as I recall, the heap of LPs I set down before that Amoe­ba clerk came most­ly from that decade. The decade’s play­ers, pro­duc­ers, labels, and con­cert venues con­tin­ue their work today, the cur­rent pan­dem­ic-relat­ed dif­fi­cul­ties of live per­for­mance aside. When the shows start and trav­el resumes again in earnest, no small num­ber of Japan­ese-jazz fans will be book­ing their tick­ets to Tokyo at once, all in search of an offline Japan­ese Jazz Week — or two or three — of their own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 30-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japan­ese Whisky, It’s Under­rat­ed, But Very High Qual­i­ty

Hear Enchant­i­ng Mix­es of Japan­ese Pop, Jazz, Funk, Dis­co, Soul, and R&B from the 70s and 80s

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Hear a Six-Hour Mix Tape of Hunter S. Thompson’s Favorite Music & the Songs Name-Checked in His Gonzo Jour­nal­ism

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blistering “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” Guitar Solo (2004)

in Music | May 5th, 2021

Recent­ly, I was walk­ing with a young rel­a­tive who, upon pass­ing a mur­al of the late Prince Rogers Nel­son, looked up at me and asked, “who is that?,” where­upon my eyes grew wide as saucers and I began the tale of a musi­cal hero who con­quered every instru­ment, every musi­cal style, every chord and scale, etc. It was a sto­ry fit for young ears, mind you, but myth­ic enough, I guess, that it inspired my rel­a­tive to stop me mid-sen­tence and ask in awe, “was he a god?” To which I stam­mered, caught off guard, “well, kind of…..”

Human­ly flawed though he was, Prince comes as close as any recent fig­ure to musi­cal divin­i­ty in the flesh. He seemed to con­jure and cre­ate effort­less­ly, ex nihi­lo, nev­er seem­ing to tire and always look­ing as though he just stepped off of a cloud. Now we know a lit­tle more about the source of some of that seren­i­ty, but it dimin­ish­es his leg­end not one bit. If not a god, he was at least some sort of wiz­ard.

Prince’s famous­ly epic live solo at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induc­tion Cer­e­mo­ny in the star-packed jam­boree cov­er of George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” holds up as a won­drous­ly suc­cinct case in point to show the chil­dren. Now, the per­for­mance has been re-edit­ed in a “director’s cut” by the broadcast’s orig­i­nal direc­tor Joel Gallen. Thom Dunn at Boing Boing quotes his expla­na­tion: “there were sev­er­al shots that were both­er­ing me. I got rid of the dis­solves and made them all cuts, and added lots more close ups of Prince dur­ing his solo.” (See the orig­i­nal below.)

“For­tu­nate­ly,” notes Dunn, “Gallen pre­served the dis­ap­pear­ing gui­tar at the end.” No one knows to this day where the gui­tar went, not even Tom Pet­ty and the Heart­break­ers drum­mer Steve Fer­rone, who was on stage behind Prince at the time. The stunt was unre­hearsed, and so was every­thing about the solo — no one had any idea what was going to hap­pen, a fright­en­ing prospect on live tele­vi­sion but a risk one must take, I sup­pose, when work­ing with the Pur­ple One.

In 2016, Gallen told The New York Times the sto­ry, worth quot­ing in full, of the performance’s rehearsal, a moment of pri­vate humil­i­ty from Prince behind his live bravu­ra show onstage.

The Pet­ty rehearsal was lat­er that night. And at the time I’d asked him to come back, there was Prince; he’d shown up on the side of the stage with his gui­tar. He says hel­lo to Tom and Jeff and the band. When we get to the mid­dle solo, where Prince is sup­posed to do it, Jeff Lyn­ne’s gui­tar play­er just starts play­ing the solo. Note for note, like Clap­ton. And Prince just stops and lets him do it and plays the rhythm, strums along. And we get to the big end solo, and Prince again steps for­ward to go into the solo, and this guy starts play­ing that solo too! Prince does­n’t say any­thing, just starts strum­ming, plays a few leads here and there, but for the most part, noth­ing mem­o­rable.

