An Animated Introduction to Arthur Schopenhauer and How We Can Achieve Happiness Through Art & Philosophy

in Philosophy | March 15th, 2017

For many years, as we wrote in a recent post, Friedrich Niet­zsche has been mis­un­der­stood as a philo­soph­i­cal nihilist and even a pro­to-Nazi. This is unfor­tu­nate, giv­en all Niet­zsche has to say about liv­ing coura­geous­ly in the face of nihilism and pro­to-Nazism, both of which he feared and hat­ed. But if we’re look­ing for a philoso­pher who espoused few, if any, pos­i­tive val­ues, who saw the entire world as emp­ty and malev­o­lent, and who had lit­tle sym­pa­thy for his fel­low man, we could instead turn to the Ger­man thinker whom Niet­zsche called his “teacher,” Arthur Schopen­hauer.

Schopen­hauer adopt­ed Bud­dhism ear­ly, years before D.T. Suzu­ki arrived in Europe and the U.S. and pop­u­lar­ized East­ern reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy. Per­haps Schopenhauer’s ver­sion of Bud­dhism didn’t quite catch on the same way because in his inter­pre­ta­tion, it resem­bles a dark, pes­simistic inver­sion of Rene Descartes’ propo­si­tions two cen­turies ear­li­er. “In my 17th year,” wrote Schopen­hauer (1788–1860), “I was gripped by the mis­ery of life, as the Bud­dha had been in his youth when he saw sick­ness, old age, pain and death.” So far, text­book intro to Bud­dhism.

But Bud­dhism has lit­tle to say about how the world came into exis­tence. Schopen­hauer goes on to write, “The truth was that this world could not have been the work of an all lov­ing being, but rather that of a dev­il, who had brought crea­tures into exis­tence in order to delight in their suf­fer­ings.” Schopen­hauer fits into the rare com­pa­ny of philo­soph­i­cal Anti­na­tal­ists, those who believe it would be bet­ter for us not to have been born at all. How is it then that Alain de Bot­ton can claim, as he does in his School of Life intro to Schopen­hauer above, that “like the Bud­dha… he deserves dis­ci­ples, schools, art­works, and monas­ter­ies to put his ideas into prac­tice.” What would that even look like?

Schopenhauer’s pes­simism was thor­ough­go­ing, and arrived ful­ly devel­oped in his 1818 mas­ter­piece, The World as Will and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, pub­lished when he was thir­ty. The Schopen­hauer we tend to know, if we know him at all, is a scowl­ing old man with an incon­gru­ous­ly com­ic ring of white hair sur­round­ing his bald head like a fluffy winged  halo. But until his death at age 72, he stuck to the sys­tem­at­ic think­ing of his youth; “he pub­lished a great deal,” says Bryan Magee above in a dis­cus­sion with philoso­pher Fred­er­ick Cople­ston,” but all of it was to extend, or elab­o­rate, or enrich the philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem he had devel­oped in his twen­ties and from which he nev­er depart­ed.”

In those many lat­er pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing two works on ethics and a revised edi­tion of Will and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion over twice the orig­i­nal length, Schopen­hauer the­o­rized the world as essen­tial­ly irra­tional and the crea­tures in it as gov­erned by the “will-to-life,” which, says de Bot­ton, “makes us thrust our­selves for­ward, cling to exis­tence, and look always to our own advan­tage.” Expressed main­ly through sex, the will-to-life dri­ves us to fall in love again and again, a phe­nom­e­non Schopen­hauer respect­ed, “as one would a tiger or a hur­ri­cane.” But Schopen­hauer resent­ed love, and saw it only as a neces­si­ty for the preser­va­tion of the species.

Aside from serv­ing this essen­tial func­tion, the will-to-life expressed through love only drove us to unhap­pi­ness. Schopen­hauer tends to be much less quotable than his most famous admir­er, Niet­zsche, but in one quote that sums up his idea of love, he wrote, “direct­ly after cop­u­la­tion the devil’s laugh­ter is heard.” It is per­haps need­less to point out that he had a very low view of the busi­ness of pro­cre­ation, not only because he opposed birth, but also because he opposed the con­di­tions that give rise to it. Rather than ele­vat­ing us above the run of oth­er sex­u­al­ly pro­cre­at­ing ani­mals, our con­scious­ness only serves to make us aware of our mis­ery.

