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

in Music, Science | September 29th, 2016

Last May, we told you about Flow Machine, an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-dri­ven music com­pos­er that analy­ses composer’s styles and then cre­ates new works from that data. Devel­oped by François Pachet at Sony CSL-Paris, the ini­tial exper­i­ments demon­strat­ed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as played in the style of bossa nova, the Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane,” and Ennio Morricone’s roman­tic work. Admit­ted­ly, it wasn’t the most stun­ning moment in A.I.—a com­put­er was now doing what arrangers have been doing for years, apply­ing genre rules to a melody cre­at­ed in anoth­er genre.

How­ev­er, Flow Machine has returned with an inter­est­ing devel­op­ment: two upcom­ing albums of A.I.-created songs, from which two tunes have been released to give you a taste of com­put­er cre­ativ­i­ty. French com­pos­er and musi­cian Benoît Car­ré helped out with the arrange­ments and pro­duc­tion of the songs, and also wrote the lyrics, so it’s not com­plete­ly an A.I. cre­ation, we should note.

So what should we make of “Daddy’s Car,” above, an attempt to cre­ate an A.I song in the style of the Bea­t­les? The open­ing sec­onds fea­ture the three-part har­mo­ny of “Because,” but when the band kicks in, it’s clos­er to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds than the Fab Four. (If any­thing, it’s clos­er to the High Lla­mas.)

But does it sound like it was writ­ten by a human? Yes.

For some­thing stranger, try the oth­er song released so far: “Mr. Shad­ow,” writ­ten “in the style of Amer­i­can song­writ­ers such as Irv­ing Berlin, Duke Elling­ton, George Gersh­win and Cole Porter.”

Now this is much odd­er, a mix of coun­try twang, Daniel Lanois-style ambi­ence, along with a vocal that sounds like a cor­rupt­ed audio file. If you are look­ing for a true glimpse of the future, wrap your ears and san­i­ty around this one. Musi­cians and music fans, let us know in the com­ments what you think about this brave new world that has such hit sin­gles in it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

in Music | September 27th, 2016

Here in Amer­i­ca, we’re liv­ing in some anx­ious times. And frankly my nerves are a lit­tle torn and frayed–especially after the run-up to last night’s debate. Maybe some of you feel the same. Maybe you could stand to relax a bit. Maybe this will do the trick.

Above, watch Peter Pringle per­form on the theremin “Over the Rain­bow,” the song orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for 1939’s The Wiz­ard of Oz. And it’s not just any theremin. It’s the 1929 RCA theremin that belonged to the Hol­ly­wood therem­i­nist, Dr. Samuel Hoff­man. In fact, it’s the very same one that Hoff­man played on The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son in 1956, below.

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:

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

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

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

The Art of Making Old-Fashioned, Hand-Printed Books

in Books, Technology | September 26th, 2016

Reports of tra­di­tion­al books’ death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, thanks in part to the suc­cess of print-on-demand pub­lish­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal inno­va­tions.

As thrilled as we are about the sur­vival of the print­ed page—it’s a relief to have some­thing to read after Wi-Fi fails dur­ing the zom­bie invasion—the crafts­man­ship that goes into hand-print­ed, hand-bound vol­umes is an almost-lost art.

The Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum’s video, above, doc­u­ments the painstak­ing process, begin­ning with the arrang­ing of met­al type that will result in an octa­vo, the most com­mon type of book.

It’s a qui­et endeav­or, though sure­ly a bit loud­er than the V&A’s silent doc­u­men­ta­tion, an unusu­al choice giv­en a cer­tain seg­ment of the mil­len­ni­al pop­u­lace’s appetite for well-edit­ed arti­sanal craft videos in which music plays a big part.

A well-deployed tune could ele­vate these love­ly visu­als to the realms of the advanced ele­gy.

