Linked Jazz: A Huge Data Visualization Maps the Relationships Between Countless Jazz Musicians & Restores Forgotten Women to Jazz History

in Data, Jazz, Music | March 19th, 2020

Hav­ing watched the devel­op­ment of inter­ac­tive data visu­al­iza­tions as a writer for Open Cul­ture, I’ve seen my share of impres­sive exam­ples, espe­cial­ly when it comes to map­ping music. Per­haps the old­est such resource, the still-updat­ing Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music, also hap­pens to be one of the best for its com­pre­hen­sive­ness and wit­ty tone. Anoth­er high achiev­er, The Uni­verse of Miles Davis, released on what would have been Davis’ 90th birth­day, is more focused but no less dense a col­lec­tion of names, record labels, styles, etc.

While visu­al­iz­ing the his­to­ry of any form of music can result in a sig­nif­i­cant degree of com­plex­i­ty, depend­ing on how deeply one drills down on the specifics, jazz might seem espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing. Choos­ing one major fig­ure pulls up thou­sands of con­nec­tions. As these mul­ti­ply, they might run into the mil­lions. But some­how, one of the best music data visu­al­iza­tions I’ve seen yet—Pratt Institute’s Linked Jazz project—accounts seam­less­ly for what appears to be the whole of jazz, includ­ing obscure and for­got­ten fig­ures and inter­ac­tive, dynam­ic fil­ters that make the his­to­ry of women in jazz more vis­i­ble, and let users build maps of their own.

Jazz musi­cians “are like fam­i­ly,” Zena Lat­to, one of the musi­cians the project recov­ered, told an inter­view­er in 2015. A mul­ti-racial, transna­tion­al, active­ly mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional fam­i­ly that meets all over the world to play togeth­er con­stant­ly, that is. As a form of music built on ensem­ble play­ers and jour­ney­men soloists who some­times form bands for no more than a sin­gle album or tour, jazz musi­cians prob­a­bly form more rela­tion­ships across age, gen­der, race, and nation­al­i­ty than those in any oth­er genre.

That organ­ic, built-in diver­si­ty, a fea­ture of the music through­out its his­to­ry, shows up in every per­mu­ta­tion of the Linked Jazz map, and comes through in the record­ed inter­views, per­for­mances, and oth­er accom­pa­ny­ing info linked to each musi­cian. Like the Uni­verse of Miles Davis, Linked Jazz leans heav­i­ly on Wikipedia for its infor­ma­tion. And in using such “linked open data (LOD),” as Pratt notes in a blog post, the project “also reveals archival gaps. While icons such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis have large dig­i­tal foot­prints, less­er-known per­form­ers may bare­ly have a mention”—despite the fact that most of those play­ers, at one time or anoth­er, played with, stud­ied under, or record­ed with the greats.

Such was the case with Lat­to, who was men­tored by Ben­ny Good­man and toured through­out the 1940s and 50s with the Inter­na­tion­al Sweet­hearts of Rhythm, “con­sid­ered the first inte­grat­ed all-women band in the Unit­ed States.” Lat­to was “part of a net­work that stretched from New York to New Orleans,” but her name had dis­ap­peared entire­ly until Pratt School of Infor­ma­tion pro­fes­sor Cristi­na Pattuel­li found it on a tat­tered fly­er for a Carnegie Hall con­cert. “Soon, through Linked Jazz, Lot­ta had a Wikipedia page and her inter­view was pub­lished on the Inter­net Archive.”

Linked Jazz’s focus on women musi­cians does not mean gen­der seg­re­ga­tion, but a redis­cov­ery of wom­en’s place in all of jazz.  Like all of the oth­er fil­ters, the Linked Jazz data map’s gen­der view shows both men and women promi­nent­ly in the lit­tle pho­to bub­bles con­nect­ed by webs of red and blue lines. But as you begin click­ing around, you will see the per­spec­tive has shift­ed. “Linked Jazz has con­cen­trat­ed on pro­cess­ing more inter­views with women jazz musi­cians,” writes Pratt, “and these resources have been enhanced by a series of Women of Jazz Wikipedia Edit-a-thons in 2015 and 2017.”

