How to Listen to Music: A Free Course from Yale University

in Music, Online Courses, Yale | August 30th, 2017

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Craig Wright, this course, Lis­ten­ing to Music, oper­ates on the assump­tion that lis­ten­ing to music is “not sim­ply a pas­sive activ­i­ty one can use to relax, but rather, an active and reward­ing process.” When we under­stand the basic ele­ments of West­ern music (e.g., rhythm, melody, and form), we can appre­ci­ate music in entire­ly new ways. That includes every­thing from clas­si­cal music, rock and tech­no, to Gre­go­ri­an chant and the blues.

You can watch the 23 lec­tures above, on YouTube, or Yale’s web­site, where you’ll also find a syl­labus and infor­ma­tion on each class ses­sion. The main text used in the course is Lis­ten­ing to Music, writ­ten by the pro­fes­sor him­self.

Lis­ten­ing to Music will be added to the Music sec­tion of our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

It’s also worth not­ing that Prof. Wright has cre­at­ed an inter­ac­tive MOOC called Intro­duc­tion to Clas­si­cal Music. You might want to check it out.

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:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Down­load 400,000 Free Clas­si­cal Musi­cal Scores & 46,000 Free Clas­si­cal Record­ings from the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Alice in Wonderland Gets Re-Envisioned by a Neural Network in the Style of Paintings By Picasso, van Gogh, Kahlo, O’Keeffe & More

in Art, Technology | August 30th, 2017

An artist just start­ing out might first imi­tate the styles of oth­ers, and if all goes well, the process of learn­ing those styles will lead them to a style of their own. But how does one learn some­thing like an artis­tic style in a way that isn’t sim­ply imi­ta­tive? Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and espe­cial­ly the cur­rent devel­op­ments in mak­ing com­put­ers not just think but learn, will cer­tain­ly shed some light in the process — and pro­duce, along the way, such fas­ci­nat­ing projects as the video above, a re-envi­sion­ing of Dis­ney’s Alice in Won­der­land in the styles of famous artists: Pablo Picas­so, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Fri­da Kahlo, Vin­cent van Gogh and oth­ers.

The idea behind this tech­no­log­i­cal process, known as “style trans­fer,” is “to take two images, say, a pho­to of a per­son and a paint­ing, and use these to cre­ate a third image that com­bines the con­tent of the for­mer with the style of the lat­er,” says an explana­to­ry post at the Paper­space Blog.

“The cen­tral prob­lem of style trans­fer revolves around our abil­i­ty to come up with a clear way of com­put­ing the ‘con­tent’ of an image as dis­tinct from com­put­ing the ‘style’ of an image. Before deep learn­ing arrived at the scene, researchers had been hand­craft­ing meth­ods to extract the con­tent and tex­ture of images, merge them and see if the results were inter­est­ing or garbage.”

Deep learn­ing, the fam­i­ly of meth­ods that enable com­put­ers to teach them­selves, involves pro­vid­ing an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem called a “neur­al net­work” with huge amounts of data and let­ting it draw infer­ences. In exper­i­ments like these, the sys­tems take in visu­al data and make infer­ences about how one set of data, like the con­tent of frames of Alice in Won­der­land, might look when ren­dered in the col­ors and con­tours of anoth­er, such as some of the most famous paint­ings in all of art his­to­ry. (Oth­ers have tried it, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured, with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Run­ner.) If the tech­nol­o­gy at work here piques your curios­i­ty, have a look at Google’s free online course on deep learn­ing or this new set of cours­es from Cours­era— it prob­a­bly won’t improve your art skills, but it will cer­tain­ly increase your under­stand­ing of a devel­op­ment that will play an ever larg­er role in the cul­ture and econ­o­my ahead.