“At every stop, in great things and small,” Schopen­hauer wrote, “we are bound to expe­ri­ence that the world and life are cer­tain­ly not arranged for the pur­pose of being hap­py. That’s why the faces of almost all elder­ly peo­ple are deeply etched with such dis­ap­point­ment.” Nonethe­less, we can “rise above the demands of the will-to-life,” he believed, in the man­ner of celi­bate monks and nuns. As Bud­dhist monas­tics have for 2,600 years, and more recent­ly a few scowl­ing Ger­man philoso­phers, we can renounce the plea­sures and the suf­fer­ings of every­day human life.

The oth­er way in which Schopen­hauer rec­om­mend­ed that we face the grim­ness of human life is through a form of art ther­a­py, spend­ing “as long as we can with art and phi­los­o­phy, whose task is to hold up a mir­ror to the fren­zied efforts and unhap­py tur­moil cre­at­ed in us by the will-to-life.” Where Schopenhauer’s first pro­pos­al for deal­ing with life’s suf­fer­ing close­ly resem­bles that of Ther­ava­da Bud­dhism, his sec­ond is a Mahayana for a Ger­man Roman­tic, who finds com­pas­sion for oth­er suf­fer­ing indi­vid­u­als only through the medi­um of art, lit­er­a­ture, and phi­los­o­phy.

In the full embrace of pes­simism, Schopen­hauer may sound to us a lit­tle like anoth­er Ger­man artist, Wern­er Her­zog, who also stares into the abyss of human mis­ery and finds val­ue only in its rela­tion to art: “To mar­ry means to do every­thing pos­si­ble to become an object of dis­gust to each oth­er,” Schopen­hauer writes, “Every life his­to­ry is the his­to­ry of suf­fer­ing,” “Life has no intrin­sic worth, but is kept in motion mere­ly by desire and illu­sion.” Should you find such state­ments com­fort­ing because they sound true to your expe­ri­ence, then per­haps Schopen­hauer holds for you a key to under­stand­ing and accept­ing the tragedy of exis­tence. But maybe he was wrong in assum­ing every­one was as mis­er­able as him­self.

See de Bot­ton expand on Schopenhauer’s view of love in the video above from his A Guide to Hap­pi­ness series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

How Did Niet­zsche Become the Most Mis­un­der­stood & Bas­tardized Philoso­pher?: A Video from Slate Explains

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Botton’s Doc­u­men­tary Shows How Niet­zsche, Socrates & 4 Oth­er Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

See the Homes and Stud­ies of Wittgen­stein, Schopen­hauer, Niet­zsche & Oth­er Philoso­phers

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

Rock Band: Hear The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” Played with Electromechanical Instruments That Make Music with Rocks

in Music, Technology | March 15th, 2017

From Neil Men­doza comes “Rock Band,” an amal­ga­ma­tion of “electro­mechan­i­cal instru­ments that make music with rocks by throw­ing them through the air, slap­ping them and mak­ing them vibrate.” Above, hear the band play one of my favorite Bea­t­les songs, “Here Comes the Sun.” There’s no Paul, John, George and Ringo here. Instead, you’ve got the fol­low­ing band mem­bers:

Pinger — fires small rocks at alu­mini­um keys using sole­noids.
Spin­ner — launch­es mag­net­ic rocks, Hematite, at pieces of mar­ble. Rocks are launched by spin­ning mag­nets using Applied Motion applied-motion.com step­per motors.
Slap­per — slaps rocks with fake leather.
Buzzer — vibrates the plunger of a sole­noid against a piece of mar­ble.

Accord­ing to Neil, “the whole project is con­trolled by a com­put­er run­ning a MIDI play­er writ­ten in open­Frame­works talk­ing to a Teen­sy. The machines were designed using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Inven­tor.” You can find instruc­tions on how to build your own Pinger 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!

via The Kids Should See This

How Filmmakers Like Kubrick, Jodorowsky, Tarantino, Coppola & Miyazaki Use Color to Tell Their Stories

in Film | March 15th, 2017

Once upon a time, a film could impress sim­ply by using col­or at all. Now, with a wider field of visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties open to cin­e­ma than ever, film­mak­ers must not sim­ply use col­or but mas­ter it, active­ly, as a way of con­vey­ing emo­tions, ideas, and even more besides. Chan­nel Criswell’s Lewis Bond, who describes col­or as his “favorite aspect of visu­al sto­ry­telling,” breaks down some of the main ways film­mak­ers have used it so far in his video essay on col­or in cin­e­ma.

