Criterion Collection Films 50% Off for a Limited Time: Get Great Films at Half Price

in Deals, Film | February 13th, 2018

FYI. Until noon east­ern time tomor­row (2/14), the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion is run­ning a flash sale (click here), giv­ing you a chance to pur­chase “all in-stock Blu-rays & DVDs at 50% off.” Just use the pro­mo code GOLD and get clas­sic films by Hitch­cock, Lynch, Welles, Kubrick, the Coen Broth­ers, and many oth­ers.

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!

Designer Creates Origami Cardboard Tents to Shelter the Homeless from the Winter Cold

in Design, Life | February 13th, 2018

Dur­ing the day, Xavier Van der Stap­pen runs an elec­tric car com­pa­ny. At night, the Bel­gian entrepreneur/designer helps spear­head the ORIG-AMI project, which cre­ates origa­mi-style card­board tents designed to shield Brus­sels’ home­less from the bit­ter cold of win­ter. Card­board is light and portable. It holds heat fair­ly well. And the card­board tents (as opposed to oth­er struc­tures) are legal on Brus­sels’ streets. The cost for each life-sav­ing struc­ture? Only $36.

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:

How to “Hijack” Ama­zon Prime for Good: Short Video Shows How Prime & Oth­er Instant Deliv­ery Ser­vices Can Eas­i­ly Help the Home­less

MIT Cre­ates Amaz­ing Self-Fold­ing Origa­mi Robots & Leap­ing Chee­tah Robots

How Josephine Bak­er Went From Home­less Street Per­former to Inter­na­tion­al Super­star, French Resis­tance Fight­er & Civ­il Rights Hero

How to Write Like an Architect: Short Primers on Writing with the Neat, Clean Lines of a Designer

in Architecture, Design, How to Learn for Free, Writing | February 12th, 2018

We have anoth­er nation­al cri­sis on our hands.

Our chil­dren are not only ill-equipped to read maps and tell time with ana­log clocks, their hand­writ­ing is in seri­ous decline.

For­get cur­sive, which went the way of the dodo ear­li­er in the mil­len­ni­um. Young­sters who are dab hands on the key­board may have lit­tle impulse—or opportunity—to prac­tice their print­ing.

Does it mat­ter?

It sure as shootin’ might be dur­ing a zom­bie inva­sion, giv­en the atten­dant break­down of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the elec­tric­i­ty that pow­ered it.

But even in less dire times, leg­i­ble pen­man­ship is a good skill to mas­ter.

As Vir­ginia Berninger, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington’s Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Learn­ing Dis­abil­i­ties Cen­ter, told The New York Times, “Hand­writ­ing — form­ing let­ters — engages the mind, and that can help chil­dren pay atten­tion to writ­ten lan­guage.”

Hand let­ter­ing is also a com­plex neu­ro­log­i­cal process, a work­out involv­ing var­i­ous cog­ni­tive, motor, and neu­ro­mus­cu­lar func­tions.

There’s also a school of thought that teach­ers who still accept hand­writ­ten assign­ments uncon­scious­ly award the high­est grades to pupils with the neat­est pen­man­ship, which is eas­i­er on tired eyes. Some­thing to keep in mind for those gear­ing up to take the hand­writ­ten essay por­tions of the SAT and ACT.

Let’s remem­ber that let­ters are real­ly just shapes.

The Finns and French have long-estab­lished uni­for­mi­ty with regard to hand­writ­ing. In the absence of class­room instruc­tion, Amer­i­cans have the free­dom to peruse var­i­ous pen­man­ship styles, iden­ti­fy their favorite, and work hard to attain it.

(This writer is proof that pen­man­ship can become part of the DNA through prac­tice, hav­ing set out to dupli­cate my mother’s delight­ful, eccen­tric-to-the-point-of-illeg­i­bile hand at around the age of 8. I added a few per­son­al quirks along the way. The result is I’m fre­quent­ly bam­boo­zled into serv­ing as scribe for what­ev­er group I hap­pen to find myself in, and my chil­dren can claim they could­n’t read the impor­tant hand­writ­ten instruc­tions hur­ried­ly left for them on Post-Its.)

