Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957–1961)

in Food & Drink, Television | March 28th, 2017

Drink our cof­fee. Or else. That’s the mes­sage of these curi­ous­ly sadis­tic TV com­mer­cials pro­duced by Jim Hen­son between 1957 and 1961.

Hen­son made 179 ten-sec­ond spots for Wilkins Cof­fee, a region­al com­pa­ny with dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Bal­ti­more-Wash­ing­ton D.C. mar­ket, accord­ing to the Mup­pets Wiki: “The local sta­tions only had ten sec­onds for sta­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so the Mup­pet com­mer­cials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight sec­onds for the com­mer­cial pitch and a two-sec­ond shot of the prod­uct.”

With­in those eight sec­onds, a cof­fee enthu­si­ast named Wilkins (who bears a resem­blance to Ker­mit the frog) man­ages to shoot, stab, blud­geon or oth­er­wise do grave bod­i­ly harm to a cof­fee hold­out named Won­tkins. Hen­son pro­vid­ed the voic­es of both char­ac­ters.

Up until that time, TV adver­tis­ers typ­i­cal­ly made a direct sales pitch. “We took a dif­fer­ent approach,” said Hen­son in Christo­pher Finch’s Of Mup­pets and Men: The Mak­ing of the Mup­pet Show. “We tried to sell things by mak­ing peo­ple laugh.”

The cam­paign for Wilkins Cof­fee was a hit. “In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­mer­cials in the Wash­ing­ton area,” said Hen­son in a 1982 inter­view with Judy Har­ris, “we were the num­ber one, the most pop­u­lar com­mer­cial.” Hen­son’s ad agency began mar­ket­ing the idea to oth­er region­al cof­fee com­pa­nies around the coun­try. Hen­son re-shot the same spots with dif­fer­ent brand names. “I bought my con­tract from that agency,” said Hen­son, “and then I was pro­duc­ing them–the same things around the coun­try. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going at the same time. At the point, I was mak­ing a lot of mon­ey.”

If you’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment, you can watch many of the Wilkins Cof­fee com­mer­cials above. And a word of advice: If some­one ever asks you if you drink Wilkins Cof­fee, just say yes.

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:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Hear Jimi Hendrix’s Virtuoso Guitar Performances in Isolated Tracks: “Fire,” “Purple Haze,” “Third Stone from the Sun” & More

in Music | March 27th, 2017

A gar­den of musi­cal curiosities—lush with rar­i­ties, out­takes, obscu­ri­ties, and live per­for­mances span­ning the globe—Youtube has ful­filled many a super­fan’s dream of instant access to record­ed musi­cal his­to­ry. One rar­i­fied bloom, the iso­lat­ed track, can prove a divi­sive strain. Why, aes­thetes and purists ask, rip a per­for­mance from its set­ting, place it before lis­ten­ers in a way musi­cians nev­er meant for it to be heard? Though at times expressed in ranty tones, the crit­i­cism has mer­it.

Think­ing of the “iso­lat­ed track” as pure solo vir­tu­os­i­ty does great injus­tice to the process­es that pro­duce these per­for­mances. As musi­cians well know, whether live or record­ed at sep­a­rate times in the stu­dio, most group per­for­mances result from count­less hours of rehearsal, revi­sion, some­times numb­ing rep­e­ti­tion, and devi­a­tions that become stan­dard over time.

For any band that plays togeth­er reg­u­lar­ly, parts emerge from the matrix of group dynam­ics or musi­cal “chem­istry.” Throw a dif­fer­ent musi­cian into the mix, and oth­er indi­vid­ual per­for­mances change as well.

That’s not even to men­tion the role of pro­duc­ers, record­ing and mix­ing engi­neers, etc. on shap­ing and refin­ing the sound. Many stu­dio pro­duc­tions nowa­days come from the lay­er­ing of beats, sequences, and sam­ples pro­duced in iso­la­tion from each oth­er. The results can sound ster­ile and inor­gan­ic. But in the 60s and 70s hey­day of album-ori­ent­ed rock, it was about the band, and almost no one put togeth­er bands that bet­ter com­ple­ment­ed his play­ing than Jimi Hen­drix. Con­verse­ly, no one played gui­tar like Hen­drix, in any con­text.

