Movie Accent Expert Analyzes 31 Actors Playing Other Famous People: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, and More

in English Language, Film, How to Learn for Free, Life | December 7th, 2018

Well-known fig­ures’ voic­es are often as dis­tinc­tive as their thou­sand-watt smiles and influ­en­tial hair­dos.

While there is some evi­dence as to the accents and idio­syn­crat­ic speech pat­terns of such his­tor­i­cal heavy hit­ters as Thomas Edi­son, Flo­rence Nightin­gale, and Har­ry Hou­di­ni, tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments have real­ly upped the ante for those charged with imper­son­at­ing real life peo­ple from the mid 20th-cen­tu­ry onward.

Natal­ie Port­man had to sus­tain her Jack­ie Kennedy imper­son­ation for an entire fea­ture-length biopic, a per­for­mance dialect coach Erik Singer gives high marks, above. Port­man, he explains, has tru­ly inter­nal­ized Jackie’s idi­olect, the indi­vid­ual quirks that add yet anoth­er lay­er to such sig­ni­fiers as class and region.

As evi­dence, he sub­mits a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the First Lady’s famous 1962 tele­vised tour of the White House ren­o­va­tions she had spear­head­ed, and Portman’s recre­ation there­of.

Port­man has done her home­work with regard to breath pat­tern, pitch, and the refine­ment that strikes most 21st cen­tu­ry ears as a bit stilt­ed and strange. Most impres­sive to Singer is the way Port­man trans­fers Kennedy’s odd­ly musi­cal elon­ga­tion of cer­tain syl­la­bles to oth­er words in the script. Tis no mere par­rot job.

Jamie Foxx’s Oscar-win­ning turn as Ray Charles suc­ceeds on copi­ous research and his abil­i­ty to inhab­it Charles’ habit­u­al smile. Obvi­ous­ly, the pos­ture in which an indi­vid­ual holds their mouth has a lot to do with the sound of their voice, and Foxx was blessed with plen­ty of source mate­r­i­al.

The 1982 epic Gand­hi pro­vid­ed the ver­sa­tile Ben Kings­ley with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case not one, but two, idi­olects. The adult Gand­hi under­went a dra­mat­ic and well doc­u­ment­ed evo­lu­tion from the British accent he adopt­ed as a young law stu­dent in Lon­don to a proud­ly Indi­an voice bet­ter suit­ed to inspir­ing a nation to uni­fy against its British col­o­niz­ers.

It’s like­ly that many of us have nev­er con­sid­ered the speech-relat­ed build­ing blocks Singer scru­ti­nizes while ana­lyz­ing 29 oth­er per­for­mances for the WIRED video, above—epenthesis, tongue posi­tions, rel­a­tive degrees of emphat­ic mus­cu­lar­i­ty, and retroflex consonants—but it’s easy to see how they play a part.

Singer invites you to expand his research and teach­ing library by record­ing your­self speak­ing extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly and read­ing from two sam­ple texts here. Pray that who­ev­er plays you in the biopic gets it right.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Why Do Peo­ple Talk Fun­ny in Old Movies?, or The Ori­gin of the Mid-Atlantic Accent

Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Pol­ish, Irish, Aus­tralian, Yid­dish & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Andy Kaufman Reads Earnestly from The Great Gatsby and Enrages His Audience

in Comedy | December 6th, 2018

In a 1980 appear­ance on David Let­ter­man, a dead­pan Andy Kauf­man tells a sob sto­ry about his nonex­is­tent fam­i­ly leav­ing him. He then “admon­ish­es the audi­ence for laugh­ing,” writes William Hugh­es at the AV Club, and pan­han­dles for their spare change. “The genius of the bit, as always, is that Kauf­man nev­er blinks. Even as he’s led away by the show’s staff, there’s noth­ing about his unemo­tion­al entreaties that sug­gests that what he’s doing isn’t any­thing but the sober-cold truth.”

He pulled a sim­i­lar stunt the fol­low­ing year, in a guest appear­ance on a short-lived SNL knock­off called Fri­days. After bel­liger­ent­ly break­ing char­ac­ter dur­ing a sketch, he appeared the fol­low­ing week to deliv­er an apol­o­gy, which became a bit­ter, sad sack appeal for sym­pa­thy, while he stared blankly at the cam­era in what his writ­ing part­ner Bob Zmu­da called his “glazed-over hostage look.” Kauf­man was “more of an antag­o­nist of his audi­ence than an ally,” Jake Rossen com­ments at Men­tal Floss.

