Watch Author Chuck Palahniuk Read Fight Club 4 Kids

in Books, Comedy, Film | September 18th, 2017

The first rule of Hors­ing Around Club is: You do not talk about Hors­ing Around Club.  ― Chuck Palah­niuk, Fight Club for Kids

Retool­ing a pop­u­lar show, film, or com­ic to fea­ture younger ver­sions of the char­ac­ters, their per­son­al­i­ties and rela­tion­ships vir­tu­al­ly unchanged, can be a seri­ous, if cyn­i­cal source of income for the orig­i­nal cre­ators.

The Mup­pets, Archie, Sher­lock Holmes, and James Bond have all giv­en birth to spin-off babies.

So why not author Chuck Palah­niuk?

Per­haps because spin-off babies are designed to gen­tly ensnare a new and younger audi­ence, and Palah­niuk, whose 2002 nov­el Lul­la­by hinged on a nurs­ery rhyme that kills chil­dren in their cribs, is unlike­ly to file down the dark, twist­ed edges that have won him a cult fol­low­ing.

That said, his most recent title is for­mat­ted as a col­or­ing book, with anoth­er due to drop lat­er this fall.

The same spir­it of mis­chief dri­ves Fight Club for Kids, which mer­ci­ful­ly will not be hit­ting the children’s sec­tion of your local book­store in time for the upcom­ing hol­i­day sea­son (or ever).

Much like Tyler Dur­den, Palah­niuk’s most infa­mous cre­ation, this title is but a fig­ment, exist­ing only in the above video, where it is read by its puta­tive author.

If you think Samuel L. Jackson’s nar­ra­tion of Go the F**k to Sleep—which can actu­al­ly be pur­chased in book form—rep­re­sents the height of adult read­ers run­ning off the rails, you ain’t heard noth­ing yet:

The horse­play would go on until it was done

And every­one who did it would always have fun

Espe­cial­ly the Boy Who Had No Name

Who once just, like, beat this dude, who was actu­al­ly Jared Leto in the movie, which was so fuckin’ cool and intense, and he’s just pum­mel­ing this guy and of course, being Jared Leto, he was essen­tial­ly a mod­el, but when our guy is done with him, he’s just this pur­ple, bloat­ed, chewed up bub­blegum-look­ing moth­er­fuck­er cov­ered in blood, head to toe!

(The sec­ond rule of Hors­ing Around Club is: You DO NOT TALK ABOUT HORSING AROUND CLUB!)

Find more print­able Chuck Palah­niuk col­or­ing pages here.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

What Are the Most Stolen Books? Book­store Lists Fea­ture Works by Muraka­mi, Bukows­ki, Bur­roughs, Von­negut, Ker­ouac & Palah­niuk

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Famous Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in a Short Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Dr. Jane Goodall Is Now Teaching an Online Course on Conservation, Animal Intelligence & Activism

in Environment, Online Courses | September 17th, 2017

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.

Back in June, we men­tioned that the great pri­ma­tol­o­gist and anthro­pol­o­gist Dr. Jane Goodall was gear­ing up to teach her first online course on envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion, ani­mal intel­li­gence, and activism. Now, it seemed worth giv­ing this quick update–Goodal­l’s course is ready to go. It fea­tures 29 lessons and costs $90. You can sign up and take the course through Mas­ter­Class here. (You can pur­chase an All-Access Annu­al Pass for every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­log for $180.)

Above watch a trail­er that intro­duces the course. Below see her dis­cuss the course on the Tonight Show with Jim­my Fal­lon.

Oth­er cours­es cur­rent­ly offered by Mas­ter­class include:

• Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing
• David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing
• Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy
• Aaron Sorkin on Screen­writ­ing

Find more cours­es taught by star instruc­tors here.

Note: Mas­ter­Class is one of our part­ners. So if you sign up for a course, it ben­e­fits not just you and Mas­ter­Class. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

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!

When Michel Foucault Tripped on Acid in Death Valley and Called It “The Greatest Experience of My Life” (1975)

in Philosophy | September 15th, 2017

Image by Nemo­main, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

French the­o­rist Michel Fou­cault rose to inter­na­tion­al promi­nence with his crit­i­cal histories—or “archaeologies”—of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and tech­no­crat­ic pow­er. His first book, Mad­ness and Civ­i­liza­tion, described the Enlight­en­ment-era cre­ation of insan­i­ty as a cat­e­go­ry set apart from rea­son, which enabled those labeled mad to be sub­ject­ed to painful, inva­sive treat­ments and lose their free­dom and agency dur­ing a peri­od he called “the Great Con­fine­ment.”