Here’s a full list of painters used in the neur­al net­worked ver­sion of Alice:

Pablo Picas­so
Geor­gia O’Ke­effe
S.H. Raza
Hoku­sai
Fri­da Kahlo
Vin­cent van Gogh
Tar­si­la
Saloua Raou­da Chou­cair
Lee Kras­ner
Sol Lewitt
Wu Guanzhong
Elaine de Koon­ing
Ibrahim el-Salahi
Min­nie Pwer­le
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Edvard Munch
Natalia Gon­charo­va

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Ren­dered in the Style of Picas­so; Blade Run­ner in the Style of Van Gogh

What Hap­pens When Blade Run­ner & A Scan­ner Dark­ly Get Remade with an Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The First Film Adap­ta­tion of Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

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.

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper & Francis Bacon Influenced David Lynch’s Cinematic Vision

in Art, Film | August 29th, 2017

When an artist becomes an adjective—think Orwellian, Kafkaesque, or Joycean—one of two things can hap­pen: their work can be super­fi­cial­ly appro­pri­at­ed, reduced to a col­lec­tion of obvi­ous ges­tures clum­si­ly com­bined in bad pas­tiche. Or their dis­tinc­tive style can inspire artists with more skill and depth to make orig­i­nal cre­ations that may them­selves become touch­stones for the future. What might dis­tin­guish one from the oth­er is the degree to which we under­stand not only the work of Orwell, Kaf­ka, or Joyce, but also the work that influ­enced them.

When it comes to David Lynch, there’s no doubt that the “Lynchi­an” stands as a mod­el for so much con­tem­po­rary film and tele­vi­sion. But while some direc­tors make excel­lent use of Lynch’s influ­ence, oth­ers strive for Lynchi­an atmos­phere only to reach a kind of unin­spired, unin­ten­tion­al par­o­dy. The sub­lime bal­ance of humor and hor­ror Lynch has achieved over the course of his extra­or­di­nary career seems like the kind of thing one shouldn’t attempt with­out seri­ous study and prepa­ra­tion.

With­out Lynch’s sur­re­al­ist vision, odd­ball char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and dia­logue fall flat—as in Twin Peaks’ sec­ond sea­son, which Lynch him­self says “sucked.” So what defines the Lynchi­an? A very dis­tinc­tive use of music, for one thing. And as the video essay above by Men­no Koois­tra demon­strates, the sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence of paint­ing. Lynch him­self began paint­ing and draw­ing at a young age and stud­ied art at the School of the Muse­um of Fine Arts in Boston in the six­ties. While he found his call­ing in film, his art edu­ca­tion pre­pared him to dream up the unfor­get­table com­po­si­tions of the Lynchi­an world.

Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per, Arnold Böck­lin, and the mas­ter of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Fran­cis Bacon—all of these painters have direct­ly informed Lynch’s night­mar­ish mise-en-scène. As you’ll see in Kooistra’s video, in side by side com­par­isons, Lynch adapts the work of his favorite artists for his own pur­pos­es. In an inter­view clip, he says he dis­cov­ered Bacon at a gallery in 1966 and found the expe­ri­ence “thrilling”—later using the painter’s work as inspi­ra­tion for The Ele­phant Man and Twin Peak’s dis­ori­ent­ing Red Room.

We see Lynch’s homage to his favorite painters in Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet, as well as the cur­rent, third sea­son of Twin Peaks, over which he has (as he well should) com­plete cre­ative con­trol. You may not find Fran­cis Bacon’s dis­turb­ing por­traits quite as thrilling as Lynch does, or draw on Edward Hop­per for a warped ver­sion of 1950’s Amer­i­cana. These are Lynch’s ref­er­ences; they res­onate on his par­tic­u­lar fre­quen­cy, and hence pro­vide him with visu­al frames for his own per­son­al dream log­ic.

