One Trillion Frames Per Second: The Science of Capturing Light in Motion

in Photography, Technology, TED Talks | August 17th, 2012

Ramesh Raskar joined the MIT Media Lab in 2008, where he heads up the Lab’s Cam­era Cul­ture research group. For some time, the researcher has drawn inspi­ra­tion from anoth­er MIT pro­fes­sor, Harold Edger­ton, a pio­neer of stop-action pho­tog­ra­phy, who famous­ly pho­tographed a bul­let mov­ing through an apple in 1964. Decades lat­er, Raskar and his MIT crew have tak­en pho­tog­ra­phy to a new lev­el, cre­at­ing imag­ing hard­ware and soft­ware that can cap­ture light as it moves. They can visu­al­ize pic­tures as if they were record­ed at a rate of one tril­lion frames per sec­ond. His cut­ting edge work in fem­to-pho­tog­ra­phy is all on dis­play above.

If you want to get deep­er into Raskar’s world, you can check out his free MIT course, Com­pu­ta­tion­al Cam­era and Pho­tog­ra­phy, which is locat­ed in the Com­put­er Science/Artificial Intel­li­gence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

via Roger Ebert

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg Visit the Grave of Jack Kerouac (1975)

in Music, Poetry | August 17th, 2012

Above you can watch a rare 1975 meet­ing, of sorts, of three huge­ly influ­en­tial twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cul­tur­al minds: Bob Dylan, Allen Gins­berg, and — in spir­it, any­way — Jack Ker­ouac, who died six years before. This clip, though brief, would be fas­ci­nat­ing enough by itself, but Sean Wilentz pro­vides exten­sive back­sto­ry in “Pen­e­trat­ing Aether: The Beat Gen­er­a­tion and Allen Ginsberg’s Amer­i­ca,” an essay fron the New York­er. “On a crisp scar­let-ocher Novem­ber after­noon at Edson Ceme­tery in Low­ell,” as he describes it, “Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg vis­it­ed Kerouac’s grave, trailed by a reporter, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, a film crew, and var­i­ous oth­ers (includ­ing the young play­wright Sam Shep­ard).” There “Gins­berg recit­ed not from Kerouac’s prose but from poet­ry out of Mex­i­co City Blues [ … ] invok­ing specters, fatigue, mor­tal­i­ty, Mex­i­co, and John Steinbeck’s box­car Amer­i­ca, while he and Dylan con­tem­plat­ed Kerouac’s head­stone.” Why that par­tic­u­lar col­lec­tion? “Some­one hand­ed me Mex­i­co City Blues in St. Paul in 1959,” Wilentz quotes Dylan as hav­ing told Gins­berg. “It blew my mind.”

In the piece, which comes adapt­ed from his book Bob Dylan in Amer­i­ca, Wilentz goes into great detail describ­ing Dylan as a link between two some­times com­pat­i­ble and some­times antag­o­nis­tic sub­cul­tures in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca: the folk music move­ment and the Beat gen­er­a­tion.  “I came out of the wilder­ness and just nat­u­ral­ly fell in with the Beat scene, the bohemi­an, Be Bop crowd, it was all pret­ty much con­nect­ed,” Wilentz quotes Dylan as say­ing in 1985. “It was Jack Ker­ouac, Gins­berg, Cor­so, Fer­linghet­ti … I got in at the tail end of that and it was mag­ic … it had just as big an impact on me as Elvis Pres­ley.” Wilentz describes Dylan relat­ing to Ker­ouac as “a young man from a small declin­ing indus­tri­al town who had come to New York as a cul­tur­al out­sider more than twen­ty years earlier—an unknown burst­ing with ideas and whom the insid­ers pro­ceed­ed either to lion­ize or to con­demn, and, in any case, bad­ly mis­con­strue.” The Beats showed Dylan a path to main­tain­ing his cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, a trick he’s man­aged over and over again in the decades since. “Even though Dylan invent­ed him­self with­in one cur­rent of musi­cal pop­ulism that came out of the 1930s and 1940s,” Wilentz writes, “he escaped that cur­rent in the 1960s—without ever com­plete­ly reject­ing it—by embrac­ing anew some of the spir­it and imagery of the Beat generation’s entire­ly dif­fer­ent rebel­lious dis­af­fil­i­a­tion and poet­ic tran­scen­dence.”