Like­wise, the inclu­sion of these inter­views, biogra­phies, and record­ings have enhanced the breadth and scope of Linked Jazz, which as a whole rep­re­sents the best inten­tions in open data map­ping, real­ized by a design that makes explor­ing the daunt­ing his­to­ry of jazz a mat­ter of strolling through a dig­i­tal library with the entire cat­a­log appear­ing instant­ly at your fin­ger­tips. The project also shows how thought­ful data map­ping can not only repli­cate the exist­ing state of infor­ma­tion, but also con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly by find­ing and restor­ing miss­ing links.

via

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Influ­ence of Miles Davis Revealed with Data Visu­al­iza­tion: For His 90th Birth­day Today

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

The Brains of Jazz and Clas­si­cal Musi­cians Work Dif­fer­ent­ly, New Research Shows

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

Bruce Springsteen Releases Live Concert Film Online: Watch “London Calling: Live In Hyde Park” and Practice Self Distancing

in Music | March 18th, 2020

A mes­sage from Bruce: “Prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing & stream ‘Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park’ from the com­fort of your own home, now on YouTube & Apple Music in its entire­ty for the 1st time!” Watch it all above.

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

via Con­se­quence of Sound

“I Will Survive,” the Coronavirus Version for Teachers Going Online

in Current Affairs, Education | March 18th, 2020

If you’re an aca­d­e­m­ic sprint­ing to put your course online, this video will make you feel bet­ter for a sol­id two min­utes and 44 sec­onds.

Above we present, “I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus ver­sion for teach­ers going online, with lyrics adapt­ed by Michael Bru­en­ing, his­to­ri­an at Mis­souri State.

At first I was afraid, I was pet­ri­fied

Kept think­ing I could nev­er teach through Can­vas all the time

But then I spent so many nights read­ing the help docs for so long

And I grew strong

And I learned how to get along

And so I’m back

Stu­dents are gone

As all my col­leagues try to fig­ure out how they’re gonna get along

I should have kept up with the tech, not skipped that class on course design

If I’d known for just one sec­ond I’d be teach­ing all-online

Go on now, go, leave me alone

I’ve got to fig­ure out

Just how to lec­ture using Panop­to

You gave me two days to adjust, to move every­thing online

Did you think I’d crum­ble

Did you think I’d lay down and die?

Oh no, not I, I will sur­vive

Oh, as long as I know how to Zoom, I know I’ll be alive

Oh, my stu­dents still will learn

And my pay­checks I will earn, and I’ll sur­vive

I will sur­vive, hey, hey

It took all the strength I had not to lay down and die

Kept try­ing hard to mend the pieces of my syl­labi

And I spent oh so many nights just feel­ing sor­ry for myself

I used to cry

But now I hold my head up high and you’ll see me

Teach­ing on zoom

But just don’t cough into the mic or every eye will be on you

I can’t hear you, you’re on mute, your camera’s black, are you still there?

We’ve got some glitch­es to work out, but I know my grad­ing scheme is fair

Oh now, go, walk out the door

Try­ing to get this lec­ture done

And I’m already on take four

Now the net­work has gone down, and I’m all out of wine

Do you think I’ll crum­ble

Do you think I’ll lay down and die?