But what we might take away from “The Art of David Lynch” is that the Lynchi­an is nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to a painter­ly sen­si­bil­i­ty, and that with­out the influ­ence of fine art on com­po­si­tion, col­or, and fram­ing, a Lynchi­an pro­duc­tion may be in dan­ger of looking—as he says of that dis­ap­point­ing Twin Peaks’ sec­ond season—“stupid and goofy.”

via IndieWire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

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

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

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

The Dune Coloring & Activity Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Created Countless Hours of Peculiar Fun for Kids

in Coloring Books, Film | August 29th, 2017

David Lynch’s Dune, the $40 mil­lion cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle based on Frank Her­bert’s sci­ence-fic­tion epic, faced more than its fair share of chal­lenges: Lynch’s lack of artis­tic con­trol, elab­o­rate but not quite suc­cess­ful spe­cial effects, source mate­r­i­al so unsuit­ed to fea­ture-film adap­ta­tion that audi­ences had to read glos­saries before the first screen­ings. In an attempt to get ahead of bad buzz, the mas­sive adver­tis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing blitz had begun well before the movie’s Christ­mas 1984 release, but none of its flaks seemed to under­stand the enter­prise of Dune any bet­ter than most of those view­ers did.

Case in point: the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books, evi­dence that, as Comics Alliance’s Jason Miche­litch writes, “what Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures want­ed was a Star Wars of their very own — a whiz-bang space adven­ture for eight-year-olds that they could mer­chan­dise the heck out of to the wide-eyed kids that just a year pre­vi­ous had whee­dled their par­ents into buy­ing plush ewok dolls and toy lightsabers. Instead, Lynch and pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­tis pro­vid­ed them with a dark epic actu­al­ly fit for con­sump­tion by think­ing adults. Imag­ine their cha­grin.”

Mered­ith Yanos at Coil­house offers a more detailed write­up of the hours of fun on offer in these tonal­ly bizarre books: “First, there’s the Dune Col­or­ing Book, 44 pages of lurid scenes fea­tur­ing con­spir­a­to­r­i­al char­ac­ters from the film. Then there’s the Dune Activ­i­ty Book. 60 pages of puz­zles and games, mazes and more pic­tures for col­or­ing,” includ­ing a recipe for “No-Bake Spice Cook­ies” that sub­sti­tutes com­mon cin­na­mon for Dune’s Spice, a  “wacky aware­ness spec­trum nar­cot­ic that con­trols the uni­verse.” Oth­er vol­umes con­tain Dune-themed paper dolls, Dune-themed word puz­zles, and even Dune-themed math prob­lems.

Though Dune remains pri­mar­i­ly remem­bered as one of the worst flops in cin­e­ma his­to­ry (and even Lynch him­self usu­al­ly refus­es to dis­cuss it), a few fans have also come to its defense over the past 32 years. Some of them have no doubt want­ed to pass this revi­sion­ist appre­ci­a­tion down to their chil­dren, a task the Dune col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books may (or may not) make eas­i­er. If you buy them on Ama­zon, you’ll have to pay between $45 and $75 each — noth­ing com­pared to the cost of any­thing in the actu­al pro­duc­tion of Dune, of course, but still, you may want to keep an eye on eBay instead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The Met, New York Pub­lic Library, Smith­son­ian & More

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.

The Roman Roads of Britain Visualized as a Subway Map

in History, Maps | August 28th, 2017

Walk around Lon­don with some­one who knows its deep his­to­ry — not hard to arrange, giv­en the way Lon­don enthu­si­asts treat his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge as a hyper­com­pet­i­tive sport — and you’ll have more than a few paths of “Roman roads” point­ed out to you. Even in the city of Big Ben and Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Shard and the Gherkin, chick­en shops and cur­ry hous­es, there remain frag­ments and traces of the 2,000 miles of roads the Roman Army built between British towns and cities between 43 and 410 AD, Britain’s cen­turies as a province of the Roman Empire.

Though some of Britain’s Roman Roads have become mod­ern motor­ways, most no longer exist in any form but those bits and pieces his­to­ry buffs like to spot. This makes it dif­fi­cult to get a sense of how they all ran and where — or at least it did until Sasha Tru­bet­skoy made a Roman Roads of Britain Net­work Map in the graph­ic-design style of the sub­way maps you’ll find in Lon­don or any oth­er major city today. Tru­bet­skoy, an under­grad­u­ate sta­tis­tics major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, first found car­to­graph­i­cal fame a few months ago with his “sub­way map” of roads across the entire Roman Empire cir­ca 125 AD.

