Nelson Mandela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

in History | March 29th, 2012

Last week, the Albert Ein­stein Archive went online, bring­ing thou­sands of the physi­cist’s papers and let­ters to the web. This week, we get the launch of the Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. (Don’t miss his first record­ed TV inter­view from 1961 here.)

Made pos­si­ble by a $1.25 mil­lion grant from Google, the archive orga­nizes Man­de­la’s papers chrono­log­i­cal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly. You can jump into sec­tions cov­er­ing his Ear­ly Life, Prison Years, and Pres­i­den­tial Years, or explore his exten­sive book col­lec­tions and work with young­sters. And, much like Ein­stein, you’ll get to know a dif­fer­ent side of Man­dela, the pri­vate side that was often hid­den from pub­lic view.

Note: We recent­ly men­tioned that Google Street View will let you take a vir­tu­al tour of the Ama­zon basin. Now, it turns out, you can also use the soft­ware to take a train ride through the Swiss Alps. Start your jour­ney here.

Image from Nel­son Man­de­la’s prison jour­nals.

Richard Dawkins Rallies for Reason in Washington DC

in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | March 27th, 2012

This week­end, an esti­mat­ed 20,000 agnos­tics, athe­ists and ardent sec­u­lar­ists gath­ered on the Nation­al Mall in rainy Wash­ing­ton DC. They were attend­ing the first Rea­son Ral­ly, an event intend­ed to “uni­fy, ener­gize, and embold­en sec­u­lar peo­ple nation­wide, while dis­pelling the neg­a­tive opin­ions held by so much of Amer­i­can soci­ety… and hav­ing a damn good time doing it!” Lawrence Krauss, Michael Sher­mer, Eddie Izzard — they all spoke to the crowd. And then came Richard Dawkins, the high priest of rea­son, the author of The Self­ish Gene, who spent decades teach­ing evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy at Oxford. In the mid­dle of his 16 minute talk, he tells the audi­ence, “We’re here to stand up for rea­son, to stand up for sci­ence, to stand up for log­ic, to stand up for the beau­ty of real­i­ty, and the beau­ty of the fact that we can under­stand real­i­ty.” I’m with you Richard on that. But then comes the scorn we’re now so accus­tomed to (“I don’t despise reli­gious peo­ple; I despise what they stand for.”), and my guess is that chang­ing per­cep­tions of agnos­tics, athe­ists and sec­u­lar­ists will need to wait for anoth­er day.

Newly Discovered Piece by Mozart Performed on His Own Fortepiano

in History, Music | March 27th, 2012

A music schol­ar made an astound­ing dis­cov­ery recent­ly while going through the per­son­al belong­ings from the attic of a recent­ly deceased church musi­cian and band leader in the Lech Val­ley of the Aus­tri­an Tyrol.

Comb­ing through the dead man’s col­lec­tion of old music man­u­scripts, Hilde­gard Her­rmann-Schnei­der of the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research noticed a hand-writ­ten book with the date “1780” on the cov­er. On pages 12 to 14 she found an uniden­ti­fied sonata move­ment with the tem­po mark “alle­gro molto,” Ital­ian for “very quick­ly.” On the upper right-hand side of page 12 was writ­ten “Del Sig­nore Gio­vane Wolf­gan­go Mozart,” or “The young Wolf­gan­go Mozart.”

“Wolf­gan­go” was a name Mozart’s father, Leopold, called him when he was a boy. Look­ing fur­ther into the man­u­script, Her­rmann-Schnei­der found sev­er­al pieces that were already known to have been writ­ten by Leopold Mozart. Those com­po­si­tions were respect­ful­ly marked “Sig­nore Mozart,” or “Lord Mozart.”

Although the writ­ing was clear­ly not in the hand of either the elder or the younger Mozart, the metic­u­lous­ness of the tran­scrip­tions, along with the accu­ra­cy of every ver­i­fi­able detail through­out the 160-page book, led Her­rmann-Schnei­der to sus­pect that the com­po­si­tion by “The Young Wolf­gan­go Mozart” was an authen­tic, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown piece.

