Mesmerizing Animation, Made of Photos from Early-1900s America, Lets You Travel in a Steampunk Time Machine

in Animation, History | April 26th, 2016

Sure­ly you remem­ber Cheers, if only from the sit­com’s syn­di­cat­ed reruns cease­less­ly aired around the world. And if you remem­ber Cheers, you’ll remem­ber no part of it more vivid­ly than its open­ing cred­its sequence, which broke from the well-estab­lished tra­di­tion of show­ing the faces of the series’ cast mem­bers.

Instead, writes Stephen Cole at Fonts in Use, the stu­dio charged with cre­at­ing the sequence “col­lect­ed archival illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs of bar life, culled from books, pri­vate col­lec­tions, and his­tor­i­cal soci­eties. They hand-tint­ed the images and paired them with typog­ra­phy inspired by a turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry aes­thet­ic.”

As fond­ly as we remem­ber their work, the art of bring­ing turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry pho­tos to life has come a long way indeed since Cheers debuted in 1982. Take, for instance, the short above: The Old New World by Russ­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er and ani­ma­tor Alex­ey Zakharov, who in just over three and a half min­utes takes us right back to ear­ly-1900s Amer­i­ca. “The pho­tos show New York, Boston, Detroit, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Bal­ti­more between 1900 and 1940, and were obtained from the web­site Shorpy,” writes Petapix­el’s Michael Zhang, quot­ing Zakharov’s own descrip­tion of the work as a “pho­to-based ani­ma­tion project” as well as a chance to “trav­el back in time with a lit­tle steam­punk time machine.”

You can see a gallery of more of the mate­ri­als that went into The Old New World at Behance. Just as those Cheers open­ing cred­its evoked the con­vivi­al­i­ty of old-time tav­ern cul­ture, Zakharov’s film evokes what it meant — or at least, to all of us cur­rent­ly alive and thus with­out any liv­ing mem­o­ry of that era, what we think it meant — to live in the head­i­est cities going in the head­i­est coun­try going, places whose boom­ing indus­try and cul­ture held out seem­ing­ly infi­nite promise, even on qui­et days.

Should Net­flix picks Cheers as their next beloved sit­com to revive, they might con­sid­er going to Zakharov for a new title sequence. He’s cer­tain­ly got all the pic­tures of Boston he’d need.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

James Joyce’s Dublin Cap­tured in Vin­tage Pho­tos from 1897 to 1904

Watch 1920s “City Sym­phonies” Star­ring the Great Cities of the World: From New York to Berlin to São Paulo

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.

Hear Prince and Miles Davis’ Rarely-Heard Musical Collaborations

in Music | April 25th, 2016

The days and weeks after a celebri­ty death tend to fill up with pub­lic inquiries. The vaguer the cir­cum­stances, the more ques­tions pro­lif­er­ate, lead to inves­ti­ga­tions, tri­als, depress­ing tabloid pay­days…. But many fans don’t linger over pro­ce­dur­al goings-on or pruri­ent details. Many won­der instead “What if?”—as in, how do we reck­on the artis­tic loss? What projects went uncom­plet­ed? What kind of col­lab­o­ra­tions might have been on the hori­zon?

The spec­u­la­tive answers to the lat­ter ques­tion often give us far more inter­est­ing results than the real thing. While David Bowie’s work with Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen is unques­tion­ably mas­ter­ful, for exam­ple, his joint effort with Mick Jag­ger now just makes us laugh. Bowie worked with near­ly every­one it seems—there are few match-ups left to pon­der…. Well, every­one that is except Prince. What if….?

And now that Prince has left us, we might won­der about all of the super­du­os that might have formed had he lived into his six­ties and beyond. One col­lab­o­ra­tion that did bear some fruit dur­ing his life­time came just in time for Prince’s super­star part­ner, Miles Davis, who died in 1991. Dur­ing the lat­ter half of the ‘80s, the two formed a bond, based on mutu­al admi­ra­tion for each other’s music, of course, as well as for each other’s image and gen­er­al­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing per­son­al­i­ty.

