The Ancient Egyptians Wore Fashionable Striped Socks, New Pioneering Imaging Technology Imaging Reveals

in Fashion, History | October 26th, 2018

If you grew up in cer­tain decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry, you almost cer­tain­ly spent your child­hood wear­ing striped socks, and you may even have returned to the prac­tice in recent years as they’ve regained their sar­to­r­i­al respectabil­i­ty. But new research has revealed that this sort of mul­ti­col­ored hosiery has a more dis­tant his­tor­i­cal prece­dent than we may imag­ine, one going all the way back to ancient Egypt. The sub­ject of that research, the small sock pic­tured above, evi­dences the fash­ion­abil­i­ty of striped socks among the Egypt­ian youth of more than 1700 years ago, though its own stripes have only recent­ly been revealed by the most mod­ern imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“Sci­en­tists at the British Muse­um have devel­oped pio­neer­ing imag­ing to dis­cov­er how enter­pris­ing Egyp­tians used dyes on a child’s sock, recov­ered from a rub­bish dump in ancient Anti­noupo­lis in Roman Egypt, and dat­ing from 300AD,” writes The Guardian’s Car­o­line Davies. “New mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing can estab­lish which dyes were used – mad­der (red), woad (blue) and weld (yel­low) – but also how peo­ple of the late antiq­ui­ty peri­od used dou­ble and sequen­tial dying and weav­ing, and twist­ing fibers to cre­ate myr­i­ad col­ors from their scarce resources.”

This and oth­er sim­i­lar­ly advanced research, such as the use of ultra­vi­o­let light and infrared and x‑ray spec­troscopy that found the bright col­ors of ancient Greek sculp­ture, no doubt has us all rethink­ing the broad­ly mono­chro­mat­ic fash­ion in which we’ve long envi­sioned the ancient world.

We may also have to start imag­in­ing it a lit­tle less ele­gant­ly than we have been. “The ancient Egyp­tians employed a sin­gle-nee­dle loop­ing tech­nique, often referred to as nål­bind­ning, to cre­ate their socks,” writes Smith­son­ian’s Kather­ine J. Wu. “Notably, the approach could be used to sep­a­rate the big toe and four oth­er toes in the sock — which just may have giv­en life to the ever-con­tro­ver­sial socks-and-san­dals trend.” It brings to mind the archae­o­log­i­cal research that came out a few years ago sug­gest­ing that the Romans in Britain two mil­len­nia ago may have worn socks with their san­dals as well. That infor­ma­tion has made it to the Wikipedia page specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to socks and san­dals; an enter­pris­ing read­er might have a look at the British Muse­um sci­en­tists’ paper, “A mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing approach inte­grat­ed into the study of Late Antique tex­tiles from Egypt,” and add in a bit about the ancient wear­ing of striped socks with san­dals as well.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

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 or on Face­book.

Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917 to 1931)

in Animation | October 24th, 2018

Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, AKA ani­me, might be filled with large-eyed maid­ens, way cool robots, and large-eyed, way cool maiden/robot hybrids, but it often shows a lev­el of dar­ing, com­plex­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty not typ­i­cal­ly found in Amer­i­can main­stream ani­ma­tion. And the form has spawned some clear mas­ter­pieces from Kat­suhi­ro Otomo’s Aki­ra to Mamoru Oishii’s Ghost in the Shell to pret­ty much every­thing that Hayao Miyaza­ki has ever done.

Ani­me has a far longer his­to­ry than you might think; in fact, it was at the van­guard of Japan’s furi­ous attempts to mod­ern­ize in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. The old­est sur­viv­ing exam­ple of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, Namaku­ra Gatana (Blunt Sword), dates back to 1917, though much of the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed movies were lost fol­low­ing a mas­sive earth­quake in Tokyo in 1923. As with much of Japan’s cul­tur­al out­put in the first decades of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, ani­ma­tion from this time shows artists try­ing to incor­po­rate tra­di­tion­al sto­ries and motifs in a new mod­ern form.

Above is Oira no Yaku (Our Base­ball Game) from 1931, which shows rab­bits squar­ing off against tanukis (rac­coon dogs) in a game of base­ball. The short is a basic slap­stick com­e­dy ele­gant­ly told with clean, sim­ple lines. Rab­bits and tanukis are main­stays of Japan­ese folk­lore, though they are seen here play­ing a sport that was intro­duced to the coun­try in the 1870s. Like most silent Japan­ese movies, this film made use of a ben­shi – a per­former who would stand by the movie screen and nar­rate the movie. In the old days, audi­ences were drawn to the ben­shi, not the movie. Aki­ra Kurosawa’s elder broth­er was a pop­u­lar ben­shi who, like a num­ber of despon­dent ben­shis, com­mit­ted sui­cide when the pop­u­lar­i­ty of sound cin­e­ma ren­dered his job obso­lete.