On the back of the man­u­script was the copy­ist’s name: Johannes Reis­er­er. After an exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion, Her­rmann-Schnei­der was able to learn that Reis­er­er was born in 1765 and had gone to gym­na­si­um, or high school, in Salzburg, where he was a mem­ber of the cathe­dral choir from 1778 to 1780. That would have placed him in close prox­im­i­ty to Leopold Mozart. “Researchers have thus con­clud­ed,” writes The His­to­ry Blog, “that Johannes Reis­er­er used the note­book to copy com­po­si­tions as part of a rig­or­ous pro­gram of music instruc­tion by Kapell­haus music mas­ters, per­haps Leopold him­self.”

Based on the style and the lev­el of accom­plish­ment in the piece, now known as the “Alle­gro Molto in C Major,” researchers place the date of com­po­si­tion at around 1767, when Mozart was 11 years old. A press release from the Insti­tute for Tyrolean Music Research describes the piece:

Mozart fre­quent­ly select­ed a C‑major key, and the Alle­gro molto has a sonata form with a length of 84 mea­sures. Its ambi­tus is tai­lored to the clavi­chord. The Alle­gro molto could be a first major attempt by Wolf­gang Amadé to assert him­self in the area of the sonata form. This is sug­gest­ed by the rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el of com­po­si­tion­al technique.…Throughout the Alle­gro molto, the­mat­ic for­ma­tion, com­po­si­tion­al set­ting and har­mo­ny have a num­ber of com­po­nents that are found repeat­ed in oth­er Mozart piano works. Hard­ly a com­po­si­tion­al detail points to a con­tra­dic­tion with the gen­er­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of Mozart’s com­sum­mate musi­cal com­po­si­tion. Accord­ing to cur­rent schol­ar­ly knowl­edge, it must there­fore be regard­ed as an authen­tic sonata move­ment by Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart.

Aus­tri­an musi­cian Flo­ri­an Bir­sak, who spe­cial­izes in play­ing ear­ly key­board instru­ments, gave the pre­mier per­for­mance of the piece on Mozart’s own fortepi­ano last Fri­day at the Mozart fam­i­ly home in Salzburg, which is now a muse­um of the Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion. You can watch a video, above, which was record­ed some­time ear­li­er in the same place and on the same instru­ment. You can also read a PDF of the score, and down­load Bir­sak’s record­ing at iTunes.

The first page of Mozart’s Alle­gro Molto in C Major (above) from the 1780 note­book. Cred­it: Salzburg Mozar­teum Foun­da­tion.

via @MatthiasRascher

Robert Frost Recites ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’

in Literature, Poetry | March 26th, 2012

Today is the birth­day of Robert Frost, who once said that a poem can­not be wor­ried into being, but rather, “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melt­ing.” Those words are from Frost’s 1939 essay, “The Fig­ure a Poem Makes,” which includes the famous pas­sage:

The fig­ure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wis­dom. The fig­ure is the same as for love. No one can real­ly hold that the ecsta­sy should be sta­t­ic and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direc­tion with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of life–not nec­es­sar­i­ly a great clar­i­fi­ca­tion, such as sects and cults are found­ed on, but in a momen­tary stay against con­fu­sion.

To cel­e­brate the 138th anniver­sary of the poet­’s birth, we bring you rare footage of Frost recit­ing his clas­sic poem, “Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” You can also lis­ten to a four-part record­ing (below) of Frost read­ing a selec­tion of his poems in 1956, cour­tesy of Harp­er Audio.