Oh no, not I, I will sur­vive

Oh, as long as I know how to zoom, I know I’ll be alive

My stu­dents still will learn

And my pay­checks I will earn and I’ll sur­vive

I will sur­vive

Hey hey

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

in Music, Theatre | March 18th, 2020

You’ve always read books in the com­fort of your own home. Though it may not be the full cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, you can also watch films there, in a pinch. Now that such a pinch has come, in the form of coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic-relat­ed quar­an­tines and oth­er forms of iso­la­tion, few art forms must be feel­ing it more than live music and the­atre. Though we’ve all watched record­ed per­for­mances now and again, we know full well that noth­ing can quite repli­cate the felt ener­gy of the live expe­ri­ence. Until we can get out and enjoy it once and again, a vari­ety of per­form­ers and venues — from rock stars and Broad­way lumi­nar­ies to inde­pen­dent the­atre com­pa­nies and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera — have stepped up to pro­vide as much as they can of it online.

“The live music indus­try has seen an unprece­dent­ed fall­out in the wake of the coro­n­avirus out­break,” writes Con­se­quence of Sound’s Lake Schatz. “High­ly antic­i­pat­ed tours from Foo Fight­ers, Bil­lie Eil­ish, Thom Yorke, and Elton John have all been post­poned, and major fes­ti­vals such as Coachel­la and South By South­west have had to dras­ti­cal­ly change their plans last minute.”

In response, “artists are turn­ing to livestream­ing to stay in touch with their fans. Neil Young, Coldplay’s Chris Mar­tin, Death Cab for Cutie front­man Ben Gib­bard, and John Leg­end are stream­ing inti­mate con­certs live from their very own homes.” Young’s “Fire­side Ses­sions” launched on the Neil Young Archives site last Mon­day.

That same day Mar­tin, leader of Cold­play, “streamed a mini con­cert on Mon­day as part of Instagram’s ‘Togeth­er, at Home’ vir­tu­al series” (which will con­tin­ue next week with John Leg­end). Even more ambi­tious­ly, Gib­bard has a dai­ly stream­ing series set to launch next Tues­day on YouTube and Face­book. “Apt­ly titled ‘Live From Home,’ the dai­ly live ses­sions will see the indie rock­er take requests and even pos­si­bly duet with spe­cial guests,” writes Schatz. (You can view Gib­bard’s first Live from Home ses­sion at the top of the post.)

“Addi­tion­al­ly, punk rock­ers Jeff Rosen­stock and AJJ are both sched­uled to per­form a spe­cial con­cert that will be livestreamed on Spe­cial­ist Subject’s Insta­gram Sto­ries. That event goes down Tues­day after­noon begin­ning 7:45 p.m. ET.” Putting the show on by any tech­no­log­i­cal means avail­able is, we can sure­ly agree, very much the punk-rock way. And even apart from broad­cast­ing con­certs online, from home or else­where, “acts like Deaf­heav­en are releas­ing live albums (sans any audi­ence).” Deaf­haven, if you don’t know them, are a post-met­al band out of San Fran­cis­co; on the oth­er end of the musi­cal spec­trum, coun­try star Kei­th Urban streamed a live con­cert on Insta­gram from his base­ment this past Tues­day.

Over at the The­atre Devel­op­ment Fund (TDF), Raven Snook rounds up a vari­ety of New York the­atre insti­tu­tions now stream­ing online. These include 92nd Street Y (whose per­for­mance archive we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture); Broad­way­World, which has come up with “dai­ly Liv­ing Room Con­certs, a series of one-song per­for­mances record­ed by Broad­way stars in their respec­tive homes”; The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, whose night­ly stream­ing of “pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed pre­sen­ta­tions” we men­tioned ear­li­er this week.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in this push include The Actors Fund, with its new “dai­ly performance/talk show Stars in the House” in which “Broad­way lumi­nar­ies will sing and chat from their homes,” and the Nation­al Yid­dish The­atre Folks­bi­ene, which “kicks off its Folks­bi­ene LIVE!: An Online Cel­e­bra­tion of Yid­dish Cul­ture” this week, all streamed free on its Face­book page. And be sure to vis­it the site of New York non-prof­it arts pre­sen­ter and pro­duc­er The Tank, whose new Cyber­Tank series live streams a “week­ly, remote, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary arts gath­er­ing” every Tues­day. What­ev­er your pre­ferred vari­ety of live per­for­mance, you’re sure to be cov­ered until you can get back out to the the­atre, the club, the opera hous­es, or wher­ev­er you enjoy your live cul­ture of choice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

