A Collection of Hokusai’s Drawings Are Being Carved Onto Woodblocks & Printed for the First Time Ever

in Art | July 26th, 2023

If you know any­thing about the ukiyo‑e mas­ters of eigh­teenth- and nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan like Kita­gawa Uta­maro, Uta­gawa Hiroshige, and Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, you know that they became renowned through wood­block prints. But in almost all cas­es, a wood­block print begins in anoth­er medi­um: the medi­um of the draw­ing, where the artist works out the image before com­mit­ting (or hav­ing it com­mit­ted) to a block of wood for print­ing. This process, as Tokyo-based Cana­di­an print­mak­er David Bull explains in the video above, entailed the destruc­tion of the orig­i­nal draw­ing — or at least it did a cou­ple of cen­turies ago, before the advent of copy machines, let alone high-res­o­lu­tion dig­i­tal scan­ners.

Our time has not only these tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced tools, but also, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a wealth of redis­cov­ered draw­ings by Hoku­sai him­self. “The exis­tence of these exquis­ite small draw­ings had been for­got­ten,” says the site of the British Muse­um. “Last pub­licly record­ed at a Parisian auc­tion in 1948, they are said to have been in a pri­vate col­lec­tion in France before resur­fac­ing in 2019.”

Hav­ing acquired the 103 images that con­sti­tute this Great Pic­ture Book of Every­thing, the British Muse­um has entered into a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bull, whose work­shop Mokuhankan is tak­ing a selec­tion of these draw­ings — nev­er print­ed in Hoku­sai’s day — and carv­ing them into wood­blocks for the first time ever.

You can enjoy this project, called Hoku­sai Reborn, by fol­low­ing its progress on Bul­l’s Youtube chan­nel; the first two episodes of the series appear just above. You can also pur­chase a sub­scrip­tion to receive copies of the actu­al prints now being made from Hoku­sai’s draw­ings at Mokuhankan. “The prints will be 13.5 x 18.5 cm in for­mat (slight­ly larg­er than 5 x 7 inch­es),” says the page at the stu­dio’s site with more infor­ma­tion on that, “and will be made on a thin ver­sion of our usu­al hosho washi, made in the work­shop of Iwano Ichibei,” one of Japan’s offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed Liv­ing Nation­al Trea­sures. This sales mod­el is in keep­ing with the com­mer­cial mod­el of ukiyo‑e in the Edo peri­od of the sev­en­teenth through the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, when a bur­geon­ing mer­chant class formed a robust cus­tomer base for its arti­sans. Here we have an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to become one of those cus­tomers — and, per­haps, to own the next Great Wave Off Kana­gawa.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

View 103 Dis­cov­ered Draw­ings by Famed Japan­ese Wood­cut Artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Thir­ty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: A Deluxe New Art Book Presents Hokusai’s Mas­ter­piece, Includ­ing The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kana­gawa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

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

Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

in Music, Technology | July 25th, 2023

The first time I saw the infa­mous Skull­cas­sette-and-Bones logo was on hol­i­day in the UK and pur­chased the very un-punky Char­i­ots of Fire sound­track. It was on the inner sleeve. “Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music” it pro­claimed. It was? I asked myself. “And it’s ille­gal” a sub­head added. It is? I also asked myself. (Iron­i­cal­ly, this was a few months before I came into pos­ses­sion of my first com­bi­na­tion turntable-cas­sette deck.)

Ten years and racks and racks of home­made cas­sette dubs on my shelves lat­er, music seemed to be doing very well. (Lat­er, by going dig­i­tal, the music indus­try killed itself, and I had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with it.)

British record col­lec­tors will no doubt remem­ber this cam­paign that start­ed in 1981, anoth­er busi­ness-backed “moral” pan­ic. And fun­ni­ly enough it had noth­ing to do with dub­bing vinyl.

Instead, the British Phono­graph­ic Indus­try (BPI) were tak­ing aim at peo­ple who were record­ing songs off the radio instead of pur­chas­ing records. With the rise of the cas­sette tape in pop­u­lar­i­ty, the BPI saw pounds and pence leav­ing their pock­ets.