• Robert Frost Read­ing, Part One: “The Road Not Tak­en,” “The Pas­ture,” “Mow­ing,” “Birch­es,” “After Apple-Pick­ing,” and “The Tuft of Flow­ers.”
• Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Two: “West-Run­ning Brook” and “The Death of the Hired Man.”
• Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Three: “Mend­ing Wall,” “One More Brevi­ty,” “Depart­men­tal,” “A Con­sid­er­able Speck,” and “Why Wait for Sci­ence.”
• Robert Frost Read­ing, Part Four: “Ethe­re­al­iz­ing,” “Pro­vide, Pro­vide,” “One Step Back­ward Tak­en,” “Choose Some­thing Like a Star,” “Hap­pi­ness Makes Up in Height,” and “Reluc­tance.”

The Animation of Billy Collins’ Poetry: Everyday Moments in Motion

in Animation, Poetry, TED Talks | March 26th, 2012

The first time I saw Bil­ly Collins speak, he appeared at my col­lege con­vo­ca­tion, toward the end of his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. Now, the sec­ond time I’ve seen Bil­ly Collins speak, he appears giv­ing this TEDTalk, “Every­day Moments, Caught in Time,” in which he makes fun of his own ten­den­cy to men­tion his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. But he most­ly uses his fif­teen min­utes onstage in Long Beach in front of TED’s swoop­ing cam­eras to talk about how the Sun­dance Chan­nel ani­mat­ed five of his poems. A boost­er of poet­ry “off the shelf” and into pub­lic places — sub­ways, bill­boards, cere­al box­es — he fig­ured that even such an “unnat­ur­al and unnec­es­sary” merg­er could fur­ther the cause of elud­ing humanity’s “anti-poet­ry deflec­tor shields that were installed in high school.”

Collins also notes that the idea for the project stirred the embers of his “car­toon junkie” child­hood, when Bugs Bun­ny was his muse. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, how­ev­er, the pro­duc­ers at the Sun­dance Chan­nel kept quite far indeed from the Mer­rie Melodies. These ani­mat­ed poems opt instead for an aes­thet­ic that takes pieces of visu­al real­i­ty and repur­pos­es them in ways we don’t expect: look at the real arm slith­er­ing across the pages in the first poem, the tan­gi­ble-look­ing dolls and doll envi­ron­ments of the sec­ond poem, or the drift­ing pho­to­graph­ic cutouts of the third. Not to get too grand about it, but isn’t this what poet­ry itself is sup­posed to do? Don’t the words them­selves also cut out frag­ments of actu­al exis­tence and posi­tion them, recon­tex­tu­al­ize them, and move them around in ways that sur­prise us? The sub­stance of these shorts — foun­tain pens, fig­urines, car keys, paper boats, match­sticks, mice — may seem like the last word in mun­dan­i­ty, but per­ceived through the dif­fer­ent­ly “real” lens­es of Collins’ poet­ry and this unusu­al ani­ma­tion, they inspire curios­i­ty again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3 Year Old Recites Poem, “Litany” By Bil­ly Collins

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry At Con­struc­tion Site

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Art and Science of Violin Making

in Music, Technology | March 23rd, 2012

Sam Zyg­muntow­icz is a world-renowned luthi­er, or mak­er of stringed instru­ments. Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma play his instru­ments. In 2003, a vio­lin he made for Isaac Stern sold at auc­tion for $130,000–the high­est price ever for an instru­ment by a liv­ing luthi­er. To sum up Zyg­muntow­icz’s stature as a builder of fine instru­ments, Tim J. Ingles, direc­tor of musi­cal instru­ments for Sothe­by’s, told Forbes mag­a­zine: “There are no more than six peo­ple who are at his lev­el.”

