The 5 Books on President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List

in Books | August 16th, 2016

As he kicked off a sum­mer vaca­tion, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma released last week a free 39-song playlist for a sum­mer day–essen­tial­ly a sound­track for a sum­mer vaca­tion. He also shared his sum­mer read­ing list–five books which offer, notes the White House, “a mix of fic­tion and non-fic­tion, includ­ing a Pulitzer Prize-win­ning surf mem­oir, a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, and a sci­ence fic­tion nov­el. They include:

• Bar­bar­ian Days: A Surf­ing Life by William Finnegan
• The Under­ground Rail­road by Col­son White­head
• H Is for Hawk by Helen Mac­don­ald
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• Sev­en­eves by Neal Stephen­son

For any­one inter­est­ed in revis­it­ing Pres. Oba­ma’s five picks from last sum­mer, we have them here:

• All The Light We Can­not See by Antho­ny Doerr
• The Sixth Extinc­tion by Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert
• The Low­land by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Wash­ing­ton: A Life by Ron Cher­now

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:

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ List of 13 Rec­om­mend­ed Books

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: Camus, Shake­speare, Woolf, Wilde & More

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Harvard Puts Online a Huge Collection of Bauhaus Art Objects

in Art | August 16th, 2016

You may have first encoun­tered the word Bauhaus as the name of a campy, arty post-punk band that influ­enced goth music and fash­ion. But you’ll also know that the band took its name from an even more influ­en­tial art move­ment begun in Ger­many in 1919 by Wal­ter Gropius. The appro­pri­a­tion makes sense; like the band, Bauhaus artists often leaned toward camp—see, for exam­ple, their cos­tume par­ties—and despite their seri­ous com­mit­ment, had a sense of humor about their endeav­or to rad­i­cal­ly alter Euro­pean art and design. But the Bauhaus move­ment has been unfair­ly pegged at times as over­ly seri­ous: cold tech­nol­o­gists and pro­po­nents of face­less glass and steel build­ings and aus­tere mod­ernist fur­ni­ture. That impres­sion only tells a part of the tale.

When we speak of Bauhaus design, we often for­get that the Bauhaus was also—and first principally—an art school. Until bro­ken up by the Nazis in 1933, it oper­at­ed under a rig­or­ous course of train­ing with a fac­ul­ty who brought with them a vari­ety of organ­ic the­o­ries and practices—not all of them enam­ored of tech­nol­o­gy or 90-degree angles. Paul Klee, for exam­ple, mocked our fas­ci­na­tion with machines in works like Appa­ra­tus for the Mag­net­ic Treat­ment of Plants (top) and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky enact­ed his mys­ti­cal the­o­ries of sym­bol­ism in increas­ing­ly abstract, vibrant can­vas­es like Small Worlds, above.

Both of these paint­ings reside in Harvard’s spe­cial col­lec­tion, “one of the first and largest col­lec­tions relat­ing to the Bauhaus,” and at the Har­vard Muse­ums web­site, you can find more works–in fact, more than 32,000 objects–by these artists and oth­ers like Oskar Schlem­mer, who designed many of those out­landish cos­tumes. (See some of those designs in his cos­tumes for the Tri­adic Bal­let, below.)

The Har­vard Bauhaus col­lec­tion demon­strates how the Bauhaus school “served as hot­house for a vari­ety of ‘isms,’ from expres­sion­ism, Dadaism, con­struc­tivism, and func­tion­al­ism.” The ten­den­cy to asso­ciate Bauhaus with pri­ma­ry col­ors and min­i­mal­ist glass, steel, and con­crete has much to do with some of its best-known faculty/alumni, like founder Gropius, and architects/designers Mies Van der Rohe, Le Cor­busier, Eero Saari­nen, and his stu­dent Charles Eames.

These names are rep­re­sent­ed in the Har­vard col­lec­tion, but so are “dif­fer­ent facets of the Bauhaus and its lega­cy.” Paint­ings, pho­tographs, ceram­ics, tex­tiles, met­al­work…. One sec­tion of the site, Ped­a­gogy, shows us stu­dent work of artists like Her­bert Bay­er, below. Known for his “hard-edged ‘machine aes­thet­ic,” Bayer’s tra­di­tion­al char­coal study of wool and wood shav­ings “appears anti­thet­i­cal to the school’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­gram.” Yet it is an exam­ple of Bauhaus’ empha­sis on fun­da­men­tals of tech­nique, “ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods that per­sist in var­i­ous form in art schools today.”

