14 Paris Museums Put 390,000 Works of Art Online: Download Classics by Monet, Cézanne & More

in Archives, Art, Museums | January 10th, 2020

First trips to Paris all run the same risk: that of the muse­ums con­sum­ing all of one’s time in the city. What those new to Paris need is a muse­um-going strat­e­gy, not that one size will fit all. Tai­lor­ing such a strat­e­gy to one’s own inter­ests and pur­suits requires a sense of each muse­um’s col­lec­tion, some­thing dif­fi­cult to attain remote­ly before Paris Musées opened up its online col­lec­tions por­tal.

There, a counter tracks the num­ber of art­works from the muse­ums of Paris dig­i­tized and uploaded for all the world to see, which as of this writ­ing comes in at 321,055. 150,222 images, notes a counter below, are in the pub­lic domain, and below that, anoth­er counter reveals that the archive now con­tains 621,075 pieces of dig­i­tal media in total.

Among these, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia, “mas­ter­pieces by renowned artists such as Rem­brandt, Gus­tave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, and Antho­ny van Dyck, among many oth­er famil­iar and less­er-known names, can now be accessed and enjoyed dig­i­tal­ly.”

She high­lights “Paul Cézanne’s enchant­i­ng 1899 por­trait of the French art deal­er Ambroise Vol­lard,” pic­tures tak­en by “Eugène Atget, the French pho­tog­ra­ph­er known for doc­u­ment­ing and immor­tal­iz­ing old Paris,” and Gus­tave Courbet’s Les demoi­selles des bor­ds de la Seine, which became “the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy at the Paris Salon of 1857 for what some deemed an indeco­rous and even sen­su­al por­tray­al of work­ing class women.”

Paul Cezanne (1839–1906). “Rochers et branch­es à Bibé­mus”. Huile sur toile. Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.

Paris Musées over­sees the four­teen City of Paris Muse­ums, includ­ing the Musée d’Art Mod­erne de la Ville de Paris and the Petit Palais as well as the Mai­son de Balzac and Mai­son de Vic­tor Hugo. That last now has a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion up called “Light and Shade,” which, through the illus­tra­tions of Hugo’s lit­er­ary works, reveals the “fren­zy of images that adorned 19th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture,” from “the blos­som­ing of the roman­tic vignette, to the flood of pop­u­lar edi­tions, and the swan­song of those col­lec­tors’ edi­tions cel­e­brat­ing the glo­ries of the Third Repub­lic.” The “the­mat­ic dis­cov­er­ing” sec­tion of Paris Musées por­tal also fea­tures sec­tions on car­i­ca­tures of Vic­tor Hugo, on the 18th cen­tu­ry, on por­traits, and on Paris in the year 1900, when Art Nou­veau made it “the cap­i­tal of Europe.”

“Users can down­load a file that con­tains a high def­i­n­i­tion (300 DPI) image, a doc­u­ment with details about the select­ed work, and a guide of best prac­tices for using and cit­ing the sources of the image,” writes Di Lis­cia. Shown here are Claude Mon­et Soleil couchant sur la Seine à Lava­court, effet d’hiver, Célestin Nan­teuil’s La Cour des Mir­a­cles, Léon Bon­nat’s Por­trait de M. Vic­tor Hugo, Cézanne’s Rochers et branch­es à Bibé­mus, and a post­card for the Expo­si­tion uni­verselle de Paris 1889. These images are released under a CC0 (Cre­ative Com­mons Zero) license, and “works still in copy­right will be avail­able as low def­i­n­i­tion files, so users can still get a feel for the muse­ums’ col­lec­tions online.” Do bear in mind that Paris Musées does not have under its umbrel­la that most famous muse­um of all, the Lou­vre. If you’re look­ing to get a feel for that world-renowned des­ti­na­tion’s for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion, you may just have to vis­it it — a cul­tur­al task that neces­si­tates a bat­tle plan of its own.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Makes 375,000 Images of Fine Art Avail­able Under a Cre­ative Com­mons License: Down­load, Use & Remix

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

A 3D Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Paris: Take a Visu­al Jour­ney from Ancient Times to 1900

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.