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the most leg­i­ble Amer­i­can pen­man­ship belongs to archi­tects.

Their pre­cise­ly ren­dered all caps sug­gest metic­u­lous­ness, account­abil­i­ty, steadi­ness of char­ac­ter…

And almost any­one can achieve it, regard­less of whether those are qual­i­ties they per­son­al­ly pos­sess.

All it takes is deter­mi­na­tion, time, and—as taught by Doug Patt in his How to Archi­tect series, above—more tools than can be simul­ta­ne­ous­ly oper­at­ed with two hands:

an Ames let­ter­ing guide

a par­al­lel rule or t‑square

a small plas­tic tri­an­gle cus­tomized with bits of tape

a .5mm Pen­tel draft­ing pen­cil

If this sounds need­less­ly labo­ri­ous, keep in mind that such spe­cial­ty equip­ment may appeal to reluc­tant hand writ­ers with an inter­est in engi­neer­ing, robot­ics, or sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion.

(Be pre­pared for some frus­tra­tion if this is the student’s first time at the rodeo with these instru­ments. As any vet­er­an com­ic book artist can attest, few are born know­ing how to use an Ames let­ter­ing guide.)

It should be not­ed that Patt’s alpha­bet devi­ates a bit from tra­di­tion­al stan­dards in the field.

His pref­er­ence for breath­ing some life into his let­ters by not clos­ing their loops, squash­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly cir­cu­lar forms into ellipses, and using “dynam­ic angles” to ren­der cross­pieces on a slant would like­ly not have passed muster with archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sors of an ear­li­er age, my sec­ond grade teacher, or the font design­ers respon­si­ble for the com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed “hand let­ter­ing” grac­ing the bulk of recent archi­tec­tur­al ren­der­ings.

He’s like­ly the only expert sug­gest­ing you make your Ks and Rs rem­i­nis­cent of actor Ralph Mac­chio in the 1984 film, The Karate Kid.

There’s lit­tle chance you’ll find your­self groov­ing to Patt’s videos for any­thing oth­er than their intend­ed pur­pose. Where­as the late Bob Ross’ Joy of Paint­ing series has legions of fans who tune in sole­ly for the med­i­ta­tive ben­e­fits they derive from his mel­low demeanor, Patt’s rapid fire instruc­tion­al style is that of the busy mas­ter, deft­ly exe­cut­ing moves the fledg­ling stu­dent can only but fum­ble through.

But if the Karate Kid taught us any­thing, it’s that prac­tice and grit lead to excel­lence. If the above demon­stra­tion whips by too quick­ly, Patt expands on the shap­ing of each let­ter in 30-sec­ond video tuto­ri­als avail­able as part of a $19 online course.

Those look­ing for archi­tec­tur­al low­er case, or tech­niques for con­trol­ling the thick­ness of their lines can find them in the episode devot­ed to let­ter­ing with a .7mm Pen­tel mechan­i­cal draft­ing pen­cil.

Explore fur­ther secrets of the archi­tects on Patt’s How to Archi­tect chan­nel or 2012 book, also called How to Archi­tect.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

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

Watch Scenes from the “Pink Floyd Ballet:” When the Experimental Rock Band Collaborated with Ballet Choreographer Roland Petit (1972)

in Dance, Music | February 12th, 2018

We all know that rock opera isn’t actu­al­ly opera. It bor­rows some of the clas­si­cal form’s affects—theatrical bom­bast and loud cos­tum­ing, which seem a nat­ur­al fit—but it doesn’t attempt the extreme for­mal rig­or. Rock and roll is loose, intu­itive, expres­sion­is­tic, best played by or to libidi­nous kids or kids-at-heart; opera is tight­ly con­trolled and per­formed by trained vocal gym­nasts to audi­ences of sophis­ti­cates. Both of these forms excel at emo­tive sto­ry­telling, but beyond that, with some rare excep­tions, their sim­i­lar­i­ties are most­ly cos­met­ic.