YouTube user, Krafts­man Sheng, attempts to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by repro­duc­ing the video (sans attri­bu­tion) with a sound­track of his own choos­ing—pianist Roger Williams’ syrupy 1965 ren­di­tion of “Soft­ly As I Leave You,” below.

An uncon­ven­tion­al choice, to be sure. I should think some­thing baroque would go bet­ter with all of this metic­u­lous fold­ing, cut­ting, and bind­ing.

Though per­haps some­thing a lit­tle more robust could high­light the hard­core hero­ism of the arti­sans toil­ing to keep this ancient art alive. Elec­tric Lit has a round up of great book-inspired punk songs, of which “Time” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids seems par­tic­u­lar­ly apt.

Print­’s not dead!

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brazil Gives Out Books That Dou­ble as Sub­way Tick­ets, Pro­mot­ing Lit­er­a­cy & Mass Tran­sit at Once

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

An Animated David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

in Film, Psychology | September 22nd, 2016

“Where do you get your ideas?” Every artist dreads hav­ing to answer that most com­mon of all ques­tions. Well, every artist with the excep­tion of David Lynch. The direc­tor of such mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic qua­si-night­mares as Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve will glad­ly explain exact­ly where he gets his ideas: from his own con­scious­ness, “the TV in your mind.”

He’ll also glad­ly explain how he gets them by, not to mix the metaphor too much, using the folksy terms of fish­ing: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch lit­tle fish, you can stay in the shal­low water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deep­er.” And to bait the hook with? Why, bits of oth­er ideas. Those words come from his 2006 book Catch­ing the Big Fish: Med­i­ta­tion, Con­scious­ness, and Cre­ativ­i­ty, a slim vol­ume on this and that which gets into some detail about his use of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion as a kind of fish­ing pole to reel those espe­cial­ly com­pelling ideas in from one’s con­scious­ness. 

A cou­ple of years after that, Lynch sat down with The Atlantic to talk about his spe­cial brand of cre­ativ­i­ty (as dis­tinct from his spe­cial brand of cof­fee, no doubt also a fuel for thought). They’ve just recent­ly ani­mat­ed his remarks to make the short video above, a visu­al­iza­tion of his idea-get­ting process­es, includ­ing day­dream­ing, trav­el­ing, and look­ing into a pud­dle in the gut­ter.

“I always say it’s like there’s a man in anoth­er room with the whole film togeth­er, but they’re in puz­zle parts,” says Lynch as hands chop a fish into frames of cel­lu­loid. “He’s flip­ping one piece at a time into me. At first it’s very abstract; I don’t have a clue. More pieces come, more ideas are caught. It starts form­ing a thing. And then one day, there it is. In a way, there’s no orig­i­nal ideas. It’s just the ideas that you caught.”

The ideas Lynch has caught have become, among oth­er things, some of the most mem­o­rable films of the late 20th cen­tu­ry — and, accord­ing to last mon­th’s BBC poll, the best film of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. What’s more, he claims not to have suf­fered for them, illus­trat­ing his argu­ment of suf­fer­ing as anti­thet­i­cal to cre­ativ­i­ty with an imag­i­nary sce­nario of a diar­rhea-afflict­ed Van Gogh. As for what part of his con­scious­ness he fished that image out of, per­haps we’d rather not know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains Where His Ideas Come From

Pat­ti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear George Orwell’s 1984 Adapted as a Radio Play at the Height of McCarthyism & The Red Scare (1953)

in Literature, Politics, Radio | September 20th, 2016

“If you want a pic­ture of the future,” George Orwell famous­ly said, “imag­ine a boot stamp­ing on a human face, for­ev­er.” Since his omi­nous warn­ing of com­ing tyran­ny, and the pub­li­ca­tion of his dystopi­an nov­el 1984, Orwell’s grim vision has been put to var­i­ous par­ti­san uses. Con­ser­v­a­tives lament­ing the polic­ing of speech invoke Orwell. So too does a spec­trum of voic­es speak­ing out against vio­lent author­i­tar­i­an­ism in actu­al polic­ing, and in the pol­i­tics of the right—related phe­nom­e­na giv­en the will­ing­ness of police and secret ser­vice to become enforcers of a campaign’s will at ral­lies nation­wide. The state and cor­po­rate mass media have both become com­plic­it in fos­ter­ing a cli­mate of out­rage, mis­trust, and inse­cu­ri­ty in which there seems to be, as Orwell wrote, “no loy­al­ty except loy­al­ty to the Par­ty.”

