Watch the Trippy 1970s Animated Film Quasi at the Quackadero: Voted One of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time

in Animation | March 16th, 2021

There cer­tain­ly are a lot of weirdos out today. —Qua­si at the Quack­adero

Ani­ma­tion is a pro­fes­sion where­in child­hood influ­ences hold vis­i­ble sway.

Today’s young ani­ma­tors are like­ly to cite the for­ma­tive pow­ers of Sponge­bob Squarepants, Avatar: The Last Air­ben­der, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and the films of Japan­ese mas­ter, Hayao Miyaza­ki.

As a child of the 50s, Sal­ly Cruik­shank, cre­ator of cult favorite Qua­si at the Quack­adero, above, mar­i­nat­ed in Carl Barks’ Don­ald Duck comics. In The Ani­ma­tors, an early-80’s PBS doc­u­men­tary cen­tered on the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area scene, she mused that “the images of the mon­ey bin and Don­ald Duck and the nephews and Uncle Scrooge all sunk into my sub­con­scious and came out lat­er, not real­ly look­ing like ducks to any­one but me, but in my mind they are ducks—Quasi, Snozzy, and Ani­ta.”

Qua­si at the Quack­adero places two of those odd ducks, con­tent­ed loafer Qua­si and his con­trol­ling, lisp­ing ladyfriend, Ani­ta, in a bizarre amuse­ment park where the attrac­tions include oppor­tu­ni­ties to “Relive One of the Shin­ing Moments of Your Life” and “See Last Night’s Dreams Today.”

The fun house mir­rors in the 3:10 mark’s Hall of Time are a par­tic­u­lar treat, con­tribut­ing to a car­ni­val of sen­so­ry over­load that’s as old timey as it is trip­py.

“You don’t need to take acid to have weird thoughts and imag­ine weird things,” Cruik­shank, whose oth­er favorites, telling­ly, include Win­sor McCay, Max Fleis­ch­er, and Yel­low Sub­ma­rine, replied to an admir­er on YouTube.

In 2009, Cruikshank’s dement­ed vision found its way into the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Film Reg­istry, an hon­or she cel­e­brat­ed with a blog post toast­ing her late boss, E.E. Gregg Snazelle of Snazelle Films:

The job was to exper­i­ment with ani­ma­tion, and do com­mer­cials for him when the jobs came in. He also hoped I’d fig­ure out how to solve 3‑d with­out glass­es.

Need­less to say I did­n’t solve 3‑d. I did­n’t even do very many com­mer­cials over ten years, but I showed up at 8:30, took an hour off for lunch and worked till 5:30. I was paid $350 a month, and I could live on that then.

He encour­aged me gen­er­ous­ly with­out ever pay­ing much atten­tion to me. These days if an oppor­tu­ni­ty like that even exist­ed, you’d be forced to sign all kinds of rights state­ments for char­ac­ters and con­tent cre­at­ed, but this was before “Star Wars” and he just seemed to be hap­py to have me around. We were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly close. It spoiled me for any job after that.

I made all my “Qua­si” films while I was work­ing at Snazelle. Unfor­tu­nate­ly he’s no longer alive, but here’s to you, Gregg, with a big heart and much thanks.

Cruik­shank was indeed lucky to have secured a day job in her cho­sen field, pro­vid­ing her with access to pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive equip­ment.

Remem­ber that her 1975 short pre­dates per­son­al com­put­ers, afford­able ani­ma­tion soft­ware, and a pletho­ra of free shar­ing plat­forms. Cruik­shank says that Qua­si at the Quack­adero required two years of near dai­ly work, liken­ing its ani­ma­tion process to “some­thing from the Mid­dle Ages.”

Of course, 1975 was also a peak year for under­ground comix, anoth­er tra­di­tion from which Qua­si sprung, right into the arms of a recep­tive audi­ence. Ani­ta and Qua­si also appear in Cruikshank’s one and only com­ic, Mag­ic Clams. In addi­tion to her work at Snazelle Stu­dios, Cruik­shank cock­tail wait­ressed in a hang­out for San Francisco’s under­ground car­toon­ists, includ­ing then-boyfriend Kim Deitch, Quasi’s “Spe­cial Art Assis­tant.” Bob Arm­strong and Al Dodge of R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders con­tributed the short’s score. Oth­er friends from the indie comix scene were enlist­ed to paint cells at 50 cents per.

Quasi’s inclu­sion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry not only car­ries the impri­matur of cul­tur­al, his­toric, and aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance, it sug­gests the psy­che­del­ic short is a sem­i­nal influ­ence in its own right.

We agree with KQED’s Sarah Hotchkiss that “the sat­u­rat­ed col­ors, hard edges, and con­stant move­ment of Cruik­shank’s ani­ma­tion could be source mate­r­i­al for the future real­iza­tion of Pee-wee’s Play­house.”

