Japanese Artist Creates Bookshelf Dioramas That Magically Transport You Into Tokyo’s Back Alleys

in Art, Books | November 23rd, 2018

Should you find your­self in a Japan­ese city, spend time not on the Star­bucks- and McDon­ald’s-lined boule­vards but on the back streets that wind in all direc­tions behind them. Or bet­ter yet, head into the back alleys branch­ing off those streets, those half-hid­den spaces that offer the most evoca­tive glimpses of life in urban Japan by far. Only there can you find pas­sage into the won­der­ful­ly idio­syn­crat­ic busi­ness­es tucked into the cor­ners of the city, from bars and restau­rants to cof­fee shops and of course book­stores. Those book­stores have long occu­pied Japan’s back alleys, but now an artist by the name of Monde has brought the back alleys onto book­shelves.

Mon­de’s hand­craft­ed wood­en book­end dio­ra­mas, which you can see on his Twit­ter feed as well as in a Buz­zfeed Japan arti­cle about them, repli­cate the back alleys of his home­town of Tokyo. They do it in minia­ture, and down to the small­est detail — even the elec­tric lights that illu­mi­nate the real thing at night.

Scaled to the height of not just a book but a small Japan­ese paper­back, the likes of which fill those back-alley book­stores from floor to ceil­ing, they’re designed to slot right into book­shelves, pro­vid­ing a wel­com­ing street scene to those brows­ing through their own or oth­ers’ vol­umes in the same way that the actu­al alleys they mod­el come as a pleas­ant sur­prise to passers­by on the main streets.

Tokyo has become a beloved city to Japan­ese and non-Japan­ese alike for count­less rea­sons, but who can doubt the appeal of the way it com­bines the feel­ing of small-town life in its many neigh­bor­hoods that togeth­er make for a megac­i­ty scale? Mon­de’s dio­ra­mas cap­ture the dis­tinc­tive mix­ture of domes­tic­i­ty and den­si­ty in the cap­i­tal’s back alleys, reflect­ing the nar­row­ness of the spaces in form and their some­how organ­i­cal­ly man­made nature — step­ping stones, pot­ted-plant gar­dens, and all the small pieces of infra­struc­ture that have accu­mu­lat­ed to sup­port life in the homes of so many — in con­tent. Though Tokyo has for decades been regard­ed, espe­cial­ly from the West, as a place of thor­ough hyper­moder­ni­ty, its alleys remind us that with­in the some­times over­whelm­ing present exists a mix­ture of eras that feel time­less — just like the con­tent of a well-curat­ed book­shelf.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

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.

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The Solar System Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Creates a Handcrafted Quilt to Use as a Teaching Aid in Her Astronomy Class

in Astronomy, Education, K-12 | November 23rd, 2018

Ded­i­cat­ed teach­ers often go well beyond the call of duty, sac­ri­fic­ing large amounts of free time for the bet­ter­ment of their class­rooms and their pupils.

Any teacher who’s ever paid for sup­plies out of their own pock­et, then spent the week­end con­struct­ing an elab­o­rate bul­letin board dis­play, will appre­ci­ate the her­culean efforts of Sarah Ellen Hard­ing Bak­er.

Bak­er, a teacher and astronomer in Cedar Coun­ty, Iowa, is rumored to have spent 7 years embroi­der­ing a beau­ti­ful appliquéd quilt to use as a visu­al aid in lec­tures.

Fin­ished in 1876, the quilt is large enough that even a near-sight­ed stu­dent could see its plan­ets and moons from the back row.

Orbits are indi­cat­ed with silken threads against a black back­ground.

A comet in the upper left is thought to be Hal­ley’s Comet, whose last appear­ance would have been in 1835, 12 years before Baker’s birth.

The Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry, where Baker’s quilt is housed, notes that astron­o­my was deemed an accept­able inter­est for 19th-cen­tu­ry women, which may explain the num­ber of celes­tial-themed quilts that date to the peri­od.

