What Happens When Artificial Intelligence Listens to John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space & Starts to Create Its Own Free Jazz

in Music, Technology | July 22nd, 2019

Some enjoy free jazz as soon as they first hear it; oth­ers think it sounds like music from an alien civ­i­liza­tion, a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence fit only for a jazz fan as high as a kite. But how about as high as a space probe? Out­er­he­lios, a 24/7 stream of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed free jazz, comes designed for broad­cast into out­er space by Dad­abots, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between musi­cians-turned-pro­gram­mers CJ Carr and Zack Zukows­ki (or, accord­ing to their about page, “a cross between a band, a hackathon team, and an ephemer­al research lab”). Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly built an AI-gen­er­at­ed death met­al stream (about whose cre­ation you can read in this com­put­er sci­ence paper), they’ve looked to the skies and trained their neur­al net­work on John Coltrane’s Inter­stel­lar Space.

“These duets between Coltrane on tenor (and bells) and Rashied Ali on drums sound like an annoy­ance until you con­cen­trate on them,” writes Robert Christ­gau in his orig­i­nal review of the 1974 album, “at which point the inter­ac­tions take on pace and shape.” The neur­al net­work “lis­tened to the album 16 times,” says the offi­cial Data­bots descrip­tion on the Out­er­he­lios stream, “then con­tin­ued to make music in the style.”

The project draws inspi­ra­tion from NASA’s probes Voy­ager 1 and 2, which “launched in 1977 car­ry­ing a mix­tape Carl Sagan made called The Sounds of Earth. It fea­tured Blind Willie John­son, Chuck Berry, record­ings of laugh­ter, Beethoven, Bach, Stravin­sky, along with dia­grams of human repro­duc­tive organs,” all “intend­ed for an audi­ence of intel­li­gent extrater­res­tri­al life­forms.”

Where­as The Sounds of Earth “used a sta­t­ic music for­mat pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed by peo­ple,” Out­er­he­lios fol­lows on Bri­an Eno’s ideas about gen­er­a­tive music by invent­ing a Coltrane album that nev­er sounds the same twice. “For a few min­utes, it’ll pro­duce plau­si­ble-sound­ing free jazz,” writes Futurism.com’s Jon Chris­t­ian. “Then the drums will segue into an inhu­man trill, or the horns will dis­in­te­grate into a cacoph­o­nous wash of sound. Let’s just say that it’s not your dad’s jazz” — even if your dad hap­pens to be John Coltrane, or indeed Bri­an Eno. But per­haps it will give NASA just the inspi­ra­tion it needs to get the next Voy­ager launched. The sound of the orig­i­nal Inter­stel­lar Space got Christ­gau think­ing beyond nations: “Euro­pean, Ori­en­tal, African — I don’t know. But amaz­ing.” Could the likes of Out­er­he­lios get us think­ing beyond the solar sytem?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Piano Played with 16 Increasing Levels of Complexity: From Easy to Very Complex

in Creativity, Music | July 16th, 2019

Remem­ber the feel­ing of accom­plish­ment as a child, pick­ing out a sim­ple tune after your first piano les­son?

Then the day you begin to play with both hands? So grown up.

Even­tu­al­ly you start using more than two fin­gers.

And then comes the par­ty where a proud par­ent, pos­si­bly with a drink or two in him, com­mands you to play for the guests, who indulge your efforts with applause and the sug­ges­tion that per­haps their child, a con­tem­po­rary of yours, take a turn at the key­board.

Mozart.

Beethoven.

Max­i­mum humil­i­a­tion.

How soon can you bail on those damn piano lessons?

I flashed on that uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence whilst lis­ten­ing to pianist and com­pos­er Nahre Sol demon­strate the “end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties” of piano com­po­si­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion by sub­ject­ing “Hap­py Birth­day” to six­teen lev­els of increas­ing com­plex­i­ty.

‘Round about lev­el five is where our respec­tive tal­ents began to part ways.

After a lot of prac­tice and false starts, I can some­times man­age a sim­ple arpeg­gio.