Both deliv­er us from real­i­ty into the lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of an anthro­po­mor­phic uni­verse.

Explore more of Sal­ly Cruickshank’s ani­ma­tions on her You Tube chan­nel, includ­ing her  car­toons for Sesame Street. Some of her ani­ma­tion cels, includ­ing ones from Qua­si at the Quack­adero are for sale in her Etsy shop.

Qua­si at the Quack­adero–vot­ed one of the 50 Great­est Car­toons, in a poll of 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als–will be added to our list of ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

What are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)? And How Can a Work of Digital Art Sell for $69 Million

in Art, Economics | March 16th, 2021

Val­ue in the art world depends on man­u­fac­tured desire for objects that serve no pur­pose and have no intrin­sic mean­ing out­side of the sto­ries that sur­round them, which is why it can be easy to fool oth­ers with fraud­u­lent copies. Col­lec­tors and experts are often eager to believe a well-told tale of spe­cial prove­nance. As Orson Welles says in F is for Fake, “Lots of oys­ters, only a few pearls. Rar­i­ty. The chief cause and encour­age­ment of fak­ery and phoni­ness.”

“Con­cepts of fak­ery and orig­i­nal­i­ty bounce off one anoth­er as reflec­tions,” Lidi­ja Groz­dan­ic writes of Welles’ doc­u­men­tary on “our innate infat­u­a­tion with exclu­siv­i­ty,” a film made when the inter­net con­sist­ed of 36 routers and 42 host com­put­ers — in total (includ­ing a link in Hawaii!). Now we are immersed in hyper­re­al­i­ty. Copies of dig­i­tal art­works are indis­tin­guish­able from each oth­er, since they can­not be said to exist in any mate­r­i­al sense. How can they be authen­ti­cat­ed? How can they become exclu­sive place­hold­ers for wealth?

The ques­tions have been tak­en up, and answered rather abrupt­ly, it seems, by the archi­tects of blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, who bring us NFTs, or “Non-Fun­gi­ble Tokens,” an acronym and phrase­ol­o­gy you’ve sure­ly heard, whether you’ve felt inclined to learn what they mean. The videos fea­tured today offer brief expla­na­tions, by ref­er­ence espe­cial­ly to the case of South Car­oli­na-based dig­i­tal artist named Mike Win­kle­mann, who goes by Beeple, and who first har­nessed the pow­er of NFTs to make mil­lions.

Most recent­ly, in a first-of-its-kind online auc­tion at Christies, Beeple’s mon­tage “‘Every­days — The First 5000 Days’… became the ‘What Does the Fox Say?’ of art sales,” writes Erin Grif­fiths at The New York Times.

A cryp­to whale known only by the pseu­do­nym Metako­van paid $69 mil­lion (with fees) for some indis­crim­i­nate­ly col­lat­ed pic­tures of car­toon mon­sters, gross-out gags and a breast­feed­ing Don­ald Trump — which sud­den­ly makes this com­put­er illus­tra­tor the third-high­est-sell­ing artist alive.

The crit­i­cism is per­haps unfair. As Christies argues in its defense, the piece reveals “Beeple’s enor­mous evo­lu­tion as an artist” over five years. Spe­cial­ist Noah Davis calls the col­lage, stitched togeth­er from Beeple’s body of work on Insta­gram, “a kind of Duchampian ready­made.” But it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter if Beeple’s work is avant-garde high art.

The lib­er­tar­i­an econo-speak “non­fun­gi­ble token” reveals itself as part of a world divorced from the usu­al cri­te­ria art his­to­ri­ans, cura­tors, auc­tion hous­es, and oth­ers apply in their judg­ments of authen­tic­i­ty and worth. Instead, the val­ue of NFTs rests main­ly on the fact that they are exclu­sive, with­out par­tic­u­lar­ly high regard for what they include. One may love the work of Beeple, but we should be clear, “what Christie’s sold was not an object” — there is no object — “but a ‘non­fun­gi­ble token,’” which is “bit­coinese for unique string of char­ac­ters, logged on a blockchain,” that can­not be exchanged or replaced… like own­ing a Mon­et with­out own­ing a Mon­et.

Unlike the Wu Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, bought for $2 mil­lion in 2015 by Mar­tin Shkre­li, con­tent attached to NFTs can be shared, viewed, copied, etc. over and over. “Mil­lions of peo­ple have seen Beeple’s art,” the BBC explains, “and the image has been copied and shared count­less times. In many cas­es, the artist even retains the copy­right own­er­ship of their work, so they can con­tin­ue to pro­duce and sell copies.”