Now, fig­ur­ing out lost prof­its from home tap­ing could be a fools’ errand, but let’s focus on the “ille­gal” part. Tech­ni­cal­ly, this is true. Radio sta­tions pay licens­ing fees to play music, so a con­sumer tap­ing that song off the radio is infring­ing on the song’s copy­right. Britain has very dif­fer­ent “fair use” laws than Amer­i­ca. In addi­tion, dig­i­tal radio and clear­er sig­nals have com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters over the years.

In prac­tice, how­ev­er, the whole thing was bunkum. Radio record­ings are his­toric. Mix­tapes are cul­ture. I have my tapes of John Peel’s BBC shows, which I record­ed for the music. Now, I lis­ten to them for Peel’s intros and out­ros.

Seri­ous­ly, the Napalm Death Peel Ses­sions *only* make sense with his com­men­tary. Who­ev­er taped this is an unknown leg­end:

The post-punk crowd knew the cam­paign was bunkum too. Mal­colm McLaren, always the provo­ca­teur, released Bow Wow Wow’s cas­sette-only-sin­gle C‑30 C‑60 C‑90 Go with a blank B‑side that urged con­sumers to record their own music. EMI quick­ly dropped the band.

The Dead Kennedys also repeat­ed the black b‑side gim­mick with In God We Trust, Inc. (I would be inter­est­ed in any­body who picks up a copy used of either to see what *is* on the b‑side).

And then there were the par­o­dies. The met­al group Ven­om used “Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music; So Are Ven­om” on an album; Peter Prin­ci­ple offered “Home Tap­ing Is Mak­ing Music”: Bil­ly Bragg kept it Marx­ist: “Cap­i­tal­ism is killing music — pay no more than £4.99 for this record”. For the indus­try, music was the prod­uct; for the reg­u­lar folks, music was com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it was art, it was a lan­guage.

The cam­paign nev­er did much dam­age. Attempts to levy a tax on blank cas­settes didn’t get trac­tion in the UK. And BPI’s direc­tor gen­er­al John Dea­con was frus­trat­ed that record com­pa­nies didn’t want to splash the Jol­ly Roger on inner sleeves. The logo lives on, how­ev­er, as part of tor­rent site Pirate Bay’s sails:

Just after the hys­te­ria died down, com­pact discs began their rise, plant­i­ng the seeds for the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, the mp3, file shar­ing, and now stream­ing.

(Wait, is it pos­si­ble to record inter­net streams? Why, yes.)

If you have any sto­ries about how you helped “kill music” by record­ing your favorite DJs, con­fess your crimes in the com­ments.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

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:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Whether the Gov­ern­ment Should Cen­sor Music in a Heat­ed Episode of Cross­fire: Why Are Peo­ple Afraid of Words? (1986)

The Dev­il­ish His­to­ry of the 1980s Parental Advi­so­ry Stick­er: When Heavy Met­al & Satan­ic Lyrics Col­lid­ed with the Reli­gious Right

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

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.

How Streaming Led to the TV Writers Strike: Four TV Writers Explain the Logic of the Strike

in Business, Television | July 25th, 2023

Though it’s too ear­ly to know what will turn out to be the defin­ing cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence of the twen­ty-twen­ties, I’d put my mon­ey on first hear­ing of an acclaimed tele­vi­sion show from one of its devot­ed fans only after it’s already been on the air for months or even years, if not after its lament­ed can­cel­la­tion. Part of this has to do with a change in quan­ti­ty, laid out by tele­vi­sion writer War­ren Leight in the Vox video above: “There used to be 80 shows in a year. Now you’re up to 500, 550 shows in a year,” many of them cre­at­ed not for tra­di­tion­al broad­cast net­works but for new­er, con­tent-hun­gri­er online stream­ing plat­forms. “For writ­ers, it was good because it gave peo­ple entry.”

Writ­ing for stream­ing, Leight explains, “you did­n’t have to wor­ry about com­mer­cial breaks” and their dra­mat­ic dis­rup­tions. Instead, “you get to write a dif­fer­ent struc­ture. Maybe it’s just an organ­ic three-act struc­ture to an hour.” And in short­er stream­ing sea­sons, “you could arc a sto­ry across eight episodes. You can go a lit­tle dark­er, you can go a lit­tle deep­er.”