Then there’s this ver­sion of the Japan­ese folk­tale Kobu-tori from 1929, about a woods­man with a mas­sive growth on his jaw who finds him­self sur­round­ed by mag­i­cal crea­tures. When they remove the lump, he finds that not every­one is pleased. Notice how detailed and uncar­toony the char­ac­ters are.

Anoth­er ear­ly exam­ple of ear­ly ani­me is Ugok­ie Kori no Tate­hi­ki (1931), which rough­ly trans­lates into “The Mov­ing Pic­ture Fight of the Fox and the Pos­sum.” The 11-minute short by Ikuo Oishi is about a fox who dis­guis­es him­self as a samu­rai and spends the night in an aban­doned tem­ple inhab­it­ed by a bunch of tanukis (those guys again). The movie brings all the won­der­ful grotes­queries of Japan­ese folk­lore to the screen, drawn in a style rem­i­nis­cent of Max Fleis­ch­er and Otto Mess­mer.

And final­ly, there is this curi­ous piece of ear­ly anti-Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da from 1936 that fea­tures a pha­lanx of fly­ing Mick­ey Mous­es (Mick­ey Mice?) attack­ing an island filled with Felix the Cat and a host of oth­er poor­ly-ren­dered car­toon char­ac­ters. Think Toon­town drawn by Hen­ry Darg­er. All seems lost until they are res­cued by fig­ures from Japan­ese his­to­ry and leg­end. Dur­ing its slide into mil­i­tarism and its inva­sion of Asia, Japan argued that it was free­ing the con­ti­nent from the grip of West­ern colo­nial­ism. In its queasy, weird sort of way, the short argues pre­cise­ly this. Of course, many in Korea and Chi­na, which received the brunt of Japan­ese impe­ri­al­ism, would vio­lent­ly dis­agree with that ver­sion of events.

Find more gems in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

The Art of Hand-Drawn Japan­ese Ani­me: A Deep Study of How Kat­suhi­ro Otomo’s Aki­ra Uses Light

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Roger Waters Adapts and Narrates Igor Stravinsky’s Theatrical Piece, The Soldier’s Story

in Music | October 22nd, 2018

Roger Waters has always had an ego to match the size of his musi­cal ambi­tions, a char­ac­ter trait that didn’t help him get along with his Pink Floyd band­mates. But it gave him the con­fi­dence to write dar­ing oper­at­ic albums like The Wall and stage the mas­sive the­atri­cal shows for which the band became well-known. He’s a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller, eager to use music to com­mu­ni­cate not only tren­chant polit­i­cal cri­tique, but the emo­tion­al lives of char­ac­ters caught up in the machi­na­tions of war­mon­gers and prof­i­teers.

Through­out the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal The Wall runs a nar­ra­tive of wartime trau­ma, a thread that turned into The Final Cut, essen­tial­ly a solo album that brought togeth­er Waters’ cri­tique of Mar­garet Thatch­er and the Falk­lands War with a memo­r­i­al for WWII British ser­vice­men, so many of whom, like his father, gave their lives for a coun­try Waters felt betrayed their mem­o­ry. While his solo career and activism have focused square­ly on anti-war mes­sages, he has shown much sym­pa­thy for the com­mon sol­dier.

Waters’ lat­est project, then, is fit­ting­ly called The Soldier’s Sto­ry, but this time, he is nei­ther author nor com­pos­er. Rather, the piece comes from 100 years ago, adapt­ed by Igor Stravin­sky from an old Russ­ian folk tale. In Stravin­sky’s ver­sion, a WWI sol­dier relin­quish­es his violin—and his musi­cal ability—to the dev­il in exchange for a book that pre­dicts the future econ­o­my. The sol­dier uses the book to get rich, then gives up his for­tune to regain his tal­ent, heal a dying princess, and beat the dev­il, for a time.