Rather than punch­ing up or down, he punched out, open­ly exploit­ing our trust and abus­ing our patience. Kauf­man invit­ed us to mock him, only to reroute our respons­es into empa­thy, anger, con­fu­sion, or bore­dom. “Many crowds had streamed into com­e­dy clubs only to endure Kauf­man nap­ping in a sleep­ing bag,” writes Rossen, “or read­ing earnest­ly from The Great Gats­by, threat­en­ing to start all over again if they inter­rupt­ed.” Once giv­en a choice between him read­ing or play­ing a record, a night­club chose the record. “It was the sound of Kauf­man read­ing.”

Just what is the prop­er response to this? The emo­tion­al mis­di­rec­tion works so well because we know we should react a cer­tain way, for exam­ple, to a bro­ken man in great distress—whether he’s ask­ing for spare change or look­ing for all the world like a kid­nap vic­tim. In his Gats­by read­ing, Kauf­man pulls a dif­fer­ent lever—drawing on our innate sense of deco­rum dur­ing a lit­er­ary event, one con­duct­ed by a vague­ly Euro­pean-sound­ing man in a tuxe­do, no less. He incites his audi­ence by mak­ing them laugh at a sit­u­a­tion they would, in its prop­er con­text, try to take seri­ous­ly.

In the clip of Kauf­man read­ing Gats­by at the top, he begins with a cou­ple rus­es and feints: play­ing a snip­pet of a record that makes us think we might be in for a Mighty Mouse-like rou­tine, intro­duc­ing him­self as an actor who plays a screw­ball Amer­i­can com­ic named Andy Kauf­man. Once he launch­es into Gats­by, how­ev­er, and it becomes clear he isn’t going to stop, that the read­ing is the act, the audi­ence becomes incensed, express­ing a pal­pa­ble sense of betray­al.

You came for com­e­dy, he tells them in his Let­ter­man and Fri­days bits; I’m going to give you human­i­ty. You came for com­e­dy, he announces in the Gats­by read­ing; I’m going to give you cul­ture, whether you want it or not. But it’s not me who’s mis­be­hav­ing, he says (in dia­bol­i­cal ver­sions of “stop hit­ting your­self”), it’s you. In the clip above from Man on the Moon, Jim Car­rey draws out the pas­sive aggres­sive impuls­es inher­ent in these maneu­vers, show­ing Andy break­ing out Gats­by as an act of retal­i­a­tion against a crowd who demands that he enter­tain them on their terms.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Kauf­man Cre­ates May­hem on Late Night TV: When Com­e­dy Becomes Per­for­mance Art (1981)

The Improb­a­ble Time When Orson Welles Inter­viewed Andy Kauf­man (1982)

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

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

Hunter S. Thompson, Existentialist Life Coach, Presents Tips for Finding Meaning in Life

in Life, Philosophy | December 6th, 2018

Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At first blush, Hunter S. Thomp­son might be the last per­son you would want to ask for advice. After all, his dai­ly rou­tine involved copi­ous amounts of cocaine, LSD and Chivas Regal. He once raked a neighbor’s house with gun­fire. And he once almost acci­den­tal­ly blew up John­ny Depp. Yet beneath his gonzo per­sona lay a man who thought deeply and often about the mean­ing of it all. He was some­one who spent a life­time star­ing into the abyss.

So in 1958, before he became a counter-cul­ture icon, before he even start­ed writ­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Thomp­son wrote a long let­ter about some of the big ques­tions in life to his friend, Hume Logan, who was in the throes of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis.

While the first cou­ple of para­graphs warns against the dan­gers of seek­ing advice, Hunter then expounds at length on some deep, and sur­pris­ing­ly lev­el-head­ed truths. Below are a few pearls of wis­dom:

• Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this!
• You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.)
• To put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
• Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.
• Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

The let­ter was pub­lished in the 2013 book, Let­ters of Note. You can read it in its entire­ty below.

