Building Your Resilience: Finding Meaning in Adversity–Take a Free & Timely Course Online

in Health, Online Courses, Psychology | May 8th, 2020

The Great Courses has made avail­able a free and rather time­ly course–Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty. Divid­ed into 24 lec­tures and taught by Mol­ly Birk­holm, the course gets intro­duced with the fol­low­ing text:

Recent research shows that we grow into our best and most joy­ful selves not when we avoid our prob­lems but when we embrace them, con­fi­dent that we are resilient enough to work through them to an appro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion. Our prob­lems are an impor­tant part of our path.

Resilience is our abil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and men­tal­ly bounce back from adverse cir­cum­stances. With­out it, we would be down for the count every time we ran into a prob­lem. Stuck in traf­fic and late for a meet­ing? It’s your resilience that allows you to make the nec­es­sary phone calls and keep mov­ing for­ward, con­fi­dent that you can han­dle this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion as it evolves. With­out it, you’d make a U‑turn and give up. Recov­er­ing from the flu or recent surgery? It’s your resilience that helps you take care of your­self appro­pri­ate­ly and look for­ward to a bet­ter future. Our capac­i­ty to thrive in life depends direct­ly on our resilience.

Shar­ing her own fas­ci­nat­ing jour­ney, as well as the lat­est research by neu­rol­o­gists and psy­chol­o­gists, trau­ma spe­cial­ist Mol­ly Birk­holm shows us how to gauge our cur­rent lev­el of resilience and improve from there. In Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty, you’ll learn how all of our challenges—from every­day stress­es to life-alter­ing traumas—can bring wis­dom and growth. In 17 fas­ci­nat­ing class­es and 7 “hands-on” prac­tice ses­sions, you’ll learn about and expe­ri­ence the process of build­ing the inner calm and clar­i­ty of mind that cre­ate greater resilience. With Ms. Birkholm’s warm and opti­mistic demeanor, you’ll feel her encour­age­ment every step of the way as you move toward build­ing your best and most ful­fill­ing life.

Watch all 24 lec­tures above, or over on YouTube. Build­ing Your Resilience: Find­ing Mean­ing in Adver­si­ty will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Find more cours­es in The Great Courses cat­a­logue 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:

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How to Find Emo­tion­al Strength & Resilience Dur­ing COVID-19: Advice from Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, Jack Korn­field, Susan David & Oth­er Experts

Masterclass Is Running a “Buy One, Share One Free” Deal (Until the End of the Weekend)

in Deals | May 8th, 2020

FYI: Mas­ter­class is run­ning a Buy One, Share One Free through this week­end.

Here’s the gist: If you buy an All-Access pass to their 80+ cours­es, you will receive anoth­er All-Access Pass to give to some­one else at no addi­tion­al charge. An All-Access pass costs $180, and lasts one year. For that fee, you–and a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend–can watch cours­es cre­at­ed by Annie Lei­bovitz, Neil Gaiman, Mal­colm Glad­well, Wern­er Her­zog, Mar­tin Scors­ese, David Mamet, Jane Goodall, Mar­garet Atwood, Helen Mir­ren, Her­bie Han­cock, Alice Waters, Bil­ly Collins and so many more. If you’re think­ing this sounds like a pret­ty good way to get through quar­an­tine, we’d have to agree. The deal is avail­able now.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Robert Fripp Releases Free Ambient Music to Get You Through the Lockdown: Enjoy “Music for Quiet Moments”

in Music | May 8th, 2020

King Crimson’s mas­ter gui­tarist Robert Fripp has had a career long rep­u­ta­tion as an auto­crat, and exact­ing, dif­fi­cult taskmas­ter. He’s named an album, a band, and a record com­pa­ny “Dis­ci­pline.” Drum­mer Bill Bru­ford once described him as an “an amal­gam of Stal­in, Gand­hi and the Mar­quis de Sade,” accord­ing to The Tele­graph.