In its time­less, arche­typ­al way, the sto­ry evokes some of the sprawl­ing themes Waters has tak­en on many times, with a sim­i­lar­ly sar­don­ic tone. But unlike the rock star’s big the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions, Stravin­sky’s piece is a sim­ple moral­i­ty play, full of humor and an inno­v­a­tive use of jazz and rag­time ele­ments in a clas­si­cal set­ting. There are three speak­ing parts—the sol­dier, the dev­il, and the nar­ra­tor. Waters has added oth­ers to this updat­ed ver­sion: “the bloke in the pub” and the king, who remains mute in the orig­i­nal. He not only nar­rates the piece, but plays all of the char­ac­ters as well.

Work­ing with “sev­en musi­cians asso­ci­at­ed with the Bridge­hamp­ton Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val,” reports Con­se­quence of Sound. The ensem­ble seeks to “hon­or Stravinsky’s work while rein­ter­pret­ing it for a new audi­ence.” Stravin­sky him­self record­ed the piece three times, “first in 1932,” notes James Leonard at All­Mu­sic, “then again in 1954, and final­ly in 1961.” The last record­ing saw a re-release in 2007 with Jere­my Irons dubbed in as nar­ra­tor. Oth­er famous actors who have record­ed it include John Giel­gud as the nar­ra­tor in a set of per­for­mances from the ear­ly 70s and Dame Har­ri­et Wal­ter in the role in a 2017 release.

These are huge dra­mat­ic shoes to fill. A press release for the new adap­ta­tion, dis­play­ing Waters’ char­ac­ter­is­tic self-con­fi­dence (or maybe hubris), assures us that he felt up to the task: “He has want­ed for a long time to engage more deeply with the work of a com­pos­er whose weight and occa­sion­al inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty may per­haps have much in com­mon” with his own, we’re told. What­ev­er affini­ties might exist between Waters’ pro­gres­sive rock operas and the rad­i­cal mod­ernist sym­phonies of Stravin­sky, The Soldier’s Sto­ry seems like a nat­ur­al fit for Waters’ lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ties.

See the offi­cial trail­er above, and order the album here.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Igor Stravin­sky Remem­bers the “Riotous” Pre­miere of His Rite of Spring in 1913: “They Were Very Shocked. They Were Naive and Stu­pid Peo­ple.”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

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

Iggy Pop’s Totally Bonkers Contract Rider for Concerts

in Music | October 19th, 2018

Pho­to by Man Alive!, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“There’s only a cou­ple of peo­ple I’ve felt gen­uine­ly fright­ened tak­ing pho­tos in front of live because the per­son is out of con­trol,” says Man­ches­ter-based rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kevin Cum­mins. The first was Joy Division’s Ian Cur­tis, “and Iggy Pop was anoth­er.” Iggy’s onstage mania rivals any lead singer, liv­ing or dead. The intim­i­dat­ing Hen­ry Rollins tells a sto­ry about his one and only attempt to upstage his idol. He describes Iggy as “two guys. There’s Jim (Jim Osterberg)—‘Hey, my name’s Jim, good to meet you, man, how are you?’ And then there’s Iggy Pop,” Rollins says, and does an impres­sion of a seething mad­man. “Jim is cool. Iggy is like this ter­ri­fy­ing mon­ster of rock and roll.”

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the sto­ries of those ear­ly Stooges gigs. Smear­ing him­self with peanut but­ter, cut­ting him­self open with bro­ken glass and leap­ing into the audi­ence long before stage-div­ing was some­thing peo­ple did. We’ve also heard a lot more from Jim these days: shirt­less, but “lucid, intel­li­gent,” and dis­play­ing excel­lent recall in his inter­view with Marc Maron in the comedian’s garage; most­ly clothed, bespec­ta­cled, and pro­fes­so­r­i­al in his deliv­ery of the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture.

In inter­views and on his radio show, includ­ing a recent two-hour Bowie trib­ute, he is wit­ty, gre­gar­i­ous, and some­times wist­ful. But Iggy’s still pret­ty ter­ri­fy­ing onstage even into his elder-states­man-hood. Wit­ness the stage plan drawn up in 2006 by Jos Grain, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er for the 21st-cen­tu­ry tour­ing ver­sion of Iggy and The Stooges.

we like to keep it as clear as pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly at the front.

This means all cables for the down­stage wedges etc must be run off the front in the pit, not accross the front of the stage.

My insur­ance does­n’t cov­er me for allow­ing rock­stars to fall off the front of the stage.

No light­ing or mon­i­tor cables, no pow­er cables, no toy robots, no tele­vi­sion evan­ge­lists, no tele­vi­sion cam­era­men, no sub­stances relat­ed to the man­u­fac­ture of cre­osote, no plas­tic sea­hors­es, no baili­wicks, no crepes­cules, no kooks and espe­cial­ly NO CAMERAMEN.