“Mr. Tambourine Man” & Other Bob Dylan Classics, Sung Beautifully by Kids

in K-12, Music | January 10th, 2020

New Zealan­der David Antony Clark grew up with the music of Bob Dylan, and, like many his age, felt sad that the youngun’s had no idea who that was. Instead of moan­ing, he decid­ed to pro­duce Kids Sing Bob Dylan, an 11-track CD of cov­ers sung by the Star­bugs, Clark’s children’s group.

Before you flinch, check the YouTube clip above. These kids can actu­al­ly sing, right? The har­monies are there…I mean pos­si­bly cleaned up a bit with tech­nol­o­gy, I can’t say for sure.

Here’s “For­ev­er Young,” from Dylan’s 1974 Plan­et Waves. An appro­pri­ate song for this quin­tet: Jessie Hil­lel, Rebec­ca Jenk­ins, Sarah Whitak­er, Ben Ander­son, and Roisin Ander­son, all from Welling­ton, NZ, and rag­ing in age from 7 to 15.

Accord­ing to a Stuff.nz arti­cle on the release, Jessie Hil­lel said about the record­ing: “Hear­ing and lis­ten­ing to him was real­ly fun. But you can do what­ev­er you want to the songs, but at the same time I real­ly want­ed to have his stan­dard because he did such a good job. I feel proud of myself, it’s just so good.”

Ben Ander­son, age 12, was the only one with pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Dylan: ““I’d heard about him a few times before, I was real­ly excit­ed. He’s a real­ly good singer, just the emo­tion that he puts into his songs, I was real­ly excit­ed to sing them. I was real­ly ner­vous that I would­n’t live up to it, and do it right, but it got eas­i­er as the song went on.”

Now, you might have noticed two things from a quick lis­ten. One of the younger kids, Jessie Hil­lel, might be small, but she packs a voice from some­one twice her age. (She han­dles the low­er range in the har­monies.) The oth­er thing: these videos are from 2011.

Where is Jessie now? Fun­ny you ask:

In 2012 she made her way onto the finals of New Zealand’s Got Tal­ent, and in 2016 she sang Puc­ci­ni in Mel­bourne. She’s cur­rent­ly study­ing music in Mel­bourne and is in a jazz-fusion band called Jakal.

Sarah Whitak­er also has her own music chan­nel on YouTube.

Fun­ny about kids–they grow up right in front of your eyes.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Tan­gled Up in Blue: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

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.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

in Books, Education | January 10th, 2020

Below, you can hear jour­nal­ist David Epstein talks with Recode’s Kara Swish­er about his book, Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World. In it, “he argues that the world’s most suc­cess­ful ath­letes, artists, musi­cians, inven­tors, fore­cast­ers and sci­en­tists are more like­ly to be dab­blers, rather than peo­ple who set out to do what they do best from a young age — and, in fact, the peo­ple who have high­ly spe­cial­ized train­ing from an ear­ly age tend to have low­er life­time earn­ings over­all.” The #1 New York Times best­selling book makes the case that “in most fields—especially those that are com­plex and unpredictable—generalists, not spe­cial­ists, are primed to excel. Gen­er­al­ists often find their path late, and they jug­gle many inter­ests rather than focus­ing on one. They’re also more cre­ative, more agile, and able to make con­nec­tions their more spe­cial­ized peers can’t see.”

You can pick up a copy of Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World in print, or get it as a free audio book if you sign up for a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com.