Author and quilt his­to­ri­an Bar­bara Brack­man includes a few on her Mate­r­i­al Cul­ture blog, while her His­tor­i­cal­ly Mod­ern blog vis­its some more recent exam­ples, includ­ing one that makes use of a stars-and-earth hot-iron trans­fer pub­lished in Good House­keep­ing mag­a­zine, to accom­pa­ny an arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing the win­ners of its 1939 World of Tomor­row Quilt Con­test.

Bak­er got just ten years out of her quilt before suc­cumb­ing to tuber­cu­lo­sis at the age of 39, the moth­er of 7 chil­dren, 5 of whom sur­vived her.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

Too Big for Any Muse­um, AIDS Quilt Goes Dig­i­tal Thanks to Microsoft

Watch Nina Paley’s “Embroi­der­ma­tion,” a New, Stun­ning­ly Labor-Inten­sive Form of Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Masterclass Is Running a Special “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal: It Gives You & Family Member/Friend Access to Their Complete Course Catalog

in Deals | November 23rd, 2018

A quick fyi: Mas­ter­class is run­ning a Buy One, Give One Free spe­cial until Novem­ber 26 at 11:59:59 PM PST.

Here’s the gist: If you buy an All-Access pass to their 45 cours­es, you will receive anoth­er All-Access Pass to give to some­one else at no addi­tion­al charge. An All-Access pass costs $180, and lasts one year. For that fee, you–and a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend–can watch cours­es cre­at­ed by Annie Lei­bovitz, Wern­er Her­zog, Mar­tin Scors­ese, David Mamet, Jane Goodall, Mar­garet Atwood, Helen Mir­ren, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Her­bie Han­cock, Alice Waters and so many more. If you’re think­ing this sounds like a pret­ty good hol­i­day present, I’d have to agree.

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

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Psilocybin Could Soon Be a Legal Treatment for Depression: Johns Hopkins Professor, Roland Griffiths, Explains How Psilocybin Can Relieve Suffering

in Health, Psychology, Science, TED Talks | November 23rd, 2018

Much of the recent sci­en­tif­ic research into psy­che­delics has picked up where researchers left off in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, before LSD, psilo­cy­bin, and oth­er psy­choac­tive drugs became coun­ter­cul­tur­al means of con­scious­ness expan­sion, and then banned, ille­gal sub­stances the gov­ern­ment sought to con­trol. Sci­en­tists from sev­er­al fields stud­ied psy­che­delics as treat­ments for addic­tion, depres­sion, and anx­i­ety, and end-of-life care. These appli­ca­tions were con­ceived and test­ed sev­er­al decades ago.

Now, thanks to some seri­ous invest­ment from high-pro­file insti­tu­tions like Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, and thanks to chang­ing gov­ern­ment atti­tudes toward psy­choac­tive drugs, it may be pos­si­ble for psilo­cy­bin, the active ingre­di­ent in “mag­ic mush­rooms,” to get legal approval for ther­a­py in a clin­i­cal set­ting by 2021. “For the first time in U.S. his­to­ry,” Shel­by Hart­man reports at Rolling Stone, “a psy­che­del­ic drug is on the fast track to get­ting approved for treat­ing depres­sion by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

As Michael Pol­lan has detailed in his lat­est book, How to Change Your Mind, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for psilo­cy­bin and oth­er such drugs are vast. “But before the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion can be peti­tioned to reclas­si­fy it,” Brit­tany Shoot notes at For­tune, the drug “first has to clear phase III clin­i­cal tri­als. The entire process is expect­ed to take about five years.” In the TEDMED video above, you can see Roland R. Grif­fiths, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at Johns Hop­kins, dis­cuss the ways in which psilo­cy­bin, “under sup­port­ed con­di­tions, can occa­sion mys­ti­cal-type expe­ri­ences asso­ci­at­ed with endur­ing pos­i­tive changes in atti­tudes and behav­ior.”

The impli­ca­tions of this research span the fields of ethics and med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy and reli­gion, and it’s fit­ting that Dr. Grif­fiths leads off with a state­ment about the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and sci­ence, sup­port­ed by a quote from Ein­stein, who said “the most beau­ti­ful and pro­found emo­tion we can expe­ri­ence is the sen­sa­tion of the mys­ti­cal. It’s the source of all true sci­ence.” But the work Grif­fiths and oth­ers have been engaged in is pri­mar­i­ly prac­ti­cal in nature—though it does not at all exclude the mystical—like find­ing effec­tive means to treat depres­sion in can­cer patients, for exam­ple.

