David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

in Art, Creativity, Education, Science | September 23rd, 2016

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

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

Bruce Springsteen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Songwriter & Now Memoirist

in Books, Music | September 23rd, 2016

Image by Michele Lucon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bruce Spring­steen turns 67 today. And next week his long-await­ed mem­oir, Born to Run, will final­ly get into read­ers’ hands. In advance of that lit­er­ary event, we’re look­ing back at a 2014 inter­view with The New York Times, print­ed short­ly before Spring­steen pub­lished his chil­dren’s book, Out­law Pete. 

The inter­view takes you inside Spring­steen’s lit­er­ary world, reveal­ing what books he reads, which books he loves, and what authors have shaped his song­writ­ing (and like­ly his own lit­er­ary style): The Times asks: “Who is your favorite nov­el­ist of all time, and your favorite nov­el­ist writ­ing today?;” “Who are your favorite New Jer­sey writ­ers?;” “What’s your favorite mem­oir by a musi­cian?;” “What book, if any, most influ­enced your deci­sion to become a song­writer and musi­cian or con­tributed to your artis­tic devel­op­ment?” The books he namechecks along the way include the fol­low­ing:

• Amer­i­can Pas­toral, I Mar­ried a Com­mu­nist and Sabbath’s The­ater, by Philip Roth
• Anna Karen­i­na, by Leo Tol­stoy
• Blood Merid­i­an, by Cor­mac McCarthy
• Chron­i­cles, by Bob Dylan
• Last Train to Mem­phis: The Rise of Elvis Pres­ley, by Peter Gural­nick
• Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whit­man
• Life, by Kei­th Richards
• Lone­ly Hearts of the Cos­mos, by Den­nis Over­bye
• Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez
• Moby-Dick, by Her­man Melville

• Mys­tery Train: Images of Amer­i­ca in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, by Greil Mar­cus
• The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
• Soul Min­ing: A Musi­cal Life, by Daniel Lanois
• The Com­plete Short Sto­ries, by Flan­nery O’Con­nor
• The His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy, by Bertrand Rus­sell
• The Nov­els of Jim Thomp­son
• The Sports­writer, Inde­pen­dence Day and The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford
• The Sto­ries of Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov

You can read the inter­view in its entire­ty here, and find some of the clas­sic books he men­tions in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. His mem­oir, Born to Run, will be offi­cial­ly released on Sep­tem­ber 27th. The com­pan­ion album, Chap­ter and Verse, is out today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List

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

in Art, Magazines, Sci Fi | September 23rd, 2016

H.G. Wells’ tales of fan­tas­ti­cal inven­tions, nev­er-before-seen beings, time trav­el, and alien inva­sion prac­ti­cal­ly cry out for visu­al and son­ic accom­pa­ni­ment. Of all the oth­er artists’ inter­pre­ta­tions of his 1898 nov­el The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ infa­mous Hal­loween 1938 radio broad­cast remains best known, but var­i­ous illus­tra­tors have also brought the sto­ry of mer­ci­less­ly destruc­tive Mar­tians’ arrival on Earth to equal­ly vivid life. Last year, we fea­tured Brazil­ian illus­tra­tor Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa’s hor­ri­fy­ing work for the 1906 edi­tion; today, we go back before The War of the Worlds’ first edi­tion to behold the aliens as ren­dered by War­wick Gob­le.

“I’m doing the dear­est lit­tle ser­i­al for Pear­son­’s new mag­a­zine,” Wells wrote to a friend, “in which I com­plete­ly wreck and sack Wok­ing — killing my neigh­bours in painful and eccen­tric ways — then pro­ceed via Kingston and Rich­mond to Lon­don, which I sack, select­ing South Kens­ing­ton for feats of pecu­liar atroc­i­ty.” That dear­est lit­tle ser­i­al, after its 1897 run in Pear­son­’s Mag­a­zine in the U.K. and Cos­mopoli­tan in the U.S., appeared the next year in book form as The War of the Worlds, a com­mon pub­li­ca­tion pro­ce­dure for pop­u­lar Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

