An Animated Alan Watts Waxes Philosophical About Time in The Fine Art of Goofing Off, the 1970s “Sesame Street for Grown-Ups”

in Animation, Life, Philosophy, Television | May 19th, 2017

Time is a mea­sure of ener­gy, a mea­sure of motion. And we have agreed inter­na­tion­al­ly on the speed of the clock. And I want you to think about clocks and watch­es for a moment. We are of course slaves to them. And you will notice that your watch is a cir­cle, and that it is cal­i­brat­ed, and that each minute, or sec­ond, is marked by a hair­line which is made as nar­row as pos­si­ble, as yet to be con­sis­tent with being vis­i­ble. 

— Alan Watts

How­ev­er true, that’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress-induc­ing obser­va­tion from one who was known for his Zen teach­ings…

The pres­sure is ame­lio­rat­ed some­what by Bob McClay’s trip­py time-based ani­ma­tion, above, nar­rat­ed by Watts. Putting Mick­ey Mouse on the face of Big Ben must’ve gone over well with the coun­ter­cul­tur­al youth who eager­ly embraced Watts’ East­ern phi­los­o­phy. And the tan­gi­ble evi­dence of real live mag­ic mark­ers will prove a ton­ic to those who came of age before ani­ma­tion’s dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion.

The short orig­i­nal­ly aired as part of the ear­ly 70’s series, The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off, described by one of its cre­ators, the humorist and sound artist, Hen­ry Jacobs, as “Sesame Street for grown-ups.”

Time pre­oc­cu­pied both men.

One of Jacobs’ fake com­mer­cials on The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off involved a pitch­man exhort­ing view­ers to stop wast­ing time at idle pas­times: Log a few extra gold­en hours at the old grind­stone.

A koan-like skit fea­tured a gramo­phone through which a dis­em­bod­ied voice end­less­ly asks a stuffed dog, “Can you hear me?” (Jacobs named that as a per­son­al favorite.)

Watts was less punch­line-ori­ent­ed than his friend and even­tu­al in-law, who main­tained an archival col­lec­tion of Watts’ lec­tures until his own death:

And when we think of a moment of time, when we think what we mean by the word “now”; we think of the short­est pos­si­ble instant that is here and gone, because that cor­re­sponds with the hair­line on the watch. And as a result of this fab­u­lous idea, we are a peo­ple who feel that we don’t have any present, because the present is instant­ly van­ish­ing — it goes so quick­ly. It is always becom­ing past. And we have the sen­sa­tion, there­fore, of our lives as some­thing that is con­stant­ly flow­ing away from us. We are con­stant­ly los­ing time. And so we have a sense of urgency. Time is not to be wast­ed. Time is mon­ey. And so, because of the tyran­ny of this thing, we feel that we have a past, and we know who we are in terms of our past. Nobody can ever tell you who they are, they can only tell you who they were. 

Watch a com­plete episode of The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off here. Your time will be well spent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

Take a Break from Your Fran­tic Day & Let Alan Watts Intro­duce You to the Calm­ing Ways of Zen

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

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

Guillermo del Toro Creates a List of His 20 Favorite Art House/Criterion Films

in Film | May 18th, 2017

When it comes to films released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, we’d all strug­gle to nar­row our favorites down to only ten, but we prob­a­bly would­n’t have quite as hard a time as Guiller­mo del Toro. The direc­tor of Mim­ic, Hell­boy, and Pan’s Labyrinth char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly takes it to anoth­er lev­el, bemoan­ing the “unfair, arbi­trary, and sadis­tic top ten prac­tice,” craft­ing instead a series of “thematic/authorial pair­ings” (and in first place, a tri­fec­ta) for his Cri­te­ri­on “top-ten” fea­ture. The list, whether he meant us to take it lin­ear­ly or not, runs as fol­lows:

1. Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Throne of Blood, High and Low, and Ran, the Emper­or of Cin­e­ma’s “most oper­at­ic, pes­simistic, and visu­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar films.”
2. Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal and Fan­ny and Alexan­der (the­atri­cal ver­sion), which “have the pri­mal pulse of a children’s fable told by an impos­si­bly old and wise nar­ra­tor, both “ripe with fan­tas­ti­cal imagery and a sharp sense of the uncan­ny.”
3. Jean Cocteau’s Beau­ty and the Beast and Georges Fran­ju’s Eyes With­out a Face, both of which “depend on sub­lime, almost ethe­re­al, imagery to con­vey a sense of doom and loss: mad, frag­ile love cling­ing for dear life in a mael­strom of dark­ness.”
4. David Lean’s Great Expec­ta­tions and Oliv­er Twist, two “epics of the spir­it [ … ] plagued by grand, utter­ly mag­i­cal moments and set­tings” and laced with pas­sages that “skate the fine line between poet­ry and hor­ror.”
5. Ter­ry Gilliam’s Time Ban­dits and Brazil, the work of a “liv­ing trea­sure” who “under­stands that ‘bad taste’ is the ulti­mate dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence from the dis­creet charm of the bour­geoisie” and tells sto­ries in elab­o­rate worlds “made coher­ent only by his undy­ing faith in the tale he is telling.”
6. Kane­to Shin­do’s Oni­ba­ba and Kuroneko, a “per­verse, sweaty dou­ble bill” fus­ing “hor­rors and desire, death and lust” that, when del Toro first saw them at age ten, “did some seri­ous dam­age to my psy­che.”
7. Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus and Paths of Glo­ry, which “speak elo­quent­ly about the scale of a man against the tide of his­to­ry, and both raise the bar for every ‘his­tor­i­cal’ film to fol­low.”
8. Pre­ston Sturges’ Sul­li­van’s Trav­els and Unfaith­ful­ly Yours, “mas­ter­ful films full of mad ener­gy and fire­works, but Sullivan’s Trav­els also man­ages to encap­su­late one of the most inti­mate reflec­tions about the role of the film­mak­er as enter­tain­er.”
9. Carl Theodor Drey­er’s Vampyr and Ben­jamin Chris­tensen’s Häx­an, the for­mer “a memen­to mori, a stern reminder of death as the thresh­old of spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion” and the lat­ter “the filmic equiv­a­lent of a hell­ish engrav­ing by Bruegel or a paint­ing by Bosch.”
10. Vic­tor Erice’s The Spir­it of the Bee­hive and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, “the two supreme works of childhood/horror [ … ] lamen­ta­tions of worlds lost and the inno­cents trapped in them.”

Hav­ing already fea­tured a tour of del Toro’s man cave and a tour of his imag­i­na­tion by way of his sketch­es here on Open Cul­ture, it makes for a nat­ur­al fol­low-up to offer this tour of his dis­tinc­tive cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness. A direc­tor since his child­hood back in Mex­i­co (then equipped with his dad’s Super 8, his own action fig­ures, and a pota­to he once cast as a ser­i­al killer), he went on to study not film­mak­ing, strict­ly speak­ing, but make­up and spe­cial effects design. The resul­tant mas­tery of visu­al rich­ness, espe­cial­ly in ser­vice of the grotesque, shows up even in his ear­li­est avail­able works, such as the 1987 short Geome­tria we post­ed a few years ago.

Del Toro’s next fea­ture, a fan­ta­sy adven­ture set in Cold War Amer­i­ca called The Shape of Water and involv­ing a fish-man locked away in a secret gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty, will no doubt make even more use of all the tastes the direc­tor’s favorite Cri­te­ri­on films have instilled in him: for grand spec­ta­cle, for freak­ish­ness, for the uncan­ny, for “mad, frag­ile love,” and for sheer dis­tur­bance. May he con­tin­ue to do “seri­ous dam­age” to the psy­ches of his own audi­ences for decades to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geome­tria: Watch Guiller­mo del Toro’s Very Ear­ly, Ghoul­ish Short Film (1987)

Sketch­es by Guiller­mo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wild­ly Cre­ative Imag­i­na­tion

A Guid­ed Tour of Guiller­mo del Toro’s Cre­ativ­i­ty-Induc­ing Man Cave, “Bleak House”

