How People Imagined in 1948 What Cars Would Look Like in the Future

in Technology | May 3rd, 2022

With a few excep­tions, car design of the last two decades has been stuck in a rut, with a same­ness on the outside—-aerodynamic, sleek, rounded—-hiding the advance­ments under the hood and in the con­trol pan­el. That’s why it’s always a hoot to check out mock designs from the past, espe­cial­ly when they are being used to fore­cast the future.

This short 1948 film from Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics shows three pos­si­ble cars of the future, all of which for var­i­ous rea­sons, nev­er real­ly caught on. But films like this offer a tan­ta­liz­ing thought-—what if they had? It’s a tiny glimpse of an alter­na­tive real­i­ty, and we all seem to be lov­ing that mul­ti­verse vibe these days.

The first is the Davis Divan, which is per­fect for par­al­lel park­ing with its sin­gle front tire and tight maneu­ver­abil­i­ty. It cer­tain­ly looks cool but I will dis­agree with the nar­ra­tor: no amount of space-age oomph is going to make chang­ing a tire an “exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence.” The Divan was built by the Davis Motor­car Com­pa­ny of Van Nuys, CA, designed by used-car sales­man Gary Davis, and includ­ed ideas tak­en from the aero­nau­ti­cal indus­try. This film appear­ance was part of a major pub­lic­i­ty push from 1947–1949, but in the end only 13 Divans were pro­duced, and a dozen sur­vive. Not so the com­pa­ny, which was sued into liq­ui­da­tion after it failed to deliv­er prod­uct.

The sec­ond has an even stranger his­to­ry. If this is a “car from the future”, then the film­mak­ers neglect­ed to note it’s actu­al­ly from 1935. The Hoppe & Streur Stream­lin­er pro­to­type was designed and built by Allyn Streur and Allen Hoppe as part of Con­sol­i­dat­ed Air­craft San Diego, and based on a Chrysler 66 chas­sis. It seat­ed five peo­ple. If it looks like flim­sy met­al on top of a skele­tal frame, then you’ve guessed cor­rect­ly.

You can see how South­ern California’s aero­space indus­try has start­ed to influ­ence every­thing after the war, which accounts for the air­plane obses­sion with these autos, espe­cial­ly what comes next. The final selec­tion is Gor­don Buehrig’s TACSO pro­to­type from 1948. Sev­er­al of the con­trols in the dri­ver’s seat imi­tate those found in the cock­pit of a plane, and the four wheels are cov­ered in fiber­glass direc­tion­al fend­ers. Not not­ed in the film: the car had “a trans­par­ent roof that could be removed to let the wind in,” a fea­ture way ahead of its time. But it would have been too expen­sive to mass pro­duce (Auto­Blog fig­ures one of these would have cost the equiv­a­lent of $80,000 back in the day) so the one in the video is the only one in exis­tence.

As peo­ple are still try­ing (and fail­ing) to suc­cess­ful­ly par­al­lel park, safe to say none of these pre­dic­tions came true. Part­ly, that’s sad. On the oth­er hand, next time you hear some doom-n-gloom pre­dic­tion of our cur­rent moment, think on this video and how thank­ful­ly wrong they were.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee & More (1926/35)

How Pre­vi­ous Decades Pre­dict­ed the Future: The 21st Cen­tu­ry as Imag­ined in the 1900s, 1950s, 1980s, and Oth­er Eras

Buck­min­ster Fuller, Isaac Asi­mov & Oth­er Futur­ists Make Pre­dic­tions About the 21st Cen­tu­ry in 1967: What They Got Right & Wrong

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

David Byrne’s New Illustrated Book Playfully Presents A History of the World (in Dingbats)

in Books | May 3rd, 2022

What does David Byrne know about the his­to­ry of the world in his new book A His­to­ry of the World (in Ding­bats)? As much as he knows about psy­cho killers, burn­ing down hous­es, and “non-ratio­nal log­ic,” the sub­ject of a show at New York’s Pace Gallery this past Feb­ru­ary fea­tur­ing elab­o­rate doo­dles Byrne calls “ding­bats.” That is to say, he knows quite a lot about the his­to­ry of the world. Or maybe, it hard­ly mat­ters. “Burn­ing Down the House” is not real­ly about arson.

The new book presents us, instead of his­to­ry, with a “cross between Codex Seraphini­anus and E.E. Cum­ming’s lit­tle-known philo­soph­i­cal line draw­ings,” Maria Popo­va writes at The Mar­gin­a­lian. It is a work of the hope­ful­ness of imag­i­na­tion; a state­ment about how “non-ratio­nal log­ic” can shape real­i­ty.