92nd Street Y Launch­es a New Online Archive with 1,000 Record­ings of Lit­er­ary Read­ings, Musi­cal Per­for­mances & More

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Relive 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances with These Big YouTube Playlists: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Going to Con­certs and Expe­ri­enc­ing Live Music Can Make Us Health­i­er & Hap­pi­er, a New Psy­chol­o­gy Study Con­firms

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

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 or on Face­book.

David Bowie’s Rise as Ziggy Stardust Documented in a New 300-Page Photo Book

in Music, Photography | March 18th, 2020

Great rock pho­tog­ra­phers of the sev­en­ties often cap­tured their sub­jects at their mood­i­est, as in Pen­nie Smith’s pen­sive tour pho­tos of the Clash, or Kevin Cum­mins’ stark, some­times explo­sive pho­tos of Joy Divi­sion. These were bands best shot in black and white. Punk looked back to the rock of the fifties in its high-con­trast sim­plic­i­ty. But the ear­ly sev­en­ties belonged to glam—or, more accu­rate­ly, belonged to Zig­gy Star­dust, a char­ac­ter who demand­ed to be cap­tured in full-col­or.

Mick Rock was just the pho­tog­ra­ph­er to frame the alien space rock opera in bril­liant reds, greens, and blues. Zig­gy was sev­er­al parts T‑Rex swag­ger and riffage, Sun Ra out­er-space per­sona, Lind­say Kemp kabu­ki mime, and Bauhaus-inspired cos­tum­ing.

Get­ting all of this in his shots of Bowie as Zig­gy earned Rock the nick­name “the man who shot the sev­en­ties.” His “career took off along­side Bowie’s,” writes Kris­ten Richard at Men­tal Floss, “and between 1972 and 1973, Rock was the musician’s go-to pho­tog­ra­ph­er and video­g­ra­ph­er.”

More than that, Rock is almost as respon­si­ble for Zig­gy Star­dust’s rise as Bowie him­self, giv­en the way his pho­tos spread the mythos through print media of the time and became icon­ic dig­i­tal images that still define Bowie’s career. When we think of Zig­gy Star­dust, it’s more than like­ly we are think­ing of an image shot by Mick Rock. Bowie’s “cre­ative part­ner” com­piled his pho­tographs in 2015, “with Bowie’s bless­ing,” and they will soon be pub­lished in a new, 300-page book by Taschen.

“You’ll find pho­tographs of Bowie both on stage and behind the scenes,” Richard notes, “giv­ing fans an up-close look at the trans­for­ma­tive performer’s life on the road as he honed his dar­ing new per­sona.” That per­sona upend­ed what it meant to be a rock star, and opened doors for oth­ers to push into new per­for­ma­tive ter­ri­to­ry. “Rock’s glam imagery toyed with the idea of mas­culin­i­ty,” writes Christo­pher Mosley of a recent exhi­bi­tion in Dal­las. For exam­ple, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “avoid­ed a tough-guy image with the group Queen by encour­ag­ing singer Fred­die Mer­cury to pose in a man­ner sim­i­lar to that of an old still of Ger­man silent film star, Mar­lene Diet­rich.”