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:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Teach­es You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophistication to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Classic Interviews Online

in Television | January 9th, 2020

Just as the avun­cu­lar pres­ence of Ed Sul­li­van helped ease mid­dle Amer­i­ca into accept­ing Elvis Pres­ley and The Bea­t­les, the aw-shucks mid­west­ern charm of Dick Cavett made Wood­stock hip­pies seem down­right cud­dly when he had Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, and Joni Mitchell on just after the leg­endary music fes­ti­val in 1969. He had a way of mak­ing every­one around him com­fort­able enough to reveal just a lit­tle more than they might oth­er­wise. (See Jimi Hen­drix talk about his Nation­al Anthem per­for­mance, below.)

Born in Nebras­ka in 1937, “the only per­sona [Cavett] both­ered to, or need­ed to, devel­op for work­ing on cam­era was of a boy from Nebras­ka daz­zled by the bright lights of New York,” as Clive James writes in an appre­ci­a­tion of the TV host. As he inter­viewed the biggest stars of late six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies on the long-run­ning Dick Cavett Show, Cavett’s easy­go­ing Mid­west­ern demeanor dis­armed both his guests and audi­ences. He kept them engaged with his eru­di­tion, quick wit, and breadth of cul­tur­al knowl­edge.

Cavett, writes James, was “the most dis­tin­guished talk-show host in Amer­i­ca… a true sophis­ti­cate with a daunt­ing intel­lec­tu­al range.” He was also an empath­ic inter­view­er who could lead his guests beyond the stock respons­es they were used to giv­ing in TV inter­views. (David Bowie, below, reveals how he was influ­enced by his fans.)

A trained gym­nast and self-taught magician—Cavett met fel­low magi­cian John­ny Car­son in the ear­ly 50s at a mag­ic convention—the talk-show host left Nebras­ka for Yale and nev­er looked back. (He once joked, quot­ing Abe Bur­rows, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?”) After col­lege, he moved to New York to pur­sue act­ing. There, he got his first com­e­dy writ­ing job, when he hand­ed some of his jokes to Tonight Show host Jack Paar in an ele­va­tor. He befriend­ed Stan Lau­rel, Grou­cho Marx, and all the biggest names in com­e­dy, and wrote for Jer­ry Lewis and Merv Grif­fin.

Once he had his own late-night talk show, how­ev­er, which ran oppo­site John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show, it became clear that he was doing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. “Cavett nev­er mugged, nev­er whooped it up for the audi­ence, rarely told a for­mal­ly con­struct­ed joke, and lis­tened to the guest,” writes James. He became “famous enough not to be able to go out except in dis­guise,” but “his style did not suit a mass audi­ence.” This is what made—and still makes—Cavett worth watch­ing.

He had Bri­an de Pal­ma and Mar­tin Scors­ese on to talk about how they’re each other’s best crit­ics, and Scors­ese revealed that he did addi­tion­al shoot­ing for The Last Waltz after De Pal­ma saw it.

Robin Williams came on to demon­strate his devel­op­ing Pop­eye voice dur­ing the shoot­ing of the Robert Alt­man film in 1979. In the clip above, he talks about feel­ing like “a mon­key on a string” and work­ing through his depres­sion.

Lucille Ball told the sto­ry of her ear­ly years in show busi­ness, and her time work­ing as a mod­el, and Dick Van Dyke talked frankly about his alco­holism and the stig­ma sur­round­ing addic­tion.

These are just a few of the 270+ sur­pris­ing clips you’ll find on the Dick Cavett Show YouTube chan­nel, where George Car­lin, Muham­mad Ali, Mar­lon Bran­do, George Har­ri­son, John Lennon, Ian McK­ellen, Julie Andrews, and too many more stars to name say things they rarely said any­where else, as Cavett draws them out and keeps them talk­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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

The Magic of Chess: Kids Share Their Uninhibited, Philosophical Insights about the Benefits of Chess

in Games, K-12 | January 9th, 2020

From the US Chess Fed­er­a­tion and direc­tor Jen­ny Schweitzer comes the short doc­u­men­tary, The Mag­ic of Chess. “Filmed at the 2019 Ele­men­tary Chess Cham­pi­onships at the Nashville Opry­land resort, a group of chil­dren share their unin­hib­it­ed, philo­soph­i­cal insights about the ben­e­fits of chess.” Jen­ny Schweitzer added: “For me, as a moth­er of a child who sim­ply loves the game, it was my inten­tion to focus not on the com­pet­i­tive aspects of the chess world, but rather what a deep com­mit­ment to chess can poten­tial­ly offer some­one, young or old.” If this whets your appetite, explore some of our chess resources below.