But recent­ly, there’s been some activ­i­ty on Fripp’s social media that can only be described as “sil­ly.” In lock­down with his wife of 34 years, singer and actor Toy­ah Wilcox, we’ve seen them shim­my­ing to the Twist on East­er Sun­day:

They dressed up as bees and ran around their Worces­ter­shire gar­den:

And per­formed a bal­let with stuffed uni­corns set to Ravel’s Bolero:

Very sil­ly indeed. But there is some music being made dur­ing all this mad­ness, as can be heard at the top of this post.

Last Fri­day, Fripp dropped the first in a 50-track series, Music for Qui­et Moments. These ambi­ent pieces will be drawn from all dif­fer­ent years of the guitarist’s career, and will appear on most stream­ing plat­forms (includ­ing YouTube and Spo­ti­fy), one a week, every Fri­day.

“My own qui­et moments,” he says in a blog post announce­ment, “over fifty-one years of being a tour­ing play­er, have been most­ly in pub­lic places where, increas­ing­ly, a lay­er of noise has inten­tion­al­ly over­laid and sat­u­rat­ed the son­ic envi­ron­ment.” He con­tin­ues: “Some of these Sound­scapes are inward-look­ing, reflec­tive. Some move out­wards, with affir­ma­tion. Some go nowhere, sim­ply being where they are.”

David Sin­gle­ton, pro­duc­er and Fripp’s busi­ness part­ner, added “a year at home with­out tour­ing offers the chance to lis­ten for the first time in many cas­es to exist­ing live record­ings.”

The cov­er art for the first track fea­tures sculp­ture from Fripp’s gar­den by artist Althea Wynne. (You may not see it at first, but the sculp­ture is a take on Manet’s Le Déje­uner sur l’herbe.)

By the way, Fripp’s online diary is just as thor­ough and fas­ci­nat­ing as the man him­self, as well as reveal­ing the sop­py ol’ roman­tic when­ev­er he describes his wife. It’s very endearing…another word I bet you didn’t expect to pop up in this post.

As of this writ­ing, his lat­est entry offers a pre­view of Music for Qui­et Moments #2:

Qui­et Moments 2 is a son­ic med­i­ta­tion on dying, loss and accept­ing, dis­guised as loop­ing; so it is bet­ter equipped and able to go out and present itself in pub­lic; so more like­ly to escape the expec­ta­tion and qual­i­ty of atten­tion that would oth­er­wise under­mine the reflection/event were it for­mal­ly billed as Med­i­ta­tion On Loss, Griev­ing & An Accep­tance Of Suf­fer­ing As Both Nec­es­sary & Inevitable In The Human Con­di­tion.

Boy. That’s a show I’d avoid.

But it just might be what we need right now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Peter Gabriel’s First Solo Con­cert, Post-Gen­e­sis: Hear the Com­plete Audio Record­ing (1977)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

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.

A Virtual Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Museum

in Animation, Film, K-12, Museums | May 8th, 2020

Let us pray that orga­ni­za­tion expert Marie Kon­do nev­er comes with­in spit­ting dis­tance of A Boy’s Room, part of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li muse­um’s Where a Film is Born instal­la­tion.

It’s not like­ly that every sin­gle item in the mas­sive (and no doubt well dust­ed) col­lec­tion of books, post­cards, hand tools, pic­tures, fig­urines, and oth­er assort­ed tchotchkes pic­tured above sparks joy, but the sug­ges­tion is that any one of them might prove the gate­way to a fan­tas­ti­cal tale, such as those spun by the museum’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki:

The room seems to belong to some­one who was sketch­ing at the desk just a few min­utes ago. The room is filled with books and toys. The walls are all cov­ered with illus­tra­tions and sketch­es. Hang­ing from the ceil­ing are a mod­el of an air­plane and a mod­el of a Pter­a­n­odon. It’s a place where the own­er of the room has stored his favorite things. This room pro­vides lots of inspi­ra­tion for what will go on to the blank piece of paper on the desk to become the ori­gin of an actu­al film.