Harvard’s web site rep­re­sents its phys­i­cal col­lec­tion, but it does not dupli­cate it. Many of the small images in its online archive do not expand to larg­er ver­sions and can­not be down­loaded. How­ev­er, if you fol­low the guid­ed tour by click­ing “Con­tin­ue Read­ing” under the site’s intro­duc­tion, you’ll be able to click on the sev­er­al dozen exam­ples in each sec­tion and see them up close. You’ll also get a thor­ough sur­vey of the Bauhaus school’s brief his­to­ry and mis­sion. The best way to access the col­lec­tion is to click here, then scroll down to the box where it says “Search the Bauhaus spe­cial col­lec­tion by key­word, title, artist, or object num­ber, and by using the fil­ters below.”

The only U.S. exhi­bi­tion of Bauhaus artists dur­ing the school’s life­time took place at Har­vard in 1930, orga­nized by under­grad­u­ates. And Wal­ter Gropius taught for fif­teen years at Harvard’s Grad­u­ate School of Design, dur­ing which time “he built the school up as a bas­tion of archi­tec­tur­al mod­ernism.” Gropius and his stu­dents and col­leagues changed the way we build and design. (See Gropius’ Total The­ater for Erwin Pis­ca­tor, above). The Har­vard Muse­um Bauhaus col­lec­tion also reminds us that they rev­o­lu­tion­ized art edu­ca­tion in Europe and the U.S.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

Kandin­sky, Klee & Oth­er Bauhaus Artists Designed Inge­nious Cos­tumes Like You’ve Nev­er Seen Before

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Cre­ate an Abstract Com­po­si­tion

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

Free Audio: The Dream Keeper and Other Poems of Langston Hughes (Read by Langston Hughes)

in | August 15th, 2016

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

From Smith­son­ian Folk­ways comes the 1955 album, The Dream Keep­er and Oth­er Poems of Langston Hugh­es. The col­lec­tion fea­tures 10 tracks of Langston Hugh­es, the great Harlem Renais­sance poet, read­ing his poems, start­ing with “The Dream Keep­er.” And it’s all avail­able on Spo­ti­fy for free. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here. The col­lec­tion can also be pur­chased in CD for­mat here.

The Dream Keep­er and Oth­er Poems of Langston Hugh­es will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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.

When James Joyce & Marcel Proust Met in 1922, and Totally Bored Each Other

in Literature | August 15th, 2016

When we invoke the names of famous artists of the past, we refer to their most hal­lowed work—Orson Welles simul­ta­ne­ous­ly means Cit­i­zen Kane, for exam­ple, or War of the Worlds, and H.G. Wells means The Time Machine or…  War of the Words. It hap­pens that when these two artists got togeth­er in 1940, they found that their worlds, which had already met in Welles’ noto­ri­ous broad­cast, had quite a lot to say to each oth­er, genial­ly trad­ing sto­ries, ideas, and mutu­al admi­ra­tion.

Anoth­er his­toric meet­ing between two artists we might con­sid­er kin­dred, James Joyce of Ulysses fame and Mar­cel Proust of In Search of Lost Time, did not pro­duce such a rich exchange. As Irish crit­ic Arthur Pow­er remarked, “Here are the two great­est lit­er­ary fig­ures of our time meet­ing and they ask each oth­er if they like truf­fles.”

That, at least, is one account of the occa­sion in May of 1922, near the end of Proust’s life. The meet­ing took place at a par­ty for Igor Stravin­sky and Sergei Diaghilev at the Majes­tic Hotel. Though both nov­el­ists pro­pelled their great­est work for­ward by extrap­o­lat­ing from their favorite sub­ject, them­selves, the selves in their work are expan­sive and vast, tak­ing in whole cities, nations, and social worlds. Both were vora­cious read­ers with incred­i­ble mem­o­ries (as we cer­tain­ly know of Proust) and an intu­itive grasp of the cul­tur­al mech­a­nisms of moder­ni­ty. Such seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions the two of them might have.…

But one attendee, William Car­los Williams, paints a much more com­ic pic­ture.….