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:

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Plain Eng­lish

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Chess Grand­mas­ter Gar­ry Kas­parov Relives His Four Most Mem­o­rable Games

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #26 Discusses Alan Moore’s Watchmen Comic and the HBO Show with Cornell Psychology Professor David Pizarro

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 9th, 2020

Per­haps the most laud­ed graph­ic nov­el has been sequelized for HBO, and amaz­ing­ly, it turned out pret­ty darn well (with a 96% Rot­ten Toma­toes rat­ing!).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by the Cor­nel­l’s David Pizarro, host of the pop­u­lar Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast. We con­sid­er Alan Moore’s 1986 graph­ic nov­el, the 2009 Zack Sny­der film, and of course most­ly the recent­ly com­plet­ed (we hope) show by Damon Lin­de­lof, the cre­ator of Lost and The Left­overs.

How does Moore’s idio­syn­crat­ic writ­ing style trans­late to the screen? Did the show make best use of its nine hours? Are there oth­er sto­ries in this alter­nate his­to­ry that should still be told, per­haps to reflect on oth­er recur­rent social ills or crises of what­ev­er moment might be depict­ed? Was Lin­de­lof real­ly the guy to tell this sto­ry about race, and does mak­ing the show about racism (which is bad!) under­mine Moore’s rejec­tion of (moral­ly) black-and-white heroes and vil­lains?

Some of the arti­cles we used to warm up for this dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

• “Some Watch­men Fans Are Mad that HBO’s Ver­sion Is Polit­i­cal. But Watch­men Has Always Been Polit­i­cal” by Alex Abad-San­tos
• “How HBO’s ‘Watch­men’ Can Avoid the Misog­y­nis­tic Mis­steps of Its Past” by Rosie Knight
• “The Right-Wing Troll Back­lash Against HBO’s Watch­men Is Hilar­i­ous­ly Stu­pid” by Matt Miller
• “How ‘Watchmen’s’ Mis­un­der­stand­ing of Viet­nam Under­cuts its Vision of Racism” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• “Why We Don’t Want to Watch Watch­men Sea­son 2” by David Opie
• “When Sex Scenes Go Wrong: Zack Snyder’s Watch­men“ by Jim Vorel

You might want to also check out HBO’s Watch­men page, which includes extra essays and the offi­cial pod­cast with Damon Lin­de­lof com­ment­ing on the episodes.

Fol­low Dave @peez. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, undoubt­ed­ly the apex of his pro­fes­sion­al career.

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.