April 22, 1958
57 Per­ry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dan­ger­ous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies some­thing very close to ego­ma­nia. To pre­sume to point a man to the right and ulti­mate goal— to point with a trem­bling fin­ger in the RIGHT direc­tion is some­thing only a fool would take upon him­self.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sin­cer­i­ty in ask­ing my advice. I ask you though, in lis­ten­ing to what I say, to remem­ber that all advice can only be a prod­uct of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be dis­as­ter to anoth­er. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you spe­cif­ic advice, it would be too much like the blind lead­ing the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the ques­tion: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous for­tune, or to take arms against a sea of trou­bles … ” (Shake­speare)

And indeed, that IS the ques­tion: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this! Think of any deci­sion you’ve ever made which had a bear­ing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been any­thing but a choice how­ev­er indi­rect— between the two things I’ve men­tioned: the float­ing or the swim­ming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is anoth­er ques­tion. It is unques­tion­ably bet­ter to enjoy the float­ing than to swim in uncer­tain­ty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a cas­tle in the stars, but a real and tan­gi­ble thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock can­dy moun­tain,” the entic­ing sug­ar-can­dy goal that has lit­tle taste and no sub­stance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to under­stand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us cer­tain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a con­cept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you want­ed to be a fire­man. I feel rea­son­ably safe in say­ing that you no longer want to be a fire­man. Why? Because your per­spec­tive has changed. It’s not the fire­man who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reac­tions to expe­ri­ence. As your expe­ri­ences dif­fer and mul­ti­ply, you become a dif­fer­ent man, and hence your per­spec­tive changes. This goes on and on. Every reac­tion is a learn­ing process; every sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence alters your per­spec­tive.

So it would seem fool­ish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a dif­fer­ent angle every day? How could we ever hope to accom­plish any­thing oth­er than gal­lop­ing neu­ro­sis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tan­gi­ble goals, any­way. It would take reams of paper to devel­op this sub­ject to ful­fill­ment. God only knows how many books have been writ­ten on “the mean­ing of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many peo­ple have pon­dered the sub­ject. (I use the term “god only knows” pure­ly as an expres­sion.) There’s very lit­tle sense in my try­ing to give it up to you in the prover­bial nut­shell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for reduc­ing the mean­ing of life to one or two para­graphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “exis­ten­tial­ism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE fire­men, bankers, or doc­tors— but that we must make the goal con­form to the indi­vid­ual, rather than make the indi­vid­ual con­form to the goal. In every man, hered­i­ty and envi­ron­ment have com­bined to pro­duce a crea­ture of cer­tain abil­i­ties and desires— includ­ing a deeply ingrained need to func­tion in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE some­thing; he has to mat­ter.

As I see it then, the for­mu­la runs some­thing like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES func­tion at max­i­mum effi­cien­cy toward the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is ful­fill­ing a need (giv­ing him­self iden­ti­ty by func­tion­ing in a set pat­tern toward a set goal), he avoids frus­trat­ing his poten­tial (choos­ing a path which puts no lim­it on his self-devel­op­ment), and he avoids the ter­ror of see­ing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws clos­er to it (rather than bend­ing him­self to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to con­form to his own abil­i­ties and desires).

In short, he has not ded­i­cat­ed his life to reach­ing a pre-defined goal, but he has rather cho­sen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolute­ly sec­ondary: it is the func­tion­ing toward the goal which is impor­tant. And it seems almost ridicu­lous to say that a man MUST func­tion in a pat­tern of his own choos­ing; for to let anoth­er man define your own goals is to give up one of the most mean­ing­ful aspects of life— the defin­i­tive act of will which makes a man an indi­vid­ual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Nat­u­ral­ly, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row life, a ver­ti­cal rather than a hor­i­zon­tal exis­tence. So it isn’t any too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who pro­cras­ti­nates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by cir­cum­stance.

So if you now num­ber your­self among the dis­en­chant­ed, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seri­ous­ly seek some­thing else. But beware of look­ing for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a liv­ing WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writ­ing a book. I hope it’s not as con­fus­ing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of look­ing at things. I hap­pen to think that it’s pret­ty gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble, but you may not. Each of us has to cre­ate our own cre­do— this mere­ly hap­pens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my atten­tion. I’m not try­ing to send you out “on the road” in search of Val­hal­la, but mere­ly point­ing out that it is not nec­es­sary to accept the choic­es hand­ed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do some­thing he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means con­vince your­self that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of com­pa­ny.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Deca­dent Dai­ly Break­fast: The “Psy­chic Anchor” of His Fre­net­ic Cre­ative Life

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Full Rotation of the Moon: A Beautiful, High Resolution Time Lapse Film

in Astronomy | December 6th, 2018

This is a sight to behold. Above, the moon spins in full rota­tion, all in high-res­o­lu­tion footage tak­en by The Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion.