That’s greasy kid stuff to Nahre, whose YouTube chan­nel abounds with expert advice on how to sound like var­i­ous clas­si­cal com­posers and robust inves­ti­ga­tions of gen­res—fla­men­co, rag­time, Bossa nova, the Blues…

Now I know what made the vis­i­tors’ kid so much more advanced than me—broken octaves, glis­san­dos, great mus­cu­lar spans, a con­fi­dent com­mand of har­monies and rhythm…

Sol blows that per­for­mance out of the water, with seem­ing­ly very lit­tle effort, breezi­ly explain­ing what she’s doing each time she takes things up a notch, cul­mi­nat­ing in lev­el 16, which encom­pass­es all pre­vi­ous steps.

As home­less­ricegum observes in the com­ment sec­tion of the video, “Lev­el 17: you will now need your third hand.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­cept of Musi­cal Har­mo­ny Explained in Five Lev­els of Dif­fi­cul­ty, Start­ing with a Child & End­ing with Her­bie Han­cock

Learn How to Read Sheet Music: A Quick, Fun, Tongue-in-Cheek Intro­duc­tion

A Vin­tage Grand Piano Gets Reengi­neered to Play 20 Dif­fer­ent Instru­ments with a Push of Its Keys

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

What Happened to the 1200 Paintings Painted by Bob Ross? The Mystery Has Finally Been Solved

in Art, Business, Television | July 15th, 2019

Very few artists enjoy the degree of recog­ni­tion that’s been con­ferred upon the late tele­vi­sion edu­ca­tor Bob Ross, though sales of his work hov­er around zero.

It’s not due to scarci­ty. Ross pumped out three near­ly-iden­ti­cal paint­ings per episode of his series, The Joy of Paint­ing (watch them online here). That’s 403 episodes over the course of 31 sea­sons on pub­lic television—or 1209 can­vas­es of clouds, moun­tains, and “hap­py lit­tle trees.”

Shouldn’t eco­nom­ics dic­tate that these would have only increased in val­ue fol­low­ing their creator’s untime­ly death from lym­phoma in 1995?

A hand­ful have been donat­ed to the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um Of Amer­i­can His­to­ry’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. Leav­ing those aside, why are there no Bob Ross­es fetch­ing high prices on the auc­tion block?

Is the painter’s leg­endary hyp­not­ic appeal a fac­tor? Did he sub­con­scious­ly manip­u­late even the most cut­throat col­lec­tors into a state of sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment where­in prof­it mat­ters not a jot?

As The New York Times-pro­duced video above points out, Ross’ great mis­sion in life was to get oth­ers painting—quickly and joy­ful­ly.

Which is not to say he blithe­ly tossed the fruits of his labor into the incin­er­a­tor after that pur­pose had been served.

The rea­son Ross’ paint­ings aren’t on the mar­ket is they’re neat­ly stacked in card­board car­tons at Bob Ross Inc. in Hern­don, Vir­ginia. It hard­ly con­sti­tutes archival stor­age, but the box­es are neat­ly num­bered, and every­thing is account­ed for.

And that is where they’re like­ly to remain, accord­ing to exec­u­tive assis­tant Sarah Strohl and pres­i­dent Joan Kowal­s­ki, the daugh­ter of Ross’ long­time busi­ness part­ner. (Her moth­er, Annette is Ross’ for­mer stu­dent and the fore­most authen­ti­ca­tor of his work.)

For now, if any­one endeav­ors to sell you a Bob Ross orig­i­nal, it’s safe to assume it’s a fake.

Bet­ter yet, paint your own. Bob Ross Inc. tends to both the master’s rep­u­ta­tion and his lucra­tive off-screen busi­ness, sell­ing instruc­tion­al books and paint­ing sup­plies.

Be fore­warned, though, it’s won’t be as easy as the ever-placid mas­ter made it seem. Have a look at these come­di­ans scram­bling to keep up with his moves for the Bob Ross Chal­lenge, a fundrais­er for the Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety.

