R. Crumb Illustrates Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea: Existentialism Meets Underground Comics

in Art, Literature, Philosophy | September 18th, 2018

Sartre’s nov­el Nau­sea intro­duced his philo­soph­i­cal view as a form of ill­ness to a WWII read­er­ship. “Nau­sea is exis­tence reveal­ing itself—and expe­ri­ence is not pleas­ant to see,” he wrote in his own sum­ma­ry of his first book, pub­lished in 1938. The novel’s drama­ti­za­tion of His­to­ri­an Roquentin’ s cri­sis presents a case of exis­ten­tial sick­ness as most­ly invol­un­tary.

Though pub­lished before his many Marx­ist books and essays, Nau­sea con­nects the malaise to a cer­tain class expe­ri­ence. “I have no trou­bles,” thinks Roquentin in Robert Crumb’s short adap­ta­tion of the book above, “I have mon­ey like a cap­i­tal­ist, no boss, no wife, no chil­dren; I exist, that’s all…. And that trou­ble is so vague, so meta­phys­i­cal that I am ashamed of it.” Nau­sea, in one sense, is bour­geoise alien­ation, while Roquentin’s con­ver­sa­tion part­ner, the Self-Taught Man, con­fess­es a naïve human­ist ide­al­ism.

The char­ac­ters alone, some crit­ics sug­gest, imbue the book with a sub­tle par­o­dy. As he lis­tens to the Self-Taught Man’s trou­bles and rumi­nates on his own, Crumb’s Roquentin grows more Sartre-like. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the Self-Taught Man takes on a Crumb-like demeanor and aspect. Their dia­logue moves briskly, the scene resem­bling My Din­ner with Andre with less ban­ter and more neu­ro­sis. Sartre’s tone lends itself well to Crumb’s obses­sive, tight­ly-com­posed pan­els.

Crumb’s lit­er­ary inter­pre­ta­tions have grav­i­tat­ed toward oth­er anx­ious writ­ers like Charles Bukows­ki and Franz Kaf­ka, as well as the mur­der and incest of the book of Gen­e­sis. The under­ground comics leg­end is right at home with Sartre­an dread and despair. Crumb became famous for Fritz the Cat, an ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of his raunchy hip­ster, what many called his gross­ly sex­ist and racist sex fan­tasies, and the draw­ing and slo­gan “Keep on Truckin’.” He was a fig­ure of 60s and 70s coun­ter­cul­ture, but that’s nev­er where he belonged.

Crumb was a Sartre­an pro­tag­o­nist , even when he “often por­trayed him­self in his work as naked… and pri­apic.” In an an inter­view with Crumb The Guardian describes him:

his words are depres­sive and lugubri­ous, and yet he appears mel­low, laugh­ing eas­i­ly through his exis­ten­tial nau­sea. The most ter­ri­ble sto­ries amuse him as much as they pain him. He tells me how a best friend killed him­self by swal­low­ing four bot­tles of paper cor­rec­tion flu­id, and he chor­tles. He talks of his own despair, and gig­gles. He admits that he could nev­er have imag­ined a life quite so fulfilled—with Aline, and his beloved daugh­ter Sophie, also a car­toon­ist, and suc­cess and money—and says he’s still mis­er­able as hell, and laughs.

He is a lit­tle Roquentin, a lit­tle bit Sartre, a lit­tle bit Self-Taught man, apply­ing to his read­ing of lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy an LSD-assist­ed, sex-pos­i­tive, and unavoid­ably con­tro­ver­sial and depres­sive sen­si­bil­i­ty. See the full Crumb-illus­trat­ed Nau­sea here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

R. Crumb Shows Us How He Illus­trat­ed Gen­e­sis: A Faith­ful, Idio­syn­crat­ic Illus­tra­tion of All 50 Chap­ters

Three Charles Bukows­ki Books Illus­trat­ed by Robert Crumb: Under­ground Com­ic Art Meets Out­sider Lit­er­a­ture

Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb Cre­ates an Illus­trat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

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

Paul McCartney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Questions in Two New Videos

in Music | September 18th, 2018

Paul McCart­ney has played it safe for decades, rely­ing on the bril­liance of his song­writ­ing and musi­cian­ship, which no one ever doubts and so he nev­er has to prove. His songs usu­al­ly fall into a for­mu­la famil­iar from Bea­t­les’ days: “sil­ly love songs,” writes Stephen Ear­lewine at Pitch­fork, “mini-suites… polite polit­i­cal protests, and old-fash­ioned rock­ers.” But while the Bea­t­les had each oth­er, the exper­i­ments of George Mar­tin, LSD, tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, and a moment of per­fect cul­tur­al kismet to twist and warp their music into all sorts of weird shapes, McCartney’s solo releas­es tend to stick to his estab­lished strengths, some­times to the detri­ment of what can hap­pen when he moves out of his com­fort zone to get deep­er and more vul­ner­a­ble.