Here’s how NASA explains what you’re see­ing:

No one, present­ly, sees the Moon rotate like this. That’s because the Earth­’s moon is tidal­ly locked to the Earth, show­ing us only one side. Giv­en mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, how­ev­er, com­bined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), a high res­o­lu­tion vir­tu­al Moon rota­tion movie has now been com­posed. The above time-lapse video starts with the stan­dard Earth view of the Moon. Quick­ly, though, Mare Ori­en­tale, a large crater with a dark cen­ter that is dif­fi­cult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equa­tor. From an entire lunar month con­densed into 24 sec­onds, the video clear­ly shows that the Earth side of the Moon con­tains an abun­dance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dom­i­nat­ed by bright lunar high­lands.

You can find many more Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter videos on this page, and down­load your own copy of the Moon Rota­tion Movie right 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!

via @ZonePhysics

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Cre­ates a Visu­al­iza­tion That Sets Breath­tak­ing Footage of the Moon to Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” (Moon­light)

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

The Source Code for the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Mis­sion Is Now Free on Github

Introducing the Mellotron: A Groovy 1965 Demonstration of the “Musical Computer” Used by The Beatles, Moody Blues & Other Psychedelic Pop Artists

in Music | December 5th, 2018

With a name like a laid back 60s robot, the Mel­lotron has been most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with psy­che­del­ic pop like The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” the Moody Blues “Nights in White Satin,” and David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” But the ear­ly sam­pling key­board, an elec­tro-acoustic device that used pre-record­ed tape strips mount­ed inside an organ-like key­board, was first mar­ket­ed, Gor­don Reid writes at Sound on Sound, to “old-time/­mod­ern/Latin dance audi­ences.” It was sup­posed to con­vinc­ing­ly repli­cate an orches­tra.

The Mel­lotron, built and sold by Mel­lotron­ics, Ltd., was based on an ear­li­er instru­ment, the Cham­ber­lin Music­Mas­ter, which used record­ed notes from mem­bers of Lawrence Welk’s band—hardly the hippest sounds on the scene when the Mel­lotron MK1 debuted in 1963. By the time of the MK2, how­ev­er, the device devel­oped into a pow­er­ful mul­ti­tim­bral machine, with a dual key­board, “con­tain­ing more than 70 3/8‑inch tape play­ers, a reverb unit, ampli­fiers and speak­ers.”

The rock world “took the Mel­lotron to its heart,” Reid com­ments, “and it was this that ensured its suc­cess.” It could sim­u­late oth­er instru­ments, but it did so with its own dis­tinc­tive fla­vor (pro­vid­ing not only the flute intro to “Straw­ber­ry Fields” but the Span­ish gui­tar at the begin­ning of The White Album’s “The Con­tin­u­ing Sto­ry of Buf­fa­lo Bill”). Brad Allen Williams sums up the slight­ly more portable Mel­lotron M400’s lim­it­ed oper­a­tions suc­cinct­ly at Fly­pa­per:

Due to the rather prim­i­tive tape mech­a­nism (and the inher­ent chal­lenges of keep­ing 35 play­back heads and pinch rollers in good con­di­tion), Mel­lotrons are a lit­tle unpre­dictable and can be quite char­ac­ter­ful. The action of the key­board is stiff and unusu­al-feel­ing, so vir­tu­osic play­ing is not usu­al­ly in the cards. All of these “bugs” some­how become “fea­tures,” how­ev­er — the quirks add up to a son­ic char­ac­ter that’s icon­ic and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able!

Like so many dis­tinc­tive ana­log instru­ments from pop music’s past, the Mel­lotron has returned in Nord’s updat­ed Mel­lotron MK VI, which “uses new mechan­ics and state of the art tech­nol­o­gy, but orig­i­nal unused stock tape heads.” That’s groovy news for musi­cians who dig the Mellotron’s dat­ed idio­syn­crasies. In the short film above, how­ev­er, from 1965, British TV per­son­al­i­ties Eric Robin­son and David Nixon intro­duce the instru­ment to view­ers as a first-rate new “musi­cal com­put­er.”