Ross, of course, nev­er broke a sweat on cam­era, which lends a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance to the Times’ video’s fre­net­ic edit­ing. (I nev­er thought I’d have to issue a seizure warn­ing for some­thing Bob Ross-relat­ed, but those can­vas­es flash by awful­ly quick­ly at the 1:09 mark and again at 10:36. )

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Watch 13 Come­di­ans Take “The Bob Ross Chal­lenge” & Help Raise Mon­ey for The Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 9 for the kick off of anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The New David Bowie Barbie Doll Released to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of “Space Oddity”

in Music, Random | July 12th, 2019

This week Open Cul­ture com­mem­o­rat­ed the 50th anniver­sary of the release of David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” by explor­ing the song’s rela­tion­ship to the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mat­tel, they han­dled things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, releas­ing a new David Bowie Bar­bie Doll. Here’s their spiel:

• In the defin­i­tive cel­e­bra­tion of two pop cul­ture icons, Bar­bie hon­ors the ulti­mate pop chameleon, Eng­lish singer, song­writer and actor, David Bowie.
• This col­lectible Bar­bie doll wears the metal­lic Zig­gy Star­dust ‘space suit’ with red and blue stripes, flared shoul­ders and Bowie’s sig­na­ture cher­ry-red plat­form boots.
• Spe­cial details include bold make­up — fea­tur­ing the famed astral sphere fore­head icon — and a hair­style inspired by Bowie’s fiery-red locks.
• Spe­cial­ly designed pack­ag­ing makes Bar­bie David Bowie the ulti­mate collector’s item for Bowie and Bar­bie fans alike.
• Hon­or David Bowie’s extra­or­di­nary tal­ent and unde­ni­able influ­ence with Bar­bie David Bowie doll.

You can pur­chase it online.

Relat­ed Con­tent

David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Turn 50 This Month: Cel­e­brate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

The Restoration of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Begins: Watch the Painstaking Process On-Site and Online

in Art | July 10th, 2019

Are col­lectibles mar­kets dri­ven by arbi­trary stan­dards? Of course. Just note the com­par­isons between the art world and world of vin­tage base­ball cards. Don’t see any sig­nif­i­cant sim­i­lar­i­ties? You must not be an econ­o­mist. As Tim Schnei­der points out at Art­net, the two mar­kets may be more alike than not, but they “diverge vio­lent­ly when it comes to the con­cept of restora­tion.” Base­ball cards, no mat­ter how tat­tered, stained, and torn, should nev­er be tam­pered with to improve their con­di­tion one bit. One could say the same of many oth­er “posi­tion­al goods,” to use the prop­er­ly econ­o­mistic term.

But econ­o­mists don’t make cat­e­gories with aes­thet­ic cri­te­ria in mind, and most of us aren’t gallery own­ers, cura­tors, or bil­lion­aire col­lec­tors, but lovers and appre­ci­a­tors of art. Do the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who vis­it Rembrandt’s mon­u­men­tal­ly famous The Night Watch at the Rijksmu­se­um care about the fluc­tu­a­tions in the paint­ing’s mar­ket val­ue? Like­ly not, espe­cial­ly since a work as trea­sured as the offi­cial­ly-titled Mili­tia Com­pa­ny of Dis­trict II under the Com­mand of Cap­tain Frans Ban­ninck Cocq has no mar­ket val­ue. “It will nev­er be sold,” writes trav­el writer Kier­an Meeke. The Night Watch is “lit­er­al­ly ‘price­less.’

“Like many oth­er such paint­ings in nation­al col­lec­tions, there is also no rea­son to insure it as it makes more finan­cial sense to spend the pre­mi­ums on improv­ing secu­ri­ty.” Oth­er rea­sons to spend on secu­ri­ty include the three vio­lent attacks the paint­ing has endured at the hands of angry and trou­bled would-be art assas­sins allowed to get too close. This dam­age, rang­ing from severe to mild, and the rav­ages of time, have also neces­si­tat­ed many expen­sive restora­tion efforts, and the lat­est under­tak­ing is the biggest yet, espe­cial­ly since it has been turned into a heav­i­ly-pro­mot­ed live event called “Oper­a­tion Night Watch.”

