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

in Film | February 7th, 2020

Machine learn­ing keeps, well, learn­ing in leaps and bounds, and at Open Cul­ture we have watched devel­op­ments with a fas­ci­nat­ed, some­time wary eye. This lat­est advance checks off a lot of Open Cul­ture box­es: trav­el­ing back in time through the pow­er of film; home­grown inge­nu­ity; and film his­to­ry.

YouTu­ber Denis Shiryaev took the lat­est advances in AI tech and turned them onto one of the ear­li­est works of film: The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion, shot by the Lumière Broth­ers in 1896. There are plen­ty of urban leg­ends around this 50 sec­ond short: that it was the first ever Lumière film (it wasn’t, they had a selec­tion of pre­vi­ous shorts); and that audi­ences were ter­ri­fied, think­ing the train would hit them (they were amazed, no doubt, but they weren’t that naive).

You might want to watch the orig­i­nal below before watch­ing Shiryaev’s 4K upscal­ing and AI “smoothed” ver­sion to get a sense of the mar­vel at the top of the post.

What we are see­ing is not a tra­di­tion­al “restora­tion,” how­ev­er. Instead, Shiryaev is using a com­mer­cial image-edit­ing soft­ware called Gigapix­el AI. (If you have the pro­cess­ing pow­er, you can try it out). The orig­i­nal film was not shot at 60-frames-per-sec­ond. Instead, neur­al net­works are look­ing at the orig­i­nal frames and “fill­ing in” the data in between, cre­at­ing what you can see is a more nat­u­ral­is­tic effect. Peo­ple on and off the train move like they do in real life. It looks like it was shot yes­ter­day.

Now, this isn’t per­fect. There are a lot of arti­facts, squooshy, mor­ph­ing moments where the neur­al net­work can’t fig­ure things out. But hey, this is just one guy on his com­put­er. It’s an exper­i­ment. The com­put­er code will get bet­ter.

The Gigapix­el AI was devel­oped by Topaz Labs orig­i­nal­ly to help pho­tog­ra­phers upscale their pics by 600 per­cent with­out los­ing detail. It didn’t take long to apply this to video, but be warned, it can take hours of pro­cess­ing pow­er to ren­der a cou­ple of sec­onds. Still it hasn’t stopped peo­ple from exper­i­ment­ing, even with sim­i­lar neur­al net­work pro­grams:

Here’s a clip from Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” video upscaled to 4K with Gigapix­el AI:

User AkN upscaled A‑Bomb footage from the 1950s:

Some clips from Home Alone:

You get the idea. As with any tech­nol­o­gy, there are also some hor­rif­ic exam­ples out there too where it just does not work. But I have a feel­ing that Shiryaev’s first dive into film his­to­ry is not going to his, or the internet’s, last.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

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

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

An Artist Tricks Google Maps Into Creating a Virtual Traffic Jam, Using a Little Red Wagon & 99 Smartphones

in Google, Life, Maps, Technology, Travel | February 7th, 2020

Some­times the mirac­u­lous time-sav­ing con­ve­niences we’ve come to depend on can have the oppo­site effect, as artist Simon Wick­ert recent­ly demon­strat­ed, ambling about the streets of Berlin at a Huck Finn-ish pace, tow­ing a squeaky-wheeled red wag­on loaded with 99 sec­ond­hand smart­phones.

Each phone had a SIM card, and all were run­ning the Google Maps app.

The result?

A near-instan­ta­neous “vir­tu­al traf­fic jam” on Google Maps, even though bicy­clists seem to vast­ly out­num­ber motorists along Wick­ert’s route.

As a Google spokesper­son told 9to5 Google’s Ben Schoon short­ly after news of Wickert’s stunt began to spread:

Traf­fic data in Google Maps is refreshed con­tin­u­ous­ly thanks to infor­ma­tion from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing aggre­gat­ed anonymized data from peo­ple who have loca­tion ser­vices turned on and con­tri­bu­tions from the Google Maps com­mu­ni­ty.