A fol­low-up, The Birth of the Clin­ic, appeared in 1963, intro­duc­ing the notion of the “med­ical gaze,” a cold, prob­ing ide­o­log­i­cal instru­ment that dehu­man­izes patients and allows peo­ple to be made into objects of exper­i­men­ta­tion. Fou­cault tend­ed to view the world through a par­tic­u­lar­ly grim, claus­tro­pho­bic, even para­noid lens, though one arguably war­rant­ed by the well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ries he unearthed and the con­tem­po­rary tech­no­crat­ic police states they gave rise to.

But Fou­cault also insist­ed that in all rela­tions of pow­er, “there is nec­es­sar­i­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of resis­tance.” His own forms of resis­tance tend­ed toward polit­i­cal activism, adven­tur­ous sex­u­al exploits, Zen med­i­ta­tion, and drugs. He grew pot on his bal­cony in Paris, did cocaine, smoked opi­um, and “deanat­o­mized the local­iza­tion of plea­sure,” as he put it, with LSD. The exper­i­men­ta­tion con­sti­tut­ed what he called a “lim­it expe­ri­ence” that trans­gressed the bound­aries of a social­ly-imposed iden­ti­ty.

But in a strange irony, the first time Fou­cault dropped acid, he him­self became the sub­ject of an exper­i­ment con­duct­ed on him by one of his fol­low­ers, Sime­on Wade, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate School. In 1975 Fou­cault gave a sem­i­nar at UC Berke­ley, where he would lat­er fin­ish his career in the years before his death in 1984. While in Cal­i­for­nia, he accept­ed an invi­ta­tion from Wade and his part­ner Michael Stone­man to take a road trip to Death Val­ley. “I was per­form­ing an exper­i­ment,” Wade remem­bered in a recent inter­view on Boom Cal­i­for­nia. “I want­ed to see [how] one of the great­est minds in his­to­ry would be affect­ed by an expe­ri­ence he had nev­er had before.”

We went to Zabriskie Point to see Venus appear. Michael placed speak­ers all around us, as no one else was there, and we lis­tened to Elis­a­beth Schwarzkopf sing Richard Strauss’s, Four Last Songs. I saw tears in Foucault’s eyes. We went into one of the hol­lows and laid on our backs, like James Turrell’s vol­cano, and watched Venus come forth and the stars come out lat­er. We stayed at Zabriskie Point for about ten hours.

The desert acid trip, Wade says, changed Fou­cault per­ma­nent­ly, for the bet­ter. “Every­thing after this expe­ri­ence in 1975,” he says, “is the new Fou­cault, neo-Fou­cault…. Fou­cault from 1975 to 1984 was a new being.” The evi­dence seems clear enough. Fou­cault wrote Wade and Stone­man a few months lat­er to tell them “it was the great­est expe­ri­ence of his life, and that it pro­found­ly changed his life and his work…. He wrote us that he had thrown vol­umes two and three of his His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty into the fire and that he had to start over again.”

Fou­cault had suc­cumbed to despair pri­or to his Death Val­ley trip, Wade says, con­tem­plat­ing in his 1966 The Order of Things “the death of human­i­ty…. To the point of say­ing that the face of man has been effaced.” After­ward, he was “imme­di­ate­ly” seized by a new ener­gy and focus. The titles of those last two, rewrit­ten, books “are emblem­at­ic of the impact this expe­ri­ence had on him: The Uses of Plea­sure and The Care of the Self, with no men­tion of fini­tude.” Fou­cault biog­ra­ph­er James Miller tells us in the doc­u­men­tary above (at 27:30) —Michel Fou­cault Beyond Good and Evil— that every­one he spoke to about Fou­cault had heard about Death Val­ley, since Fou­cault told any­one who would lis­ten that it was “the most trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence in his life.”