“Six­teen mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from depres­sion and approx­i­mate­ly one-third of them are treat­ment resis­tant,” Hart­man writes. “Depres­sion is also an epi­dem­ic world­wide, affect­ing 300 mil­lion peo­ple around the world.” Psy­chotrop­ic drugs like psilo­cy­bin, LSD, and MDMA (which is not clas­si­fied as a psy­che­del­ic), have been shown for a long time to work for many peo­ple suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness and addic­tions.

Although such drugs present some poten­tial for abuse, they are not high­ly addic­tive, espe­cial­ly rel­a­tive to the flood of opi­oids on the legal mar­ket that are cur­rent­ly dev­as­tat­ing whole com­mu­ni­ties as peo­ple use them to self-med­icate. It seems that what has most pre­vent­ed psy­che­delics from being researched and pre­scribed has as much or more to do with long-stand­ing prej­u­dice and fear as it does with a gen­uine con­cern for pub­lic health. (And that’s not even to men­tion the finan­cial inter­ests who exert tremen­dous pres­sure on drug pol­i­cy.)

But now, Hart­man writes, “it appears [researchers] have come too far to go back—and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is final­ly rec­og­niz­ing it, too.” Find out why this research mat­ters in Dr. Grif­fiths’ talk, Pollan’s book, the Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies, and some of the posts we’ve linked to below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Use Psy­che­del­ic Drugs to Improve Men­tal Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

New LSD Research Pro­vides the First Images of the Brain on Acid, and Hints at Its Poten­tial to Pro­mote Cre­ativ­i­ty

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

When Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD, Expe­ri­enc­ing “the Most Serene, the Most Beau­ti­ful Death” (1963)

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

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The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

in Music, Random | November 22nd, 2018

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion. Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to every­one who plans to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day today.

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:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Sar­cas­tic “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

William Shat­ner Raps About How to Not Kill Your­self Deep Fry­ing a Turkey

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

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The Impossibly Cool Album Covers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Creative Team Behind These Iconic Designs

in Art, Design, Jazz, Music, Photography | November 22nd, 2018

If you stepped into a record store in the 1950s and 60s, you would like­ly be drawn almost imme­di­ate­ly to a Blue Note release—whether or not you were a fan of jazz or had heard of the artist or even the label. “If you went to those record stores,” says Estelle Caswell in the Vox Ear­worm video above, “it prob­a­bly wasn’t the sound of Blue Note that imme­di­ate­ly caught your atten­tion. It was their album cov­ers.”

Now those designs are hal­lowed jazz iconog­ra­phy, with their “bold typog­ra­phy, two tone pho­tog­ra­phy, and min­i­mal graph­ic design.” Of course, it should go with­out say­ing that the sound of Blue Note is as dis­tinc­tive and essen­tial as its look, thanks to its founders’ musi­cal vision, the fault­less ear of pro­duc­er and engi­neer Rudy Van Gelder, and the ros­ter of unbe­liev­ably great musi­cians the label recruit­ed and record­ed.

But back to those cov­ers….

“Their bold use of col­or, inti­mate pho­tog­ra­phy, and metic­u­lous­ly placed typog­ra­phy came to define the look of jazz” in the hard bop era, and thus, defined the look of cool, a “refined sophis­ti­ca­tion” vibrat­ing with rest­less, sul­try, smoky, classy, moody ener­gy. The rat pack had noth­ing on Blue Note. Their cov­ers “have today become an epit­o­me of graph­ic hip,” writes Robin Kin­ross at Eye mag­a­zine. (And lest we fetishize the cov­ers at the expense of their con­tents, Kin­ross makes sure to add that they “are no more than the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of an organ­ic whole.”)

Flip over any one of those beau­ti­ful­ly-designed Blue Note records from, say, 1955 to 65, the label’s peak years, and you’ll find two names cred­it­ed for almost all of their designs: pho­tog­ra­ph­er Fran­cis Wolff and graph­ic design­er Reid Miles. Wolff, says pro­duc­er and Blue Note archivist Michael Cus­cu­na in the Ear­worm video, shot almost every Blue Note ses­sion from “the minute he arrived.”