Yet as near­ly every crit­ic has so far not­ed of his newest album, Egypt Sta­tion—which he heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed, for exam­ple, with an appear­ance on Car­pool Karaoke and a “secret” show at Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion—McCart­ney lets lis­ten­ers in on some sur­pris­ing con­fes­sion­al dark­ness. The Nick Drake-like lyrics of open­er “I Don’t Know” show him earnest­ly con­fronting aging, mor­tal­i­ty, and depres­sion, with­out any of the usu­al sun­ni­ness or comedic turns of phrase: “I got crows at my window/Dogs at my door/I don’t think I can take any­more.” The can­did admis­sion, Erlewine writes, “would be star­tling in any con­text, but what stings most is the tac­it acknowl­edg­ment that 76-year-old McCart­ney real­izes he’s near­ing the end of his long, wind­ing road.”

In inter­views, like his lat­est with Rolling Stone, how­ev­er, McCart­ney sounds as upbeat as ever. He describes sit­ting in Apple meet­ings after the breakup of the Bea­t­les as “like see­ing the death of your favorite pet,” but he also enthus­es about his patched-up rela­tion­ship with Yoko (“Now it’s like we’re mates”), love for his band—who have now been play­ing togeth­er longer than both the Bea­t­les and Wings—and his pride in his musi­cal lega­cy (“It’s a damn good job I did”). He sounds just as pleased to be onstage in his mid-70s as he was in his 20s—the gen­uine love of per­form­ing and engag­ing with fans hasn’t dulled one bit with age, just as his abil­i­ty to write and sell hit records remains sol­id.

As for his time-test­ed for­mu­la, Erlewine com­ments, it only “makes the moments where Paul attempts some­thing slight­ly new seem all the more appar­ent.” One new thing he’s game­ly tried in recent years is mak­ing online videos for fans. A few years back, he dropped a few lessons show­ing how to play the bass and gui­tar parts on “Ever Present Past” from 2007’s Mem­o­ry Almost Full. This year, McCartney’s fan ser­vice includes the two videos here. First at the top, he spends almost a half an hour dis­cussing the best-known songs in his 60-year-career for GQ: “I Lost My Lit­tle Girl,” “Yes­ter­day,” “I Saw Her Stand­ing There,” “And I Love Her,” “Eleanor Rig­by,” “A Day in the Life,” “Hey Jude,” “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” “Black­bird,” “Let It Be,” “Hi Hi Hi,” “Here Today,” “Jet,” and Egypt Sta­tion’s “I Don’t Know.”

Above, McCart­ney accept’s Wired’s “auto­com­plete chal­lenge,” answer­ing the internet’s most searched ques­tions about him­self, such as “Why is Paul McCartney’s nick­name ‘Mac­ca’?” and “Why did Paul McCart­ney write ‘Let it Be’?” (Answers: “Cause I’m from Liv­er­pool, and they abbre­vi­ate every­thing in Liv­er­pool” and he was “a bit stressed out”—and a lit­tle high—and his moth­er came to him in a dream with the advice: “just let it be.”) Is there always more learn about Paul McCart­ney? Yes, appar­ent­ly there is. But even when he repeats him­self, he’s still great fun to watch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

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

Umberto Eco Explains Why We Make Lists

in History, Literature | September 17th, 2018

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the Nation­al Archives in Hol­land

We hate lists, which have told us what to do since at least the days Leonar­do da Vin­ci, and which now, as “lis­ti­cles,” con­sti­tute one of the low­est stra­ta of inter­net con­tent. But we also love lists: a great many of us click on those lis­ti­cles, after all, and one might argue that the list, as a form, rep­re­sents the begin­ning of writ­ten texts. “The list is the ori­gin of cul­ture,” said Umber­to Eco in a 2009 Der Spiegel inter­view about the exhi­bi­tion on the his­to­ry of the list he curat­ed at the Lou­vre. “It’s part of the his­to­ry of art and lit­er­a­ture. What does cul­ture want? To make infin­i­ty com­pre­hen­si­ble. It also wants to cre­ate order  — not always, but often.”