“The sto­ry is still a bit rough round the edges,” writes sci-fi author John Guy Col­lick, but “what makes the mag­a­zine spe­cial are the fan­tas­tic illus­tra­tions by War­wick Gob­le. These are the first pic­tures of the Mar­tians and their tripods and, I think, the best.” He prais­es their low-tech style and their faith­ful­ness to the text: “in the nov­el Wells is at pains to point out that the Mar­t­ian legs are rigid,” not artic­u­lat­ed as the films and oth­er illus­tra­tions have tend­ed to por­tray them.” The Mar­tians them­selves he con­sid­ers a “bit too cute, though they are the first attempt to visu­alise beings from anoth­er world,” and these depic­tions of ter­ror from anoth­er plan­et (more of which you can see here) cer­tain­ly marked a depar­ture in Gob­le’s chil­dren’s book-ori­ent­ed career. Even an artist of whim­sy has to cause a few night­mares once in a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

H.G. Wells Inter­views Joseph Stal­in in 1934; Declares “I Am More to The Left Than You, Mr. Stal­in”

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.

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tutorial

in Art, How to Learn for Free | September 23rd, 2016

Aspir­ing artists, take note. New Mas­ters Acad­e­my has put online a video demon­strat­ing how to draw the human face and head. And it’s no short demo. It runs a full three hours. 

Describ­ing the scope and con­tent of the video, the Acad­e­my writes:

In this in-depth draw­ing series, instruc­tor Steve Hus­ton shows you a step-by-step con­struc­tion of the human head. He cov­ers the basic forms and more detailed inter­me­di­ate con­structs of the head as well as the eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

In this les­son, you will learn how to use basic shapes (box­es, cylin­ders, spheres) to form the basic struc­ture of the head. This les­son is a fun­da­men­tal step in learn­ing how to cre­ate a sol­id foun­da­tion to place the fea­tures of the face on. He will also show you how to con­struct the basic head in dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives…

This video will give you a big taste of what’s inside New Mas­ters Acad­e­my’s library of sub­scrip­tion videos. You can learn more about their ser­vice here.

On their YouTube chan­nel, you’ll also find videos of (nude) fig­ure mod­els you can use in draw­ings and paint­ings. And a series of non-nude mod­els you can use for the same pur­pose.

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:

An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy: Take a Free Course from Stan­ford Prof/Google Researcher Marc Lev­oy

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

The New York Public Library Unveils a Cutting-Edge Train That Delivers Books

in Books, Technology | September 22nd, 2016

In ear­ly Octo­ber, The New York Pub­lic Library will unveil a new book deliv­ery sys­tem that fea­tures 24 cars, run­ning on 950-feet of ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal track, mov­ing mil­lions of books through 11 dif­fer­ent lev­els of the library, at a rate of 75 feet per minute. This new $2.6 mil­lion book trans­port sys­tem replaces a clunki­er old one where “box­es of research mate­ri­als were placed on a series of con­vey­or belts.”

Image by Jonathan Blanc/NYPL

Says Matt Knutzen, direc­tor of the Human­i­ties and Social Sci­ences Research Divi­sions with­in the Stephen A. Schwarz­man Build­ing, “This new depend­able and effi­cient sys­tem will ensure a seam­less deliv­ery of research items from our stor­age facil­i­ty to the researchers who need them.”  “Our pri­or­i­ties include pre­serv­ing our mate­ri­als and mak­ing them increas­ing­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic in an inspir­ing space for research – our recent stor­age expan­sion, our restora­tion of the Read­ing Room, and the instal­la­tion of this sys­tem are all ele­ments of that work.”

