Glenn Gould Predicts Mash-up Culture in 1969 Documentary

in Music | May 15th, 2012

Like the Bea­t­les, Cana­di­an piano vir­tu­oso Glenn Gould gave up live per­for­mance in the mid-1960s and focused his cre­ative ener­gies on record­ing. “At live con­certs,” he told an inter­view­er, “I feel demeaned, like a vaude­vil­lian.” Gould ruf­fled quite a few feath­ers in the clas­si­cal music estab­lish­ment when he pub­licly embraced the prac­tice of splic­ing togeth­er pieces of tape from dif­fer­ent record­ings to cre­ate a new per­for­mance. In effect, he pro­voked a re-eval­u­a­tion of the word “per­for­mance.” In this short 1969 doc­u­men­tary from the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion’s Tele­scope series, Gould talks about the rea­sons for his dis­like of play­ing con­certs and his phi­los­o­phy of art in the age of elec­tron­ic record­ing. In the pro­logue, he more or less pre­dicts today’s mash-up cul­ture:

I have a feel­ing that the end result of all our labors in the record­ing stu­dio is not going to become some kind of auto­crat­ic fin­ished prod­uct such as we turn out now with rel­a­tive ease, with the help of splice-mak­ing which we do or which engi­neers do for us, but is going to be a rather more demo­c­ra­t­ic assem­blage. I think we’re going to make kits, and I think we’re going to send out these kits to lis­ten­ers, per­haps to view­ers also, as video­tape car­tridge gets into the act, as I think it will, and we’re going to say, Do it your­self. Take the assem­bled com­po­nents and make of those com­po­nents some­thing that you gen­uine­ly appre­ci­ate. If you don’t like the result as you put togeth­er the first time, put it togeth­er a sec­ond time. Be in fact your own edi­tor. Be, in a sense, your own per­former.

Vari­a­tions on Glenn Gould offers a fas­ci­nat­ing take–or, as the title sug­gests, sev­er­al dif­fer­ent takes–on Gould’s world-view. There is a short musi­cal inter­lude, in which he plays an excerpt from the first move­ment, “Alle­gro ma non trop­po,” of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 6 in F Major. And with­in the 24-minute time frame, the film­mak­ers allow Gould to devel­op his idio­syn­crat­ic thoughts on sev­er­al sub­jects, includ­ing his “con­tra­pun­tal radio doc­u­men­taries’ and his sense of iso­la­tion from soci­ety. “I absolute­ly enjoy being sur­round­ed by a sort of elec­tron­ic wall­pa­per, hav­ing music every­where about me,” says Gould. “I think that it gives a cer­tain shel­ter, and sets you apart. And I think that the only val­ue I have as an artist–the only val­ue most artists have, whether they real­ize it or not– is their par­tic­u­lar iso­la­tion from the world about which they write, and to which they hope to con­tribute.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

Glenn Gould and Leonard Bern­stein Play Bach

Why the University System, as We Know It, Won’t Last .… and What’s Coming Next

in Education | May 14th, 2012

It’s easy to sell books and oth­er com­modi­ties on the web. It’s not easy to deliv­er a qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. But two con­verg­ing trends point toward a future when we will see the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty give way to an online alter­na­tive — some­thing I was­n’t will­ing to bank on two years ago. First, Sil­i­con Val­ley is final­ly focus­ing on e‑learning. Udac­i­ty, Cours­era, Kahn Acad­e­my, EdX — they’re all look­ing to lift e‑learning out of a long peri­od of stag­na­tion. And, sec­ond, times are tough, and the tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem does­n’t care enough about man­ag­ing costs, while wrong­ly assum­ing that it has a cap­tive audi­ence.

This week­end, The New York Times took a good look at the financ­ing of a col­lege edu­ca­tion and high­light­ed a few stag­ger­ing data points.

• The U.S. has racked up more than $1 tril­lion in stu­dent loans.
• Today 94 per­cent of stu­dents earn­ing a bachelor’s degree take out loans — up from 45 per­cent in 1993.
• It’s esti­mat­ed that the “aver­age debt [per stu­dent] in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 per­cent owing more than $54,000 and 3 per­cent more than $100,000.”
• “Pay­ments are being made on just 38 per­cent of the bal­ance of fed­er­al stu­dent loans, down from 46 per­cent five years ago.”
• Final­ly, state fund­ing of edu­ca­tion is going down, and tuition is going up, which means that the fig­ures above will just get worse.