There were some peo­ple, notes inter­view­er Heather Dun­das, who believed that Wade’s exper­i­ment was uneth­i­cal, that he had been “reck­less with Foucault’s wel­fare.” To this chal­lenge Wade replies, “Fou­cault was well aware of what was involved, and we were with him the entire time.” Asked whether he thought of the reper­cus­sions to his own career, how­ev­er, he replies, “in ret­ro­spect, I should have.” Two years lat­er, he left Clare­mont and could not find anoth­er full-time aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tion. After obtain­ing a nurs­ing license, he made a career as a nurse at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal and Ven­tu­ra Coun­ty Hos­pi­tal, exact­ly the sort of insti­tu­tions Fou­cault had found so threat­en­ing in his ear­li­er work.

Wade also authored a 121-page account of the Death Val­ley trip, and in 1978 pub­lished Chez Fou­cault, a mimeo­graphed fanzine intro­duc­tion to the philoso­pher’s work, includ­ing an unpub­lished inter­view with Fou­cault. For his part, Fou­cault threw him­self vig­or­ous­ly into the final phase of his career, in which he devel­oped his con­cept of biopow­er, an eth­i­cal the­o­ry of self-care and a crit­i­cal take on clas­si­cal philo­soph­i­cal and reli­gious themes about the nature of truth and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. He spent the last 9 years of his life pur­su­ing the new path­ways of thought that opened to him dur­ing those extra­or­di­nary ten hours under the hot sun and cool stars of the Death Val­ley desert.

You can read the com­plete inter­view with Wade at BoomCalifornia.com.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

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

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

in Art | September 15th, 2017

Most of us have now and again seen and appre­ci­at­ed Japan­ese wood­block prints, espe­cial­ly those in the tra­di­tion of ukiyo‑e, those “cap­ti­vat­ing images of seduc­tive cour­te­sans, excit­ing kabu­ki actors, and famous roman­tic vis­tas.” Those words come from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, whose essay on the art form describes how, “in the late sev­en­teenth and ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, wood­block prints depict­ing cour­te­sans and actors were much sought after by tourists to Edo and came to be known as ‘Edo pic­tures.’ In 1765, new tech­nol­o­gy made pos­si­ble the pro­duc­tion of sin­gle-sheet prints in a range of col­ors,” which brought about “the gold­en age of print­mak­ing.”

At that time, “the pop­u­lar­i­ty of women and actors as sub­jects began to decline. Dur­ing the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Uta­gawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai (1760–1849) brought the art of ukiyo‑e full cir­cle, back to land­scape views, often with a sea­son­al theme, that are among the mas­ter­pieces of world print­mak­ing.”

Even if you’ve only seen a few Japan­ese wood­block prints, you’ve seen the work of Hiroshige and Hoku­sai, thou­sands of exam­ples of which you can find in the vast Japan­ese wood­block data­base of Ukiyo‑e.org.

This Eng­lish-Japan­ese bilin­gual site, a project of pro­gram­mer and Khan Acad­e­my engi­neer John Resig, launched in 2012 and now boasts 213,000 prints from 24 muse­ums, uni­ver­si­ties, libraries, auc­tion hous­es, and deal­ers world­wide. You can search it by text or image (if you hap­pen to have one of a print you’d like to iden­ti­fy), or you can browse by peri­od and artist: not just the “gold­en age” of Hiroshige and Hoku­sai (1804 to 1868), but ukiyo-e’s ear­ly years (ear­ly-mid 1700s), the birth of full-col­or print­ing (1740s to 1780s), the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of wood­block print­ing (1804 to 1868), the Mei­ji peri­od (1868 to 1912), the artist-cen­tric Shin Hanga and Sosaku Hanga move­ments (1915 to 1940s), and even the mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary era (1950s to now).

That last group includes wood­block prints of styles and sub­ject mat­ter one cer­tain­ly would­n’t expect from clas­sic ukiyo‑e, though the works nev­er go com­plete­ly with­out con­nec­tion to the tra­di­tion of pre­vi­ous mas­ters. Some of these more recent prac­ti­tion­ers, like Dan­ish-Ger­man-Aus­tralian print­mak­er Tom Kris­tensen, have even gone so far as to not be Japan­ese. Kris­tensen, who “works in typ­i­cal­ly Japan­ese ‘sosaku hanga’ style: self-carved and self-print­ed with nat­ur­al Japan­ese pig­ments on hand-made washi paper,” has pro­duced works like the 36 Views of Green Island series, of which num­ber 21 appears below. The surf­boards may at first seem incon­gru­ous, but one imag­ines that Hiroshige and Hoku­sai, those two great appre­ci­a­tors of waves, might approve. Enter the dig­i­tal archive here, and note that if you click on an image, and then click on it again, you can view it in a larg­er for­mat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