Above, you can watch the new sys­tem at work, chug­ging away, climb­ing to new heights, and deliv­er­ing books to hap­py read­ers.

via Boing­Bo­ing/NYPL

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Build Your Own Miniature Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service & More

in Creativity, Film | September 22nd, 2016

In the Shin­to­ism from which Hayao Miyazaki’s films lib­er­al­ly draw, the worlds of nature and spir­it are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. “Shrine Shin­to,” write James Boyd and Tet­suya Nishimu­ra at The Jour­nal of Reli­gion and Film, “under­stands the whole of life, includ­ing both humans and nature, as cre­ative and life giv­ing. A gen­er­a­tive, imma­nent force har­mo­nious­ly per­vades the whole phe­nom­e­nal world.” But to expe­ri­ence this pow­er “requires an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful heart/mind, an emo­tion­al, men­tal and voli­tion­al con­di­tion that is not eas­i­ly attained.” In My Neigh­bor Totoro, for exam­ple, Miyaza­ki helps to induce this state in us with long slice-of-life pas­sages that move like gen­tle breezes through tall grass­es and trees. In the apoc­a­lyp­tic sci-fi Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the title char­ac­ter her­self takes on the task of har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­cil­ing man, nature, and mutant insect.

I would argue that Miyazaki’s films are not sole­ly enter­tain­ments, but means by which we can expe­ri­ence “an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pure and cheer­ful” heart and mind. And although he has retired, we can relive those films “over and over again,” as The Creator’s Project writes, not only by watch­ing them, but by build­ing minia­ture sets from them, as you see rep­re­sent­ed here. See My Neigh­bor Totoro’s old, rus­tic house in the for­est—where Sat­su­ki and Mei come to terms with their mother’s ill­ness while befriend­ing the local nature spirits—get assem­bled at the top of the post. And just above, see the town of Koriko from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice take shape, a place that becomes trans­formed by mag­ic, just as Kiki does by her sor­ties into the for­est.

These kits, made by the Japan­ese paper craft com­pa­ny Sankei, are “ready to be assem­bled and glued togeth­er, cre­at­ing your own mini movie set,” The Creator’s Project notes. Pre­vi­ous mod­els include Totoro and his two small com­pan­ions, above, and the bak­ery from Kiki; anoth­er kit recre­ates the desert­ed mag­i­cal town Chi­hi­ro and her par­ents stum­ble upon in Spir­it­ed Away. The kits don’t come cheap—each one costs around $100—and they take time and skill to assem­ble, as you see in these videos. But like so many of the impor­tant acts in Miyazaki’s films—and like the act of watch­ing those films themselves—we might think of assem­bling these mod­els as rit­u­als of patience and devo­tion to aes­thet­ic habits of mind that slow us down and gen­tly nudge us to seek har­mo­ny and con­nec­tion.

via The Creator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

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

Ukulele Orchestra Performs Ennio Morricone’s Iconic Western Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pretty Brilliant.

in Film, Music | September 21st, 2016

Last week, Josh Jones high­light­ed for you a free five-hour playlist fea­tur­ing Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Clas­sic West­ern Films. Even if you’re not deeply famil­iar with Morricone’s body of work, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard the theme to The Good, the Bad & the Ugly–the icon­ic 1966 Spaghet­ti west­ern direct­ed by Ser­gio Leone. Open­ing with the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able two-note melody that sounds like “the howl of a coy­ote,” the theme was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed with the help of the Unione Musicisti di Roma orches­tra.

Above, you can watch anoth­er orches­tra, The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain, pay homage to Morricone’s clas­sic theme. Described by The Guardian as “a cultish British insti­tu­tion” known for its expert­ly played cov­ers of Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” the Ukulele Orches­tra group scored its biggest hit with this per­for­mance. It’s an out­take from the DVD Anar­chy in the Ukulele, which you can pur­chase through The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s web­site. Enjoy.

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 5 Hours of Ennio Morricone’s Scores for Clas­sic West­ern Films: From Ser­gio Leone’s Spaghet­ti West­erns to Tarantino’sThe Hate­ful Eight

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” on the Uke

W.E.B. Du Bois Creates Revolutionary, Artistic Data Visualizations Showing the Economic Plight of African-Americans (1900)

in Data, Design, History | September 21st, 2016

Few peo­ple have done more to accu­rate­ly fore­see and help shape the cen­tu­ry ahead of them as W.E.B. Du Bois. And per­haps few intel­lec­tu­als from the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry still have as much crit­i­cal rel­e­vance to our con­tem­po­rary glob­al crises. Du Bois’ inci­sive soci­ol­o­gy of racism in The Souls of Black Folk, Black Recon­struc­tion in Amer­i­ca, and his arti­cles for the NAACP’s jour­nal, The Cri­sis, remained root­ed in a transcon­ti­nen­tal aware­ness that antic­i­pat­ed glob­al­ism as it cri­tiqued trib­al­ism. Du Bois, who stud­ied in Berlin and trav­eled wide­ly in Europe, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca, also became one of the most influ­en­tial of Pan-African­ist thinkers, unit­ing the anti-colo­nial con­cerns of African and Caribbean nations with the post-Recon­struc­tion issues of Black Amer­i­cans.

