Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Printed Violin

in Music, Technology | May 4th, 2016

There is a per­pet­u­al argu­ment among stringed instru­ment afi­ciona­dos about the eso­teric val­ue of so-called “tonewoods.” Cer­tain­ly, to most dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears, the dif­fer­ences between an acoustic gui­tar, man­dolin, or vio­lin made of sol­id spruce or maple and one made of ply­wood seem son­i­cal­ly obvi­ous. When it comes to elec­tric gui­tars, the dis­tinc­tions between mate­ri­als can seem more neg­li­gi­ble. In blind tests many of us might have some dif­fi­cul­ty telling the dif­fer­ence between an elec­tric gui­tar made of the finest woods and one made of cheap bal­sa, lucite, or even an oil can. (Not that dif­fer­ences don’t exist!) It’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to point out that acoustic instru­ments depend upon their mate­ri­als and work­man­ship in ways elec­tric instru­ments don’t.

So how might dis­crim­i­nat­ing ears respond to an elec­tric, dig­i­tal­ly 3‑D print­ed acrylic vio­lin, based loose­ly on a real Stradi­var­ius? Can such an instru­ment repli­cate the sweet sus­tain of an acoustic vio­lin, Strad or oth­er­wise? You can judge for your­self in the demon­stra­tions here. Cre­at­ed by French engi­neer and musi­cian Lau­rent Bernadac, the “3Dvarius”—the world’s first 3‑D print­ed vio­lin—is per­haps, reports Wired, “a har­bin­ger of what’s to come for musi­cal instru­ments.” Crit­ics have shown how it falls far short of recre­at­ing the sound of a tra­di­tion­al instru­ment. (See vio­lin­ist Joan­na Wronko com­pare the two at a TEDx Ams­ter­dam talk here). And yes, the 3Dvarius may look “more like an avian skele­ton than a stringed instru­ment.” But it does have some advan­tages over tra­di­tion­al vio­lins made of wood.

For one thing, syn­thet­ic instru­ments are high­ly durable and light­weight (vio­lins and cel­los made of car­bon fiber have been on the mar­ket for sev­er­al years). For anoth­er, the 3Dvarius can indeed make some pret­ty sweet sounds when plugged into Bernadac’s rig, con­sist­ing of var­i­ous effects ped­als and loop­ers. At the top, see how he uses his set­up to cre­ate jazzy mul­ti-lay­ered, mul­ti-track arrange­ments of pop­u­lar songs with the 3Dvarius. And hear a few of those songs here, along with snazzy videos—including U2’s “With or With­out You,” the Game of Thrones and X‑Files themes, and “Se Bas­tasse Una Can­zone” by Ital­ian singer/songwriter Eros Ramaz­zot­ti. (See many more on Youtube.) The 3Dvarius web­site has a step-by-step expla­na­tion of how the instru­ment is made, from ini­tial design to sur­face treat­ment and final assem­bly.

Despite its name and inspi­ra­tion, the 3Dvarius does­n’t claim to actu­al­ly dupli­cate a Stradi­var­ius, a feat long thought impos­si­ble by even the finest mod­ern luthiers. Even com­put­er sci­en­tists admit: no mat­ter how good machines get at repli­ca­tion, replac­ing tra­di­tion­al, hand­made vio­lins with print­ed copies “would lead to dig­i­tal­ly cloned instru­ments,” writes Wired, “and the loss of son­ic char­ac­ter that makes music, well, music.” And it isn’t only son­ic char­ac­ter that mat­ters to musi­cians. Sur­pris­ing­ly enough, in blind tests, many vio­lin­ists can’t tell the dif­fer­ence between a Stradi­var­ius and a high-qual­i­ty new­er mod­el vio­lin, but these find­ings do not dimin­ish the Stradi­var­ius mys­tique. The look and feel of an instru­ment and its make and pedi­gree mat­ter. As musi­cian and writer Clemen­cy Bur­ton-Hill points out, much of our fas­ci­na­tion with the Stradi­var­ius vio­lin has to do with the “sto­ry of Stradi­vari,” as well as those of the musi­cians who have owned and played his instru­ments.