“One of the most impres­sive, and shock­ing things” about Wolff’s pho­to shoots, “was that the aver­age suc­cess rate of those pho­tos was real­ly extra­or­di­nary. He was like the jazz artist of pho­tog­ra­phy in that he could nail it imme­di­ate­ly.” Once Wolff filled a con­tact sheet with great shots, it next came to Miles to select the per­fect one—and the per­fect crop—for the album cov­er. These sat­u­rat­ed por­traits turned Blue Note artists into immor­tal heroes of hip.

But Reid’s exper­i­ments with typog­ra­phy, “inspired by the ever present Swiss let­ter­ing style that defined 20th cen­tu­ry graph­ic design,” notes Vox, pro­vid­ed such an impor­tant ele­ment that the let­ter­ing some­times edged out the pho­tog­ra­phy, such as in the cov­er of Joe Henderson’s In ‘n Out, which fea­tures only a tiny por­trait of the artist in the upper left-hand cor­ner, nes­tled in the dot of a low­er-case “i.”

Miles pushed the excla­ma­tion point to absurd lengths on Jack­ie McLean’s It’s Time, which again rel­e­gates the artist’s pho­to to a tiny square in the cor­ner while the rest of the cov­er is tak­en up with bold, black “!!!!!!!!!!!”s over a white back­ground. It’s “star­tling­ly get­ting your atten­tion,” Cus­cu­na com­ments. On Lou Donaldson’s Sun­ny Side Up, Miles dis­pens­es with pho­tog­ra­phy alto­geth­er, for a strik­ing black and white design that makes the title seem like it might up and float away.

But Miles’ type-cen­tric cov­ers, though excel­lent, are not what we usu­al­ly asso­ciate with the clas­sic Blue Note look. The syn­the­sis of Wolff’s impec­ca­ble pho­to­graph­ic instincts and Miles’ sur­gi­cal­ly keen eye for fram­ing, col­or, and com­po­si­tion com­bined to give us the pen­sive, mys­te­ri­ous Coltrane on Blue Train, the impos­si­bly cool Son­ny Rollins on the cov­er of Newk’s Time, the total­ly, wild­ly in-the-moment Art Blakey on The Big Beat, and so, so many more.

Reid Miles had the rare tal­ent only the best art direc­tors pos­sess, says Cus­cu­na: the abil­i­ty to “cre­ate a look for a record that was high­ly indi­vid­ual but also that fit into a stream that gave the label a look.” Learn more about his work with Wolff in Robin Kinross’s essay, see many more clas­sic Blue Note album cov­ers here, and make sure to lis­ten to the music behind all that bril­liant graph­ic design in this huge, stream­ing discog­ra­phy of Blue Note record­ings. To view them in print for­mat, see the defin­i­tive book, The Cov­er Art of Blue Note Records: The Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

The Ground­break­ing Art of Alex Stein­weiss, Father of Record Cov­er Design

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

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

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The Making of “Bohemian Rhapsody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Iconic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Documentary

in Music | November 22nd, 2018

Despite being fraught with pro­duc­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, an absent direc­tor, and a crit­i­cal quib­bling over its sex­u­al­i­ty pol­i­tics, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the biopic of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen, has been doing very well at the box office. And though it has thrust Queen’s music back into the spot­light, has it even real­ly gone away?

The song itself, the 6 minute epic “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” was the top of the UK sin­gles charts for nine weeks upon its release and hasn’t been for­got­ten since. It’s part of our col­lec­tive DNA, but with a cer­tain caveat…it’s noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to cov­er. It is so fine­ly con­struct­ed that it can’t be decon­struct­ed, leav­ing artists to stand in the shad­ow of Mercury’s deliv­ery. Bri­an May, in the above video, gives cred­it to Axl Rose for get­ting close to the pow­er­ful high reg­is­ters of Mer­cury, but even that was a kind of karaoke. And let’s not even talk about Kanye West’s stab at it.