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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 Map of Chemistry: New Animation Summarizes the Entire Field of Chemistry in 12 Minutes

in Chemistry, Education, K-12, Science | May 18th, 2017

Philoso­phers, tech­nol­o­gists, and futur­ists spend a good deal of time obsess­ing about the nature of real­i­ty. Recent­ly, no small num­ber of such peo­ple have come togeth­er to endorse the so-called “sim­u­la­tion argu­ment,” the mind-bog­gling, sci-fi idea that every­thing we expe­ri­ence exists as a vir­tu­al per­for­mance inside a com­put­er sys­tem more sophis­ti­cat­ed than we could ever imag­ine. It’s a sce­nario right out of Philip K. Dick, and one Dick believed pos­si­ble. It’s also, per­haps, ter­mi­nal­ly the­o­ret­i­cal and impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy.

So… where might the per­plexed turn should they want to under­stand the world around them? Are we doomed to expe­ri­ence real­i­ty—as post­mod­ern the­o­rist Jean Bau­drillard thought—as noth­ing more than end­less sim­u­la­tion? It’s a lit­tle old-fash­ioned, but maybe we could ask a sci­en­tist? One like physi­cist, sci­ence writer, edu­ca­tor Dominic Wal­li­man, whose series of short videos offer to the layper­son “maps” of physics, math, and, just above, chem­istry.

Walliman’s inge­nious teach­ing tools excel in con­vey­ing a tremen­dous amount of com­plex infor­ma­tion in a com­pre­hen­sive and intel­li­gi­ble way. We not only get an overview of each field’s intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, but we see how the var­i­ous sub­dis­ci­plines inter­act.

One of the odd­i­ties of chem­istry is that it was once just as much, if not more, con­cerned with what isn’t. Many of the tools and tech­niques of mod­ern chem­istry were devel­oped by alchemists—magicians, essen­tial­ly, whom we would see as char­la­tans even though they includ­ed in their num­ber such tow­er­ing intel­lects as Isaac New­ton. Wal­li­man does not get into this strange sto­ry, inter­est­ing as it is. Instead, he begins with a pre­his­to­ry of sorts, point­ing out that since humans start­ed using fire, cook­ing, and work­ing with met­al we have been engag­ing in chem­istry.

Then we’re launched right into the basic build­ing blocks—the parts of the atom and the peri­od­ic table. If, like me, you passed high school chem­istry by writ­ing a song about the ele­ments as a final project, you may be unlike­ly to remem­ber the var­i­ous types of chem­i­cal bonds and may nev­er have heard of “Van der Waals bond­ing.” There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to look some­thing up. And there’s noth­ing wrong with being a pri­mar­i­ly audi­to­ry or visu­al learn­er. Wal­li­man’s instruc­tion does a real ser­vice for those who are.

Wal­li­man moves through the basics briskly and into the dif­fer­ences between and uses of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic chem­istry. As the ani­ma­tion pulls back to reveal the full map, we see it is com­prised of two halves: “rules of chem­istry” and “areas of chem­istry.” We do not get expla­na­tions for the extreme end of the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. Fields like “com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry” are left unex­plored, per­haps because they are too far out­side Wal­li­man’s exper­tise. One refresh­ing fea­ture of the videos on his “Domain of Sci­ence” chan­nel is their intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty.

If you’ve enjoyed the physics and math­e­mat­ics videos, for exam­ple, you should check back in with their Youtube pages, where Wal­li­man has post­ed lists of cor­rec­tions. He has a list as well on the chem­istry video page. “I endeav­our to be as accu­rate as pos­si­ble in my videos,” he writes here, “but I am human and def­i­nite­ly don’t know every­thing, so there are some­times mis­takes. Also, due to the nature of my videos, there are bound to be over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions.” It’s an admis­sion that, from my per­spec­tive, should inspire more, not less, con­fi­dence in his instruc­tion. Ide­al­ly, sci­en­tists should be dri­ven by curios­i­ty, not van­i­ty, though that is also an all-too-human trait. (See many more maps, exper­i­ments, instruc­tion­al videos, and talks on Wal­li­man’s web­site.)