And though it may be pos­si­ble to come close to their tones with cheap­er mod­ern copies and dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, we still gush over Jimi Hen­drix’s Stra­to­cast­er or Jim­my Page’s Les Paul. The 3Dvarius, I’ll admit, is a very cool idea, but it’s hard to imag­ine a dig­i­tal­ly-pro­duced plas­tic arti­fact ever acquir­ing the same intan­gi­ble aura of not only the most famous instru­ments in the world, but also of unique, hand-craft­ed new instru­ments on their way to mak­ing his­to­ry. As Wal­ter Ben­jamin argued in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­ducibil­i­ty,” it’s the authen­tic­i­ty of “aura”—the spe­cif­ic traces of his­to­ry and the fin­ger­prints of artists and mas­ter craftsmen—that we trea­sure in art. These are qual­i­ties that elude the most advanced tech­no­log­i­cal process­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

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

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

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

Hear a Radio Drama of George Orwell’s 1984, Starring Patrick Troughton, of Doctor Who Fame (1965)

in Literature, Radio | May 4th, 2016

Take two of the most promi­nent Eng­lish cul­tur­al prop­er­ties of the past sev­er­al decades, bring them togeth­er, and what have you got? You’ve got Patrick Troughton, bet­ter known as the Sec­ond Doc­tor in TV’s Doc­tor Who, in a 1965 BBC Radio adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984. Troughton was not yet the Doc­tor; the hon­or would not fall to him until the fol­low­ing year when he replaced William Hart­nell (with the latter’s full approval, it seems). But he was a well-known char­ac­ter actor, the first to play Robin Hood on tele­vi­sion (in a 1953 BBC mini-series), and a fig­ure who inspired a good deal of respect in the British enter­tain­ment indus­try. Troughton was also a dec­o­rat­ed World War II vet­er­an (who, when the year 1984 final­ly arrived, suf­fered his sec­ond major heart attack).

Troughton brings to the role of every­man Win­ston Smith a grav­i­tas shared by a num­ber of actors who have inher­it­ed the role since the very first radio adap­ta­tion in 1949, star­ring David Niv­en. Of course Orwell’s sto­ry is not an ongo­ing series like Doc­tor Who, but it has remained remark­ably rel­e­vant to every gen­er­a­tion post-World War II, and like the Doctor’s char­ac­ter, has been con­stant­ly re-imag­ined in adap­ta­tions on radio, film, and tele­vi­sion. The con­di­tions of gov­ern­ment repres­sion, cen­sor­ship, and mass sur­veil­lance Orwell fore­saw have seemed immi­nent, if not ful­ly real­ized, in the decades fol­low­ing the nov­el’s 1948 pub­li­ca­tion, though the adjec­tive “Orwellian” and many of the novel’s coinages have suf­fered a good deal through overuse and mis­ap­pli­ca­tion.

Just as the first radio play of 1984 warned of a “dis­turb­ing broad­cast,” this 1965 ver­sion begins, “The fol­low­ing play is not suit­able for those of a ner­vous dis­po­si­tion.” It’s inter­est­ing that even this long after the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion, and in the midst of the swing­ing six­ties, Orwell’s dystopi­an fable still had the pow­er to shock. Or at least the pro­duc­ers of this broad­cast thought so. Per­haps we’ve been so thor­ough­ly inured to the prospects Orwell warned of that rev­e­la­tions of the NSA’s mas­sive data col­lec­tion, or of the glob­al expro­pri­a­tion dis­closed by the Pana­ma Papers, or of any num­ber of nefar­i­ous gov­ern­ment deal­ings often elic­it a cyn­i­cal shrug from the aver­age per­son. Those who do express alarm at such doc­u­ment­ed abus­es are often brand­ed… well, alarmists.

But then again, we keep return­ing to Orwell.

Con­tin­u­ing in the tra­di­tion begun by David Niv­en and car­ried for­ward by Patrick Troughton (and on film by Edmond O’Brien and John Hurt), anoth­er respect­ed British actor recent­ly took on the role of Win­ston Smith in a BBC 4 radio adap­ta­tion three years ago. This time the actor was Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who also, it turns out, once played Doc­tor Who.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Wor­ries That Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness Will Lead Us into a Humor­less World, Rem­i­nis­cent of Orwell’s 1984

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

Hermeneutics of Toilets by Slavoj Žižek: An Animation About Finding Ideology in Unlikely Places

in Animation, Philosophy, Politics | May 4th, 2016

It’s been part of Slavoj Žižek’s schtick for years. He’s men­tioned it in talks about Don­ald Rums­feld and Amer­i­ca’s mis­ad­ven­tures in Iraq. In lec­tures about archi­tec­ture in Spain. In Eng­lish-lan­guage talks. And oth­er lan­guages too. Maybe you’ve nev­er heard Žižek’s spiel about find­ing ide­ol­o­gy in the unlike­li­est of places. Yes, toi­lets. If you’ve missed out, this new ani­ma­tion has you cov­ered.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Phi­los­o­phy Mat­ters 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Slavoj Žižek: What Ful­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

Slavoj Žižek Names His Favorite Films from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Download 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them However You Like

in Film, Internet Archive | May 3rd, 2016

Fea­tures, com­mer­cials, art pieces, stock footage, home movies, pro­pa­gan­da: the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma so far has pro­duced count­less indi­vid­ual forms, all of which also count as doc­u­men­taries. Watch any kind of film made suf­fi­cient­ly long ago and you look through a win­dow onto the atti­tudes, aes­thet­ics, and accou­trements of anoth­er time.