In oth­er words, had you checked your phone before head­ing out to the Baumhaus an der Mauer (Tree­house on the Wall), the Urban Art Clash Gallery, OMA’s Café, or some oth­er spot close to Wickert’s lit­tle red wagon’s trail of terror—like Google’s Berlin office—you might have thought twice about your intend­ed path, or even going at all, see­ing bridges and streets change from a free and easy green to an osten­si­bly grid­locked red.

As long as Wick­ert kept mov­ing, he was able to con­tin­ue fool­ing the algo­rithm into think­ing 99 humans were all using their phone’s Maps app for nav­i­ga­tion­al pur­pos­es in a small, con­gest­ed area.

Obvi­ous­ly, a cou­ple of bus­es could eas­i­ly be respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing 99 smart­phones in active use, but it’s unlike­ly those phones own­ers would be con­sult­ing the map app in the pas­sen­ger seats, when they could be scrolling through Insta­gram or play­ing Can­dy Crush.

Wick­ert also dis­cov­ered that his vir­tu­al traf­fic jam dis­ap­peared when­ev­er a car passed his wag­onload.

The spokesper­son who engaged with Schoon put a good-natured face on Google’s response to Wickert’s hack, say­ing, “We’ve launched the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between cars and motor­cy­cles in sev­er­al coun­tries includ­ing India, Indone­sia and Egypt, though we haven’t quite cracked trav­el­ing by wag­on. We appre­ci­ate see­ing cre­ative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work bet­ter over time.”

Mean­while, the artist’s puck­ish stunt, which he describes as a “per­for­mance and instal­la­tion,” seems anchored by sin­cere philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions, as evi­denced by the inclu­sion on his web­site of the below excerpt from “The Pow­er of Vir­tu­al Maps,” urban researcher Moritz Ahlert’s recent essay in the Ham­burg­er Jour­nal für Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie, :

The advent of Google’s Geo Tools began in 2005 with Maps and Earth, fol­lowed by Street View in 2007. They have since become enor­mous­ly more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced. Google’s vir­tu­al maps have lit­tle in com­mon with clas­si­cal ana­log maps. The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence is that Google’s maps are inter­ac­tive  – scrol­lable, search­able and zoomable. Google’s map ser­vice has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed our under­stand­ing of what a map is, how we inter­act with maps, their tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, and how they look aes­thet­i­cal­ly.

In this fash­ion, Google Maps makes vir­tu­al changes to the real city. Appli­ca­tions such as Airbnb and Car­shar­ing have an immense impact on cities: on their hous­ing mar­ket and mobil­i­ty cul­ture, for instance. There is also a major impact on how we find a roman­tic part­ner, thanks to dat­ing plat­forms such as Tin­der, and on our self-quan­ti­fy­ing behav­ior, thanks to the nike jog­ging app. Or map-based food deliv­ery apps like deliv­eroo or foodo­ra. All of these apps func­tion via inter­faces with Google Maps and cre­ate new forms of dig­i­tal cap­i­tal­ism and com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. With­out these maps, car shar­ing sys­tems, new taxi apps, bike rental sys­tems and online trans­port agency ser­vices such as Uber would be unthink­able. An addi­tion­al map­ping mar­ket is pro­vid­ed by self-dri­ving cars; again, Google has already estab­lished a posi­tion for itself.

With its Geo Tools, Google has cre­at­ed a plat­form that allows users and busi­ness­es to inter­act with maps in a nov­el way. This means that ques­tions relat­ing to pow­er in the dis­course of car­tog­ra­phy have to be refor­mu­lat­ed. But what is the rela­tion­ship between the art of enabling and tech­niques of super­vi­sion, con­trol and reg­u­la­tion in Google’s maps? Do these maps func­tion as dis­pos­i­tive nets that deter­mine the behav­ior, opin­ions and images of liv­ing beings, exer­cis­ing pow­er and con­trol­ling knowl­edge? Maps, which them­selves are the prod­uct of a com­bi­na­tion of states of knowl­edge and states of pow­er, have an inscribed pow­er dis­pos­i­tive. Google’s sim­u­la­tion-based map and world mod­els deter­mine the actu­al­i­ty and per­cep­tion of phys­i­cal spaces and the devel­op­ment of action mod­els.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Graphic Novel Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Literature | February 6th, 2020