Free Online Writing & Journalism Courses

in Online Courses, Writing | January 8th, 2020

Image by Book Mama, via Flickr Com­mons

• A Beginner’s Guide to Writ­ing in Eng­lish for Uni­ver­si­ty Study — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing
• An Intro­duc­tion to Screen­writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia
• Advanced Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Busi­ness Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC-Boul­der
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Char­ac­ter — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Plot — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Set­ting and Descrip­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Cre­ative Writ­ing: The Craft of Style — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan
• Dis­cov­er­ing Sci­ence: Sci­ence Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ists, Part 1 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ists, Part 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Get­ting Start­ed with Essay Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Gram­mar and Punc­tu­a­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• Gram­mar and Punc­tu­a­tion Advanced — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Irvine
• How To Make A Poem — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty
• How to Write an Essay — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — UC Berke­ley
• Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics — Free Online Course — Jim New­ton, UCLA
• Jour­nal­ism Under Siege — Free Online Course — Mul­ti­ple Fac­ul­ty, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Mem­oir and Per­son­al Essay: Man­ag­ing Your Rela­tion­ship with the Read­er — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty
• Press and Soci­ety — Free iTunes Audio — Christo­pher Scan­lon, La Trobe Uni­ver­si­ty
• Rhetoric: The Art of Per­sua­sive Writ­ing and Pub­lic Speak­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Script Writ­ing: Write a Pilot Episode for a TV or Web Series — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Michi­gan State
• Sharp­ened Visions: A Poet­ry Work­shop — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Cal Arts
• Song­writ­ing: Writ­ing the Lyrics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Berklee Col­lege of Music
• Start Fic­tion Writ­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Open Uni­ver­si­ty
• Start Writ­ing Essays — Free Course - Open Uni­ver­si­ty
• Writ­ing in the Sci­ences — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Writ­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion & Fan­ta­sy — Free Online Videos — BYU, Bran­don Sander­son
• Writ­ing Sto­ries About Our­selves — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty

See our meta col­lec­tion–1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties–for a com­plete list of online cours­es, cov­er­ing near­ly every sub­ject.

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!

The Strange, Spiritual Origins of the Ouija Board

in History | January 8th, 2020

Even as an avid hor­ror movie fan, I find it hard to sus­pend dis­be­lief when Oui­ja boards show up, and they show up often enough, in clas­sics like The Exor­cist and mod­ern favorites like Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty. Oui­ja boards have always seemed more like wands with plas­tic flow­ers in them than telegraphs to the after­life or the infer­nal abyss. But I grew up with peo­ple who con­sid­ered it a gate­way to hell, just as spir­i­tu­al­ists have con­sid­ered it a por­tal to the beyond, where their dead rel­a­tives wait­ed to give them mes­sages.

So, how did this nov­el­ty item become such a potent fig­ure of fear and fas­ci­na­tion in Amer­i­ca? When it was mass-mar­ket­ed by “a Pitts­burgh toy and nov­el­ty shop” in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, as Lin­da Rodriquez McRob­bie writes at Smith­son­ian, “this mys­te­ri­ous talk­ing board was basi­cal­ly what’s sold in board game aisles today.” Its adver­tise­ments promised “nev­er fail­ing amuse­ment and recre­ation for all the class­es,” and a bridge “between the known and unknown, the mate­r­i­al and imma­te­r­i­al.”

The Oui­ja board might have become a toy by the end of the cen­tu­ry, but through­out the ear­li­er decades, belief in the super­nat­ur­al held seri­ous sway among “all the class­es.” The aver­age lifes­pan was less than 50. “Women died in child­birth; chil­dren died of dis­ease; and men died in war. Even Mary Todd Lin­coln, wife of the ven­er­a­ble pres­i­dent, con­duct­ed séances in the White House after their 11-year-old son died of a fever in 1862.” Dis­ease epi­demics and the Civ­il War left mil­lions bereft.

“Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the dead was com­mon,” says Oui­ja his­to­ri­an Robert Murch. “It wasn’t seen as bizarre or weird,” even among the staunchest reli­gious peo­ple who filled the pews each Sun­day. “It’s hard to imag­ine that now, we look at that and think, ‘Why are you open­ing the gates of hell?’” These com­mon­ly held beliefs may not have damned anyone’s soul, but they made even the rarest minds, like Sher­lock Holmes’ cre­ator Arthur Conan Doyle, sus­cep­ti­ble to fraud and trick­ery.

It was only a mat­ter of time before believ­ers in spir­i­tu­al­ism became a tar­get demo­graph­ic for the cheap com­modi­ties spread­ing across the coun­try with the rail­roads. “Peo­ple were des­per­ate for meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion” with the dead “that would be quick­er” than the local medi­um. “While sev­er­al entre­pre­neurs real­ized that,” McRob­bie writes, “it was the Ken­nard Nov­el­ty Com­pa­ny that real­ly nailed it” with their 1886 prod­uct. But they didn’t invent it. Such devices date back years ear­li­er.