In the “Map of Physics,” you’ll note that we even­tu­al­ly reach a gap­ing “chasm of ignorance”—a place where no one has any idea what’s going on. Maybe this is where we reach the edges of the sim­u­la­tion. But most sci­en­tists, whether physi­cists, chemists, or math­e­mati­cians, would rather reserve judg­ment and keep build­ing on what they know with some degree of cer­tain­ty. You can see a full image of the “Map of Chem­istry” fur­ther up, and pur­chase a poster ver­sion here.

Find Free Chem­istry Cours­es in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Physics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Physics Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

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

Learn Python with a Free Online Course from MIT

in Online Courses, Software | May 18th, 2017

The pro­gram­ming lan­guage Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python (true sto­ry!), and now cours­es that teach Python are in very high demand. Last Decem­ber, we fea­tured a free Python course cre­at­ed by Google. Today, it’s a free Python course from MIT.

Designed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence, the course “aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems. It also aims to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, to feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals.” Beyond offer­ing a primer on Python, the course offers an intro­duc­tion to com­put­er sci­ence itself.

The 38 lec­tures above were pre­sent­ed by MIT’s John Gut­tag. On this MIT web­site, you can find relat­ed course mate­ri­als, includ­ing a syl­labus and soft­ware. And if you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing this course as a MOOC (Mas­sive Open Online Course), you can sign up for the ver­sion that begins on May 27th over at edx.

The course will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of 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:

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learn­ing HTML, Python, Javascript & More

Down­load 243 Free eBooks on Design, Data, Soft­ware, Web Devel­op­ment & Busi­ness from O’Reilly Media

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

in Music | May 18th, 2017

Recent­ly I’ve been div­ing back into mak­ing music on my lap­top. Just like the iPhone has done to bulky equip­ment like cam­eras and key­boards, the dig­i­tal work­sta­tion has shrunk tons of gear, from music to mas­ter­ing, down into soft­ware. There’s cer­tain­ly no way I’m going to lug a mini-Moog to a cof­fee shop. But I’m will­ing to dab­ble with synth soft­ware, turn those dials and knobs, and see what hap­pens.

So this upload of “Intro to Syn­the­sis,” an instruc­tion­al VHS from 1985, is per­fect for me, and maybe you too. The hair, the clothes, and the jokes might be dat­ed, but the info is not. In the above video, Dean Friedman–who if you close your eyes sounds like late night host Seth Meyers–lays out the build­ing blocks of sound (pitch, tim­bre, vol­ume), the five types of wave­forms, and the sev­en com­po­nents of a syn­the­siz­er, from oscil­la­tors to the LFO.

All of these fea­tures are still found on the synth inter­faces used today in some form or anoth­er, and Fried­man goes through every ele­ment at a method­i­cal but appre­ci­at­ed pace. The three videos are an hour each.

And it pays to study the con­trols of synths and learn what makes them tick. The Yama­ha DX‑7 con­tained many pre-sets which, unfid­dled with, sound dat­ed and appear on many an ‘80s pop hit. Mean­while, Bri­an Eno, one of the few to actu­al­ly read the man­u­al, made “The Shutov Assem­bly” and oth­er mid-era ambi­ent tracks with the very same machine and noth­ing sounds quite like it.
Hap­py twid­dling!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 10-Hour Playlist of Music Inspired by Robert Moog’s Icon­ic Syn­the­siz­er: Hear Elec­tron­ic Works by Kraftwerk, Devo, Ste­vie Won­der, Rick Wake­man & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Hear 2,000 Recordings of the Most Essential Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Education

in Music | May 17th, 2017

If you were to ask me “What is jazz?” I wouldn’t pre­sume to know the answer, and I’m not sure any sin­gle com­po­si­tion exists to which one could point to as an ide­al type. Maybe the only thing I’m cer­tain of when it comes to jazz is—to quote Wal­lace Stevens—“it must change.”