Since its pub­li­ca­tion just over half a cen­tu­ry ago, Slaugh­ter­house-Five has seen bans and burn­ings, gone through var­i­ous adap­ta­tions, and all the while held its place in the Amer­i­can lit­er­ary canon. Some­thing about Kurt Von­negut’s sto­ry of the invol­un­tar­i­ly time-trav­el­ing optometrist Bil­ly Pil­grim, who like his cre­ator sur­vived the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den in the Sec­ond World War, con­tin­ues to res­onate with read­ers even as that war (and so very many nov­els about it) pass out of liv­ing mem­o­ry. Von­negut him­self loved George Roy Hill’s 1972 film of the nov­el, but alas, hav­ing died in 2007, he did­n’t stick around long enough to see Slaugh­ter­house-Five — or, to use its full title, Slaugh­ter­house-Five, or The Chil­dren’s Cru­sade: A Duty-Dance with Death — turned into a graph­ic nov­el.

“Indie graph­ic nov­el house BOOM! Stu­dios announced plans to pub­lish a graph­ic ver­sion of Kurt Vonnegut’s clas­sic sci-fi/an­ti­war nov­el,” reports Pub­lish­ers Week­ly’s Calvin Reid, nam­ing the adap­tors as writer Ryan North, artist Albert Monteys, and col­orist Ricard Zaplana. Nerdis­t’s Matthew Hart writes that it’s “unclear at this point what’s been includ­ed and what’s been dropped for BOOM!’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tion, it seems like the sto­ry is in good hands.” [Update: You can now pur­chase a copy of Slaugh­ter­house-Five graph­ic nov­el online here.]

The images released so far “show­case a world paint­ed with appro­pri­ate­ly mut­ed col­ors, and pop­u­lat­ed by some of the most icon­ic moments from the nov­el. The graph­ic novel’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Bil­ly Pil­grim will pos­si­bly ignite some dis­agree­ment amongst read­ers, how­ev­er, as his face can be jux­ta­posed with Vonnegut’s.”

For a nov­el con­sid­ered a “clas­sic” longer than read­ers who dis­cov­er it today have been alive, Slaugh­ter­house-Five has its own uncon­ven­tion­al way with real­i­ty. Not only does Von­negut make its pro­tag­o­nist “unstuck in time,” he also works into its cast real char­ac­ters from his own life. Take Bernard O’Hare, shown here in pan­els from the graph­ic nov­el. As Von­negut’s offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed “bud­dy” in the the 106th Infantry Divi­sion, O’Hare was tak­en pris­on­er along with him in Dres­den and held cap­tive in a meat­pack­ing plant known as Schlachthof Fuenf. When Von­negut com­plet­ed the man­u­script he let O’Hare and his wife Mary read it, and the lat­ter urged the author to write about how “all the men who fought in the Sec­ond World War were just babies.” Hence the nov­el­’s sub­ti­tle, which befits the plain­spo­ken sen­si­bil­i­ty of Kurt Von­negut, a man who believed in call­ing things what they were — and thus would sure­ly have reject­ed the label “graph­ic nov­el” in favor of “com­ic book.”

Pur­chase a copy of Slaugh­ter­house-Five: The Graph­ic Nov­el online.

via Pub­lish­ers Week­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

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.

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

in Health, Sci Fi | February 6th, 2020

Back in 2009, the musi­cian who goes by the name “Cheesy Nir­vosa” began exper­i­ment­ing with ambi­ent music, before even­tu­al­ly launch­ing a YouTube chan­nel where he “com­pos­es long­form space and sci­fi ambi­ence.” Or what he oth­er­wise calls “ambi­ent geek sleep aids.” Click on the video above, and you can get lulled to sleep lis­ten­ing to the ambi­ent dron­ing sound–get ready Blade Run­ner fans!– heard in Rich Deckard’s apart­ment. It runs a good con­tin­u­ous 12 hours.