With built in rhythms and a wide selec­tion of sounds—including trom­bone and French accordion—the Mel­lotron was on the cut­ting edge of its day. Robin­son and Nixon put the device through its paces, show its inter­nal oper­a­tions, and gen­er­al­ly show off what essen­tial­ly looked like a nov­el­ty organ built for liv­ing rooms and cabarets before Lennon/McCartney & Co. got their hands on it in 1967. Just above, see McCart­ney give a mod­ern audi­ence a dif­fer­ent sort of demon­stra­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

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

David Byrne Creates a Playlist of Eclectic Music for the Holidays: Stream It Free Online

in Music | December 5th, 2018

Whose music do you put on when the hol­i­day sea­son comes around? Per­haps musi­cians like Lon­nie Hol­ley, Gur­ru­mul, Erkin Koray, and Juan Luis Guer­ra? Maybe you’ve just thrilled with recog­ni­tion at one or more of those names, or maybe you’ve nev­er heard of any of them — but in either case, you should get ready for a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al hol­i­day expe­ri­ence fea­tur­ing their songs and those of many oth­ers, all of them curat­ed by David Byrne. Each month the peri­patet­ic, oft-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cian and for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man posts a new playlist on Radio David Byrne, and the lat­est, “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” will get us into a kind of sea­son­al spir­it into which we’ve nev­er got before.

“So… who rec­om­mends this stuff to me?” Byrne asks. “I’ve known Lon­nie Hol­ley as an artist for quite some time. I saw him do a show at Nation­al Saw­dust not too long ago with trom­bon­ist Dave Nel­son, who toured with St. Vin­cent and I a few years ago.”

“I heard an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of this song by Gur­ru­mul when I was wait­ing to do an inter­view at the radio sta­tion in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. I asked, ‘Whose music is that?’ ” “Erkin Koray I heard after first hear­ing Barış Manço, who may have been rec­om­mend­ed by some friends in Istan­bul when I was there years ago… Turkey had a seri­ous psy­che­del­ic peri­od.” “Juan Luis Guer­ra may have been rec­om­mend­ed many years ago by music jour­nal­ist Daisann McLane at a music fes­ti­val in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia.”

The 41-song jour­ney that is “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” which you can stream below or on Byrne’s offi­cial site, offers not just a chance to hap­pen upon intrigu­ing artists you’d nev­er come across before — as hap­pened to Byrne in all those chance encoun­ters that went into its con­struc­tion — but a break from the same fif­teen or twen­ty songs that have long dom­i­nat­ed the hol­i­day-sea­son rota­tion in homes and pub­lic spaces around the world. The hol­i­days them­selves teach us that tra­di­tion has its place, but Byrne, whose com­pul­sion to dis­cov­er new music from an ever far­ther-flung range of soci­eties and sub­cul­tures, shows us that you can’t let them get you com­fort­able enough to close your ears.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

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.

See the Complete Works of Vermeer in Augmented Reality: Google Makes Them Available on Your Smartphone

in Art, Technology | December 4th, 2018

No muse­um could ever put on a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion. The prob­lem isn’t quan­ti­ty: thus far, only 36 works have been defin­i­tive­ly attrib­uted to the 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch painter of domes­tic scenes and por­traits, most famous­ly Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. But they all hang in col­lec­tions scat­tered around the world, not just in places like Ams­ter­dam and The Hague but Lon­don, New York, Paris, and else­where besides. Some have become too frag­ile to trav­el, and one, The Con­cert, was stolen in 1990 and has­n’t been seen since. But all of this makes a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion the per­fect con­cept to exe­cute in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, or rather aug­ment­ed real­i­ty — a con­cept just recent­ly exe­cut­ed by the Mau­rit­shuis muse­um and Google Arts & Cul­ture.

“In total, 18 muse­ums and pri­vate col­lec­tions from sev­en coun­tries con­tributed high-res­o­lu­tion images of the Ver­meers in their pos­ses­sion, which were then com­piled into a vir­tu­al muse­um by Google,” writes Giz­mod­o’s Vic­to­ria Song.

“To view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android. So long as you have a smart­phone with a work­ing cam­era, all you have to do is point your phone at a flat sur­face, wave it in a cir­cle, and voila — you, too, can have a vir­tu­al muse­um float­ing above your bed and night­stand. After that, you can pinch and zoom on each of the sev­en rooms to ‘enter’ the AR muse­um to view the paint­ings.” If you enter the vir­tu­al muse­um on a com­put­er, you can nav­i­gate a com­plete­ly vir­tu­al ver­sion of those themed rooms, of which you can catch glimpses in the GIF below.