Nei­ther Mer­cury nor Bowie need­ed per­mis­sion to chal­lenge rock’s het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, but Rock drew out of them the per­fect pos­es to turn their stage per­sonas into super­heroes. No rock star before Bowie had ever looked so gor­geous­ly oth­er­world­ly, an image we remem­ber thanks in large part to Mick Rock. Order a copy of The Rise of David Bowie, 1972–1973 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

David Bowie Picks His 12 Favorite David Bowie Songs: Lis­ten to Them Online

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

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

Are Video Games an Effective Vehicle for Storytelling? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #35 Featuring Don Marshall

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | March 18th, 2020

Do you play video games for the plot? Giv­en that most peo­ple don’t actu­al­ly fin­ish most games, it would be unex­pect­ed if sto­ry­telling were the most impor­tant ele­ment. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by for­mer video game pro­fes­sion­al (and cur­rent TV devel­op­ment exec­u­tive) Don­ald E. Mar­shall to talk through types of plots (lin­ear, “string-of-pearls,” and branch­ing), ways of weav­ing sto­ry into a game, bal­anc­ing game­play and nar­ra­tive, and more.

We touch on Death Strand­ing, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Skyrim, Fall­out, Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, Eri­ca, Bioshock, Tell­tale Games, Jour­ney, Ban­der­snatch, Days Gone, Por­tal, and more. (That casu­al game Mark jokes about is Simon’s Cat Pop Time.)

Some arti­cles and oth­er sources:

• “When Video Games Tell Sto­ries: A Mod­el of Video Game Nar­ra­tive Archi­tec­tures” by Mar­cel­lo Arnal­do Picuc­ci (2014)
• “The Evo­lu­tion of Video Games as a Sto­ry­telling Medi­um, and the Role of Nar­ra­tive in Mod­ern Games” by Chris Stone
• “Writ­ing for Video Games: A Con­ver­sa­tion with E. Lily Yu, Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Reed, Seth Dick­in­son, and Karl Schroed­er” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
• “How to Write a Video Game Sto­ry” by Col­in Camp­bell
• “A Hugo Award for Best Game or Inter­ac­tive Expe­ri­ence” by Ira Alexan­dre
• The Dia­log Pod­cast: s1e08 “Video Game Nar­ra­tive Design and Writ­ing Sci­ence Fan­ta­sy Nov­els with Car­rie Patel”

You can also read some lists of games that sup­pos­ed­ly have the best plots at Games­Radar, Ranker, and The Gamer.

Don is also a pod­cast­er, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been a host of Geek­sOn and now on The Big Fat Gay Pod­cast. Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show. One rel­e­vant Geek­sOn episode is #102.  Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show.

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.

Why Fighting the Coronavirus Depends on You

in Current Affairs, Health | March 17th, 2020

A pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment from Vox.

It’s worth cou­pling this with our pre­vi­ous post: Quar­an­tined Ital­ians Send a Mes­sage to Them­selves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then.

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:

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Cours­era Pro­vid­ing Free Access to Its Course Cat­a­log to Uni­ver­si­ties Impact­ed by COVID-19

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

Quar­an­tined Ital­ians Send a Mes­sage to Them­selves 10 Days Ago: What They Wish They Knew Then

While Away the Hours with a Free H.P. Lovecraft Call of Cthulhu Coloring Book

in Coloring Books, Comics/Cartoons | March 17th, 2020

Unlike his devo­tee Stephen King, whose nov­els and sto­ries have spawned more Love­craft­ian film and tele­vi­sion projects than any writer in the genre, H.P. Love­craft him­self has lit­tle cin­e­ma cred­it to his name. Giv­en the abject ter­ror evoked by Cthul­hu and oth­er ter­ri­fy­ing “pri­mal Great Ones”—as the author called his mon­sters in the sto­ry of the octo­pus-head­ed god—we might expect it to be oth­er­wise.

But Love­craft was not a cin­e­mat­ic writer, nor a fan of any such mod­ern sto­ry­telling devices. He pre­ferred the Vic­to­ri­an mode of indi­rect nar­ra­tion, his prose full of hearsay, reportage, bib­li­og­ra­phy, and lengthy descrip­tion of expe­ri­ences once or twice removed from the teller of the tale.

These qual­i­ties (and his extreme racism) make him a poor choice for the plot-dri­ven medi­um of fea­ture film. Lovecraft’s expan­sive imag­i­na­tion, like his buried, dream­ing mon­sters, was sub­ter­ranean and sub­ma­rine, reveal­ing only the barest glimpse of night­mares we are grate­ful nev­er to see ful­ly revealed.