Some ear­ly ver­sions “looked like Oui­ja boards, and some didn’t,” notes Vox. “Some devices even used planchettes (that’s the name for the thing you hold when you oper­ate a Oui­ja.” (Planchette, from medieval French, means a small board.) As for the non­sense word “Oui­ja,” one leg­end has it that the name came from an 1890 ses­sion in which the board was asked what it would like itself to be called. Learn more in the Vox video above about why the Oui­ja board came to loom so large, or in their words, became so “over­rat­ed,” in the Amer­i­can imag­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

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

An Animated Look at the Charade of the Global Elites: Claiming They Want to “Change the World,” They End Up Preserving the Unjust Status Quo

in Animation, Current Affairs, Politics | January 8th, 2020

From Peter Kropotkin to Leo Tol­stoy to Noam Chom­sky, some of the most revered anar­chist thinkers have exhaust­ed page after page explain­ing why pow­er over oth­ers is unjus­ti­fied, no mat­ter how it jus­ti­fies itself. To those who say the wealthy and pow­er­ful ben­e­fit soci­ety with char­i­ta­ble works and occa­sion­al­ly humane pol­i­cy, Tol­stoy might reply with the fol­low­ing illus­tra­tion, which opens Time edi­tor Anand Girid­haradas’ talk above, “Win­ner Take All,” as ani­mat­ed by the RSA:

I sit on a man’s back, chok­ing him and mak­ing him car­ry me, and yet assure myself and oth­ers that I am sor­ry for him and wish to light­en his load by all means pos­si­ble… except by get­ting off his back.

The author of Win­ners Take All: The Elite Cha­rade of Chang­ing the World, Girid­haradas doesn’t make the case for anar­chism here, except per­haps by the slight­est impli­ca­tion in his choice of epi­graph. But he does call out the “win­ners of our age,” no mat­ter how much they deter­mine to make a dif­fer­ence with human­i­tar­i­an aid, for being “unwill­ing to get off the man’s back.” Unwill­ing to pay tax­es, close loop­holes and tax shel­ters, pay high­er wages, or stop lob­by­ing to slash pub­lic ser­vices. Unwill­ing to rein­vest in the com­mu­ni­ties that made them.

“What does it look like to imag­ine the kind of change,” Girid­haradas asks, “that would involve the win­ners of our age step­ping off that guy’s back? Or being made to step off that guy’s back?” Here, he leaves us with an ellipses and moves to cri­tique the idea of the “win-win” as a means of mak­ing change, rather than just exchange.

The mar­ket econ­o­my has import­ed the cri­te­ria of exchange into pol­i­tics and social action. Every­thing is trans­ac­tion­al. But in order to address the gross inequities that result in peo­ple fig­u­ra­tive­ly sit­ting on the backs of oth­ers, some must gain more pow­er and oth­ers must have less. The par­ties do not meet in a state of ceteris paribus.

One might take issue with the very terms used in “win-win” think­ing. Rather than win­ners, some would call pow­er­ful cap­i­tal­ists oppor­tunists, prof­i­teers, and worse. (The term “rob­ber baron” was once in com­mon cir­cu­la­tion.) To claim that good works and good inten­tions obvi­ate mas­sive pow­er imbal­ances is to pre­sume that such imbal­ances are jus­ti­fi­able in the first place. Answer­ing this the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tion doesn’t, how­ev­er, address the prac­ti­cal prob­lem.

In the cur­rent sys­tem of cor­po­rate mis­rule, says Girid­haradas, “when every­thing is couched as a win-win, what you are real­ly say­ing… is that the best kinds of solu­tions don’t ask any­one to get off anyone’s back.” Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism has brought us the “pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic prob­lems.” That is to say, com­pa­nies prof­it from the same issues they help cre­ate through pol­lu­tion, preda­to­ry schemes, and undue polit­i­cal influ­ence.