Joyce, writes Ben Jack­son at the Lon­don Review of Books, “arrived drunk and poor­ly dressed; Proust, draped in furs, opened the door.” Then, writes Williams, the two men sat in chairs side by side, while “par­ti­sans” wait­ed for “the wits to sparkle and flash.” Instead, they kvetched in the sports-and-weath­er small talk of two elder­ly men meet­ing in a doctor’s wait­ing room, or two Samuel Beck­ett char­ac­ters, beset by pet­ty com­plaints of ulti­mate impor­tance.

Joyce said, “I’ve headaches every day. My eyes are ter­ri­ble.”
Proust replied, “My poor stom­ach. What am I going to do? It’s killing me. In fact, I must leave at once.”
“I’m in the same sit­u­a­tion,’ replied Joyce. ‘If I can find some­one to take me by the arm. Good­bye!”
“Char­mé,” said Proust. “Oh, my stom­ach, my stom­ach.”

Ford Madox Ford con­firms the account, but the party’s host, nov­el­ist Syd­ney Schiff denied it, reports Joyce’s most respect­ed biog­ra­ph­er Richard Ell­mann. Ell­mann doesn’t seem to favor one ver­sion or anoth­er, but he does give us Joyce’s own ver­sion, mul­ti­ply attest­ed. The Ulysses author remem­bered that their “talk con­sist­ed sole­ly of the word ‘No.’ Proust asked me if I knew the duc du so-and-so. I said, ‘No.’” Proust was asked if he’d read Ulysses, and like­wise replied in the neg­a­tive. “The sit­u­a­tion,” Joyce remem­bered, “was impos­si­ble.” Oth­er guests remem­bered the meet­ing sim­i­lar­ly.

In yet anoth­er ver­sion, we see the after­math of their conference—in a sto­ry that resem­bles many an end-of-the-night-gone-sour sce­nario. Syd­ney Schiff’s wife Vio­let recalled Joyce drunk­en­ly invit­ing him­self into a taxi with the two of them and Proust, and prompt­ly open­ing the win­dow. “Know­ing Proust’s dead­ly fear of drafts,” writes a Proust site, Vio­let “imme­di­ate­ly closed the win­dow.” When the cab arrived at Proust’s apart­ment, the French nov­el­ist “urged the Irish­man to let the taxi take him home,” then “fled to his apart­ment.”

The many con­flict­ing ren­di­tions all seem to agree on one thing: the meet­ing was a wash. Nonethe­less, one author recent­ly pub­lished what pur­ports to be an entire book on the sub­ject. Even he con­cludes “no one can say for cer­tain exact­ly what they said to each oth­er.” It’s tempt­ing to think things might have gone oth­er­wise, had they met ear­li­er or in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, giv­en Joyce’s ten­den­cy to get too drunk and Proust’s ill health and aver­sion to, well, com­pa­ny. The New Inquiry cites a remark Joyce made to Samuel Beck­ett about Proust: “If we had been allowed to meet and have a talk some­where….”

Although it’s said that both writ­ers con­fessed to not hav­ing read the oth­er, Jack­son notes that when Joyce “did admit to pass­ing his eyes over a few pages he declared that he did not see ‘any spe­cial tal­ent.’” He also con­fessed to some envy of Proust’s com­fort­able cir­cum­stances. Proust, who died six months lat­er, left no men­tion of their meet­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The His­toric Meet­ing Between Dick­ens and Dos­to­evsky Revealed as a Great Lit­er­ary Hoax

Edward Said Recalls His Depress­ing Meet­ing With Sartre, de Beau­voir & Fou­cault (1979)

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

The History of Civilization Mapped in 13 Minutes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

in History, Maps | August 15th, 2016

Above, watch “a geopo­lit­i­cal his­to­ry of all empires, nations, king­doms, armies and republics” unfold in 13 min­utes. Cre­at­ed by a YouTu­ber who sim­ply goes by the name “kard­board­king,” the video stitch­es togeth­er “more than 500 world maps span­ning all his­tor­i­cal events.” We start in Sumer, some­where around 5500–4000 BC. And end in 2014, with the world as we know it today.