I would offer this in defense of hear­ing iso­lat­ed tracks from Hen­drix, or from Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie (who bucked the trend and wrote, arranged, rehearsed, and record­ed “Under Pres­sure” in the same night), Paul McCart­ney, Grace Slick, or any oth­er huge­ly tal­ent­ed per­former: We know these songs well enough already. So many of us have inter­nal­ized how their parts fit togeth­er into some­thing greater than them­selves. To have the indi­vid­ual tracks revealed only enhances our appre­ci­a­tion for the whole. When we return to the full arrange­ment we may hear nuances and quirks we’d nev­er noticed before, and notice afresh how these moments call and respond to the oth­er play­ers.

The iso­lat­ed Hen­drix gui­tar tracks here are sub­jects of study and appre­ci­a­tion, for gui­tarists, musi­col­o­gists, crit­ics, and ordi­nary fans. They allow us to hear very clear­ly what Hen­drix was doing in these songs under his cap­ti­vat­ing vocal deliv­ery, Mitch Mitchell’s rolling fills, and Noel Redding’s trav­el­ing lines. We gain a new appre­ci­a­tion for his rhythm play­ing, his deft tran­si­tions, and how his cool under­play­ing in vers­es made space for his indeli­bly flashy leads and intros.

Is it arti­fi­cial? Sure, but so is the record­ing process. And so is excerpt­ing parts of, say, Cit­i­zen Kane or Ver­ti­go to ana­lyze their edit­ing, cam­era work, or use of col­or. We don’t do it because we only want see part of the film, but because we want to bet­ter under­stand the tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cies of the work as a whole. Hear Hendrix’s iso­lat­ed gui­tar takes above (with some faint bleed from oth­er instru­ments) in “Fire,” “Pur­ple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic,” “Stone Free,” and, my per­son­al favorite, “Third Stone from the Sun.”

You can lis­ten to many more iso­lat­ed Hen­drix per­for­mances, and those from sev­er­al oth­er musi­cians, at the Dai­ly Motion chan­nel of Joh Phe. Then, by all means, return to the full record­ings and see how lit­tle bits of col­or, shape, and tex­ture that you hadn’t heard before now leap out at you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

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

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automatons in Action

in History, Technology | March 27th, 2017

The robots, as we all know, are com­ing for our jobs. We might regard that par­tic­u­lar anx­i­ety as dis­tinc­tive of the dig­i­tal age, but the idea of machines that per­form what we’ve long con­sid­ered specif­i­cal­ly human tasks has a long his­to­ry — as does the real­i­ty of those machines. The BBC video above offers a look at “The Writer,” which the New York Times’ Sonia Kolesnikov-Jes­sop describes as an “ear­ly humanoid robot of carved wood” who, “seat­ed at a small mahogany table, could write on paper using a goose­feath­er quill.” The date of this impres­sive curios­i­ty’s cre­ation? The decid­ed­ly pre-dig­i­tal year of 1768. The Writer has at his core a sys­tem of intri­cate clock­work, and so it stands to rea­son that its inven­tor Pierre Jaquet-Droz spent his career as a Swiss watch­mak­er.

“In the fol­low­ing years, work­ing with the help of his son, Hen­ri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, and his fel­low clock­mak­er Jean-Frédéric Leschot,” writes Kolesnikov-Jes­sop, “he also cre­at­ed The Musi­cian, a mechan­i­cal young woman who could play five tunes on an organ, and The Draughts­man, a ‘child’ able to draw four sep­a­rate images includ­ing that of a dog and a por­trait of a man.”

But The Writer, with its abil­i­ty to dip its quill in ink, its mov­ing eyes, and the wheel that makes it “pro­gram­ma­ble” to write any short mes­sage, remains both Jaquet-Droz’s most intri­cate and most impor­tant mechan­i­cal achieve­ment. You can see more pieces of his work, automa­tons and oth­er­wise, put into con­text in the short film just above, a pro­duc­tion of the Jaquet Droz lux­u­ry watch brand still in exis­tence today.