“Since before we were even able to actu­al­ize sound in film, we’ve been obsessed with col­or,” Bond says, hav­ing shown us clips drawn from the work of Stan­ley Kubrick, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Hayao Miyaza­ki, Ang Lee, and oth­er direc­tors known for their visu­al­ly lush pic­tures.

“Film has always been about the visu­al, and the pri­mor­dial age of cin­e­ma dis­plays the lengths we were will­ing to go to just to cap­ture its essence.” Then came Tech­ni­col­or: when Dorothy passed into the land of Oz, “we became com­plete­ly free to use col­or how­ev­er we want­ed, and artists began to under­stand the dis­ci­plines of aes­thet­ics and sym­bol­ism.”

Yet “the meth­ods of the silent era,” a time when film­mak­ers had to hand-tint each black-and-white frame they shot with the prop­er­ly evoca­tive col­or, “have held through to the 21st cen­tu­ry.” Red, per­haps the strongest col­or, sig­nals “hate and cru­el­ty” just as force­ful­ly as it does “pas­sion and love.” And while “a lus­cious green field gives us hope and shows us fer­til­i­ty,” oth­er green loca­tions “show the mun­dane and life­less, and the green on a per­son” — again, The Wiz­ard of Oz pro­vides the go-to exam­ple — “tells us who the mon­ster is.”

Bond finds tra­di­tions in the use of col­or that con­nect the films of the clas­sic era to those of mod­ern mas­ters like the appar­ent­ly col­or-obsessed Wes Ander­son, whose use of non-con­trast­ing greens, browns, and yel­lows in Moon­rise King­dom “suits the film’s nos­tal­gic tone,” and who fills The Roy­al Tenen­baums and The Grand Budapest Hotel of pinks and beiges in order not to pile on emo­tion­al weight, but to reduce it, to tell us not to take the events of the sto­ry too seri­ous­ly.

Quentin Taran­ti­no, a fan of both the sub­tle and the unsub­tle, uses col­or in a vari­ety of ways, from the code­names of the thieves in Reser­voir Dogs to the bright yel­low track suit (itself a trib­ute to the films of Bruce Lee) worn by the pro­tag­o­nist of Kill Bill. In Apoc­a­lypse Now, sub­ject of anoth­er Chan­nel Criswell essay recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vit­to­rio Storaro “used a bal­anced col­or scheme in kurtz’s com­pound, but the orange mist gave a feel­ing of tox­i­c­i­ty in the air.”

In Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci’s The Last Emper­or, “as the char­ac­ter dis­cov­ers more about the world around him, the col­or palette shifts. The world of tra­di­tion and the char­ac­ter’s naiveté is dis­played by the world of red. How­ev­er, as the char­ac­ter begins to learn more, the col­or goes from red to orange, yel­low, and final­ly, once he becomes ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive of his sur­round­ings, he’s bound­ed to green.” And so, by the end of the movie, “both the char­ac­ter and the wheel have turned 180 degrees.” Bond means the col­or wheel, a cir­cu­lar dia­gram of the col­ors first devel­oped by Isaac New­ton and still cen­tral to col­or the­o­ry.

If cinephiles give that sub­ject a lit­tle study, they’ll see how their favorite films tell sto­ries in a more, well, vivid way. No mat­ter how many times you’ve seen Ver­ti­go, for exam­ple, a work­ing knowl­edge of col­or will help you appre­ci­ate exact­ly why it has such an impact when Scot­tie first sees Madeleine in a green dress sur­round­ed by a field of red. Alfred Hitch­cock­’s mas­ter­piece stands, of course, as one of the most effec­tive cin­e­mat­ic exam­ples of col­or as a sto­ry­telling device. Should any film­mak­er work­ing today both­er try­ing to top it? Bond quotes cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins as say­ing “that it’s easy to make col­or look good, but hard­er to make it ser­vice a sto­ry. He’s prob­a­bly right, but let’s try and prove him wrong.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

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.

Sesame Street’s Count Von Count counts Pi to 10,000 Places: A 5 Hour Recording for Pi Day

in Math | March 14th, 2017

March 14 is Pi Day. This odd­i­ty will keep the cel­e­bra­tion going a good part of the day.

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

Pi in the Sky: The World’s Largest Ephemer­al Art Instal­la­tion over Beau­ti­ful San Fran­cis­co

How Pi Was Near­ly Changed to 3.2 … and Copy­right­ed!