This way Iggy can run around in his cus­tom­ary man­ner like a crazed run­ning around-type-thing and we can all relax in a haze of self-sat­is­fied pan­ic. [all sic]

This excerpt comes from the sav­age­ly fun­ny, and total­ly bonkers, text of Grain’s “Mar­velous and Most Instruc­tive Infor­ma­tion Doc­u­ment: Includ­ing Utter­ly Con­fus­ing Com­ments and Asides”— oth­er­wise known as the con­tract rid­er, the spec­i­fi­ca­tions detail­ing the band’s require­ments. “When you’re as leg­endary as Iggy Pop,” writes Luka Osbourne at Enmore Audio, “you tend to get away with a lot.”

Grain’s rider—a hilar­i­ous write-up prone to pro­fane fugue states full of jar­ring non-sequiturs and riotous asides—pushes the genre as far as it can go. “If there was a Gram­my for ‘best con­tract rid­er,’ writes Bri­an Mack­ay at the Spring­field, Illi­nois State Jour­nal-Reg­is­ter, “Iggy and the Stooges would retire the cat­e­go­ry.” A note about a gui­tar rack sud­den­ly swerves into the fol­low­ing rever­ie:

Horse v Pan­da? I think the pan­da might just win it if he man­aged to get on the horse’s back and sink his teeth and claws into its neck. With­out get­ting kicked in the bol­locks, of course. Two hooves in a Pan­da’s gonads would prob­a­bly bring vic­to­ry to the horse, though I doubt it would cel­e­brate much. Hors­es arent big cham­pagne drinkers.
And fuck­ing Grand Prix dri­vers just squirt it all over each oth­er.

The requests get ridicu­lous­ly spe­cif­ic, but it’s still more or less stan­dard rock star stuff (noth­ing on the order of Van Halen’s “no brown M&M’s”) …or is it…? When we get down to the require­ments for Iggy’s dress­ing room, Grain asks for:

Some­body dressed as Bob Hope doing fan­tas­tic Bob Hope imper­son­ations and telling all those hilar­i­ous Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hol­ly­wood and Bing Cros­by. Oh God, I wish I’d been alive in those days, so that Bob Hope could have come and enter­tained me in some World War 2 hell-hole before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have expe­ri­enced…

OR 

Sev­en dwarves, dressed up as those dwarves out of that mar­velous Walt Dis­ney film about the woman who goes to sleep for a hun­dred years after bit­ing a poi­soned dwarf, or maybe after prick­ing her fin­ger on a rather sharp apple… or some­thing. What was the name of that film? Was it Cin­derel­la? Taller peo­ple are accept­able, of course. It’s atti­tude, more than height, that’s impor­tant here. Don’t for­get the pointy hats!

As for the band’s needs, oth­er ref­er­ences to pan­das come up. The bass play­er needs three Mar­shall VBA Bass Ampli­fiers. “Please make sure they’re good ones,” Grain writes, “or we’ll all end up as worm­like web-based life forms in the bass player’s online lit­er­ary dia­hor­rea. Hon­est­ly. He’s like a sort of inter­net Pepys or Boswell, except with­out the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.” The Stooges’ bass play­er, by the way, is punk leg­end Mike Watt, whose tour diaries real­ly are a species of lit­er­ary genius.

Some­times when I get down about the state of rock and roll, I remem­ber that Iggy Pop is still alive and run­ning around shirt­less onstage like a lunatic at 71. And I remem­ber this rid­er exists. Read the whole thing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Marc Maron Recalls Inter­view­ing a Shirt­less Iggy Pop in LA Garage

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Stream Iggy Pop’s Two-Hour Radio Trib­ute to David Bowie

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

Twerking, Moonwalking AI Robots–They’re Now Here

in Dance, Technology | October 18th, 2018

In a study released last year, Kat­ja Grace at Oxford’s Future of Human­i­ty Insti­tute “sur­veyed the world’s lead­ing researchers in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence by ask­ing them when they think intel­li­gent machines will bet­ter humans in a wide range of tasks.” After inter­view­ing 1,634 experts, they found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI out­per­form­ing humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automat­ing all human jobs in 120 years.” That includes every­thing from dri­ving trucks, run­ning cash reg­is­ters, to per­form­ing surgery, and writ­ing New York Times best­sellers. These sober­ing pre­dic­tions have prompt­ed aca­d­e­mics, like North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun, to write books along the lines of Robot-Proof: High­er Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence which asks the ques­tion, How can uni­ver­si­ties “edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents to invent, to cre­ate, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophis­ti­cat­ed robot can­not”? It’s a good ques­tion. But a chal­leng­ing one too. Because it assumes we under­stand what robots can, and can­not, do. Case in point, Boston Dynam­ics released a video this week of its Spot­Mi­ni robot danc­ing to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.” It can moon­walk. It can twerk. Did the dance depart­ments see that com­ing? Doubt it.

