What Does the World’s Oldest Surviving Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Performance on a 1720 Cristofori Piano

in History, Music | January 2nd, 2017

Imag­ine your favorite works for the piano—the del­i­cate and haunt­ing, the thun­der­ing and pow­er­ful. The min­i­mal­ism of Erik Satie, the Roman­ti­cism of Claude Debussy or Mod­est Mus­sorgsky, the rap­tur­ous swoon­ing of Beethoven’s con­cer­tos. Maybe it’s Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard; Thelo­nious Monk or Duke Elling­ton. Tom Waits, Tori Amos, Rufus Wain­wright, Prince… you get the idea.

Now imag­ine all of it nev­er exist­ing. A giant hole opens up in world cul­ture. Cat­a­stroph­ic! Or maybe, I sup­pose, we’d nev­er know the dif­fer­ence. But I’m cer­tain we’d be worse off for it, some­how. The piano seems inevitable when we look back into music his­to­ry. Its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors, the clavi­chord and harp­si­chord, so resem­ble the mod­ern piano that they must have evolved in just such a way, we think. But it needn’t have been so.

The harp­si­chord, writes Geor­gia State University’s Hyper­physics, “has a shape sim­i­lar to a grand piano,” but its oper­a­tion pre­vents one crit­i­cal musi­cal prop­er­ty: dynamics—“the play­er has no con­trol over the loud­ness and qual­i­ty of the tone.” On the whole, every inno­va­tion of the harpsichord’s design aimed to solve this prob­lem. Over the instrument’s 400-year his­to­ry, none of them did so as ele­gant­ly as the piano, invent­ed around 1700 by Bar­tolomeo Cristo­fori. In the video above, you can hear a slight­ly lat­er ver­sion of his instru­ment from 1720 played by pianist Dong­sok Shin—an excerpt from one of the first pieces of music ever writ­ten for the instru­ment.

Cristo­fori called his design the grave­cem­ba­lo col piano et forte, “key­board instru­ment with soft and loud” sounds. This soon short­ened to sim­ply pianoforte. It’s inter­est­ing that the word for “soft” even­tu­al­ly became its sole name. For all its grandeur and thun­der­ous capa­bil­i­ty, it’s the piano’s soft­ness that so often cap­tures our attention—the abil­i­ty of this lum­ber­ing beast of an instru­ment to pull its punch­es and move with qui­et grace. As you’ll prob­a­bly note in Shin’s demon­stra­tion, the ear­li­est pianos still retained a bit of the harpsichord’s twang, but we can also clear­ly dis­cern the woody thumps, rum­bles, and tin­kling highs of mod­ern pianos. (Com­pare it to this, for exam­ple.)

True to its name, the “qui­et nature of the piano’s birth around 1700,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, “comes as some­thing of a sur­prise.” It was invent­ed “almost entire­ly by one man,” Cristo­fori, whose exper­tise had made him stew­ard of Flo­ren­tine Prince Fer­di­nan­do d’Medici’s entire col­lec­tion of harp­si­chords and oth­er musi­cal instru­ments. The first men­tion comes from a 1700 Medici inven­to­ry describ­ing a harp­si­chord-like instru­ment “new­ly invent­ed by Bar­tolomeo Cristo­fori with ham­mers and dampers, two key­boards, and a range of four octaves, C‑c.” The first pianos had 54 keys rather than 88, and used “small wood­en ham­mers cov­ered with deer­skin.”

Oth­er mak­ers tried dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms, but “Cristo­fori was an art­ful inven­tor,” the Met remarks, “cre­at­ing such a sophis­ti­cat­ed action for his pianos that, at the instrument’s incep­tion, he solved many of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems that con­tin­ued to puz­zle oth­er piano design­ers for the next sev­en­ty-five years of its evo­lu­tion.” These design­ers made short­cuts, since Cristofori’s “action was high­ly com­plex and thus expen­sive.” But noth­ing matched his design, and those fea­tures were “grad­u­al­ly rein­vent­ed and rein­cor­po­rat­ed in lat­er decades.”

Cristofori’s inge­nious inno­va­tions includ­ed an “escape­ment” mech­a­nism that enabled the ham­mer to fall away from the string instant­ly after strik­ing it, so as not to damp­en the string, and allow­ing the string to be struck hard­er than on a clavi­chord; a “check” that kept the fast-mov­ing ham­mer from bounc­ing back to re-hit the string; a damp­en­ing mech­a­nism on a jack to silence the string when not in use; iso­lat­ing the sound­board from the ten­sion-bear­ing parts of the case, so that it could vibrate more freely; and employ­ing thick­er strings at high­er ten­sions than on a harp­si­chord.