1000 Dig­its of Pi, Recit­ed by Jane Barbe, Famous Voice of Tele­phone Com­pa­ny Record­ings

Infin­i­ty Minus Infin­i­ty Equals Pi: This Video Proves It

NASA Puts Its Software Online & Makes It Free to Download

in Software | March 14th, 2017

A quick heads up: NASA has just announced that it has released its “2017–2018 soft­ware cat­a­log, which offers an exten­sive port­fo­lio of soft­ware prod­ucts for a wide vari­ety of tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tions, all free of charge to the pub­lic, with­out any roy­al­ty or copy­right fees.”

More than 30% of NASA inno­va­tions are soft­ware-based, and by mak­ing its soft­ware avail­able to the pub­lic, it helps give a boost to entre­pre­neurs, small busi­ness­es, cor­po­ra­tions and aca­d­e­mics. Ah, the ben­e­fits of Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer.

Avail­able in both hard copy and online, the soft­ware archive is divid­ed into numer­ous cat­e­gories, includ­ing Busi­ness Sys­tems and Project Man­age­ment, Vehi­cle Man­age­ment, Data Servers and Process Han­dling, Data and Image Pro­cess­ing, Design and Inte­gra­tion Tools, and more. See all avail­able soft­ware here.

h/t goes to OC read­er, Kunal

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:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 14 Free Posters from NASA That Depict the Future of Space Trav­el in a Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Retro Style

Down­load Free NASA Soft­ware and Help Pro­tect the Earth from Aster­oids!

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

Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es Free Course on Devel­op­ing Apps with iOS 10

See Japanese Musicians Play “Amazing Grace” with 273 Theremins Placed Inside Matryoshka Dolls–Then Learn How They Perform Their Magic

in Music, Technology | March 14th, 2017

In the arts, tech­nol­o­gy, or any oth­er realm, Japan­ese cul­ture encour­ages tak­ing one’s cho­sen pur­suits to the lim­its, even when their mate­r­i­al comes from oth­er cul­tures. We have here a par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ple in the form of Man­darin Elec­tron, a musi­cal ensem­ble found­ed and led since 1999 by pio­neer Japan­ese theremin play­er Masa­mi Takeuchi. But its mem­bers (273 of whom set the theremin-ensem­ble Guin­ness World Record with the per­for­mance of “Amaz­ing Grace” above) don’t play quite the same touch­less, spooky-sound­ing instru­ment vin­tage elec­tron­ic music fans would rec­og­nize; instead, they mas­ter the Matry­omin, a theremin in the com­pact form of a tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian Matryosh­ka doll, con­ve­nient­ly designed “so as to dis­sem­i­nate theremin per­for­mance.”

The com­bi­na­tion isn’t quite as ran­dom as it sounds. Back in 2015 we post­ed about the his­to­ry of the theremin, which goes back to the work of a Russ­ian inven­tor named Léon Theremin. When he first devel­oped the instru­ment in 1919, he called it the Aether­phone, and in the 1920s demon­strat­ed it in Europe and the Unit­ed States.

In the decades there­after, Therem­in’s strange new musi­cal inven­tion cap­tured imag­i­na­tions all over the world, and last year Japan cel­e­brat­ed the inven­tor’s 120th Birth­day with a series of events called Theremin 120 — most of them some­how involv­ing Takeuchi. You can learn more about his his­to­ry with the theremin and its home­land from the video just above.

In a sense, Takeuchi, who moved to Rus­sia to study under Therem­in’s rel­a­tive and pupil Lydia Kavia, has real­ized the inven­tor’s orig­i­nal vision for his “instru­ment of a singing-voice kind.” Free­ing its sounds from their mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry West­ern asso­ci­a­tions — dri­ve-in hor­ror movies, nov­el­ty surf-rock — he has over­seen their trans­for­ma­tion into the ele­ments of an elec­tron­ic cho­rus. You can pur­chase your very own Man­darin Elec­tron-made Matry­omin (now on its third-gen­er­a­tion mod­el) and start learn­ing to play it with the video just above, but if its poten­tial still escapes you, have a look at Takeuchi and his ensem­ble’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of tour and media appear­ances. If the sound and sight of hun­dreds of peo­ple all tun­ing their Matryosh­ka-doll theremins at once does­n’t intrigue you, noth­ing could.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

“Some­where Over the Rain­bow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

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.

Download 1,500+ Episodes of the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, Where Famous Guests Name the Songs They Can’t Live Without (1942 to the Present)

in Music, Radio | March 14th, 2017

Intro­vert, book­worm, home­body… labels I have glad­ly worn through­out my life. I believe in civic engage­ment on prin­ci­ple, but there have been many times in the past few months, indeed in life, when I’ve want­ed to strand myself on one of those prover­bial desert islands, sur­round­ed by my favorite books and records.