The Muse­um, which announced it would delay its reopen­ing out of ongo­ing con­cerns relat­ed to social dis­tanc­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, recent­ly shared some brief video tours of the Miyaza­ki-designed space, per­haps all the more mag­i­cal for being emp­ty.

One lucky view­er, who had trekked to the Tokyo sub­urb of Mita­ka for an in-per­son vis­it, recalled the expe­ri­ence of actu­al­ly being in A Boy’s Room:

Open up the draw­ers in this room, take the books off shelves to look at them, touch things, look through trunks—you might find lit­tle secrets to be dis­cov­ered. One time I took an art book from the shelf and one of the employ­ees came over to me. I was expect­ing to get rep­ri­mand­ed, but instead she kind­ly guid­ed me over to a couch so that I could read the book. Miyaza­ki took care to design the space to be friend­ly to the explorato­ry nature of chil­dren, mak­ing sure that they could play unob­struct­ed. It’s one of the rea­sons why you aren’t allowed to take pho­tos inside—he did­n’t want par­ents inter­rupt­ing their expe­ri­ence to pose for pho­tos they could care less about.

That phi­los­o­phy is enact­ed through­out the muse­um. Kids can climb all over a life-size plush recre­ation of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus, but would-be Insta­gram­mers are S.O.L.

A peek at the Space of Won­der room reveals Thum­be­li­na-sized char­ac­ters from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice frol­ick­ing in a fres­co of fruit, flow­ers, and vines.

The archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments are a par­tic­u­lar treat, and sug­gest that there’s seri­ous bank to be made, should Miyaza­ki ever con­sid­er extend­ing the brand into a theme park-style hotel. (Some­thing tells us he won’t.)

Once hav­ing seen a pho­to essay fea­tur­ing some of the fan­cy refresh­ments oth­ers have enjoyed there, the tour of the emp­ty Straw Hat Café does under­whelm a bit. Those cute lit­tle plates are just call­ing out for a slice of straw­ber­ry short­cake…

We’re unsure if muse­um staffers will be releas­ing more videos dur­ing their down­time, though we’re hope­ful, espe­cial­ly since sev­er­al in-per­son vis­i­tors have not­ed that the museum’s toi­lets are pret­ty note­wor­thy.

That said we’d hap­pi­ly set­tle for some of the short films that screen in the museum’s Sat­urn The­ater.

You can fol­low the Museum’s YouTube chan­nel just in case.

Mean­while, here is Miyazaki’s man­i­festo detail­ing the kind of muse­um he want­ed to make, right down to the café and the gift shop:

A muse­um that is inter­est­ing and which relax­es the soul
A muse­um where much can be dis­cov­ered
A muse­um based on a clear and con­sis­tent phi­los­o­phy
A muse­um where those seek­ing enjoy­ment can enjoy, those seek­ing to pon­der can pon­der, and those seek­ing to feel can feel
A muse­um that makes you feel more enriched when you leave than when you entered!

To make such a muse­um, the build­ing must be…
Put togeth­er as if it were a film
Not arro­gant, mag­nif­i­cent, flam­boy­ant, or suf­fo­cat­ing
Qual­i­ty space where peo­ple can feel at home, espe­cial­ly when it’s not crowd­ed
A build­ing that has a warm feel and touch
A build­ing where the breeze and sun­light can freely flow through

The muse­um must be run in such a way that…
Small chil­dren are treat­ed as if they were grown-ups
Vis­i­tors with dis­abil­i­ties are accom­mo­dat­ed as much as pos­si­ble
The staff can be con­fi­dent and proud of their work
Vis­i­tors are not con­trolled with pre­de­ter­mined cours­es and fixed direc­tions
It is suf­fused with ideas and new chal­lenges so that the exhibits do not get dusty or old, and that invest­ments are made to real­ize that goal