Zyg­muntow­icz is the sub­ject of a 2007 book by John March­ese called The Vio­lin Mak­er: Find­ing a Cen­turies-Old Tra­di­tion in a Brook­lyn Work­shop. In one pas­sage, March­ese writes about the mys­te­ri­ous acousti­cal qual­i­ties of the vio­lin, which he likens to a mag­ic box:

The laws that gov­ern the build­ing of this box were decid­ed upon a short time before the laws of grav­i­ty were dis­cov­ered, and they have remained remark­ably unchanged since then. It is com­mon­ly thought that the vio­lin is the most per­fect acousti­cal­ly of all musi­cal instru­ments. It is quite uncom­mon to find some­one who can explain exact­ly why. One physi­cist who spent decades try­ing to under­stand why the vio­lin works so well said that it was the world’s most ana­lyzed musi­cal instrument–and the least under­stood.

The most famous, and fabled, stringed instru­ments are those that were made in Cre­mona, Italy, in the late 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies by Anto­nio Stradi­vari and a hand­ful of oth­er mas­ters. In Zyg­muntow­icz’s work­shop in the Park Slope neigh­bor­hood of Brook­lyn, New York, there is a bumper stick­er that says, “My oth­er fid­dle is a Strad.” Behind the joke lies a seri­ous point. Zyg­muntow­icz wants great musi­cians to use his instruments–not because they are cheap­er than a Stradi­var­ius, but because they are bet­ter. He’s try­ing to break a bar­ri­er that has been firm­ly in place for cen­turies. “I call it the ‘Strad Ceil­ing,’ ” he told NPR in 2008. “You know, if some­one has a Strad in their case, will they play your fid­dle?”

Although Joshua Bell owns a Zyg­muntow­icz, he most­ly calls on the luthi­er to make fine adjust­ments to his Stradi­var­ius. But Eugene Druck­er of the Emer­son String Quar­tet told Forbes that he actu­al­ly prefers his Zyg­muntow­icz to his 1686 Stradi­var­ius in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. “In a large space like Carnegie Hall,” he said, “the Zyg­muntow­icz is supe­ri­or to my Strad. It has more pow­er and punch.” In spite of the mys­tique that sur­rounds Stradi­vari and the oth­er Cre­mona mas­ters, Zyg­muntow­icz sees no rea­son why a mod­ern luthi­er could­n’t make a bet­ter instru­ment. “There isn’t any inef­fa­ble essence,” he told the The New York Times ear­li­er this year, “only a phys­i­cal object that works bet­ter or worse in a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances.”

For a quick intro­duc­tion to Zyg­muntow­icz’s work, watch a new video, above, by pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Dustin Cohen, and an ear­li­er piece by Jon Groat of Newsweek, below. And to dive deep­er into the sci­ence of the vio­lin, be sure to vis­it the “Strad3D” Web site, which fea­tures fas­ci­nat­ing excerpts from Eugene Schenkman’s film about Zyg­muntow­icz’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with physi­cist George Bissinger on a project using 3D laser scans, CT scans and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to ana­lyze the acousti­cal prop­er­ties of vio­lins by Stradi­vari and Giuseppe Guarneri. As Zyg­muntow­icz told Strings mag­a­zine in 2006, “What makes those vio­lins work is more know­able now than it ever was.” H/T Kot­tke

Note: if you have any prob­lems watch­ing the video below, you can watch an alter­nate ver­sion here.

‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster

in Art, Books, History | March 21st, 2012

In an old Vic­to­ri­an rail­way sta­tion in the pic­turesque vil­lage of Alnwick, Northum­ber­land, just South of the Scot­tish bor­der, is a one-of-a-kind book­store called Barter Books. The New States­man called it “The British Library of sec­ond­hand books.” A mod­el rail­way winds along a track laid out across row upon row of book­shelves in what was once the depar­ture hall. Dur­ing the win­ter months, cus­tomers sit and read by a roar­ing fire in the old wait­ing room.

One day in 2000, the store’s co-own­er, Stu­art Man­ley, was search­ing through a dusty box of books that were bought at auc­tion, when he found a fold­ed-up piece of paper at the bot­tom. He took the paper out, opened it and showed it to his wife and busi­ness part­ner, Mary Man­ley. Nei­ther of them had seen it before. It said: “Keep Calm and Car­ry On.” As the BBC’s Stu­art Hugh­es lat­er put it, “the sim­ple five-word mes­sage is the very mod­el of British restraint and stiff upper lip.”