So it’s a good time to check in with this 45 minute-long mini-doc on the mak­ing of the song, which took the band into the stratos­phere. Pro­duced in 2002 for the band’s Great­est Hits DVD, it fea­tures gui­tarist Bri­an May and drum­mer Roger Tay­lor. The first part is on the writ­ing of the song, the sec­ond part on the mak­ing of the music video, and the third, the bulk of the doc, on the pro­duc­tion.

Don’t expect any expla­na­tion of the sub­ject mat­ter of the song–as May says, Mer­cury would have shrugged off any inter­pre­ta­tion and dis­missed any search for depth. And while Mer­cury always took care over his lyrics, the pow­er is all there in the music.

As for the video, that came about from neces­si­ty, as the band want­ed to be on Top of the Pops and tour at the same time. By using their rehearsal stage at Elstree stu­dios for the per­for­mance footage and a side area for the choral/­close-up seg­ments, they made a strange­ly icon­ic video. (Who doesn’t think of Queen’s four mem­bers arranged in a dia­mond when those vocals start up?). The two main effects were a prism lens on the cam­era and video feed­back, all done live.

The last part is fas­ci­nat­ing and a deep dive into the mix. Bri­an May, along­side stu­dio engi­neer Justin Shirley Smith, play just the piano, bass, and drums from the song at first. Mer­cury was a self-taught pianist who played “like a drum­mer,” with a metronome in his head, says May.

The gui­tarist also iso­lates his var­i­ous gui­tar parts, includ­ing the har­mon­ics dur­ing the open­ing bal­lad por­tion, the “shiv­ers down my spine” sound made by scrap­ing the strings, and the famous solo, which he wrote as a coun­ter­point to Mercury’s melody. It’s geek­ery of the high­est order, but it’s for a song that deserves such atten­tion.

Inside The Rhap­sody will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay
Hear Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals on Their Endur­ing Clas­sic Song, “We Are The Cham­pi­ons”

Fred­die Mercury’s Final Days: Watch a Poignant Mon­tage That Doc­u­ments the Last Chap­ter of the Singer’s Life

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.

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How to Write a Bestselling Page Turner: Learn from The Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown’s New Masterclass

in Online Courses, Writing | November 22nd, 2018

“Dan Brown vis­it­ed my Eng­lish class,” remem­bers the New York­er’s Joshua Roth­man. “It hap­pened in the spring of 1998,” five years before Brown hit the big­time with The Da Vin­ci Code, a thriller best known for its colos­sal sales num­bers. “None of us had heard of Brown, or of his book” — his debut nov­el, Dig­i­tal Fortress — “and we were annoy­ing, arty lit­tle snooty-snoots. Why would we want to talk with the author of a ‘tech­no-thriller’ about com­put­er hack­ers?” But the class’ atti­tude did­n’t stop Brown from shar­ing the writ­ing wis­dom he had to offer, deliv­ered in the form of such guide­lines (in Roth­man’s mem­o­ry) as “Set your sto­ry in an exot­ic loca­tion,” “Make your char­ac­ters inter­est­ing peo­ple with secrets,” “Have lots of plot twists,” and “End each chap­ter with a cliffhang­er.”

At the time, Roth­man did­n’t under­stand why Brown would come to his class to “give a bunch of arty high-school kids advice about how to write cheesy thrillers.” But now, as a pro­fes­sion­al writer him­self, Roth­man real­izes “why Brown’s advice was so prac­ti­cal,” and what it had to teach them about the prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, even rig­ors, of “how to write for a liv­ing.”

Though he does­n’t men­tion any of his class­mates grow­ing up to become the kind of nov­el­ists Brown is, a great many oth­ers dream of such a writ­ing life, few of whom ever had the chance to ben­e­fit from a class­room vis­it by the man him­self. But they can now enroll in “Dan Brown Teach­es Writ­ing Thrillers,” a new course from online edu­ca­tion com­pa­ny Mas­ter­class whose trail­er you can watch above.