In 1900, Du Bois attend­ed the First Pan-African Con­fer­ence, held in Lon­don at West­min­ster Hall just pri­or to the Paris Exhi­bi­tion. Atten­dees pre­sent­ed papers on “the African ori­gins of human civ­i­liza­tion,” writes Ram­la Ban­dele at Northwestern’s Glob­al Map­pings, on African self-gov­ern­ment, and on the impe­r­i­al aggres­sion of Euro­pean coun­tries (includ­ing the host coun­try). Du Bois arrived armed with what might have seemed like a dull offer­ing to some: a col­lec­tion of sta­tis­tics. But not just any col­lec­tion of sta­tis­tics. Though they’re now an often banal sta­ple of our every­day work­ing lives, his pre­sen­ta­tion used then-inno­v­a­tive charts and graphs to con­dense his data into a pow­er­ful set of images.

Once again antic­i­pat­ing glob­al trends of over a cen­tu­ry hence, the activist and soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Atlanta Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed around 60 eye-catch­ing data visu­al­iza­tions, “charts and maps,” writes the blog All My Eyes, “hand drawn and col­ored at the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry” by Du Bois and his stu­dents.

For audi­ences at the time, these must have packed the evi­den­tiary punch that Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Repa­ra­tions” have recent­ly. Du Bois and his stu­dents’ charts show us—as the first “slide” at the top of the post notes—“the con­di­tion of the descen­dants of for­mer African slaves now res­i­dent in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

The col­lec­tion of info­graph­ics, Dan­ny Lewis argues at The Smith­son­ian, “is just as rev­o­lu­tion­ary now as it was when it was first cre­at­ed,” for an exhib­it Du Bois orga­nized with a lawyer named Thomas J. Cal­loway and his occa­sion­al rival Book­er T. Wash­ing­ton. “This was less than half a cen­tu­ry after the end of Amer­i­can slav­ery,” writes Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “and at a time when human zoos dis­play­ing peo­ple from col­o­nized coun­tries in repli­cas of their homes were still com­mon.” In the U.S., the grotesque stereo­types of black­face min­strels pro­vid­ed the pri­ma­ry depic­tion of African-Amer­i­can life.

“Du Bois’ stu­dents,” writes data blog See­ing Com­plex­i­ty, “made a rad­i­cal deci­sion when they visu­al­ized the eco­nom­ic plight of a group explic­it­ly exclud­ed from sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis and thus hid­den from inter­na­tion­al atten­tion.” The lev­el of detail—for Du Bois’ time and ours—is over­whelm­ing, remind­ing us that “the sim­ple act of dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion can, in itself, be a rad­i­cal­ly and poten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive act.” In one of Du Bois’ graph­ic stud­ies, “The Geor­gia Negro,” he quotes his key line from The Souls of Black Folk, “The prob­lem of the 20th cen­tu­ry is the prob­lem of the col­or-line.” Far too much cur­rent data demon­strates that the state­ment still holds true in the 21st cen­tu­ry, as gross dis­par­i­ties in wealth and in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem grim­ly per­sist, or wors­en, along racial lines.

Data may not be as trans­for­ma­tive as Du Bois had hoped, but it forces us to con­front the real­i­ty of the situation—and either ratio­nal­ize the sta­tus quo or seek to change it. One of three parts of the exhib­it, The Geor­gia Negro study was Du Bois’ “most impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the project,” writes Pro­fes­sor Eugene Proven­zo in his book on the sub­ject. The charts are tru­ly impres­sive for their dis­til­la­tion of “an enor­mous amount of sta­tis­ti­cal data,” drawn from “sources such as the Unit­ed States Cen­sus, the Atlanta Uni­ver­si­ty Reports, and var­i­ous gov­ern­men­tal reports that had been com­piled by Du Bois for groups such as the Unit­ed States Bureau of Labor.” (Much of the data would have gone uncol­lect­ed were it not for Du Bois’ tire­less efforts.)