In fact, since at least 1982, Davis, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Ian Carr, became “almost obses­sive­ly inter­est­ed in the androg­y­nous, mul­ti-tal­ent­ed black pop star… whom he rat­ed very high­ly as an artist.” In the short (almost inaudi­ble) inter­view clip above, Davis describes Prince as a syn­the­sis of James Brown, Mar­vin Gaye, Jimi Hen­drix, and Char­lie Chap­lin. He also com­pared Prince to Sly Stone and Lit­tle Richard, writes Carr, and com­ment­ed, “He’s a mix­ture of all those guys and Duke Elling­ton.”

For his part, Prince sup­pos­ed­ly saw in Davis an old­er ver­sion of him­self. After the two artists met in 1985, they crossed paths sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years, with Miles appear­ing onstage to play a solo at a Pais­ley Park New Year’s Eve ben­e­fit and record­ing a solo on the Prince/Chaka Khan song “Sticky Wicked” in 1988. What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing about Prince and Davis’s musi­cal love affair is that the result­ing music played to both artists’ strengths, instead of attempt­ing to meld their styles into some­thing out of char­ac­ter.

Davis’ exper­i­ments with ‘80s R&B tropes in his 1986 album Tutu stem from their work togeth­er, and the record was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a Prince col­lab­o­ra­tion. At the top of the post, you can hear an unre­leased track orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for Tutu called “Can I Play With U?” and fea­tur­ing Prince’s vocals. Tutu end­ed up going in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and received some high­ly mixed reviews, but it retained much of the spir­it of Prince. And for Miles—who since the late six­ties had absorbed and trans­formed influ­ences from so many con­tem­po­rary styles—this seemed per­fect­ly fit­ting.

The Tutu col­lab may not have panned out—Prince was appar­ent­ly unhap­py with the results and scrapped his songs—but the two didn’t give up on each oth­er. On the con­trary, much of the music Davis played and record­ed at the end of his life was writ­ten by Prince. Above, hear one such com­po­si­tion, the sug­ges­tive­ly named “Pen­e­tra­tion,” in a 1991 per­for­mance. Though Prince’s funk roots shine through, it’s also a work very much in Davis’s fusion wheel­house. Although Davis died before the two could com­plete their long-await­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive album, we don’t have to won­der “What if?”

Much of the music they wrote togeth­er sur­vives in live per­for­mances like that above and has cir­cu­lat­ed in a Davis boot­leg titled Miles Davis Plays Prince and a Prince boot­leg titled Cru­cial. Does the music on these record­ings live up to the out­sized tal­ent and per­son­al­i­ties of these two genius­es? Prob­a­bly not—whatever could? But it shows us the direc­tion Davis would have con­tin­ued to move in had he lived on, and also gives us a way to think about the sig­nif­i­cant jazz influ­ences in Prince’s music, a sub­ject rarely dis­cussed but wor­thy of much more con­sid­er­a­tion.

via Bill­board

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

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

Franz Kafka: An Animated Introduction to His Literary Genius

in Literature | April 25th, 2016

Franz Kaf­ka — he wrote that sto­ry about the guy who turns into a bug, and lot of stuff about com­plex and implaca­ble bureau­cra­cy, right? What more do you need to know? Well, giv­en the endur­ing use (and abuse) of the adjec­tive “Kafkaesque,” the man’s work must tap into some deep­er real­i­ty of the human con­di­tion than our fears of wak­ing up trans­formed into some­thing gross and inhu­man or get­ting trapped in the pur­ga­to­ry of vast, soul­less, and irra­tional sys­tems. Here to explain a lit­tle bit more about that deep­er real­i­ty, we have this explana­to­ry ani­mat­ed video above from Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life.