The piano Shin plays above is the old­est sur­viv­ing instru­ment of Cristofori’s design, and it resides at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. Only “two oth­er Cristo­fori pianos sur­vive today,” notes CMuse, “in Rome and anoth­er at Leipzi Uni­ver­si­ty.” This instru­ment might have rep­re­sent­ed an ele­gant dead end in musi­cal evo­lu­tion. Though Baroque com­posers at the time, includ­ing Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, “were aware of it,” most, like Bach, har­bored doubts. “It was only with the com­po­si­tions of Haydn and Mozart” decades lat­er “that the piano found a firm place in music.” A place so firm, it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to imag­ine the last 250 years of music with­out it.

via CMuse

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Musi­cians Play Bach on the Octo­bass, the Gar­gan­tu­an String Instru­ment Invent­ed in 1850

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

205 Big Thinkers Answer the Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”

in Science | January 2nd, 2017

Image by Ben­jamin Reay, via Flickr Com­mons

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annu­al ques­tion to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2017 edi­tion asks, “What sci­en­tif­ic term or con­cept ought to be more wide­ly known?” And the ques­tion comes pref­aced by this thought:

Richard Dawkins’ “meme” became a meme, known far beyond the sci­en­tif­ic con­ver­sa­tion in which it was coined. It’s one of a hand­ful of sci­en­tif­ic ideas that have entered the gen­er­al cul­ture, help­ing to clar­i­fy and inspire.

Of course, not every­one likes the idea of spread­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing. Remem­ber what the Bish­op of Birmingham’s wife is reput­ed to have said about Darwin’s claim that human beings are descend­ed from mon­keys: “My dear, let us hope it is not true, but, if it is true, let us hope it will not become gen­er­al­ly known.”

So what estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic idea should we try to get out there? What con­cept should, at all costs, see the light of day? The replies — 205 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Richard Dawkins, of course, who’d have us learn more about the notion of “Genet­ic Book of the Dead.” You will also find selec­tions by Bri­an Eno (“Con­fir­ma­tion Bias”), Jared Dia­mond (“Com­mon Sense”),  Jan­na Levin (“The Prin­ci­ple of Least Action”), Steven Pinker (“The Sec­ond Law of Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics”) and more. Access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es 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!

Kill the Wabbit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bunny Cartoon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

in Animation, Music, Opera, Television | January 2nd, 2017

It comes as no sur­prise that many Amer­i­can children’s first, and often only expo­sure to opera comes com­pli­ments of Bugs Bun­ny. One of the ras­cal­ly rab­bit’s most endur­ing turns is as Brünnhilde oppo­site Elmer Fudd’s Siegfried in “What’s Opera, Doc?,” a 1957 car­toon spoof­ing Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen.

Oth­er well known names, includ­ing Mar­i­lyn Horne and Placido Domin­go have assayed these parts over the years, but thanks to the mir­a­cle of syn­di­ca­tion, Bugs and Elmer are the ones who tru­ly own them, as a cel­e­brat­ed part of their reper­toire for six decades and count­ing.

The law of aver­ages dic­tates that a percentage—a very small percentage—of their bil­lions of child view­ers would grow up to become opera pro­fes­sion­als.

The Wall Street Jour­nal recent­ly con­firmed that for sev­er­al promi­nent Wag­ne­r­i­ans, includ­ing the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s Lin­de­mann Young Artist Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, “What’s Opera, Doc?” and an ear­li­er work, 1949’s “Rab­bit of Seville,” had a pro­found impact.

And no dis­re­spect to direc­tor Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, who deployed Ride of the Valkyries so mem­o­rably in Apoc­a­lypse Now, but no one will ever use it to greater effect than the cartoon’s writer, Michael Mal­tese, author of the immor­tal lyrics:

Kiww the wab­bit! Kiww the wab­bit!

It’s a phrase even the least opera-inclined child can remem­ber and sing, well into adult­hood.

Read the com­plete Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Stream Brian Eno’s “Magnificently Peaceful” New Album Reflection: A Thoughtful Way to Start 2017

in Music | January 2nd, 2017

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The con­sen­sus among most of my friends seems to be that 2016 was a ter­ri­ble year, and the begin­ning of a long decline into some­thing we don’t even want to imag­ine.” Per­haps you find your­self, here at the dawn of 2017, think­ing the very same thing. But Bri­an Eno, who wrote those words in a new year’s Face­book mes­sage to his fans, won­ders if 2016 marked “the end — not the begin­ning — of a long decline.” Amid all the sound and fury, he’s also noticed “a qui­eter but equal­ly pow­er­ful stir­ring: peo­ple are rethink­ing what democ­ra­cy means, what soci­ety means and what we need to do to make them work again.”