The charts are also, Proven­zo notes, “remark­able in terms of their design,” as you can see for your­self. Du Bois and his stu­dents com­mit­ted to “exam­in­ing every­thing,” Meier writes, quot­ing Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion, “from the val­ue of house­hold and kitchen fur­ni­ture to the ‘rise of the negroes from slav­ery to free­dom in one gen­er­a­tion.’” And they did so in a way that still looks “strik­ing­ly vibrant and mod­ern, almost antic­i­pat­ing the cross­ing lines of Piet Mon­dri­an or the inter­sect­ing shapes of Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky.” How­ev­er much their cre­ators had explic­it­ly mod­ernist inten­tions, these designs also draw from his­tor­i­cal tech­niques in data visu­al­iza­tion—from 17th cen­tu­ry sci­en­tif­ic texts to Flo­rence Nightingale’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary 19th cen­tu­ry epi­demi­o­log­i­cal maps.

You can view and down­load scans of all the hand-drawn Du Bois’ Pan-African Con­fer­ence charts and graphs at the Library of Con­gress. There, you’ll also find oth­er fea­tures of the Du Bois/Calloway/Washington Exhib­it, includ­ing pho­tographs of sev­er­al African-Amer­i­can men who had “received appoint­ment as clerks in civ­il ser­vice depart­ments… through com­pet­i­tive exam­i­na­tions” and a “hand-let­tered descrip­tion of Hamp­ton Nor­mal and Agri­cul­tur­al Insti­tute” in Vir­ginia. Du Bois’ descrip­tion of his project says as much about his sense of Black Nation­al­ism as it does about pride in the progress made a gen­er­a­tion after slav­ery: “an hon­est straight­for­ward exhib­it of a small nation of peo­ple, pic­tur­ing their life and devel­op­ment with­out apol­o­gy or gloss, and above all made by them­selves.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic/All My Eyes/See­ing Com­plex­i­ty/Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Flo­rence Nightin­gale Saved Lives by Cre­at­ing Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Visu­al­iza­tions of Sta­tis­tics (1855)

The Art of Data Visu­al­iza­tion: How to Tell Com­plex Sto­ries Through Smart Design

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

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketches of Broadacre City (1932)

in Architecture | September 21st, 2016

As much as we admire build­ings designed by genius archi­tects, we have to admit that — some­times, just some­times — those genius archi­tects them­selves can be con­trol freaks. These ten­den­cies man­i­fest with a spe­cial clar­i­ty when a mak­er of indi­vid­ual struc­tures turns his mind toward build­ing, or knock­ing down and re-build­ing, the city as a whole. The Carte­sian grid of looka­like tow­ers on the green of Le Cor­busier’s Radi­ant City stand (or rather, the project hav­ing gone unbuilt, don’t stand) as per­haps the best-known image of urban­ism re-envi­sioned to suit a sin­gle archi­tec­t’s desires. In response, Frank Lloyd Wright came up with an urban Utopia of his own: Broad­acre City.

“Imag­ine spa­cious land­scaped high­ways,” Wright wrote in 1932, “giant roads, them­selves great archi­tec­ture, pass pub­lic ser­vice sta­tions, no longer eye­sores, expand­ed to include all kinds of ser­vice and com­fort. They unite and sep­a­rate — sep­a­rate and unite the series of diver­si­fied units, the farm units, the fac­to­ry units, the road­side mar­kets, the gar­den schools, the dwelling places (each on its acre of indi­vid­u­al­ly adorned and cul­ti­vat­ed ground), the places for plea­sure and leisure.

All of these units so arranged and so inte­grat­ed that each cit­i­zen of the future will have all forms of pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, self improve­ment, enjoy­ment, with­in a radius of a hun­dred and fifty miles of his home now eas­i­ly and speed­i­ly avail­able by means of his car or plane.” 