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

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Harry Dean Stanton (RIP) Reads Poems by Charles Bukowski

in Audio Books, Poetry | September 15th, 2017

Vari­ety is report­ing tonight that Har­ry Dean Stan­ton has died in Los Ange­les, at the age of 91. He’s best remem­bered, of course, for his roles in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, HBO’s Big Love, Alex Cox’s Repo Man, and Wim Wen­der’s Paris, Texas. Over a 60 year career, Stan­ton made appear­ances in 116 films, 77 TV shows, and sev­er­al music videos. He also lent his voice to an Alien video game and record­ed poems by Charles Bukows­ki. Above and below, hear him read “Blue­bird” and “Torched Out.” Both record­ings come from the 2003 doc­u­men­tary, Bukows­ki: Born Into This. Back in 2012, Stan­ton head­lined an L.A. trib­ute to the Los Ange­les poet.

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:

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

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

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Watch “Beer,” a Mind-Warp­ing Ani­ma­tion of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 Poem Hon­or­ing His Favorite Drink

Download Theft! A History of Music, a New Free Graphic Novel Exploring 2,000 Years of Musical Borrowing

in Comics/Cartoons, Law | September 15th, 2017

From the team behind the 2006 fair use com­ic Bound by Law comes a new fair use com­ic, Theft! A His­to­ry of Music. Cre­at­ed by James Boyle and Jen­nifer Jenk­ins, two law school profs from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Theft! A His­to­ry of Music is “a graph­ic nov­el lay­ing out a 2000-year long his­to­ry of musi­cal bor­row­ing from Pla­to to rap.” The book’s blurb adds:

This com­ic lays out 2000 years of musi­cal his­to­ry. … Again and again there have been attempts to police music; to restrict bor­row­ing and cul­tur­al cross-fer­til­iza­tion. But music builds on itself. To those who think that mash-ups and sam­pling start­ed with YouTube or the DJ’s turnta­bles, it might be shock­ing to find that musi­cians have been bor­row­ing – exten­sive­ly bor­row­ing – from each oth­er since music began. Then why try to stop that process? The rea­sons var­ied. Phi­los­o­phy, reli­gion, pol­i­tics, race – again and again, race – and law. And because music affects us so deeply, those strug­gles were pas­sion­ate ones. They still are.

The his­to­ry in this book runs from Pla­to to Blurred Lines and beyond. You will read about the Holy Roman Empire’s attempts to stan­dard­ize reli­gious music using the first great musi­cal tech­nol­o­gy (nota­tion) and the inevitable back­fire of that attempt. You will read about trou­ba­dours and church com­posers, swap­ping tunes (and remark­ably pro­fane lyrics), chang­ing both reli­gion and music in the process. You will see dia­tribes against jazz for cor­rupt­ing musi­cal cul­ture, against rock and roll for breach­ing the col­or-line. You will learn about the law­suits that, sur­pris­ing­ly, shaped rap. You will read the sto­ry of some of music’s icon­o­clasts – from Han­del and Beethoven to Robert John­son, Chuck Berry, Lit­tle Richard, Ray Charles, the British Inva­sion and Pub­lic Ene­my.

To under­stand this his­to­ry ful­ly, one has to roam wider still – into musi­cal tech­nolo­gies from nota­tion to the sam­ple deck, aes­thet­ics, the incen­tive sys­tems that got musi­cians paid, and law’s 250 year strug­gle to assim­i­late music, with­out destroy­ing it in the process. Would jazz, soul or rock and roll be legal if they were rein­vent­ed today? We are not sure. Which as you will read, is pro­found­ly wor­ry­ing because today, more than ever, we need the arts.

All of this makes up our sto­ry. It is assured­ly not the only his­to­ry of music. But it is def­i­nite­ly a part – and a fas­ci­nat­ing part – of that his­to­ry…

Released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, the book is free to down­load online. Or you can buy a nice paper­back ver­sion on Ama­zon.

The video above offers anoth­er intro­duc­tion to the graph­ic nov­el. And you can read an inter­view with the authors over on the Cre­ative Com­mons web­site.