If share and reac­tion counts are any indi­ca­tion, Eno’s assess­ment of the cur­rent human sit­u­a­tion has res­onat­ed with peo­ple, many of whom must sim­ply feel relieved to hear that at least one of their favorite musi­cal lumi­nar­ies has made it into 2017 unscathed.

Not only has he sur­vived, he’s put out a brand new album called Reflec­tion which, in an essay on his web site, he calls “the lat­est work in a long series” that includes 1975’s Dis­creet Music, 1985’s Thurs­day After­noon, 1993’s Neroli, 2012’s Lux, and “the first orig­i­nal piece of music I ever made, at Ipswich Art School in 1965 — record­ings of a met­al lamp­shade slowed down to half and quar­ter speed, all over­laid.”

Eno refers, broad­ly speak­ing, to the sort of music now known as “ambi­ent,” though “I don’t think I under­stand what that term stands for any­more.” He more accu­rate­ly describes this thread of his work as “gen­er­a­tive music,” which means music where the pieces “make them­selves. My job as a com­pos­er is to set in place a group of sounds and phras­es, and then some rules which decide what hap­pens to them. I then set the whole sys­tem play­ing and see what it does, adjust­ing the sounds and the phras­es and the rules until I get some­thing I’m hap­py with.” The album ver­sion of Reflec­tion, which you can stream on Spo­ti­fy (after down­load­ing Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware here) or pur­chase on Ama­zon or iTunes, rep­re­sents just one “record­ing of one of those unfold­ings.”

Reflec­tion’s sin­gle track, writes the Guardian’s Kit­ty Empire, “unfurls very grad­u­al­ly over 54 min­utes (and one sec­ond), its thrums and oscil­la­tions rever­ber­at­ing at a pace you might call glacial if the glac­i­ers weren’t all melt­ing in such a hur­ry. At sev­en min­utes in, the tones gath­er momen­tum. At 21 min­utes, there’s some­thing like the twit­ter of an elec­tron­ic bird. It gets going again at the 47-minute mark, when the bell-like nuances once again turn up a notch. The over­all effect is deeply, mag­nif­i­cent­ly peace­ful, med­i­ta­tive, even; ambi­ent cer­tain­ly monop­o­lis­es cer­tain sec­tions of the the­saurus. Naysay­ers may liken ambi­ent music to watch­ing paint dry, but this is paint dry­ing on a Mark Rothko can­vas.”

Just as a Rothko can­vas pro­vides a visu­al envi­ron­ment con­ducive to thought, so an ambi­ent Eno album pro­vides a son­ic one. “Reflec­tion is so called because I find it makes me think back. It makes me think things over,” Eno writes on his notes on the album. “It seems to cre­ate a psy­cho­log­i­cal space that encour­ages inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion. And exter­nal ones actu­al­ly — peo­ple seem to enjoy it as the back­ground to their con­ver­sa­tions.” This goes just as much, pre­sum­ably, for the the app ver­sion, which pro­vides the gen­er­a­tive sys­tem for a dif­fer­ent Reflec­tion lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence each time. We need the kind of space it cre­ates more than ever, now that, as Eno put it in his opti­mistic New Year’s dis­patch, “peo­ple are think­ing hard, and, most impor­tant­ly, think­ing out loud, togeth­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

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 Science of Willpower: 15 Tips for Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Last from Dr. Kelly McGonigal

in Psychology | December 30th, 2016

This week­end, mil­lions of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions will go into effect, with the most com­mon ones being lose weight, get fit, quit drink­ing and smok­ing, save mon­ey, and learn some­thing new. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, 33% of these res­o­lu­tions will be aban­doned by Jan­u­ary’s end. And 80% will even­tu­al­ly fall by the way­side. Mak­ing res­o­lu­tions stick is tricky busi­ness. But it’s pos­si­ble, and psy­chol­o­gist Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal has a few sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-proven sug­ges­tions for you.

For years, McGo­ni­gal has taught a very pop­u­lar course called The Sci­ence of Willpow­er in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, where she intro­duces stu­dents to the idea that willpow­er is not an innate trait. Rather it’s a “com­plex mind-body response that can be com­pro­mised by stress, sleep depri­va­tion and nutri­tion and that can be strength­ened through cer­tain prac­tices.”

For those of you who don’t live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you can find McGo­ni­gal’s ideas pre­sent­ed in a recent book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Below, we have high­light­ed 15 of Dr. McGo­ni­gal’s strate­gies for increas­ing your willpow­er reserves and mak­ing your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion endure.