Those words appeared in The Dis­ap­pear­ing City, a sort of man­i­festo about Wright’s hope for the indus­tri­al metrop­o­lis of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry: that it would go away. He “hat­ed cities,” writes The New York­er’s Mor­gan Meis. “He thought that they were cramped and crowd­ed, stu­pid­ly designed, or, more often, built with­out any sense of design at all.” Vis­i­tors to 2014’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art exhi­bi­tion Frank Lloyd Wright and the City could behold not just Wright’s sketch­es of Broad­acre City but a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot mod­el of the (to the archi­tect) ide­al place, a re-think­ing of the urban with the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the rur­al. Almost eighty years before, 40,000 vis­i­tors to Rock­e­feller Cen­ter who first saw the mod­el saw it embla­zoned with such straight­for­ward dec­la­ra­tions as “No slum,” “No Scum,” and “No traf­fic prob­lems.”

Nel­son Rock­e­feller sup­port­ed the idea of Broad­acre city, as did Albert Ein­stein and John Dewey, all of whom signed a peti­tion Wright passed around in its favor in 1943. But “even in the 1930s, urban plan­ners were dis­gust­ed by Broad­acre,” writes Next City’s Kather­ine Don. “Its phi­los­o­phy was deeply indi­vid­u­al­is­tic; its lay­out was con­spic­u­ous­ly waste­ful. Lib­er­als of the time who emu­lat­ed the social­ist spir­it of Europe clas­si­fied Wright as an anti-gov­ern­ment eccen­tric, which indeed he was.” Matt Novak at Pale­o­fu­ture describes Wright’s utopia as “ulti­mate­ly an exten­sion of the things that made him per­son­al­ly com­fort­able: open spaces, the auto­mo­bile, and not sur­pris­ing­ly, the archi­tect as mas­ter con­troller.”

Image cour­tesy of MoMA

Though Wright and Le Cor­busier “shared an inter­est in dis­man­tling the rec­og­niz­able urban fab­ric, they had dif­fer­ent ideas about what should replace it,” writes City Jour­nal’s Antho­ny Palet­ta. The archi­tect of Falling­wa­ter thought it best for the city “not to be ratio­nal­ized but to be pas­tor­al­ized. Urban ills were to be dilut­ed by ample help­ings of prairie soil.” By the time he died in 1958, a sprawl­ing post­war Amer­i­ca had whole­heart­ed­ly adopt­ed his “new stan­dard of space mea­sure­ment — the man seat­ed in his auto­mo­bile.” But noth­ing as tech­no-pas­toral par­a­disi­a­cal as a Broad­acre ever came into being, and indeed, the sub­urbs turned out to grow in a fash­ion even more hap­haz­ard and irra­tional than the one that so dis­gust­ed him in tra­di­tion­al cities. Then again, a true per­fec­tion­ist — and a true artist — must grow accus­tomed to such dis­ap­point­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tour of Tal­iesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Per­son­al Home & Stu­dio

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter Ani­mat­ed

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.

Hear 75 Free, Classic Audio Books on Spotify: Austen, Joyce, Bukowski, Kafka, Vonnegut, Poe, Shakespeare, Kerouac & More

in Audio Books, Literature | September 20th, 2016

Here’s a lit­tle known tip. If you open Spo­ti­fy, click “Browse” (in the left hand nav), then scroll way down to “Word,” you will find a num­ber of free audio­book col­lec­tions–read­ings by Sylvia Plath, Langston Hugh­es, and Dylan Thomas; old time crime and sci-fi dra­mas; a big H.P. Love­craft com­pendi­um and more. But that way of nav­i­gat­ing things real­ly only scratch­es the sur­face of what Spo­ti­fy has to offer.

If you rum­mage around enough, you’ll find many qual­i­ty recordings–everything from Christo­pher Lee read­ing Drac­u­la and Franken­stein, to Kurt Von­negut read­ing four of his nov­els, to a 68-hour playlist of Shakespeare’s plays being per­formed by leg­endary actors. We’ve found 75+ record­ings in recent months and grad­u­al­ly added them to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. But they seemed worth high­light­ing and call­ing to your atten­tion here.