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:

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

Philosophers Name the Best Philosophy Books: From Stoicism and Existentialism, to Metaphysics & Ethics for Artificial Intelligence

in Philosophy | October 17th, 2018

As an Eng­lish major under­grad in the 90s, I had a keen side inter­est in read­ing phi­los­o­phy of all kinds. But I had lit­tle sense of what I should be read­ing. I browsed the library shelves, pick­ing out what caught my atten­tion. Not a bad way to make unusu­al dis­cov­er­ies, but if you want to get a focused, not to men­tion cur­rent, view of a par­tic­u­lar field, you need to have a knowl­edge­able guide.

Back in those days, the inter­net was, as they say, in its infan­cy. How much bet­ter I would have fared if some­thing like Five Books had exist­ed! The site’s gen­er­al idea, as it trum­pets on its home­page, is to rec­om­mend “the best books on every­thing.” Argue amongst your­selves about whether any one resource can deliv­er on that promise, but let’s keep our focus on the excel­lent space of their Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion, curat­ed by free­lance philoso­pher-at-large Nigel War­bur­ton.

You may know Dr. War­bur­ton from his many for­ays in pub­lic phi­los­o­phy. Whether it’s the Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast, or its spin-offs Free Speech Bites and Ethics Bites, or his work on the BBC’s ani­mat­ed his­to­ry of ideas series, or any one of his books, he has a rare knack for bring­ing the obscure and often dif­fi­cult con­cepts of aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy to light with both con­ver­sa­tion­al good humor and intel­lec­tu­al rig­or. Most of that work takes place in dia­logue, the orig­i­nal form of clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy.

The Five Books forum is no excep­tion. In the lat­est post, War­bur­ton inter­views Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield’s Kei­th Frank­ish on the five best books on Phi­los­o­phy of Mind. What is “Phi­los­o­phy of Mind”? Read Frankish’s answer to that ques­tion here. What are his five picks? See below:

1. A Mate­ri­al­ist The­o­ry of the Mind, by D.M. Arm­strong
2. Con­scious­ness Explained, by Daniel C. Den­nett
3. Vari­eties of Mean­ing: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lec­tures, by Ruth Gar­rett Milikan
4. The Archi­tec­ture of the Mind, by Peter Car­ruthers
5. Super­siz­ing the Mind: Embod­i­ment, Action, and Cog­ni­tive Exten­sion, by Andy Clark

What about the best books on Ethics for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence? It’s a far more press­ing ques­tion than it was when Arthur C. Clarke pub­lished 2001: A Space Odyssey, which hap­pens to be one of the books on Oxford aca­d­e­m­ic Paula Boddington’s list. In his inter­view with Bod­ding­ton, War­bur­ton asks for, and receives, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the phrase “ethics for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” In her choice of books, Bod­ding­ton rec­om­mends those below. You may not find some of them shelved in phi­los­o­phy sec­tions, but when it comes to our sci-fi present, it seems, we may need to expand our cat­e­gories of thought.

1. Hearti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Embrac­ing Our Human­i­ty to Max­i­mize Machines, by John Havens
2. The Tech­no­log­i­cal Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, by Mur­ray Shana­han
3. Weapons of Math Destruc­tion: How Big Data Increas­es Inequal­i­ty and Threat­ens Democ­ra­cy, by Cathy O’Neil
4. Moral Machines: Teach­ing Robots Right from Wrong, by Wen­dell Wal­lach and Col­in Allen
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

There are dozens more enlight­en­ing inter­views and lists of five best books—on Niet­zsche, Marx, and Hegel, on Exis­ten­tial­ism, Sto­icism, Con­scious­ness, Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy…. Too many to direct­ly quote here. There are lists from War­bur­ton him­self, on the best phi­los­o­phy books from 2017, and best intro­duc­tions to phi­los­o­phy. The whole expe­ri­ence is a lit­tle like vis­it­ing, vir­tu­al­ly, a cou­ple dozen or so high­ly-regard­ed philoso­phers in every field, lis­ten­ing in on an infor­ma­tive chat, and get­ting a book­list from every one. You’ve still got to find and buy the books your­self (and read and talk about them), but this kind of guid­ance from liv­ing philoso­phers cur­rent­ly work­ing in the field has nev­er before been so wide­ly and freely avail­able out­side of acad­e­mia.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