You’re more a Star Trek fan? Ok, try nod­ding off to the idling engine noise of a ship fea­tured in Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion. Mr. Nir­vosa cleaned up a sam­ple from the show and then looped it for 24 hours. That makes for one long sleep.

Or how about 12 hours of ambi­ent engine noise gen­er­at­ed by the USCSS Nos­tro­mo in Alien?

Final­ly, and per­haps my favorite, Cheesy cre­at­ed a 12 hour clip of the ambi­ent sounds made by the Tardis, the time machine made famous by the British sci-fi TV show, Doc­tor Who. But watch out. You might wake up liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent time and place.

For lots more ambi­ent sci-fi sounds (Star Wars, The Matrix, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, etc. ) check out this super long playlist here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2017.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

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

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

Why Every Nominated Film Will Win the 2020 Oscar: A Pretty Much Pop Podcast Debate (ep. 30)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 6th, 2020

The 2020 Acad­e­my Awards are near­ly upon us! Real­is­ti­cal­ly, most of you will find this episode well after the win­ners have already been announced, but seri­ous­ly, that should not affect your enjoy­ment of this dis­cus­sion. Your intre­pid non-film-crit­ic Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts have each been ran­dom­ly assigned three of the best pic­ture nom­i­nees to argue for either for why it should with the Oscar, or if we real­ly don’t like it, why we think it will win any­way. The assign­ments were as fol­lows:

• Mark Lin­sen­may­er: 1917, Lit­tle Women, Jok­er
• Eri­ca Spyres: Jojo Rab­bit, Par­a­site, Once Upon a Time…in Hol­ly­wood*
• Bri­an Hirt: Ford v Fer­rari,  Mar­riage Sto­ry, The Irish­man**

*Cov­ered in our ep. 12.
**Cov­ered in our ep. 29.

As we hash out the rel­a­tive mer­its of these films, we reflect on what it is to be an Oscar-win­ning type-of-film as opposed to one peo­ple might actu­al­ly enjoy watch­ing, pat­terns of what kinds of films win in which cat­e­gories, and the effect of view­ing con­di­tions, pri­or knowl­edge, and pre­con­cep­tions on our enjoy­ment.

In prepa­ra­tion, we all watched all nine films and looked at some of the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive reviews about them. Here are a few more arti­cles cov­er­ing the Oscars more gen­er­al­ly that we also used to make our­selves more sus­cep­ti­ble to OSCAR FEVER.

• “Why the Oscars Still Mat­ter” by Cheryl Boone Isaacs (last year)
• “The 2020 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions Con­firm That Awards Don’t Mat­ter” by Kara Weisen­stein
• “This Year’s Oscars Are a Joke” by Gene Sey­mour
• “Oscars 2020 Nom­i­na­tions: 12 Biggest Snubs” by Bri­an Tal­leri­co
• “Com­plete List of Every ‘Best Pic­ture’ Oscar Win­ner Ever” by Matt Mur­ray

The par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive 1917 review Mark talks about was by Richard Brody. Here’s an arti­cle about Joaquin Phoenix impro­vis­ing his stunt work as Eri­ca men­tions. Speak­ing of Jok­er, have you heard the (sub)Text pod­cast pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark’s Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life co-host Wes Alwan on the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sions of that film?

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion mus­ing about past win­ners and 2020 act­ing cat­e­gories 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.

The Most Complete Collection of Salvador Dalí’s Paintings Published in a Beautiful New Book by Taschen: Includes Never-Seen-Before Works

in Art, Books | February 5th, 2020

Sal­vador Dali was that rare avant-garde artist whose work earned the respect of near­ly every­one, even those who hat­ed him per­son­al­ly. George Orwell called Dali a “dis­gust­ing human being,” but added “Dali is a draughts­man of very excep­tion­al gifts…. He has fifty times more tal­ent than most of the peo­ple who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paint­ings.”