And if it’s one made long enough ago or of obscure enough own­er­ship to fall into the pub­lic domain, you can incor­po­rate that piece of his­to­ry into your own mod­ern, era-span­ning work in any way you like. Now, Prelinger Archives has made that eas­i­er than ever by mak­ing more than 6600 films free on the Inter­net Archive to down­load and use.

“Prelinger Archives was found­ed in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City,” says the col­lec­tion’s about page. “Over the next twen­ty years, it grew into a col­lec­tion of over 60,000 ‘ephemer­al’ (adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, indus­tri­al, and ama­teur) films. In 2002, the film col­lec­tion was acquired by the Library of Con­gress, Motion Pic­ture, Broad­cast­ing and Record­ed Sound Divi­sion,” and now holds “approx­i­mate­ly 11,000 dig­i­tized and video­tape titles (all orig­i­nal­ly derived from film) and a large col­lec­tion of home movies, ama­teur and indus­tri­al films acquired since 2002.” Its mis­sion? “To col­lect, pre­serve, and facil­i­tate access to films of his­toric sig­nif­i­cance that haven’t been col­lect­ed else­where.”

And what can you find amid these 6000-odd pieces of ephemera host­ed on Archive.org? At first glance, they may real­ly strike you as 6000 odd pieces. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured 1958’s Have I Told You Late­ly That I Love You?, a UCLA stu­dent short Ayun Hal­l­i­day described as the tale of “a white-col­lar dad and house­wife mom… marooned in their indi­vid­ual exis­ten­tial hells, unable to con­nect” due to the labor-sav­ing devices of the day. 1965’s equal­ly cau­tion­ary (as well as often unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous) Per­ver­sion for Prof­it, offers a stern two-part warn­ing against the “pornog­ra­phy which may appear at the local news­stand, malt shop or drug­store.”

Mid­cen­tu­ry moral­ism man­i­fests in count­less enter­tain­ing forms across the Prelinger Archives col­lec­tion, includ­ing in Make Mine Free­dom, a Cold War car­toon treat­ment of the var­i­ous treach­er­ous “-isms” out to under­mine truth, jus­tice, and the Amer­i­can Way. That came out in 1948, just as fears start­ed roil­ing again after the Unit­ed States’ vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War. The year before, the hus­band-and-wife exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing team of Alexan­der Ham­mid and Maya Deren com­plet­ed The Pri­vate Life of a Cat. “Using their own cats in their own apart­ment,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Amber Frost, “they chron­i­cle the inte­ri­or world of a cat ‘fam­i­ly,’ and it’s just insane­ly com­pelling, even out­side of the cat-lady milieu!” Fur­ther down, we have House in the Mid­dle (1954), which sug­gests that a clean, tidy house can help you sur­vive an atom­ic blast.

But you don’t have to watch every­thing you dig up from the Prelinger Archives col­lec­tion in an iron­ic or avant-garde frame of mind. Some pieces, like ama­teur film­mak­er and inven­tor Tul­lio Pel­le­grini’s 1955 Cin­e­mas­cope homage to the city of San Fran­cis­co just above, offer much in the way of pure his­tor­i­cal inter­est. You can find a few more sug­ges­tions about where to start from Tim Brookes at MakeUse­Of, who high­lights even ear­li­er footage of the City by the Bay, per­haps the most gener­ic film ever made, and instruc­tions on what to do on a date as well as what to do in the event of a nuclear attack — all valu­able mate­r­i­al for those of us remix­ing his­to­ry, one ephemer­al clip at a time.

One final thing worth keep­ing in mind, the Archive comes with this invi­ta­tion:

You are warm­ly encour­aged to down­load, use and repro­duce these films in whole or in part, in any medi­um or mar­ket through­out the world. You are also warm­ly encour­aged to share, exchange, redis­trib­ute, trans­fer and copy these films, and espe­cial­ly encour­aged to do so for free. Any deriv­a­tive works that you pro­duce using these films are yours to per­form, pub­lish, repro­duce, sell, or dis­trib­ute in any way you wish with­out any lim­i­ta­tions.