1. Will pow­er is like a mus­cle. The more you work on devel­op­ing it, the more you can incor­po­rate it into your life. It helps, McGo­ni­gal says in this pod­cast, to start with small feats of willpow­er before try­ing to tack­le more dif­fi­cult feats. Ide­al­ly, find the small­est change that’s con­sis­tent with your larg­er goal, and start there.
2. Choose a goal or res­o­lu­tion that you real­ly want, not a goal that some­one else desires for you, or a goal that you think you should want. Choose a pos­i­tive goal that tru­ly comes from with­in and that con­tributes to some­thing impor­tant in life.
3. Willpow­er is con­ta­gious. Find a willpow­er role mod­el — some­one who has accom­plished what you want to do. Also try to sur­round your­self with fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends or groups who can sup­port you. Change is often not made alone.
4. Know that peo­ple have more willpow­er when they wake up, and then willpow­er steadi­ly declines through­out the day as peo­ple fatigue. So try to accom­plish what you need to — for exam­ple, exer­cise — ear­li­er in the day. Then watch out for the evenings, when bad habits can return.
5. Under­stand that stress and willpow­er are incom­pat­i­ble. Any time we’re under stress it’s hard­er to find our willpow­er. Accord­ing to McGo­ni­gal, “the fight-or-flight response floods the body with ener­gy to act instinc­tive­ly and steals it from the areas of the brain need­ed for wise deci­sion-mak­ing. Stress also encour­ages you to focus on imme­di­ate, short-term goals and out­comes, but self-con­trol requires keep­ing the big pic­ture in mind.” The upshot? “Learn­ing how to bet­ter man­age your stress is one of the most impor­tant things you can do to improve your willpow­er.” When you get stressed out, go for a walk. Even a five minute walk out­side can reduce your stress lev­els, boost your mood, and help you replen­ish your willpow­er reserves.
6. Sleep depri­va­tion (less than six hours a night) makes it so that the pre­frontal cor­tex los­es con­trol over the regions of the brain that cre­ate crav­ings. Sci­ence shows that get­ting just one more hour of sleep each night (eight hours is ide­al) helps recov­er­ing drug addicts avoid a relapse. So it can cer­tain­ly help you resist a dough­nut or a cig­a­rette.
7. Also remem­ber that nutri­tion plays a key role. “Eat­ing a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes ener­gy more avail­able to the brain and can improve every aspect of willpow­er from over­com­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion to stick­ing to a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion,” McGo­ni­gal says.
8. Don’t think it will be dif­fer­ent tomor­row. McGo­ni­gal notes that we have a ten­den­cy to think that we will have more willpow­er, ener­gy, time, and moti­va­tion tomor­row. The prob­lem is that “if we think we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a dif­fer­ent choice tomor­row, we almost always ‘give in’ to temp­ta­tion or habit today.”
9. Acknowl­edge and under­stand your crav­ings rather than deny­ing them. That will take you fur­ther in the end. The video above has more on that.
10. Imag­ine the things that could get in the way of achiev­ing your goal. Under­stand the ten­den­cies you have that could lead you to break your res­o­lu­tion. Don’t be over­ly opti­mistic and assume the road will be easy.
11. Know your lim­its, and plan for them. Says McGo­ni­gal, “Peo­ple who think they have the most self-con­trol are the most like­ly to fail at their res­o­lu­tions; they put them­selves in tempt­ing sit­u­a­tions, don’t get help, give up at set­backs. You need to know how you fail; how you are tempt­ed; how you pro­cras­ti­nate.”
12. Pay atten­tion to small choic­es that add up. “One study found that the aver­age per­son thinks they make 14 food choic­es a day; they actu­al­ly make over 200. When you aren’t aware that you’re mak­ing a choice, you’ll almost always default to habit/temptation.” It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out when you have oppor­tu­ni­ties to make a choice con­sis­tent with your goals.
13. Be spe­cif­ic but flex­i­ble. It’s good to know your goal and how you’ll get there. But, she cau­tions, “you should leave room to revise these steps if they turn out to be unsus­tain­able or don’t lead to the ben­e­fits you expect­ed.”
14. Give your­self small, healthy rewards along the way. Research shows that the mind responds well to it. (If you’re try­ing to quite smok­ing, the reward should­n’t be a cig­a­rette, by the way.)
15. Final­ly, if you expe­ri­ence a set­back, don’t be hard on your­self. Although it seems counter-intu­itive, stud­ies show that peo­ple who expe­ri­ence shame/guilt are much more like­ly to break their res­o­lu­tions than ones who cut them­selves some slack. In a nut­shell, you should “Give up guilt.”