Google’s aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, in oth­er words, allows not just the cre­ation of an entire vir­tu­al muse­um in which to view Ver­meer’s body of work togeth­er, but the cre­ation of such a muse­um in any loca­tion where you might pos­si­bly open the app. Those of us who tend toward fan­tasies of a high-pow­ered art col­lec­tion will, of course, want to give it a try in our homes and get a taste of what it would look like if we had the cash on hand to round up all the Ver­meers in the world our­selves. Whether the impe­cu­nious Ver­meer him­self — impe­cu­nious in part, no doubt, due to his lack of pro­lifi­ca­cy — enter­tained such dreams of wealth, his­to­ry has­n’t record­ed, though giv­en the unabashed domes­tic­i­ty of his sub­jects, he might well agree that, for an exhi­bi­tion of every­thing he ever paint­ed, there’s no place like home.

Again, to view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, & Oth­er Great Mas­ters Come to Life in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

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.

Download Over 325 Free Art Books From the Getty Museum

in Art, Books | December 4th, 2018

In 2014, Get­ty Pub­li­ca­tions announced the launch of its Vir­tu­al Library, where read­ers can freely browse and down­load 325 art books from the publisher’s back­list cat­a­logue. The Vir­tu­al Library con­sists of texts asso­ci­at­ed with sev­er­al Get­ty insti­tu­tions. Read­ers can view exten­sive­ly researched exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues from the J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um, includ­ing Paul Cézan­ne’s late-life water­colours, when the painter raised the still life to a high art (Cézanne in the Stu­dio: Still Life in Water­col­ors, 2004), as well as the woe­ful­ly under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed Flem­ish illus­tra­tions of the 15th and 16th cen­turies (Illu­mi­nat­ing the Renais­sance: The Tri­umph of Flem­ish Man­u­script, 2003).

The col­lec­tion also con­tains detailed trea­tis­es on art con­ser­va­tion from the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute, and schol­ar­ly works from the Get­ty Research Insti­tute, both of which include a mul­ti­tude of books on spe­cial­ized top­ics. Fan­cy read­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, the two leg­endary 17^th cen­tu­ry painters who lived in the Nether­lands’ city of Antwerp? There’s a book on that.

Intrigued by all the pros­ti­tutes in French impres­sion­ism? Try Paint­ed Love: Pros­ti­tu­tion in French Art of the Impres­sion­ist Era (2003). Per­haps you’re par­tial to ancient vas­es, and have already read The Col­ors of Clay (2006), Pots & Plays (2007), and Greek Vas­es (1983)? Don’t wor­ry, the Getty’s vir­tu­al library has at least 8 more vase-ori­ent­ed books.

All of the Getty’s vir­tu­al library vol­umes are avail­able in a down­load­able PDF for­mat. If you’re look­ing for more free art books, please explore the resources in the Relat­eds below.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2014.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 502 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load 50,000 Art Books & Cat­a­logs from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions

Down­load 200+ Free Mod­ern Art Books from the Guggen­heim Muse­um

2,000+ Archi­tec­ture & Art Books You Can Read Free at the Inter­net Archive

How Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Video Changed Pop Culture Forever: Revisit the 13-Minute Short Film Directed by John Landis

in Dance, Music, Television | December 4th, 2018

Michael Jack­son’s Thriller, the album, had spent the pre­vi­ous year at the top of the charts before the John Lan­dis-direct­ed video for the title track debuted in 1983. Two pre­vi­ous videos, for mas­sive hits “Bil­lie Jean” and “Beat It,” kept him on con­stant rota­tion on the fledg­ling MTV and oth­er net­works. It seemed that the “naïve, preter­nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed 25-year-old” couldn’t get any more inter­na­tion­al­ly famous, but then, as Nan­cy Grif­fin writes at Van­i­ty Fair, “it was the ‘Thriller’ video that pushed Jack­son over the top, con­sol­i­dat­ing his posi­tion as the King of Pop.”

His naïveté was matched by a shrewd, cal­cu­lat­ing ambi­tion, and the sto­ry of the “Thriller” video high­lights both. After see­ing An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don, he chose Lan­dis to make a video that would goose Thriller’s sales as they start­ed to fall. Lan­dis, the pro­fane, irrev­er­ent direc­tor of The Blues Broth­ers and Ani­mal House, may have seemed an odd choice for the whole­some pop star, who pref­aced his zom­bie spoof with a pious dis­claimer about his “strong per­son­al con­vic­tions.” (Short­ly before the video’s release, Jack­son, under pres­sure from the Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es, asked Lan­dis to destroy it.)