You don’t need me to spell things out. Pay­ing for a col­lege edu­ca­tion is get­ting unsus­tain­able, so much so that many expect a cri­sis in the col­lege loan mar­ket in the com­ing years. And then you con­sid­er this. Many uni­ver­si­ties seem indif­fer­ent to the dif­fi­cul­ties stu­dents face, if they’re not inten­tion­al­ly exac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem. At one point in the Times arti­cle, E. Gor­don Gee, the pres­i­dent of Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, goes on record say­ing, “I read­i­ly admit it … I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have giv­en sig­nif­i­cant thought to the impact of col­lege costs on fam­i­lies.” Now lis­ten to the lat­est episode of Plan­et Mon­ey, The Real Price of Col­lege (audio), which under­scores a more galling fact — many col­leges think that they gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage if they have a high stick­er price. For many schools, low­er tuition is a sign of weak­ness, not strength.

Uni­ver­si­ties can behave this way because they think they have a cap­tive audi­ence. Because col­lege grads still earn con­sid­er­ably more than high school grads, col­leges assume that stu­dents will keep enrolling. But what will hap­pen when cash-strapped stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with a viable alter­na­tive? It may take 10 to 20 years, but I would­n’t be sur­prised if a new breed of school emerges, schools that throw away the four year mod­el (and the human­i­ties too) and offer stu­dents a very tar­get­ed online edu­ca­tion in “prac­ti­cal” fields — from account­ing to cod­ing to nurs­ing to law and busi­ness — at a dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er cost. Here, the edu­ca­tion cycle gets short­ened to per­haps two years, and then stu­dents get cre­den­tialed (maybe by a trust­ed third-par­ty provider) and go to work, only to return lat­er in their careers to take more cours­es in spe­cial­ized areas. This mod­el will require the right tech­nol­o­gy plat­form (some­thing that will get worked out fair­ly soon) and a change in the expec­ta­tions of employ­ers and soci­ety more broad­ly (some­thing that will take time to devel­op, but less time than com­pla­cent col­leges think).

The new sys­tem won’t be bet­ter than the cur­rent one in many respects. It won’t offer a round­ed edu­ca­tion. The teach­ing will be less per­son­al. Long-last­ing social bonds won’t be made as eas­i­ly. (You’ll need to pay the big bucks at a tra­di­tion­al school for that. No, they won’t all go away.) And the teach­ing jobs cre­at­ed by these uni­ver­si­ties won’t be ter­ri­bly ful­fill­ing or lucra­tive. But the new sys­tem will offer a more focused and afford­able edu­ca­tion to stu­dents on a mass scale. And when stu­dents grad­u­ate most­ly debt free, they won’t com­plain. Nor will they be forced to forego col­lege alto­geth­er, as some would now advo­cate. There’s per­haps some­thing inevitable about this shift. But the insou­ciance of admin­is­tra­tors and fac­ul­ty inhab­it­ing the cur­rent sys­tem won’t do any­thing to delay it. Stick around, and you’ll prob­a­bly see that I’m right. And if you think my look into the crys­tal ball is wrong, let me know.

In the mean­time, we give you anoth­er take on how to solve our world’s edu­ca­tion­al prob­lems — Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci’s Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty:

For oodles of free cours­es, don’t for­get to vis­it our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Neil deGrasse Tyson & Richard Dawkins Ponder the Big Enchilada Questions of Science

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | May 14th, 2012

When­ev­er you bring togeth­er Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins — one the pub­lic face of astro­physics, the oth­er the pub­lic face of biol­o­gy — you’re pret­ty much guar­an­teed a good crowd and a spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. And that’s what stu­dents got in Sep­tem­ber 2010, when the sci­en­tists shared the stage at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty and con­sid­ered some big enchi­la­da ques­tions. For exam­ple: Why did our mind — from an evo­lu­tion­ary point of view — lead us to abstract math­e­mat­ics, which dri­ves the major dis­cov­er­ies in physics? What are the chances that we’ll dis­cov­er intel­li­gent life in the uni­verse, and, if they dis­cov­er us (rather than the oth­er way around), could we, as a civ­i­liza­tion, be in big trou­ble? Is nat­ur­al selec­tion oper­a­tive through­out the uni­verse and would aliens look any­thing like us? And why is The Blob a much bet­ter alien than ET? In short, they’re con­sid­er­ing just the kinds of mind-bend­ing ques­tions that col­lege stu­dents love to enter­tain — and hope­ful­ly you do to. Their con­ver­sa­tion runs about 50 min­utes and a Q&A fol­lows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Some­thing from Noth­ing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Dis­cuss Cos­mol­o­gy, Ori­gins of Life & Reli­gion Before a Packed Crowd