Oth­er sales of NFTs include a ver­sion of the 10-year-old inter­net meme Nyan Cat that sold for $600,000, a clip of LeBon James block­ing a shot for $100,000, and a pic­ture of Lind­say Lohan for $17,000, which then resold for $57,000. Lohan artic­u­lat­ed the NFT ethos in a state­ment, say­ing, “I believe in a world which is finan­cial­ly decen­tral­ized.” This is not a world where judg­ments about the val­ue of art and cul­ture can be cen­tral­ized either. But pow­er can be, pre­sum­ably, in the form of cur­ren­cy, cryp­to-and oth­er­wise, trad­ed in spec­u­la­tive bub­bles.

“Some peo­ple com­pare it to buy­ing an auto­graphed print,” the BBC writes. Some com­pare it to the age-old scams warned of in folk tales. David Ger­ard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, calls NFT sell­ers “cryp­to-grifters… the same guys who’ve always been at it, try­ing to come up with a new form of worth­less bean that they can sell for mon­ey.” This eter­nal scam exists beyond the bina­ries posed by F is for Fake. Orig­i­nal­i­ty, authen­tic­i­ty, or oth­er­wise are most­ly beside the point.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Art Mar­ket Demys­ti­fied in Four Short Doc­u­men­taries

Banksy Shreds His $1.4 Mil­lion Paint­ing at Auc­tion, Tak­ing a Tra­di­tion of Artists Destroy­ing Art to New Heights

Warhol: The Bell­wether of the Art Mar­ket

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

Brian Eno Explains the Origins of Ambient Music

in Music | March 15th, 2021

When William Basin­s­ki released The Dis­in­te­gra­tion Loops in the years after the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 attacks, it was the sound of decay pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty — record­ings of decades-old tape loops lit­er­al­ly falling apart on their reels, as the World Trade Cen­ter ruins smol­dered across the riv­er from the composer’s Brook­lyn stu­dio. The piece was per­formed ten years lat­er by an orches­tra at the Tem­ple of Den­dur, at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, for the tenth anniver­sary of the attacks. Anohni (then known as Antony of Antony and the John­sons) called it “the most help­ful and use­ful music I have ever known.”

This might mark the first time a piece of ambi­ent music has been award­ed such grav­i­tas and made the cen­ter­piece of a sig­nif­i­cant memo­r­i­al. It seems a long way from the ori­gins of the form in Bri­an Eno’s Dis­creet Music (1975) and Music for Air­ports (1978), in which Eno pushed music to the periph­ery of expe­ri­ence, turn­ing it into unob­tru­sive back­ground stim­u­lus that “cre­at­ed a sort of land­scape you could belong to,” he says above, like the end­less­ly repeat­ing worlds of a video game. In music, how­ev­er, “rep­e­ti­tion is a form of change,” Eno remind­ed us, or as Basinski’s loops sug­gest­ed, writes Sasha Frere-Jones at The New York­er, “rep­e­ti­tion is change.”

Anoth­er curi­ous trait links Basinski’s 21st cen­tu­ry lamen­ta­tions and Eno’s 70s air­port lounge music, one that seems to change the terms of the con­tract that ambi­ent music, as we usu­al­ly under­stand it, makes with the lis­ten­er. We might think of it as music that makes no par­tic­u­lar demands on us and take Eno’s state­ments about it as encour­ag­ing a kind of pas­sive con­sump­tion: ambi­ent music as no more than pleas­ant accom­pa­ni­ment for bet­ter queu­ing-up and calmer shop­ping. (Not that there’s any­thing wrong with stress relief….)

But what Basin­s­ki and Eno both describe in intense acts of ambi­ent cre­ation is more extreme. It begins with a kind of help­less­ness in the face of dis­tress — in the first case an of help­less­ly watch­ing low­er Man­hat­tan burn from the roof of a Williams­burg loft. Eno’s predica­ment was more per­son­al and inti­mate, he tells Riz Khan above, but no less help­less. Con­va­lesc­ing in his bed after a car acci­dent, he found him­self unable to move when a friend put on a record and left him alone. The expe­ri­ence of immo­bil­i­ty became a cat­a­lyst.

The album of “18th cen­tu­ry harp music” was too qui­et. He couldn’t turn it up over the sound of rain out­side his win­dow. At first, Eno says, he was frus­trat­ed by his lack of con­trol over the envi­ron­ment. But as he “start­ed lis­ten­ing to the rain and lis­ten­ing to these odd notes of the harp that were just loud enough to be heard above the rain,” it became for him “a great musi­cal expe­ri­ence…. I sud­den­ly thought of this idea of mak­ing music that didn’t impose itself on your space in the same way.”