170+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Emi­nent Philoso­phers Name the 43 Most Impor­tant Phi­los­o­phy Books Writ­ten Between 1950–2000: Wittgen­stein, Fou­cault, Rawls & More

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

48 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

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

Was Jackson Pollock Overrated? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Critic, and Behind Pollock There Was Clement Greenberg

in Art, Magazines | October 5th, 2018

Abstract expres­sion­ist Jack­son Pol­lock is one of the few painters whose work is eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied by peo­ple who don’t care much for mod­ern art.

More often than not, they’ll cite him as a prime rea­son they don’t want to spend a sun­ny Sat­ur­day at MoMA with you.

They’re enti­tled to their opin­ions, just as author Phil Edwards, host of the Vox series Over­rat­ed and a Pol­lock fan, is enti­tled to his.

In the most recent episode of Over­rat­ed, above, Edwards exam­ines the dri­ving force behind Pollock’s endur­ing fame.

His con­clu­sion?

The mus­cu­lar sup­port of a high­ly influ­en­tial art crit­ic, Clement Green­berg, who was chum­my enough with Pol­lock and his wife, Lee Kras­ner, to frol­ic with them in the Hamp­tons.

(Jef­frey Tam­bor appeared to have a ball play­ing him in Ed Har­ris’ Pol­lock biopic.)

Green­berg said one glimpse of Pollock’s 1943 “Mur­al” was all it took to real­ize that “Jack­son was the great­est painter this coun­try has pro­duced.”

Green­berg was inter­est­ed in what he called “Amer­i­can-Type” paint­ing and Pol­lock, with his high­ly phys­i­cal, booze-soaked macho swag­ger, was a “rad­i­cal­ly Amer­i­can” poster boy.

He was one of the first to men­tion Pol­lock in print:

He is the first painter I know of to have got some­thing pos­i­tive from the mud­di­ness of col­or that so pro­found­ly char­ac­ter­izes a great deal of Amer­i­can paint­ing.

His cheer­lead­ing result­ed in a LIFE mag­a­zine pro­file, “Jack­son Pol­lock: Is he the great­est liv­ing painter in the Unit­ed States?,” that took a trav­el­ogue approach to the artist’s drip paint­ing process.

Their stars rose togeth­er. Though Green­berg’s atten­tion even­tu­al­ly wan­dered away to new­er favorites, Pol­lock­’s career owed much to his force­ful ear­ly cham­pi­on.

We remem­ber the artist bet­ter than the crit­ic because of those giant, splat­tered canvases—so acces­si­ble to those look­ing for illus­tra­tions of why they hate mod­ern art.  The critic’s art is more ephemer­al, and unlike­ly to show up on umbrel­las, tote bags, and oth­er gift shop swag.

Those with an inter­est in Pollock—pro or con—would do well to fol­low Edwards’ sug­ges­tion to bol­ster their under­stand­ing of Greenberg’s taste, and his role in pro­mot­ing both Pol­lock and his fel­low Abstract Expres­sion­ists.

Watch Sea­sons 1 and 2 of Over­rat­ed free online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear Brian Eno’s Ringtones Composed for Mobile Phones

in Music | October 4th, 2018

In a Bri­an Eno inter­view from 2007, writer Gem­ma Win­ter remind­ed him of some­thing she had read about him and ring­tones:

GM: I read an inter­view with you in Q mag­a­zine about sev­en years ago, and you were asked had you ever com­posed your own ring­tone. You respond­ed by say­ing you would­n’t be that sad! But you’ve just com­posed ring­tones for Nokia — please explain.

BE: Heh heh! At that time they were ask­ing you to com­pose a piece of music, but you could only use those sounds. They would com­pose ring­tones out of these — beep boo boop, beepy nois­es. So I thought, ‘That’s hope­less — what can you do with that?’ You know the sound I mean, neep neep neep; so peo­ple were com­pos­ing neep-neep neep-neep nee-nee nee-nee. In the mean­time things changed so they had poly­phon­ic tones; so you could actu­al­ly have more com­pli­cat­ed sounds. It’s not real­ly a great medi­um for writ­ing music.