Now imag­ine not rock opera, but a rock bal­let. What could ath­let­ic Euro­pean clas­si­cal dance con­tribute to songs about sex and drugs? What could elec­tric gui­tars, drums, and key­boards do for pirou­ettes, arabesques, or grand jetés? Part of the prob­lem with such a mashup comes—as not­ed above—from the intrin­sic for­mal dif­fer­ences between the two. Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour put it well when he not­ed in 1973 that his band found bal­let “too restrict­ing for us. I mean, I can’t play and count bars at the same time.”

Yes, there was once a Pink Floyd bal­let, or, well, almost. For rea­sons that may or may not be obvi­ous, the attempt was not pop­u­lar, and it has not gone down in either rock or bal­let his­to­ry as a mem­o­rable event. But it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment, per­haps both more com­pelling and more inco­her­ent than one might think. An unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tion between the prog-rock super­stars and French chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Roland Petit, the show first began to take shape in 1970 over a series of lunch­es and din­ner and drinks—as a high-con­cept adap­ta­tion of Proust.

But the com­po­si­tion did not come eas­i­ly. For one thing, the band couldn’t get through the source mate­r­i­al. “David did the worst,” remem­bers Nick Mason, “he only read the first 18 pages.” Roger Waters report­ed that he fin­ished “the sec­ond vol­ume of Swann’s Way and when I got to the end of it I thought, ‘Fuck this, I’m not read­ing any­more. I can’t han­dle it.’ It just went too slow­ly for me.” A com­mon com­plaint from attempt­ed read­ers of Proust. Petit then float­ed the idea of adapt­ing A Thou­sand and One Ara­bi­an Nights, then Franken­stein. At one point, Roman Polan­s­ki and Rudolph Nureyev were attached as direc­tor and star. There was talk of a film.

All of these schemes were aban­doned, includ­ing the plan for orig­i­nal music. “Nureyev, Polan­s­ki, and the 108-piece orches­tra,” writes Nicholas Schaffn­er, “were con­spic­u­ous in their absence.” In Petit’s even­tu­al piece, per­formed in Mar­seilles and Paris in 1972–73, the band “game­ly appeared… to pro­vide live ren­di­tions of ‘Care­ful with That Axe Eugene’ and three new­er works in which the Syd-less Floyd had at last dis­cov­ered its rai­son d’être: ‘Echoes,’ ‘One of These Days,’ and ‘Obscured by Clouds,’” among oth­er exist­ing songs. The whole endeav­or was con­sis­tent with the band’s oth­er extra-cur­ric­u­lar for­ays, into film and musique con­crete for exam­ple, but the rote recy­cling of mate­r­i­al was not.

The bal­let, notes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “wasn’t shot live, but an in stu­dio ver­sion was pro­duced in 1977.” (You can see a clip from that rather slick arti­fact at the top of the post.) The oth­er videos you see here come from rehearsals for the live 1973 shows (the clip sec­ond from top fea­tures inter­views with Petit and a shy, French-speak­ing Gilmour). It’s an odd affair: male dancers who all vague­ly resem­ble Bruce Lee—and pull off some Lee-like punch­es; inex­plic­a­ble syn­chro­nized line dances; dancers form­ing pairs to the har­row­ing screams of “Care­ful with That Axe, Eugene”; and a very con­tem­po­rary 70s feel over­all mark these per­for­mances as the kind of thing like­ly to feel deeply unsat­is­fy­ing to con­nois­seurs of either Pink Floyd or the bal­let.