In pay­ing atten­tion to a loss of con­trol, Eno dis­cov­ered music that relin­quish­es con­trol over the lis­ten­er. In lis­ten­ing to his own shock and grief, Basin­s­ki dis­cov­ered music that lets itself fall apart, slow­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly over time. What he “pompous­ly called” ambi­ent music, Eno jokes above, “became some­thing I no longer rec­og­nize.” And, yes, it may have come to take up more space than he intend­ed. But it still func­tions as a cre­ative response to cir­cum­stances in which, it seems, there may be lit­tle else to do but lis­ten care­ful­ly and wait.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Bri­an Eno Rein­vent Pachelbel’s Canon (1975)

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

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

The Letters of Mozart’s Sister Maria Anna Get Transformed into Music

in Music, Technology | March 15th, 2021

The tal­ent of an indi­vid­ual may not always run in the fam­i­ly, but we can nev­er dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its doing so. This is true even in the case of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, not just one of the best-known com­posers ever to live, but a byword for deep, innate, and unre­peat­able genius. Mozart was com­pos­ing orig­i­nal music at the age of of four or five, an aston­ish­ing fact we know today in part because his old­er sis­ter wit­nessed and lat­er attest­ed to it. Known as Nan­nerl, Maria Anna Mozart pre­ced­ed her both­er into key­board lessons from their father Leopold, a com­pos­er and teacher. Togeth­er Wolf­gang and Maria Anna toured Europe as a per­form­ing duo of child prodi­gies, until Maria Anna’s attain­ment of mar­riage­able age took her off the cir­cuit.

If Maria Anna ever com­posed music of her own, none of it has sur­vived. But she did leave behind a fair few diaries and let­ters, many of the lat­ter exchanged with her broth­er. These writ­ings pro­vid­ed the mate­r­i­al for pianist Heloísa Fer­nan­des to cre­ate a piece in trib­ute to the less­er-known Mozart sib­ling.

“The writ­ing, all in Ger­man, under­went painstak­ing analy­sis so that its tone and pro­nun­ci­a­tion could be trans­lat­ed into musi­cal notes,” says Lit­tle Black Book. “A Ger­man inter­preter was invit­ed to read the let­ters and diary of Maria Anna Mozart out loud,” and a piece of soft­ware “trans­lat­ed the record­ing into musi­cal notes by tun­ing the syl­la­bles. If a spo­ken syl­la­ble hit 387 Hz, for exam­ple, the pro­gram inter­pret­ed it as G.” Thus were Nan­ner­l’s words trans­formed into music.

The result­ing piece, “Das Kön­i­gre­ich Rück­en,” is named after “an imag­i­nary king­dom that Maria and Wolf­gang made ref­er­ence to in their let­ters to each oth­er,” as Sara Spary notes in Adweek — a pub­li­ca­tion that would nat­u­ral­ly cov­er it, com­mis­sioned as it was by an ad cam­paign for LG Elec­tron­ics. Devel­oped by Brazil­ian firm AlmapBB­DO in coop­er­a­tion with the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Super­sôni­ca, “Pro­jec­to Ms. Mozart” is meant to pro­mote LG’s XBOOM Go Blue­tooth speak­er. But whichev­er device you use to hear “Das Kön­i­gre­ich Rück­en,” you’ll sure­ly find that it sounds quite unlike any piece you’ve heard before. Fans of Maria Anna Mozart as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure will lis­ten and won­der what could have been, and even those igno­rant of her can’t but wel­come these three addi­tion­al min­utes of Mozart into the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Maria Anna Mozart Was a Musi­cal Prodi­gy Like Her Broth­er Wolf­gang, So Why Did She Get Erased from His­to­ry?

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

12-Year-Old Piano Prodi­gy Takes Four Notes Ran­dom­ly Picked from a Hat and Instant­ly Uses Them to Impro­vise a Sonata

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

Yo-Yo Ma Plays an Impromptu Performance in Vaccine Clinic After Receiving 2nd Dose

in Life, Music | March 14th, 2021

After get­ting his sec­ond dose of the COVID-19 vac­cine, Yo-Yo Ma “took a seat along the wall of the obser­va­tion area, masked and social­ly dis­tanced away from the oth­ers. He went on to pass 15 min­utes in obser­va­tion play­ing cel­lo for an applaud­ing audi­ence,” writes the Berk­shire Eagle. You can watch the scene above, which played out at Berk­shire Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege this week­end. And read more about it here.

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:

Yo-Yo Ma Per­forms the First Clas­si­cal Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Men­tal Health Break and Watch His Mov­ing “Tiny Desk” Con­cert

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

All Praise Lou Ottens: The Inventor of the Cassette Tape Dies at Age 94

in History, Music | March 12th, 2021

The cas­sette tape is so ubiq­ui­tous, so much a part of my life since I can even remem­ber music as a thing, that it was a shock to find out that the man who invent­ed it, Lou Ottens, passed away at the age of 94. Of course, some­body did have to invent the cas­sette tape, but in all these years I nev­er thought to look the per­son up. Such an inven­tion first makes you think of the world before it: records (dear­ly beloved, still around), and reel-to-reel tape (not so dear­ly beloved). The for­mer was a fixed object, an art object, immutable (until turntab­lists came along). The lat­ter was a way to record our­selves, but so much more was involved in the act. Peo­ple had to wind the spin­dle, to thread the tape through the cap­stan and heads, and record usu­al­ly in mono. You can see an overview of a mod­el from the 1950s here.