If you hap­pen to get cre­ative with the films in the Archive, please feel free to share your cre­ations in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Have I Told You Late­ly That I Love You?: A 1958 Look at How Mod­ern Gad­gets & Con­ve­niences Lead to Exis­ten­tial Hell

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

The Pub­lic Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

T.S. Eliot Reads From “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” & “The Hollow Men”: His Apocalyptic Post WWI Poems

in Poetry | May 3rd, 2016

The T.S. Eliot of the post-World War I peri­od was a poet who stood Janus-faced on the thresh­old of old and new worlds. He looked back­ward to the moun­tain ranges of Euro­pean tra­di­tion and mar­veled at their alpine peaks. At the same time, he seemed acute­ly aware of what a ridicu­lous fig­ure he some­times cut in his self-seri­ous, pedan­tic ven­er­a­tion for the past. Eliot acknowl­edged the inex­orable move­ment of time in poems like “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “The Hol­low Men,” even if time only moved for­ward into entropy and medi­oc­rity. When Eliot looked ahead, after the hor­rors of war and the increas­ing speed of mod­ern­iza­tion, what he saw was frag­men­ta­tion, wreck­age, and waste. I have heard his strat­e­gy in “The Waste Land” described as a “ter­mi­nal aesthetic”—a beau­ti­ful­ly destruc­tive poet­ics, and one which could go no fur­ther.

Eliot’s high mod­ernist poems stand in very dif­fer­ent rela­tion to the post-WWI world than the work of for­ward-look­ing 20th cen­tu­ry avant-garde artists of the peri­od. As James Mar­tin Hard­ing notes in Adorno and “A Writ­ing of the Ruins,” what “dis­tin­guish­es Eliot from the avant-garde is that… the pol­i­tics of the avant-garde evinced a faith in rev­o­lu­tion­ary progress…. One would have to ally Eliot’s imagery with the dawn­ing of the postmodern”—with ideas, that is, of the “end of his­to­ry.” In terms of form—characterized by pas­tiche, irony, self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty, and a blend­ing of high and low culture—Eliot’s poet­ics were dis­tinct­ly post-mod­ern.

But post­mod­ernists have gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed the frag­ment­ing of tra­di­tion and the loss of grand nar­ra­tives. Eliot cher­ished the old, destroyed world, and most­ly despaired of any­thing of val­ue replac­ing it. His imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors, whom he imi­tat­ed and ref­er­enced often, were the French sym­bol­ists and deca­dents; mod­ernist aes­thetes who mourned unnamed cat­a­stro­phes and cat­a­logued absurd cor­re­spon­dences. Crit­ic Cleanth Brooks sin­gles out one poem that Eliot quotes at the end of “The Waste Land,” Ger­ard de Nerval’s “El Des­dicha­do,” for its sug­ges­tion that “the pro­tag­o­nist of the poem has been dis­in­her­it­ed, robbed of his tra­di­tion.” Even in trans­la­tion, we can hear in Nerval’s lines the dark­ly com­ic, cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic, despair of Eliot’s Prufrock:

My very supernova’s been snuffed out, and my one
shiny-ten­doned lute has been silenced by DEPRESSION.

I think you can hear that same world-weary depres­sion and sense of cul­tur­al exhaus­tion in Eliot’s voice as he reads from both “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” above and from “The Hol­low Men” below (unfor­tu­nate­ly drowned out near the end by some added music). I don’t mean to sug­gest that Eliot him­self suf­fered from some form of clin­i­cal depres­sion. But his poet­ic speakers—and in the case of “The Waste Land” his jum­ble of com­pet­ing voices—all join in an apoc­a­lyp­tic cho­rus as though wit­ness­ing the world’s end. Per­haps the poet­ry exag­ger­ates Eliot’s own per­son­al atti­tudes for effect, per­haps it acts as a series of guis­es for the philo­soph­i­cal and crit­i­cal ideas he explained with­out arti­fice in his essays.

This is how many peo­ple have read Eliot’s poems, myself includ­ed: as con­tain­ers for abstract ideas about cul­tur­al decay and the nature of art and tra­di­tion. But Eliot and his some­time edi­tor and friend Ezra Pound would like­ly object to this kind of approach to poet­ry. Added at the insis­tence of his pub­lish­er, Eliot’s foot­notes to “The Waste Land” seem to mock read­ers anx­ious to leap to inter­pre­ta­tion. Instead, the poet would ask us to attend not to ideas, but to the images, and the emo­tions they evoke—and in this case, to attend also to the poet­’s voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

Grou­cho Marx and T.S. Eliot Become Unex­pect­ed Pen Pals, Exchang­ing Por­traits & Com­pli­ments (1961)

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

The Making of Japanese Handmade Paper: A Short Film Documents an 800-Year-Old Tradition

in Art, Life, Travel | May 2nd, 2016

For many of us, washi paper is the art sup­ply equiv­a­lent of a dish that’s “too pret­ty to eat.” I love to look at it, but would be loathe to mar its beau­ty with my ama­teur cre­ative efforts.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for use in lanterns and sho­ji screens in Japan, its sim­plic­i­ty makes it a stand out among the far more orna­men­tal dec­o­ra­tive sheets pop­u­lat­ing the fan­cy inter­na­tion­al paper selec­tions. Though there is no short­age of machine-pro­duced washi on the mar­ket these days, the loveli­est exam­ples are still hand­made in Kurotani, a small town near Kyoto.