How, as mere human beings, do we impose order when we gaze up into infin­i­ty, down into the abyss — pick your metaphor of the sub­lime­ly, incom­pre­hen­si­bly vast? We do it, Eco thought, “through lists, through cat­a­logs, through col­lec­tions in muse­ums and through ency­clo­pe­dias and dic­tio­nar­ies.” The breadth as well as depth of the knowl­edge he accu­mu­lat­ed through­out his 84 years — which itself could seem sub­lime­ly and incom­pre­hen­si­bly vast, as any­one who has read one of his list-filled nov­els knows — placed him well to explain the ori­gins, func­tions, and impor­tance of the list. In the Spiegel inter­view he names Don Gio­van­ni’s 2,063 lovers, the con­tents of Leopold Bloom’s draw­ers, and the many ships and gen­er­als spec­i­fied in the Ili­ad as just a few of the clas­sic lists and enu­mer­a­tions of West­ern cul­ture.

Eco’s research into and/or obses­sion with lists pro­duced not just the exhi­bi­tion at the Lou­vre but also a book, The Infin­i­ty of Lists: An Illus­trat­ed Essay. Did it also lead him to any oth­er answers about why, whether in the Mid­dle Ages with its “very clear image of the uni­verse,” the Renais­sance and Baroque eras with their “world­view based on astron­o­my,” the “post­mod­ern age” in which we live today, or any oth­er time, “the list has pre­vailed over and over again?” Ulti­mate­ly, we make lists when­ev­er we expe­ri­ence a “defi­cien­cy of lan­guage,” such as when lovers describe one anoth­er (“Your eyes are so beau­ti­ful, and so is your mouth, and your col­lar­bone”) or when we remem­ber the “very dis­cour­ag­ing, humil­i­at­ing lim­it” of death. Mak­ing lists of things that seem infi­nite is “a way of escap­ing thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.”

Hav­ing died in 2016 him­self, Eco left behind an immense per­son­al library (his walk­through of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). “It might actu­al­ly be 50,000 books,” he said to the Spiegel inter­view­er, but he refused to put them on a list and find out for sure: “When my sec­re­tary want­ed to cat­a­logue them, I asked her not to. My inter­ests change con­stant­ly, and so does my library.” If he were to try to list his inter­ests, he would have had to keep scrap­ping the list and draw­ing up a new one; more than pro­vid­ing abun­dant mate­r­i­al for his writ­ing, this con­stant and life­long cir­cu­la­tion of fas­ci­na­tions (he men­tioned first lov­ing Chopin at 16, and again in his sev­en­ties) con­firmed his engage­ment with the infi­nite world around him: “If you inter­act with things in your life, every­thing is con­stant­ly chang­ing. And if noth­ing changes, you’re an idiot.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Watch Umber­to Eco Walk Through His Immense Pri­vate Library: It Goes On, and On, and On!

Umber­to Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

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

in Astronomy | September 17th, 2018

The next time some non-crafty type dis­par­ages your hob­by as a frumpy pur­suit, show them soft­ware engi­neer Sarah Spencer’s “Stargaz­ing.”

The 9’x 15’ knit­ted tapes­try is an accu­rate equa­to­r­i­al star map fea­tur­ing all 88 con­stel­la­tions as viewed by the naked eye, includ­ing the Milky Way and the South­ern Cross, the best known star group in Spencer’s native Aus­tralia.

The project ate up 33 pounds of Aus­tralian wool in three shades, includ­ing the same ultra­ma­rine blue sport­ed by a num­ber of accom­plished Aus­tralian women whose por­traits are on dis­play as part of the 2018 Archibald Prize.

While “Stargaz­ing” is machine knit, its cre­ation took longer than most hand-knit­ted projects.

What start­ed as a lark, hack­ing and pro­gram­ming a 40-year-old, sec­ond­hand Emp­isal knit­ting machine, grew into some­thing much larg­er when Spencer devel­oped a com­put­er algo­rithm that allowed one tri-col­ored knit stitch per pix­el.