“Pop­u­lar request,” he writes, demand­ed a Britain-spe­cif­ic fol­low up, a project he describes as “far more com­pli­cat­ed than I had ini­tial­ly antic­i­pat­ed.” The chal­lenges includ­ed not just the sheer num­ber of Roman Roads in Britain but a lack of clar­i­ty about their exact loca­tion and extents. As in his pre­vi­ous map, Tru­bet­skoy admits, “I had to do some sim­pli­fy­ing and make some tough choic­es on which cities to include.” While this clos­er-up view demand­ed a more geo­graph­i­cal faith­ful­ness, he nev­er­the­less “had to get rather cre­ative with the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence” in places, to the point of using such “not exact­ly Latin-sound­ing” names as “Watling Street” and “Ermin Way.”

Still, bar­ring a rev­o­lu­tion­ary dis­cov­ery in Roman his­to­ry, you’re unlike­ly to find a more rig­or­ous exam­ple of sub­way-mapped Roman Roads in Britain than this one. And for $9 USD you can have it as a “crisp PDF” suit­able for print­ing as a poster and giv­ing to any­one pas­sion­ate about the his­to­ry of Britain — or the his­to­ry of Rome, or graph­ic design, or maps that aren’t what they might seem at first glance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Rise & Fall of the Romans: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

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.

Watch “Adam,” an Award-Winning Short Claymation That Wonderfully Re-Tells the Story of Creation

in Uncategorized | August 28th, 2017

Above, watch ‘Adam,’ a short clay­ma­tion made by Eve­lyn Jane Ross while attend­ing the Rhode Island School of Design. As she points out in a recent inter­view, ‘Adam’ is “noth­ing like Wal­lace and Gromit; it’s nei­ther a children’s sto­ry nor does it have a dis­tinct char­ac­ter. Instead, it’s a poet­ic nar­ra­tive depict­ing love and emo­tion­al sin­cer­i­ty. It uses the mal­leable nature of clay to empha­size the main idea, cre­ation. ‘Adam’ also defies the per­cep­tion that ani­ma­tion is a children’s medi­um. The film could eas­i­ly be rat­ed “R” for “MATURE” audi­ences only.” She then adds:

I read a quote by Stan­ley Kubrick, ‘A film is — or should be — more like music than like fic­tion. It should be a pro­gres­sion of moods and feel­ings. The theme, what’s behind the emo­tion, the mean­ing, all that comes lat­er’. This quote real­ly guid­ed my pro­gres­sion. It seemed like a won­der­ful way to think of struc­ture and tim­ing. The mean­ing, yes, came lat­er.

Although Ross made the film main­ly to ful­fill some senior year require­ments at RISD, she got some extra mileage out of the clay­ma­tion. Among oth­er awards, it won Best Ani­mat­ed Film at the Yale Stu­dent Film Fes­ti­val, the Berlin Flash Film Fes­ti­val, and San­ta Fe Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val. And it was a BAFTA Stu­dent Awards Final­ist. Enjoy.

“Adam” will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rates a Clay­ma­tion of His Grim Hol­i­day Sto­ry “The Junky’s Christ­mas”

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Philo­soph­i­cal, Sci-Fi Clay­ma­tion Film Answers the Time­less Ques­tion: Which Came First, the Chick­en or the Egg?

Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry Brought to Life with Clay­ma­tion

A Colorful Map Visualizes the Lexical Distances Between Europe’s Languages: 54 Languages Spoken by 670 Million People

in Maps | August 28th, 2017

Stephen F. Stein­bach, a res­i­dent of Vien­na and a “car­tog­ra­phy, lan­guage and trav­el enthu­si­ast, with an engi­neer­ing back­ground,” is not a lin­guist. Stein­bach, who runs the site Alter­na­tive Trans­port, seems much more inter­est­ed in map­ping and trans­porta­tion than mor­phol­o­gy and ety­mol­o­gy. But he has made a con­tri­bu­tion to a lin­guis­tic con­cept called “lex­i­cal dif­fer­ence” with the map you see above, a col­or­ful 2015 visu­al­iza­tion of Euro­pean lan­guages, grouped togeth­er in clus­ters accord­ing to their sub­fam­i­lies (Ital­ic-Romance, Baltic, Slav­ic, Ger­man­ic, etc.—see a much larg­er ver­sion here).

Straight and arc­ing lines span the rel­a­tive dis­tance these lan­guages have pre­sum­ably trav­eled from each oth­er. Sol­id lines between lan­guages rep­re­sent a very close prox­im­i­ty, dashed lines of dif­fer­ent thick­ness­es show more dis­tance, and thin dot­ted lines tra­verse the great­est expans­es.

Hun­gar­i­an and Ukrain­ian, for exam­ple, have a lex­i­cal dis­tance score of 90, where Pol­ish and Ukrain­ian, both Slav­ic lan­guages, are only 30 degrees from each oth­er. “The map shows the lan­guage fam­i­lies that cov­er the con­ti­nent,” writes Big Think, “large, famil­iar ones like Ger­man­ic, Ital­ic-Romance and Slav­ic, small­er ones like Celtic, Baltic and Ural­ic; out­liers like Semit­ic and Tur­kic; and isolates—orphan lan­guages, with­out a fam­i­ly: Alban­ian and Greek.”  (Tech­ni­cal­ly, mod­ern Greek does have a family—Hellenic—though it is the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber.)

As we might expect from this sub­set of the durable Indo-Euro­pean schema, the lan­guages with­in each clus­tered group occu­py the short­est dis­tance from each oth­er, with some excep­tions. Roman­ian, for exam­ple, is slight­ly clos­er to Alban­ian than it is to French, its Romance cousin. The Slav­ic lan­guages Russ­ian and Pol­ish seem to have trav­eled a bit fur­ther apart than Pol­ish has from the Baltic lan­guage of Lithuan­ian. What does this mean, exact­ly? Accord­ing to the mea­sure of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” pro­posed by Ukrain­ian lin­guist Kon­stan­tin Tishchenko, it means that clos­er lan­guages might be more mutu­al­ly intel­li­gi­ble, at least from a lex­i­cal stand­point, since they may share more cog­nates (sim­i­lar-sound­ing and mean­ing words) and bor­row­ings.

Gas­ton Ümlaut, the han­dle of a lin­guist on the Stack Exchange Lin­guis­tics beta, cau­tions that the con­cept of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” may be “pret­ty use­less” giv­en that the com­par­isons also include false cognates—words that sound or look sim­i­lar but have no rela­tion­ship to each oth­er. These could account for some seem­ing incon­sis­ten­cies. (Ümlaut admits he has not read the orig­i­nal arti­cle, writ­ten in Russ­ian. If you are able, you can find it online in the book Metathe­o­ry of Lin­guis­tics, here.) Stein­bach has respond­ed in the same thread.

The idea received a much more tren­chant cri­tique more recent­ly. Stein­bach clar­i­fied that the the­o­ry, and the map, only com­pare writ­ten words and not syn­tax or speech. “It has noth­ing to do with gram­mar, syn­tax, rhythm or oth­er impor­tant fea­tures that are impor­tant for intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty,” he writes. “It also com­pares a small list of words and not the entire vocab­u­lary of one lan­guage to anoth­er.” This expla­na­tion does cast doubt on whether “lex­i­cal dis­tance” is a mean­ing­ful con­cept. I’ll leave it to the lin­guists to decide. (Stein­bach reached out to Tis­chchenko but has yet to receive a reply.)