Kard­board­king is care­ful to point out that the clip fea­tures civ­i­liza­tions with a writ­ing sys­tem and urban cen­ters. Hence “pre-his­tor­i­cal cul­tures” don’t make an appear­ance here. For a tru­ly com­pre­hen­sive his­to­ry of the world, see: The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

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: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Lets You Down­load Thou­sands of Maps from the Unit­ed States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

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

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Watch Sunspring, the Sci-Fi Film Written with Artificial Intelligence, Starring Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | August 15th, 2016

This past spring the streets of Seoul, where I live, felt more like a sci-fi movie than usu­al. Large over­head video screens kept the pop­u­la­tion post­ed on the progress of a series of Go match­es between 18-time world cham­pi­on Lee Sedol and Alpha­Go, a piece of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence devel­oped by Google Deep­Mind. Com­put­ers have long had a spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ty mas­ter­ing that tra­di­tion­al game, but before long it became clear that this com­put­er would win most of the match­es, despite the human’s for­mer­ly unshak­able pre­dic­tion of the oppo­site out­come. What would arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence achieve next?

“In the wake of Google’s AI Go vic­to­ry, film­mak­er Oscar Sharp turned to his tech­nol­o­gist col­lab­o­ra­tor Ross Good­win to build a machine that could write screen­plays,” say the video notes for the new short film Sun­spring. They assem­bled hun­dreds of sci­ence fic­tion scripts, most­ly from 1980s and 90s tele­vi­sion shows and movies, and fed them into the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which even­tu­al­ly named itself Ben­jamin, so as to teach it the mechan­ics of screen­writ­ing. “Build­ing a team includ­ing Thomas Mid­dled­itch, star of HBO’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, they gave them­selves 48 hours to shoot and edit what­ev­er Ben­jamin decid­ed to write.” Ben­jamin decid­ed to write eight min­utes’ worth of its own inter­pre­ta­tion of the tropes of a cer­tain kind of sci-fi enter­tain­ment.

It did come up with, fair to say, some dia­logue a human screen­writer could only dream of — that is to say, words with the kind of uncon­scious log­ic that, deliv­ered by liv­ing, breath­ing actors in phys­i­cal spaces, take on weight, humor, and even an askew kind of mean­ing. (Mid­dled­itch’s despon­dent “I am not a bright light” will sure­ly stay quotable for years to come.) You can learn more about the mak­ing of Sun­spring from this Ars Tech­ni­ca piece by Annalee Newitz. Ben­jamin won’t put any sci-fi scribes out of work just yet, haunt­ing though it may seem for a pro­gram to have come so close to doing some­thing clas­si­cal­ly human as telling a sto­ry about the future. But remem­ber, peo­ple had to write that pro­gram, just as peo­ple had to cre­ate Alpha­Go; every achieve­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence thus also counts as an achieve­ment of human­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Soci­ety of Mind: A Free Online Course from Mar­vin Min­sky, Pio­neer of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

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.

Mashup Weaves Together 57 Famous Classical Pieces by 33 Composers: From Bach to Wagner

in Creativity, Music | August 15th, 2016

Musi­cal mash up artist Grant Woolard has found a per­fect­ly eth­i­cal way to side­step copy­right issues. Sam­ple the great­est hits of long dead clas­si­cal com­posers.

The prag­mat­i­cal­ly titled “Clas­si­cal Music Mashup,” above, weaves 57 melodies by Mozart, Beethoven, Ver­di, and 30 oth­er greats into one six minute com­po­si­tion.

Woolard invites lis­ten­ers to sep­a­rate out the strands, most of which will sound famil­iar, even if you are unable to name that tune.

(One sharp-eared lis­ten­er not only accept­ed the chal­lenge, but post­ed a com­plete list­ing of all the com­posers and com­po­si­tions in chrono­log­i­cal order with time stamps. Those who don’t mind SPOILERS can view it at the end of this post.)

Those who crave an even more inter­ac­tive assign­ment can down­load the sheet music (for a small fee), then recruit two more pianists to per­form the six-hand­ed piece.

You can also buy an audio track of the com­po­si­tion here.