“The way things were,” Byrne writes, “the way we made things, it turns out, none of it was inevitable — none of it is the way things have to be.” Popo­va calls the project an “illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of the pos­si­ble future.”

“Cre­at­ed while under quar­an­tine,” notes pub­lish­er Phaidon — the draw­ings “expand on the ding­bat, a typo­graph­ic orna­ment used to illu­mi­nate or break up blocks of text.” Byrne says he was inspired by the lit­tle illus­tra­tions in The New York­er, though he took the con­cept much fur­ther. He writes text in each themed sec­tion that echoes the anx­i­ety, con­tem­pla­tion, and strange excite­ment of life in lock­down: thoughts on what has been lost to us and on the life that might emerge in a world remade by a virus.

Byrne reminds us that his­to­ry is “a sto­ry we tell our­selves.… These sto­ries we tell our­selves about the world are not fixed.” Nor are the sto­ries we each tell our­selves about who we are as indi­vid­u­als. These are ideas the artist has explored in projects rang­ing from his first book, 1995’s Strange Rit­u­al, to his work with Lua­ka Bop, his world music label, to the album/Broadway show/feature film/pic­ture book Amer­i­can Utopia — all projects con­cerned with expand­ing the bound­aries of our shared human nar­ra­tive.

Sto­ries are lessons we send to our­selves — some remain vibrant and rel­e­vant while oth­ers are only use­ful for a moment. They serve myr­i­ad pur­pos­es that are often beyond our ken, for bet­ter or worse, and some­times both at the same time.

How can we know when it’s time to let go, to move into a his­to­ry of the future rather than the past? “Only you can find the way,” he writes, “in the city in your head.” It is our task to sift the sto­ries that serve us from those that don’t, through crit­i­cal reflec­tion, the play of the imag­i­na­tion, and mak­ing new con­nec­tions between our minds and bod­ies:

In the new world the rules have changed — or at least there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of change.

We can be dif­fer­ent.

Order A His­to­ry of the World (in Ding­bats) here and see more of Byrne’s draw­ings at The Mar­gin­a­lian.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Byrne Turns His Acclaimed Musi­cal Amer­i­can Utopia into a Pic­ture Book for Grown-Ups, with Vivid Illus­tra­tions by Maira Kalman

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

David Byrne Answers the Internet’s Burn­ing Ques­tions About David Byrne

David Byrne Launch­es Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, an Online Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Arti­cles by Byrne, Bri­an Eno & More

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

Experience Seinfeld’s Famous “Soup Nazi” Scenes With & Without Laugh Tracks

in History, Television | May 2nd, 2022

For a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion fan, watch­ing old net­work sit­coms can take some get­ting used to. Noth­ing about them takes more get­ting used to than their laugh tracks, which must strike any­one who did­n’t grow up hear­ing them as utter­ly bizarre. But was it real­ly so long ago that we took for grant­ed — nay, expect­ed — an erup­tion of pre-record­ed laugh­ter after each and every punch line? As late as the nine­teen-nineties, even sit­coms well-regard­ed for their sophis­ti­ca­tion and sub­ver­sive­ness added “canned laugh­ter” to their sound­tracks. Take Sein­feld, the show famous­ly “about noth­ing,” scenes from one of whose episodes you can watch with­out a laugh track in the video above.

The episode in ques­tion is one of Sein­feld’s best-known: “The Soup Nazi,” orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on NBC on Novem­ber 2, 1995. These scenes por­tray Jer­ry, George and Elaine’s encoun­ters with the title fig­ure, a harsh soup-restau­rant pro­pri­etor based on Ali “Al” Yeganeh, own­er of Soup Kitchen Inter­na­tion­al in New York. (Unaware of the char­ac­ter’s real-life coun­ter­part, actor Lar­ry Thomas based his per­for­mance on that of Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Ara­bia.)

With the laugh track cut out, the main char­ac­ters’ inter­ac­tions with each oth­er reach heights of near-sur­re­al awk­ward­ness, to say noth­ing of their con­fronta­tions with the Soup Nazi and his rigid order­ing rules.