Last year, we brought you news of this upcom­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the painting’s vibrant col­ors emerge from the accu­mu­lat­ed grime; this month, the project began, with an intro­duc­tion on Mon­day by muse­um direc­tor Taco Dib­bets. This is “the largest research and restora­tion project ever for ‘the Night Watch,’” the Rijksmu­se­um reports, “and you can be part of it.” You do not need a tick­et to the Nether­lands, though if you buy one, you’ll also need to buy a tick­et for entry to the muse­um, where the paint­ing will be on full dis­play dur­ing its restora­tion. If, how­ev­er, you decide to watch from home, your seats are free.

The pro­jec­t’s name is only part­ly tongue-in-cheek. “It is like a mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in the plan­ning,” said Dib­bets, and it has required the utmost pre­ci­sion and expert teams of restor­ers, data experts, art his­to­ri­ans, and the pro­fes­sion­als who moved the enor­mous paint­ing into the glass case it will occu­py dur­ing this intense peri­od. The crew of restor­ers will work from dig­i­tal images tak­en with a macro X‑ray flu­o­res­cence scan­ner, a tech­nique, says Dib­bets, that allowed them to “make a full body scan” and “dis­cov­er which pig­ments [Rem­brandt] used.”

This restora­tion project will great­ly expand our under­stand­ing of the paint­ing’s cre­ation, and renew our awe for its grandeur. There may be no way to cal­cu­late The Night Watch’s mon­e­tary val­ue, out­side of the unlike­ly event that the Rijksmu­se­um decides to sell, but what restor­ers, his­to­ri­ans, gallery visitors—and mil­lions of art lovers around the world, who only know the paint­ing in reproductions—truly want to know is: what exact­ly did this beloved art­work look like when it was first made, and what might we have been miss­ing in the almost 400 years we’ve been admir­ing it?

We’ll get the chance to see not only the fin­ished prod­uct of the restora­tion, but every painstak­ing step of the process as well. You can mon­i­tor the progress of the restora­tion online, and, fur­ther up, see a time-lapse video of the labor-inten­sive oper­a­tion required to move the mas­sive can­vas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Enter an Online Inter­ac­tive Doc­u­men­tary on Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Learn About the Painting’s Many Hid­den Secrets

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

Late Rem­brandts Come to Life: Watch Ani­ma­tions of Paint­ings Now on Dis­play at the Rijksmu­se­um

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

Arnold Schoenberg, Avant-Garde Composer, Creates a System of Symbols for Notating Tennis Matches

in Music, Sports | July 10th, 2019

This time each sum­mer, as the con­clu­sion of this year’s fort­night-long cham­pi­onship at Wim­ble­don approach­es, even the most pri­vate of the ten­nis enthu­si­asts in all of our cir­cles make them­selves known. Love of that par­tic­u­lar game runs down all walks of life, but seems to exist in par­tic­u­lar­ly high con­cen­tra­tions among cul­tur­al cre­ators: not just writ­ers like Mar­tin Amis, Geoff Dyer, and David Fos­ter Wal­lace, all of whose bod­ies of work con­tain elo­quent thoughts on ten­nis, but com­posers of music as well.

Take Arnold Schoen­berg, who well into his old age con­tin­ued not just to cre­ate the inno­v­a­tive music for which we remem­ber him, but to spend time on the court as well. Though born in Vien­na, Schoen­berg even­tu­al­ly land­ed in the right place to enjoy ten­nis on the reg­u­lar: south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, to which he fled in 1933 after being informed of how inhos­pitable his home­land would soon become to per­sons of Jew­ish her­itage. Few famous com­posers of that time had less in com­mon than Schoen­berg and George Gersh­win, but their shared enjoy­ment of ten­nis made them into fast part­ners.