They fin­ish, and I go up to Jeff and Tom, and I sort of hud­dle up with these guys, and I’m like: “This can­not be hap­pen­ing. I don’t even know if we’re going to get anoth­er rehearsal with him. [Prince]. But this guy can­not be play­ing the solos through­out the song.” So I talk to Prince about it, I sort of pull him aside and had a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with him, and he was like: “Look, let this guy do what he does, and I’ll just step in at the end. For the end solo, for­get the mid­dle solo.” And he goes, “Don’t wor­ry about it.” And then he leaves. They nev­er rehearsed it, real­ly. Nev­er real­ly showed us what he was going to do, and he left, basi­cal­ly telling me, the pro­duc­er of the show, not to wor­ry. And the rest is his­to­ry. It became one of the most sat­is­fy­ing musi­cal moments in my his­to­ry of watch­ing and pro­duc­ing live music.

No, kid, he wasn’t a god, just a guy who could do things no one else could. He was a genius.

via Boing Boing / Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”

Watch Prince Per­form “Pur­ple Rain” in the Rain in His Tran­scen­dent Super Bowl Half-Time Show (2007)

Prince’s First Tele­vi­sion Inter­view (1985)

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

Kermit the Frog Gives a TED Talk About Creativity & the Power of “Ridiculous Optimism”

in Creativity, TED Talks, Television | May 4th, 2021

In 2015, 3.8 bil­lion years after “cre­ativ­i­ty emerged” out of “sheer­est empti­ness,” Ker­mit the Frog was tapped to give a talk on cre­ativ­i­ty at TEDx­Jack­son.

How did a local, one-day event man­age to snag such a glob­al icon?

Roots.

The famed frog’s cre­ator, Jim Hen­son, spent his first decade in Mis­sis­sip­pi (though Ker­mit was born of a ping pong ball and Henson’s mother’s old coat after the fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed to Mary­land.)

The con­fer­ence took place 15 years after Henson’s untime­ly death, leav­ing Ker­mit to be ani­mat­ed by Steven Whit­mire, the first of two pup­peteers to tack­le a role wide­ly under­stood to be Henson’s alter ego.

The voice isn’t quite the same, but the man­ner­isms are, includ­ing the throat clear­ing and crum­pled facial expres­sions.

Also present are a num­ber of TED Talk tropes, the smart phone prompts, the dark stage, pro­jec­tions designed to empha­size pro­found points.

A num­ber of jokes fail to elic­it the expect­ed laughs … we’ll leave it up to you to deter­mine whether the fault lays with the live audi­ence or the mate­r­i­al. (It’s not easy being green and work­ing blue comes with chal­lenges, too.)

Were he to give his TED Talk now, in 2021, Ker­mit prob­a­bly wouldn’t describe the audience’s col­lec­tive deci­sion to “accept a premise, sus­pend our dis­be­lief and just enjoy the ride” as a “con­spir­a­cy of crazi­ness.”

He might bypass a bina­ry quote like “If neces­si­ty is the moth­er of inven­tion, then cre­ativ­i­ty is the father.”

He’d also be advised to steer clear of a pho­to of Miss Pig­gy dressed as a geisha, and secure her con­sent to share some of the raci­er anec­dotes… even though she is a known atten­tion hog.

He would “tran­scend and include” in the words of philoso­pher Ken Wilber, one of many inspi­ra­tions he cites over the course of his 23-minute con­sid­er­a­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty and its ori­gins, attempt­ing to answer the ques­tion, “Why are we here?”

Also ref­er­enced: Michelan­ge­lo, Albert Ein­stein, Sal­vador Dali, Charles Baude­laire, Zen mas­ter Shun­ryū Suzu­ki, math­e­mati­cian Alfred North White­head, author and edu­ca­tor, Sir Ken Robin­son (who appears, briefly) and of course, Hen­son, who applaud­ed the “ridicu­lous opti­mism” of fling­ing one­self into cre­ative explo­rations, unsure of what one might find.

He can’t wan­der freely about the stage, but he does share some stir­ring thoughts on col­lab­o­ra­tion, men­tors, and the impor­tance of main­tain­ing “beginner’s mind,” free of pre-con­cep­tions.

How to cul­ti­vate beginner’s mind?

Try fast for­ward­ing to the 11:11 mark. Watch for 20 sec­onds. It’s the purest invi­ta­tion to believe since Peter Pan begged us to clap Tin­ker Bell back to life.