But “as the episode orders have shrunk,” says Leight’s col­league Julia Yorks, “what used to be 40 weeks of the year that you were work­ing is now 20 weeks,” with an at-least-con­comi­tant reduc­tion in pay­checks. What­ev­er its artis­tic short­com­ings, the old “net­work mod­el” guar­an­teed a cer­tain degree of sta­bil­i­ty for those who wrote its shows — a sta­bil­i­ty dis­rupt­ed by the age of stream­ing.

Hence the ongo­ing Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca strike, and the cen­tral­i­ty to the WGA’s demands of improved resid­u­als (that is, pay­ments made for a pro­duc­tion after its ini­tial run) from stream­ing media. But the pro­fes­sion­als inter­viewed for this video also express con­cerns about what hap­pens to the shows them­selves when their writ­ing gets sep­a­rat­ed from their pro­duc­tion, which has become increas­ing­ly com­mon in recent years. On the likes of Law and Order or Friends, says Yorks, “your show was being filmed con­cur­rent­ly when you were in the writ­ers’ room,” cre­at­ing nat­ur­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­tin­u­ous cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­ac­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion. We may live in a “gold­en age of tele­vi­sion,” but left unchecked, the strain of this frag­men­ta­tion, as well as the finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties imposed on writ­ers, could very well take the shine off of it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Har­lan Ellison’s Won­der­ful Rant on Why Writ­ers Should Always Get Paid

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

How Break­ing Bad Craft­ed the Per­fect TV Pilot: A Video Essay

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

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

The Ancient World Comes to Life in an Animation Featuring Istanbul’s Islamic, Ottoman, Greek & Byzantine Art

in Architecture, Art, Film | July 24th, 2023

Trav­el for travel’s sake can be won­der­ful but noth­ing beats trav­el­ing with a pur­pose.

Syr­i­an Ger­man film­mak­er Waref Abu Quba was so tak­en with Istanbul’s time­less beau­ty on his first vis­it in 2021 that he resolved to pho­to­graph as many exam­ples of it as pos­si­ble.

Hav­ing amassed some 2,900 pho­tos, he set about ani­mat­ing them using a flash cut tech­nique, rapid­ly tog­gling between sim­i­lar images to bring life and move­ment to fixed archi­tec­tur­al and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments.

(Warn­ing: the result­ing con­tent could trig­ger seizures in view­ers with epilep­sy or pho­to­sen­si­tiv­i­ty.)

Takrar –  Ara­bic for ‘rep­e­ti­tion’ — took two years to com­plete, con­dens­ing the sense of won­der Quba expe­ri­enced on his trav­els into four aston­ish­ing min­utes.

His col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Alex Sto­ry and per­cus­sion­ist Robbe Kieck­ens brings added vital­i­ty to these ancient pat­terns on stone, wood, ceram­ic, and tile.

Among the forms Quba infus­es with life are 140 unique columns from Hagia Sophia, each carved with the emper­or’s mono­gram and their land of orig­in’s cap­i­tal.

The domed ceil­ings of Istanbul’s mag­nif­i­cent mosques achieve a kalei­do­scop­ic effect.

The three insti­tu­tions that com­prise the Istan­bul Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­ums proved a rich source of mate­r­i­al, from Assyr­i­an sculp­tures and mosaics from Mesopotamia, to orna­ments dec­o­rat­ing the 4th cen­tu­ry BCE Alexan­der Sar­coph­a­gus, to the Hel­lenis­tic Sar­coph­a­gus of Cry­ing Women, whose tit­u­lar mourn­ers now shim­my in a rit­u­al­is­tic dance.

Even door­knobs man­age to cap­ti­vate, while a cobalt blue Iznik charg­er plate from the Muse­um Of Turk­ish and Islam­ic Arts pos­sess­es true star qual­i­ty.

Watch more of Waref Abu Quba’s films here.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recre­at­ed in Authen­tic Byzan­tine Chant

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Exquisite 2300-Year-Old Scythian Woman’s Boot Preserved in the Frozen Ground of Siberia

in History, Photography | July 23rd, 2023

Shoes and boots, show where your feet have gone. —Guy Sebeus, 10 New Scythi­an Tales 

In the age of fast fash­ion, when planned obso­les­cence, cheap mate­ri­als, and shod­dy con­struc­tion have become the norm, how star­tling to encounter a styl­ish women’s boot that’s tru­ly built to last…

…like, for 2300 years.