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:

Bound by Law?: Free Com­ic Book Explains How Copy­right Com­pli­cates Art

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

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Free Courses on Design from the Famous California Design Firm IDEO Start This Week

in Design, Online Courses | September 14th, 2017

A quick fyi: This week, the famous Cal­i­for­nia design firm IDEO has launched two free courses–a 7‑week Intro­duc­tion to Human-Cen­tered Design and a 4‑week course on Pro­to­typ­ing.

As you might recall, we recent­ly fea­tured A Crash Course in Design Think­ing from Stanford’s Design School. If that piqued your inter­est in design and design think­ing, then IDEO’s cours­es might hold appeal. You can enroll in both cours­es, at no cost, today.

More free cours­es can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Free eBooks on Design from O’Reilly Media

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

Abstract: Netflix’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series About “the Art of Design” Pre­mieres Today

The Velvet Underground Meets Lawrence Welk

in Music, Random | September 14th, 2017

The worlds of the Vel­vet Under­ground and Lawrence Welk are pret­ty far apart. On the one side, you have a grit­ty New York band city writ­ing lyrics about shoot­ing up hero­in. On the oth­er, a band­leader whose “cham­pagne music” charmed TV view­ers across Mid­dle Amer­i­ca for 27 straight years. And yet. And yet.

In this 2007 YouTube clas­sic, director/producer Dar­ren Hack­er found a way to cross the chasm, mash­ing up VU’s 1968 song “Sis­ter Ray” with footage from the Lawrence Welk Show. As he explained to Dan­ger­ous Minds, “I rigged up 2 ancient VCRs and a CD play­er across my liv­ing room floor, layed down on my stom­ach, cued every­thing up and then man­u­al­ly acti­vat­ed all 3 devices at pre­cise inter­vals, live…in real time. One take, no edits…” Every­thing lined up, just like that.

Enjoy “Lawrence Welk Meets Vel­vet Under­ground” and imag­ine a moment when, cir­ca 1968, VU went main­stream on the mil­que­toast Lawrence Welk Show.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­ma­tion of The Vel­vet Underground’s “Sun­day Morn­ing” … for Your Sun­day Morn­ing

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Watch a Musician Improvise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instrument, The Carillon

in Music | September 14th, 2017

Last year we fea­tured the Win­ter­gatan Music Machine, a lov­ing­ly hand­craft­ed in wood auto­mat­ed instru­ment cre­at­ed by artist/musician Mar­tin Mollin. Over 2,000 mar­bles trav­el through a com­plex series of gears, cranks, and tubes, even­tu­al­ly strik­ing notes on a xylo­phone and cre­at­ing beats on two close­ly mic’d pads to make bass and snare drum sounds. There’s more lay­ers to fol­low in the video, and it’s all been pro­gramed by Mollin.

His video earned over 55 mil­lion views on Youtube. What inspired the Win­ter­gatan Music Machine?The col­lec­tion of old automa­ta at the Speelk­lok Muse­um, where Mollin’s machine now resides. In an inter­view, he told Wired:

Even before dig­i­tal they made fan­tas­tic, pro­gram­ma­ble music instru­ments. In bell tow­ers and church tow­ers that play a melody they always have a pro­gram­ming wheel exact­ly like the one that is on the mar­ble machine.

Which leads to today’s video, where Mollin gets to impro­vise on the machine that inspired him to make his own: a 500-year-old car­il­lon. This car­il­lon uses a pro­gram­ma­ble wheel (or “repinnable musi­cal drum” as it is offi­cial­ly called), which allowed melodies to be played on church bells.

Those pat­terns are set on the drum by a series of mov­able stops, but this car­il­lon also has a sec­ond set of keys that are arranged like a piano, and must be played with a fist. Mollin has a go, and impro­vis­es a melody near the end.