Kaf­ka, says de Bot­ton, “was a great Czech writer who has come to own a part of the human emo­tion­al spec­trum which we can now call the ‘Kafkaesque,’ and which, thanks to him, we’re able bet­ter to rec­og­nize and to gain a mea­sure of per­spec­tive over and relief from.” We find our­selves in Kafka’s world when­ev­er “we feel pow­er­less in front of author­i­ty: judges, aris­to­crats, indus­tri­al­ists, politi­cians, and most of all, fathers. When we feel that our des­tiny is out of our con­trol. When we’re bul­lied, humil­i­at­ed, and mocked by soci­ety, and espe­cial­ly by our own fam­i­lies. We’re in Kafka’s orbit when we’re ashamed of our bod­ies, of our sex­u­al urges, and feel that the best thing for us might be to be killed or squashed with­out mer­cy, as if we were an incon­ve­nient and rather dis­gust­ing bed­bug.”

You might expect any writer who takes those as his themes to have led a trou­bled life, and this video gets into detail about Kafka’s: the self-hatred of his youth, his unsuc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships with women, the ago­niz­ing dis­ease that kept him in pain, and every­thing else that shaped his writ­ing of not just The Meta­mor­pho­sis but the nov­els The Tri­al, The Cas­tle, and Ameri­ka, all left unfin­ished, to his own mind, in his short life­time. But in a way, his drea­ry life sto­ry ends well: “With­in a few years of his death, his rep­u­ta­tion began. By the sec­ond World War, he was rec­og­nized as one of the great­est writ­ers of the age.”

Acknowl­edg­ing the Kafkaesque in our world has become impor­tant to many of us, but accord­ing to this video’s view of Kaf­ka, you can’t ful­ly under­stand it unless you under­stand the writer’s rela­tion­ship with his “ter­ri­fy­ing­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly abu­sive” father. “Any boy who has ever felt inad­e­quate in front of or unloved by a pow­er­ful father will at once relate to what Kaf­ka went through in his child­hood,” says de Bot­ton, who has him­self spo­ken pub­licly about grow­ing up in the sim­i­lar­ly dark shad­ow of his own “cru­el tyrant” banker father. But even if you did­n’t suf­fer in the same way, you’ll find some­thing to at least crack the frozen sea with­in you in the work of this writer who stands as “a mon­u­ment in Ger­man lit­er­ary his­to­ry,” and at the same time “a sad, ashamed, ter­ri­fied part of us all.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Reads Franz Kafka’s Short Sto­ry “A Lit­tle Fable” (and Explains Why Com­e­dy Is Key to Kaf­ka)

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Franz Kaf­ka Says the Insect in The Meta­mor­pho­sis Should Nev­er Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Any­way

Franz Kafka’s It’s a Won­der­ful Life: The Oscar-Win­ning Film About Kaf­ka Writ­ingThe Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

The Ani­mat­ed Franz Kaf­ka Rock Opera

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.

In Search of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Secluded Hut in Norway: A Short Travel Film

in Philosophy, Travel | April 25th, 2016

If you like phi­los­o­phy and road trip­ping, then you’ll want to put Wittgen­stein in Nor­way in your YouTube queue. Post­ed this month by Kirsten Dirk­sen, the short film takes through the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side of Nor­way, in search of the hut where Lud­wig Wittgen­stein exiled him­self from soci­ety from time to time, first start­ing in 1913. Dirk­sen gives this pref­ace to the film:

Over 100 years ago, philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein went to the fjords of Nor­way to escape the schol­ar­ly world of Cam­bridge. His for­mer teacher Bertrand Rus­sell wrote, “I said it would be lone­ly, and he said he pros­ti­tut­ed his mind talk­ing to intel­li­gent peo­ple.”

Not con­tent with sim­ply mov­ing to the iso­la­tion of rur­al Nor­way- at the end of the Sogne­fjord (the deep­est and sec­ond longest fjord)- Wittgen­stein built his hut across the lake and halfway up a moun­tain from the near­est town (Skjold­en). Mea­sur­ing just 7 by 8 meters, the small cab­in dubbed “Lit­tle Aus­tria” (his native coun­try) became his home on and off through­out his life (his longest stay here was 13 months).