Accord­ing to Howard Pol­lack­’s life of Gersh­win, fel­low com­pos­er Albert Sendrey left a “reveal­ing account” of one of the week­ly match­es between “the thir­ty-eight-year-old Gersh­win and the six­ty-two-year-old Schoen­berg, con­trast­ing the alter­nate­ly ‘ner­vous’ and ‘non­cha­lant,’ ‘relent­less’ and ‘chival­rous’ Gersh­win, ‘play­ing to an audi­ence,’ with the ‘over­ly eager’ and ‘chop­py’ Schoen­berg who ‘has learned to shut his mind against pub­lic opin­ion.’ ” Any par­al­lels between play­ing style and musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty are, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

The cere­bral nature of Schoen­berg’s com­po­si­tions may not sug­gest a tem­pera­ment suit­ed for phys­i­cal activ­i­ty of any kind, but even in Aus­tria Schoen­berg had been a keen sports­man. And as a fair few ten­nis-lov­ing writ­ers have explained, the game does pos­sess an intel­lec­tu­al side, and one made more eas­i­ly ana­lyz­able, at least in the­o­ry, by a sys­tem of Schoen­berg’s inven­tion. “Toward the end of his life, Schoen­berg — always fas­ci­nat­ed by rules, analy­sis, and inven­tion — would come up with a form of nota­tion to tran­scribe the ten­nis match­es of his ath­lete son Ronald,” writes Mark Berry in Arnold Schoen­berg. You can see this sys­tem laid out on the sheet above, recent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter by Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er.

The marks look vague­ly sim­i­lar to those of cer­tain dance nota­tion sys­tems, a nat­ur­al enough resem­blance con­sid­er­ing the kind of foot­work ten­nis demands. But ide­al­ly, Schoen­berg’s nota­tion would also have ren­dered a game of ten­nis as com­pre­hen­si­ble as one of chess — anoth­er pur­suit to which Schoen­berg applied his mind. He came up with “an expand­ed four-play­er, ten-square ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al game,” writes Berry, “involv­ing super­pow­ers and less­er pow­ers all com­pelled to forge alliances, with new pieces such as air­planes, tanks, sub­marines, and so forth.” Schoen­berg’s “coali­tion chess,” as he called it, seems to have caught on no more than his ten­nis nota­tion sys­tem did. But then, the man who pio­neered the twelve-tone tech­nique nev­er did go in for mass accep­tance.

via @NotationIsGreat and Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arnold Schoen­berg Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn, Paper-Cut “Wheel Chart” to Visu­al­ize His 12-Tone Tech­nique

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

A Witty Dictionary of Victorian Slang (1909)

in Books, English Language | July 3rd, 2019

In the intro­duc­tion to his Dic­tio­nary of Con­tem­po­rary Slang, Tony Thorne writes of the dif­fi­cul­ty of defin­ing infor­mal speech: “A sym­po­sium on slang held in France in 1989 broke up after sev­er­al days with­out hav­ing arrived at a def­i­n­i­tion accept­able to even the major­i­ty of par­tic­i­pants.” If you’re think­ing maybe this seems like tak­ing the sub­ject a lit­tle too seri­ous­ly, I’d agree. But if we trav­el back eighty years in time and across the Eng­lish Chan­nel, we’ll meet an eccen­tric lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er who approached the task in the right spir­it.

“Here is a numer­i­cal­ly weak col­lec­tion of ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish.’ ” writes James Red­ding Ware in the Pref­ace to his posthu­mous­ly-pub­lished 1909 Pass­ing Eng­lish of the Vic­to­ri­an Era, A Dic­tio­nary of Het­ero­dox Eng­lish, Slang and Phrase.

“It may be hoped that there are errors on every page, and also that no entry is ‘quite too dull.’” He goes on in a more seri­ous tone to sum­ma­rize the rapid lan­guage change occur­ring in Eng­land in the last few decades of the 19th cen­tu­ry:

Thou­sands of words and phras­es in exis­tence in 1870 have drift­ed away, or changed their forms, or been absorbed, while as many have been added or are being added. ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ rip­ples from count­less sources, form­ing a riv­er of new lan­guage which has its tide and its ebb, while its cur­rent brings down new ideas and car­ries away those that have drib­bled out of fash­ion. Not only is ‘Pass­ing Eng­lish’ gen­er­al ; it is local ; often very sea­son­ably local. 