The dis­plays will be…
Not only for the ben­e­fit of peo­ple who are already fans of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li
Not a pro­ces­sion of art­work from past Ghi­b­li films as if it were “a muse­um of the past”
A place where vis­i­tors can enjoy by just look­ing, can under­stand the artists’ spir­its, and can gain new insights into ani­ma­tion

Orig­i­nal works and pic­tures will be made to be exhib­it­ed at the muse­um
A project room and an exhib­it room will be made, show­ing move­ment and life
(Orig­i­nal short films will be pro­duced to be released in the muse­um!)
Ghi­b­li’s past films will be probed for under­stand­ing at a deep­er lev­el

The café will be…
An impor­tant place for relax­ation and enjoy­ment
A place that does­n’t under­es­ti­mate the dif­fi­cul­ties of run­ning a muse­um café
A good café with a style all its own where run­ning a café is tak­en seri­ous­ly and done right

The muse­um shop will be…
Well-pre­pared and well-pre­sent­ed for the sake of the vis­i­tors and run­ning the muse­um
Not a bar­gain shop that attach­es impor­tance only to the amount of sales
A shop that con­tin­ues to strive to be a bet­ter shop
Where orig­i­nal items made only for the muse­um are found

The muse­um’s rela­tion to the park is…
Not just about car­ing for the plants and sur­round­ing green­ery but also plan­ning for how things can improve ten years into the future
Seek­ing a way of being and run­ning the muse­um so that the sur­round­ing park will become even lush­er and bet­ter, which will in turn make the muse­um bet­ter as well!

This is what I expect the muse­um to be, and there­fore I will find a way to do it.

This is the kind of muse­um I don’t want to make!
A pre­ten­tious muse­um
An arro­gant muse­um
A muse­um that treats its con­tents as if they were more impor­tant than peo­ple
A muse­um that dis­plays unin­ter­est­ing works as if they were sig­nif­i­cant

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

For the First Time, Stu­dio Ghibli’s Entire Cat­a­log Will Soon Be Avail­able for Dig­i­tal Pur­chase

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Download Free Doctor Who Backgrounds for Virtual Meetings (Plus Many Other BBC TV Shows)

in Technology | May 8th, 2020

Enthu­si­asm for British tele­vi­sion is a force of nature. That goes even more so for British tele­vi­sion fan­dom out­side Britain. All of us have known some­one, or indeed been some­one, who shift­ed their cul­tur­al alle­giances whole­sale after watch­ing a sin­gle episode of, say, Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus. But even that huge­ly influ­en­tial com­e­dy series com­mands only low-inten­si­ty world­wide devo­tion when set along­side Doc­tor Who, which has aired on the BBC in one form or anoth­er since 1963. One can express one’s mem­ber­ship in the glob­al Doc­tor Who fan­dom in many ways, now includ­ing, in this peri­od of all-dig­i­tal pro­fes­sion­al and social inter­ac­tion, one’s choice of vir­tu­al back­grounds on Zoom or oth­er video­con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware.

You can, in oth­er words, make a call from inside the TARDIS. The expan­sive inte­ri­or of the Doc­tor’s time-trav­el­ing space ship — which, as fans know, mate­ri­al­izes in dif­fer­ent lands and eras as a hum­ble Lon­don police box — is just one of the free vir­tu­al back­grounds now offered by the BBC.

In fact, they’ve made avail­able not just one TARDIS back­ground but six: the 1980 ver­sion, the 1983 ver­sion, two views of the 2019 ver­sion, and two views of it as it appeared in the 1976 ser­i­al-with­in-the-series The Masque of Man­drago­ra. If none of this means any­thing to you, you might con­sid­er brows­ing the BBC’s oth­er vir­tu­al-back­ground cat­e­gories, which fea­ture emp­ty sets from the net­work’s oth­er sci­ence-fic­tion pro­duc­tions as well as its sit­coms, light-enter­tain­ment pro­grams, chil­dren’s shows, and sports broad­casts.