How did this hap­pen? If we, in the Unit­ed States, are ever inclined to learn from our his­to­ry, we might avoid falling vic­tim to the para­noid blan­d­ish­ments of dem­a­gogues and fear­mon­gers. While one cur­rent threat to democ­ra­cy comes from out­side the polit­i­cal sys­tem, in the 1950s, an insid­er used sev­er­al of the same tac­tics to hold the nation in thrall. The repres­sive post­war cli­mate of anti-Com­mu­nist pan­ic in which Joseph McCarthy rose to pow­er in the late 40s and 50s entrapped even Orwell, who “named names” in a list he sent to the British For­eign Office, sug­gest­ing cer­tain acquain­tances “were not fit for writ­ing assign­ments” with the gov­ern­ment because of sup­posed Sovi­et sym­pa­thies.

This secret act would have seemed like a bit­ter irony to many dis­si­dents in McCarthy’s Amer­i­ca, who sure­ly read 1984 with increas­ing alarm as the Red Scare took hold of Con­gress. For their part, read­ers fear­ing the Com­mu­nist threat heard echoes of Orwell’s warn­ings in McCarthy’s pro­pa­gan­da.

In what­ev­er way it was inter­pret­ed, 1984 had an imme­di­ate impact on the cul­ture. Its first radio drama­ti­za­tion, star­ring David Niv­en, pre­miered in 1949—the year after the nov­el­’s publication—aired by the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater. This was fol­lowed just four years lat­er with anoth­er radio adap­ta­tion pro­duced by The Unit­ed States Steel Hour, a radio and TV anthol­o­gy pro­gram that employed Rod Ser­ling as a scriptwriter and fea­tured notable guest stars like James Dean, Andy Grif­fith, Jack Klug­man, and Paul New­man.

The program’s radio dra­mas, called The­atre Guild on the Air, adapt­ed clas­sic nov­els like Pride and Prej­u­dice and plays from Eugene O’Neill and Ten­nessee Williams. Its 1953 radio play of 1984 starred Richard Wid­mark as “Smith” and Mar­i­an Seldes as “Julia.” The play opens—as you can hear above—with a dire announce­ment of “the most ter­ri­fy­ing sub­ject in the news today: the threat to all free men of Com­mu­nism or total­i­tar­i­an dom­i­na­tion in any form.”

Whether they saw creep­ing Stal­in­ism or the rabid anti-Com­mu­nism of McCarthy as the more insid­i­ous force, read­ers of the 1950s found Orwell imme­di­ate­ly rel­e­vant. He has remained so, such that con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist David Brooks, who has made many an Orwell ref­er­ence in the past, describes the recent “birtherism” turn­around as an “Orwellian inver­sion of the truth” in the PBS New­shour appear­ance above:

And so we are real­ly in Orwell land. We are in “1984.” And it’s inter­est­ing that an author­i­tar­i­an per­son­al­i­ty type comes in at the same time with a com­plete dis­re­spect for even tan­gen­tial rela­tion­ship to the truth, that words are unmoored.

And so I do think this state­ment sort of shocked me with the purifi­ca­tion of a lot of ter­ri­ble trends that have been hap­pen­ing. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that real­ly is some­thing new in pol­i­tics.