Upon hear­ing word of such “automa­tons,” oth­er inven­tors fol­lowed suit. Arti­fi­cial writ­ing remained a goal: more than forty years after The Writer, for instance, Hen­ri Mail­lardet built one capa­ble of “hand”-reproducing four draw­ings and three poems stored in its “brass mem­o­ry.” But oth­er automa­ton-builders had cho­sen to widen the field of mechan­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties: in 1784, the famed Ger­man cab­i­net­mak­er David Roent­gen pre­sent­ed to King Louis XVI a dul­cimer-play­ing automa­ton mod­eled after Queen Marie Antoinette. While the Queen thrilled to musi­cal per­for­mances from her own minia­ture like­ness, automa­ta made anoth­er kind of progress on the oth­er side of the world in Japan, a land that had almost no con­tact with the West until the mid-18th cen­tu­ry but whose tra­di­tions of craft stretch even deep­er into his­to­ry than Europe’s.

You can wit­ness in the video just above an unbox­ing, oper­a­tion, and inter­nal exam­i­na­tion of the best-known such Japan­ese karakuri, a spring-pow­ered archer that can load arrows into its bow and fire away. Its cre­ator Tana­ka Hisas­hige, also known as “the Thomas Edi­son of Japan,” built a fair few of these clock­work amuse­ments that still impress today, but also many more use­ful things, includ­ing a pneu­mat­ic fire pump, a uni­ver­sal clock, and the first Japan­ese steam loco­mo­tive and war­ship. His com­pa­ny Tana­ka Engi­neer­ing Works, found­ed in 1875, would lat­er evolve into the elec­tron­ics firm called Toshi­ba — devel­op­ers of Aiko Chi­hi­ra, who in 2015 became the world’s first robot­ic depart­ment-store employ­ee. Retail is one thing, but will her even more advanced descen­dants find it in them­selves to pick up the quill, the dul­cimer ham­mers, or the bow and arrow?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Cre­ates Amaz­ing Self-Fold­ing Origa­mi Robots & Leap­ing Chee­tah Robots

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appre­ci­ate Poet­ry

Autonomous Fly­ing Robots Play the Theme From the James Bond Movies

Two Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Chat­bots Talk to Each Oth­er & Get Into a Deep Philo­soph­i­cal Con­ver­sa­tion

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.

Free eBook Lets You Read Stories from 75 Up-and-Coming Sci-Fi Authors (Available for a Limited Time)

in Sci Fi | March 27th, 2017

Image by Dave Revoy, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up for sci-fi fans. Writes Wired UK:

Spec­u­la­tive fic­tion author Jake Kerr has edit­ed and released Event Hori­zon 2017, a huge anthol­o­gy of short fic­tion by 75 authors eli­gi­ble for this year’s John W. Camp­bell Award for Best New Writer. Kerr, who assem­bled the book over a week­end, said: “I knew it would­n’t look like a ‘book­store’ book, but I also knew it would look nice and some­thing a young author would be proud to have: their first paper­back book with their name in it.” Event Hori­zon 2017 is avail­able as a free ebook, or as two phys­i­cal vol­umes at the cost price of $10.33 apiece.

Find the free ebook here. Get more details on the col­lec­tion at The Verge.

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:

Hear Radio Dra­mas of Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy & 7 Clas­sic Asi­mov Sto­ries

Arthur C. Clarke Cre­ates a List of His 12 Favorite Sci­ence-Fic­tion Movies (1984)

Sci-Fi Icon Robert Hein­lein Lists 5 Essen­tial Rules for Mak­ing a Liv­ing as a Writer

Sci-Fi Writer Robert Hein­lein Imag­ines the Year 2000 in 1949, and Gets it Most­ly Wrong

I’m Just a Pill: A Schoolhouse Rock Classic Gets Reimagined to Defend Reproductive Rights in 2017

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health, Politics, Television | March 27th, 2017

Like many Amer­i­can chil­dren of the 70s and 80s, my under­stand­ing of how our gov­ern­ment is sup­posed to func­tion was shaped by School­house Rock.

Immi­gra­tion, sep­a­ra­tion of leg­isla­tive, exec­u­tive and judi­cial pow­ers and of course, the promise of the Con­sti­tu­tion (“a list of prin­ci­ples for keepin’ peo­ple free”) were just a few of the top­ics the ani­mat­ed musi­cal series cov­ered with clar­i­ty and wit.

The new world order in which we’ve recent­ly found our­selves sug­gests that 2017 would be a grand year to start rolling out more such videos.