The resul­tant ten­sion, unbro­ken by the trans­plant­ed guf­faws heard in the orig­i­nal scenes above, would become the stock in trade of lat­er sit­coms like the impro­vi­sa­tion-based Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, star­ring Sein­feld co-cre­ator Lar­ry David. But that show could only have exist­ed under the per­mis­sive­ness of a pre­mi­um cable chan­nel like HBO; on NBC, the lega­cy of the laugh track would be upheld for some years. After all, laugh tracks had been in use since the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties, dur­ing tele­vi­sion’s tran­si­tion away from all-live broad­cast­ing to the meth­ods of pre-pro­duc­tion used for prac­ti­cal­ly all dra­ma and com­e­dy still today. Even then, live stu­dio audi­ences were becom­ing a thing of the past — but the exploita­tion of tele­vi­sion’s pow­er to gen­er­ate arti­fi­cial feel­ings of com­mu­ni­ty had only just begun.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sein­feld & Noth­ing­ness: A Super­cut of the Show’s Emp­ti­est Moments

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Theme Song Gets the Sein­feld Treat­ment

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Watch a New Animation of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

in Animation, Music, Nature, Physics | May 2nd, 2022

…I would like not to under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of the world view which is the result of sci­en­tif­ic effort. We have been led to imag­ine all sorts of things infi­nite­ly more mar­velous than the imag­in­ings of poets and dream­ers of the past.

- Richard Feyn­man

In 1955, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Richard Feyn­man gave a talk on the val­ue of sci­ence to mem­bers of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the wake of the destruc­tion of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, his involve­ment with the Man­hat­tan Project had been cause for seri­ous depres­sion and soul search­ing.

He con­clud­ed that the pur­suit of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge remained valu­able to soci­ety, even though such knowl­edge comes with­out oper­at­ing instruc­tions, and thus can be put to evil pur­pos­es.

In the Cal­tech speech, he cit­ed the life improv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and med­ical break­throughs that are the result of sci­en­tif­ic explo­rations, as well as the sci­en­tif­ic field­’s alle­giance to the con­cept that we must be free to dis­sent, ques­tion, and dis­cuss:

If we sup­press all dis­cus­sion, all crit­i­cism, pro­claim­ing “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom human­i­ty for a long time to the chains of author­i­ty, con­fined to the lim­its of our present imag­i­na­tion.

(This strikes a pro­found chord in 2022, remem­ber­ing how some extreme­ly vocal politi­cians and cit­i­zens took chang­ing pub­lic health man­dates as evi­dence of con­spir­a­cy, rather than an ever-deep­en­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of how an unfa­mil­iar virus was oper­at­ing.)

Any child with an inter­est in STEM will be grat­i­fied to learn that Feyn­man also found much to admire in “the fun …which some peo­ple get from read­ing and learn­ing and think­ing about (sci­ence), and which oth­ers get from work­ing in it.

Through­out his speech, he refrained from tech­ni­cal jar­gon, using lan­guage that those whose pas­sions skew more toward the arts can under­stand to invoke the expe­ri­ence of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery.

His med­i­ta­tions con­cern­ing the inter­con­nect­ed­ness between every mol­e­cule “stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness” and every­thing else in the known uni­verse, includ­ing him­self, a human stand­ing beside the sea, try­ing to make sense of it all, is of a piece with Shake­speare and Walt Whit­man.

Unti­tled Ode to the Won­der of Life

by Richard Feyn­man

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.

There are the rush­ing waves

moun­tains of mol­e­cules

each stu­pid­ly mind­ing its own busi­ness

tril­lions apart

yet form­ing white surf in uni­son.

Ages on ages before any eyes could see

year after year

thun­der­ous­ly pound­ing the shore as now.

For whom, for what?

On a dead plan­et

with no life to enter­tain.

Nev­er at rest

tor­tured by ener­gy

wast­ed prodi­gious­ly by the sun

poured into space.

A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea

all mol­e­cules repeat

the pat­terns of one anoth­er

till com­plex new ones are formed.

They make oth­ers like them­selves

and a new dance starts.

Grow­ing in size and com­plex­i­ty

liv­ing things

mass­es of atoms

DNA, pro­tein

danc­ing a pat­tern ever more intri­cate.

Out of the cra­dle

onto dry land

here it is

stand­ing: atoms with con­scious­ness;

mat­ter with curios­i­ty.

Stands at the sea,

won­ders at won­der­ing: I

a uni­verse of atoms

an atom in the uni­verse

The Mar­gin­a­lian’s (for­mer­ly Brain Pick­ings) Maria Popo­va seizes on this inter­lude for the final install­ment of her video series, The Uni­verse in Verse, above, col­lab­o­rat­ing with ani­ma­tor Kel­li Ander­son on a “per­spec­tive-broad­en­ing, mind-deep­en­ing” visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Feynman’s excerpt­ed remarks.

Flow­ing under and around Feynman’s nar­ra­tion is an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion by cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, whose renown in the field of music is on par with Feynman’s in physics, and who notes in the intro­duc­tion to The Quotable Feyn­man:

While he paid close atten­tion to prob­lems we face and gen­er­ate, he also knew that humans are a sub­set of nature, and nature held for him the great­est fas­ci­na­tion — for the imag­i­na­tion of nature is far, far greater than the imag­i­na­tion of man, and nature guards her secrets jeal­ous­ly.