Wittgen­stein was flee­ing the dis­trac­tions and inter­rup­tions of a more social lifestyle and hop­ing to con­front only his own thoughts. “Who­ev­er is unwill­ing to descend into him­self,” he wrote, “because it is too painful, will of course remain super­fi­cial in his writ­ing.’” He wrote some of his most impor­tant work here (a pre­cur­sor to his “Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus” and some of his “Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions”).

Today all that remains of his hut are its stone foun­da­tion and a very faint hik­ers trail up the moun­tain, though some Nor­we­gians are try­ing to change this. Artists Mar­i­anne Bre­desen, Sebas­t­ian Makon­nen Kjølaas and Siri Hjorth (in col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Wittgen­stein Soci­ety in Skjold­en and fund­ed by Pub­lic Art Nor­way) threw an all-expens­es-paid vaca­tion to bring fel­low Oslo res­i­dents to the ruin. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s argu­ment that “philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems arise when lan­guage goes on hol­i­day”, they are call­ing their art hol­i­day “Wittgen­stein on Vaca­tion”. For part one, they enter­tained their guests with a week­end of lec­tures, meals and a Wittgen­stein inter­pre­ta­tion at the site of his cab­in. We cap­tured some of the show on our own jour­ney to this dis­ap­pear­ing piece of his­to­ry.

Oth­er videos about sim­ple liv­ing, self-suf­fi­cien­cy, small homes, and philoso­phies of life can be found on Dirk­sen’s YouTube chan­nel.

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!

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Short, Strange & Bru­tal Stint as an Ele­men­tary School Teacher

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Gets Adapt­ed Into an Avant-Garde Com­ic Opera

Wittgen­stein and Hitler Attend­ed the Same School in Aus­tria, at the Same Time (1904)

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

in Art, Technology | April 25th, 2016

As depict­ed above, ink mak­ing is as volup­tuous a process as mak­ing a high end can­dy bar. Hav­ing grown up around the print­ing floor of a dai­ly news­pa­per, I know that ink’s pun­gent aro­ma is the oppo­site of chocolate‑y, but my mouth still start­ed to water. Was it the com­mer­cial-ready clas­si­cal sound­track or hear­ing Chief Ink Mak­er Peter Wel­fare com­par­ing the pigment’s gooey “vehi­cle” to hon­ey?

I won’t be dip­ping my tongue in the ink pot any time soon, but the mul­ti­step four col­or process by which pow­dered cyan, magen­ta, yel­low, and black hues become press-bound ink proved far more sen­su­al than expect­ed.

Ink mak­ing in the 21st-cen­tu­ry is a com­bi­na­tion of Old and New World tech­niques.

The his­to­ry of ink and print­ing is very old indeed. The Chi­nese devel­oped move­able type around 1045 and used it to print paper mon­ey. The Guten­berg Press was up and run­ning by 1440. The rollers, vats, and mix­ing tools in use at the Print­ing Ink Com­pa­ny, Wel­fare’s fam­i­ly busi­ness, are not so far removed from the tools used by ear­ly prac­ti­tion­ers.

Work­ers at the Print­ing Ink Comp­nany use their fin­gers to test their product’s tack­i­ness, a pre­dic­tor of its on-press per­for­mance. Pre­sum­ably, you devel­op a feel for it after a while.

State of the art com­put­er pro­grams pro­vide fur­ther qual­i­ty con­trol, ana­lyz­ing for con­sis­ten­cy of col­or and gloss with an accu­ra­cy that eludes even the most prac­ticed human eye.

The results can be seen on every­thing from brochures to fine art prints.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn How Crayons Are Made, Cour­tesy of 1980s Videos by Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How Film Was Made in 1958: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Prince Plays a Mind-Blowing Guitar Solo On “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

in Music | April 21st, 2016

Amidst all its oth­er unset­tling excess­es, 2016 has become a year of col­lec­tive mourn­ing as musi­cal icon after musi­cal icon pass­es away. The names begin to sound like a list of bat­tle­field casu­al­ties. Our lat­est loss was much more than a leader among men: he was roy­al­ty.