Ottens was a Dutch engi­neer work­ing at Philips who became head of new prod­uct devel­op­ment in Has­selt, Bel­gium. His assign­ment was to shrink the reel-to-reel and, like the radio, make it more portable. And here is the most impor­tant deci­sion: Ottens want­ed the for­mat to be licensed to oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers for free, so every­body could par­take. Con­sid­er­ing the end­less for­mat bat­tles that we fight every day, this deci­sion was as mon­u­men­tal as it was human­ist.

He designed his pro­to­type out of wood and sized it to fit into a pock­et for true porta­bil­i­ty. (This pro­to­type, by the way, dis­ap­peared from his­to­ry after he used it to prop up a jack when fix­ing a flat tire.) The actu­al com­pact cas­sette, pro­mot­ed as a cheap­er and small­er for­mat for major label releas­es, imme­di­ate­ly gained a sec­ond life as an artis­tic tool: a way for reg­u­lar folk to record what­ev­er they want­ed. Kei­th Richards report­ed­ly record­ed the riff for “Sat­is­fac­tion” on the portable cas­sette play­er near his bed. Peo­ple record­ed lec­tures, the tele­vi­sion, the radio, their rel­a­tives, their friends, the ran­dom sound of life. Peo­ple start­ed to curate: their favorite music, their favorite peo­ple, their favorite sounds. Peo­ple pre­tend­ed to be DJs, pre­tend­ed to be artists, pre­tend­ed to be tele­vi­sion hosts, pre­tend­ed to be authors, pre­tend­ed to be crit­ics. And some through pre­tend­ing became the things they want­ed to be.

Peo­ple made mix­tapes for friends and for lovers. They looked at the remain­ing tape on the spin­dle and won­dered if the song they had to end side two would fit. Peo­ple real­ized that cas­sette tape could be a col­lage of sounds, cut up by the pause but­ton.

Ottens may not have real­ized it, but he had cre­at­ed a com­plete­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic for­mat. In the 1980s, the back pages of music mag­a­zines flour­ished with the cat­a­logs of cas­sette-only album releas­es. If you had a Walk­man and a friend with a halfway decent tape recorder, you could car­ry around your favorite music and lis­ten to it when­ev­er you want­ed.

The record indus­try rebelled (for a while). They want­ed you to know that “home tap­ing is killing music” but did so with a skull and bones graph­ic that made it that much cool­er. In the end it didn’t real­ly mat­ter. The music fans repur­chased every­thing on CD any­way. (Apart from the peo­ple who taped CDs and even then after that *those* peo­ple down­loaded the mp3s.)

And here’s the thing. Ottens wasn’t pre­cious about any of it. He was part of the devel­op­ment of the Com­pact Disc. The cas­sette was just anoth­er step­ping stone.

But despite the numer­ous arti­cles that cas­settes were a dead medi­um, they kept com­ing back. Mix­tapes, the lifeblood of hip hop cul­ture con­tin­ued to thrive, even if by the end of the cen­tu­ry the idea was more of a con­cept. And then in the mid­dle of the 2010s cas­settes came roar­ing back after the vinyl resur­gence. For bands it was a cheap way to pro­vide a phys­i­cal prod­uct, what with vinyl still being very expen­sive to pro­duce. Band­camp, the place to go for cas­sette-only releas­es, offers artis­tic tapes for the same price as a dig­i­tal down­load. So why not get both and start your library again?

Ottens nev­er fore­saw any of this hap­pen­ing, but it speaks to some­thing very human: we want con­trol of our music, and dig­i­tal music, espe­cial­ly in the cloud, ain’t cut­ting it. We want to hold some­thing in our hands and claim it as our own.

So pour one out for Lou Ottens, who start­ed a rev­o­lu­tion that hasn’t fin­ished. Do *not* press pause.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

Stream a Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of Indie, Noise Indus­tri­al Mix­tapes from the 80s and 90s

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.

Google & Coursera Launch Career Certificates That Prepare Students for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Analytics, Project Management and UX Design

in Education, Google, Online Courses | March 12th, 2021

We live in an age of less-than-total agree­ment as to the pur­pose of high­er edu­ca­tion. Should it immerse stu­dents in the best that has been thought and said? Pro­vide an envi­ron­ment in which to come of age? Pro­duce “lead­ers”? Or should it, as increas­ing­ly many argue, first and fore­most secure pro­fes­sion­al futures? In the prac­tice of recent decades, high­er edu­ca­tion has done a bit of each, to the sat­is­fac­tion of some and the dis­sat­is­fac­tion of oth­ers. It has, in oth­er words, become an indus­try sub­ject to “dis­rup­tion” by oth­er play­ers offer­ing spe­cial­ized solu­tions of their own. Take for exam­ple the new Career Cer­tifi­cates offered by Google and the online edu­ca­tion plat­form Cours­era.