Like com­par­isons to anoth­er, all-too-real, total­i­tar­i­an regime, ref­er­ences to Orwell’s author­i­tar­i­an soci­ety have grown hoary over the decades, and often seem so elas­tic that they fall into triv­i­al­iz­ing cliché. But com­par­isons to fas­cism in a time when many vocal par­ti­sans are avowed fas­cists, or may as well be, seem almost tau­to­log­i­cal. The moment Brooks calls “Orwellian” above also seems pre­cise­ly that—a will­ful, coor­di­nat­ed, bla­tant, and total rever­sal of polit­i­cal language’s rela­tion­ship to any­thing even resem­bling the truth.

You can also stream the radio pro­duc­tion at the Inter­net Archive, who host all 74 The­atre Guild on the Air pro­duc­tions. 1984 was the last of the radio dra­mas before The Unit­ed States Steel Hour moved to tele­vi­sion, where Rod Ser­ling attract­ed con­tro­ver­sy for his 1956 dra­ma Noon at Dooms­day, inspired by the Emmett Till case, and anoth­er Cold War work still ter­ri­bly rel­e­vant to our time.

“The vic­tim” of the play, wrote Ser­ling in the intro to his 1957 col­lec­tion Pat­terns, “was on old Jew who ran a pawn­shop. The killer was a neu­rot­ic mal­con­tent who lashed out at some­thing or some­one who might be mate­ri­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly the scape­goat for his own unhap­py, pur­pose­less, mis­er­able exis­tence.” The episode imme­di­ate­ly pro­voked “a wel­ter of pub­lic­i­ty that came from some 15,000 let­ters and wires from White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils and the like protest­ing the pro­duc­tion of the play” for its resem­blance to the Till case. “I shrugged it off,” wrote Ser­ling, “answer­ing, ‘If the shoe fits.…’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

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

A Map of Chicago’s Gangland: A Cheeky, Cartographic Look at Al Capone’s World (1931)

in Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, History, Maps, Travel | September 19th, 2016

Mod­ern day Chicagoland gang activ­i­ty does not inspire quip­py car­toon “won­der maps.” Back when Al Capone ruled Chicago’s under­world, the pub­lic viewed gang­sters with movie mag­a­zine breath­less­ness. Their vio­lent crimes and glam­orous lifestyles sold news­pa­pers and movie tick­ets.

Today? Gangs­ta rap—a genre not known for its whimsy—glorifies the hard­core exis­tence of kids whom the sys­tem has failed, trapped in a cycle of pover­ty, com­pound­ing the social prob­lems that were heaped on them at birth. 

But back to 1931, the year Capone was sent to prison for tax eva­sion, and local firm Bruce-Roberts pub­lished Chicago’s Gang­land map, above, from “authen­tic sources.”

As any civic mind­ed reformer knows, the best way to “incul­cate the most impor­tant prin­ci­ples of piety and virtue in young per­sons” is to pack all “the evils and sin of large cities” into some­thing resem­bling a large-scale com­ic book. 

If the 30 exe­cu­tion orders post­ed on Dead Man’s Tree doesn’t scare ‘em straight, per­haps 1750 cas­es of gov­ern­ment booze and some scant­i­ly clad danc­ing girls will!

Nat­u­ral­ly, the site of 1929’s Saint Valentine’s Day Mas­sacre gets star treat­ment, with a graph­ic depic­tion guar­an­teed to stir the imag­i­na­tion far more than a vis­it to the actu­al site itself.

The pub­lish­er thought­ful­ly includ­ed a Gang­land Dic­tio­nary to fur­ther incul­cate the impres­sion­able youth and explain the pres­ence of two pineap­ples in the car­touche. 