To put all of these tips into a big­ger frame­work, you can get a copy of Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal’s book, The Willpow­er Instinct: How Self-Con­trol Works, Why It Mat­ters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. And now you can take The Sci­ence of Willpow­er as an online course that begins on Jan­u­ary 23.

Final­ly you might also want to peruse How to Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist (iTunes Video), a free online course led by Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal. It appears in our col­lec­tion of 1200 Free Cours­es Online.

A ver­sion of this post first appeared on Open Cul­ture in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoramic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

in Art | December 30th, 2016

A friend of mine, a fel­low Amer­i­can liv­ing in Seoul, just recent­ly put up a vlog in which he at once admires a piece of street art he hap­pens upon here and remarks on how much the pres­ence of the stuff both­ered him back in the States. It illus­trates an impor­tant point about the very medi­um of street art, graf­fi­ti, tag­ging, or what­ev­er you hap­pen to call it: con­text is every­thing — or rather, con­text and skill are every­thing. The worst exam­ples, as Paul Gra­ham writes, hap­pen “at the inter­sec­tion of ambi­tion and incom­pe­tence: peo­ple want to make their mark on the world, but have no oth­er way to do it than lit­er­al­ly mak­ing a mark on the world.”

How to find the best exam­ples? Ide­al­ly, they’ll catch you by sur­prise in their nat­ur­al urban envi­ron­ment, but you can’t be in every urban envi­ron­ment at once. Hence Google Street Art, the vir­tu­al muse­um we fea­tured last year. Since then Google Street Art intro­duced anoth­er inno­va­tion: the abil­i­ty to behold some of their 10,000 col­lect­ed pieces in “muse­um view.”

We’ve all used Google Street View to remote­ly explore the far­away places that pique our curios­i­ty, and some of us have already tried using it to check out the world’s street art, but this pro­vides a kind of Street View espe­cial­ly for street art, a high-res­o­lu­tion 360-degree panoram­ic per­spec­tive that lets you step for­ward and back­ward, to the left and to the right, and look at it from whichev­er angle you want to look at it.

Now you can check out 94 pieces and count­ing in much greater detail, from Los Ange­les to Bal­ti­more, Lis­bon to Lon­don, Buenos Aires to Mel­bourne. The selec­tion even includes pieces of street art brought indoors, as found in Paris’ Palais de Tokyo and the Gyeong­gi Muse­um of Art right here in Korea. Whether street art has the prop­er impact out­side its orig­i­nal urban con­text, or in a dig­i­tal rather than a con­crete ver­sion of that urban con­text, will sure­ly remain an inter­est­ing debate. “A city can nev­er be a uni­fied work of art or a beau­ti­ful object,” argues archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Joseph Ryk­w­ert in The Seduc­tion of Place, since “all sorts of things buf­fet and push human inten­tions about.” Per­haps, but that buf­fet­ing and push­ing cre­ates so much, from the grand­est tow­ers to the hum­blest alley murals, that counts as art in itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The Cre­ativ­i­ty of Female Graf­fi­ti & Street Artists Will Be Cel­e­brat­ed in Street Hero­ines, a New Doc­u­men­tary

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Artists Paint Paris, Berlin and Lon­don with High-Tech Video Graf­fi­ti

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

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.

Jim Jarmusch Lists His Favorite Poets: Dante, William Carlos Williams, Arthur Rimbaud, John Ashbery & More

in Film, Literature, Poetry | December 30th, 2016

Wiki­me­dia Com­mons pho­to by Chrysoula Artemis

When it comes to Amer­i­can indie direc­tor Jim Jar­musch, we tend to think right away of the impor­tance of music in his films, what with his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Neil Young, Tom Waits, and Iggy Pop. (Jar­musch is him­self a musi­cian who has released two stu­dio albums and three EPs under the moniker Sqürl.) But Jarmusch’s most recent film, Pater­son, is an ode to poet­ry, drawn from his own love of New York School poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ash­bery. Set in Pater­son, New Jer­sey and fea­tur­ing a main char­ac­ter also named Pater­son (Adam Dri­ver), the film aims to show, writes Time mag­a­zine, “how art—maybe even espe­cial­ly art made in the margins—can fill up every­day life.”

Jar­musch was drawn to Pater­son, the town, by William Car­los Williams. The mod­ernist poet called the town home and pub­lished an epic poem called Pater­son in 1946. Although that dense, com­plex work is “not one of my favorite poems,” Jar­musch tells Time, he namechecks Williams as one of his favorite poets.