Mollin also hosts “Music Machine Mon­days” on his YouTube chan­nel, where he explores more of the museum’s col­lec­tion of automa­ta, like this insane Self-Play­ing Orches­tra with 17 Instru­ments (above). If you are into some pre-tran­sis­tor cool­ness, before steam or punk was even a thing, do check it out.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Old­est Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

Behold the Sea Organ: The Mas­sive Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cal Instru­ment That Makes Music with the Sea

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Behold the Beautiful Designs of Brazil’s 1920s Art Deco Magazine, Para Todos

in Art, Magazines | September 14th, 2017

Art Nou­veau, Art Deco… these are terms we asso­ciate not only with a par­tic­u­lar peri­od in history—the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry and the ensu­ing jazz-age of the 20s—but also with par­tic­u­lar locales: Paris, New York, L.A., Lon­don, Vien­na, or the Jugend­stil of Weimar Munich. We prob­a­bly do not think of Rio de Janeiro. This may be due to bias­es about the priv­i­leged loca­tion of cul­ture, such that most peo­ple in Europe and North Amer­i­ca, even those with an arts edu­ca­tion, know very lit­tle about art from “the colonies.”

But it is also the case that Brazil had its own mod­ern art move­ment, one that strove for a dis­tinct­ly Brazil­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty even as it remained in dia­logue with Europe and the U.S. The move­ment announced itself in 1922, the cen­ten­ni­al of the South Amer­i­can nation’s inde­pen­dence from Por­tu­gal.

In cel­e­bra­tion, artists from São Paulo held the Sem­ana de Arte Mod­er­na, sev­en days in which, the BBC writes, they “con­struct­ed, decon­struct­ed, per­formed, sculpt­ed, gave lec­tures, read poet­ry and cre­at­ed some of the most avant-garde works ever seen in Brazil.”

1922 also hap­pened to be the year that a Rio de Janeiro-born artist, illus­tra­tor, and graph­ic design­er who went by the name J. Car­los (José Car­los de Brito e Cun­ha) took over the direc­tion of the mag­a­zine Para Todos. Found­ed in 1918, the mag­a­zine began as a film rag, and its cov­ers faith­ful­ly fea­tured pho­to spreads of movie stars. But in 1926, Car­los, who had already proven him­self a “major tal­ent in Brazil­ian Art Deco graph­ic design,” writes Messy Nessy, began draw­ing his own cov­er illus­tra­tions, and he con­tin­ued to do so for the next four years, as well as draw­ing thou­sands of car­toons and writ­ing vaude­ville plays and sam­ba lyrics.

His work clear­ly draws from Euro-Amer­i­can sources, includ­ing sev­er­al unfor­tu­nate racial car­i­ca­tures. But it also intro­duces some unique­ly Brazil­ian ele­ments, or unique­ly Car­los-ian ele­ments, that seem almost pro­to-psy­che­del­ic (we might imag­ine a jazz-age Os Mutantes accom­pa­ny­ing these trip­py designs).  J. Car­los was a pro­lif­ic artist who “col­lab­o­rat­ed in design and illus­tra­tion in all the major pub­li­ca­tions of Brazil from the 1920s until the 1950s.” In all, it’s esti­mat­ed that he left behind over 100,000 illus­tra­tions. So devot­ed was Car­los to the art and cul­ture of his native city that he appar­ent­ly turned down an invi­ta­tion by Walt Dis­ney to work in Hol­ly­wood.

Print mag­a­zine describes Car­los’ work as “a cross between Aubrey Beard­s­ley and John Held Jr.,” and while there is no short­age of the wil­lowy, doll-like flap­pers, elon­gat­ed, elfin fig­ures, and intri­cate, spi­dery pat­terns we would expect from this deriva­tion, Car­los is also doing some­thing very dif­fer­ent from either of those artists—or real­ly from any­one work­ing in the North­ern Hemi­sphere. He has since become a hero­ic fig­ure for Brazil­ian artists and schol­ars, inspir­ing an exten­sive web project, a visu­al the­sis on Issuu, and two recent doc­u­men­tary films (all in Por­tuguese), which you can find here.

In 2009, Car­los received a posthu­mous hon­or that prob­a­bly would have thrilled him in life, a trib­ute song by the Académi­cos da Rocin­ha sam­ba club. Lis­ten to it here and find sev­er­al more of Car­los’ Para Todos cov­ers at Messy Nessy, Print, and the Brazil­ian blog Os cam­in­hos do Jour­nal­is­mo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of Issues of Jugend, Germany’s Pio­neer­ing Art Nou­veau Mag­a­zine (1896–1940)

Down­load Influ­en­tial Avant-Garde Mag­a­zines from the Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry: Dadaism, Sur­re­al­ism, Futur­ism & More

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

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