It helps to have land­ed in a Scythi­an bur­ial mound in Siberia’s Altai Moun­tains, where the above boot was dis­cov­ered along with a num­ber of nomadic after­life essentials—jewelry, food, weapons, and cloth­ing.

These arti­facts (and their mum­mi­fied own­ers) were well pre­served thanks to per­mafrost and the painstak­ing atten­tion the Scythi­ans paid to their dead.

As cura­tors at the British Muse­um wrote in advance of the 2017 exhi­bi­tion Scythi­ans: War­riors of Ancient Siberia:

Nomads do not leave many traces, but when the Scythi­ans buried their dead they took care to equip the corpse with the essen­tials they thought they need­ed for the per­pet­u­al rides of the after­life. They usu­al­ly dug a deep hole and built a wood­en struc­ture at the bot­tom. For impor­tant peo­ple these resem­bled log cab­ins that were lined and floored with dark felt – the roofs were cov­ered with lay­ers of larch, birch bark and moss. With­in the tomb cham­ber, the body was placed in a log trunk cof­fin, accom­pa­nied by some of their prized pos­ses­sions and oth­er objects. Out­side the tomb cham­ber but still inside the grave shaft, they placed slaugh­tered hors­es, fac­ing east.

18th-cen­tu­ry water­col­or illus­tra­tion of a Scythi­an bur­ial mound. Archive of the Insti­tute of Archae­ol­o­gy of the Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, St Peters­burg

The red cloth-wrapped leather bootie, now part of the State Her­mitage Muse­um’s col­lec­tion, is a stun­ner, trimmed in tin, pyrite crys­tals, gold foil and glass beads secured with sinew. Fan­ci­ful shapes—ducklings, maybe?—decorate the seams. But the true mind­blow­er is the remark­able con­di­tion of its sole.

Maybe the boot belonged to a high-rank­ing woman who wouldn’t have walked much…

Or Scythi­ans spent so much time on horse­back, their shoe leather was spared…

Or per­haps it’s a high qual­i­ty funer­al gar­ment, reserved for exclu­sive­ly post-mortem use…

The British Muse­um cura­tors’ expla­na­tion is that Scythi­ans seat­ed them­selves on the ground around a com­mu­nal fire, sub­ject­ing their soles to their neigh­bors’ scruti­ny.

Become bet­ter acquaint­ed with Scythi­an boots by mak­ing a pair, as ancient Per­sian empire reen­ac­tor Dan D’Silva did, doc­u­ment­ing the process in a 3‑part series on his blog. How you bedaz­zle the soles is up to you.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

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:

Styl­ish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

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

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

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

Kids’ Films, Adult Messages — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #153

in Film, Pretty Much Pop | July 21st, 2023

Today’s Pret­ty Much Pop fea­tures pan­el of par­ents: your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, NY Times Enter­tain­ment Writer and Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Lawrence Ware, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason and pop-cul­ture philoso­pher Chris Suna­mi. We take on the mass of large­ly ani­mat­ed films by Dis­ney, Pixar, Dream­works, Illu­mi­na­tion, etc. We’ve all watched them with our kids, and many adults devour them even in pref­er­ence to oth­er types of films.

So what’s the under­ly­ing ide­ol­o­gy of this kind of media? What mes­sages are they con­vey­ing, and are these sub­stan­tial or even coher­ent? What ele­ments in these films can adults relate to?

We touch on Puss in Boots, Turn­ing Red, Soul, Trolls, Eno­la Holmes, The Polar Express, tod­dler edu­tain­ment, things we watched as kids, and sto­ries by Roald Dahl, Lewis Car­roll and L. Frank Baum. Our hosts rec­om­mend­ed The Babysit­ter’s Club, The Mys­te­ri­ous Bene­dict Soci­ety, the stu­dio Ghi­b­li films, and the Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events books.