Do you? Because Ker­mit believes in you.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Wit­ness the Birth of Ker­mit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

Watch Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Per­form “Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” with Ker­mit the Frog on The Mup­pet Show (1981)

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

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

What Makes Ringo Starr a Great Drummer: Demonstrations from a German Teenager & Ringo Himself

in Music | April 28th, 2021

The ques­tion of whether or not Ringo Starr is a great rock drum­mer — maybe one of the great­est– seems more or less set­tled among drum­mers. “From the sim­plis­tic heavy-hit­ting of Dave Grohl, to the pro­gres­sive mind bend­ing of Mike Port­noy, and way beyond,” writes Stu­art Williams at Music Radar, “all roads lead back to Ringo.” Not only is Ringo “your favorite drummer’s favorite drum­mer,” but when he took the stage in 1964 on The Ed Sul­li­van Show, “you’d be hard-pushed to find anoth­er moment where one drum­mer inspired an entire gen­er­a­tion of kids and teenagers to pick up a pair of sticks and beg their par­ents to buy them a kit.”

There was lit­tle prece­dent for what he did in rock drum­ming even in the band’s ear­li­est years. Ringo helped change “the role of the drums from an ortho­dox, mil­i­tary and jazz-led dis­ci­pline into a more democ­ra­tised art form. If there was a blue­print for what drum­mers ‘did’ in rock ’n’ roll, Ringo’s approach widened it,” adds Music Radar. Much of his expan­sive vocab­u­lary was acci­den­tal, at least at first, a prod­uct of what Bea­t­les biog­ra­ph­er Bob Spitz calls a child­hood beset by “a Dick­en­sian chron­i­cle of mis­for­tune.”

Like many a ground­break­ing musi­cian, Ringo played at what might be con­sid­ered a phys­i­cal dis­ad­van­tage. He learned the drums in “the hos­pi­tal band,” he once said, while con­va­lesc­ing from tuber­cu­lo­sis. “My grand­par­ents gave me a man­dolin and a ban­jo, but I didn’t want them. My grand­fa­ther gave me a har­mon­i­ca… we had a piano — noth­ing. Only the drums.” Like Hen­drix, he was a lefty forced to adapt to a right-hand­ed ver­sion of the instru­ment, thus enlarg­ing what right- (and left) hand­ed drum­mers thought could be done with it.

As Ger­man drum­mer Sina demon­strates at the top of the post, Ringo’s unique style involves a great deal of sub­tle­ty, “tone, taste, musi­cal­i­ty, and that left-hand­ed drum­mer on a right-hand­ed kit reverse-fell tom-tom work,” writes Boing Boing. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Sina in a post in which great drum­mers pay trib­ute to Ringo. The daugh­ter of a musi­cian in Ger­man Bea­t­les trib­ute band the Sil­ver Bea­t­les, she shows off an unim­peach­able grasp of Star­r’s sig­na­ture moves.

In the clip above, Ringo him­self demon­strates his tech­nique on “Tick­et to Ride,” “Come Togeth­er,” and his high­est-chart­ing solo sin­gle “Back Off Booga­loo.” In explain­ing how he employed his most high­ly praised tal­ent — play­ing exact­ly what the song need­ed and no more — he shows how the drum pat­tern in the Abbey Road open­er came direct­ly from John’s vocals and Paul’s bass line. In “Tick­et to Ride,” he shows how he works from his shoul­der, pro­duc­ing a down­beat that’s slight­ly ahead.

Where do Ringo’s quirks come from, accord­ing to Ringo? “It has to do with swing,” he dead­pans, “or as we keep men­tion­ing, med­ica­tion.” More seri­ous­ly, he explains above in an inter­view with Conan O’Brien, he “leads with his left,” a lim­i­ta­tion that he turned into a musi­cal lega­cy on his favorite Bea­t­les drum moments and on every­one else’s.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Musi­cian Plays Sig­na­ture Drum Parts of 71 Bea­t­les Songs in 5 Min­utes: A Whirl­wind Trib­ute to Ringo Starr

How Can You Tell a Good Drum­mer from a Bad Drum­mer?: Ringo Starr as Case Study

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

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

Free Software Lets You Create Traditional Japanese Wood Joints & Furniture: Download Tsugite

in Architecture, Art | April 14th, 2021

The Japan­ese art of tsug­ite, or wood join­ery, goes back more than a mil­len­ni­um. As still prac­ticed today, it involves no nails, screws, or adhe­sives at all, yet it can be used to put up whole build­ings — as well as to dis­as­sem­ble them with rel­a­tive ease. The key is its canon of elab­o­rate­ly carved joints engi­neered to slide togeth­er with­out acci­den­tal­ly com­ing apart, the designs of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture in ani­mat­ed GIF form. Though it would be nat­ur­al to assume that 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has no pur­chase on this domain of ded­i­cat­ed tra­di­tion­al crafts­men, it does great­ly assist the efforts of the rest of us to under­stand just how tsug­ite works.