If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. And if you find any oth­er gems, please list them in the com­ments below and we’ll add them to our list.

• Austen, Jane — Pride and Prej­u­dice — Spo­ti­fy
• Beck­ett, Samuel – Wait­ing for Godot (The­atri­cal per­for­mance with Bert Lahr) – Spo­ti­fy
• Bukows­ki, Charles – 4 Hours of Bukows­ki Read­ings – Spo­ti­fy
• Bukows­ki, Charles – Hostage – Spo­ti­fy
• Bukows­ki, Charles – Mas­ter Col­lec­tion – Spo­ti­fy
• Bur­roughs, William S. – Call Me Bur­roughs (his first spo­ken word album) – Spo­ti­fy
• Bur­roughs, William S. – Let Me Hang You (posthu­mous album sett­ting read­ings of Naked Lunch to music) – Spo­ti­fy
• Car­roll, Lewis – Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (Read by Sir John Giel­gud) – Spo­ti­fy
• Car­roll, Lewis – Through the Look­ing Glass (Read by Joan Green­wood, Stan­ley Hol­loway) – Spo­ti­fy

• Cia­r­di, John – As If: Poems New and Select­ed by John Cia­r­di (read by the author) –Spo­ti­fy
• Coleridge, Samuel – Poems (Read by Ralph Richard­son) – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Collins, Bil­ly – The Best Cig­a­rette (Poet­ry col­lec­tion read by the author) – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Collins, Bil­ly – Soap – Spo­ti­fy
• Conan Doyle, Arthur – The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes (64 Hours of Read­ings) – Spo­ti­fy
• Dante Alighieri – The Infer­no, Can­tos I‑VIII (Read by John Cia­r­di) – Spo­ti­fy
• Defoe, Daniel – Robin­son Cru­soe (Read by Nigel Gra­ham)
• Dick­in­son, Emi­ly – Poems & Let­ters – Spo­ti­fy
• Eliot, T.S. – The Cock­tail Par­ty (Per­formed by Alec Guin­ness & Cath­leen Nes­bitt) – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Eliot, T.S. – Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (Read by T.S. Eliot) – Spo­ti­fy playlist
• Eliot, T.S. – T.S. Eliot Read­ing Poems and Cho­rus­es – Spo­ti­fy
• Eliot T.S. — T.S. Eliot Reads the Waste Land — Spo­ti­fy
• Fer­linghet­ti, Lawrence – A Coney Island of the Mind – Spo­ti­fy
• Frost, Robert – Robert Frost Reads His Poet­ry – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Gins­berg, Allen — Howl — Spo­ti­fy
• Gins­berg, Allen – First Blues: Rags, Bal­lads and Har­mo­ni­um Songs – Spo­ti­fy
• Gins­berg, Allen – The Last Word on First Blues – Spo­ti­fy
• Gins­berg, Allen – The Lion for Real – Free on Spo­ti­fy
• Gins­berg, Allen – Witchi­ta Vor­tex Sutra – Spo­ti­fy
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scar­let Let­ter – Spo­ti­fy
• Hugo, Vic­tor – The Hunch­back of Notre Dame (Abridged ver­sion read by Christo­pher Lee) – Spo­ti­fy
• Hesse, Her­mann – Sid­dhartha – Spo­ti­fy
• Hitch­cock, Alfred – Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Ghost Sto­ries for Young Peo­ple – Spo­ti­fy
• Hugh­es, Langston – Langston Hugh­es Reads Langston Hugh­es – Spo­ti­fy
• Hugh­es, Langston – The Dream Keep­er and Oth­er Poems of Langston Hugh­es (Read by Hugh­es) – Spo­ti­fy
• Hugh­es, Langston – The Glo­ry of Negro His­to­ry – Spo­ti­fy
• Hugh­es, Langston – The Voice of Langston Hugh­es – Spo­ti­fy
• Joyce, James – Dublin­ers – Free on Spo­ti­fy
• Joyce, James – “The Dead” (Read by Bart Wolffe) – Spo­ti­fy