Kurotani has the dis­tinc­tion of being Japan’s old­est paper-mak­ing town, and as doc­u­ment­ed by film­mak­er Kuroy­ana­gi Takashi, above, the washi process has changed lit­tle in 800 years.

In the pre-indus­tri­al age, washi-mak­ing was sea­son­al. Farm­ers plant­ed the paper mul­ber­ry (kozo), mit­suma­ta, and gampi plants essen­tial to the process along with their food crops. Come havest-time, they would soak these plants’ fibrous inner barks until they were soft enough to be cleaned and pound­ed.

Then as now, the result­ing pulp was added mixed with liq­uid and a mucilage to yield a (not par­tic­u­lar­ly deli­cious sound­ing, and def­i­nite­ly not too pret­ty to eat…) spread­able paste.

The sheets are formed on bam­boo screens, then stacked and pressed until dry.

The end result is both strong and flex­i­ble, mak­ing it a favorite of book­binders. Its absorben­cy is prized by print­mak­ers, includ­ing Rem­brandt.

If you have a yen to wit­ness the labor-inten­sive, tra­di­tion­al process up close, Dutch washi crafts­man Rogi­er Uiten­boogaart runs a guest house as part of his stu­dio in near­by Kamikoya.

The rest of us must con­tent our­selves with Takashi’s med­i­ta­tive 5‑minute doc­u­men­tary.

via The Kid Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

How Ink is Made: A Volup­tuous Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She writes a month­ly col­umn about peo­ple who love their jobs for Mainichi Week­ly, a bilin­gual Japan­ese news­pa­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Manual, “Manly Health & Training,” Urges Readers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plenty of Meat (1858)

in Health, Literature | May 2nd, 2016

The idea of “the author,” wrote Roland Barthes, “rules in man­u­als of lit­er­ary his­to­ry, in biogra­phies of writ­ers, in mag­a­zine inter­views, and even in the aware­ness of lit­er­ary men, anx­ious to unite, by their pri­vate jour­nals, their per­son and their work.” We see this anx­i­ety of author­ship in much of Walt Whit­man’s per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence. The poet, “could be sur­pris­ing­ly anx­ious about his own dis­ap­pear­ance,” writes Zachary Turpin in the intro­duc­tion to a recent­ly re-dis­cov­ered series of Whit­man essays called “Man­ly Health and Train­ing.”

Whit­man, how­ev­er, was just as often anx­ious to dis­as­so­ci­ate his per­son from his work, whether juve­nile short sto­ries or his copi­ous amount of jour­nal­ism and occa­sion­al pieces. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the New York Atlas between 1858 and 1860, “Man­ly Health and Train­ing”—“part guest edi­to­r­i­al, part self-help column”—may indeed rep­re­sent some of the work Whit­man wished would dis­ap­pear in his late-in-life attempts at “careerist revi­sion­ism.” As it hap­pens, reports The New York Times, these arti­cles did just that until Turpin, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, found the essays last sum­mer while brows­ing arti­cles writ­ten under var­i­ous jour­nal­is­tic pseu­do­nyms Whit­man used.

The work in ques­tion appeared under the name “Mose Vel­sor,” and it’s worth ask­ing, as Barthes might, whether we should con­sid­er it by the poet­ic fig­ure we call “Whit­man” at all. Though we encounter in these occa­sion­al­ly “eye­brow-rais­ing” essays the “more-than-typ­i­cal­ly self-con­tra­dic­to­ry Whit­man,” Turpin com­ments, “these con­tra­dic­tions dis­play lit­tle of the poet­ic dialec­ti­cism of Leaves of Grass”—first pub­lished, with­out the author’s name, in 1855.