Any fan of Brown’s writ­ing — or the block­buster movies that have been made out of it — knows that, as far as exot­ic loca­tions, char­ac­ters with secrets, plot twists, and cliffhang­ers go, he has hard­ly aban­doned his prin­ci­ples. His Mas­ter­class cov­ers all of those aspects in depth and more besides, from “The Anato­my of a Thriller” to “Cre­at­ing Heroes and Vil­lains” to “Cre­at­ing Sus­pense” to “Pro­tect­ing Your Process.” Brown also devotes two sec­tions to research, which he once called in a Goodreads ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion “the most over­looked facet of writ­ing a suc­cess­ful page turn­er.” If any liv­ing writer knows how to come up with a suc­cess­ful page turn­er, Brown does, and unlike in his nov­els them­selves, he cer­tain­ly does­n’t seem inclined to bury the secret under lay­ers of his­to­ry, sym­bol­ism, con­spir­a­cy, and mur­der. You can enroll in Brown’s new thriller-writ­ing class (which runs $90) here. You can also pay $180 to get an annu­al pass to all of Mas­ter­class’ cours­es.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Mal­colm Glad­well Teach­ing His First Online Course: A Mas­ter Class on How to Turn Big Ideas into Pow­er­ful Sto­ries

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

Judy Blume Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Writ­ing

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writ­ers

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.

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Free: Download 15,000+ Free Golden Age Comics from the Digital Comic Museum

in Comics/Cartoons | November 21st, 2018

The Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um offers free access to hun­dreds of pre-1959 com­ic books, uploaded by users who often offer his­tor­i­cal research and com­men­tary along­side high-qual­i­ty scans.

The site’s mod­er­a­tors and admin­is­tra­tors are par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful to avoid post­ing non-pub­lic-domain comics (a com­pli­cat­ed des­ig­na­tion, as described in this forum thread). The result­ing archive is devoid of many famil­iar com­ic-book char­ac­ters, like those from Mar­vel, D.C., or Dis­ney.

On the oth­er hand, because of this restric­tion, the archive offers an inter­est­ing win­dow into the themes of less­er-known comics in the Gold­en Age—romance, West­erns, com­bat, crime, super­nat­ur­al and hor­ror. The cov­ers of the romance comics are great exam­ples of pop­u­lar art.

Inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing how home­front Amer­i­can cul­ture reflect­ed fight­ing in World War II and Korea, and the anx­i­eties of the Cold War? The archive is full of titles like “Fight­ing Yank”  (or “War­front”) that trade on true sto­ries of past com­bat and present-day engage­ments. Many, like these “Atom­ic Attack” books from the ear­ly 1950s, have a dis­tinc­tive Cold War fla­vor, with sci­ence-fic­tion­al imag­in­ings of futur­is­tic com­bat. (“See how the war of 1972 will be fought! The war that YOU, your­self, might have to take part in…”)

The muse­um holds some unex­pect­ed and for­got­ten titles, like the Mad Mag­a­zine knock-off “Eh.” Here you can see how look­ing at a com­ic that was­n’t suc­cess­ful enough to have a last­ing lega­cy (and, there­fore, a renewed copy­right) can be enlight­en­ing in and of itself. What sub­jects did “Eh” cov­er that Mad might have avoid­ed?

The DCM asks users to reg­is­ter and log in before down­load­ing com­ic files. Reg­is­tra­tion is free, and—for now—there’s no lim­it on the num­ber of titles you can down­load. You can enter the archive here.

When you’re there, make sure you vis­it the site’s ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of those noto­ri­ous ‘Pre-Code’ Hor­ror comics of the 50s. Also see the Archives and Col­lec­tions area where artists of note have been giv­en their own indi­vid­ual spot­light.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2013.

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:

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion.

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The Psychedelic 1970s Animations of Keiichi Tanaami: A Music Video for John Lennon’s “Oh Yoko!,” Surreal Tributes to Elvis & Marilyn Monroe, and More

in Animation, Art | November 21st, 2018

If you want to see the West as you’ve nev­er seen it before, go to Japan. Since the end of the Sec­ond World War, there have been few big West­ern phe­nom­e­na in which Japan­ese cre­ators have not tak­en an inter­est, then turned around and made their own. One of the most pow­er­ful imag­i­na­tions among those cre­ators belongs to Kei­ichi Tanaa­mi, who came of age sur­round­ed by the likes of Mick­ey Mouse and Elvis after doing much of his grow­ing up amid the chaos and dev­as­ta­tion of war. Born in 1936 and still active today, he’s pro­duced a body of work whose ear­li­est pieces go back to the 1950s, and even the vari­ety of media he’s used — illus­tra­tion, graph­ic design, paint­ings, comics, ani­ma­tion — can bare­ly con­tain his ever-expand­ing vision, a mix­ture of pop cul­ture and and sym­bol­ic iconog­ra­phy drawn from Amer­i­ca, Japan, and deep down in his own psy­che.