Note: Do you want to hear Sean Wilentz read Bob Dylan in Amer­i­ca for free? (Find an audio sam­ple here.) Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio­book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Clas­sic Beat Poem, Howl

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

William S. Burroughs’ Class on Writing Sources (1976)

in | August 17th, 2012

Image by Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

These lec­tures were record­ed in July 1976 at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in Boul­der, CO.

The first half of a class with William S. Bur­roughs dis­cuss­es var­i­ous sources for writ­ing, includ­ing dreams, voic­es (exter­nal and inter­nal), and cut-up, giv­ing exam­ples from his own work. Bur­roughs empha­sizes the impor­tance of ego­less­ness to the writer and presents his sources as a means to that end. In the course of the dis­cus­sion, Bur­roughs airs many of his ideas about con­scious­ness. There are ques­tions and answers halfway through the ses­sion.

End of a class with William S. Bur­roughs, fin­ish­ing with a ques­tion and answer ses­sion with Bur­roughs respond­ing to remarks about women, non-ref­er­en­tial images, non-lin­ear think­ing, and telepa­thy. (Con­tin­ued from 76p020-021.) Key­words: Beat Move­ment, Exper­i­men­tal Writ­ing, Aur­al Poet­ry, Con­scious­ness and Lit­er­a­ture.

Mnozil Brass: Europe’s Most Imaginative Brass Band

in Comedy, Music | August 17th, 2012

Here’s some­thing fun. And a bit weird. Mnozil Brass is an Aus­tri­an septet that com­bines musi­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty with absur­dist the­atre. The group’s name means “noz­zle,” and refers to the Mnozil Pub, a lit­tle place near the Vien­na Col­lege of Music where the found­ing mem­bers used to get togeth­er to drink and play music. Since form­ing in 1992, and the group’s enter­tain­ing mix­ture of music and clown­ing has grown steadi­ly in pop­u­lar­i­ty. Above is a skit called “Slow Motion” from Mnozil Brass’s new DVD, Mag­ic Moments. Think of it as a sort of “spaghet­ti west­ern music recital.” There are sev­er­al more sam­ples below, to give you a sense of the luna­cy:

The William Tell Over­ture:

Lone­ly Boy:

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody:

William S. Burroughs’ Short Class on Creative Reading

in | August 16th, 2012

These lec­tures were record­ed in August 1979 at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in Boul­der, CO

Part 1 — The first half of a William S. Bur­roughs lec­ture on cre­ative read­ing. The lec­ture men­tions a wide vari­ety of authors, includ­ing Alis­tair Crow­ley, Paul Bowles, and many oth­ers. The class also dis­cuss­es sci­ence fic­tion, non-fic­tion, gen­er­al seman­tics, scriptwrit­ing, cloning, rot­ten ecto­plasm, and judg­ment in cut-ups, as well as Bur­rough­s’s nov­el, The Soft Machine.

Part 2 — The sec­ond half of a William S. Bur­roughs lec­ture on cre­ative read­ing. The lec­ture men­tions a wide vari­ety of authors, includ­ing Alis­tair Crow­ley, Paul Bowles, and many oth­ers. The class also dis­cuss­es sci­ence fic­tion, non-fic­tion, gen­er­al seman­tics, scriptwrit­ing, cloning, rot­ten ecto­plasm, and judg­ment in cut-ups, as well as Bur­rough­s’s nov­el, The Soft Machine.