And now, the list of Woolard’s raw ingre­di­ents, com­pli­ments of youtube com­menter, Yifeng Huang:

1. Mozart Eine Kleine Nacht­musik K525 0:01

2. Haydn Sym­pho­ny 94 “Sur­prise” II 0:01

3. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 9 IV (Ode to Joy) 0:06

4. Mendelssohn Wed­ding March in Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, sec­ond theme 0:06

5. Dvo­rak Humoresque No.7 0:13

6. Wag­n­er Lohen­gerin, Bridal Cho­rus 0:13

7. Tchaikovsky Piano Con­cer­to 1 0:19

8. Saint-Saens Car­ni­val of Ani­mals: Swan 0:19

9. Bach Well Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 Pre­lude 1 0:19

10. Tchaikovsky 1812 Over­ture 0:29

11. Bach Cel­lo Suite No. 1 0:32

12. Mendelssohn Song with­out Words “Spring” 0:33

13. Schu­bert Ave Maria 0:40

14. Schu­bert Sym­pho­ny 8 “Unfin­ished” 0:46

15. Ver­di “La Don­na è Mobile” in Rigo­let­to 0:51

16. Boc­cheri­ni String Quar­tet in E, Op.11 No.5, III. Min­uet­to 0:55

17. Beethoven für Elise 1:03

18. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 1:04

19. Pagani­ni Capric­cio 24 1:11

20. Mozart Piano Sonata No.11 III (Turk­ish March) 1:15

21. Grieg Piano Con­cer­to 1:22

22. Mozart Requiem Lac­rimosa 1:26

23. Schu­bert Ser­e­nade 1:30

24. Chopin Pre­lude in C minor 1:35

25. Strauss II Over­ture from Die Fle­d­er­maus (Bat) 1:46

26. Brahms 5 Lieder Op.49, IV. Wiegen­lied (Lul­la­by) 1:46

27. Satie Gymno­pe­die 1:56

28. Debussy Arabesque 2:00

29. Holst Plan­ets, Jupiter 2:05

30. Schu­bert Trout 2:14

31. Liszt Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody No.2 2:28

32. Mozart Vari­a­tion on Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star 2:41

33. Schu­mann Op.68, No.10 Mer­ry Peas­ant 2:47

34. Schu­bert Mil­i­tary March in D 2:54

35. Bach* (could be Pet­zold) Min­uet in G 3:00

36. Mozart Piano Sonata No.16 in C, K545 3:07

37. Offen­bach Can-can in “Orpheus in the under­world” 3:08

38. Beethoven Piano Sonata No.8 “Pathe­tique” II 3:18

39. Mozart Die Zauber­flöte Over­ture 3:24

40. Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juli­et Over­ture 3:31

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:44

41. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 5 “Fate” 3:47

6′. Wag­n­er Wed­ding March 3:52

42. Rach­mani­noff Pre­lude Op.3 No.2 in C# minor 3:53

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:56

43. Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2 III. Funer­al March 4:11

44. Williams Impe­r­i­al March in Star War 4:19

45. Tchaikovsky Marche Slave 4:25

46. Smetana Ma Vlast II. Moldau 4:38

47. Tchaikovsky Nut­crack­er — Flower Waltz (not the main theme!) 4:45

48. Borodin Polovt­sian Dances 4:45

49. Strauss II Blue Danube 4:58

50. Vival­di Four Sea­sons I. Spring 5:03

51. Han­del Mes­si­ah, Hal­lelu­jah 5:03

52. Han­del The Entrance of the Queen of She­ba 5:08

53. Elgar Pomp and Cir­cum­stance March­es No. 1 5:15

54. Pachel­bel Canon in D 5:21

55. Mozart Sym­pho­ny No. 35 in D major (Haffn­er) K. 385, IV. Finale, Presto 5:27

56. Chopin Etude Op.25 No.9 in G flat, “But­ter­fly” 5:34

57. Bach Gavotte from French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 5:42

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Debussy’s Clair de lune: The Clas­si­cal Music Visu­al­iza­tion with 21 Mil­lion Views

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch What Happens When 100 Metronomes Perform György Ligeti’s Controversial Poème Symphonique

in Art, Music | August 12th, 2016

A loose asso­ci­a­tion of mid-20th cen­tu­ry artists includ­ing at times John Cage, Yoko Ono, and Joseph Bueys, the Fluxus group pro­duced a lot of strange per­for­ma­tive work and anti-art stunts influ­enced by sim­i­lar provo­ca­tions from ear­li­er Dada artists. The movement’s “patron saint,” Martha Schwen­den­er writes at The New York Times, was Mar­cel Duchamp, whose “idea of art (or life) as a game in which the artist recon­fig­ures the rules is cen­tral to Fluxus.” Also cen­tral was Duchamp’s con­cept of the “ready-made”—everyday objects turned into objets d’art by means part rit­u­al and part prank.