Ware—a pen name of British writer Andrew Forrester—goes on to get very local indeed in his descrip­tions, from “Pet­ty Italia behind Hat­ton Gar­den” to “Anglo-Yid­dish.” The Pub­lic Domain Review high­lights the fol­low­ing quirky entries.

Got the Morbs – tem­po­rary melan­choly
Mut­ton Shunter – the police
Bat­ty-Fang – to thrash thor­ough­ly
Doing the Bear – court­ing that involves hug­ging
Maf­fick­ing – get­ting row­dy in the streets
Orf Chump – no appetite
Poked Up – embar­rassed
Nan­ty Nark­ing – great fun

Ware’s atti­tude may be appro­pri­ate­ly infor­mal, but his method­ol­o­gy is suit­ably rig­or­ous, and this com­pre­hen­sive lex­i­con was clear­ly a labor of love. His book is a seri­ous resource for schol­ars of the peri­od, and, hell, it’s also just great fun. Read and down­load the full dic­tio­nary at the Inter­net Archive.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read A Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Vul­gar Tongue, a Hilar­i­ous & Infor­ma­tive Col­lec­tion of Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish Slang (1785)

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

The Very First Writ­ten Use of the F Word in Eng­lish (1528)

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

3 Iconic Paintings by Frida Kahlo Get Reborn as Vans Skate Shoes

in Art, Fashion | June 28th, 2019

Atten­tion Fri­da Kahlo tchotchke hounds.

You can scratch that itch, even if your sum­mer itin­er­ary doesn’t include Mex­i­co City (or Nashville, Ten­nessee, where the Frist Muse­um is host­ing Fri­da Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mex­i­can Mod­ernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gel­man Col­lec­tion through Sep­tem­ber 2).

Tak­ing its cue from Doc Marten’s Muse­um Col­lec­tion, Vans is releas­ing three shoes inspired by some of the painter’s most icon­ic works, 1939’s The Two Fridas, 1940’s Self-Por­trait with Thorn Neck­lace and Hum­ming­bird, and—for those who pre­fer a more sub­tly Fri­da-inspired shoe, 1954’s refresh­ing­ly fruity Viva la Vida.

Vans’ lim­it­ed edi­tion Fri­da Kahlo col­lec­tion hits the shelves June 29. Expect it to be snapped up quick­ly by the Waf­fle­heads, Vans’ ded­i­cat­ed group of col­lec­tors and cus­tomiz­ers, so don’t delay.

If this line doesn’t tick­le your fan­cy, there is of course an abun­dance of Fri­da Kahlo trib­ute footwear on Etsy, every­thing from huaraches and Con­verse All-Stars to socks and baby booties.

via Juxtapoz/MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

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

The Atlas of Space: Behold Brilliant Maps of Constellations, Asteroids, Planets & “Everything in the Solar System Bigger Than 10km”

in Astronomy, Design, Science | June 20th, 2019

A great deal remains to be learned about our solar sys­tem, but a great deal has already been learned about it as well. Yet huge amounts of data such as those pro­duced by out­er-space research so far can’t do much for us unless we can inter­pret them. Luck­i­ly, the age of the inter­net has made pos­si­ble unprece­dent­ed­ly easy access to data as well as unprece­dent­ed­ly easy dis­tri­b­u­tion of inter­pre­ta­tions of that data. Eleanor Lutz, a biol­o­gy grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the cre­ator of the sci­ence illus­tra­tion blog Table­top Whale, has tak­en advan­tage of both con­di­tions to wow her ever-grow­ing fan base with her maps of the realms beyond Earth.