It’s a shame we don’t have the audio of this inter­view, because I would dear­ly like to hear what “neep neep neep” actu­al­ly sounds like. But in lieu of that, we have the above video, which col­lects all of the ring­tones Eno com­posed for the Nokia 8800 “Siroc­co”.

Eno was no stranger to writ­ing in minis­cule–he com­posed the Win­dows 95 open­ing chime. But in 2007 the “beep boop” lim­i­ta­tions had gone away and he was able to draw from a much larg­er palette. Now, we don’t know the para­me­ters of the assign­ment, but then again, look at what he was giv­en for the Win­dows chime, accord­ing to the same inter­view:

The music should be active, young, inspi­ra­tional, wise, stim­u­lat­ing, catchy, mem­o­rable, thought­ful, err glossy, futur­is­tic, nos­tal­gic — hon­est­ly a para­graph of adjec­tives. At the bot­tom it said the piece should not be more than three and a quar­ter sec­onds in length!

This time he was able to cre­ate over a dozen ring­tones along with alarms and alert sounds, all includ­ed above. The ques­tion might be: if we didn’t know this was Bri­an Eno, would we be able to rec­og­nize his music in such a small work? Also: Are these minia­tures inher­ent­ly more inter­est­ing than any oth­er com­pos­er?

For the first ques­tion, I did notice that some of the bright gui­tar tones sound a bit like his work with dul­cimer artist Laraa­ji, and the tone, the echo, and his choice of scale on some of the piano pieces come from the same world as his ambi­ent pieces, as do the round tones of his “alarms,” which are more of a con­cerned fur­rowed brow than a yell.

To the sec­ond ques­tion, I would say there is a cer­tain con­sis­ten­cy to this group than the grab bag of sounds on my iPhone. And if I used ring­tones anymore–does anybody?–I might be jeal­ous of the per­son with the Eno­phone.

Final ques­tion, prompt­ed by the nos­tal­gia in the YouTube com­ments: How many Nokia 8800 users bought a Bri­an Eno ambi­ent record because it remind­ed them of their phone?

Note: You can appar­ent­ly down­load Eno’s ring­tone col­lec­tion at this web­site.

via @darkshark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Reich is Call­ing: A Min­i­mal­ist Ring­tone for the iPhone

Down­load Jim Rockford’s Answer­ing Machine Mes­sages as MP3s

Bri­an Eno Reveals His Favorite Film Sound­tracks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Masterpiece

in Art, History | October 1st, 2018

When you think of Rem­brandt, do you think first of The Philoso­pher in Med­i­ta­tion? Or The Syn­dics of the Drap­ers’ Guild? How about Anato­my Les­son of Dr. Nico­laes Tulp? Those paint­ings may well come to mind, and oth­ers besides, but only one demands a great effort indeed not to think of: Mili­tia Com­pa­ny of Dis­trict II under the Com­mand of Cap­tain Frans Ban­ninck Cocq, bet­ter known as The Night Watch. Famous for the enor­mous dimen­sions that make its fig­ures near­ly life-size, and make the paint­ing a show­case for the artist’s mas­tery of shad­ow and light more ful­ly than any oth­er, it stands not just for Rem­brandt’s body of work but for the 17th cen­tu­ry’s Dutch Gold­en Age of paint­ing as well.

But what, exact­ly, makes The Night Watch Rem­brandt’s mas­ter­piece? Wal­ter Ben­jamin once said that every great work either dis­solves a genre or founds a new one, but this paint­ing fits neat­ly in an estab­lished tra­di­tion: the civic guard por­trait, civic guards being the groups of wealthy cit­i­zens who pledged to defend a city should it come under threat. As Dutch paint­ing moved away from reli­gious sub­ject mat­ter toward com­mis­sioned por­trai­ture, civic guards made fine clients, pos­sessed as they were of both the desire and bud­get for large and expen­sive group scenes. But even with­in the genre, every­one involved must have sus­pect­ed that, when Ams­ter­dam may­or Frans Ban­ninck Cocq hired Rem­brandt van Rijn to paint him and his civic guard in the late 1630s, some­thing impres­sive would result.