I think we can see the influ­ence of Williams’ spare visu­al imag­i­na­tion in Jar­musch films like Stranger than Par­adise, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, and Bro­ken Flow­ers. Jar­musch goes on in the course of his dis­cus­sion about Pater­son, the film, to name a hand­ful of oth­er poets he counts as inspi­ra­tions. In the list below, you can find Jarmusch’s favorites, along with links to some of their most-beloved poems.

–William Car­los Williams (“Aspho­del, That Gree­ny Flower,” “4th of July”)
–Wal­lace Stevens (“The Man with the Blue Gui­tar,” “The Snow Man,” “Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at a Black­bird”)
–Dante Alighieri (Can­to I of the Infer­no)
–Arthur Rim­baud (“The Drunk­en Boat,” “Vagabonds”)
–John Ash­bery (“Self-Por­trait in a Con­vex Mirror”—read by Ash­bery)
–Ken­neth Koch (“In Love With You,” “One Train May Hide Anoth­er”)
–Frank O’Hara (“Steps,” Var­i­ous Poems)

As we read or re-read these poets, we might ask how they have informed Jar­musch’s styl­ish films in addi­tion to the influ­ence of his cin­e­mat­ic favorites. Sev­er­al great direc­tors have con­tributed to his pecu­liar visu­al aes­thet­ic. The only film­mak­er he men­tions as a hero in his Time inter­view is Bernar­do Bertol­luc­ci, but you can read about Jar­musch’s top ten films at our pre­vi­ous post–films direct­ed by such lumi­nar­ies as Yasu­jiro Ozu, Nicholas Ray, and Robert Bres­son.

via Austen Kleon’s week­ly newslet­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jarmusch’s 10 Favorite Films: Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai and Oth­er Black & White Clas­sics

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

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

Watch Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer’s Haunting, Animated Take on Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy”

in Animation, Current Affairs, Music, Politics | December 30th, 2016

The late Leonard Cohen’s 1992 anthem “Democ­ra­cy” feels not just fresh, but painful­ly rel­e­vant these days.

Cohen, a Cana­di­an who spent much of his adult life in the States, avowed that the song was nei­ther sar­cas­tic nor iron­ic, but rather hope­ful, an “affir­ma­tion of the exper­i­ment of democ­ra­cy in this coun­try.”

He start­ed writ­ing it in the late ’80s, churn­ing out dozens of vers­es as he pon­dered the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tianan­men Square protests.

The press kit for the album on which the song orig­i­nal­ly appeared stat­ed:

These are the final days, this is the dark­ness, this is the flood. What is the appro­pri­ate behav­ior in a cat­a­stro­phe, in a flood? You know, while you’re clean­ing out your orange crate in the tor­rent and you pass some­body else hang­ing on to a spar of wood. What do you declare your­self? “left wing” “right wing” “pro-abor­tion” “against abor­tion”? All these things are lux­u­ries which you can no longer afford. What is the prop­er behav­ior in a flood?

For musi­cian Aman­da Palmer and her hus­band, author Neil Gaiman, the answer to Cohen’s ques­tion is the stripped down, spo­ken word ver­sion of “Democ­ra­cy,” above—a fundrais­er for the free speech defense orga­ni­za­tion, PEN Amer­i­ca.

The video’s stir­ring water­col­ors are cour­tesy of artist David Mack, an offi­cial Ambas­sador of Arts & Sto­ry for the US State Depart­ment who has illus­trat­ed sev­er­al of Gaiman’s poems. Singer-song­writer Olga Nunes, anoth­er in Gaiman and Palmer’s vast sta­ble of tal­ent­ed co-con­spir­a­tors, ani­mat­ed.

Gaiman fans will no doubt thrill to hear that unmis­tak­able accent game­ly tack­ling such lyrics as “the homi­ci­dal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen,” but for my mon­ey, the most mem­o­rable phrase is the descrip­tion of this coun­try as “the cra­dle of the best and of the worst.”

Tru­ly.

You can pur­chase the track here—the project was fund­ed by 9,408 con­trib­u­tors to Palmer’s Patre­on and all pro­ceeds ben­e­fit PEN Amer­i­ca.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Hear Aman­da Palmer’s Cov­er of “Pur­ple Rain,” a Gor­geous Stringfelt Send-Off to Prince

Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Mas­ter of Dra­mat­ic Sto­ry­telling Reads Anoth­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

25 Animations of Great Literary Works: From Plato, Dostoevsky & Dickinson, to Kafka, Hemingway & Bradbury

in Animation, Literature | December 29th, 2016

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured a large num­ber of lit­er­ary works that have been won­der­ful­ly re-imag­ined by ani­ma­tors. Rather than leav­ing these works buried in the archives, we’re bring­ing them back and putting them all on dis­play. And what bet­ter place to start than with a foun­da­tion­al text — Pla­to’s Repub­lic. We were tempt­ed to show you a clay­ma­tion ver­sion of the sem­i­nal philo­soph­i­cal work (watch here), but we decid­ed to go instead with Orson Welles’ 1973 nar­ra­tion of The Cave Alle­go­ry, which fea­tures the sur­re­al artis­tic work of Dick Oden.