Who, exact­ly, one won­ders, was the audi­ence for this? Maybe you’ll get some sense of the appeal in the brief inter­views and com­men­tary from the French jour­nal­ists in this rehearsal footage. Or per­haps a pro­gram from one of the Mar­seille per­for­mances sheds more light on the inten­tions behind this pro­duc­tion. Petit did sup­pos­ed­ly say, “It all began in the late ‘60s. One day my daugh­ter… gave me an album by Pink Floyd and said, ‘Dad, you have to make a bal­let with this music.’” After some ini­tial skep­ti­cism, “when I heard the music,” he remem­bers, “I agreed with my daugh­ter.” Per­haps he sim­ply couldn’t refuse her a request.

Those who did attend these shows may have been delight­ed, con­fused, bored, enraged, or some com­bi­na­tion of any of these emo­tions and more besides. As for the band’s strug­gles, Gilmour admits, “we had to have some­one sit­ting on stage with us with a piece of paper telling us what bar we were play­ing.” (Before you make a joke about how rock musi­cians can’t count, bear in mind most clas­si­cal play­ers can’t impro­vise.) At the end, how­ev­er, audi­ences wouldn’t have been left want­i­ng. “The bal­let cli­maxed,” Schaffn­er writes, “with a typ­i­cal­ly Floy­di­an flour­ish: ten cans of oil explod­ing like fire­balls from the front of the stage.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

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

Artist Re-Envisions National Parks in the Style of Tolkien’s Middle Earth Maps

in Literature, Maps | February 12th, 2018

J.R.R. Tolkien imag­ined Mid­dle-Earth by draw­ing not just from far-flung lands and old myths but the Eng­lish land­scape all around him. Of course, every­one who reads The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, let alone the relat­ed books writ­ten by Tolkien as well as his fol­low­ers, has their own way of envi­sion­ing the place, and those who go espe­cial­ly deep may even start see­ing their own, real envi­ron­ments as ver­sions of Mid­dle-Earth. That seems to have hap­pened in the case of Dan Bell, an Eng­lish artist who maps his home­land’s nation­al parks in an artis­tic style sim­i­lar to the one in which Tolkien ren­dered Mid­dle-Earth.

Bell “began read­ing Tolkien’s books when he was 11 or 12 years old, and fell in love with them,” writes The Verge’s Andrew Lip­tak. “In par­tic­u­lar, he was struck by Tolkien’s maps.” To start, he “works from an open source Ord­nance Sur­vey map, and begins draw­ing by hand,” adding in such addi­tion­al details, not always found in most nation­al parks, as “forests, Hob­bit holes, tow­ers, and cas­tles.” Hav­ing so adapt­ed the nation­al parks of the Unit­ed Kind­gom “as well as places like Oxford, Lon­don, Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park, and George R.R. Martin’s Wes­t­eros,” he’s made them avail­able for pur­chase on his site.

Most of us who first encounter The Lord of the Rings at the age Bell did have sure­ly wished, if only for a moment or two, that we could live in Mid­dle-Earth our­selves. Bel­l’s maps remind us that places like Mid­dle-Earth always come in some way from, and res­onate on some lev­el with, the real Earth on which we have no choice but to live. Much like how the set­tings of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries, no mat­ter how tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ampli­fied or cul­tur­al­ly twist­ed and turned, always reflect the time of the sto­ry’s com­po­si­tion, thor­ough­ly real­ized fan­ta­sy realms, no mat­ter how fan­tas­ti­cal — how many hob­bit-holes, cas­tles, or Eyes of Sauron with which they may be dot­ted — are nev­er 100 per­cent made up. Just ask the tourist indus­try of New Zealand.

Enter Bel­l’s map col­lec­tion here.