“Designed to pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months,” as Cours­era CEO Jeff Mag­gion­cal­da explains it, these new­ly-unveiled Career Cer­tifi­cates “don’t have any pre­req­ui­sites,” which means that most any­one inter­est­ed in earn­ing them can do so right now. This goes for “new grads land­ing their first job, front-line work­ers seek­ing sta­ble employ­ment, mid-career pro­fes­sion­als mak­ing a piv­ot, or par­ents plan­ning their return to the work­force,” and pre­sum­ably myr­i­ad oth­er walks of life besides.

Avail­able in Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, and User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, “each cer­tifi­cate is com­plete­ly online, self-paced, and costs $39 per month” — sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than most exist­ing forms of high­er edu­ca­tion, even of the most pro­fes­sion­al­ly or tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed vari­eties.

If you’ve dipped into our list of online cours­es, you’ve prob­a­bly encoun­tered Cours­era, a lead­ing plat­form for mas­sive online open cours­es (or MOOCs) used by some of the world’s best-known tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ties. Its new pro­vi­sion of Google’s Career Cer­tifi­cates should go some way to mak­ing more famil­iar — at least to those us who’ve already learned online — a reimag­in­ing of pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion. This pro­gram’s “dis­rup­tive” poten­tial, due not least to Google’s own con­sid­er­a­tion of these cer­tifi­cates as equiv­a­lent to a four-year degree, has already been well not­ed. “But while the new pro­grams offer a fast track to new skills and pos­si­bly even a new job in a frac­tion of the time of a degree pro­gram,” writes Inc.‘s Justin Bariso, “stu­dents should­n’t expect the cours­es to be a walk in the park.” And giv­en that they’re unlike­ly to get eas­i­er, any­one inter­est­ed in earn­ing a Career Cer­tifi­cate would do well to look into it today.

Below, you can find a list of the new Career Cer­tifi­cates.

• User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate – UX design jobs are pro­ject­ed to steadi­ly grow over the com­ing years, with medi­an salaries for an entry-lev­el role around $82,000. This sev­en-course cer­tifi­cate explores UX prin­ci­ples, UX terms, and indus­try-stan­dard tools, includ­ing Fig­ma and Adobe XD. By the time they com­plete the pro­gram, learn­ers will have three port­fo­lio projects to use in their job appli­ca­tions.
• Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate – In the U.S., there are near­ly 15,000 open entry-lev­el data ana­lyt­ics roles, with an annu­al medi­an entry-lev­el salary of more than $63,000. This sev­en-course cer­tifi­cate explores ana­lyt­i­cal skills, con­cepts, and tools used in many intro­duc­to­ry data ana­lyt­ics roles – includ­ing SQL, Tableau, RStu­dio, and Kag­gle.

• Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate – Employ­ers will need to fill near­ly 2.2 mil­lion new project-ori­ent­ed roles each year through 2027, accord­ing to the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute. This six-course cer­tifi­cate pre­pares learn­ers to launch a project man­age­ment career. It cov­ers indus­try-stan­dard tools and meth­ods, includ­ing the agile project man­age­ment sys­tem, and key soft skills, such as stake­hold­er man­age­ment, prob­lem-solv­ing, and influ­enc­ing.
• IT Sup­port Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate — Pre­pare for an entry-lev­el job as an IT sup­port spe­cial­ist. In this pro­gram, you’ll learn the fun­da­men­tals of oper­at­ing sys­tems and net­work­ing, and how to trou­bleshoot prob­lems using code to ensure com­put­ers run cor­rect­ly. This is for you if you enjoy solv­ing prob­lems, learn­ing new tools, and help­ing oth­ers.
• IT Automa­tion Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate — This is an advanced pro­gram for learn­ers who have com­plet­ed the Google IT Sup­port Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate. This is for you if you want to build on your IT skills with Python and automa­tion.

The new cer­tifi­cates have been added to our col­lec­tion, 200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Cours­era and Google Launch an Online Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram to Help Stu­dents Become IT Pro­fes­sion­als & Get Attrac­tive Jobs

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Cours­era Part­ners with Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Afford­able Price

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

1,500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Watch Cartoonist Lynda Barry’s Two-Hour Drawing Workshop

in Art, Creativity, Education, K-12 | March 12th, 2021

We know you’re Zoomed out, but might you make an excep­tion for the pre-record­ed draw­ing and writ­ing ses­sion above with leg­endary car­toon­ist and illus­tra­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry?

Under the aus­pices of Graph­ic Med­i­cine’s par­tic­i­pa­to­ry online series, Draw­ing Togeth­er, the noto­ri­ous­ly play­ful Bar­ry led par­tic­i­pants through a series of exer­cis­es from her book, Mak­ing Comics, and seemed gen­uine­ly pleased to be back in teach­ing mode. (All of her in-per­son class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin have been can­celled until fur­ther notice due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, as has her usu­al sum­mer stint at the Omega Insti­tute.)