You don’t have to be an anar­chist to see a seri­ous prob­lem with that. But if you see the prob­lem, you should want to imag­ine how things could be oth­er­wise.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Alinsky’s 13 Tried-and-True Rules for Cre­at­ing Mean­ing­ful Social Change

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Teach­ing Tol­er­ance to Activists: A Free Course Syl­labus & Anthol­o­gy

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

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

in Music | January 7th, 2020

It’s hard to imag­ine that in the late 60s, the band who would become the most famous of the psy­che­del­ic era was still an obscu­ri­ty to most U.S. lis­ten­ers. Nowa­days “Pink Floyd may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap,” writes Bill Wyman in a Vul­ture ret­ro­spec­tive of their entire cat­a­logue. Indeed, it’s pos­si­ble their sta­di­um-sized pop­u­lar­i­ty has been under­es­ti­mat­ed. Accord­ing to the data, they’ve actu­al­ly sold more albums world­wide than the Fab Four.

But they had to pay dues in the States. “In the last week of April 1973,” notes KQED’s Richie Unter­berg­er, Dark Side of the Moon “reached No. 1 on the Amer­i­can charts. In the last week of April 1970, though, they had yet to crack the U.S. Top 50 after three years of record­ing and per­form­ing.”

Their first singer/songwriter, and lat­er trag­ic muse, Syd Bar­rett, had come and gone after their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They were already well into what Wyman describes as the sec­ond phase of “four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

This ver­sion “was one of the founders of pro­gres­sive rock, a psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble.” They were excel­lent live musi­cians and mas­ters of mood and atmos­phere. But their exper­i­men­tal direc­tion didn’t sell. “At that point, they were real­ly anx­ious to have what­ev­er pub­lic­i­ty they could,” says Jim Far­ber, who co-pro­duced the hour-long TV con­cert film above for KQED, San Francisco’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

We did not have much of a bud­get. Pink Floyd did the per­for­mance and offered the rights for a cer­tain num­ber of air­ings for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. My mem­o­ry is we paid them $200.

The band played in the emp­ty Fill­more Audi­to­ri­um for a film crew. The venue wasn’t emp­ty because no one showed up. They could draw a crowd and had already played the Fill­more West and toured the U.S. three times. But, “for as strong an under­ground fol­low­ing as they were build­ing in the Unit­ed States,” writes Unter­berg­er, they “were so eager for an Amer­i­can audi­ence that they played a free con­cert at UCLA a week lat­er” after the KQED tap­ing.

The sta­tion, which in 1970 “was more known for Sesame Street than psy­che­del­ic rock,” had already begun to move into con­cert films. “Local icons” like “Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice all got air­time.” But Pink Floyd was some­thing dif­fer­ent indeed. The film, broad­cast in Jan­u­ary of ’71, “got an incred­i­bly pos­i­tive response when we aired it in San Fran­cis­co,” says Far­ber. “After that, it had two nation­al broad­casts on PBS.”

You can watch the full “Hour with Pink Floyd,” as the pro­gram was called, just above. At the top, see the band play “Astron­o­my Domine” in footage cut from the orig­i­nal broad­cast. Fur­ther up, see the six­teen minute “Atom Heart Moth­er,” a tes­ta­ment to how far out Pink Floyd could go, and how much a local pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion was will­ing to go with them. The track opens with five min­utes of aer­i­al footage of the San Joaquin Val­ley, the band nowhere in sight. When Pink Floyd final­ly arrives onscreen, the desert vis­tas con­tin­ue to weave in and out.

In “Grantch­ester Mead­ows,” below, for­est sounds and images intro­duce the song. The effect was to trans­late the mys­tique British lis­ten­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Pink Floyd to U.S. audi­ences just on the verge of being blown away by a very dif­fer­ent-sound­ing band who released Dark Side of the Moon three years lat­er.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

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