Years lat­er, she was ready to start knit­ting her star map, a reflec­tion of her inter­est in STEM—science, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics.

“Stargaz­ing” is actu­al­ly com­prised of sev­en pan­els, each the result of dusk-to-dawn labor on the part of the hacked machine. Stitch­ing them togeth­er required many more human hours.

The piece was unveiled at the UK’s tech-and-arts fes­ti­val, Elec­tro­mag­net­ic Field, on August 31. Spencer had cal­i­brat­ed the place­ment of the tapestry’s plan­ets to cor­re­spond with their celes­tial coun­ter­parts’ loca­tions that night.

For now, the tapes­try is one-of-a-kind, but giv­en its indus­tri­al ori­gins, it’s not hard to fore­see a future in which cou­ples can cud­dle under astro­nom­i­cal­ly cor­rect afghans, while gaz­ing up at the stars.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever

in Music, Technology | September 17th, 2018

There is a scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke Sky­walk­er defeats the mon­strous, man-eat­ing Ran­cor, crush­ing its skull with a por­tullis, and we see the beast’s keep­er, a port­ly shirt­less gen­tle­man in leather breech­es and head­gear, weep­ing over the loss of his beloved friend. I think of this scene when I read about a night in 1974 at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room when Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart walked on the stage and found the band’s sound engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley stand­ing in front of “a sol­id wall of over 600 speak­ers.”

As Enmore Audio tells it:

Tears streamed down his face and he whis­pered to the mass of wood, met­al, and wiring, with the ten­der­ness of any par­ent wit­ness­ing their child’s first recital, “I love you and you love me—how could you fail me?”

The sto­ry sums up Owsley’s total ded­i­ca­tion to what became known as “The Wall of Sound,” a feat of tech­ni­cal engi­neer­ing that “changed the way tech­ni­cians thought about live engi­neer­ing.” The “three-sto­ry behe­moth… was free of all dis­tor­tion… served as its own mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and solved many, if not all of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems that sound engi­neers faced at that time.” But, while it had required much tri­al and error and many refine­ments, it did not fail, as you’ll learn in the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Live sound prob­lems not only bedev­iled engi­neers but bands and audi­ences as well. Through­out the six­ties, rock con­certs grew in size and scope, audi­ences grew larg­er and loud­er, yet ampli­fi­ca­tion did not. Low-wattage gui­tar amps could hard­ly be heard over the sound of scream­ing fans. With­out mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, bands could bare­ly hear them­selves play. This “noise cri­sis,” writes Moth­er­board, “con­front­ed musi­cians who went elec­tric at the height of the war in Viet­nam,” but it has been “rou­tine­ly snuffed from the annals of mod­ern music.”

In dra­mat­ic recre­ations of the peri­od, drums and gui­tars boom and wail over the noise of sta­di­um and fes­ti­val crowds. For ears accus­tomed to the pow­er of mod­ern sound sys­tems, the actu­al expe­ri­ence, by con­trast, would have been under­whelm­ing. Most Bea­t­les fans know the band quit tour­ing in 1966 because they couldn’t hear them­selves over the audi­ence. Things improved some­what, but the Dead, “obsessed with their sound to com­pul­sive degrees,” could not abide the noisy, feed­back-laden, under­pow­ered sit­u­a­tion. Still, they weren’t about to give up play­ing live, and cer­tain­ly not with Owsley on board.

“A Ken­tucky-born crafts­man and for­mer bal­let dancer”—and a man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­uter of “mass quan­ti­ties of high-grade LSD,” whose prof­its financed the Dead for a time—Owsley applied his obses­sion with “sound as both a con­cept and a phys­i­cal thing.” To solve the noise cri­sis for the Dead, he first built an inno­v­a­tive sound sys­tem in 1973 (after serv­ing a cou­ple stints in prison for sell­ing acid). The fol­low­ing year, he sug­gest­ed putting the PA sys­tem behind the band, “a crazy idea at the time.”