The Lady Parts Jus­tice League, a self-declared “cabal of comics and writ­ers expos­ing creeps hell­bent on destroy­ing access to birth con­trol and abor­tion” leads the charge with the above homage to School­house Rock­’s 1976 hit, “I’m Just a Bill,” recast­ing the original’s glum aspi­rant law as a feisty Plan B con­tra­cep­tive pill. The red haired boy who kept the bill com­pa­ny on the steps of the Cap­i­tal is now a teenage girl, con­fused as to how any legal, over-the-counter method for reduc­ing the risk of unwant­ed preg­nan­cy could have so many ene­mies.

As with the orig­i­nal series, the prime objec­tive is to edu­cate, and com­ic Lea DeLar­ia’s Pill hap­pi­ly oblig­es, explain­ing that while peo­ple may dis­agree as to when “life” begins, it’s a sci­en­tif­ic fact that preg­nan­cy begins when a fer­til­ized egg lodges itself in the uterus. (DeLar­ia plays Big Boo on Orange is the New Black, by the way.) That process takes a while—72 hours to be exact. Plen­ty of time for the par­tic­i­pants to scut­tle off to the drug­store for emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion, aka Plan B, the so called “morn­ing-after” pill.

As per the drug’s web­site, if tak­en with­in 72 hours after unpro­tect­ed sex, Plan B  can reduce the risk of preg­nan­cy by up to 89%. Tak­en with­in 24 hours, it is about 95% effec­tive.

And yes, teenagers can legal­ly pur­chase it, though Teen Vogue has report­ed on numer­ous stores who’ve made it dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, for shop­pers to gain access to the pill.

(The Repro­duc­tive Jus­tice Project encour­ages con­sumers to help them col­lect data on whether Plan B is cor­rect­ly dis­played on the shelves as avail­able for sale to any woman of child­bear­ing age.)

There’s a help­ful foot­ball anal­o­gy for those who may be a bit slow in under­stand­ing that Plan B is indeed a bonafide con­tra­cep­tive, and not the abor­ti­fa­cient some mis­tak­en­ly make it out to be. It’s NSFW, but only just, as a team of car­toon penis-out­lines push down the field toward the uter­ine wall in the end zone.

The oth­er bills who once stood in line await­ing the president’s sig­na­ture have been reimag­ined as sperm, while song­writer Hol­ly Miran­da pays trib­ute to Dave Frish­berg’s lyrics with a piz­zazz wor­thy of the orig­i­nal:

I’m just a pill

A help­ful birth con­trol pill

No mat­ter what they say on Cap­i­tal Hill

So now you know my truth

I’m all about pre­ven­tion

If your con­dom breaks

I’m here for inter­ven­tion

Join me take a stand today

I real­ly hope and pray that you will

Drop some facts

Tell the world

I’m a pill.

Let’s hope the resis­tance yields more catchy, edu­ca­tion­al ani­ma­tions!

And here, for com­par­ison’s sake, is the mag­nif­i­cent orig­i­nal:

Via BUST Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

School­house Rock: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

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

Rock Scene: Browse a Complete Online Archive of the Irreverent Magazine That Chronicled the 1970s Rock & Punk Scene

in Magazines, Music | March 27th, 2017

The web­site RockScen­ester, assem­bled by Ryan Richard­son, has cre­at­ed a com­plete online archive of Rock Scene mag­a­zine, which ran from 1973 through 1982.

In the book There Goes Grav­i­ty: A Life in Rock and Roll, Rock Scene’s co-founder Lisa Robin­son writes, the mag­a­zine “was print­ed on cheap paper and the ink came off on your hands.” “It was an irrev­er­ent, cult music mag­a­zine that doc­u­ment­ed and glam­or­ized the rise of glam­rock and punk rock.” “Part fanzine, part tabloid, Rock Scene was where you could see what hap­pened before or after the show, par­tic­u­lar­ly at par­ties and back­stage.” “Years after Rock Scene was out out print,” Robin­son con­tin­ues, “musicians–Michael Stipe, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Thurston Moore, Chrissie Hyn­de and many others–would tell me that they grew up try­ing to find it in their small towns.” They would­n’t have that prob­lem today.