The end­less­ly sug­ges­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­ror of Love­craft has instead become the source of an extend­ed uni­verse that includes fan fiction—written by pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs alike—fantasy art, com­ic books, and RPGs (role-play­ing games) like the Call of Cthul­hu series made by Chao­sium, Inc. for over 35 years: “the fore­most game of mys­tery and hor­ror,” the com­pa­ny touts. “For those brave enough to uncov­er its secrets, the rewards are beyond com­pre­hen­sion!” If this sounds just like the thing to pass the time dur­ing these days of social dis­tanc­ing, look over all of the Chao­sium Cthul­hu offer­ings here.

For those who pre­fer Love­craft­ian immer­sions of a more soli­tary, med­i­ta­tive nature, allow us to present Call of Cthul­hu: The Col­or­ing Book, the first of many “fun and engag­ing diver­sions,” the com­pa­ny promis­es “we can enjoy while stay­ing in, work­ing-from-home, in quar­an­tine, or in self-iso­la­tion….. While away the hours in lock­down col­or­ing an amaz­ing array of scenes, with strik­ing images from H.P. Lovecraft’s stories—and the Call of Cthul­hu RPG his imag­i­na­tion inspired (Hor­ror on the Ori­ent Express, Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Fun­gi from Yug­goth and more).”

While these many Love­craft spin-offs may be unfa­mil­iar, hints of their har­row­ing scenes always lay in the murky depths of Lovecraft’s fic­tion. See how award-win­ning artist Andrey Feti­sov has imag­ined these encoun­ters with ancient ter­rors. Then col­or his Moe­bius-like draw­ings in, and enter your work in a Call of Cthul­hu col­or­ing com­pe­ti­tion by shar­ing it with the hash­tag #home­with­chao­sium. There will be prizes, sure to be sur­pris­es, though we hope the ruth­less Elder Gods don’t have a hand in choos­ing them. Down­load all 28 eldritch scenes here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthul­hu in Ani­me: A First Glimpse

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

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

in Music | March 17th, 2020

Image by Lech­hansl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

On its web­site, the Met Opera announced that “effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, all per­for­mances have been can­celed through March 31 because of coro­n­avirus con­cerns.” But that does­n’t mean audi­ences can’t get their fill of opera per­for­mances. Accord­ing to Opera Wire, in an “effort to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing opera to its audi­ence mem­bers, the Met Opera will host ‘Night­ly Met Opera Streams’ on its offi­cial web­site to audi­ences world­wide.” They add:

These free streams will present encores of past per­for­mances from its famed Live in HD series. The encore pre­sen­ta­tions will begin at 7:30 p.m. each night on the company’s offi­cial web­site and will then be avail­able for an addi­tion­al 20 hours there­after. Each show­case will also be view­able on the Met Opera on demand apps.

Head over Met Oper­a’s site where they’re stream­ing Car­men now…

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:

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

The Opera Data­base: Find Scores, Libret­ti & Syn­opses for Thou­sands of Operas Free Online

How a Philip Glass Opera Gets Made: An Inside Look

Isaac Newton Conceived of His Most Groundbreaking Ideas During the Great Plague of 1665

in History, Physics | March 17th, 2020

Whether you’ve vol­un­teered to self-quar­an­tine, or have done so from neces­si­ty, health experts world­wide say home is the best place to be right now to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For some this means lay­offs, or remote assign­ments, or an anx­ious and indef­i­nite stay­ca­tion. For oth­ers it means a loss of safe­ty or resources. No mat­ter how much choice we had in the mat­ter, there are those among us who har­bor ambi­tious fan­tasies of using the time to final­ly fin­ish labors of love, whether they be cro­chet, com­pos­ing sym­phonies, or writ­ing a con­tem­po­rary nov­el about a plague.