We can think of the piece above in both reg­is­ters. Györ­gy Ligeti’s Poème sym­phonique, a com­po­si­tion involv­ing 100 metronomes and ten oper­a­tors, fit right in with Fluxus dur­ing Ligeti’s brief asso­ci­a­tion with them.

Writ­ten in 1962—and yes, it has a writ­ten score—Ligeti’s piece “owes much of its suc­cess to its pre­sen­ta­tion as a ridicu­lous spec­ta­cle,” writes com­pos­er Jason Char­ney, who has made a dig­i­tal recre­ation. Ligeti pro­vides spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for the per­for­mance.

The work is per­formed by 10 play­ers under the lead­er­ship of a con­duc­tor … Each play­er oper­ates 10 metronomes … The metronomes must be brought onto the stage with a com­plete­ly run-down clock­work … the play­ers wind up the metronomes …  at a sign from the con­duc­tor, all the metronomes are set in motion by the play­ers.

These are fol­lowed almost to the let­ter in the video at the top of the page, with the added bonus of hold­ing the per­for­mance in a Goth­ic church. What does it sound like? A cacoph­o­nous rack­et. A water­fall of type­writ­ers. And yet, believe it or not, some­thing inter­est­ing does hap­pen after a while; you become attuned to its inter­nal log­ic. Pat­terns emerge and dis­ap­pear in the rever­ber­a­tion from the church walls: A wave of robot applause, then sooth­ing white noise, then a move­ment or two of a fac­to­ry sym­pho­ny.…

“The score,” notes Matt Jol­ly, who shot the video, “calls for a long silence and then up to an hour of tick­ing. We decid­ed to short­en this con­sid­er­ably. The metronomes are sup­posed be ful­ly wound but we had to lim­it that to 13 turns on aver­age.” The inge­nu­ity of Ligeti’s piece far sur­pass­es that of any mere prank, as does the logis­ti­cal and mate­r­i­al demand. The com­pos­er ful­ly acknowl­edged this, pro­vid­ing specifics as to how per­form­ers might go about secur­ing their “instru­ments,” hard to come by in such large quan­ti­ty even in 1962. (Mechan­i­cal metronomes are now all but obso­lete.) Char­ney quotes from Ligeti’s help­ful sug­ges­tions, which include enlist­ing the ser­vices of an “exec­u­tive coun­cil of a city, one or more of the music schools, one or more busi­ness­es, one or more pri­vate per­sons….”

I doubt he meant any of this seri­ous­ly. Dutch Tele­vi­sion can­celed a planned 1963 broad­cast of Poème sym­phonique from an ear­ly per­for­mance in the Nether­lands. The event includ­ed speech­es by local politi­cians and an audi­ence who had no idea what to expect. As you might imag­ine, they did not react favor­ably. Like the ear­li­er anti-art Ligeti’s idea draws from, he explic­it­ly framed the com­po­si­tion as “a spe­cial sort of cri­tique,” whose score is “admit­ted­ly rather iron­ic” and in which he rants vague­ly against “all ide­olo­gies” and “rad­i­cal­ism and petit-bour­geois atti­tudes” alike. How seri­ous­ly he means this is also anyone’s guess. And yet, prank or art, peo­ple con­tin­ue to per­form the piece, as in the even short­er ren­di­tion above, which goes even fur­ther in remov­ing the human ele­ment by design­ing a machine to start all the metronomes simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Rad­i­cal Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions of Mar­cel Duchamp (1912–1915)

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

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

A Free POTUS Summer Playlist: Pres. Obama Curates 39 Songs for a Summer Day

in Music | August 12th, 2016

Like he did last sum­mer, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has put togeth­er two eclec­tic music playlists–one for a hot sum­mer day, and anoth­er for a sum­mer evening. And they’re both pret­ty chill, the stuff vaca­tions are made of. If you have Spo­ti­fy (down­load it here), you can start stream­ing all of the songs below. And if you want to know more about Clin­ton and Trump’s favorite songs, check out this piece on Rolling Stone.