You can find the course list­ed in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

The Joy of Making Artistic Homemade Guitars

in Music | August 16th, 2012

We’ve shown you the Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar, how Fend­er elec­tric gui­tars were made way back in 1959, and what goes into build­ing the Hofn­er bass gui­tar made famous by Paul McCart­ney. Next up: a mini doc­u­men­tary on Mark Nilsen and his artis­tic, home­made gui­tars. Much like Dan Philips, an artist who builds sus­tain­able homes out of every­day mate­ri­als (see our post from yes­ter­day), Nilsen makes instru­ments with mate­ri­als found in our local envi­ron­ment. It is all part of his belief that if you make your own gui­tars, you’ll make your­self a bet­ter musi­cian.

This video comes from Gui­tarka­di­a’s mini doc­u­men­tary series avail­able here.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar

‘The Right of the People to Rule’: Listen to Theodore Roosevelt Speaking 100 Years Ago Today

in History | August 16th, 2012

On this day 100 years ago, Theodore Roo­sevelt record­ed his great speech, “The Right of the Peo­ple to Rule.” The polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the speech bear some resem­blance to those of today: 1912 was a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, and the coun­try was divid­ed.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty, though, was espe­cial­ly divid­ed. Roo­sevelt had already served two terms as pres­i­dent under the Repub­li­can ban­ner, but by 1912 he had become deeply dis­ap­point­ed in what he saw as the reac­tionary drift of his suc­ces­sor and one-time friend, William Howard Taft. He decid­ed to chal­lenge Taft for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. When Roo­sevelt lost at the con­ven­tion he pressed ahead any­way, form­ing the Pro­gres­sive (“Bull Moose”) Par­ty.

Taft knew he was no match for the charis­mat­ic Roo­sevelt in a pop­u­lar elec­tion, but he saw his role in the sit­u­a­tion as being the guardian of the con­ser­v­a­tive char­ac­ter of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. With only 24% of the vote, Taft came in third place in the Novem­ber elec­tion, behind the Demo­c­rat Woodrow Wil­son (41%) and Roo­sevelt (27%). It was an embar­rass­ing out­come for a sit­ting pres­i­dent, but in one sense Taft won: The Repub­li­can par­ty took a con­ser­v­a­tive turn, and stayed on that course.

Roo­sevelt’s speech was record­ed on an Edi­son cylin­der at his Sag­amore Hill Estate in Oys­ter Bay, New York on August 16, 1912, dur­ing a brief lull in the cam­paign fol­low­ing the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty Con­ven­tion. It was one of sev­er­al cam­paign speech­es that were record­ed and then dis­trib­uted around the coun­try before the gen­er­al elec­tion. It’s based part­ly on a speech he gave on March 20, 1912 at Carnegie Hall.

In the record­ed ver­sion, Roo­sevelt speaks for the need to find a polit­i­cal mid­dle ground, warn­ing against the dan­ger of ultra-con­ser­vatism. “It would be well,” he says, “if our peo­ple would study the his­to­ry of a sis­ter repub­lic. All the woes of France for a cen­tu­ry and a quar­ter have been due to the fol­ly of her peo­ple in split­ting into the two camps of unrea­son­able con­ser­vatism and unrea­son­able rad­i­cal­ism. Had pre-Rev­o­lu­tion­ary France lis­tened to men like Tur­got, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of priv­i­lege, the Bour­bon reac­tionar­ies, the short­sight­ed ultra-con­ser­v­a­tives, turned down Tur­got; and found that instead of him they had obtained Robe­spierre.”

Near the end, Roo­sevelt sounds an impas­sioned call:

Friends, our task as Amer­i­cans is to strive for social and indus­tri­al jus­tice, achieved through the gen­uine rule of the peo­ple. This is our end, our pur­pose. The meth­ods for achiev­ing the end are mere­ly expe­di­ents, to be final­ly accept­ed or reject­ed accord­ing as actu­al expe­ri­ence shows that they work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty pur­pose, and we must strive for it in all earnest­ness and sin­cer­i­ty, or our work will come to noth­ing. In order to suc­ceed we need lead­ers of inspired ide­al­ism, lead­ers to whom are grant­ed great visions, who dream great­ly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kin­dle the peo­ple with the fire from their own burn­ing souls.