It turns out, how­ev­er, that when Jack­son called Lan­dis, he hadn’t seen any of the director’s oth­er films (and Lan­dis hadn’t heard the song). It was Lan­dis who sug­gest­ed that the video be turned into a 14-minute short film, a choice that set the bar high for the form ever since. As he told Billboard’s John Bran­ca on the video’s 35th anniver­sary, just days ago:

Music videos at that time were always just nee­dle drop. Some were pret­ty good, but most were not, and they were com­mer­cials. Michael’s such a huge star that I said, “Maybe I can bring back the the­atri­cal short.” I pitched him the idea, and he total­ly went for it. Michael was extreme­ly enthu­si­as­tic because he want­ed to make movies.

Before “Thriller” even aired, it was a high-pro­file event. “Mar­lon Bran­do, Fred Astaire, Rock Hud­son and Jack­ie Kennedy Onas­sis all turned up on set,” notes Phil Heb­bleth­waite, “and Eddie Mur­phy, Prince and Diana Ross were spot­ted at the pri­vate pre­mier.” After the video pre­miered on MTV at mid­night on Decem­ber 2nd, it sealed the network’s “rep­u­ta­tion as a new cul­tur­al force; dis­solved racial bar­ri­ers in the station’s treat­ment of music,” and “helped cre­ate a mar­ket for VHS rentals and sales.”

“Thriller” turned the mak­ing of music videos into a “prop­er indus­try,” says Bri­an Grant, the British direc­tor who made videos for Tina Turner’s “Pri­vate Dancer” and Whit­ney Houston’s “I Wan­na Dance with Some­body.” It “launched a dance craze,” Karen Bliss writes at Bill­board, and “a red-jack­et fash­ion favorite.” It won three MTV Awards, two Amer­i­can Music Awards, and a Gram­my. In 2009, it became the first music video induct­ed into the Library of Congress’s Nation­al Film Reg­istry, des­ig­nat­ed as a nation­al trea­sure.

But as we look back on unprece­dent­ed his­toric impact “Thriller” had on pop cul­ture, we must also look at its con­tin­ued impact in the present. It remains the most pop­u­lar music video of all time. “’Thriller’ is thriv­ing on YouTube,” Grif­fin writes. Celebri­ties and ordi­nary peo­ple, pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur dance troops, Fil­ipino pris­on­ers and Nor­we­gian sol­diers, rou­tine­ly per­form its dance moves for the cam­era all over the world. An entire genre of how-to videos teach view­ers how to do the “Thriller” dance. This past Sep­tem­ber, it became the first music video released in IMAX 3D.

The video received the doc­u­men­tary treat­ment in Jer­ry Kramer’s Mak­ing Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which pre­miered at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val last year. Lan­dis tells Bran­ca one sto­ry that did not make it into Kramer’s movie. After Quin­cy Jones refused him per­mis­sion to remix the song, he and Jack­son walked into the stu­dio at night, took the tapes, dupli­cat­ed them and returned them. The song that appears in the video “is very dif­fer­ent than the record,” says Lan­dis. “I only used a third of the lyrics. It’s a 3‑minute song; in the film, it plays for 11 min­utes.” Jones and engi­neer Bruce Swe­di­en didn’t even notice, says the direc­tor, they were so enthralled with what they saw onscreen.

What con­tin­ues to dri­ve “Thriller’s” pop­u­lar­i­ty? The com­bi­na­tion of good clean fun and per­fect­ly-pitched camp horror—Vincent Price voiceover and all? The vir­tu­oso dance moves, zom­bie chore­og­ra­phy, and irre­sistibly sleek 80s fash­ions? All of the above, of course, and also some inde­fin­able sum of all these parts, a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of cin­e­mat­ic depth and shiny pop cul­ture sur­faces that set the bench­mark for the for­mat for three-and-a-half decades.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Michael Jack­son Wrote a Song: A Close Look at How the King of Pop Craft­ed “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

James Hill Plays Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” on the Ukulele: Watch One Musi­cian Become a Com­plete Band

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

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

in Books, Literature | December 4th, 2018

Beneath Kurt Vonnegut’s grim, absur­dist humor beat the heart of a human­ist, but not, by any stretch, an opti­mist. Von­negut looked bale­ful­ly at every project intend­ed to improve the sor­ry state of human affairs. In Play­er Piano, for exam­ple, he imag­ines a future very much like that envi­sioned for us by our con­tem­po­rary tech­no­crat­ic elite: near­ly all work has been auto­mat­ed and the mass of unem­ployed are giv­en a mod­est stipend for their liv­ing and fun­neled into what anthro­pol­o­gist David Grae­ber might call “bull­shit jobs.”