His exper­i­ments in ‘74 evolved to include line arrays—“columns of speak­ers… designed to con­trol the dis­per­sion of sound across the fre­quen­cy range”—noise-canceling micro­phones to clear up mud­dy vocals, six sep­a­rate sound sys­tems that could iso­late eleven chan­nels, and a quadra­phon­ic encoder for the bass, “which took a sig­nal,” Enmore notes, “from each string and pro­ject­ed it through its own set of speak­ers.” The mas­sive Wall of Sound could not last long. It had to be stream­lined into a far more man­age­able and cost-effec­tive tour­ing rig. All the same, Owsley and the band’s will­ing­ness take ideas and exe­cu­tion to extreme lengths changed live sound for­ev­er for the bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

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

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Played by 28 Trombone Players

in Music | September 14th, 2018

28 trom­bone play­ers got togeth­er and played Queen’s beloved 1975 hit, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” They call it, “Bone­hemi­an Rhap­sody.” Enjoy.

Con­trib­u­tors in the video above include:

Jig­gs Whigh­am — Glenn Miller, Stan Ken­ton

Den­son Paul Pol­lard — Met Opera / Jacobs School of Music

Jen­nifer Whar­ton — Leader Bone­gasm — https://jenniferwharton.com/

Thomas Hultén — Hous­ton Grand Opera/Houston Bal­let

Josi­ah Williams — Blast: The Music of Dis­ney

Joseph L. Jef­fer­son — South­east Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty — http://www.josephljefferson.com/

Ger­ry Pagano — Sym­pho­ny — http://gerrypagano.org/

Javier Stup­pard — Fresh2Def Horns/ Rath Artist

Peter Moore — Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Mar­shall Gilkes — New Album! https://www.marshallgilkes.com/

Mar­tin McCain — Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty — https://www.martinmccain.com/

Zsolt Szabo — West­ern Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty

Jere­my Wil­son — Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty — https://jeremywilsonmusic.com/

Isabelle Lavoie — Thun­der Bay Sym­pho­ny

Aman­da Stew­art — St. Louis Sym­pho­ny — http://amandatrombone.com/

Dr. Natal­ie Man­nix — UNT — http://www.nataliemannix.com/

Zoltan Kiss — Mnzoil Brass — http://www.zoltankiss.com/

Matyas Veer — Essen­er Phil­har­moniker Saat­sop­er Stuttgart — http://www.matyasveer.com/

Paul The Trom­bon­ist — The Inter­net — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6e…

Karen Marston — Mt San Anto­nio College/Omni Brass

Javier Nero — Jazz Soloist / Com­pos­er — https://www.javiernero.com/

Dr. Deb Scott — Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty — https://sfatrombones.wordpress.com/

Tol­ga Akman — Lätzsch Per­form­ing Artist

Domeni­co Cata­lano — Slide­Sticks Trio/Basel Symphony/Haag Artist

José Mil­ton Vieira — Orches­tra Brazil

Györ­gy Gyivic­san — Szeged Trom­bone Ensem­ble — http://szegedtrombones.com/en

Bri­an Hecht — Atlanta Sym­pho­ny — http://www.brianhecht.com/

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Discovered Radio Pulsars in 1974, But the Credit Went to Her Advisor; In 2018, She Gets Her Due, Winning a $3 Million Physics Prize

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | September 14th, 2018

Say you made a Nobel-wor­thy sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and the prize went to your the­sis super­vi­sor instead. How would you take it? Prob­a­bly not as well as Joce­lyn Bell Bur­nell, dis­cov­er­er of the first radio pul­sars, to whom that very thing hap­pened in 1974. “Demar­ca­tion dis­putes between super­vi­sor and stu­dent are always dif­fi­cult, prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to resolve,” she said a few years lat­er. “It is the super­vi­sor who has the final respon­si­bil­i­ty for the suc­cess or fail­ure of the project. We hear of cas­es where a super­vi­sor blames his stu­dent for a fail­ure, but we know that it is large­ly the fault of the super­vi­sor. It seems only fair to me that he should ben­e­fit from the suc­cess­es, too.”

But now, 44 years lat­er, Bell Bur­nel­l’s achieve­ment has brought a dif­fer­ent prize her way: the Spe­cial Break­through Prize in Fun­da­men­tal Physics, to be pre­cise, and the $3 mil­lion that comes with it, all of which she will donate “to fund women, under-rep­re­sent­ed eth­nic minor­i­ty and refugee stu­dents to become physics researchers.” “Like the stars of Hid­den Fig­ures and DNA researcher Ros­alind Franklin, Bell Burnell’s per­son­al sto­ry embod­ies the chal­lenges faced by women in sci­en­tif­ic fields,” write the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Anto­nia Noori Farzan. “Bell Bur­nell, who was born in North­ern Ire­land in 1943, had to fight to take sci­ence class­es after age 12.”