Click here to view the map in a larg­er for­mat. Then zoom in to explore this light­heart­ed spin on Chicago’s wicked past in greater detail. The moral instruc­tion con­tin­ues in the form of poster-sized repro­duc­tions whose sale ben­e­fits Chicago’s New­ber­ry Library.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Essence of Linear Algebra Explained with Animations

in Animation, Math | September 15th, 2016

Fyi: Grant Sander­son has a knack for math and cod­ing. So he cre­at­ed a tool that has helped him explain “the essence of lin­ear alge­bra” in a “visu­al­ly-dri­ven man­ner.” And he post­ed the result, a series of 13 videos, to YouTube. You can watch the col­lec­tion, called “The Essence of Lin­ear Alge­bra,” above. Top­ics cov­ered include: Vec­tors, what even are they?; Matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion as com­po­si­tion; Dot prod­ucts and dual­i­ty; and more.

You can also find com­plete uni­ver­si­ty cours­es on Lin­ear Alge­bra in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Math course, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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 Metafil­ter

New Archive Presents The Chicagoan, Chicago’s Jazz-Age Answer to The New Yorker (1926 to 1935)

in History, Magazines, Writing | September 9th, 2016

Copy­right The Quigley Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, a Divi­sion of QP Media, Inc.

Chicago’s famed “sec­ond city com­plex” did­n’t spring from organ­ic feel­ings of infe­ri­or­i­ty, but rather from the poi­so­nous pen of vis­it­ing New Yorker writer, A.J. Liebling:

Seen from the taxi, on the long ride in from the air­port, the place looked slow­er, shab­bier, and, in defi­ance of all chronol­o­gy, old­er than New York… the low build­ings, the indus­tri­al plants, and the rail­road cross­ings at grade pro­duced less the feel­ing of being in a great city than of rid­ing through an end­less suc­ces­sion of fac­to­ry-town main streets. 

- A.J. Liebling, Chica­go: The Sec­ond City, 1952

The Man­hat­tan born jour­nal­ist’s obser­va­tions about the tod­dlin’ town are plain­ly those formed by an out­sider, albeit one who har­bored no designs on becom­ing an insid­er.

The Chicagoan, a home­grown pub­li­ca­tion that inten­tion­al­ly mim­ic­ked The New York­er in both design and con­tent, offers a dif­fer­ent take. From 1926 to 1935, it strove to coun­ter­act the city’s thug­gish rep­u­ta­tion (Al Capone, any­one?) by draw­ing atten­tion to its cul­tur­al offer­ings and high soci­ety doings.

Out­side of Chica­go, no one cared much. Hav­ing failed to repli­cate The New Yorker’s nation­al suc­cess, it fold­ed, leav­ing behind very few sur­viv­ing copies.

Neil Har­ris, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of His­to­ry, has right­ed that wrong by arrang­ing for the uni­ver­si­ty library’s near com­plete col­lec­tion of Chicagoans to be uploaded to a search­able online data­base.

The cov­ers have a Jazz Age vibran­cy, as do arti­cles, adver­tise­ments, and car­toons aimed at Chicago’s smart set. There’s even a Helen Hokin­son car­toon, in the form of a Bor­den cheese ad.

A search for Lieblings yield­ed but two:

Copy­right The Quigley Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, a Divi­sion of QP Media, Inc.

One from Decem­ber 1, 1934, above, name checks pianist Emil Liebling in an arti­cle revis­it­ing the 1897 Christ­mas issue of anoth­er bygone Chica­go paper, the Sat­ur­day Evening Her­ald.

Copy­right The Quigley Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny, a Divi­sion of QP Media, Inc.

Four years ear­li­er, in Vol. 9, No. 3, Robert Pollack’s Musi­cal Notes col­umn made men­tion of Leonard Liebling, a crit­ic for the New York Amer­i­can… (I can hear A.J. beyond-the-grave snick­er­ing even now).