The essays are piece­meal dis­til­la­tions of “a huge range of top­ics” of gen­er­al inter­est to male read­ers of the time—in some respects, a 19th cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of Men’s Health mag­a­zine. And yet, argues Ed Fol­som, edi­tor of The Walt Whit­man Quar­ter­ly—which has pub­lished the near­ly 47,000 word series of essays online—“One of Whitman’s core beliefs was that the body was the basis of democ­ra­cy. The series is a hymn to the male body, as well as a guide to tak­ing care of what he saw as the most vital unit of demo­c­ra­t­ic liv­ing.” These themes are man­i­fest along with the robust homo­eroti­cism of Whitman’s poet­ry:

We shall speak by and by of health as being the foun­da­tion of all real man­ly beau­ty. Per­haps, too, it has more to do than is gen­er­al­ly sup­posed, with the capac­i­ty of being agree­able as a com­pan­ion, a social vis­i­tor, always welcome—and with the divine joys of friend­ship. In these par­tic­u­lars (and they sure­ly include a good part of the best bless­ings of exis­tence), there is that sub­tle virtue in a sound body, with all its func­tions per­fect, which noth­ing else can make up for, and which will itself make up for many oth­er defi­cien­cies, as of edu­ca­tion, refine­ment, and the like.

David Reynolds, pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at the Grad­u­ate Cen­ter of the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, con­curs: “there’s a kind of health-nut thing about ‘Leaves of Grass’ already. This series sort of cod­i­fies it and expands on it, giv­ing us a real reg­i­men.” To that end, two of “Mose Velsor”’s promi­nent top­ics are diet and exer­cise, and whether we con­sid­er “Man­ly Health and Train­ing” a prose adden­dum to Whitman’s first book or most­ly work-for-hire on a range of top­ics in his gen­er­al purview, some of the advice, like the poet­ry, can often sound par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern, while at the same time pre­serv­ing the quaint­ness of its age.

Antic­i­pat­ing the Paleo craze, for exam­ple, Whit­man writes, “let the main part of the diet be meat, to the exclu­sion of all else.” His diet advice is far from sys­tem­at­ic from essay to essay, yet he con­tin­u­al­ly insists upon lean meat as the foun­da­tion of every meal and refers to beef and lamb as “strength­en­ing mate­ri­als.” The “sim­plest and most nat­ur­al diet,” con­sists of eat­ing main­ly meat, Whit­man asserts as he casts asper­sions on “a veg­e­tar­i­an or water-gru­el diet.” Whit­man issues many of his dietary rec­om­men­da­tions in the ser­vice of vocal train­ing, rec­om­mend­ing that his read­ers “gain ser­vice­able hints from the ancients” in order to “give strength and clear­ness to their vocal­iza­tions.”

Aspi­rants to man­li­ness should also attend to the ancients’ habit of fre­quent­ing “gym­na­si­ums, in order to acquire mus­cu­lar ener­gy and pli­an­cy of limbs.” Many of Whitman’s train­ing reg­i­mens con­jure images from The Road to Wellville or of stereo­typ­i­cal 19th-cen­tu­ry strong men with han­dle­bar mus­tach­es and fun­ny-look­ing leo­tards. But he does intu­it the mod­ern iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a seden­tary lifestyle with ill health and pre­ma­ture death, address­ing espe­cial­ly “stu­dents, clerks, and those in seden­tary or men­tal employ­ments.” He exhorts pro­to-cubi­cal jock­eys and couch pota­toes alike: “to you, clerk, lit­er­ary man, seden­tary per­son, man of for­tune, idler, the same advice. Up!”

Whitman’s “warn­ings about the dan­gers of inac­tiv­i­ty,” writes The New York Times, “could have been issued from a 19th-cen­tu­ry stand­ing desk,” a not unlike­ly sce­nario, giv­en the many authors from the past who wrote on their feet.  But should we pic­ture Whit­man him­self issu­ing these procla­ma­tions on “Health and Train­ing”? No image of the man him­self, with cocked elbow and cocked hat, is affixed to the essays. The pseu­do­ny­mous byline may be no more than a con­ven­tion, or it may be a desire to inhab­it anoth­er per­sona, and to dis­tance the words far from those of “Walt Whit­man.”

Did Whit­man con­sid­er the essays hackwork—populist pab­u­lum of the kind strug­gling writ­ers today often crank out anony­mous­ly as “spon­sored con­tent”? The series, Turpin writes “is un-Whit­man­ian, even unpo­et­ic,” its func­tion “fun­da­men­tal­ly util­i­tar­i­an, a phys­i­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal doc­u­ment root­ed in the (pseudo)sciences of the era.” Not the sort of thing one imag­ines the high­ly self-con­scious poet would have want­ed to claim. “Dur­ing his life­time,” Whit­man “wast­ed no time remind­ing any­one of this series,” like­ly hop­ing it would be for­got­ten.

And yet, it’s inter­est­ing nonethe­less to com­pare the exag­ger­at­ed mas­culin­i­ty of “Man­ly Health and Train­ing” with much of the belit­tling per­son­al crit­i­cism Whit­man received in his life­time, rep­re­sent­ed per­fect­ly by one Thomas Went­worth Hig­gin­son. This crit­ic and harsh review­er includ­ed Whitman’s “pri­apism,” his serv­ing as a nurse dur­ing the Civ­il War rather than “going into the army,” and his “not look­ing… in real­ly good con­di­tion for ath­let­ic work” as rea­sons why the poet “nev­er seemed to me a thor­ough­ly whole­some or man­ly man.”