Walt Dis­ney was very keen to work with Dali. And Dali’s own per­son­al hero and intel­lec­tu­al father fig­ure, Sig­mund Freud—no lover of mod­ern art—found the artist’s “unde­ni­able tech­ni­cal mas­tery” so com­pelling that he rethought his long­stand­ing neg­a­tive opin­ion of Sur­re­al­ism.

It’s hard to imag­ine that Orwell, Dis­ney, and Freud would agree on much else, but when it came to Dali, all three saw what is uni­ver­sal­ly appar­ent: as an artist, he was “not a fraud,” as Orwell grudg­ing­ly admit­ted.

It is also clear that Dali was a “very hard work­er.” For all the time he spent in absolute­ly shame­less self-promotion—a full career’s worth of activ­i­ty for many a cur­rent celebrity—Dali still found the time to leave behind hun­dreds of high­ly accom­plished can­vas­es, draw­ings, pho­tographs, films, mul­ti­me­dia projects, and more. A trip to the Dali Muse­um in Tam­pa, Flori­da can be a dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence.

Despite the already siz­able body of work we might have seen on view or repro­duced, how­ev­er, the edi­tors of Taschen’s newest, updat­ed edi­tion of Dali: The Paint­ings have “locat­ed paint­ed works by the mas­ter that had been inac­ces­si­ble for years,” as the influ­en­tial arts pub­lish­er notes, “so many, in fact, that almost half the fea­tured illus­tra­tions appear in pub­lic for the first time.” In addi­tion to the “opu­lent” pre­sen­ta­tion of the art­work, the book (which expands on a first edi­tion pub­lished last year) also “con­tex­tu­al­izes Dali’s oeu­vre and its mean­ings by exam­in­ing con­tem­po­rary doc­u­ments, from writ­ings and draw­ings to mate­r­i­al from oth­er facets of his work, includ­ing bal­let, cin­e­ma, fash­ion, adver­tis­ing, and objets d’art.”

The first sec­tion of the book reveals how Dali found his own style by mas­ter­ing every­one else’s. He “deployed all the isms… with play­ful mas­tery” and “would bor­row from pre­vail­ing trends before ridi­cul­ing and aban­don­ing them.” Dali want­ed us to know that he could have paint­ed any­thing he want­ed, throw­ing into even high­er relief the con­found­ing dream log­ic of his cho­sen sub­jects. Per­haps Dali him­self made it impossible—as Orwell had want­ed to do—to sep­a­rate Dali the per­son from the tech­ni­cal achieve­ments of his art.

As the artist him­self saw things, his life and work were all wrapped up togeth­er in a sin­gu­lar per­for­mance. At the age of sev­en, he wrote, he had decid­ed he want­ed to be Napoleon. “Since then,” Dali mock-humbly con­fessed, “my ambi­tion has steadi­ly grown, and my mega­lo­ma­nia with it. Now I want only to be Sal­vador Dali, I have no greater wish.” A great part of Dali’s mag­net­ism, of course, is due to what he calls his “mega­lo­ma­nia,” or rather to his uncom­pro­mis­ing life’s work of becom­ing ful­ly, com­plete­ly, him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Sur­re­al­ism in a Clas­sic Tarot Card Deck

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Ani­mat­ed Film, Des­ti­no, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

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

Terry Jones, the Late Monty Python Actor, Helped Turn Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Into a Free App: Explore It Online

in Education, Literature, Technology | February 5th, 2020

People’s eyes tend to glaze over when they hear the phrase “dig­i­tal human­i­ties.” Grant­ed, it’s not the most thrilling com­bi­na­tion of words. But when you show them what’s pos­si­ble at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and the arts, the glaze turns to a gleam: a Shaz­am-like app for scan­ning, iden­ti­fy­ing, and learn­ing about fine art? Yes, please…. An iPad app intro­duc­ing the works of Shake­speare, with con­tex­tu­al notes, sum­maries, essays, and videos fea­tur­ing Sir Ian McK­ellen? Fas­ci­nat­ing….