But sure­ly one needn’t be an intro­vert to appre­ci­ate occa­sion­al soli­tude and time well spent with one’s favorite writ­ing and music? Not in the least. As the BBC’s Desert Island Discs has shown us, many of the most out­go­ing celebri­ties, known for their con­stant pres­ence in the spot­light, have cul­ti­vat­ed their own inner cast­away.

Or at least many have been hap­py to share what they would lis­ten to and read on a the­o­ret­i­cal voy­age into soli­tude. Since 1942, Desert Island Discs has asked its famous guests to name eight record­ings (not strict­ly lim­it­ed to music), one book, and one lux­u­ry item that they couldn’t live with­out if left alone. One guest, Louis Arm­strong, con­fessed him­self mar­ried to the city and had such a long and suc­cess­ful career as a trum­pet play­er, band­leader, com­pos­er, singer, actor, and all-around per­son­al­i­ty that it’s hard to imag­ine he ever had any time to him­self.

Nev­er­the­less, Arm­strong pos­sessed a key qual­i­ty nec­es­sary for peace­ful time alone: he was a man who enjoyed his own com­pa­ny. In his 1968 appear­ance on the show, Arm­strong told the show’s cre­ator and long­time host Roy Plom­ley that one favorite track he couldn’t live with­out was his own record­ing of “Blue­ber­ry Hill.” His lux­u­ry item? His trum­pet of course. And book? His own auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

Not all the show’s guests have been as intense­ly self-focused in their answers. Kei­th Richards, who owes his sta­tus, said host Kirsty Young, to a “sin­gle-mind­ed ded­i­ca­tion to the tri­umvi­rate pur­suits of sex and drugs and rock and roll,” chose many of his heroes, like Chuck Berry and Etta James. And as a lux­u­ry item, he opt­ed not for a musi­cal instru­ment or an induce­ment to plea­sure, but for a very prac­ti­cal machete.

The long-run­ning Desert Island Discs owes its pop­u­lar­i­ty not sim­ply to famous peo­ple mak­ing lists, how­ev­er; that premise has served through­out its 75 years as scaf­fold­ing for some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with artists, actors, politi­cians, and oth­er nota­bles.

In Kirsty Young’s 2016 inter­view with Tom Han­ks, the affa­ble actor—whose list includ­ed Dean Mar­tin, Dusty Spring­field, Talk­ing Heads and a Her­mes 3000 man­u­al typewriter—broke down in tears while telling the painful sto­ry of his lone­ly child­hood. “What have you done to me?” he said to Young, then told her he was try­ing to express “the vocab­u­lary of lone­li­ness.” In 2014, Young pro­nounced artist and 12 Years a Slave direc­tor Steve McQueen—a devo­tee of Prince, Michael Jack­son, and Kate Bush—one of her all time favorite inter­vie­wees for his can­did, engag­ing dis­cus­sion of art as his “sal­va­tion.”

But of course, no pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment suc­ceeds with­out its con­tro­ver­sies, and Desert Island Discs has had plen­ty of those moments as well. Some­times scan­dalous moments—at least for the show’s host—have popped up in the midst of oth­er­wise excel­lent inter­views. In 2009, Mor­ris­sey sat down with Young for an inter­view that includ­ed “plen­ty of pos­i­tive state­ments,” writes NME, includ­ing “his rel­a­tive ease with life.” Yet she was shocked to hear him defend sui­cide as “hon­ourable… an act of great con­trol.” Whether he meant it or not, true fans of the singer would not have raised an eye­brow.

Anoth­er exchange hard­ly out of char­ac­ter for the inter­vie­wee occurred dur­ing a much less engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion. In 1989, Lady Mosley, aris­to­crat­ic wife of British Union of Fas­cists leader Oswald Mosley, pro­claimed her admi­ra­tion for Hitler and denied the Holo­caust. Host Sue Law­ley seemed “stunned,” the BBC notes, and accused Mosley of “rewrit­ing his­to­ry.” It’s hard to know what else the host expect­ed from a woman The Guardian called “unre­pen­tant” and “Hitler’s angel” upon her death in 2003.