Of course, there’s an incred­i­bly rich his­to­ry of jazz, broad­ly known, espe­cial­ly to those who have seen Ken Burns’ expan­sive doc­u­men­tary. I’d also rec­om­mend the excel­lent jazz writ­ing of Amiri Bara­ka, Stan­ley Crouch, or Philip Larkin. For the young, we might con­sult Langston Hugh­es’ illus­trat­ed jazz his­to­ry. And maybe every­one should read Charles Min­gus’ Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?” in which the con­trar­i­an genius writes, “each jazz musi­cian is sup­posed to be a com­pos­er. Whether he is or not, I don’t know.”

Min­gus the icon­o­clast argued for tear­ing up the text even as he sought a clas­si­cal pedi­gree for jazz. His wish was part­ly grant­ed by the influ­ence of jazz on com­posers like Leonard Bern­stein, who sought to answer the ques­tion “What is Jazz?” in a 1956 spo­ken-word LP. The ten­sion between jazz as a com­po­si­tion­al or whol­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al art seems to resound through­out the form, in all of its many guis­es and vari­a­tions. But one thing I think every jazz musi­cian knows is this: Stan­dards, a com­mon com­pendi­um of songs in the tra­di­tion.

You’ve got to know the rule­book (or the fake­book, at the least), before you can throw it out the win­dow. Even some of the most inno­v­a­tive jazz artists who more or less invent­ed their own scales, modes, and harmonies—like Cecil Tay­lor and Ornette Cole­man—either stud­ied at con­ser­va­to­ry or paid their dues as side­men play­ing oth­er people’s songs. Jazz—Coleman once told Jacques Der­ri­da—is “a con­ver­sa­tion with sounds.” Its under­ly­ing gram­mar comes from the Stan­dards.

Until fair­ly recent­ly, the only way one could get a prop­er edu­ca­tion in the stan­dards was on the job. Crit­ic, jazz his­to­ri­an, and pianist Ted Gioia writes as much in his com­pre­hen­sive 2012 ref­er­ence, The Jazz Stan­dards: A Guide to the Reper­toire. Gioia’s “edu­ca­tion in this music was hap­pen­stance and hard earned.” He writes, “aspir­ing musi­cians today can hard­ly imag­ine how opaque the art form was just a few decades ago—no school I attend­ed had a jazz pro­gram or even offered a sin­gle course on jazz.”

How times have changed. These days, if you can get in, you can take grad­u­ate-lev­el class­es taught by the greats, such as Her­bie Han­cock and Wayne Short­er at UCLA. Hun­dreds more less-famous jazz musi­cian pro­fes­sors stand at the ready in music depart­ments world­wide or at the renowned Berklee Col­lege of Music.

But for those auto­di­dacts out there, Gioia—who has served on the fac­ul­ty at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and been called “one of the out­stand­ing music his­to­ri­ans in America”—offers an excep­tion­al guide to the Stan­dards, one we can not only read, but also, thanks to Jim Hig­gins of the Jour­nal Sen­tinel, lis­ten to, in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) In a com­pan­ion essay, Hig­gins describes the process of com­pil­ing “as many of the per­for­mances [Gioia] rec­om­mend­ed” in his com­men­tary on 250 jazz stan­dards.

Gioia names over 2,000 dif­fer­ent per­for­mances of those 250 stan­dards, and the playlist con­tains near­ly all of them. You’ll find, for exam­ple, “sev­er­al dif­fer­ent record­ings of ‘In a Sen­ti­men­tal Mood’ by the com­pos­er (includ­ing one with John Coltrane), as well as ver­sions by Son­ny Rollins, Art Tatum, McCoy Tyn­er, Abdul­lah Ibrahim and Bud­dy Tate, and Chris Pot­ter.” While the playlist is “not a com­plete reflec­tion of Gioia’s rec­om­men­da­tions,” giv­en that cer­tain artists’ work can­not be streamed, “there’s a lot of music here”—a whole lot—“spanning a cen­tu­ry.”

The expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to this incred­i­ble library will not be com­plete with­out some con­text. Gioia’s book con­tains a “short his­tor­i­cal and musi­cal essay” on each of the 250 songs and he isn’t shy about offer­ing inci­sive crit­i­cal com­men­tary. Oth­er than going to music school or join­ing a tour­ing band, I can’t think of a bet­ter way to learn the Stan­dards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Intro­duc­tion to the Great Amer­i­can Art Form (1956)

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

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

An Animated Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Absurdist Playwright, Novelist & Poet

in Literature | May 17th, 2017

Though he’s best known for his spare, absur­dist tragi­com­e­dy, Wait­ing for Godot, play­wright, poet, and nov­el­ist Samuel Beck­ett wrote what might be his most-quot­ed line at the end of The Unnam­able, the third book in a hyp­not­ic tril­o­gy that begins with Mol­loy and con­tin­ues with Mal­one Dies: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

These nov­els, and the orig­i­nal Godot, were all writ­ten in French, then trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by Beck­ett him­self. But Beck­ett was an Irish writer, who—like his con­tem­po­rary, hero, coun­try­man, and almost-father-in-law James Joyce—lived most of his life in vol­un­tary exile. Like Joyce, Beck­ett wrote about Irish char­ac­ters, and his “theme,” not­ed a 1958 New York Times review­er of The Unnam­able, “is the very Irish one in this cen­tu­ry: the iden­ti­ty of oppo­sites.”

Noth­ing in Beck­ett encap­su­lates this idea more con­cise­ly than the sev­en-word con­clud­ing line of The Unnam­able. It’s a sen­tence that sums up so much of Beckett—his ellip­ti­cal apho­risms; his dry, acer­bic wit; and his unwa­ver­ing stare into the abyss. As one con­tem­po­rary of his sug­gest­ed, Beck­ett will remain rel­e­vant “as long as peo­ple still die.” His pri­ma­ry sub­ject is indeed one of the few tru­ly uni­ver­sal themes.

But to only think of Beck­ett as mor­bid is not to read Beck­ett or see his work per­formed. While he can be unre­lent­ing­ly grim, he is also nev­er not in con­trol of the dry humor of his voice. In his ani­mat­ed School of Life intro­duc­tion to Beck­ett above, Alain de Bot­ton begins with an anec­dote about Beck­ett at a much-antic­i­pat­ed crick­et match. Observ­ing the per­fect weath­er, a com­pan­ion of his remarked, “This is the sort of day that would make you glad to be alive.” To which Beck­ett replied, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”

The sto­ry, de Bot­ton, says, “nice­ly encom­pass­es two aspects of Samuel Beck­ett: his famous­ly bleak view of life, and his mor­dant sense of humor.” They are qual­i­ties that for Beck­ett have the sta­tus of philo­soph­i­cal principles—though the author him­self had a very fraught, almost aller­gic, rela­tion­ship to phi­los­o­phy. He gave up teach­ing ear­ly in his career, as we learn in the video, because “he felt he could not teach to oth­ers what he did not know him­self.” When a ver­sion of Wait­ing for Godot debuted in 1952, Beck­ett sent a note to be read in his place. He wrote, in part:

All I knew I showed. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me, by a wide mar­gin. I’ll even say that I would have been sat­is­fied with less. As for want­i­ng to find in all that a broad­er, lofti­er mean­ing to car­ry away from the per­for­mance, along with the pro­gram and the Eski­mo pie, I can­not see the point of it. But it must be pos­si­ble …

The neces­si­ty of the point­less exer­cise; the rich­ness in the pover­ty of existence—stripped of its pre­tense and grand, self-impor­tant nar­ra­tives.… These ideas arise from “the themes of fail­ure that so dom­i­nate his work,” says de Bot­ton. Though Beck­ett resist­ed inter­pre­ta­tion in his own writ­ing, he wrote an ear­ly study of Mar­cel Proust that inter­pret­ed the French author’s work as a phi­los­o­phy of life which rests “on the mak­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of art.” Giv­en that this is a School of Life video, this inter­pre­ta­tion becomes the favored way to read Beck­ett. There are many oth­ers. But as the title of a 1994 Samuel Beck­ett read­er—I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On—sug­gests, every approach to Beck­ett must some­how try to account for the stub­born inten­si­ty of his con­tra­dic­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