You can browse the pages of The Chicagoan here. For fur­ther read­ing, see Pro­fes­sor Har­ris’ book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Mag­a­zine of the Jazz Age.

via Messy N Chic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Par­ti­san Review Now Free Online: Read All 70 Years of the Pre­em­i­nent Lit­er­ary Jour­nal (1934–2003)

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946)

The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever, Curat­ed by Kevin Kel­ly

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

An Animated John Lennon Describes His First Acid Trip

in Music | September 1st, 2016

Way back when, we fea­tured an ani­ma­tion that doc­u­ment­ed the first acid trip of nov­el­ist Ken Kesey. In Kesey’s case, it all hap­pened in a care­ful, cal­cu­lat­ed way in 1959, under the care and con­trol of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Six years lat­er and 5,000+ miles away, John Lennon’s maid­en voy­age went down in a very dif­fer­ent way. A dentist–yes, a den­tist of all people–slipped LSD into John and George’s cof­fee, unbe­knownst to them. Next thing they knew build­ings were burst­ing into fire, and rooms mor­ph­ing into sub­marines. So began the Bea­t­les’ exper­i­men­ta­tion with psy­che­delics and new musi­cal sounds, which, togeth­er, shaped their 1965 mas­ter­piece, Revolver (stream it free on Spo­ti­fy).

John Lennon recounts that first acid trip in the ani­mat­ed video above. The link between psy­che­delics and Revolver gets cov­ered in a new piece in Rolling Stone.

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:

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Watch M.C. Escher Make His Final Artistic Creation (1971)

in Art, Math | August 31st, 2016

I first encoun­tered the world of Mau­rits Cor­nelis Esch­er where many oth­ers do: in school. A poster of his 22-foot-long Meta­mor­pho­sis III hung along the walls of my fourth-grade class­room, where I spent many an idle minute or ten star­ing at its intri­cate geom­e­try through which squares became birds, birds became lizards, lizards became fish, and it all some­how arrived at the cliff-like edge of a three-dimen­sion­al chess­board. It came as the last of a tril­o­gy of wood­cuts Esch­er made between 1937 and 1968, and a jour­ney through its 1940 pre­de­ces­sor Meta­mor­pho­sis II ends the 1971 doc­u­men­tary above, M.C. Esch­er: Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion.

Esch­er him­self seem­ing­ly had no hap­py class­room mem­o­ries. “I hat­ed school,” the nar­ra­tor quotes him as say­ing. “The only class I liked at all was art. That does­n’t mean I was any good at it.” Though his work has no doubt inspired many young­sters to take up draw­ing, wood­cut­ting, and print­mak­ing them­selves, it’s sure­ly dri­ven even more of them into math­e­mat­ics.

Obsessed with per­spec­tive, geom­e­try, and pat­tern (Esch­er described tes­sel­la­tion as “a real mania to which I have become addict­ed”), his images have, by the count of math­e­mati­cian and Esch­er schol­ar Doris Schattschnei­der, led so far to eleven sep­a­rate strands of math­e­mat­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic research.

The twen­ty-minute Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the Nether­lands’ Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, offers in its first half a med­i­ta­tion on the mes­mer­iz­ing, often impos­si­ble world Esch­er had cre­at­ed with his art to date. Its sec­ond half cap­tures Esch­er in the last years of his life, still at work in his Laren, North Hol­land stu­dio. It even shows him print­ing one of the three tit­u­lar ser­pents, thread­ed through a set of elab­o­rate­ly inter­lock­ing cir­cles, of his very last print Snakes. He nev­er actu­al­ly fin­ished Snakes, whose pat­terns would have con­tin­ued on to the effect of infin­i­ty, and even says here of his offi­cial­ly com­plete works that none suc­ceed, “because it’s the dream I tried for that can’t be real­ized.” But those unre­al­ized dreams have kept the rest of us dream­ing, and think­ing, ever since.

Adven­tures in Per­cep­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

Inspi­ra­tions: A Short Film Cel­e­brat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal Art of M.C. Esch­er

M.C. Escher’s Per­pet­u­al Motion Water­fall Brought to Life: Real or Sleight of Hand?

Back to Bed: A New Video Game Inspired by the Sur­re­al Art­work of Esch­er, Dali & Magritte

David Bowie Sings in a Won­der­ful M.C. Esch­er-Inspired Set in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.