Fol­low us @law_writes, @DaylaLearning (Michelle), @PopCultPhil (Chris), and @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. If you’re not sub­scribed to the pod­cast, you’re miss­ing lots of good episodes, such as our recent post-mortems on Suc­ces­sion and Ted Las­so. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

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

Does Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity Suggest That There Is an Afterlife?: A Theoretical Physicist Explains

in Physics | July 20th, 2023

“Let’s talk about the physics of dead grand­moth­ers.” Thus does the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Sabine Hossen­felder start off the Big Think video above, which soon gets into Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty. The ques­tion of how Hossen­felder man­ages to con­nect the for­mer to the lat­ter should raise in any­one curios­i­ty enough to give these ten min­utes a watch, but she also address­es a cer­tain com­mon cat­e­go­ry of mis­con­cep­tion. It all began, she says, when a young man posed to her the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “A shaman told me that my grand­moth­er is still alive because of quan­tum mechan­ics. Is this right?”

Upon reflec­tion, Hossen­felder arrived at the con­clu­sion that “it’s not entire­ly wrong.” For decades now, “quan­tum mechan­ics” has been hauled out over and over again to pro­vide vague sup­port to a range of beliefs all along the spec­trum of plau­si­bil­i­ty. But in the dead-grand­moth­er case, at least, it’s not the applic­a­ble area of physics. “It’s actu­al­ly got some­thing to do with Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty,” she says. With that par­tic­u­lar achieve­ment, Ein­stein changed the way we think about space and time, prov­ing that “every­thing that you expe­ri­ence, every­thing that you see, you see as it was a tiny, lit­tle amount of time in the past. So how do you know that any­thing exists right now?”

In Ein­stein’s descrip­tion of phys­i­cal real­i­ty, “there is no unam­bigu­ous notion to define what hap­pens now; it depends on the observ­er.” And “if you fol­low this log­ic to its con­clu­sion, then the out­come is that every moment could be now for some­one. And that includes all moments in your past, and it also includes all moments in your future.” Ein­stein posits space and time as not two sep­a­rate con­cepts, but aspects of a sin­gle enti­ty called space­time, in which “the present moment has no fun­da­men­tal sig­nif­i­cance”; in the result­ing “block uni­verse,” past, present, and future coex­ist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and no infor­ma­tion is ever destroyed, just con­tin­u­al­ly rearranged.

“So if some­one you knew dies, then, of course, we all know that you can no longer com­mu­ni­cate with this per­son. That’s because the infor­ma­tion that made up their per­son­al­i­ty dis­pers­es into very sub­tle cor­re­la­tions in the remains of their body, which become entan­gled with all the par­ti­cles around them, and slow­ly, slow­ly, they spread into radi­a­tion that dis­pers­es through­out the solar sys­tem, and even­tu­al­ly, through­out the entire uni­verse.” But one day could bring “some cos­mic con­scious­ness­es which will also be spread out, and this infor­ma­tion will be acces­si­ble again” — in about a bil­lion years, any­way, which will at least give grand­ma’s reassem­bled intel­li­gence plen­ty to catch up on.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Har­ris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Ques­tions

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Hap­pens When We Die

Is There an After­life? Christo­pher Hitchens Spec­u­lates in an Ani­mat­ed Video

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

Is There Life After Death?: John Cleese and a Pan­el of Sci­en­tists Dis­cuss That Eter­nal Ques­tion

Albert Ein­stein On God: “Noth­ing More Than the Expres­sion and Prod­uct of Human Weak­ness”

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

Take a High Def, Guided Tour of Pompeii

in Archaeology, Architecture, History | July 20th, 2023

“If you want to under­stand ancient Rome, its archi­tec­ture, its his­to­ry, the sprawl of the Roman Empire, you’ve got to go Rome.” So says archae­ol­o­gist Dar­ius Arya in the video above, mak­ing a fair, if obvi­ous, point. “But you also have to go to the Vesu­vian cities”: that is, the set­tle­ments locat­ed near the vol­cano Mount Vesu­vius on the Gulf of Naples. “You have to go to Her­cu­la­neum. You must go to Pom­peii. Not just because they’re famous, but because of the lev­el of preser­va­tion.” This preser­va­tion was a side effect of the explo­sion of Vesu­vius in 79 AD, which destroyed all life in Her­cu­la­neum and Pom­peii, but also kept the basic struc­tures of both cities intact; vis­it­ing either one today allows us to “get immersed in the world of the Romans.”