If you would like to read along as you lis­ten to Roo­sevelt’s voice, click here to open the full text in a new win­dow.

“Expansive Poetics” by Allen Ginsberg: A Free Course from 1981

in | August 16th, 2012

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

These lec­tures were record­ed at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in Boul­der, CO in the sum­mer of 1981.

Tape 1 — The first class in an Allen Gins­berg course on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Gins­berg opens the class with a brief his­to­ry of the top­ics of cours­es he has taught in the past. He then explains his expec­ta­tions for this course and the mate­r­i­al he plans to cov­er in the sourcebook/anthology he is com­pil­ing. He then reads Geza Roheim’s Chil­dren of the desert, Shel­ley’s Hymn to intel­lec­tu­al beau­ty, Ode to the West Wind and the end of Adon­ais. The class dis­cuss­es rhythm and the expan­sive breath and how it influ­ences one’s work.

Tape 2 in an 11 tape series of a class taught by Allen Gins­berg on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes back­ground on the Russ­ian Futur­ists as well as the read­ing of works by Paul Kleb­nikov.

Tape 3 in an 11 tape series of a class taught by Allen Gins­berg on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes some dis­cus­sion of the Russ­ian Futur­ists and two short read­ings by Russ­ian Futur­ist writ­ers.

Tape 4 of an 11 Tape series of a class taught by Allen Gins­berg on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes back­ground on the Futur­ists, Dadaists, and oth­er lit­er­ary movents as well as read­ings of work by such writ­ers as Vladamir Kleb­nikov and Kurt Schwit­ters.

Tape 5 of an 11 tape series of a class taught by Allen Gins­berg on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes back­ground on such move­ments as the Futur­ists, Acmeists, and Imag­in­ists as well as read­ings of work by var­i­ous artists includ­ing Osip Man­del­stam, Jorge Ivanov, Niko­lai Gumilev, William Car­los Williams, and Anna Akhma­to­va.

Tape 6 of an 11 tape series of a class taught by Allen Gins­berg on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the lives and writ­ing of Anna Akhma­to­va and Sergey Yes­enin.

Tape 7 Not avail­able. (But we’re look­ing into it.)

Tape 8 of an 11 tape series of Allen Gins­bergs class on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes back­ground on Sur­re­al­ism and con­cepts of lan­guage and the imag­i­na­tion as well as read­ings of works by such writ­ers as Tris­tan Tzara, Philip Laman­tia, Andre Bre­ton, Robert Desnos, Vitezslav Nez­val, Philippe Sou­peau, Fran­cis Picabia, and Ben­jamin Per­ret.

Tape 9 Not  avail­able.

Tape 10 Not avail­able.

Tape 11 of an 11 tape series of Allen Gins­berg’s class on Expan­sive Poet­ics. Sub­ject mat­ter includes back­ground on such Russ­ian writ­ers as Kaysin Kuliev and Sergei Yes­enin. Also includ­ed are read­ings of work by Gor­don McVay, Vladimir Kleb­nikov, and Sergei Yes­enin.

You can find the course list­ed in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

“Glitch” Artists Compose with Software Crashes and Corrupted Files

in Music, Technology | August 16th, 2012

A the­o­ry: one of the dri­vers of our cur­rent wave of nostalgia—lo-fi ana­log hiss and pop in music and ready­made vin­tage fil­ters in dig­i­tal photography—is the loss of imper­fec­tion. Increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful tech­nolo­gies ren­der sound and vision too slick­ly pris­tine, glossy, hyper­re­al, and thus imper­son­al and alien. The lat­est episode of PBS Arts’ “Off Book” series (above) fea­tures a trend toward dis­rupt­ing dig­i­tal over­pro­duc­tion by delib­er­ate­ly exploit­ing the weak­ness­es in new tech­nolo­gies. Glitch artists makes use of “nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring” (so to speak) cor­rup­tions of soft­ware, or cre­ate their own cor­rup­tions in a process called “data­bend­ing”—open­ing images as text files, for exam­ple, and adding and/or delet­ing infor­ma­tion from the image.