No Brits will be sur­prised at the pres­ence of an entire cat­e­go­ry of back­grounds from the long-run­ning soap opera Eas­t­En­ders: the laun­drette, the Bran­ning Broth­ers car lot, and of course the Queen Vic­to­ria pub. But non-Brits will prob­a­bly opt to make their video calls from famil­iar places cre­at­ed for more wide­ly trav­eled pro­grams, like the din­ing room at Fawl­ty Tow­ers or Eddy and Pat­sy’s wine-filled refrig­er­a­tor. Per­son­al­ly, I yield to none — or at least to no oth­er Amer­i­can — in my appre­ci­a­tion of Yes Min­is­ter, a polit­i­cal satire that has only grown more inci­sive over the decades; I’d sure­ly make my calls from one of the five White­hall office sets the BBC has put up. Brows­ing its com­plete selec­tion of vir­tu­al back­grounds, even the most obses­sive British-TV afi­ciona­dos will come across sets from shows of which they’ve nev­er even heard. Luck­i­ly, many of us now have the time to binge-watch them all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brit­Box Now Stream­ing Now Stream­ing 550 Episodes Doc­tor Who and Many Oth­er British TV Shows

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Doc­tor Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

Cus­tomize Your Zoom Vir­tu­al Back­ground with Free Works of Art

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

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

The Earliest Known Motion Picture, 1888’s Roundhay Garden Scene, Restored with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History, Technology | May 7th, 2020

No image is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the birth of the motion pic­ture than a train pulling into the French coastal town of La Cio­tat. Cap­tured by cin­e­ma pio­neers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the 50-sec­ond clip fright­ened the audi­ence at its first screen­ing in 1896, who thought a real loco­mo­tive was hurtling toward them — or so the leg­end goes. Those ear­ly view­ers may sim­ply have felt a tech­no­log­i­cal aston­ish­ment we can no longer muster today, and cer­tain­ly not in response to such a mun­dane sight. That goes dou­ble for the slight­ly short­er and old­er Lumière Broth­ers pro­duc­tion La Sor­tie de l’U­sine Lumière a Lyon. Though it depicts noth­ing more than work­ers leav­ing a fac­to­ry at the end of the day, it has long been referred to as “the first real motion pic­ture ever made.”

That qual­i­fi­er “real,” of course, hints at the exis­tence of a pre­de­ces­sor. Where­as La Sor­tie de l’U­sine Lumière a Lyon pre­miered in 1895, Louis Le Prince’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene dates to 1888. With its run­time under two sec­onds, this depic­tion of a moment in the life of four fig­ures, a younger man and woman and an old­er man and woman, would even by the stan­dards of the Lumière Broth­ers’ day bare­ly count as a movie at all.

Equal­ly dis­qual­i­fy­ing is its low frame rate: just sev­en to twelve per sec­ond (which one it is has been a mat­ter of some dis­pute), which strikes our eyes more as a rapid sequence of still pho­tographs than as con­tin­u­ous motion. Even so, it must have been a thrill of a result for Le Prince, an Eng­land-based French artist-inven­tor who had been devel­op­ing his motion-pho­tog­ra­phy sys­tem in secre­cy since ear­ly in the decade.

We now have a clear­er sense of the action cap­tured in Round­hay Gar­den Scene thanks to the efforts Youtube-based film restora­tionist Denis Shiryaev, who’s used neur­al net­works to bring the his­toric film more ful­ly to life. Tak­ing a scan of Le Prince’s orig­i­nal paper film, Shiryaev “man­u­al­ly cut this scan into indi­vid­ual frames and cen­tered each image in the frame,” he says in the video at the top of the post. He then “added a sta­bi­liza­tion algo­rithm and applied an aggres­sive face recog­ni­tion neur­al net­work in order to add more details to the faces.” There fol­lowed adjust­ments for con­sis­ten­cy in bright­ness, dam­age repairs, and the work of “an ensem­ble of neur­al net­works” to upscale the footage to as high a res­o­lu­tion as pos­si­ble, inter­po­lat­ing as many frames as pos­si­ble. We may feel star­tled by the life­like qual­i­ty of the result in much the same way as 19th-cen­tu­ry view­ers by the Lumière Broth­ers’ train — which, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, has also received the Shiryaev treat­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Watch AI-Restored Film of Labor­ers Going Through Life in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land (1901)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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