Read Feynman’s com­plete speech to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at at Cal­tech Uni­ver­si­ty here.

Watch all nine chap­ters of The Uni­verse in Verse here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Video

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

A Creative Animation Documents What Happened When a 1970s Self-Help Seminar Turned Into a Nightmare (NSFW)

in Film, Life | May 2nd, 2022

Self-improve­ment is a won­der­ful thing, and we obvi­ous­ly embrace the idea here at Open Cul­ture. But cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ings and self-help sem­i­nars can often serve to break peo­ple down rather than build them up. The cult-like men­tal­i­ty one finds in such envi­rons should not sur­prise us: 1 in 5 busi­ness lead­ers have “psy­cho­path­ic ten­den­cies”; many self-help gurus actu­al­ly do become — or start out as — nar­cis­sis­tic cult lead­ers. In the short film above by film­mak­er Joey Izzo we see one cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ing course that imme­di­ate­ly devolved into a night­mar­ish scene of abuse and humil­i­a­tion.

Based on an inter­view with Gene Church — a par­tic­i­pant in the 1970 four-day lead­er­ship sem­i­nar in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia — the film mix­es ani­ma­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy, and dra­mat­ic recre­ations filmed in 16mm, por­tray­ing “an uncon­ven­tion­al Mind Dynam­ics class where par­tic­i­pants were forced to find a ‘moment of truth’ through a num­ber of degrad­ing and often vio­lent acts,” writes Rob Mun­day at Short of the Week.

Par­tic­i­pants of the men-only encounter group each paid $1000 for the priv­i­lege. All of them were dis­trib­uters of a cos­met­ics brand called Hol­i­day Mag­ic, owned by William Penn Patrick, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire John Bircher who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran as a Repub­li­can for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia and who owned both Mind Dynam­ics and a cor­po­rate train­ing com­pa­ny called Lead­er­ship Dynam­ics Insti­tute.

Patrick offered his sem­i­nars both “for his peo­ple” and “who­ev­er want­ed to come,” says Church, and aimed to teach them “how to be suc­cess­ful, how to be a bet­ter hus­band, father, leader par­ent, on and on and on.” Over­promis­ing seems to be a hall­mark of fraud­u­lent self-improve­ment cours­es, and this one was no dif­fer­ent. What set it apart is the degree to which the par­tic­i­pants vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­ject­ed them­selves to what Church’s room­mate at his hotel called “a rather rough four days.” As they would learn, the true pur­pose of the course was to force its stu­dents to find their “moment of truth” through var­i­ous forms of beat­ing and tor­ture. One man was placed in a cof­fin, beat­en severe­ly, then locked in overnight; one was placed in a cage; one tied to a cross. These are just some of the hor­rors, accord­ing to the film.

Like some kind of sadis­tic Mil­gram exper­i­ment gone total­ly off the rails, the pro­gram enlist­ed all of the par­tic­i­pants to admin­is­ter beat­ings to each oth­er and pre­vent each from leav­ing. And like the Mil­gram exper­i­ment, the Mind Dynam­ics sem­i­nar stands as one of many object lessons in “the per­ils of obe­di­ence.” There are many more exam­ples of dark descents into cultish abuse in the self help world. Writer C.L. Tay­lor tells the more recent sto­ry of self-help busi­ness­man James Arthur Ray, who in 2011 was con­vict­ed of “three counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide when three peo­ple died dur­ing one of his ‘new age’ retreats.” These involved “sleep depri­va­tion, fire walk­ing, fast­ing, board break­ing and arrow break­ing,” and a sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny that turned dead­ly.

The fact that peo­ple are often will­ing to relin­quish their auton­o­my in order grow as indi­vid­u­als says a great deal about the amount of help peo­ple per­ceive they need and the degree to which human beings can be manip­u­lat­ed by charis­mat­ic lead­ers. In most cas­es, those lead­ers have no busi­ness giv­ing advice in the first place. As one for­mer self-help “expert,” Michelle Good­man (who found her­self pushed into the are­na by her pub­lish­er) admits, “the dirty lit­tle secret of those in the advice busi­ness is that we wind up teach­ing oth­ers the lessons we most need to learn our­selves.” Her advice to those who came to her with prob­lems she could­n’t real­is­ti­cal­ly solve: “You should real­ly talk to a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al about that.” To learn more about Church’s har­row­ing expe­ri­ence with Mind Dynam­ics, read his book The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Behold Octavia Butler’s Moti­va­tion­al Notes to Self