The pos­si­bil­i­ties for casu­al learn­ers and seri­ous stu­dents alike are vast. You just have to know where to look. And if you’re look­ing for a tech-savvy way into Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales, the clas­sic medieval sto­ry cycle writ­ten in Mid­dle Eng­lish verse and prose, you’ve found it. Thanks in part to medieval schol­ar Ter­ry Jones, for­mer­ly a mem­ber of Mon­ty Python—and the writer and direc­tor of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail—we now have a Chaucer app.

“The project… fea­tures a 45-minute audio per­for­mance of the Gen­er­al Pro­logue of the Tales,” writes Hen­ry Bod­kin at the Inde­pen­dent. “While lis­ten­ing to the read­ing, users have access to a mod­ern trans­la­tion, explana­to­ry notes and a vocab­u­lary explain­ing Mid­dle Eng­lish words used by Chaucer, as well as a dig­i­tized ver­sion of the orig­i­nal 14th cen­tu­ry man­u­script.” The project was Jones’ final schol­ar­ly work—he passed away last month—but his con­tri­bu­tion is sig­nif­i­cant.

Jones’ two books on Chaucer and his trans­la­tion of the “Gen­er­al Pro­logue” are both fea­tured in the app’s intro­duc­tion and notes, as Ellen Gutoskey notes at Men­tal Floss. One of the project’s lead­ers, Peter Robin­son of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan, also points to his behind-the-scenes influ­ence. “His work and his pas­sion for Chaucer was an inspi­ra­tion for us. We talked a lot about Chaucer and it was his idea that the Tales would be turned into a per­for­mance.”

We can enjoy many a mod­ern Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Chaucer, and there’s noth­ing wrong with doing so, but to tru­ly under­stand what made the text so rev­o­lu­tion­ary, we should hear it in its orig­i­nal lan­guage. Mid­dle Eng­lish is beau­ti­ful­ly musi­cal, but it was not in Chaucer’s time a lit­er­ary tongue. Like Dante, he broke new ground by writ­ing in the ver­nac­u­lar when most every­one else wrote in Latin or French.

The strange­ness of Mid­dle Eng­lish to our eyes and ears can make approach­ing the Can­ter­bury Tales for the first time a daunt­ing expe­ri­ence. The Chaucer app is an excel­lent research tool for schol­ars, yet the researchers want “the pub­lic, not just aca­d­e­mics to see the man­u­script as Chaucer would have like­ly thought of it,” says Robin­son, “as a per­for­mance that mixed dra­ma and humor.” In oth­er words, read­ing Chaucer should be fun.

Why else would Ter­ry Jones—a man who knew his com­e­dy as well as his medieval history—spend decades read­ing and writ­ing about him? Find out for your­self at the Can­ter­bury Tales app, where, with a click of a few but­tons at the top of the page, you can see part of the orig­i­nal man­u­script, a tran­scrip­tion of the Mid­dle Eng­lish text, explana­to­ry notes, and Jones’ trans­la­tion of the “Gen­er­al Pro­logue.”

Enter the app here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

Sir Ian McK­ellen Releas­es New Apps to Make Shakespeare’s Plays More Enjoy­able & Acces­si­ble

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

The Met Puts 650+ Japanese Illustrated Books Online: Marvel at Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and More

in Archives, Art, Books | February 5th, 2020

There are cer­tain Japan­ese wood­block prints many of us can pic­ture in our minds: Hoku­sai Kat­sushika’s The Great Wave off Kana­gawa, Uta­gawa Hiroshige’s Sud­den Show­er over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake, Kita­gawa Uta­maro’s Three Beau­ties of the Present Day. Even when we find vast archives of such works, known as ukiyo‑e or “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” we tend to appre­ci­ate the works them­selves one piece at a time; we imag­ine them on walls, not in books. But it was in books that much of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters first appeared in the first place. Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro, as the three are usu­al­ly called, “are best known today for their wood­block prints, but also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture.”