Reject­ing an expect­ed life of cook­ery and needle­work, Bell Bur­nell “read her father’s astron­o­my books cov­er to cov­er, teach­ing her­self the jar­gon and grap­pling with com­plex con­cepts until she felt she could com­pre­hend the uni­verse. She com­plained to her par­ents, who com­plained to the school, which ulti­mate­ly allowed her to attend lab along with two oth­er girls. At the end of the semes­ter, Bell Bur­nell ranked first in the class.” Still, by the time she arrived at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty for grad­u­ate school, she “was cer­tain some­one had made a mis­take admit­ting her.” Her sub­se­quent work there on one of “the most impor­tant astro­nom­i­cal finds of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” which you can see her talk about in the clip above, should have dis­pelled that notion.

But as Josh Jones wrote here on Open Cul­ture last month, Bell Bur­nell was a vic­tim of the “Matil­da effect,” named for suf­frag­ist and abo­li­tion­ist Matil­da Joslyn Gage, which iden­ti­fies the “denial of recog­ni­tion to women sci­en­tists” seen through­out the his­to­ry of sci­ence. The new gen­er­a­tion of prizes like the Break­through Prize in Fun­da­men­tal Physics, found­ed in 2012 by physi­cist-entre­pre­neur Yuri Mil­ner, have the poten­tial to coun­ter­act the Matil­da effect, but many oth­er Matil­das have yet to be rec­og­nized. “I am not myself upset about it,” as Bell Bur­nell put it in 1977 when asked about her non-recep­tion of the Nobel. “After all, I am in good com­pa­ny, am I not!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

Read the “Don’t Let the Bas­tards Get You Down” Let­ter That Albert Ein­stein Sent to Marie Curie Dur­ing a Time of Per­son­al Cri­sis (1911)

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

Pop Art Posters Cel­e­brate Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists: Down­load Free Posters of Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

94-Year-Old Stroke Survivor Plays Jazz Piano for the First Time in Years

in Life, Music | September 14th, 2018

French musi­cian Fred Yon­net post­ed on Insta­gram an ever so poignant video. He writes: “Great day today — took my men­tor Don Bur­rows to vis­it our old mate Julian Lee in Moss­vale 🎺🎹. He hasn’t played piano for many years since his stroke — he turns 95 this year and we share the same birth­day.”

The scene that unfolds will make your day…

via @TedGioia

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:

81-Year-Old Man Walks into a Gui­tar Shop & Starts Play­ing a Sub­lime Solo: Ignore the Tal­ents of the Elder­ly at Your Own Per­il

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

Dis­cov­er the Retire­ment Home for Elder­ly Musi­cians Cre­at­ed by Giuseppe Ver­di: Cre­at­ed in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

Behold Mystical Photographs Taken Inside a Cello, Double Bass & Other Instruments

in Art, Music, Photography | September 13th, 2018

“If God had designed the orches­tra,” remarks a char­ac­ter in Rick Moody’s Hotels of North Amer­i­ca, “then the cel­lo was His great­est accom­plish­ment.” I couldn’t agree more. The cel­lo sounds sub­lime, looks state­ly… even the word cel­lo evokes regal poise and grace. If orches­tral instru­ments were chess pieces, the cel­lo would be queen: shape­ly and dig­ni­fied, prime mover on the board, majes­tic in sym­phonies, quar­tets, cham­ber pop ensem­bles, post rock bands….

With all its many son­ic and aes­thet­ic charms, I didn’t imag­ine it was pos­si­ble to love the cel­lo more. Then I saw Roman­ian artist Adri­an Bor­da’s mag­nif­i­cent pho­tos tak­en from inside one. The pho­to above, Bor­da tells us at his Deviant Art page, was tak­en from inside “a very old French cel­lo made in Napoleon’s times.” It looks like the bel­ly of the HMS Vic­to­ry mat­ed with the nave of Chartres Cathe­dral. The light descend­ing through the f‑holes seems of some divine ori­gin.