Unlike punk rock, to which glitch is com­pared by one of the artists above, some glitch art requires a fair­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, video artist Anton Mari­ni describes how he writes his own soft­ware to pro­duce glitch effects. But since vir­tu­al­ly any­one can access a pc and stan­dard text and image-edit­ing soft­ware, it remains a fair­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic aes­thet­ic, sim­i­lar to the bed­room tech­nolo­gies that enable almost any­one to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute their own musi­cal com­po­si­tions. There are sites offer­ing tuto­ri­als on how to cre­ate your own glitch art and even a Flickr account called Glitch­bot that will auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate glitch images for you, like Hip­sta­mat­ic or Insta­gram will con­vert your care­less snap­shots into intrigu­ing vin­tage arti­facts. Sound too easy? Maybe, but so was Duchamp’s uri­nal. Con­text, as always, mat­ters, and whether glitch art is “art” may ulti­mate­ly become a his­tor­i­cal ques­tion. At the moment, glitch images, video and music offer a way to human­ize all-too-inhu­man cor­po­rate prod­ucts and tech­nolo­gies.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Dan Philips Presents Sustainable Housing with Wildly Creative Designs

in Art, Design, TED Talks | August 15th, 2012

“Unique” is an overused word, so much so that it appears in overqual­i­fied redun­dan­cies like “com­plete­ly” or “very unique.” But, what the hell, I’m going to go ahead and call Dan Philips very unique. Philips, who has worked in army intel­li­gence, and as a dance instruc­tor and antiques deal­er, seems to have final­ly found his call­ing at age 64: build­ing cus­tom hous­es out of up to 80 per­cent sal­vaged and recy­cled materials—from con­struc­tion castoffs like old doors and odd-shaped beams to cat­tle bones, wine bot­tles, and license plates. In the TED talk above, Philips, a very wit­ty and engag­ing speak­er with a slight build and bushy han­dle­bar mus­tache, walks an audi­ence through some of his idio­syn­crat­ic designs, remark­ing on details like eggshells as dec­o­ra­tive but­tons, sal­vaged vin­tage appli­ances, his own low-tech solu­tions for laun­dry chutes and bath­tubs, and a sur­pris­ing­ly taste­ful “Bud­weis­er House.”

If any of this sounds a bit quirk-for-quirk’s sake, it’s not (entire­ly). Philips is a man with a seri­ous pur­pose. As a New York Times pro­file put it, he is “fer­vent­ly com­mit­ted to his vision of build­ing for low-income peo­ple,” espe­cial­ly poor, sin­gle moth­ers (Philips’ father aban­doned his fam­i­ly when he was 17). A self-taught plumber, car­pen­ter, and elec­tri­cian, his vision—articulated through his Huntsville, TX com­pa­ny Phoenix Com­mo­tion—includes hous­ing that is not only struc­tural­ly sound, but also archi­tec­tural­ly beau­ti­ful. “I think mobile homes are a blight on the plan­et,” he says. “Attrac­tive, afford­able hous­ing is pos­si­ble and I’m out to prove it.” While many of his buy­ers default­ed on their mort­gages dur­ing the recent crises, and some of his hous­es have been “gentrified”—sold to upper mid­dle-class fam­i­lies attract­ed by the design fea­tures and ener­gy efficiency—Philips is still pleased that his con­struc­tion rep­re­sents the real­i­ty of sus­tain­able design with recy­cled mate­ri­als and a build­ing phi­los­o­phy that tran­scends the end­less vis­tas of bland nou­veau colo­nials, ranch homes, and shod­dy tract hous­ing that seems to stretch across every sub­ur­ban land­scape.

Click here for a slideshow of sev­er­al of Philips’ cre­ations.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.