So writes John Car­pen­ter, Cura­tor of the Depart­ment of Asian Art at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, describ­ing the “fell swoop” in which the Met acquired “a superb col­lec­tion of Japan­ese books to com­ple­ment its excel­lent hold­ings in paint­ings and prints of the Edo peri­od (1615–1868).” Once the per­son­al col­lec­tion of Arthur and Char­lotte Ver­sh­bow, these books came into the muse­um’s pos­ses­sion in 2013, and have now come avail­able to browse on and even down­load from its web site.

Car­pen­ter describes the col­lec­tion as “par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in works by ukiyo‑e artists, but includes rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of all the var­i­ous schools of Japan­ese art. Includ­ed in the col­lec­tion of some 250 titles — more than 400 vol­umes — are numer­ous mas­ter­pieces of wood­block print­ing, many of which are near­ly impos­si­ble to find in such fine con­di­tion today.”

You’ll find in the Met’s online col­lec­tion not just the vol­umes from the Ver­sh­bow col­lec­tion, but “over 650 eigh­teenth- and nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese illus­trat­ed books” in total. Selec­tions include edi­tions of Uta­maro’s Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book), Hiroshige’s Pic­ture Book of the Sou­venirs of Edo (the name of Tokyo in his day), and Hoku­sai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji. You can also find books full of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters of whom you may not have heard, such as Kat­sukawa Shun­shō’s Mir­ror of Yoshi­wara Beau­ties, Kitao Masanobu’s A New Record Com­par­ing the Hand­writ­ing of the Cour­te­sans of the Yoshi­wara, and Uta­gawa Kunisada’s That Pur­ple Image in Mag­ic Lantern Shows. Though few of us today know Kunisada’s name, in the ear­ly to mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry his pop­u­lar rep­u­ta­tion far exceed­ed those of Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro — not least because of how many could enjoy his work in books like these. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

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.

Free for Audible Subscribers: James Taylor Releases a New Audio Memoir, and Michael Pollan a New Audio Book on Caffeine

in Audio Books | February 4th, 2020

This is a very quick FYI for any­one who hap­pens to be an Audi­ble sub­scriber. If you’re not, you can start a free tri­al here.

This month, all Audi­ble mem­bers can get free access to James Tay­lor’s new short mem­oir called Break Shot: My First 21 Years. Read by James Tay­lor him­self, the book revis­its the musi­cian’s tur­bu­lent child­hood and his emer­gence as an artist. It also fea­tures record­ed music by the singer-song­writer.

In addi­tion, Michael Pol­lan has released a new short audio­book, Caf­feine: How Caf­feine Cre­at­ed the Mod­ern World. Read by Pol­lan, the book (only avail­able in audio for­mat) “takes us on a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of the drug, which was first dis­cov­ered in a small part of East Africa and with­in a cen­tu­ry became an addic­tion affect­ing most of the human species.”

Both books are part of the Audi­ble Orig­i­nals pro­gram. So if you down­load them, you won’t be using any of your month­ly cred­its. They are free bonus mate­r­i­al.

And now for an extra bonus:  You can lis­ten to Annette Ben­ing, Jon Hamm, Matthew Rhys, Mau­ra Tier­ney and oth­ers read “The Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Report on Tor­ture.” It’s free for all–whether you’re an Audi­ble sub­scriber or not.

To sign up for an Audi­ble free tri­al, click 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:

Down­load a Free Audio Book From Audible.com

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Get Two Free Audio­books from Audiobooks.com

Take UC Berkeley’s Free “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion 101” Lec­ture Course, Fea­tur­ing a Pan­theon of Sus­tain­able Food Super­stars

What is a Blade Runner? How Ridley Scott’s Movie Has Origins in William S. Burroughs’ Novella, Blade Runner: A Movie

in Film, Literature | February 4th, 2020

Why, in the course of two extra­or­di­nary films by Rid­ley Scott and Denis Vil­leneuve, do we nev­er learn what the term Blade Run­ner actu­al­ly means? Per­haps the mys­tery only deep­ens the sense of “super-real­ism” with which the film leaves audi­ences, including—and especially—Philip K. Dick, who only lived long enough to see excerpts. “The impact of Blade Run­ner is sim­ply going to be over­whelm­ing, both on the pub­lic and on cre­ative peo­ple,” he wrote. As usu­al, Dick saw beyond his con­tem­po­raries, who most­ly panned or ignored the film.