Every sin­gle issue of Rock Scene, from 1973 through 1982, has been scanned cov­er to cov­er. (Richard­son per­son­al­ly dropped $1500 on the project.) You can flip through edi­tions fea­tur­ing David Bowie (1973), The New York Dolls (1974), Lou Reed (1974), The Rolling Stones (1974), Peter Gabriel (1975), Pat­ti Smith (1976) Robert Plant (1977), The Ramones (1977), Iggy Pop (1977) and Deb­bie Har­ry (1982). Or just explore the full archive here. There’s 54 in total.

More zines can be found in the Relat­eds below.

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!

via @darkshark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of the 1960s Mag­a­zine Avant Garde: From John Lennon’s Erot­ic Lith­o­graphs to Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Last Pho­tos

Help Fund Open Culture

in | March 26th, 2017

If you would like to sup­port Open Cul­ture and its mis­sion, you can now make con­tri­bu­tions to our site. Your con­tri­bu­tions will help us pay our ded­i­cat­ed staff, and cov­er expen­sive host­ing costs. It will also make us less depen­dent on advertising–something that’s become unre­li­able with the rise of ad block­ers.

The best way to help is with month­ly con­tri­bu­tions. Or you can make a one-time con­tri­bu­tion. We cur­rent­ly accept pay­ments via Pay­Pal. (Please click on the yel­low “Donate” but­tons below.) You don’t need a Pay­Pal account to use Pay­Pal, only a cred­it card.

You can also use Patre­on (click here), Ven­mo (send to @openculture or @openculturedotcom) and now Cryp­tocur­ren­cy (click here). We love bring­ing Open Cul­ture to you. And we thank you for any sup­port you can give in return! Note: we’re not for­mal­ly set up as a non-prof­it. So con­tri­bu­tions aren’t deductible at this time.

Make a One-Time Con­tri­bu­tion to Open Cul­ture:

Make a Recur­ring-Month­ly Con­tri­bu­tion to Open Cul­ture:

Option 1 : $3.00 USD - monthlyOption 2 : $5.00 USD - monthlyOption 3 : $7.50 USD - monthlyOption 4 : $10.00 USD - monthlyOption 5 : $20.00 USD - monthly

The Jimi Hendrix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of Newcastle

in Music | March 26th, 2017

If you find your­self on the streets of New­cas­tle, Eng­land, you might stum­ble upon Ojay (aka Stephen Oliv­er Jones) busk­ing away, doing things you nev­er thought pos­si­ble with the bass gui­tar. Hence why he’s been dubbed the Jimi Hen­drix of the bass.

Ojay learned to play the bass with­out putting much effort into it. Years ago, he played in the Dust Junkys, a rap rock band in Man­ches­ter, before then mov­ing to New­cas­tle and giv­ing busk­ing a try. That was nine years ago, he told Tom Drap­er in this inter­view.

For Ojay, busk­ing offers more than a chance to earn a liv­ing. It pro­vides a cre­ative space, a chance to con­tin­u­al­ly impro­vise and work out new musi­cal ideas. Watch him in action above. And do your­self a favor, give the video a lit­tle time to unfold. It just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter.

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:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

80s Pop Singer Jim­my Somerville Sur­pris­es Ger­man Street Musi­cian as the Busker Sings Somerville’s Hit

Bono and Glen Hansard Busk­ing in Dublin on Christ­mas Eve

The Famous Schrodinger’s Cat Thought Experiment Gets Brought to Life in an Off-Kilter Animation

in Animation, Physics | March 24th, 2017

Schrödinger’s Cat is one of the more famous thought exper­i­ments in mod­ern physics, cre­at­ed by Aus­tri­an physi­cist Erwin Schrödinger back in 1935.  The Tele­graph sum­ma­rizes the gist of the exper­i­ment as fol­lows:

In the hypo­thet­i­cal exper­i­ment … a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a radioac­tive sam­ple, a Geiger counter and a bot­tle of poi­son.

If the Geiger counter detects that the radioac­tive mate­r­i­al has decayed, it will trig­ger the smash­ing of the bot­tle of poi­son and the cat will be killed.

The exper­i­ment was designed to illus­trate the flaws of the ‘Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion’ of quan­tum mechan­ics, which states that a par­ti­cle exists in all states at once until observed.