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

226 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Nation­al Parks Are Now Online

Down­load 100,000 Pho­tos of 20 Great U.S. Nation­al Parks, Cour­tesy of the U.S. Nation­al Park Ser­vice

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.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryoshka Dolls in Japan

in Music | February 1st, 2018

Back in 2011, in Tokyo, 167 musi­cians per­formed some clas­sic Beethoven with the “Matry­omin,” a new-fan­gled instru­ment that lodges a theremin inside a matryosh­ka. A matryosh­ka, of course, is one of those Russ­ian nest­ed dolls where you find wood­en dolls of decreas­ing size placed one inside the oth­er. As for the theremin, it’s a cen­tu­ry-old elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ment that requires no phys­i­cal con­tact from the play­er. You can watch its inven­tor, Leon Theremin, give it a demo in the vin­tage video below. Or via these links you can see the Matry­omin Ensem­ble per­form­ing ver­sions of Amaz­ing Grace and Mem­o­ry of Rus­sia. Enjoy.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on Open Cul­ture in July, 2013. It’s like the Olympics. It comes back once every four years.

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:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

“Some­where Over the Rain­bow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Harry Potter Finally Gets Translated Into Scots: Hear & Read Passages from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane

in Books | January 26th, 2018

In some­thing of a land­mark, Har­ry Pot­ter and The Sor­cer­er’s Stone has just been trans­lat­ed into its 80th lan­guage–Scots, a lan­guage spo­ken by 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple in Scot­land. Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by J.K. Rowl­ing in Edin­burgh, the first Har­ry Pot­ter book was care­ful­ly trans­lat­ed by children’s author, writer, poet, edi­tor and trans­la­tor Matthew Fitt. You can see the first page of Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philoso­pher’s Stane above, and hear Fitt read sam­ples of the text in the NPR inter­view below. Due out on March 1, the book can be pre-ordered now.

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!

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

30 Min­utes of Har­ry Pot­ter Sung in an Avant-Garde Fash­ion by UbuWeb’s Ken­neth Gold­smith

Celebrate the Women’s March with 24 Goddess GIFs Created by Animator Nina Paley: They’re Free to Download and Remix

in Animation, Art, Life, Religion | January 19th, 2018

As mil­lions of women, men, and friends beyond the bina­ry gear up for Wom­en’s March events around the world this week­end, we can’t help but draw strength from the Venus of Wil­len­dorf in Graph­ics Inter­change For­mat, above.

Like the pussy hats that became the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of last year’s march, there’s a strong ele­ment of humor at play here.

Also respect for the female form.

As Dr. Bryan Zyg­mont notes in his Khan Acad­e­my essay on the Venus of Wil­len­dorf, her exis­tence is evi­dence that “nomadic peo­ple liv­ing almost 25,000 years ago cared about mak­ing objects beau­ti­ful. And … that these Pale­olith­ic peo­ple had an aware­ness of the impor­tance of the women.”

Ani­ma­tor Nina Paley has tak­en up our Pale­olith­ic ances­tors’ baton by cre­at­ing two dozen ear­ly god­dess GIFs, includ­ing the Venus.

As fur­ther proof that sis­ter­hood is pow­er­ful, Paley is shar­ing her unashamed­ly boun­cy pan­theon with the pub­lic. Vis­it her blog to down­load all 24 indi­vid­ual god­dess GIFs. Dis­sem­i­nate them wide­ly. Use them for good! No per­mis­sion need­ed.

Paley is no stranger to god­dess­es, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly placed the divine hero­ine of the Ramayana front and cen­ter in her semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fea­ture length ani­ma­tion, Sita Sings the Blues.

She’s also incred­i­bly famil­iar with rights issues, fol­low­ing mas­sive com­pli­ca­tions with some vin­tage record­ings her Bet­ty Boop-ish Sita lip-synchs in the film. (She had pre­vi­ous­ly believed them to be in the pub­lic domain.) Unable to pay the huge sum the copy­right hold­ers demand­ed to license the tunes, Paley ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to relin­quish all legal claims to her own film, plac­ing Sita Sings the Blues in the pub­lic domain, to be freely shared, exhib­it­ed, or even remixed.

If Paley’s the poster child for copy­right issues she’s also a shin­ing exam­ple of deriv­ing pow­er from unlike­ly sources.