• Kaf­ka, Franz – The Meta­mor­pho­sis – Spo­ti­fy
• Ker­ouac, Jack – 4 Albums with Ker­ouac Recit­ing Poet­ry & Verse – Spo­ti­fy
• Ler­oux, Gas­ton – The Phan­tom of the Opera (Abridged ver­sion read by Christo­pher Lee) – Spo­ti­fy
• Love­craft, H.P – The Call of of Cthul­hu & Oth­er Sto­ries – Spo­ti­fy
• Melville, Her­man – Moby-Dick (Abridged ver­sion read by Hay­ward Morse) – Spo­ti­fy
• Miller, Arthur – Read­ings from The Cru­cible and Death of a Sales­man – Spo­ti­fy
• Nabokov, Vladimir – Vladimir Nabokov Reads from Loli­ta & Select­ed Poems – Spo­ti­fy
• Nash, Ogden – Christ­mas with Ogden Nash – Spo­ti­fy
• Nash, Ogden – Ogden Nash Reads Ogden Nash – Spo­ti­fy
• Neru­da, Pablo – Pablo Neru­da Lee a Pablo Neru­da (in Span­ish) – Spo­ti­fy
• Orwell, George – Ani­mal Farm – Spo­ti­fy
• Poe, Edgar Allan – The Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe – Spo­ti­fy
• Poe, Edgar Allan – The Mask of the Red Death (Read by William S. Bur­roughs) –Spo­ti­fy
• Prokofiev, Sergei – Peter and the Wolf (Nar­rat­ed by David Bowie) – Spo­ti­fy
• Sand­burg, Carl – A Lin­coln Album: Read­ings by Carl San­durg – Spo­ti­fy
• Sand­burg, Carl – The Peo­ple Yes – Spo­ti­fy
• Sex­ton, Anne – What’s That – Spo­ti­fy
• Schiller, Friedrich – Poet­ry of Friedrich von Schiller: Read in Ger­man by Kin­s­ki –Spo­ti­fy
• Shake­speare, William – A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More – Free on Spo­ti­fy
• Shake­speare, William – Ham­let (French trans­la­tion by Mar­cel Pag­nol) – Spo­ti­fy –YouTube
• Shake­speare, William – Ham­let (Star­ring John Giel­gud) – Spo­ti­fy + Archive.org
• Shake­speare, William – Mac­beth (with Alec Guin­ness) – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Shel­ley, Mary – Franken­stein (Abridged ver­sion read by Christophe Lee) – Spo­ti­fy
• Shel­ley, Per­cy Bysshe – Var­i­ous Poems (Read by Vin­cent Price) – Free Spo­ti­fy
• Stein­beck, John – “The Snake” and “John­ny Bear” – Free Stream – Spo­ti­fy
• Steven­son, Robert Louis – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (Read by Christo­pher Lee) – Spo­ti­fy
• Steven­son, Robert Louis – Trea­sure Island (Read by Hans Con­ried) – Spo­ti­fy
• Stok­er, Bram – Drac­u­la (Read by Christo­pher Lee) – Spo­ti­fy
• Thomas, Dylan – Dylan Thomas Reads 8 Hours of His Poet­ry – Spo­ti­fy
• Thomas, Dylan – An Evening with Dylan Thomas – Spo­ti­fy
• Thomas, Dylan – Richard Bur­ton Reads 15 Poems by Dylan Thomas – Spo­ti­fy
• Twain, Mark – The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer – Spo­ti­fy ver­sion
• Von­negut, Kurt – Slaugh­ter­house 5, Cat’s Cra­dle, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, Wel­come to the Mon­key House (Abridged read­ings by Von­negut) – Spo­ti­fy
• Welles, Orson — 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More — Spo­ti­fy
• Wells, HG – The War of the Worlds (Read by Maxwell Caulfield) – Spo­ti­fy
• Wilde, Oscar – The Impor­tance of Being Earnest (Per­formed by John Giel­gud) – Free
• Woolf, Vir­ginia – The Short Sto­ries – Spo­ti­fy
• Yeats, William But­ler – William But­ler Reads His Own Work – Spo­ti­fy

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)