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

30 Free Physics Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (More Free Cours­es here)

Headbanging Anthropologist Takes Us Through the World of Heavy Metal in 2005 Documentary

in Film, Music | May 14th, 2012

Don’t wor­ry; I don’t know any­thing about met­al either. As least, I did­n’t know any­thing about it before I watched Met­al: A Head­banger’s Jour­ney, a 2005  doc­u­men­tary on this vast yet much-derid­ed musi­cal sub­cul­ture that you can watch on YouTube. Sam Dunn, an anthro­pol­o­gist, bassist, and unapolo­getic met­al­head, uses the film to ask many ques­tion about his favorite music: what exact­ly is met­al? How do met­al play­ers get it to sound so evil? Why does one per­son give him­self over com­plete­ly to the met­al lifestyle, while anoth­er bare­ly notices its exis­tence at all? What feel­ing do the most die-hard fans get from met­al, and how do they get addict­ed to it? Why does met­al’s most­ly straight male audi­ence thrill to the sight of met­al’s most­ly straight male per­form­ers strut­ting around in tight leather? How did met­al grow so many sub­gen­res — black met­al, glam met­al, pow­er met­al, death met­al? Does Satan real­ly have any­thing to do with met­al, or does it all come down to a big piece of Hal­loween-ish the­ater? And how come north­ern Euro­peans take met­al so dead­ly seri­ous­ly?

In pur­suit of the answers, Dunn trav­els the world inter­view­ing met­al­ists of every stripe, from Rob Zom­bie to Alice Coop­er to Rush bassist Ged­dy Lee to Twist­ed Sis­ter front­man Dee Snider to Iron Maid­en’s mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Rob Dick­in­son to a pair of masked men from Slip­knot. He even talks twice to the late Ron­nie James Dio, the singer who sup­pos­ed­ly pop­u­lar­ized the now-uni­ver­sal sign of the horns met­al hand ges­ture. Seek­ing con­text for these first-hand accounts, Dunn talks to aca­d­e­m­ic soci­ol­o­gists and musi­col­o­gists as well as the mile-a-minute cul­tur­al essay­ist Chuck Kloster­man. Fol­low­ing his anthro­po­log­i­cal instinct, he also puts in a great deal of time with fel­low met­al­heads of myr­i­ad ages and nation­al­i­ties (though they usu­al­ly come from the same range of grim­ly dull child­hoods). Dun­n’s dis­arm­ing per­son­al­i­ty and undy­ing enthu­si­asm for the mate­r­i­al offer a way into this seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry musi­cal cul­ture of vir­tu­os­i­ty and bru­tal­i­ty, whose cre­ators sing in death grows yet speak elo­quent­ly, whose hard­ened out­sider fol­low­ers some­how find in it a fount of com­mu­ni­ty, friend­ship and belong­ing.

via Metafil­ter

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

Remembering Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, the Backbone of Memphis Soul, with Grooving Video

in Music | May 14th, 2012

The leg­endary bassist Don­ald ‘Duck’ Dunn has died at the age of 70. As a mem­ber of the Stax Records house band in the 1960s, Dunn laid down the bass line for some of the great­est songs of the era, includ­ing Wil­son Pick­et­t’s “In the Mid­night Hour,” Sam & Dav­e’s “Soul Man,” and Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign.” He and oth­er mem­bers of the Stax band record­ed a series of clas­sic instru­men­tals under the name Book­er T. and the MG’s. The video above fea­tures Dunn and his bandmates–guitarist Steve Crop­per, drum­mer Al Jack­son, Jr., and key­boardist Book­er T. Jones–performing “Green Onions,” though that par­tic­u­lar song was first record­ed before Dunn joined the band.