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

Revisiting the Music of the Pioneering German Composer Klaus Schulze (RIP), the “Godfather of Techno,” Ambient, German Experimental Psych Rock & More

in Music | April 30th, 2022

This past Tues­day, April 26, exper­i­men­tal Ger­man elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and musi­cian Klaus Schulze died, leav­ing a musi­cal lega­cy as sig­nif­i­cant as they come in the past half-cen­tu­ry or so. Crowned the “god­fa­ther of tech­no,” Pitch­fork writes, he was inte­gral to both Krautrock (as 1970s Ger­man pro­gres­sive rock was unflat­ter­ing­ly called) and the “Berlin School” of tech­no, and he “laid the ground­work for ambi­ent, IDM, and many oth­er sub-gen­res of con­tem­po­rary elec­tron­ic music. His rel­e­vance nev­er waned.” Although a leg­end among those in the know, Schulze isn’t known in broad­er pop­u­lar cul­ture.

He should be, and will be, says Oscar-win­ning Dune com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer, who worked parts of Schulze’s 1978 com­po­si­tion “Frank Her­bert” (below) into the 2021 film’s score. “Klaus Schulze’s music has nev­er been as rel­e­vant as it is now,” said Zim­mer.

Soon after­ward, Schulz record­ed a new album, Deus Arrakis, sched­uled for release on June 10. “I need­ed more of that spice,” the 74-year-old com­pos­er said. (See him above, sit­ting cross-legged, with blonde Prince Valiant ‘do, per­form­ing “For Bar­ry Graves” live in Köln in 1977.) “From there I felt com­plete­ly unleashed and just played and played…”

Giv­en Schulze’s stay­ing pow­er and influ­ence, it may be puz­zling that he isn’t men­tioned with house­hold names like Bri­an Eno and Kraftwerk, or even hip­per names to drop like Karl­heinz Stock­hausen or Jean-Michel Jarre. This is in part because he rarely stuck with one sound long enough for praise and could­n’t have cared less whether any­one knew who he was. Though an ear­ly mem­ber, as a per­cus­sion­ist, of Tan­ger­ine Dream, Schulze left after their 1970 debut, Elec­tron­ic Med­i­ta­tion to form the band Ash Ra Tem­pel, which he also left after their stel­lar self-titled debut, a psy­che­del­ic clas­sic (though he’d return occa­sion­al­ly over the decades) to form and dis­solve project after project, while also con­sis­tent­ly releas­ing albums under his own name.

Mov­ing from band to band was hard­ly unusu­al in the 1970s Ger­man music scene. Two of Kraftwerk’s found­ing mem­bers split off to form major post-punk influ­ence NEU! (then fur­ther split for oth­er projects); the list of cur­rent and for­mer Tan­ger­ine Dream mem­bers runs over two score entries. Schulze’s “almost aller­gic response to the past,” Pitch­fork writes, set him apart. “The com­pos­er refused to release reworks of his cat­a­log, instead pre­fer­ring to push for­ward and dis­cov­er new sounds.” His exper­i­men­ta­tion start­ed as a drum­mer in the 1960s for Berlin bands, when he began “plac­ing his gui­tar on the ground and play­ing it with unlike­ly objects such as met­al tubes and cop­per plates.”

“His first solo release was Irrlicht in 1972,” The Guardian notes, “a com­po­si­tion in four parts that involved Schulze manip­u­lat­ing a bro­ken organ, record­ings of an orches­tra and an ampli­fi­er to cre­ate a tow­er­ing wall of sound.” His next album, 1973’s Cyborg, began his use of syn­the­siz­ers, which con­tin­ued through­out his 50-album run (includ­ing live albums and sound­tracks) but nev­er type­cast him. After Cyborg, Rolling Stone writes:

Schulze and his label­mates formed the Krautrock super­group Cos­mic Jok­ers and their epony­mous debut album. That col­lab­o­ra­tion segued into the most vital peri­od of Schulze’s solo career, as the mid-to-late Sev­en­ties saw the release of elec­tron­ic music clas­sics like 1975’s Timewind, 1976’s Moon­dawn and 1978’s “X.”

The list of solo albums and col­lab­o­ra­tions con­tin­ues (includ­ing an all-Moog inter­pre­ta­tion of Pink Floyd titled Dark Side of the Moog), stack­ing up into a must-hear list of titles for those unfa­mil­iar with Schulze’s work. “I hope nev­er to get bor­ing,” he said in 1997, and he meant it. “If an artist can­not amaze peo­ple any­more, that’s the end.”

Reach­ing the end of his own life, after a long ill­ness, Schulze did deign to revis­it a moment from his past. It pro­pelled him for­ward into his final work. “At the end of that sec­ond pri­vate Dune jour­ney,” he said, “I real­ized: Deus Arrakis became anoth­er salute to Frank Her­bert and to that great gift of life in gen­er­al.”