Now, thanks to researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo, a new piece of soft­ware makes it pos­si­ble for us to do our own Japan­ese join­ery as well. Called, sim­ply, Tsug­ite, it’s described in the video intro­duc­tion above as  “an inter­ac­tive com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tem to design wood­en join­ery that can be fab­ri­cat­ed using a three-axis CNC milling machine.” (CNC stands for “com­put­er numer­i­cal con­trol,” the term for a stan­dard auto­mat­ed-machin­ing process.)

In real time, Tsug­ite’s inter­face gives graph­i­cal feed­back on the joint being designed, eval­u­at­ing its over­all “slid­abilty” and high­light­ing prob­lem areas, such as ele­ments “per­pen­dic­u­lar to the grain ori­en­ta­tion” and thus more like­ly to break under pres­sure.

This is the sort of thing that a Japan­ese car­pen­ter, hav­ing under­gone years if not decades of train­ing and appren­tice­ship, will know by instinct. And though the work of a three-axis CNC machine can’t yet match the aes­thet­ic ele­gance of join­ery hand-carved by a such a mas­ter, Tsug­ite could well, in the hands of users from dif­fer­ent cul­tures as well as domains of art and craft, lead to the cre­ation of new and uncon­ven­tion­al kinds of joints as yet unimag­ined. You can down­load the soft­ware on Github, and you’ll also find sup­ple­men­tary doc­u­men­ta­tion here. Even if you don’t have a milling sys­tem handy, work­ing through vir­tu­al tri­al and error con­sti­tutes an edu­ca­tion in tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood join­ery by itself.  The cur­rent ver­sion of Tsug­ite only accom­mo­dates sin­gle joints, but its poten­tial for future expan­sion is clear: with prac­tice, who among us would­n’t want to try our hand at, say, build­ing a shrine?

via Spoon & Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Nick Offer­man Explains the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ben­e­fits of Woodworking–and How It Can Help You Achieve Zen in Oth­er Parts of Your Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A 4,000-Year-Old Student ‘Writing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Corrections in Red)

in Education, History, Museums, Writing | April 9th, 2021

Amer­i­cans raised on Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder’s Lit­tle House books tend to asso­ciate slates with one room school­hous­es and rote exer­cis­es involv­ing read­ing, writ­ing and ‘rith­metic.

Had we been reared along the banks of the Nile, would our minds go to ancient ges­soed boards like the 4000-year-old Mid­dle King­dom exam­ple above?

Like our famil­iar tablet-sized black­boards, this paper — or should we say papyrus? — saver was designed to be used again and again, with white­wash serv­ing as a form of eras­er.

As Egyp­tol­o­gist William C. Hayes, for­mer Cura­tor of Egypt­ian Art at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um wrote in The Scepter of Egypt: A Back­ground for the Study of the Egypt­ian Antiq­ui­ties in The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. Vol. 1, From the Ear­li­est Times to the End of the Mid­dle King­dom, the writ­ing board at the top of the page:

…bears parts of two mod­el let­ters of the very for­mal and ultra-poite vari­ety addressed to a supe­ri­or offi­cial. The writ­ers con­sis­tent­ly refer to them­selves as “this ser­vant” and to their addressees as “the Mas­ter (may he live, pros­per, and be well.)” The longer let­ter was com­posed and writ­ten by a young man named Iny-su, son of Sekhsekh, who calls him­self a “Ser­vant of the Estate” and who, prob­a­bly in jest, has used the name of his own broth­er, Peh-ny-su, as that of the dis­tin­guished addressee. Fol­low­ing a long-wind­ed pre­am­ble, in which the gods of Thebes and adja­cent towns are invoked in behalf of the recip­i­ent, we get down to the text of the let­ter and find that it con­cerns the deliv­ery of var­i­ous parts of a ship, prob­a­bly a sacred bar­que. In spite of its for­mal­i­ty and fine phrase­ol­o­gy, the let­ter is rid­dled with mis­spellings and oth­er mis­takes which have been cor­rect­ed in red ink, prob­a­bly by the mas­ter scribe in charge of the class.

Iny-su would also have been expect­ed to mem­o­rize the text he had copied out, a prac­tice that car­ried for­ward to our one-room-school­hous­es, where chil­dren droned their way through texts from McGuf­fey’s Eclec­tic Read­ers.