Star Trek: World-Building Over Generations—Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #42

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | May 7th, 2020

The world-wide Trib­ble infes­ta­tion and Star Trek: Picard drop­ping make this an apt time to address our most philo­soph­i­cal sci-fi fran­chise. 44 years of thought exper­i­ments (with pho­ton tor­pe­does!) about what it is to be human should have taught us some­thing, and Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er along with Drew Jack­son (Eri­ca’s hus­band) reflect on what makes a Star Trek sto­ry, world build­ing over gen­er­a­tions in Gene Rod­den­ber­ry’s land, canon you don’t remem­ber vs. some­thing that just has­n’t been shown on screen, Trek vs. Wars, and step-chil­dren like The Orville and Galaxy Quest.

We have gath­ered a heap of arti­cles for fur­ther cog­i­ta­tion:

• “Star Trek Picard: 5 Things Trekkies Loved (& 5 Things They Hat­ed)” by Tim Buck­ler
• “Is There Any Hope for Picard?” by Angel­i­ca Jade Bastién
•  “How many Picards are there?” by Antho­ny Pas­cale
•  “How Picard Fits Into the Star Trek Time­line” by Eliana Doc­ter­man (Read more about the time­line on Wikipedia.)
• “Discovery’s Michael Burn­ham Obses­sion Is Hurt­ing Star Trek Canon” by Dusty Stowe
• “Why Michael Burn­ham is Great and ‘Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery’ is Not” by Christi­na Esco­bar
• “Hear Me Out: JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Movies Are Bet­ter Than His Star Wars Films” by Sean O’Connell
• “Report: Para­mount Eyes Chris Pine To Reboot ‘The Saint’ As They Await Noah Hawley’s Star Trek Script” at trekmovie.com
• “Quentin Taran­ti­no Clarifies—Then Confuses—The Time­line For His Star Trek Project” by Antho­ny Pas­cale
• “Star Trek 4 Has Some Big Hur­dles To Over­come” by Dusty Stowe
• “10 Strange Star Trek Time­line Con­ti­nu­ity Errors” by Liam Horn

For some sug­gest­ed episodes to catch up on, there are lists online rec­om­mend­ing those from the orig­i­nal series and from the fran­chise over­all. There are also fan cre­ations like these orig­i­nal series episodes, a Star Trek musi­cal, and of course the Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast. For some rel­e­vant words from Rod Rod­den­ber­ry, check out episode 55 of the Mis­sion Log pod­cast.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Juilliard Students & the New York Philharmonic Perform Ravel’s Bolero While Social Distancing in Quarantine

in Music | May 6th, 2020

Like every­one else in COVID-19 iso­la­tion, Juil­liard stu­dents are itch­ing to get out and play. For them, the desire is a lit­tle more of an imper­a­tive. With­out meet­ing and rehears­ing togeth­er, these ded­i­cat­ed artists at the begin­ning of their careers can’t hone their skills. “In nor­mal times,” writes Ben­jamin Sosland at the Juil­liard Jour­nal, “Juilliard’s halls are buzzing with col­lab­o­ra­tions: string quar­tets, jazz ensem­bles, and singers rehears­ing in prac­tice rooms on the fourth floor; dancers cre­at­ing new chore­og­ra­phy on the third floor; HP stu­dents embell­ish­ing bass lines togeth­er in Room 554, the main harp­si­chord stu­dio; actors doing ensem­ble work in the leg­endary Room 301.”

Social dis­tanc­ing has been a sac­ri­fice for these artists, but rather than give it up, they’ve made the best of things with the edit­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion just above, Bolero Juil­liard. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is a col­lage of indi­vid­ual per­for­mances, even though that’s exact­ly what we see before our eyes.