Such unpleas­ant inter­views as Mosley’s are few and far between in the mas­sive archive of Desert Island Discs episodes on the BBC’s web­site, which spans the years 1956–2011, with many more recent episodes on the site as well, like this con­ver­sa­tion with Bruce Spring­steen. Oth­er notable inter­views come from Bri­an Eno in 1991, Yoko Ono in 2007, Maya Angelou in 1987, and Judi Dench just last year. Want to know their picks? You’ll have to lis­ten to the episodes–all of which you can download–to find out.

All of the show’s sub­jects are accom­plished peo­ple, but not all of them have been celebri­ties. The BBC has cho­sen as one of its most mov­ing inter­views a 2016 con­ver­sa­tion with David Nott, who has vol­un­teered as a sur­geon on bat­tle­fields around the world since 1993. Not­t’s har­row­ing sto­ries of over twen­ty years of war­zone trau­ma will like­ly have you con­vinced that among the show’s hun­dreds of guests, he may be most in need of that island get­away.

Giv­en Desert Island Discs’ con­straints of eight record­ings, one book, and one lux­u­ry item, what would you, cast­away read­ers, take with you, and why? Please tell us in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Library of Con­gress Releas­es Audio Archive of Inter­views with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

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

An Animated Introduction to Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent and How the Media Creates the Illusion of Democracy

in Media, Politics | March 13th, 2017

For near­ly as many years as he’s occu­pied the pub­lic eye, famed lin­guist and anar­chist philoso­pher Noam Chom­sky has made claims that might have dis­cred­it­ed oth­er aca­d­e­mics. Per­haps his many books, arti­cles, lec­tures, inter­views, etc. car­ry such weight because of his “famed lin­guist” sta­tus and his long­time tenure at MIT. But there’s more to his longevi­ty as a respect­ed crit­ic of U.S. state pow­er. His voice also car­ries sig­nif­i­cant author­i­ty because he sub­stan­ti­ates his argu­ments with eru­dite, gran­u­lar analy­ses of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, his­to­ry, and polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy.

We’ve seen him do exact­ly this in his fierce oppo­si­tion to the Viet­nam War at the begin­ning of his activist career, and in his cri­tiques of proxy wars, impe­ri­al­is­tic repres­sion, and cor­po­rate resource grabs in Latin Amer­i­ca and South­east Asia in decades since.

When it comes to the U.S. domes­tic scene, one of Chomsky’s most point­ed and con­tin­u­al­ly rel­e­vant cri­tiques address­es the way in which we’re led to believe the country’s actions over­seas jus­ti­fy them­selves, as well as its actions upon its own cit­i­zens. We might debate whether the U.S. is a democ­ra­cy or a repub­lic, but accord­ing to Chom­sky, both notions may well be illu­so­ry.

Instead, Chom­sky argues in Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent—his 1988 cri­tique of “the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of the mass media” with Edward S. Herman—that the mass media sells us the idea that we have polit­i­cal agency. Their “pri­ma­ry func­tion… in the Unit­ed States is to mobi­lize sup­port for the spe­cial inter­ests that dom­i­nate the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor.” Those inter­ests may have changed or evolved quite a bit since 1988, but the mech­a­nisms of what Chom­sky and Her­man iden­ti­fy as “effec­tive and pow­er­ful ide­o­log­i­cal insti­tu­tions that car­ry out a sys­tem-sup­port­ive pro­pa­gan­da func­tion” might work in the age of Twit­ter just as they did in one dom­i­nat­ed by net­work and cable news.

Those mech­a­nisms large­ly divide into what the authors called the “Five Fil­ters.” The video at the top of the post, pro­duced by Marcela Pizarro and nar­rat­ed by Democ­ra­cy Now’s Amy Good­man, pro­vides a quick intro­duc­tion to them, in a jar­ring ani­mat­ed sequence that’s part Mon­ty Python, part Res­i­dents video. See the five fil­ters list­ed below in brief, with excerpts from Goodman’s com­men­tary:

1. Media Own­er­ship—The endgame of all mass media orgs is prof­it. “It is in their inter­est to push for what­ev­er guar­an­tees that prof­it.”

2. Adver­tis­ing—Media costs more than con­sumers will pay: Adver­tis­ers fill the gap. What do adver­tis­ers pay for? Access to audi­ences. “It isn’t just that the media is sell­ing you a prod­uct. They’re also sell­ing adver­tis­ers a prod­uct: you.”

3. Media Elite—“Jour­nal­ism can­not be a check on pow­er, because the very sys­tem encour­ages com­plic­i­ty. Gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, and big insti­tu­tions know how to influ­ence the media. They feed it scoops and inter­views with sup­posed experts. They make them­selves cru­cial to the process of jour­nal­ism. If you want to chal­lenge pow­er, you’ll be pushed to the mar­gins…. You won’t be get­ting in. You’ll have lost your access.”