“A mag­a­zine that is packed to the brim with human inter­ests and desires bears a strong resem­blance to who I am as a per­son,” Tanaa­mi once wrote, a descrip­tion reflect­ed by his cur­rent work as well as that of pre­vi­ous eras. Take these short ani­mat­ed films, three of which come from the ear­ly 1970s — an aus­pi­cious time indeed for his brand of psy­che­delia to break through in the West.

In 1971’s Good-Bye Mar­i­lyn, Tanaa­mi pays trib­ute to per­haps the most icon­ic woman Amer­i­ca has ever pro­duced; that same year’s Good-Bye Elvis and USA draws its inspi­ra­tion from quite pos­si­bly Amer­i­ca’s most icon­ic man. Tana­mi makes use of the imagery of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and Elvis Pres­ley in a way no oth­er artist has, though he was hard­ly alone in his fas­ci­na­tion with the very fas­ci­na­tion those fig­ures com­mand­ed: Andy Warhol, for instance, also got artis­tic mileage out of them.

It was Warhol who showed Tanaa­mi how artists of their sen­si­bil­i­ty could make a career. Tanaa­mi first saw Warhol’s work on a trip to New York City in 1967. “Warhol was in the process of shift­ing from com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor to artist, and I both wit­nessed and expe­ri­enced first­hand his tac­tics, his method of inci­sion into the art world,” Tanaa­mi once recalled. “He used con­tem­po­rary icons as motifs in his works and for his oth­er activ­i­ties put togeth­er media such as films, news­pa­pers and rock bands.” In 1975, after becom­ing the first art direc­tor of the Japan­ese edi­tion of Play­boy, he returned to New York to vis­it the mag­a­zine’s head office and took a side trip to Warhol’s Fac­to­ry and took in what Warhol and his col­lab­o­ra­tors had been up to with exper­i­men­tal film. But Tanaa­mi had already been mak­ing seri­ous inroads into that field him­self, as evi­denced by the two afore­men­tioned shorts as well as his 1973 ani­ma­tion of John Lennon’s “Oh, Yoko!” — a kind of ear­ly music video — up top.

Few artists of any nation­al­i­ty have hybridized the thor­ough­ly com­mer­cial and the deeply per­son­al as Tanaa­mi, who got his start in adver­tis­ing and not long there­after was design­ing the cov­ers for Japan­ese edi­tions of albums by Jef­fer­son Air­plane and The Mon­kees. But as he also said in a recent Hype­beast inter­view, “a lot of my work is dri­ven by old mem­o­ries of the past, espe­cial­ly the fear that I felt as a child dur­ing the sev­er­al wars that took place. The fear I felt see­ing a per­son dying. But then there’s also the good feel­ings I have from play­ing as a child. I inte­grate all aspects of my mind and mem­o­ries into my work.” You can see oth­er exam­ples of it at Ubuweb, and Tanaami’s 2013 ani­ma­tion Adven­tures in Beau­ty Won­der­land above shows how that inte­gra­tion has con­tin­ued, tak­ing as it does just as much from tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese sym­bols and design motifs as it does from the work of Lewis Car­roll — a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly thrilling and elab­o­rate aes­thet­ic jour­ney, all of it com­mis­sioned by the cos­met­ics com­pa­ny Sepho­ra.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “The Mid­night Par­a­sites,” a Sur­re­al Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Set in the World of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (1972)

Japan­ese Com­put­er Artist Makes “Dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans” in 1964: When Giant Main­frame Com­put­ers Were First Used to Cre­ate Art

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & More

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

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