Dick seemed to have “had no beef with the fact Blade Run­ner was not a faith­ful adap­ta­tion of his nov­el,” writes David Bar­nett at the Inde­pen­dent. Not only did he not write a book called Blade Run­ner—the film was loose­ly adapt­ed from his 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?—but he also nev­er used those words, “Blade Run­ner,” to describe his char­ac­ters. “It’s not a phrase used in the book and it doesn’t real­ly make much sense in the con­text of the movie…. It’s sim­ply a throw­away slang for cops who hunt repli­cants.”

The phrase, as Keele Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Oliv­er Har­ris tells The Qui­etus, is so much more than that. It brings along with it “a weird back­sto­ry that tells us some­thing about how the Bur­roughs virus spreads around,” infect­ing near­ly every­thing sci­ence fic­tion­al and coun­ter­cul­tur­al over the past half-cen­tu­ry or so. That’s William S. Bur­roughs, of course, author of—among a few oth­er things—a 1979 nov­el­is­tic film treat­ment called Blade Run­ner: A Movie.

If Scott and screen­writer Hamp­ton Fanch­er had adapt­ed Bur­roughs’ night­mar­ish 21st cen­tu­ry to the cin­e­ma, we would have seen a much dif­fer­ent film—though one as whol­ly res­o­nant with our cur­rent dystopia. The sto­ry imag­ines “a med­ical-care apoc­a­lypse,” in which med­ical sup­plies like scalpels become smug­gled contraband—hence “blade run­ners.” Bur­roughs’ book is itself an adaptation—or a re-writ­ing and re-editing—of sci-fi writer Alan Nourse’s 1974 pulp sci-fi nov­el The Bladerun­ner.

It is Nourse who intro­duced the sce­nario of a “med­ical apoc­a­lypse” and who coined the term “blade run­ner,” though we owe its sep­a­ra­tion into two words to Bur­roughs. “Read­ing one text against the oth­er is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Har­ris. “Nourse writes pedes­tri­an, real­ist prose with two-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters who all talk in the same colour­less style.” Bur­roughs, on the oth­er hand, writes with “extra­or­di­nary econ­o­my, mas­tery of idiom, and wild­ly unbound imag­i­na­tion.”

In the crum­bling New York (not L.A.) of Bur­roughs’ future world, the gov­ern­ment con­trols its cit­i­zens “through the abil­i­ty to with­hold essen­tial ser­vices includ­ing work, cred­it, hous­ing, retire­ment ben­e­fits and med­ical care through com­put­er­i­za­tion.” Grant­ed, this might not seem to lend itself to a very cin­e­mat­ic treat­ment, but Bur­roughs was attract­ed to the cen­tral con­cept of Nourse’s book, one inher­ent­ly rich in human tragedy: “med­ical pan­demics appealed to his vision of a species in per­il, a plan­et head­ing for ter­mi­nal dis­as­ter.”

Dick imag­ined a species in per­il from a dif­fer­ent kind of infec­tion, as Bur­roughs would have it—artificial intel­li­gence. Was the most cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly-adapt­ed sci-fi nov­el­ist aware that he had indi­rect­ly helped rein­tro­duce a strain of the Bur­roughs virus—a para­noid, if jus­ti­fied, sus­pi­cion of authority—back into pop­u­lar cul­ture through Blade Run­ner? We might expect, giv­en his sta­tus in the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­ni­ty at the time of his death, three months before the film debuted, that he might be aware of the con­nec­tion. But he gave no hint of it, leav­ing us to pon­der what Bur­roughs’ Blade Run­ner: The Movie, the movie, would be like, made with the skill and sen­si­bil­i­ty of a Scott or Vil­leneuve.

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blade Run­ner Cap­tured the Imag­i­na­tion of a Gen­er­a­tion of Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

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