Many life­sav­ing dis­cov­er­ies have been made in the wake of epi­demics, and many a nov­el writ­ten, such as Albert Camus’ The Plague, com­posed three years after an out­break of bubon­ic plague in Alge­ria. Offer­ing even more of a chal­lenge to house­bound writ­ers is the exam­ple of Shake­speare, who wrote some of his best works dur­ing out­breaks of plague in Lon­don, when “the­aters were like­ly closed more often than they were open,” as Daniel Pol­lack-Pelzn­er writes at The Atlantic, and when it was alleged that “the cause of plagues are plays.”

You can for­give your­self for tak­ing a few days to orga­nize your clos­ets, or—let’s be real—binge on snacks and Net­flix series. But if you’re still look­ing for a role mod­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in a time of quar­an­tine, you couldn’t aim high­er than Isaac New­ton. Dur­ing the years 1665–67, the time of the Great Plague of Lon­don, Newton’s “genius was unleashed,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Philip Steele. “The pre­cious mate­r­i­al that result­ed was a new under­stand­ing of the world.”

In Shakespeare’s case, only decades ear­li­er, the “plagues may have caused plays”—spurring poet­ry, fan­ta­sy, and the epic tragedies of King Lear, Mac­beth, and Antony and Cleopa­tra. New­ton too was appar­ent­ly inspired by cat­a­stro­phe.

These years of Newton’s life are some­times known in Latin as anni mirabilies, mean­ing “mar­velous years.” How­ev­er, they occurred at the same time as two nation­al dis­as­ters. In June 1665, the bubon­ic plague broke out in Lon­don…. As the plague spread out into the coun­try­side, there was pan­ic. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty was closed. By Octo­ber, 70,000 peo­ple had died in the cap­i­tal alone.

New­ton left Cam­bridge for his home in Wool­sthor­pe. The fol­low­ing year, the Great Fire of Lon­don dev­as­tat­ed the city. As hor­ri­fy­ing as these events were for the thou­sands who lived through them, “some of those dis­placed by the epi­dem­ic,” writes Stephen Porter, “were able to put their enforced break from their nor­mal rou­tines to good effect.” But none more so than New­ton, who “con­duct­ed exper­i­ments refract­ing light through a tri­an­gu­lar prism and evolved the the­o­ry of colours, invent­ed the dif­fer­en­tial and inte­gral cal­cu­lus, and con­ceived of the idea of uni­ver­sal grav­i­ta­tion, which he test­ed by cal­cu­lat­ing the motion of the moon around the earth.”

Right out­side the win­dow of Newton’s Wool­sthor­pe home? “There was an apple tree,” The Wash­ing­ton Post writes. “That apple tree.” The apple-to-the-head ver­sion of the sto­ry is “large­ly apoc­ryphal,” but in his account, Newton’s assis­tant John Con­duitt describes the idea occur­ring while New­ton was “mus­ing in a gar­den” and con­ceived of the falling apple as a mem­o­rable illus­tra­tion. New­ton did not have Net­flix to dis­tract him, nor con­tin­u­ous scrolling through Twit­ter or Face­book to freak him out. It’s also true he prac­ticed “social dis­tanc­ing” most of his life, writ­ing strange apoc­a­lyp­tic proph­e­sies when he wasn’t lay­ing the foun­da­tions for clas­si­cal physics.

Maybe what New­ton shows us is that it takes more than extend­ed time off in a cri­sis to do great work—perhaps it also requires that we have dis­ci­pline in our soli­tude, and an imag­i­na­tion that will not let us rest. Maybe we also need the leisure and the access to take pen­sive strolls around the gar­den, not some­thing essen­tial employ­ees or par­ents of small chil­dren home from school may get to do. But those with more free time in this new age of iso­la­tion might find the changes forced on us by a pan­dem­ic actu­al­ly do inspire the work that mat­ters to them most.

via The Wash­ing­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

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