Stay­ing with the Greeks for anoth­er moment … This one may have Sopho­cles and Aeschy­lus spin­ning in their graves. Or, who knows, per­haps they would have enjoyed this bizarre twist on the Oedi­pus myth. Run­ning eight min­utes, Jason Wish­now’s 2004 film fea­tures veg­eta­bles in the star­ring roles.

One of the first stop-motion films shot with a dig­i­tal still cam­era, Oedi­pus took two years to make with a vol­un­teer staff of 100. The film has since been screened at 70+ film fes­ti­vals and was even­tu­al­ly acquired by the Sun­dance Chan­nel. Sep­a­rate videos show you the behind-the-scenes mak­ing of the film, plus the sto­ry­boards used dur­ing pro­duc­tion.

Eight years before Piotr Dumala tack­led Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment, the Russ­ian ani­ma­tor pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed film based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf­ka. Once again, you can see his method, known as “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” in action. It’s well worth the 16 min­utes. Or you can spend time with this 2007 Japan­ese ani­ma­tion of Kafka’s cryp­tic tale of “A Coun­try Doc­tor.” And if you’re still han­ker­ing for ani­mat­ed Kaf­ka, don’t miss The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa (Car­o­line Leaf’s sand ani­ma­tion from 1977) and also Orson Welles’ nar­ra­tion of the Para­ble, “Before the Law.” The lat­ter film was made by Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er, who using a tech­nique called pin­screen ani­ma­tion, cre­at­ed a longer film adap­ta­tion of Niko­lai Gogol’s sto­ry, “The Nose.” You can view it here.

The ani­mat­ed sequence above is from the 1974 film adap­ta­tion of Her­man Hes­se’s 1927 nov­el Step­pen­wolf. In this scene, the Har­ry Haller char­ac­ter played by Max von Sydow reads from the “Trac­tate on the Step­pen­wolf.” The visu­al imagery was cre­at­ed by Czech artist Jaroslav Bradác.

In 1999, Alek­san­dr Petrov won the Acad­e­my Award for Short Film (among oth­er awards) for a film that fol­lows the plot line of Ernest Hemingway’s clas­sic novel­la, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). As not­ed here, Petrov’s tech­nique involves paint­ing pas­tels on glass, and he and his son paint­ed a total of 29,000 images for this work. (For anoth­er remark­able dis­play of their tal­ents, also watch his adap­ta­tion of Dos­to­evsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”.)

Ita­lo Calvi­no, one of Italy’s finest post­war writ­ers, pub­lished Ital­ian Folk­tales in 1956, a series of 200 fairy tales based some­times loose­ly, some­times more strict­ly, on sto­ries from a great folk tra­di­tion. Upon the col­lec­tion’s pub­li­ca­tion, The New York Times named Ital­ian Folk­tales one of the ten best books of the year. And more than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, the sto­ries con­tin­ue to delight. Case in point: in 2007, John Tur­tur­ro, the star of numer­ous Coen broth­ers and Spike Lee films, began work­ing on Fiabe ital­iane, a play adapt­ed from Calvi­no’s col­lec­tion of fables. The ani­mat­ed video above fea­tures Tur­tur­ro read­ing “The False Grand­moth­er,” Calvi­no’s rework­ing of Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood. Kevin Ruelle illus­trat­ed the clip, which was pro­duced as part of Fly­p­me­di­a’s more exten­sive cov­er­age of Tur­tur­ro’s adap­ta­tion. You can find anoth­er ani­ma­tion of a Calvi­no sto­ry (The Dis­tance of the Moon) here.

Emi­ly Dick­in­son’s poet­ry is wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed for its beau­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty. To cel­e­brate her birth­day (it just recent­ly passed us by) we bring you this lit­tle film of her poem, “I Start­ed Early–Took My Dog,” from the “Poet­ry Every­where” series by PBS and the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion. The poem is ani­mat­ed by Maria Vasilkovsky and read by actress Blair Brown.