As she wrote on her web­site near­ly ten years ago:

My per­son­al expe­ri­ence con­firms audi­ences are gen­er­ous and want to sup­port artists. Sure­ly there’s a way for this to hap­pen with­out cen­tral­ly con­trol­ling every trans­ac­tion. The old busi­ness mod­el of coer­cion and extor­tion is fail­ing. New mod­els are emerg­ing, and I’m hap­py to be part of that. But we’re still mak­ing this up as we go along. You are free to make mon­ey with the free con­tent of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share mon­ey with me. Peo­ple have been mak­ing mon­ey in Free Soft­ware for years; it’s time for Free Cul­ture to fol­low. I look for­ward to your inno­va­tions.

As for Paley’s own plans for her god­dess­es, they’ll be a part of her upcom­ing ani­mat­ed musi­cal, Seder-Masochism, not­ing that “all ear­ly peo­ples con­ceived the divine as female.”

Down­load Nina Paley’s God­dess GIFs here. Watch Sita Sings the Blues here. March ever onward!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her on Feb­ru­ary 8 for Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, when a host of New York City-based per­form­ers and musi­cians will res­ur­rect  a long for­got­ten work from 1911 as a low bud­get, vari­ety show. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Binge-Watch Carl Sagan’s Original Cosmos Series Free Online (Available for a Limited Time)

in Science, Television | January 13th, 2018

FYI. Carl Sagan’s 13-episode series Cos­mos orig­i­nal­ly aired in 1980 and became one of the most wide­ly watched series in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can pub­lic TV. The show also won two Emmys and a Peabody Award.

Right now, you can watch the orig­i­nal Cos­mos episodes over on Twitch.TV. From time to time, Twitch airs marathon ses­sions of old pro­grams. They did Julia Child’s “The French Chef” back in 2016. Now it’s Sagan’s turn.

Usu­al­ly the videos are only avail­able for a few days. So you might want to start your binge-watch­ing ses­sion now. If you miss the boat, you could always pick up a copy of the show on Blu-Ray.

Twitch.TV orig­i­nal­ly aired the Cos­mos series last spring as part of a Sci­ence Week cel­e­bra­tion. Read their press release for more infor­ma­tion.

Update: Neil deGrasse Tyson just coin­ci­den­tal­ly announced this on Twit­ter: “Yup. We got the band back togeth­er. Anoth­er sea­son of Cos­mos is offi­cial­ly real. COSMOS: Pos­si­ble Worlds To air on @FOXTV & @Nat­GeoChan­nel in a year — Spring 2019. Be there.”

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!

via Big­Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan & the Dalai Lama Meet in 1991 and Dis­cuss When Sci­ence Can Answer Big Ques­tions Bet­ter Than Reli­gion

The Pio­neer­ing Physics TV Show, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Com­plete Episodes from Cal­tech

A Brief History of Making Deals with the Devil: Niccolò Paganini, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page & More

in Literature, Music, Religion | January 11th, 2018

When the term “witch hunt” gets thrown around in cas­es of pow­er­ful men accused of harass­ment and abuse, his­to­ri­ans every­where bang their heads against their desks. The his­to­ry of per­se­cut­ing witches—as every school­boy and girl knows from the famous Salem Trials—involves accu­sa­tions mov­ing decid­ed­ly in the oth­er direc­tion.

But we’re very famil­iar with men sup­pos­ed­ly sell­ing out to Satan, dealing—or just dueling—with the dev­il. They weren’t called witch­es for doing so, or burned at the stake. They were blues pio­neers, vir­tu­oso fid­dlers, and gui­tar gods. From the dev­il­ish­ly dash­ing Nic­colò Pagani­ni, to Robert John­son at the Cross­roads, to Jim­my Page’s black mag­ic, to “The Dev­il Went Down to Geor­gia,” to the omnipres­ence of Satan in met­al…. The dev­il “seems to have quite the inter­est in music,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Before musi­cians came to terms with the dark lord, pow­er-hun­gry schol­ars used demonolo­gy to sum­mon Lucifer­ian emis­saries like Mephistophe­les. The leg­end of Faust dates back to the late 16th cen­tu­ry and a his­tor­i­cal alchemist named Johann Georg Faust, who inspired many dra­mat­ic works, like Christo­pher Marlowe’s The Trag­i­cal His­to­ry of Doc­tor Faus­tus, Johann Goethe’s Faust, Thomas Mann’s Doc­tor Faus­tus, Mikhail Bugakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, and F.W. Murnau’s 1926 silent film.