The move­ments are so well chore­o­graphed, the per­for­mances so pitch per­fect­ly timed, that we sus­pend our dis­be­lief. We do not hear the flubbed lines, missed cues, sour notes, and cracked jokes that must hap­pen at even the high­est lev­els of per­for­mance. But you too would put your best foot for­ward if you knew you’d be per­form­ing (in a sense) with such illus­tri­ous Juil­liard alum­ni as Yo-Yo Ma, Lau­ra Lin­ney, Pat­ti Lupone, and Itzhak Perl­man, all of whom make an appear­ance.

“Pro­posed by [Juil­liard] Pres­i­dent Dami­an Woet­zel and under the artis­tic lead­er­ship of chore­o­g­ra­ph­er… Lar­ry Keig­win,” Sosland reports, the vir­tu­al col­lab­o­ra­tion brings togeth­er “dancers, instru­men­tal­ists, singers, actors, and alum­ni” in a ver­sion of an in-per­son piece Keig­win has staged in 14 cities around the U.S. over the past sev­er­al years. Mau­rice Ravel’s Bolero is itself “a par­tic­u­lar­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive com­po­si­tion in that it pass­es the melod­ic theme through a series of solos,” Grace Ebert writes at Colos­sal. “The sequen­tial per­for­mances high­light the dis­tinct tones and sounds of each instru­ment, whether it be a flute, vio­lin, or the anom­alous sax­o­phone.”

It is a piece that direct­ly express­es the expe­ri­ence of play­ing togeth­er in iso­la­tion, which is per­haps why the New York Phil­har­mon­ic also chose to play Bolero, togeth­er while apart in a video trib­ute to “the health­care work­ers on the front lines of the COVID-19 cri­sis.” With­out the intense chore­og­ra­phy and painstak­ing mon­tage effects of Bolero Juil­liard, the video doesn’t sus­tain the illu­sion that these musi­cians are actu­al­ly play­ing togeth­er, but close your eyes and you may imag­ine you’re in the audi­ence, lis­ten­ing to them from the stage instead of from their homes. It’s some­thing these musi­cians clear­ly do joy­ful­ly, out of grat­i­tude and love of their art… and also prob­a­bly because it’s how they’ll have to play togeth­er for the fore­see­able future.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Boléro, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

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

3D Interactive Globes Now Online: Spin Through an Archive of Globes from the 17th and 18th Century

in Astronomy, History, Maps, Museums | May 6th, 2020

“The archive presents 3D mod­els of 11 globes — a sub­set of the library’s his­toric maps col­lec­tion — that can be rotat­ed and zoomed into for greater detail at every angle,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp. She points to one in par­tic­u­lar, “stun­ning 1602 celes­tial globe by Dutch car­tog­ra­ph­er Willem Jan­szoon Blaeu, first pro­duced in 1602. In addi­tion to rep­re­sent­ing the con­stel­la­tions as their fan­tas­tic and mytho­log­i­cal name­sakes, it iden­ti­fies a nova in the con­stel­la­tion of Cygnus which Blaeu had per­son­al­ly observed in 1600.”

The British Library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion boasts sev­er­al such “celes­tial globes,” which chart the sky rather than the Earth. How­ev­er few of us have ever turned a celes­tial globe by hand, we can now do it vir­tu­al­ly. If 1602 seems a bit too vin­tage, give a dig­i­tal spin to the oth­ers from 1700, 1728, and 1783.