Schulze lived and still lives in the music he inspired, per­formed, and record­ed. “There was still so much to write about him as a human and artist,” con­cludes a state­ment from his fam­i­ly, “but he prob­a­bly would have said by now: nuff said!… You know what he was like: his music mat­ters, not his per­son.” Or maybe it was that the two were insep­a­ra­ble. Hear music from his upcom­ing and final album, Deus Arrakis, just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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

Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalker, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev

in Film | April 30th, 2022

The stench of Vladimir Putin and his inva­sion of Ukraine should­n’t taint every­thing Russ­ian, espe­cial­ly some of its finest cin­e­ma. So we’ll give you this heads up: Mos­film, the largest and old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, has post­ed sev­er­al major films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986), on its offi­cial YouTube channel. Above, you can watch Stalk­er, which we’ve cov­ered amply here on Open Cul­ture. Below, stream The Mir­ror, Andrei Rublev, and Ivan’s Child­hood. Stream oth­er Mos­film movies here.

The Mir­ror

Andrei Rublev

Ivan’s Child­hood

Solaris

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Slavoj Žižek Explains the Artistry of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films: Solaris, Stalk­er & More

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Coca-Cola Was Originally Sold as an Intellectual Stimulant & Medicine: The Unlikely Story of the Iconic Soft Drink’s Invention

in Food & Drink, History | April 29th, 2022

We all know that sweet­ened, car­bon­at­ed soft drinks have effects on those who drink them. The most con­spic­u­ous, among espe­cial­ly avid con­sumers, include obe­si­ty and its asso­ci­at­ed health trou­bles. This, fair to say, was not the inten­tion of John Stith Pem­ber­ton, the Geor­gia phar­ma­cist who in the 1880s came up with the drink that would become Coca-Cola. In that era, writes Smithsonian.com’s Kat Eschn­er, “peo­ple over­whelmed by indus­tri­al­iza­tion and urban­iza­tion as well as the holdover of the Civ­il War and oth­er social changes strug­gled to gain pur­chase, turn­ing to patent med­i­cines for cures that doc­tors could­n’t pro­vide.” And it was in a patent med­i­cine, one of the count­less many dubi­ous­ly bal­ly­hooed in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, that Coca-Cola first appeared.

Injured in the Civ­il War, Pem­ber­ton devel­oped a mor­phine addic­tion for which he fruit­less­ly sought treat­ment. But then he got word of a new sub­stance with the poten­tial to cure his “mor­phin­ism”: cocaine.  At the time, cocaine was an ingre­di­ent in a wine-based bev­er­age enjoyed by Parisians called Vin Mar­i­ani.

“It actu­al­ly made peo­ple feel great, and it was sold as med­i­cine,” writes Eschn­er. “Com­bin­ing cocaine and alco­hol pro­duces anoth­er chem­i­cal more potent than what’s nor­mal­ly found in cocaine, enhanc­ing the high.” Adapt­ing Vin Mar­i­ani for his own local mar­ket, Pem­ber­ton intro­duced what he called “French Wine Coca”: a treat­ment, as he pro­mot­ed it, for every­thing from dys­pep­sia to neuras­the­nia to con­sti­pa­tion, as well as a “most won­der­ful invig­o­ra­tor of the sex­u­al organs.”

Coca-Cola car­ries many asso­ci­a­tions today, few of them hav­ing to do with the life of the mind. Yet it was to upper-class intel­lec­tu­als, their minds dis­or­dered by the rapid devel­op­ment of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, that Pem­ber­ton pro­mot­ed his inven­tion. It would be called “a valu­able Brain Ton­ic, and a cure for all ner­vous affec­tions.” Its sup­posed men­tal ben­e­fits became the main sell­ing point in 1886, when tem­per­ance laws in Atlanta prompt­ed a re-engi­neer­ing of the for­mu­la. Even the non-alco­holic ver­sion con­tained “the valu­able TONIC and NERVE STIMULANT prop­er­ties of the Coca plant and Cola nuts,” as adver­tise­ments put it, but in the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry (long after Pem­ber­ton’s death in 1888, by which time he’d sold off his rights to the drink), the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny phased that ingre­di­ent out. If it weren’t ille­gal, a cocaine-for­ti­fied soft drink would now ben­e­fit from the retro appeal of the eight­ies — the eigh­teen-eight­ies and nine­teen-eight­ies alike.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Do You Drink Soda, Pop or Soft Drinks?: 122 Heatmaps Visu­al­ize How Peo­ple Talk in Amer­i­ca

“Soda/Pop/Coke,” A Cre­ative Visu­al Remix of Harvard’s Famous 2003 Sur­vey of Amer­i­can Dialects

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Hear The Beatles’ Abbey Road with Only Paul McCartney’s Bass: You Won’t Believe How Good It Sounds

in Music | April 29th, 2022

In addi­tion to play­ing the beat­ing human heart on the Bea­t­les’ glo­ri­ous swan song Abbey Road, Paul McCartney’s bass pro­vides melod­ic accom­pa­ni­ment, har­mo­ny, coun­ter­point, empha­sis… and some­times it just sings a lit­tle tune up and down the neck, the sort of thing a bass play­er can turn into need­less show­boat­ing in rock and roll.