It is in Pom­peii that the video’s cre­ator Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tions of the Great Pyra­mids of Giza and Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome in Flo­rence) immers­es not just him­self but also us in that world.

He does so with high-res­o­lu­tion trav­el footage, but also with his expla­na­tions of the city’s archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning, break­ing down the details of every­thing from its grand Forum (“antic­i­pat­ing mod­ern prac­tice by almost 2,000 years” as a “pedes­tri­an-only precinct”) to its com­plex­es of baths, to its ther­mopo­lia (“essen­tial­ly ancient fast-food restau­rants”). Even more reveal­ing are its hum­bler fea­tures, such as the step­ping-stones across streets that allowed cit­i­zens to avoid “the rain­wa­ter, sewage, and ani­mal waste that would accu­mu­late there.”

“Almost every build­ing in Pom­peii has inte­ri­or wall paint­ings, from pri­vate res­i­dences to pub­lic spaces such as baths and mar­kets,” says Bra­vo, and these omnipresent works of art “offer valu­able insights into the every­day life and cul­tur­al val­ues of ancient Roman soci­ety.” (And indeed, they’re still offer­ing new ones: just last month, a redis­cov­ered Pom­pei­ian fres­co showed the world an ancient pre­cur­sor to piz­za.) They also evi­dence the sur­pris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of trompe-l’œil, where artists cre­ate the illu­sion of walls con­struct­ed from sol­id mar­ble, or even lush out­door spaces. Even the already-grand Domus Romana, the form of hous­ing of choice for afflu­ent Pom­pei­ians, incor­po­rat­ed paint­ings to look grander still. Even once you make it, as the ancients clear­ly knew, you’ve still got to fake it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes — As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Fres­co in Pom­peii Reveals a Pre­cur­sor to Piz­za

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

Behold the Unique Beauty of Japan’s Artistic Manhole Covers

in Art, Design, Travel | July 19th, 2023

Vis­i­tors to Japan can’t help but be struck by the beau­ty of its tem­ples, its scenic views, its zen gar­dens, its man­hole cov­ers…

You read that right.

What start­ed as a scheme to get tax­pay­ers on board with pricey rur­al sew­er projects in the 1980s has grown into a coun­try­wide tourist attrac­tion and a mat­ter of civic pride.

Each munic­i­pal­i­ty boasts its own unique man­hole cov­er designs, inspired by spe­cif­ic region­al ele­ments.

A com­mu­ni­ty might opt to rep its local flo­ral or fau­na, a famous local land­mark or fes­ti­val, an his­toric event or bit of folk­lore.

Mat­sumo­to City high­lights one of its pop­u­lar folk craft sou­venirs, the col­or­ful silk temari balls that once served as toys for female chil­dren and bridal gifts.

Nagoya touts the puri­ty of its water with a water strid­er — an insect that requires the most pris­tine con­di­tions to sur­vive.

Hiroshi­ma pays trib­ute to its base­ball team.

Osa­ka offers a view of its cas­tle sur­round­ed by cher­ry blos­soms.

The prox­im­i­ty of the San­rio Puroland theme park allows Tama City to lay claim to Hel­lo Kit­ty and Poké­mon-themed lids have sprung up like mush­rooms from Tokyo to Oki­nawa.

Most of Japan’s 15 mil­lion artis­tic man­hole cov­ers are mono­chro­mat­ic steel which makes spot­ting one of the vibrant­ly col­ored mod­els even more excit­ing.

In the fifty some years since their intro­duc­tion, an entire sub­cul­ture has emerged. Vet­er­an enthu­si­ast Sho­ji Mori­mo­to coined the term “man­holer” to describe hob­by­ists par­tic­i­pat­ing in this “trea­sure hunt for adults.”

Remo Camero­ta doc­u­ments his obses­sion in Drainspot­ting: Japan­ese Man­hole Cov­ers and Amer­i­can trav­el­er Car­rie McN­inch shares the joy of stum­bling across pre­vi­ous­ly unspot­ted ones in her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic series You Don’t Get There From Here.