“Final­ly,” Ed O’Loughlin writes at The Irish Times, “Vonnegut’s non-tech pro­les rise up against the machines that have per­verse­ly enslaved them, smash­ing all that they can find. For Von­negut, ever the pes­simist, this is not a hap­py end­ing; the rev­o­lu­tion runs out of steam, col­laps­es inter­nal­ly, and the remain­ing rebels go hap­pi­ly to work in the wreck­age of their strug­gle, eager­ly repair­ing the machines that they destroyed them­selves.” This bleak satire can seem almost upbeat next to the fatal­ism of his most famous nov­el, Slaugh­ter­house-Five.

In this book, Von­negut uses an alien race called the Tralfamado­ri­ans to illus­trate the idea that “all moments—past, present, and future—always have exist­ed… always will exist,” as the Mia Naca­mul­li-script­ed TED-Ed ani­ma­tion above explains. The aliens keep the novel’s hero, Bil­ly Pil­grim, in a human zoo, where they patient­ly explain to him the inevitabil­i­ty of all things, includ­ing the bomb­ing of Dres­den, an event Von­negut per­son­al­ly sur­vived, “only to be sent into the ruins as prison labor,” notes Paul Har­ris at The Guardian, “in order to col­lect and burn the corpses.”

To say that Von­negut, who once worked as a press writer for Gen­er­al Elec­tric, was skep­ti­cal of sci­en­tif­ic plans for man­ag­ing nature, human or oth­er­wise, would be a major under­state­ment. As he watched GE sci­en­tists embark on a project for con­trol­ling the weath­er (while the company’s “mil­i­tary col­lab­o­ra­tors have more aggres­sive plans in mind”), Von­negut began to demand “an answer to one of science’s great­est eth­i­cal ques­tions,” writes WNYC: “are sci­en­tists respon­si­ble for the pur­suit of knowl­edge alone, or are they also respon­si­ble for the con­se­quences of that knowl­edge?”

The ques­tion becomes even more com­pli­cat­ed if we accept the premise that the future is fore­or­dained, but with­out the inter­ven­tion of all-see­ing aliens, there is no reli­able way for us to pre­dict it. Vonnegut’s expe­ri­ences at GE formed the basis of his 1963 nov­el Cat’s Cra­dle, in which a mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy called Ice-nine ends up freez­ing all of the world’s oceans and bring­ing on cat­a­clysmic storms. Cat’s Cra­dle’s char­ac­ters sur­vive by adopt­ing a reli­gion in which they tell them­selves and oth­ers delib­er­ate lies, and by so doing, invent a kind of mean­ing in the midst of hope­less­ness.

Von­negut stressed the impor­tance of con­tin­gency, of “grow­ing where you’re plant­ed,” so to speak. The best options for his char­ac­ters involve car­ing for the peo­ple who just hap­pen to be around. “We are here to help each oth­er through this thing,” he wrote, “what­ev­er it is.” That last phrase is not an eva­sion; the com­plex­i­ties of the uni­verse are too much for humans to grasp, Von­negut thought. Our attempts to cre­ate sta­ble truths and certainties—whether through abstract in-group iden­ti­ties or grand tech­no­log­i­cal designs—seem bound to cause expo­nen­tial­ly more suf­fer­ing than they solve.

Von­negut may have achieved far more acclaim in his life­time than his con­tem­po­rary Philip K. Dick, but he felt sim­i­lar­ly neglect­ed by the “lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment,” Har­ris writes. “They inter­pret­ed his sim­plis­tic style, love of sci­ence fic­tion and Mid­west­ern val­ues as being beneath seri­ous study.” (See, for exam­ple the 1969 New York Times review of Slaugh­ter­house-Five.) But per­haps even more than the peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant Dick, Vonnegut’s work speaks to us of our cur­rent predica­ment, and offers, if not opti­mism, at least a very lim­it­ed form of hope, in our capac­i­ty to “help each through this thing,” what­ev­er it is.

If you want to ful­ly immerse your­self in Von­negut’s body of work, the Library of Amer­i­ca has cre­at­ed a box set that con­tains all 14 nov­els plus a selec­tion of the best of his sto­ries.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Kurt Von­negut Cre­ates a Report Card for His Nov­els, Rank­ing Them From A+ to D

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

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