In addi­tion to thin­ly veiled homo­pho­bia, many of Higginson’s com­ments sug­gest­ed, write Robert Nel­son and Ken­neth Price, that “as a social group, work­ing-class men did not and could not pos­sess the qual­i­ties of true man­li­ness.” Per­haps we can read these ear­ly Whit­man edi­to­ri­als, pseu­do­ny­mous or not, as demo­c­ra­t­ic instruc­tions for using mas­cu­line health as a great social lev­el­er and means to “make up for many oth­er defi­cien­cies, as of edu­ca­tion, refine­ment, and the like.” Or per­haps “Man­ly Health and Train­ing” was just anoth­er assignment—a way to pay the bills by ped­dling pop­u­lar male wish-ful­fill­ment while the poet wait­ed for the rest of the world to catch up with his lit­er­ary genius.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Great­est Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953)

Mark Twain Writes a Rap­tur­ous Let­ter to Walt Whit­man on the Poet’s 70th Birth­day (1889)

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

President Obama’s 2016 Stand-Up Comedy Routine

in Comedy, Politics | May 2nd, 2016

One thing I’ll miss about Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is his abil­i­ty to deliv­er a good joke at the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner. My favorite line from Sat­ur­day night:

And then there’s Ted Cruz. Ted had a tough week. He went to Indi­ana –- Hoosier coun­try –- stood on a bas­ket­ball court, and called the hoop a “bas­ket­ball ring.” What else is in his lex­i­con? Base­ball sticks? Foot­ball hats? But sure, I’m the for­eign one.

Bern!

And it’s always nice to see John Boehn­er and Oba­ma shar­ing a good joke around a smoke. Fast for­ward to the 27 minute mark for that.

Below, we also have Lar­ry Wilmore’s cut­ting rou­tine:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 30 of the Great­est Standup Com­e­dy Albums: A Playlist Cho­sen by Open Cul­ture Read­ers

Lenny Bruce: Hear the Per­for­mances That Got Him Arrest­ed (NSFW)

Richard Pry­or Does Ear­ly Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine in New York, 1964

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

Discover Harvard’s Collection of 2,500 Pigments: Preserving the World’s Rare, Wonderful Colors

in Art, Harvard, Museums, Science | April 29th, 2016

If mod­ern paint com­pa­nies’ pre­ten­tious­ly-named col­or palettes gall you to the point of an exclu­sive­ly black-and-white exis­tence, the Har­vard Art Muse­ums’ Forbes pig­ment col­lec­tion will prove a wel­come balm.

The hand and type­writ­ten labels iden­ti­fy­ing the collection’s 2500+ pig­ments boast none of the flashy “cre­ativ­i­ty” that J. Crew employs to ped­dle its cash­mere Boyfriend Cardi­gans.

Images by Har­vard News

The benign, and whol­ly unex­cit­ing-sound­ing “emer­ald green” is —unsurprisingly—the exact shade legions of Oz fans have come to expect. The thrills here are chem­i­cal, not con­ferred. A mix of crys­talline pow­der cop­per ace­toarsen­ite, this emerald’s fumes sick­ened pen­ni­less artists as adroit­ly as they repelled insects.

Look how nice­ly it goes with Van Gogh’s rud­dy hair…

“Mum­my” is per­haps the clos­est the Forbes col­lec­tion comes to 21st- cen­tu­ry pig­ment nam­ing. As Harvard’s Direc­tor of the Straus Cen­ter for Con­ser­va­tion and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies, Narayan Khan­dekar, notes in the video above, its mush­room shade is no great shakes. The source—the resin used to seal mum­mies’ bandages—is what dis­tin­guish­es it.

The collection’s crown jew­el is a rich ball of mustard‑y Indi­an Yel­low. This pig­ment comes not from maize, nor earth, but from the dehy­drat­ed urine of a cow sub­sist­ing exclu­sive­ly on man­go leaves. I’m drawn to it like a moth to the liv­ing room walls. I’m sure Ben­jamin Moore had his rea­sons for dub­bing its urine-free fac­sim­i­le “Sun­ny Days.”