Dunn died while on a Stax music tour of Japan with Crop­per and Eddie Floyd. Crop­per, who grew up with Dunn in Mem­phis, broke the news on his Face­book page. “Today I lost my best friend, the World has lost the best guy and bass play­er to ever live,” wrote Crop­per. “Duck Dunn died in his sleep Sun­day morn­ing May 13 in Tokyo Japan after fin­ish­ing 2 shows at the Blue Note Night Club.”  No cause of death has been announced.

Expres­sions of sym­pa­thy and grief have been spread­ing across the Inter­net. “I can’t imag­ine not being able to hear Duck laugh and curse,” wrote Book­er T. Jones on his Web site, “but I’m thank­ful I got to spend time and make music with him.” On Twit­ter, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers bassist Flea wrote, “What a deep pock­et that dude had, so glad I got to see him play, beau­ti­ful bass play­er we’ll be lis­ten­ing to for­ev­er.” And for­mer Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, who had been in dai­ly e‑mail con­tact with Dunn up until the day before he died, paid trib­ute to his friend by post­ing a video on his Web site show­ing Dunn per­form­ing “Try a Lit­tle Ten­der­ness” with Otis Red­ding on the 1967 Stax Euro­pean tour. You can see it below.

The Original Episode of Dark Shadows, the 1960s TV Series That Inspired Tim Burton’s New Film

in Film, Television | May 11th, 2012

For mil­lions of Amer­i­can kids grow­ing up in the late 1960s, it was a thrill to run home from school and flip on the TV in time to hear the creepy theremin music at the begin­ning of Dark Shad­ows. A soap opera with a vam­pire! There was some­thing strange­ly sub­ver­sive about it. As a head­line writer for The New York Times recent­ly put it, Barn­abas Collins (the undead star of the show) was “The Vam­pire Who Came Out in the After­noon.”

Tim Bur­ton was one of those kids who ran home to watch the show. “I should prob­a­bly have been doing home­work or play­ing sports after school instead of watch­ing ‘Dark Shad­ows,’ ” Bur­ton told Ter­rence Raf­fer­ty for the Times arti­cle. “But see­ing that show every after­noon, at home, in Bur­bank, it just does­n’t get much weird­er than that.”

It might get just a lit­tle weird­er tonight, with the Amer­i­can open­ing of Bur­ton’s campy new film adap­ta­tion of Dark Shad­ows, star­ring John­ny Depp as Barn­abas Collins. The movie has been get­ting pos­i­tive reviews. Manohla Dar­gis in The New York Times calls it “Mr. Bur­ton’s most plea­sur­able film in years.” To help get you in the spir­it, so to speak–and to add perspective–we’re tak­ing you back to the very first episode of the orig­i­nal series (above) from June, 1966. Alas, Barn­abas Collins did­n’t make his appear­ance until episode num­ber 211, a year lat­er. The actor who played Collins, Jonathan Frid, died last month at the age of 87. He makes a cameo appear­ance in Bur­ton’s movie. For a pre­view of the film, see below. You can pur­chase the com­plete Dark Shad­ows TV series on DVD here, which comes in a nice pack­age of 131 discs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Franken­wee­nie: Tim Bur­ton Turns Franken­stein Tale into Dis­ney Kids Film (1984)

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

James Joyce Manuscripts Online, Free Courtesy of The National Library of Ireland

in Books, History | May 11th, 2012

Soon, the Nation­al Library of Ire­land will re-scan, re-orga­nize, and ful­ly con­tex­tu­al­ize its online col­lec­tion of James Joyce man­u­scripts. But the die-hard Joyce enthu­si­asts among us prob­a­bly found this out in April, when what the NLI calls “The Joyce Papers, c. 1903–1928″ first became avail­able. They would have had to do some click­ing to get there, though, since the col­lec­tion debuted and remains buried sev­er­al lay­ers deep in the site, enjoy­ing what the restau­rant indus­try calls a “soft open­ing,” before its more user-friend­ly “grand open­ing” in the near future. But when you’ve got the chance to read mil­lions of euros’ worth of writ­ing in Joyce’s own hand — drafts of Ulysses, proofs of Finnegans Wake, notes dat­ing back to his uni­ver­si­ty days — why daw­dle?