4. Flack—“When the sto­ry is incon­ve­nient for the pow­ers that be, you’ll see the flack machine in action: dis­cred­it­ing sources, trash­ing sto­ries, and divert­ing the con­ver­sa­tion.”

5. The Com­mon Ene­my—“To man­u­fac­ture con­sent, you need an ene­my, a tar­get: Com­mu­nism, ter­ror­ists, immi­grants… a boogey­man to fear helps cor­ral pub­lic opin­ion.”

Chom­sky and Herman’s book offers a sur­gi­cal analy­sis of the ways cor­po­rate mass media “man­u­fac­tures con­sent” for a sta­tus quo the major­i­ty of peo­ple do not actu­al­ly want. Yet for all of the recent ago­niz­ing over mass media fail­ure and com­plic­i­ty, we don’t often hear ref­er­ences to Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent these days. This may have some­thing to do with the book’s dat­ed exam­ples, or it may tes­ti­fy to Chomsky’s mar­gin­al­iza­tion in main­stream polit­i­cal dis­course, though he would be the first to note that his voice has not been sup­pressed.

It may also be the case that media the­o­ry and crit­i­cism like Chom­sky’s, or the work of Mar­shall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, or Jean Bau­drillard (all very dif­fer­ent kinds of thinkers), has fall­en out of favor in a 140-char­ac­ter world. In the late-80s and 90s, how­ev­er, such the­o­ry received a good deal of atten­tion, and Chom­sky appeared in the many venues you’ll see in the short video above, excerpt­ed from an almost 3‑hour 1992 doc­u­men­tary called Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent, a film made by “die-hard fans,” wrote Col­in Mar­shall in an ear­li­er post, that “curates instances of Chom­sky going from inter­view to inter­view, debate to debate, forum to forum, mak­ing sharp-sound­ing points about the rela­tion­ship between busi­ness elites and the media.”

Our desire for instant reward and set­tled opin­ion may have over­tak­en our abil­i­ty to sub­ject the entire phe­nom­e­non of mass media to crit­i­cal analy­sis, as we leap from cliffhang­er to cliffhang­er and cri­sis to cri­sis. But should we take the time to watch this film and, prefer­ably also, read Chomsky’s book, we may find our­selves some­what bet­ter equipped to eval­u­ate the onslaught of pro­pa­gan­da to which we’re sub­ject­ed on what seems like an hourly basis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

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

How 1940s Film Star Hedy Lamarr Helped Invent the Technology Behind Wi-Fi & Bluetooth During WWII

in Film, History, Technology | March 13th, 2017

A cer­tain ide­al of Amer­i­ca holds that an immi­grant who arrives in that land of oppor­tu­ni­ty can, with hard work and luck, com­plete­ly remake them­selves, even into an A‑list movie star or an inven­tor of hereto­fore unimag­ined new things. Hedy Lamarr, by this reck­on­ing, ranks among the ide­al Amer­i­cans: born Hed­wig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vien­na, she arrived in Hol­ly­wood in 1938 and reigned, under her new name grant­ed by movie mogul Louis B. May­er, as per­haps the most beau­ti­ful face on the sil­ver screen for the next dozen years.

A reluc­tant star since her ear­ly role in the scan­dalous Czech film Ekstase and in Amer­i­ca nev­er quite able to escape type­cast­ing as the mys­te­ri­ous, exot­ic beau­ty oppo­site a “real” actor, the bored Lamarr occu­pied her mind by turn­ing to inven­tion.

Work­ing away at her draft­ing table instead of mak­ing the night­ly Hol­ly­wood par­ty rounds, Lamarr came up with every­thing from dis­solv­ing soda tablets to improved traf­fic sig­nals and tis­sue box­es to a “skin-taut­ening tech­nique based on the prin­ci­ples of the accor­dion.”

But her place in the canon of Amer­i­can inven­tors rests on an idea that came out of a con­ver­sa­tion with com­pos­er George Antheil. Mar­ried back in Aus­tria to arms deal­er Friedrich Man­dl, she’d over­heard con­ver­sa­tions, accord­ing to her New York Times obit­u­ary, between her then-hus­band and many Nazi-high­er ups “who seemed to place great val­ue on cre­at­ing some sort of device that would per­mit the radio con­trol of air­borne tor­pe­does and reduce the dan­ger of jam­ming. She and Antheil got to dis­cussing all this. The idea, they decid­ed, was to defeat jam­ming efforts by send­ing syn­chro­nized radio sig­nals on var­i­ous wave­lengths to mis­siles, which could then be direct­ed to hit their mark.”