Tischchenko’s orig­i­nal “lex­i­cal dis­tance” map, fur­ther up, drawn in 1997, gets the idea across with min­i­mal fuss, but it leaves much to be desired graph­i­cal­ly. (A large, hand-drawn col­or ver­sion improves upon the print­ed map.) Stein­bach took his ver­sion from a 2008 Eng­lish-lan­guage adap­ta­tion made by Tere­sa Elms in 2008 (above). In his blog post here, he explains all of the changes he made to Elms and Tischchenko’s designs. These include adjust­ing the size of the “bub­bles” to pro­por­tion­al­ly rep­re­sent the num­ber of speak­ers of each lan­guage. Stein­bach also added sev­er­al lan­guages, as well as “grave­stones” for the dead Ana­to­lian and Tochar­i­an branch­es. In all, his map shows “54 lan­guages, rep­re­sent­ing 670 mil­lion peo­ple.” He adds, vague­ly, that “it checks out.”

After post­ing his Lex­i­cal Dis­tance Map, Stein­bach pro­posed a “3D” ver­sion, with the added dimen­sion of time. (See his pre­lim­i­nary sketch above.) The maps are intrigu­ing, the the­o­ry of “lex­i­cal dis­tance” an inter­est­ing one, but we should bear in mind, as Stein­bach writes, that he is “no lin­guist,” and that this idea is hard­ly an ortho­dox one with­in the dis­ci­pline.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Big, Beau­ti­ful Info­graph­ic

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co       

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

Gonzo Illustrator Ralph Steadman Draws the American Presidents, from Nixon to Trump

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Current Affairs, History, Politics | August 28th, 2017

In a 2012 inter­view with Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, car­toon­ist Ralph Stead­man, best known for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son, lament­ed the qual­i­ty of the can­di­dates in that year’s Pres­i­den­tial race:

The prob­lem is there are no Nixons around at the moment. That’s what we need — we need a real good Nixon to give some­thing for oth­er peo­ple to get their teeth into, to real­ly … loathe him, to become them­selves more effec­tive as oppo­si­tion lead­ers.

Alas, his prayers have been answered.

Stead­man, who has brought his inky sen­si­bil­i­ties to bear on such works as Ani­mal Farm and Alice in Won­der­land, has a new Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to add to the col­lec­tion he dis­cussed sev­er­al years ago, in the video above.

Steadman’s pen was the sword that ren­dered Ger­ald Ford as a scare­crow, Ronald Rea­gan as a vam­pire, and George W. Bush as a mon­key in a cage of his own mak­ing.

Barack Oba­ma, one of the can­di­dates in that com­par­a­tive­ly bland 2012 elec­tion, is depict­ed as a tena­cious, slen­der vine, strain­ing ever upward.

Jim­my Carter, some­what less benign­ly, is a pup­py eager­ly fetch­ing a stick with which to par­don Nixon, the Welsh cartoonist’s dark muse, first encoun­tered when he accom­pa­nied Thomp­son on the road trip that yield­ed Fear and Loathing: On the Cam­paign Trail ’72.

And now…

Don­ald Trump has giv­en Stead­man rea­son to come out fight­ing. With luck, he’ll stay out as long as his ser­vices are required. The above por­trait, titled “Porky Pie,” was sent, unso­licit­ed, to Ger­ry Brakus, an edi­tor of the New States­man, who pub­lished it on Decem­ber 17, 2015.

At the time, Stead­man had no rea­son to believe the man he’d anthro­po­mor­phized as a human pig hybrid, squeezed into bloody flag-print under­pants, would become the 45th pres­i­dent:

Trump is unthink­able. A thug and a moles­ter. Who wants him?

The por­trait’s hideous­ness speaks vol­umes, but it’s also worth look­ing beyond the obvi­ous-seem­ing inspi­ra­tion for the title to a ref­er­ence few Amer­i­cans would get. “Pork pie”—or porky—is Cock­ney rhyming slang for “a lie.”