The ongo­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of this offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned street art is evi­denced by the Japan­ese Soci­ety of Man­hole Lovers, an annu­al man­hole sum­mit, and tons of col­lectible trad­ing cards.

Explore a crowd­sourced gallery of Japan­ese man­hole cov­ers here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­cov­er Edo, the His­toric Green/Sustainable City of Japan

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine and nine books, includ­ing, most recent­ly Cre­ative, Not Famous. Fol­low her @Ayun-Halliday

How to Spot Bullshit: A Manual by Princeton Philosopher Harry Frankfurt (RIP)

in Philosophy | July 18th, 2023

Note: Over the week­end, the Prince­ton philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt passed away at the age of 94. After a long career, he became the author of the sur­prise best­selling book, On Bull­shit, which we fea­tured in 2016. Please revis­it our orig­i­nal post below.

We live in an age of truthi­ness. Come­di­an Stephen Col­bert coined the word to describe the Bush administration’s ten­den­cy to fudge the facts in its favor.

Ten years after the Amer­i­can Dialect Soci­ety named it Word of the Year, for­mer pres­i­dent Bush’s cal­en­dar is packed with such leisure activ­i­ties as golf and paint­ing por­traits of world lead­ers, but “truthi­ness” remains on active duty.

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly ger­mane in this elec­tion year, though politi­cians are far from its only prac­ti­tion­ers.

Take glob­al warm­ing. NASA makes a pret­ty rock sol­id case for both its exis­tence and our role in it:

97 per­cent or more of active­ly pub­lish­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists agree: Cli­mate-warm­ing trends over the past cen­tu­ry are extreme­ly like­ly due to human activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, most of the lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions world­wide have issued pub­lic state­ments endors­ing this posi­tion.

In view of such num­bers, it’s under­stand­able that a sub­ur­ban Joe with a freez­er full of fac­to­ry-farmed beef and mul­ti­ple SUVs in his garage would cling to the posi­tion that glob­al warm­ing is a lie. It’s his last resort, real­ly.

But such self-ratio­nal­iza­tions are not truth. They are truthi­ness.

Or to use the old-fash­ioned word favored by philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt, above: bull­shit!

Frank­furt–a philoso­pher at Prince­ton and the author of On Bull­shit–allows that bull­shit artists are often charm­ing, or at their very least, col­or­ful. They have to be. Achiev­ing their ends involves engag­ing oth­ers long enough to per­suade them that they know what they’re talk­ing about, when in fact, that’s the oppo­site of the truth.

Speak­ing of oppo­sites, Frank­furt main­tains that bull­shit is a dif­fer­ent beast from an out-and-out lie. The liar makes a spe­cif­ic attempt to con­ceal the truth by swap­ping it out for a lie.

The bull­shit artist’s approach is far more vague. It’s about cre­at­ing a gen­er­al impres­sion.

There are times when I admit to wel­com­ing this sort of manure. As a mak­er of low bud­get the­ater, your hon­est opin­ion of any show I have Lit­tle Red Hen’ed into exis­tence is the last thing I want to hear upon emerg­ing from the cramped dress­ing room, unless you tru­ly loved it.

I’d also encour­age you to choose your words care­ful­ly when dash­ing a child’s dreams.

But when it comes to mat­ters of pub­lic pol­i­cy, and the pub­lic good, yes, trans­paren­cy is best.

It’s inter­est­ing to me that film­mak­ers James Nee and Chris­t­ian Brit­ten trans­formed a por­tion of their learned subject’s thoughts into voiceover nar­ra­tion for a light­ning fast stock footage mon­tage. It’s divert­ing and fun­ny, fea­tur­ing such omi­nous char­ac­ters as Nos­fer­atu, Bill Clin­ton, Char­lie Chaplin’s Great Dic­ta­tor, and Don­ald Trump, but isn’t it also the sort of mis­di­rec­tion sleight of hand at which true bull­shit­ters excel?

Frank­furt expands upon his thoughts on bull­shit in his apt­ly titled best­selling book, On Bull­shit and its fol­lowup On Truth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

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