“Atlas of Space, her lat­est project, is all about the solar sys­tem,” writes Wired’s Sara Har­ri­son. “She plumbed the depths of pub­licly avail­able data sets from agen­cies like NASA and the US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey and used them to cre­ate vivid maps of con­stel­la­tions, aster­oids, and plan­ets. In one image, lumi­nes­cent bands of fuch­sia and aqua­ma­rine aster­oids swirl around the bright, white point of the Sun. In anoth­er, Earth seems to pul­sate as an ani­ma­tion of Arc­tic sea ice shows how it extends down the con­ti­nents dur­ing the win­ter and then retracts back to the poles in sum­mer.”

Lutz plans to release all the images she has cre­at­ed for her Atlas of Space over the next few weeks, along with instruc­tions teach­ing read­ers how to cre­ate sim­i­lar illus­tra­tions them­selves. In her intro­duc­to­ry post to the project, she promis­es “an ani­mat­ed map of the sea­sons on Earth, a map of Mars geol­o­gy, and a map of every­thing in the solar sys­tem big­ger than 10km.”

Lutz also briefly describes her plans to write about every­thing from “work­ing with Dig­i­tal Ele­va­tion Mod­els (DEMs) in Bash and Python” to “using the NASA HORIZONS orbital mechan­ics serv­er and scrap­ing inter­net data” to “updat­ing vin­tage illus­tra­tions and paint­ing in Pho­to­shop.” That last ele­ment has already made the project par­tic­u­lar­ly eye-catch­ing: you’ll notice the Atlas of Space pages pub­lished so far, “An Orbit Map of the Solar Sys­tem” and “A Topo­graph­ic Map of Mer­cury,” both pos­sess a strong retro design sen­si­bil­i­ty, though each of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent kind. Levi Wal­ter Yag­gy would be proud — and no doubt aston­ished by just how much more infor­ma­tion we’ve man­aged to gath­er about the solar sys­tem over the past 130 years.

via Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strik­ing­ly Beau­ti­ful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imag­i­na­tion of Stu­dents in the 1880s

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

3D Map of Uni­verse Cap­tures 43,000 Galax­ies

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

The Solar Sys­tem Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Cre­ates a Hand­craft­ed Quilt to Use as a Teach­ing Aid in Her Astron­o­my Class

The Solar Sys­tem Drawn Amaz­ing­ly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky Demystifies Depression, Which, Like Diabetes, Is Rooted in Biology

in Psychology | June 20th, 2019

We know that depres­sion affects peo­ple from all walks of life. Rich. Poor. Celebs. Ordi­nary Joes. Young. Old. But, some­how after the death of Robin Williams, there’s a renewed focus on depres­sion, and my mind turned imme­di­ate­ly to a lec­ture we fea­tured on the site way back in 2009. The lec­ture is by Robert Sapol­sky, a Stan­ford biol­o­gist, who has a tal­ent for mak­ing sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects pub­licly acces­si­ble. A recip­i­ent of the MacArthur genius grant, Sapol­sky notes that depres­sion — cur­rent­ly the 4th great­est cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide, and soon the 2nd — is deeply bio­log­i­cal. Depres­sion is root­ed in biol­o­gy, much as is, say, dia­betes. As the lec­ture unfolds, you will see how depres­sion changes the body. When depressed, our brains func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly while sleep­ing, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our bio­chem­istry lev­els change, etc. You will see that biol­o­gy is at work.

Sapol­sky is one com­pelling teacher. So you might not want to miss his Stan­ford course, Intro­duc­tion to Human Biol­o­gy. It’s equal­ly worth your time. You can always find it housed in our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on the site in August, 2014.

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:

Exer­cise May Prove an Effec­tive Nat­ur­al Treat­ment for Depres­sion & Anx­i­ety, New Study Shows

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Nutri­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try: Why Diet May Play an Essen­tial Role in Treat­ing Men­tal Health Con­di­tions, Includ­ing Depres­sion, Anx­i­ety & Beyond

Psilo­cy­bin Could Soon Be a Legal Treat­ment for Depres­sion: Johns Hop­kins Pro­fes­sor, Roland Grif­fiths, Explains How Psilo­cy­bin Can Relieve Suf­fer­ing