If the Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion sug­gests the radioac­tive mate­r­i­al can have simul­ta­ne­ous­ly decayed and not decayed in the sealed envi­ron­ment, then it fol­lows the cat too is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham’s Six­ty Sym­bols YouTube chan­nel pro­vides a more com­plete expla­na­tion. But with or with­out any fur­ther intro­duc­tion, you can watch the off-kil­ter ani­ma­tion, above, which imag­ines the ori­gins of the orig­i­nal exper­i­ment. It was cre­at­ed by Chav­dar Yor­danov for an ani­ma­tion show in Lon­don.

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:

80 Free Online Physics Cours­es

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Quan­tum Mechan­ics: From Schrödinger’s Cat to Heisenberg’s Uncer­tain­ty Prin­ci­ple

Ani­ma­tions of 6 Famous Thought Exper­i­ments

A Short Video Introduction to Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), the First Female Film Director & Studio Mogul

in Film, History | March 24th, 2017

This year’s Women’s His­to­ry Month theme is “Hon­or­ing Trail­blaz­ing Women in Labor and Busi­ness.” Before these lioness­es are hus­tled off­stage in order for us to refo­cus our atten­tions on Asian/Pacific Amer­i­cans, Jew­ish-Amer­i­cans, Autism Aware­ness, Mul­ti­ple Births, Sex­u­al­ly Trans­mit­ted Dis­ease Edu­ca­tion, pecans and the myr­i­ad oth­er cal­en­dar girls and boys that April brings, let’s join video essay­ist Cather­ine Strat­ton in cel­e­brat­ing the achieve­ments of film­mak­er Alice Guy-Blaché, above.

While not an offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized hon­oree, Guy-Blaché, who made over 1,000 films over two decades, def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fies as a trail­blaz­ing woman.

At age 21, she became the first female direc­tor in cin­e­ma his­to­ry with The Cab­bage Fairy, below, a whim­si­cal, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly accu­rate vision of where babies come from. (It was shot in 1896, long before rules lim­it­ing the amount of time a new­born actor can spend on set, but only a hand­ful of years before nurse Mar­garet Sanger took up the cause of women’s repro­duc­tive health.)

She tack­led the Life of Christ with a pas­sel of ani­mals, spe­cial effects, and 300 extras.

She popped view­ers eyes with can­dy-col­ored hand tint­ing.

She built a state-of-the-art film stu­dio in Fort Lee, New Jer­sey, prun­ing the ter­rain to serve as a vari­ety of land­scapes.

Viewed from the lens of 2017, one of her most star­tling achieve­ments is 1912’s A Fool and His Mon­ey, an excerpt of which is below. The tale itself is an unre­mark­able crowd­pleas­er: a poor guy falls in love with a wealthy young woman. He goes to great lengths to woo her, out­fit­ting him­self with fan­cy duds and throw­ing a huge par­ty, only to be best­ed by a flashy rival.

What is remark­able is that Guy-Blaché was white and the film’s cast is entire­ly African-Amer­i­can. Accord­ing to essay­ist Strat­ton, the char­ac­ters are por­trayed with none of the explic­it racism DW Grif­fith brought to The Birth of a Nation three years lat­er.

As Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls site reports, Guy-Blaché passed from the pub­lic view after an expen­sive divorce from her phi­lan­der­ing hus­band forced her to sell her stu­dio. She strug­gled to gain pub­lic recog­ni­tion for her pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to film his­to­ry with lit­tle suc­cess. A Fool and His Mon­ey was redis­cov­ered when a flea mar­ket shop­per bought a musty chest of old, unmarked reels.

Like that film, her rep­u­ta­tion is slow­ly being restored to its for­mer glo­ry. She was award­ed France’s Legion of Hon­or in 1955 and a Director’s Guild of Amer­i­ca Life­time Achieve­ment Award in 2012.

Give this trail­blaz­ing woman anoth­er look!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Over­looked Films Direct­ed by Women: See Selec­tions from Sight & Sound Magazine’s New List

85 Com­pelling Films Star­ring and/or Direct­ed By Women of Col­or: A List Cre­at­ed by Direc­tor Ava DuVer­nay & Friends on Twit­ter

245 Films by Female Direc­tors You Can Stream Right Now on Net­flix

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