Shel Sil­ver­stein wrote The Giv­ing Tree in 1964, a wide­ly loved chil­dren’s book now trans­lat­ed into more than 30 lan­guages. It’s a sto­ry about the human con­di­tion, about giv­ing and receiv­ing, using and get­ting used, need­i­ness and greed­i­ness, although many fin­er points of the sto­ry are open to inter­pre­ta­tion. Today, we’re rewind­ing the video­tape to 1973, when Sil­ver­stein’s lit­tle book was turned into a 10 minute ani­mat­ed film. Sil­ver­stein nar­rates the sto­ry him­self and also plays the har­mon­i­ca.

Dur­ing the Cold War, one Amer­i­can was held in high regard in the Sovi­et Union, and that was Ray Brad­bury. A hand­ful of Sovi­et ani­ma­tors demon­strat­ed their esteem for the author by adapt­ing his short sto­ries. Vladimir Sam­sonov direct­ed Bradbury’s Here There Be Tygers, which you can see above. And here you can see anoth­er adap­ta­tion of “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

The online book­seller Good Books cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed mash-up of the spir­its of Franz Kaf­ka and Hunter S. Thomp­son. Under a buck­et hat, behind avi­a­tor sun­glass­es, and deep into an altered men­tal state, our nar­ra­tor feels the sud­den, urgent need for a copy of Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis. Unwill­ing to make the pur­chase in “the great riv­er of medi­oc­rity,” he instead makes the buy from “a bunch of rose-tint­ed, will­ful­ly delu­sion­al Pollyan­nas giv­ing away all the mon­ey they make — every guilt-rid­den cent.” The ani­ma­tion, cre­at­ed by a stu­dio called Buck, should eas­i­ly meet the aes­thet­ic demands of any view­er in their own altered state or look­ing to get into one.

39 Degrees North, a Bei­jing motion graph­ics stu­dio, start­ed devel­op­ing an uncon­ven­tion­al Christ­mas card sev­er­al years ago. And once they got going, there was no turn­ing back. Above, we have the end result – an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of an uber dark Christ­mas poem (read text here) writ­ten by Neil Gaiman, the best­selling author of sci-fi and fan­ta­sy short sto­ries. The poem was pub­lished in Gaiman’s col­lec­tion, Smoke and Mir­rors.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion between film­mak­er Spike Jonze and hand­bag design­er Olympia Le-Tan does­n’t bring a par­tic­u­lar lit­er­ary tale to life. Rather this stop motion film uses 3,000 pieces of cut felt to show famous books spring­ing into motion in the icon­ic Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. It’s called Mourir Auprès de Toi.

Oth­er nota­bles include: a two minute take on Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta; a 1977 exper­i­men­tal adap­ta­tion of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which mar­ries the clas­sic engrav­ings of Gus­tave Doré to an Orson Welles nar­ra­tion of Coleridge’s poem; and “Beer,” a mind-warp­ing ani­ma­tion of Charles Bukowski’s 1971 poem hon­or­ing his favorite drink.

Are there impres­sive lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions that did­n’t make our list? Please let us know in the com­ments below. We’d love to know about them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Haunt­ing­ly Ani­mates Paris’ Famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Book­store

Piotr Dumala’s Art­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka & Dos­to­evsky

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

Roman Architecture: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Architecture, Online Courses, Yale | December 29th, 2016

Taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Diana E. E. Klein­er, this course offers “an intro­duc­tion to the great build­ings and engi­neer­ing mar­vels of Rome and its empire, with an empha­sis on urban plan­ning and indi­vid­ual mon­u­ments and their dec­o­ra­tion, includ­ing mur­al paint­ing.”

The course descrip­tion con­tin­ues: “While archi­tec­tur­al devel­op­ments in Rome, Pom­peii, and Cen­tral Italy are high­light­ed, the course also pro­vides a sur­vey of sites and struc­tures in what are now North Italy, Sici­ly, France, Spain, Ger­many, Greece, Turkey, Croa­t­ia, Jor­dan, Lebanon, Libya, and North Africa. The lec­tures are illus­trat­ed with over 1,500 images, many from Pro­fes­sor Klein­er’s per­son­al col­lec­tion.”

You can watch the 24 lec­tures above, or find the com­plete lec­ture set on YouTube and iTunes. To get more infor­ma­tion on the course, includ­ing the syl­labus, please vis­it Yale’s web­site.

Texts used in this course include:

• Ward-Perkins, John B. Roman Impe­r­i­al Archi­tec­ture. New Haven: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1994.
• Clar­idge, Aman­da. Rome: An Oxford Archae­o­log­i­cal Guide, sec­ond edi­tion, Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2010.

Roman Archi­tec­ture will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. Find more cours­es focused on the Ancient world 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:

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

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

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

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome: Get a Glimpse from a TED-ED Ani­ma­tion