The Books Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

How James Joyce’s Daugh­ter, Lucia, Was Treat­ed for Schiz­o­phre­nia by Carl Jung

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

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Support the City Threatened by Climate Change: A Poignant New Sculpture

in Art, Science | May 17th, 2017

Upon arriv­ing in Venice in the late 1930s, colum­nist and Algo­nquin Round Table reg­u­lar Robert Bench­ley imme­di­ate­ly sent a telegram back home to Amer­i­ca: “Streets full of water. Please advise.” The line has tak­en its place in the canon of Amer­i­can humor, but in more recent times the image of water-filled streets — unin­ten­tion­al­ly water-filled streets, that is — has arisen most often in the con­ver­sa­tion about cli­mate change. Some of the poten­tial dis­as­ter sce­nar­ios envi­sion every major coastal city on Earth even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a kind of Venice, albeit a much less pleas­ant ver­sion there­of.

And so what bet­ter place than the one that hosts per­haps the world’s best known art exhi­bi­tion, the Venice Bien­nale, to express cli­mate-change anx­i­ety in the form of pub­lic sculp­ture? “Venice is known for its gon­do­las, canals, and his­toric bridges,” writes Condé Nast Trav­el­er’s Sebas­t­ian Modak, “but vis­i­tors will now also be greet­ed by anoth­er, albeit tem­po­rary, reminder of the city’s inti­mate rela­tion­ship with water: a giant pair of hands reach­ing out of the Grand Canal and appear­ing to sup­port the walls of the his­toric Ca’ Sagre­do Hotel.” The piece is called Sup­port, and it’s cre­at­ed by Barcelona-based Ital­ian sculp­tor Loren­zo Quinn.

“I have three chil­dren, and I’m think­ing about their gen­er­a­tion and what world we’re going to pass on to them,” Quinn told Mash­able’s Maria Gal­luc­ci. “I’m wor­ried, I’m very wor­ried.” The hands of his 11-year-old son actu­al­ly pro­vid­ed the mod­el for the polyurethane-and-resin hands of Sup­port, weigh­ing 5,000 pounds each, that stand on 30-foot pil­lars at the bot­tom of the Grand Canal. Modak quotes one of Quin­n’s Insta­gram posts which describes the work as speak­ing to the peo­ple “in a clear, sim­ple and direct way through the inno­cent hands of a child and it evokes a pow­er­ful mes­sage, which is that unit­ed we can make a stand to curb the cli­mate change that affects us all.”

Those argu­ing in favor of more aggres­sive polit­i­cal mea­sures to coun­ter­act the effects of cli­mate change have gone to great lengths to point out what forms those effects have so far tak­en. But the fact that, apart from a stretch of hot sum­mers, few of those effects have yet man­i­fest­ed unde­ni­ably in most peo­ple’s lives has cer­tain­ly made their job hard­er. But nobody who vis­its Venice dur­ing the Bien­nale could fail to pause before Sup­port, a work whose visu­al dra­ma demands a reac­tion that tem­per­a­ture charts or data-filled stud­ies can’t hope to pro­voke by them­selves. And even apart from the issue at hand, as it were, Quin­n’s sculp­ture reminds us that art, even in as deeply his­tor­i­cal a set­ting as Venice, can also keep us think­ing about the future.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

Frank Capra’s Sci­ence Film The Unchained God­dess Warns of Cli­mate Change in 1958

Watch Episode 1 of Years of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly, The New Show­time Series on Cli­mate Change

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Edward Gorey Illustrates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inimitable Gothic Style (1960)

in Art, Literature, Sci Fi | May 16th, 2017

The sto­ry of mali­cious space aliens invad­ing Earth has a res­o­nance that knows no nation­al bound­aries. In fact, many mod­ern ver­sions make explic­it the moral that only fight­ing off an exis­ten­tial threat from anoth­er plan­et could uni­fy the inher­ent­ly frac­tious human species. H.G. Wells’ 1898 nov­el The War of the Worlds, in many ways the arche­typ­al telling of the space-invaders tale, cer­tain­ly proved com­pelling on both sides of the pond: though set in Wells’ home­land of Eng­land, it made a last­ing impact on Amer­i­can cul­ture when Orson Welles pro­duced a thor­ough­ly local­ized ver­sion for radio, his infa­mous War of the Worlds Hal­loween 1938 broad­cast. (Lis­ten to it here.)