It turned out that the poster was one of mil­lions that were print­ed on the eve of World War II but nev­er dis­trib­uted. The Man­leys decid­ed to frame the poster and hang it in the shop. Before long, cus­tomers were offer­ing to buy it, so the Man­leys decid­ed to print some copies. Then in 2005 a nation­al news­pa­per sup­ple­ment rec­om­mend­ed the poster as a Christ­mas gift and, as Stu­art Man­ley put it, “all hell broke loose.”

Since that time, tens of thou­sands of the posters have been sold, and the slo­gan has found its way onto t‑shirts and cof­fee mugs and has been the inspi­ra­tion of count­less par­o­dies like “Keep Calm and Par­ty On” and “Freak Out and Run Like Hell.” Removed from its orig­i­nal con­text, the wartime slo­gan has an uncan­ny res­o­nance in today’s world. “It’s very good, almost zen,” psy­chol­o­gist Les­ley Prince told the BBC. “It works as a per­son­al mantra now.”

For the sto­ry of this most improb­a­ble of 21st cen­tu­ry icons, watch the three-minute film above, which was made by Temu­jin Doran in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the design and pro­duc­tion stu­dio Nation.

Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds

in Apple, Art, iPad | March 21st, 2012

What if you took great works of art, stacked them side by side, and had them tell a sto­ry? You’d have a decid­ed­ly art­ful video … and a great teas­er for the new art­Cir­cles iPad app that brings you col­lec­tions of images curat­ed by well-known fig­ures includ­ing Yves Behar (named one of the “World’s 7 Most Impor­tant Peo­ple in Design”) and John Mae­da (pres­i­dent of Rhode Island School of Design). The app is free on iTunes, and if you pick up the new iPad with reti­na dis­play, you can see where the device real­ly excels. Or at least that was my expe­ri­ence when I gave it a spin.

And while we’re on the top­ic, here’s anoth­er free app worth check­ing out: “The Life of Art.” Pro­duced by the Get­ty Muse­um in LA, the “Life of Art” gives users a chance to under­stand how objects end up in a muse­um in the first place. Pho­tog­ra­phy, ani­ma­tions, video, and 360 degree rota­tions nar­rate the artis­tic lives of these objects. Find the app here. H/T Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! It will bright­en their day.

ParaHawking in Nepal: What It’s Really Like to Fly with Birds

in Life, Random, Science | March 19th, 2012

We’ve always had the desire to leave our earth-bound bod­ies and take flight with the birds. We achieved the mir­a­cle of flight over a cen­tu­ry ago. But only recent­ly did we cre­ate a robot that can mechan­i­cal­ly repro­duce the beau­ty of birds in flight. And now we’ve tak­en the next step, actu­al­ly join­ing birds high in the air. Above you can watch Para­Hawk­ing in action, a fusion between fal­con­ry and paraglid­ing that lets you inter­act with birds of prey in their own envi­ron­ment. It all takes place in Nepal. And it’s all part of an effort to con­serve Asi­a’s threat­ened vul­ture pop­u­la­tion. Learn more about these con­ser­va­tion efforts and Para­Hawk­ing itself at, of course, Parahawking.com.

And if you want to see what hap­pens when a paraglid­er (not affil­i­at­ed with this project) acci­den­tal­ly runs into an eagle, watch below:

H/T Metafil­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Hitchcock on Happiness

in Film, Life | March 17th, 2012

It’s a sim­ple recipe for hap­pi­ness. Elim­i­nate all neg­a­tive emo­tions, any­thing that cre­ates bad feel­ings and dis­tracts from the project at hand. Clear it all away, and what’s left? The space for cre­ativ­i­ty pure and sim­ple. That’s hap­pi­ness for Hitch. Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Films online here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.