Bor­da has also tak­en pho­tos from inside an old dou­ble bass (above), as well as a gui­tar, sax, and piano. The stringed orches­tral instru­ments, he says, yield­ed the best results. He was first inspired by a 2009 ad cam­paign for the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker that “cap­tured the insides of instru­ments,” writes Twist­ed Sifter, “reveal­ing the hid­den land­scapes with­in.” With­out any sense of how the art direc­tor cre­at­ed the images, Bor­da set about exper­i­ment­ing with meth­ods of his own.

He was lucky enough to have a luthi­er friend who had a con­tra­bass open for repairs. Lat­er he trav­eled to Amiens, where he found the French cel­lo, also open. “To achieve these shots,” Twist­ed Sifter notes, “Bor­da fit a Sony NEX‑6 cam­era equipped with a Samyang 8mm fish­eye lens inside the instru­ment and then used a smart remote so he could pre­view the work­flow on his phone.” Depend­ing on the angle and the play of light with­in the instru­ment, the pho­tos can look eerie, somber, omi­nous, or angelic—mirroring the cello’s expres­sive range.

Bor­da gives the cel­lo inte­ri­or shot above the per­fect title “A Long, Lone­ly Time….” Its play of smoke and light is ghost­ly noir. His pho­to below, of the inside of a sax­o­phone, pulls us into a haunt­ed, alien tun­nel. If you want to know what’s on the oth­er side, con­sid­er the strange sur­re­al­ist worlds of Borda’s main gig as a sur­re­al­ist painter of warped fan­tasies and night­mares. Unlike these pho­tos, his paint­ings are full of lurid, vio­lent col­or, but they are also filled with mys­te­ri­ous musi­cal motifs. See more of Bor­da’s inte­ri­or instru­ment pho­tos at Deviant Art and Twister Sifter.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Luthi­er Birth a Cel­lo in This Hyp­not­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Nine Tips from Bill Mur­ray & Cel­list Jan Vogler on How to Study Intense­ly and Opti­mize Your Learn­ing

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

One Second from Each Episode of Twin Peaks: Experience David Lynch’s Groundbreaking TV Drama in Less than a Minute

in Television | September 13th, 2018

Even if you watched Twin Peaks dur­ing its orig­i­nal broad­cast on ABC in 1990 and 1991 and have nev­er revis­it­ed the show since, you’ll vivid­ly remem­ber a great many moments from it: some because of their emo­tion­al impact, some because of their aes­thet­ic impact, and some because you had no idea what to make of them. But despite the incom­pre­hen­sion it famous­ly caused its view­ers, Twin Peaks nev­er­the­less slow­ly and inex­orably drew them into its real­i­ty: the real­i­ty of the epony­mous small Wash­ing­ton log­ging town whose home­com­ing queen has been mur­dered and in which FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er has arrived to inves­ti­gate.

David Lynch and Mark Frost planned it that way: peo­ple who tuned in week after week to find out who killed Lau­ra Palmer would, in the­o­ry, keep watch­ing even after that unsolved part of the sto­ry had long since fad­ed into the back­ground. But pres­sure from ABC even­tu­al­ly forced the cre­ators to resolve that mys­tery, at which point even many die-hard Peaks-heads won­dered whether the show had lost its way.

You’ll see that peri­od, as well as every every oth­er, rep­re­sent­ed in the video above, which com­press­es the entire run of Twin Peaks — the thir­ty episodes of the orig­i­nal two sea­sons plus the eigh­teen episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired last year on Show­time — into less than a minute, draw­ing one sec­ond from each episode.

Oth­er respect­ed tele­vi­sion shows, like Sein­feld and Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, have under­gone this treat­ment before. But to watch Lynch and Frost’s ground­break­ing dra­ma as an assem­bly of par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful indi­vid­ual sec­onds pro­vides an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence, one that may well bring back mem­o­ries of sur­prise, con­fu­sion, hilar­i­ty, and even a kind of awe. Per­haps it does­n’t allow you to inhab­it the dis­tinc­tive long-form Lynchi­an (and Fros­t­ian) vision in the way that the series itself does, but this con­densed, sin­gle-shot ver­sion may well get you want­i­ng to vis­it Twin Peaks again, whether you last vis­it­ed 27 years ago or just yes­ter­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

The Late Alan Thicke Hosts a Twin Peaks Behind-the-Scenes Spe­cial (1990)

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Clas­sic Scene From Twin Peaks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.