The Faust leg­end may be the stur­di­est of such sto­ries, but it is not by any means the ori­gin of the idea. Medieval Catholic saints feared the dev­il’s entice­ments con­stant­ly. Medieval occultists often saw things dif­fer­ent­ly. If we can trace the notion of women con­sort­ing with the dev­il to the Bib­li­cal Eve in the Gar­den, we find male ana­logues in the New Testament—Christ’s temp­ta­tions in the desert, Judas’s thir­ty pieces of sil­ver, the pos­sessed vagrant who sends his demons into a herd of pigs. But we might even say that God made the first deal with the dev­il, in the open­ing wager of the book of Job.

In most examples—Charlie Daniels’ tri­umphal folk tale aside—the deal usu­al­ly goes down bad­ly for the mor­tal par­ty involved, as it did for Robert John­son when the dev­il came for his due, and con­vened the mor­bid­ly fas­ci­nat­ing 27 Club. Goethe impos­es a redemp­tive hap­py end­ing onto Faust that seems to wild­ly over­com­pen­sate for the typ­i­cal fate of souls in hell’s pawn shop. Kierkegaard took the idea seri­ous­ly as a cul­tur­al myth, and wrote in Either/Or that “every notable his­tor­i­cal era will have its own Faust.”

Mod­ern-day Fausts in the pop­u­lar genre of the day, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, are famous enter­tain­ers, as you can see in the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous super­cut above from a YouTube chan­nel called “End­TimeChris­t­ian.” As it hap­pens in these kinds of nar­ra­tives, the cul­tur­al trope gets tak­en far too lit­er­al­ly as a real event. The Faust leg­end shows us that mak­ing deals with the dev­il has been a lit­er­ary device for hun­dreds of years, pass­ing into pop­u­lar cul­ture, then the blues—a genre haunt­ed by hell hounds and infer­nal crossroads—and its prog­e­ny in rock and roll and hip hop.

Those who talk of sell­ing their souls might real­ly believe it, but they inher­it­ed the lan­guage from cen­turies of West­ern cul­tur­al and reli­gious tra­di­tion. Sell­ing one’s soul is a com­mon metaphor for liv­ing a car­nal life, or get­ting into bed with shady char­ac­ters for world­ly suc­cess. But it’s also a play­ful notion. (A mis­un­der­stood aspect of so much met­al is its com­ic Satan­ic overkill.) John­son him­self turned the sto­ry of sell­ing his soul into an icon­ic boast, in “Cross­roads” and “Me and the Dev­il Blues.” “Hel­lo Satan,” he says in the lat­ter tune, “I believe it’s time to go.”

Chill­ing in hind­sight, the line is the bluesman’s grim­ly casu­al acknowl­edg­ment of how life on the edge would catch up to him. But it was worth it, he also sug­gests, to become a leg­end in his own time. In the short, ani­mat­ed video above from Music Mat­ters, John­son meets the horned one, a slick oper­a­tor in a suit: “Sud­den­ly, no one could touch him.” Often when we talk these days about peo­ple sell­ing their souls, they might even­tu­al­ly end up singing, but they don’t make beau­ti­ful music. In any case, the moral of almost every ver­sion of the sto­ry is per­fect­ly clear: no mat­ter how good the deal seems, the dev­il nev­er fails to col­lect on a debt.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

Watch Häx­an, the Clas­sic Cin­e­mat­ic Study of Witch­craft Nar­rat­ed by William S. Bur­roughs (1922)

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

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