Anoth­er ancient Egypt­ian writ­ing board in the Met’s col­lec­tion finds an appren­tice scribe fum­bling with imper­fect­ly formed, uneven­ly spaced hiero­glyphs.

Fetch the white­wash and say it with me, class — prac­tice makes per­fect.

The first tablet inspired some live­ly dis­cus­sion and more than a few punch­lines on Red­dit, where com­menter The-Lord-Moc­casin mused:

I remem­ber read­ing some­where that Egypt­ian stu­dents were taught to write by tran­scrib­ing sto­ries of the awful lives of the aver­age peas­ants, to moti­vate and make them appre­ci­ate their edu­ca­tion. Like “the farmer toils all day in the burn­ing field, and prays he does­n’t feed the lions; the fish­er­man sits in fear on his boat as the croc­o­dile lurks below.”

Always thought it sound­ed effec­tive as hell.

We can’t ver­i­fy it, but we sec­ond that emo­tion.

Note: The red mark­ings on the image up top indi­cate where spelling mis­takes were cor­rect­ed by a teacher.

via @ddoniolvalcroze

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

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

The Letterform Archive Launches a New Online Archive of Graphic Design, Featuring 9,000 Hi-Fi Images

in Archives, Art, Design | April 8th, 2021

An online design muse­um made by and for design­ers? The con­cept seems obvi­ous, but has tak­en decades in inter­net years for the real­i­ty to ful­ly emerge in the Let­ter­form Archive. Now that it has, we can see why. Good design may look sim­ple, but no one should be fooled into think­ing it’s easy. “After years of devel­op­ment and months of feed­back,” write the cre­ators of the Let­ter­form Archive online design muse­um, “we’re open­ing up the Online Archive to every­one. This project is a labor of love from every­one on our staff, and many gen­er­ous vol­un­teers, and we hope it pro­vides a source of beau­ti­ful dis­trac­tion and inspi­ra­tion to all who love let­ters.”

That’s let­ters as in fonts, not epis­tles, and there are thou­sands of them in the archive. But there are also thou­sands of pho­tographs, lith­o­graphs, silkscreens, etc. rep­re­sent­ing the height of mod­ern sim­plic­i­ty. This and oth­er uni­fy­ing threads run through the col­lec­tion of the Let­ter­form Archive, which offers “unprece­dent­ed access… with near­ly 1,500 objects and 9,000 hi-fi images.”

You’ll find in the Archive the sleek ele­gance of 1960s Olivet­ti cat­a­logs, the icon­ic mil­i­tan­cy of Emory Dou­glas’ designs for The Black Pan­ther news­pa­per, and the eeri­ly stark mil­i­tan­cy of the “SILENCE=DEATH” t‑shirt from the 1980s AIDS cri­sis.

The site was built around the ide­al of “rad­i­cal acces­si­bil­i­ty,” with the aim of cap­tur­ing “a sense of what it’s like to vis­it the Archive” (which lives per­ma­nent­ly in San Fran­cis­co). But the focus is not on the casu­al onlook­er — Let­ter­form Archive online caters specif­i­cal­ly to graph­ic design­ers, which makes its inter­face even sim­pler, more ele­gant, and eas­i­er to use for every­one, coin­ci­den­tal­ly (or not).

The graph­ic design focus also means there are func­tions spe­cif­ic to the dis­ci­pline that design­ers won’t find in oth­er online image libraries: “we encour­age you to use the search fil­ters: click on each cat­e­go­ry to explore dis­ci­plines like let­ter­ing, and for­mats like type spec­i­mens, or com­bine fil­ters like decades and coun­tries to nar­row your view to a spe­cif­ic time and place.”

From the rad­i­cal typog­ra­phy of Dada to the rad­i­cal 60s zine scene to the sleek designs (and Neins) found in a 1987 Apple Logo Stan­dards pam­phlet, the muse­um has some­thing for every­one inter­est­ed in recent graph­ic design his­to­ry and typol­o­gy. But it’s not all sleek sim­plic­i­ty. There are also rare arti­facts of elab­o­rate­ly intri­cate design, like the Per­sian Yusef and Zulaikha man­u­script, below, dat­ing from between 1880 and 1910. You’ll find dozens more such trea­sures in the Let­ter­form Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

Dis­cov­er Iso­type, the 1920s Attempt to Cre­ate a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage with Styl­ish Icons & Graph­ic Design

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