Lamarr filed this inge­nious patent for a “fre­quen­cy-hop­ping” com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem in 1942, but it raised no mil­i­tary inter­est until the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis twen­ty years lat­er, when the Navy start­ed using the tech­nol­o­gy on their ships. It evolved in the decades there­after, ulti­mate­ly becom­ing an indis­pens­able ele­ment of such tech­nolo­gies in wide­spread use today as wi-fi and Blue­tooth. Hav­ing signed her inven­tion over to the mil­i­tary, Lamarr nev­er made a dime from it her­self, but in 1996, four years before she died, she did receive the Elec­tron­ic Future Foun­da­tion’s Pio­neer Award. “It’s about time,” she said when she heard the news.

More recent­ly, his­to­ri­an Richard Rhodes told the sto­ry of Lamar­r’s invent­ing life in full with the book Hedy’s Fol­ly: The Life and Break­through Inven­tions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beau­ti­ful Woman in the World. “Hedy real­ized that what she came up with was impor­tant but I don’t think she knew how impor­tant it was going to be,” said her son Antho­ny Loder. “The def­i­n­i­tion of impor­tance is the more peo­ple that it affects over the longer peri­od of time. The longer this goes on and the more peo­ple it affects the more impor­tant she will be.” Lamarr her­self, in response to praise for her con­tri­bu­tion to com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy received in her life­time, explained it as mere­ly the result of fol­low­ing her instincts: “Improv­ing things comes nat­u­ral­ly to me.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Strange Woman, the 1946 Noir Film Star­ring Hedy Lamarr

Gus­tav Machatý’s Erotikon (1929) & Ekstase (1933): Cinema’s Ear­li­est Explo­rations of Women’s Sen­su­al­i­ty

Mark Twain’s Patent­ed Inven­tions for Bra Straps and Oth­er Every­day Items

Per­cus­sion­ist Mar­lon Bran­do Patent­ed His Inven­tion for Tun­ing Con­ga Drums

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.

Tony Conrad’s 200-Hour Avant-Garde Piano Composition, “Music & the Mind of the World”: Now Free Online for the First Time

in Music | March 13th, 2017

Last year, Tony Con­rad–an avant-garde video artist, exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er, musi­cian, com­pos­er, and sound artist–died at the age of 76. In its obit­u­ary, The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Con­rad was relent­less and rig­or­ous in expand­ing the para­me­ters of the fields in which he worked. His ear­ly musi­cal com­po­si­tions, like “Four Vio­lins” (1964), were high-vol­ume sus­tained drones. His first film, “The Flick­er” (1966), cre­at­ed a pul­sat­ing stro­bo­scop­ic effect with alter­nat­ing black and white frames. It was pre­ced­ed by a stern warn­ing that the film could induce epilep­tic seizures in cer­tain spec­ta­tors and that audi­ence mem­bers remained in the the­ater at their own risk.

Anoth­er work that else­where gets spe­cial men­tion is “Music and the Mind of the World,” a piano com­po­si­tion com­pris­ing over 200 hours of record­ed music. Influ­en­tial but lit­tle heard, “Music and the Mind of the World” fea­tures “the sounds of prac­tic­ing, bang­ing on the keys, for­mal exer­cis­es, exper­i­ments with the har­mon­ic sonor­i­ty of the piano itself, and even ‘On Top of Old Smokey’.” Begun in 1976 and com­plet­ed in 1982,“Music and the Mind of the World” is a “total encounter between an impro­vis­ing per­former and the cen­tral instru­ment of West­ern musi­cal cul­ture.”

For the first time, that influ­en­tial piece has now been pub­lished and made avail­able online for free on Youtube (above), or at this ded­i­cat­ed web­site. Set aside a big chunk of time and start stream­ing.

To learn more about the con­cep­tu­al under­pin­nings of this avant-garde cre­ation, read this inter­view with Con­rad. (I’d sug­gest click­ing here and doing a key­word search for “Could you tell me some­thing about your late 70s music, such as Music and the Mind of the World?”).

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Ital­ian Pianist Ludovi­co Ein­au­di Plays a Grand Piano While Float­ing in the Mid­dle of the Arc­tic Ocean