See a gallery of Steadman’s por­traits of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents on his web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ralph Steadman’s Sur­re­al­ist Illus­tra­tions of George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm (1995)

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

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

Modern Poetry: A Free Course from Yale

in | August 26th, 2017

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Lang­don Ham­mer, this course offers an intro­duc­tion to Mod­ern Poet­ry. Cov­er­ing every­one from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bish­op, and Frost, to the poet­ry of World War One, Imag­ism, to the Harlem Renais­sance, the course explores mod­ern poet­ry, its char­ac­ter­is­tic tech­niques, con­cerns, and major prac­ti­tion­ers.

You can watch the 20 lec­tures from the course above, or find them on YouTube. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, vis­it this Yale web­site.

The main text used in this course is the fol­low­ing:

• Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ell­mann, and Robert O’Clair, eds. The Nor­ton Anthol­o­gy of Mod­ern and Con­tem­po­rary Poet­ry. Vol. 1, Mod­ern Poet­ry. New York: W. W. Nor­ton & Com­pa­ny, 2003.

Mod­ern Poet­ry will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. There you can find a spe­cial­ized list of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es.

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!

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

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Literature | August 25th, 2017

Think of the artists you know who, espe­cial­ly in the 1960s and 70s, por­trayed an often sor­did real­i­ty in detail, just as they saw it, gar­ner­ing acclaim from enthu­si­asts, who per­ceived a high artistry in their seem­ing­ly rough-hewn work, and cries from count­less detrac­tors who object­ed to what they saw as the artists’ lazy cru­di­ty. In the realm of poet­ry and prose, Charles Bukows­ki should come to mind soon­er or lat­er; in that of com­ic art, who fits the bill bet­ter than Robert Crumb? It makes only good sense that the work of both men should inter­sect, and they did in the 1980s when Crumb illus­trat­ed two short books by Bukows­ki, Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Busi­ness.

“Crumb’s sig­na­ture under­ground comix aes­thet­ic and Bukowski’s com­men­tary on con­tem­po­rary cul­ture and the human con­di­tion by way of his famil­iar tropes — sex, alco­hol, the drudgery of work — coa­lesce into the kind of fit that makes you won­der why it hadn’t hap­pened soon­er,” writes Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va.

“In 1998, a final posthu­mous col­lab­o­ra­tion was released under the title The Cap­tain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Tak­en Over the Ship — an illus­trat­ed selec­tion from Buk’s pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished diaries, cap­tur­ing a year in his life short­ly before his death in 1994.” As one stu­dent of the graph­ic nov­el sum­ma­rizes Bring Me Your Love, “the main char­ac­ter is a man whose per­son­al­i­ty resem­bles the main char­ac­ter of most Bukows­ki sto­ries. He goes through life rather aim­less­ly, killing time by drink­ing and hav­ing sex. His wife is in a men­tal hos­pi­tal.”

“Crumb’s illus­tra­tions give the already grit­ty sto­ry­lines a visu­al con­text — such as a man who looks much like Buk wrestling on the floor with his ‘wife’ after a dis­pute involv­ing answer­ing the phone or var­i­ous bar­room skir­mish­es depict­ing a Bukows­ki-look­ing char­ac­ter run­ning amok,” says Dan­ger­ous Minds. “He was a very dif­fi­cult guy to hang out with in per­son, but on paper he was great,” Crumb once said of Bukows­ki, and his illus­tra­tions also reveal that he under­stands Bukowski’s own aware­ness of the dif­fer­ence between his page self and his real one. “Old writer puts on sweater, sits down, leers into com­put­er screen, and writes about life,” Bukows­ki writes, in their third and final col­lab­o­ra­tion, above a Crumb illus­tra­tion of just such a scene. “How holy can we get?”

See more Crumb illus­tra­tions of Bukows­ki at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

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

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

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Assess­es 21 Cul­tur­al Fig­ures, from Dylan & Hitch­cock, to Kaf­ka & The Bea­t­les

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.