Bar­ry endeav­ored to loosen her stu­dents up right away, bran­dish­ing toys and danc­ing to an amaz­ing playlist in a friend’s bor­rowed attic, con­fid­ing that the wifi sit­u­a­tion here was far supe­ri­or to that in her old farm­house.

Teacher divid­ed the large group in half by birth­days, as a way to orga­nize view­ing each other’s work after each timed exer­cise.

This couldn’t quite repli­cate the expe­ri­ence of the live class­room, where stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to han­dle each other’s work, and more time to take it in, but still fun to see the incred­i­ble diversity—and in the case of closed-eye exercises—thrilling sim­i­lar­i­ties on dis­play.

Barry’s delight extend­ed beyond the con­fines of the page, imi­tat­ing the way some stu­dents beam like sway­ing sun­flow­ers through­out the 60-sec­ond closed eye ses­sions, while oth­ers knit their brows, low­er their chins and pow­er through.

A series of self-por­traits fol­lowed, with prompts designed to tap into the sort of imag­i­na­tive pow­ers that fre­quent­ly seep away in adolescence—draw your­self as an ani­mal, an astro­naut, a mem­ber of a march­ing band, any fruit that’s not a banana…

Longer exer­cis­es involved turn­ing ran­dom squig­gles into mon­sters, with an extra minute grant­ed after the timer went off to add what­ev­er miss­ing things the artist felt each draw­ing need­ed, then choos­ing one of those mon­sters to star in a fam­i­ly album of sorts.

Bar­ry, who has, over the course of her career, filled a num­ber of pan­els with hilar­i­ous­ly out-of-touch teach­ers mak­ing life a hell for child char­ac­ters, is audi­bly appre­cia­tive of her stu­dents’ efforts, fre­quent­ly con­grat­u­lat­ing them for bring­ing some­thing into the world that didn’t exist a few min­utes pri­or:

This is the thing about comics! They come intact, they come all togeth­er and the most impor­tant thing you need to do is just make time to draw them, the unin­ter­rupt­ed time, even if it’s just 2 min­utes.

Truth!

The final exer­cise of the day drew on some of the writ­ing tech­niques Bar­ry fea­tured in Syl­labus, with par­tic­i­pants, quick­ly jot­ting down mem­o­ries after a prompt, then choos­ing one  to explore more deeply, with spe­cial atten­tion devot­ed to sen­so­ry recall.

To play along from home after the fact, you’ll need a cou­ple of hours, ten or so sheets of paper, a pen­cil or pen (Bar­ry favors black felt tips), and your “orig­i­nal dig­i­tal devices” (hint: they’re attached to the ends of your arms).

Find infor­ma­tion on how to par­tic­i­pate in upcom­ing free Draw­ing Togeth­er ses­sions here.

All draw­ings used with the per­mis­sion of par­tic­i­pant Ayun Hal­l­i­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Barry’s New Book Offers a Mas­ter Class in Mak­ing Comics

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Museum Gift Shops Shape the Way We Look at Art

in Art | March 11th, 2021

The 2010 doc­u­men­tary Exit Through the Gift Shop seemed to crit­ics both too con­trived to be real­i­ty and too bizarre to be a hoax: Frenchman-in‑L.A. Thier­ry Guet­ta obses­sive­ly films graf­fi­ti artists and begins pur­su­ing Banksy, who takes over the project and makes a film about Guet­ta, who, at Banksy’s sug­ges­tion, takes up street art, becomes an overnight sen­sa­tion and — to the some­what hor­ri­fied aston­ish­ment of Banksy — sells a mil­lion dol­lars worth of his work at his first show as “Mr. Brain­wash.”

Worth, in the art world, is a rel­a­tive term, as Roger Ebert point­ed out. So what if Guet­ta was doing mediocre riffs on Warhol, among oth­ers? “Sure­ly Warhol’s mes­sage was that Their­ry Guet­ta has an absolute right to call his work art, and sell it for as much as he can.” If he can get away with it, more pow­er to him, but sure­ly there’s a high­er author­i­ty that real­ly deter­mines what we think of as art? Some hon­est body of schol­ars with rig­or­ous stan­dards and gen­er­ous tastes? Sure­ly there’s some­thing more than sales to deter­mine the val­ue of art?

Or maybe, the Vox video above sug­gests, it real­ly is the epony­mous gift shop, whose care­ful­ly curat­ed tchotchkes and sou­venirs include such col­lec­tions as “an ear-shaped eras­er,” writes Micaela Mari­ni Hig­gs, “a $495 Ver­sace t‑shirt… and of course, the clas­sics: post­cards, mugs, and mag­nets.” And that’s not to men­tion all those won­der­ful books…. Muse­um gift shops have con­vinced us that if it sells, it’s art. “Basi­cal­ly, stores are like the ulti­mate cheat sheet — the more you see a piece of art ref­er­enced, the more impor­tant it prob­a­bly is.”