And so who bet­ter to illus­trate a mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry edi­tion of the nov­el than Edward Gorey? He was born in and spent near­ly all his life in Amer­i­ca, but devel­oped an artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty that struck its many appre­ci­a­tors as uncan­ni­ly mid-Atlantic. His work con­tin­ues to draw descrip­tions like “Vic­to­ri­an” and “goth­ic,” sure­ly under­scored by his asso­ci­a­tion with the British lit­er­a­ture-adapt­ing tele­vi­sion show Mys­tery!, for whose title sequences he drew char­ac­ters and set­tings, and the young-adult goth­ic mys­tery nov­els of Anglophile author John Bel­lairs. The Gorey-illus­trat­ed War of the Worlds came out in 1960 from Look­ing Glass Library, fea­tur­ing his draw­ings not just at the top of each chap­ter but on its wrap­around cov­er as well. Though out of print, you can find old copies for sale online.

Gorey had begun his career in the ear­ly 1950s at the art depart­ment of pub­lish­er Dou­ble­day Anchor, cre­at­ing book cov­ers and occa­sion­al­ly inte­ri­or illus­tra­tions. In addi­tion to Bel­lairs’ nov­els, he would also go on to put his artis­tic stamp on such lit­er­ary clas­sics as Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la and T.S. Eliot’s Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, bring­ing to each his sig­na­ture com­bi­na­tion of whim­sy and dread in just the right pro­por­tions. Giv­en the inher­ent omi­nous­ness and threat of The War of the Worlds, Gorey’s dark side comes to the fore as the sto­ry’s long-legged ter­rors arrive and wreak hav­oc on Earth, only to fall vic­tim to com­mon dis­ease.

Gorey’s War of the Worlds illus­tra­tions also seem to draw some inspi­ra­tion from the very first ones that accom­pa­nied the nov­el upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion as a Pear­son­’s Mag­a­zine ser­i­al in 1897. You can com­pare and con­trast them by brows­ing the high-res­o­lu­tion scans of the out-of-print 1960 Look­ing Glass Library War of the Worlds at this online exhi­bi­tion at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go Dig­i­tal Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, in part­ner­ship with the Edward Gorey Char­i­ta­ble Trust.

Though con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar to the illus­tra­tions in Pear­son’s, drawn by an artist (usu­al­ly of chil­dren’s books) named War­wick Gob­le, they don’t get into quite as much detail — but then, they don’t have to. To evoke a com­plex mix­ture of fas­ci­nat­ed antic­i­pa­tion and creep­ing fear, Gorey nev­er need­ed more than an old house, a hud­dle of sil­hou­ettes, or a pair of eyes glow­ing in the dark­ness.

via Heavy Met­al

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

Hear the Prog-Rock Adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Mil­lion Copies World­wide

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Meet the Iconic Figures on the Cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

in Art, Music | May 16th, 2017

June 1 will mark the 50th anniver­sary of the release of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, an album con­sid­ered rev­o­lu­tion­ary in every respect. Every­thing from the music itself, down to the album’s cov­er design, broke new ground. To com­mem­o­rate the upcom­ing anniver­sary, the BBC has start­ed to release a series of videos intro­duc­ing you to the 60+ fig­ures who appeared in the cutout card­board col­lage that graced the album’s icon­ic cov­er. (See a map­ping of the fig­ures here.)

Some of the fig­ures are endur­ing legends–Carl Jung, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and James Joyce. Oth­ers (e.g., Tom­my Han­d­ley, Bob­by Breen and Tom Mix) have fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty.

Up top, watch the video fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan. No stranger, right? Down below, see the video on Aubrey Beard­s­ley, the Eng­lish artist who cre­at­ed strik­ing illus­tra­tions for works by Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, both also fea­tured in the col­lage.

At the bot­tom, see a clip on pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. The BBC will be adding yet more videos here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

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

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)