The images above, save the Van Gogh paint­ing, comes cour­tesy of by Har­vard News. The video above was cre­at­ed by Great Big Sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ink is Made: A Volup­tuous Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Watch the First 10 Sea­sons of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing Free Online

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

Watch Animated Introductions to 35 Philosophers by The School of Life: From Plato to Kant and Foucault

in Philosophy | April 29th, 2016

Phi­los­o­phy as an aca­d­e­m­ic sub­ject is reg­u­lar­ly maligned in pop­u­lar dis­course. Phi­los­o­phy majors get told that their stud­ies are use­less. Phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors find their bud­gets cut, their cours­es scru­ti­nized, and their char­ac­ter gross­ly impeached in pro­pa­gan­dis­tic reli­gious fea­ture films. It’s enough to make one despair over the turgid air of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism that sti­fles con­ver­sa­tion.

But before we start pin­ing for bygone gold­en ages of rig­or­ous crit­i­cal thought, let us remem­ber that philoso­phers have been a thorn in the side of the pow­er­ful since the incep­tion of West­ern phi­los­o­phy. After all, Socrates, the ancient Greek whose name we asso­ciate with philosophy’s most basic max­ims and meth­ods, was sup­pos­ed­ly put to death for the crime of which today’s pro­fes­so­rate so often stand accused: cor­rupt­ing the youth.

We most­ly know of Socrates’ life and death through the writ­ten dia­logues of his star pupil, Pla­to, whom Alain de Bot­ton calls in the first video above, “the world’s first true, and per­haps great­est, philoso­pher.” De Bot­ton quick­ly explains in his ani­mat­ed School of Life intro­duc­tion that the core of Plato’s phi­los­o­phy con­sti­tutes a “spe­cial kind of ther­a­py” geared toward Eudai­mo­nia, or human ful­fill­ment and well-being. From Pla­to, De Bot­ton’s series of quick takes on famous philoso­phers con­tin­ues, mov­ing through the Enlight­en­ment and the 19th and 20th cen­turies.

Key to Plato’s thought is the crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of Doxa, or the con­ven­tion­al val­ues and “pop­u­lar opin­ions” that reveal them­selves as “rid­dled with errors, prej­u­dice, and super­sti­tion.” Plato’s most famous illus­tra­tion of the pro­found state of igno­rance in which most of us live goes by the name “The Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” and receives a retelling with com­men­tary by De Bot­ton just above. The para­ble doesn’t only illus­trate the util­i­ty of phi­los­o­phy, as De Bot­ton says; it also serves as a vivid intro­duc­tion to Plato’s the­o­ry of the Forms—an ide­al realm of which our phe­nom­e­nal real­i­ty is only a debased copy.

The dual­ism between the real and the ide­al long gov­erned philo­soph­i­cal thought, though many com­pet­ing schools like the Sto­ics expressed a healthy degree of skep­ti­cism. But we might say that it wasn’t until Immanuel Kant, whom you can learn about above, that Pla­to real­ly met his match. Along with his famous eth­i­cal dic­tum of the “cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tive,” Kant also posit­ed two dis­tinct realms—the noume­nal and the phe­nom­e­nal. And yet, unlike Pla­to, Kant did not believe we can make any asser­tions about the prop­er­ties or exis­tence of the ide­al. What­ev­er lies out­side the cave, we can­not access it through our faulty sens­es.

These cen­tral ques­tions about the nature of knowl­edge and mind not only make phi­los­o­phy an imma­nent­ly fas­ci­nat­ing discipline—they also make it an increas­ing­ly nec­es­sary endeav­or, as we move fur­ther into the realm of con­struct­ing arti­fi­cial minds. Soft­ware engi­neers and video game devel­op­ers are tasked with philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems relat­ed to con­scious­ness, iden­ti­ty, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of eth­i­cal free choice. And at the cut­ting edge of cog­ni­tive sci­ence—where evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy and quan­tum mechan­ics rub elbows—we may find that Pla­to and Kant both intu­it­ed some of the most basic prob­lems of con­scious­ness: what we take for real­i­ty may be noth­ing of the kind, and we may have no way of gen­uine­ly know­ing what the world is like out­side our sens­es.

As 17th cen­tu­ry French philoso­pher and math­e­mati­cian Rene Descartes feared, but found impos­si­ble to believe, our per­cep­tion of the world may in fact be a decep­tive, if use­ful, illu­sion. Learn more about Descartes above, and see De Botton’s full School of Life phi­los­o­phy series at the top of the post. Or watch the series on Youtube.

There are 35 videos in total, which let you become acquaint­ed with, and per­haps cor­rupt­ed by, a range of thinkers who ques­tion ortho­doxy and com­mon sense, includ­ing Aris­to­tle, Epi­cu­rus, Georg Wil­helm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Michel Fou­cault, Arthur Schopen­hauer, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Baruch Spin­oza. Watch all of the videos in the playlist right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (140+ Free Cours­es)

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Goethe, Germany’s “Renais­sance Man”

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

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