That’s not at all the case on “Some­thing,” where McCart­ney runs, slides, and bounces through the gui­tar solo, a moment when a sup­port play­er might con­serve his musi­cal ener­gy.… McCart­ney total­ly goes for it, as he does on every song, Fend­er amps pushed into over­drive through Abbey Road Studio’s famous com­pres­sors.

Go on… put your LP on the Hi-Fi and lis­ten to the way he swings on “Oh! Dar­ling,” how he anchors “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” so heav­i­ly he almost makes Ringo’s bass drum redun­dant (but it isn’t), how he bounces through Ringo’s “Octopus’s Gar­den” with an exag­ger­at­ed music hall lilt, then, in the bridge, oblique­ly turns the song into an almost fuzzed-out rock­er.

Do I even need to men­tion “Come Togeth­er”.…? Do we need to talk about Side 2?

“Ngl,” writes Red­dit com­menter karensellscoke on the site’s “Loud­est and Most In-Tune Com­mu­ni­ty of Bassists,” r/Bass. “I’ve been sleep­ing on Paul for a bit and call­ing him over­rat­ed and a ‘dad’ bassist but I think this may have changed my tune.”

By this, our com­menter refers not to Abbey Road prop­er, but to the iso­lat­ed bass tracks of the entire album, just above (with plen­ty of micro­phone bleed from the rest of the band). I don’t know what a dad bassist is, but I agree with the sen­ti­ment, “These are some well craft­ed basslines exe­cut­ed with per­son­al­i­ty.”

Paul plays with a feel­ing rarely heard on mod­ern record­ings. Much is due to his gui­tar-like play­ing style. Much is due to the absolute­ly dis­tinc­tive tone he achieved on the instru­ment. And much is due to the tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions of record­ing at the time.

“The lim­i­ta­tions of Bea­t­les-era tech­nol­o­gy were sub­stan­tial,” writes Justin Lan­cy at The Atlantic, “and they forced a com­mit­ment to cre­ative choic­es at ear­li­er stages of the record­ing process.” No infi­nite num­ber of takes as in our dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion times. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, in the right hands, at least — most espe­cial­ly those of the white lab coat-clad tech­ni­cians at Abbey Road — low­er tech made for bet­ter record­ings.

When you lis­ten to record­ings from a gen­er­a­tion or two ago… you often hear all sorts of rough edges: large dynam­ic tran­si­tions between loud and qui­et, the sounds of over­sat­u­rat­ed tape and tubes, instru­ments bleed­ing togeth­er. Chun­ked notes. Vocals that are out of pitch. Drums that drift in and out of time. Mis­takes. Lots of mis­takes.

Do you hear McCart­ney’s mis­takes? Sure­ly he did. “It was because artists were stuck with the mis­takes they made that they some­times decid­ed to embrace them.” This explains why anoth­er r/Bass com­menter found the iso­lat­ed bass tracks “inspir­ing­ly slop­py.… There’s a great rough­ness that’s absent today.” Musical_bear describes being “blown away” on “Oh! Dar­ling” by “how slop­py the iso­lat­ed bass is.… Things I’ve nev­er noticed before, like a ran­dom pow­er chord start­ing verse 2 I think, and even some botched/missing notes com­plete­ly… but it all some­how sits great in the final mix.” (Read leg­endary record­ing engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick­’s track by track analy­sis of how he helped make all that hap­pen here.)

We feel every note of McCart­ney’s play­ing, instead of just admir­ing its pre­ci­sion or what­ev­er. “I lis­tened to this entire thing in one sit­ting, just his bass,” writes a con­vert­ed karensellscoke (recall­ing the adage that there are Bea­t­les fans and there are peo­ple who just haven’t heard enough Bea­t­les), “and loved it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

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

Watch Sir Ian McKellen’s 1979 Master Class on Macbeth’s Final Monologue

in English Language, Literature, Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture, Writing | April 29th, 2022

If only we could have had a teacher as insight­ful as Sir Ian McK­ellen explain some Shake­speare to us at an impres­sion­able age.