The col­lec­tion awaits a detailed guide, offer­ing at the moment only a list of man­u­scripts labeled 36,639/1 through 36,639/19. But you can get a sense of what’s in there from assis­tant keep­er Peter Ken­ny’s sum­ma­ry at the top of the page. Ter­ence Killeen in the Irish Times draws spe­cial atten­tion to doc­u­ment 36,639/2/A, a jour­nal or “com­mon­place book, which Joyce used for an unusu­al vari­ety of pur­pos­es: as an account book, as a repos­i­to­ry of var­i­ous pas­sages and poems from his read­ing that struck him (Ben Jon­son is a par­tic­u­lar favourite); read­ing lists; thoughts and reflec­tions on aes­thet­ics; remarks on friends (JF Byrne, for instance); and, even­tu­al­ly, notes for Dublin­ers and for the fig­ure of Stephen Dedalus as he emerged in the lat­er fic­tion (some of the notes even look for­ward to Ulysses).” As if that weren’t enough, he also rec­om­mends the next doc­u­ment down, a “sub­ject note­book” for Ulysses includ­ing “notes on the Irish,” “the Clerken­well bomb­ing of 1867, “the Celtic view of hell by a Ger­man pro­fes­sor,” and “the Jews and theos­o­phy.” And if actu­al­ly deci­pher­ing Joyce’s own hand proves too daunt­ing a task, well, you can always wait for the tran­scrip­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Pas­sages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

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

1377 TED Talks Listed in a Neat Spreadsheet — And More Stellar Culture Links on the Web

in TED Talks | May 11th, 2012

A quick fyi for TED heads. In ear­ly 2011 we men­tioned that some­one put togeth­er a handy online spread­sheet that lists 1377 TED Talks, with handy links to each indi­vid­ual video. It’s worth men­tion­ing the spread­sheet again because this evolv­ing Google doc has now grown beyond 1200 talks. That works out to more than 340 hours of “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple.” Because the page gets updat­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, you’ll def­i­nite­ly want to book­mark it and keep tabs on the new addi­tions.

Now time for more good cul­ture links, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our hap­penin’ Twit­ter stream.

Archae­ol­o­gists Unearth Ancient Maya Cal­en­dar Writ­ing

Vir­ginia Woolf. Play­ing Crick­et

Delta Dawn: How Sears, Roe­buck & Co. Mid­wifed the Birth of the Blues

Mau­rice Sendak’s Last Video Appear­ance with Stephen Col­bert

‘Madame Bovary’ in Pie Chart Form. (Did Some­one Say Pie?)

From Whistler to Warhol, Famous Artists Paint Their Moth­ers

Jose Sara­m­ago’s First Reac­tion after Watch­ing the Movie Blind­ness

All 268 Pages from Leonar­do’s Note­books Pre­sent­ed in High Res iPad App

Mar­garet Atwood Rec­om­mends That Mar­tians Read Moby Dick to Under­stand Amer­i­ca

Biog­ra­ph­er Robert Caro Dis­cuss­es Polit­i­cal Power—How to Get It and Use It

A Record­ing of 24-Year-Old John Ash­bery Read­ing His Poems

John Peel’s Mas­sive Record Col­lec­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Strange Pol­i­tics of Gertrude Stein

David Sedaris Reads “Six to Eight Black Men” from the Album ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus or Email, and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you. We’re at your ser­vice, you know?

Five Historical Misconceptions Debunked

in History | May 11th, 2012

Viking hel­mets had horns, Napoleon was quite short and Lady Godi­va rode through Coven­try naked. Most of us accept these tales as facts because they’ve been told for many gen­er­a­tions. But C.G.P. Grey took a clos­er look and com­piled this short video in which he debunks not only these his­tor­i­cal mis­con­cep­tions but also two myths sur­round­ing the Roman “Vom­i­to­ri­um” and Colum­bus.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

• 10 more his­tor­i­cal mis­con­cep­tions
• A sci­en­tif­ic paper called “The Inven­tion of the Viking Horned Hel­met”

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

The Electronic Nose and The Strange Future of Public Health & Safety

in Science | May 10th, 2012

Over in Nate Lewis’ Cal­tech lab, they’re work­ing on devel­op­ing an “elec­tron­ic nose” that can sniff out dis­eases, bombs, dan­ger­ous tox­ins and beyond. And then they want to put that e‑nose right in your smart­phone.

Need to find out if you have a lit­tle tuber­cu­lo­sis? No prob­lem, there’s an app for that. Won­der­ing if that pow­der may be anthrax? Oh iPhone, what say you?