The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Day­time

1. Love­Hate Thing — Wale
2. Smooth Sailin’ — Leon Bridges
3. Ele­va­tor Oper­a­tor — Court­ney Bar­nett
4. Home — Edward Sharpe and the Mag­net­ic Zeros
5. Many the Miles — Sara Bareilles
6. Tightrope — Janelle Mon­ae
7. Clas­sic Man — Jiden­na
8. So Ambi­tious — Jay‑Z, feat. Phar­rell
9. Me Gus­tas Tu — Manu Chao
10. For­ev­er Begins — Com­mon
11. The Man — Aloe Blacc
12. As We Enter — Nas & Dami­an “Jr. Gong” Mar­ley
13. Sin­ner­man — Nina Simone
14. U Got the Look — Prince
15. Rock Steady — Aretha Franklin
16. Good Vibra­tions — Beach Boys
17. Don’t Owe You A Thang — Gary Clark Jr.
18. Man Like That — Gin Wig­more
19. II B.S. (edit) — Charles Min­gus

The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Night­time

1. If I Have My Way — Chrisette Michelle
2. Espera — Esper­an­za Spald­ing
3. Tell It Like It Is — Aaron Neville
4. Alright — Ledisi
5. Trapped By A Thing Called Love — Denise Lasalle
6. Lady — D’An­ge­lo
7. So Very Hard to Go — Tow­er of Pow­er
8. Mid­night Sun — Car­men McCrae
9. Cucur­ru­cu­cu Palo­ma — Cae­tano Veloso
10. Green Aphro­disi­ac — Corinne Bai­ley Rae
11. I’ll Be There for You / You’re All I Need — Mary J Blige / Method Man
12. Lover Man — Bil­lie Hol­i­day
13. Crim­i­nal — Fiona Apple
14. Acid Rain — Chance the Rap­per
15. My Fun­ny Valen­tine — Miles Davis
16. Do You Feel Me — Antho­ny Hamil­ton
17. I Get Lone­ly — Janet Jack­son
18. Lean In — Lizz Wright
19. All Day Music — War
20. Say Yes — Floetry

via CNN.

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!

Watch collective:unconscious, the Acclaimed Indie Film Where 5 Filmmakers Adapt Each Other’s Dreams for the Screen

in Film | August 12th, 2016

What an irony that, when you have a vivid, fun­ny, ter­ri­fy­ing, elab­o­rate dream, you dare not tell any­one for fear of bor­ing them. But what if you could let some­one else expe­ri­ence your dreams first-hand? The group of inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers behind this year’s collective:unconscious (not to be con­fused with the New York artist group of almost the same name) have put their wak­ing heads togeth­er to come as close as pos­si­ble to doing just that. Daniel Patrick Car­bone, Josephine Deck­er, Lau­ren Wolk­stein, Frances Bodomo, and Lily Bald­win have cre­at­ed a port­man­teau film by adapt­ing one anoth­er’s dreams for the screen, which you can dream along with them by watch­ing free on Vimeo.

“I remem­ber back when I was a teen, watch­ing Mul­hol­land Dri­ve for the first time in the the­ater,” writes collective:unconscious’ pro­duc­er Dan Schoen­brun in an essay on the mak­ing of the film at Indiewire. “I remem­ber my mind being blown. I remem­ber think­ing, ‘Movies can do that?’ ”

David Lynch has made his name with pic­tures, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve and oth­ers, that feel dream­like in the rich­est, most haunt­ing sense of the word. But rather than a set of Lynch homages, each of the five film­mak­ers con­tribut­ing here come at the project of cin­e­ma­tiz­ing the uncon­scious expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent­ly. Some may feel just like your own dreams; oth­ers may feel noth­ing like them.

Rolling Stone sum­ma­rizes the “hyp­not­i­cal­ly sense­less” results neat­ly: “a gor­geous sketch about a wood­land sniper drifts into a Mal­ick-esque por­trait of an ex-con’s first day of free­dom; a gym teacher pre­pares his class for a vol­cano drill; a young moth­er who’s giv­ing birth to an ele­men­tal mon­ster; the grim reaper hosts a TV show about mur­dered black chil­dren.” The film has already made an impres­sive cir­cuit around the fes­ti­vals, includ­ing his year’s South by South­west (where the New York­er’s Richard Brody named it as a favorite), so clear­ly their review com­mit­tees saw some­thing much more inter­est­ing going on than the kind of recount­ing of dreams that goes on over break­fast. As they say, there’s much more going on in the uncon­scious — more of artis­tic use, any­way — than we under­stand.

collective:unconscious will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

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.