Back on land, these globes fea­ture not just “fan­tas­tic crea­tures,” Sharp writes, but “charm­ing archa­ic con­cep­tions of the oceans — the ‘Ata­lantick Ocean’ in the 1730 Richard Cushee ter­res­tri­al globe, or the ‘Ethipoic Ocean’ in the 1783 ter­res­tri­al globe by G. Wright and W. Bardin.” In Chushee, Wright and Bardin’s times, few globe-users, or indeed globe-mak­ers, would have had the chance to see much of those vast bod­ies of water for them­selves. Of course, with the cur­rent state of pan­dem­ic lock­down in so many coun­tries, few of us are tak­ing transocean­ic jour­neys even today. If you’re dream­ing about the rest of the world, spend some time with the British Library’s 3D-mod­eled globes on Sketch­fab — where you’ll also find the Roset­ta Stone and Bust of Nefer­ti­ti among oth­er arti­facts pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — and get your hands on an idea of how human­i­ty imag­ined it in cen­turies past.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enchant­i­ng Video Shows How Globes Were Made by Hand in 1955: The End of a 500-Year Tra­di­tion

Watch the Mak­ing of the Dymax­ion Globe: A 3‑D Ren­der­ing of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Map

Why Mak­ing Accu­rate World Maps Is Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly Impos­si­ble

The Strik­ing­ly Beau­ti­ful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imag­i­na­tion of Stu­dents in the 1880s

Down­load 91,000 His­toric Maps from the Mas­sive David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

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

Drive-In Concerts and Even Raves Are Becoming the Rage in Europe

in Current Affairs | May 6th, 2020

If we are to remain social­ly dis­tant in the com­ing months of the pandemic—and near­ly every rep­utable health expert says we should—at least 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has pre­pared us for life lived in iso­la­tion. If we insist on going out, we may see a 20th cen­tu­ry inno­va­tion become even more pop­u­lar. The dri­ve-in the­ater has returned as a safe venue for movies, con­certs, and even raves, at least in Den­mark, where the city of Aarhus recent­ly staged a dri­ve-in con­cert by singer-song­writer Mads Langer. “500 tick­ets sold out in min­utes,” reports Forbes. “The fol­low­ing day, the stage became a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma” show­ing Star Wars Episode IX. 

The first in a series, the dri­ve-in shows are part of a larg­er trend in Europe. Pro­mot­ers in Lithua­nia have launched sim­i­lar events out­side Vil­nius. And if you’re won­der­ing what a dri­ve-in rave looks like, won­der no more—Germany held the first of many a few days back.

Does it look like a pre­cur­sor to the world of Mad Max: Fury Road? As some com­menters have sug­gest­ed, enough events like these around the world might be just what we need to accel­er­ate deser­ti­fi­ca­tion. But it’s a fun idea, with unde­ni­ably nos­tal­gic built-in brand­ing.

Dri­ve-in the­aters are dis­tinct­ly tied to teenage romances of the 1950s and envi­ron­men­tal­ly mon­strous vehi­cles large enough for very com­fort­able dou­ble dates. Their ori­gins are less roman­tic than the stereo­type. “The first patent­ed dri­ve-in was opened on June 6, 1933 by Richard Holling­shead in New Jer­sey,” notes the New York Film Acad­e­my. “He cre­at­ed it as a solu­tion for peo­ple unable to com­fort­ably fit into small­er movie the­ater seats after cre­at­ing a mini dri­ve-in for his moth­er. Appeal­ing to fam­i­lies, Holling­shead adver­tised his dri­ve-in as a place where ‘The whole fam­i­ly is wel­come, regard­less of how noisy the chil­dren are.’”

Peak time at the dri­ve-in rave in Ger­many pic.twitter.com/GLXStx5k63

— Mix­mag (@Mixmag) May 2, 2020

It is unlike­ly many par­ents today would sit through a dri­ve-in show with noisy chil­dren, when every­one can stay home with their own pri­vate screen. But for Matt Langer fan Signe Nygaard, a par­ent and for­mer gym­nast, the dri­ve-in made a dream come true. The singer invit­ed her onstage. “A few years ago,” she says, “I was sup­posed to dance at a con­ven­tion where Mads Langer sang live, but I couldn’t because I was preg­nant. Now I final­ly got the chance.” There will be feel­go­od sto­ries in the pan­dem­ic, but I do hope they stayed six feet apart.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

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