Some vis­i­tors even choose to enter through the gift shop, which may, after all, be no stranger than walk­ing through an exhi­bi­tion the wrong way. Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy Sharon Mac­don­ald describes the retail area of a muse­um as a show’s final exhib­it. Vis­i­tors may feel a lack if they can’t con­spic­u­ous­ly con­sume what they have seen. The more they do so, the more they act as adver­tise­ments for the art on their tote bags. This is by design, of course.

Muse­um gift shops not only see them­selves as rev­enue sources — some pro­vid­ing up to a quar­ter of an institution’s funds — but also as art edu­ca­tors. Store buy­ers col­lab­o­rate with cura­tors, who want to give poten­tial vis­i­tors a sense of their exhi­bi­tions’ main ideas. There is no sin­is­ter plot at work, only the rein­forc­ing, through com­merce, of the museum’s pre-exist­ing cri­te­ria for what qual­i­fies as impor­tant art. But you might see a prob­lem — it’s all a bit cir­cu­lar, isn’t it? — and thanks to the “mere-expo­sure effect,” the cir­cle rip­ples out­ward through repeat­ed view­ings.

It’s a phe­nom­e­non not unlike hear­ing the same song over and over on the radio and grow­ing to like it through sheer famil­iar­i­ty. Do we “appre­ci­ate” art by con­sum­ing its like­ness­es on key­chains and mousepa­ds? Maybe we’re also par­tic­i­pat­ing in a rit­u­al of com­mer­cial con­sent to the val­ue of cer­tain works over oth­ers, most­ly unaware of how over­priced gift shop swag meme-ifies art and ampli­fies cul­tur­al val­ues we could think about more crit­i­cal­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards, Cook­book & Wine Guide Re-Issued as Beau­ti­ful Art Books

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

Down­load 584 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

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

Rare Vincent van Gogh Painting Goes on Public Display for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Painting Online

in Art, History | March 11th, 2021

Images cour­tesy of Sothe­bys

Not every Vin­cent van Gogh paint­ing hangs at the Van Gogh Muse­um, or indeed in a muse­um at all. Though many pri­vate col­lec­tors loan their Van Goghs to art insti­tu­tions that make them avail­able for pub­lic view­ing, some have nev­er let such prized pos­ses­sions out of their sight. Such, until recent­ly, was the case with Scène de rue à Mont­martre (Impasse des Deux Frères et le Moulin à Poivre), paint­ed in 1887 but not shown to the world until this year — in prepa­ra­tion for its auc­tion on March 25. Dur­ing its cen­tu­ry of pos­ses­sion by a sin­gle French fam­i­ly, the paint­ing count­ed as one of the few pri­vate­ly-held entries in Van Gogh’s Mont­martre series, which he paint­ed in the epony­mous neigh­bor­hood dur­ing the two years spent in Paris with his broth­er Theo.

“Unlike oth­er artists of his era, like Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh was attract­ed to the pas­toral side of Mont­martre and would tran­scribe this ambi­ence rather than its balls and cabarets.” So says Aurélie Van­de­vo­orde, head of the Impres­sion­ist and Mod­ern Art depart­ment at Sotheby’s Paris to The Art News­pa­per’s Anna San­son.

The land­scape “marks van Gogh’s turn to his dis­tinc­tive Impres­sion­ist style,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, and its “live­ly street is thought to be the same as that in Impasse des Deux Frères, which cur­rent­ly hangs at the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, and sim­i­lar­ly depicts a mill and flags pro­mot­ing the cabaret and bar through the gates.”

As depict­ed by Van Gogh more than 130 years ago, Mont­martre looks near­ly rur­al — quite unlike it does now, as any­one who’s fre­quent­ed the neigh­bor­hood in liv­ing mem­o­ry can attest. But the sta­tus of the paint­ing has changed even more than the sta­tus of the place: Scène de rue à Mont­martre “is expect­ed to sell for between $6 mil­lion and $9.7 mil­lion (€5 mil­lion to €8 mil­lion),” writes Smithsonian.com’s Isis Davis-Marks. Still, like most of Van Gogh’s Paris paint­ings, its val­ue does­n’t touch that of the work he did in his sub­se­quent Provençal sojourn (under the influ­ence of Japan­ese ukiyo‑e). “One such paint­ing, Laboureur dans un champ (1889),” adds Davis-Marks, “sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $81.3 mil­lion.” Well-heeled read­ers should thus keep an eye on Sothe­by’s site: this could be your chance to keep a (rel­a­tive­ly) afford­able Van Gogh in your own fam­i­ly for the next cen­tu­ry.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

In a Bril­liant Light: Van Gogh in Arles – A Free Doc­u­men­tary

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