Above, a 38-year-old McK­ellen breaks down Macbeth’s famous final solil­o­quy as part of a 1978 mas­ter class in Act­ing Shake­speare.

He makes it clear ear­ly on that rely­ing on Iambic pen­tame­ter to con­vey the mean­ing of the verse will not cut it.

Instead, he calls upon actors to apply the pow­er of their intel­lect to every line, ana­lyz­ing metaphors and imagery, while also not­ing punc­tu­a­tion, word choice, and of course, the events lead­ing up to the speech.

In this way, he says, “the actor is the play­wright and the char­ac­ter simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.”

McK­ellen was, at the time, deeply immersed in Mac­beth, play­ing the title role oppo­site Judi Dench in a bare bones Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny pro­duc­tion that opened in the company’s Strat­ford stu­dio before trans­fer­ring to the West End. As McK­ellen recalled in a longer med­i­ta­tion on the trick­i­ness of stag­ing this par­tic­u­lar tragedy:

It was beau­ti­ful­ly done on the cheap in The Oth­er Place, the old tin hut along from the main the­atre. John Napi­er’s entire set cost £200 and the cos­tumes were a rag­bag of sec­ond-hand clothes. My uni­form jack­et had but­tons embossed with ‘Birm­ing­ham Fire Ser­vice’; my long, leather coat did­n’t fit, nor did Ban­quo’s so we had to wear them slung over the shoul­der; Judi Dench, as Lady Mac­beth, wore a dyed tea-tow­el on her head. Some­how it was mag­ic: and black mag­ic, too. A priest used to sit on the front row, when­ev­er he could scrounge a tick­et, hold­ing out his cru­ci­fix to pro­tect the cast from the evil we were rais­ing.

The New York Times raved about the pro­duc­tion, declar­ing McK­ellen “the best equipped British actor of his gen­er­a­tions:”

Mr. McK­el­len’s Mac­beth is wit­ty; not mere­ly the hor­ror but the absur­di­ty of his actions strikes him from the out­set, and he can regard his down­fall as an inex­orable joke. His wife pulls him along a road that he would trav­el any­way and he can allow him­self scru­ples, know­ing that she will be there to mop them up. Once her pro­sa­ic, lim­it­ed ambi­tion is achieved, she is of no more use to him and he shrugs her off; “she would have died here­after” is a moment of exas­per­a­tion that dares our laugh­ter.

What fuels him most is envy, reach­ing incred­u­lous­ly for­ward (“The seed of Ban­quo kings?”) and back­ward to col­or the despair of “Dun­can is in his grave.” The words, and the mind behind them, are ran­cid, and it is this mood that takes pos­ses­sion of his last scenes. Every­thing dis­gusts him, and his only rea­son for fight­ing to the death is that the thought of sub­jec­tion is the most dis­gust­ing of all.

McK­ellen begins his exam­i­na­tion of the text by not­ing how “she would have died here­after” sets up the final solil­o­quy’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with time, and its pas­sage.

Tomor­row, and tomor­row, and tomor­row,

Creeps in this pet­ty pace from day to day,

To the last syl­la­ble of record­ed time;

And all our yes­ter­days have light­ed fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief can­dle!

Life’s but a walk­ing shad­ow, a poor play­er,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing.

McK­ellen makes a true meal of  “out, out, brief can­dle”,  relat­ing it to Lady Macbeth’s final appear­ance, the fools pro­ceed­ing to their dusty death ear­li­er in the mono­logue, and Eliz­a­bethan stage light­ing.

He spec­u­lates that Shakespeare’s descrip­tion of life as a “poor play­er” was a delib­er­ate attempt by the play­wright to give the actor an inter­pre­tive hook they could relate to. In per­for­mance, the the­atri­cal metaphor should remind the audi­ence that they’re watch­ing a pre­tense even as they’re invest­ed in the character’s fate.

The pro­duc­tion’s suc­cess inspired direc­tor Trevor Nunn to film it. McK­ellen recalled that every­one was already so well acquaint­ed with the mate­r­i­al, it took just two weeks to get it in the can:

The claus­tro­pho­bia of the stage pro­duc­tion was exact­ly cap­tured. Trevor had used a sim­i­lar tech­nique with Antony and Cleopa­tra on the box. No one else should ever be allowed to tele­vise Shakespeare…There is so much I was proud of: dis­cov­er­ing how to play a solil­o­quy direct into the eyes of every­one in the audi­ence; mak­ing them laugh at Mac­beth’s gal­lows humor; work­ing along­side Judi Dench’s finest per­for­mance.

For more expert advice from McK­ellen, Patrick Stew­art, Ben Kings­ley and oth­er nota­bles, watch the RSC’s 9‑part Play­ing Shake­speare series here.

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