“What hits me right away is the bal­ance that Rem­brandt strikes between chaos and uni­ty,” says Evan Puschak, the video essay­ist known as the Nerd­writer, in his analy­sis of The Night Watch above. “He clear­ly want­ed to cre­ate a can­vas with a lot of move­ment, but the chal­lenge was to make that move­ment — peo­ple lurch­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, per­form­ing a vari­ety of actions — cohere into a uni­fied whole.” There­in lies the secret to The Night Watch’s tran­scen­dence of its genre, a tran­scen­dence achieved through a qual­i­ty we might now call dynamism. Rem­brandt also makes use of visu­al tech­niques more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with cin­e­ma, such as a “depth of field” achieved by ren­der­ing Cocq and his lieu­tenant with the utmost clar­i­ty and grad­u­al­ly reduc­ing that clar­i­ty in the fig­ures behind.

As with any mas­ter­piece, the more you look at The Night Watch, the more you notice. You may even start to sense a joke: “The Night Watch is cap­tur­ing the moments before the com­pa­ny sets out to its col­lec­tive pur­pose,” says Puschak, “but the paint­ing almost makes us doubt that they’ll ever get there.” By the time of the paint­ing’s com­ple­tion in 1642, he notes, civic guards had less to do with actu­al defense than with cer­e­mo­ny, “and at a cer­tain point these com­pa­nies became clubs for men to play with their weapons and chip in with fan­cy group por­traits. It’s not incon­ceiv­able that Rem­brandt may have been secret­ly mak­ing fun of them.” Maybe mas­ter­piece sta­tus does­n’t absolute­ly neces­si­tate cre­at­ing or destroy­ing a genre. Nor, per­haps, does it absolute­ly demand a sense of humor, but sure­ly the works that have one, like The Night Watch, stand a bet­ter chance of attain­ing it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

A Final Wish: Ter­mi­nal­ly Ill Patients Vis­it Rembrandt’s Paint­ings in the Rijksmu­se­um One Last Time

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Sci­en­tists Cre­ate a New Rem­brandt Paint­ing, Using a 3D Print­er & Data Analy­sis of Rembrandt’s Body of Work

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

1,100 Classic Arcade Machines Added to the Internet Arcade: Play Them Free Online

in Internet Archive, Video Games | September 27th, 2018

Once we could hard­ly imag­ine such things as video games. Then, all of a sud­den, they appeared, though for years we had to go out to bars — and lat­er, pur­pose-built “arcades” filled with video game machines — in order to play them, and we paid mon­ey to do so. When they came into our homes in the form of con­soles we could hook up to our tele­vi­sion sets, we at first felt only dis­ap­point­ment: these ver­sions of Space Invaders, Don­key Kong, and Defend­er nei­ther looked nor felt much like the orig­i­nals into which we’d pumped so many coins. But only now that the tech­nol­o­gy in our homes has long since sur­passed most of the tech­nol­o­gy out­side them can we play faith­ful repro­duc­tions of all our old favorite games with­out going out to the arcade.

Not that many arcades still stand, although the Inter­net Archive has made up for that absence by build­ing the Inter­net Arcade, which we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture a few years ago. Hav­ing made it pos­si­ble for us to play an enor­mous vari­ety of clas­sic arcade games free in our web browsers, the Inter­net Archive looks on its way to cre­at­ing not just the largest arcade in exis­tence but an infi­nite arcade, the kind that Borges would have imag­ined had he grown up in the video-game age.  Just last week, devel­op­ments in the soft­ware that pow­ers it allowed Inter­net Archive to add more than a thou­sand new machines to the Inter­net Arcade, from games for which we had to wait in line back in the day to obscu­ri­ties on which few of us have ever even laid eyes, let alone hands, before.

“The major­i­ty of these new­ly-avail­able games date to the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s, as arcade machines both became sig­nif­i­cant­ly more com­pli­cat­ed and graph­i­cal­ly rich,” writes the Inter­net Archive’s Jason Scott, “while also suf­fer­ing from the ever-present and home-based video game con­soles that would come to dom­i­nate gam­ing to the present day. Even fer­vent gamers might have missed some of these arcade machines when they were in the phys­i­cal world, due to low­er dis­tri­b­u­tion num­bers and short­er times on the floor.” You can explore the new wing of the Inter­net Arcade here, some of whose most pop­u­lar games include Puz­zle Bob­ble (bet­ter known in the West as Bust-a-Move), X‑Men, Met­al Slug 5, Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles: Tur­tles in Time, and Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Maybe their sound and graph­ics no longer wow us as once they did, but the years have done noth­ing to dimin­ish their fun fac­tor — and for many of us, not hav­ing to spend our quar­ters will always be a feel­ing to savor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Free: Play 2,400 Vin­tage Com­put­er Games in Your Web Brows­er

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.