Prince’s death strikes me as a tragedy for so many rea­sons: he was too young, only 57. He was—as for near­ly every­one of my generation—a fix­ture of my child­hood, a fig­ure of impos­si­ble cool; his loss feels deeply per­son­al. Last­ly, Prince seemed so above it all—above all of the ugly, pet­ty crap the rest of us slog through every day, includ­ing death.

All pop stars seem like that to their fans.

But when it comes to Prince, it wasn’t just his for­ev­er young sex­u­al­i­ty that made me think he’d nev­er die, but the fact that he could do any­thing, and I mean any­thing at all as a musi­cian. He seemed to have no lim­i­ta­tions. Unlike many of this year’s lost stars, I was lucky enough to see him play. That show became the high water­mark by which I’ve unfair­ly mea­sured every oth­er per­former.

He played for three hours, then held an after­par­ty and played for two more. He tore through his cat­a­log, then played every­one else. Mem­bers of his band left the stage one by one, and Prince con­tin­ued, pick­ing up instru­ment after instru­ment. The huge­ness of the sound didn’t seem dimin­ished one bit when he remained on stage alone with his gui­tar at three o’clock in the morn­ing.

And that gui­tar, man.… Whether his trade­mark but­ter­scotch Tele­cast­er or series of unique, sig­na­ture instruments—he played like no one else: he made the gui­tar cry, sing, howl, wail, and launch into out­er space hys­ter­ics. His pow­er and con­trol were unmatched. Eric Clap­ton, when asked what it felt like to be the world’s great­est gui­tarist, sup­pos­ed­ly said, “ask Prince.” Apoc­ryphal or not, it’s believ­able. No gui­tarist can be any­thing but blown away by Prince’s prowess. Wit­ness his solo at the end of the 2004 all-star Rock and Roll Hall of Fame George Har­ri­son trib­ute per­for­mance of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (top), wide­ly cit­ed as one one of the best gui­tar moments caught on tape, and as evi­dence for why Prince belongs in the top ten of world’s great­est play­ers. He’s accom­pa­nied on the stage by Tom Pet­ty (RIP), Steve Win­wood, Jeff Lynne and Dhani Har­ri­son.

I don’t think there’s any hyper­bole in say­ing that Prince may have been the great­est stage per­former of the past forty years, as a total pack­age: show­man, song­writer, and musi­cian. And though he dom­i­nat­ed cen­ter stage, he wasn’t too proud to play the side­man. Check him out above, for exam­ple, back­ing Lenny Kravitz on “Amer­i­can Woman.” But when it came time for Prince to take a solo (see him tear it up at around 4:50), it was like every­one else had left the stage.

Rest In Peace, Prince. As a gui­tarist, singer, and gen­er­al explo­sion of pur­ple amaz­ing­ness, he was in a class all his own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More      

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice & Cel­e­bra­tion of “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter, Motör­head Front­man, is Now Stream­ing Live

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

Call Me Burroughs: Hear William S. Burroughs Read from Naked Lunch & The Soft Machine in His First Spoken Word Album (1965)

in Literature | April 21st, 2016

Image by Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Where did you first hear the voice of William S. Bur­roughs? Weary yet vig­or­ous, flat yet pow­er­ful, wry yet haunt­ing, it has, to a good-sized seg­ment of sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions now, defined a cadence for the coun­ter­cul­ture. Many of those enthu­si­asts (most of whom would have come to know the grand old man of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion’s post­mod­ernist wing through his writ­ing, like the nov­els Naked Lunch and Junky) had their first gen­uine Bur­roughs lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence through the record album Call Me Bur­roughs, first released in 1965, and more recent­ly re-issued by Supe­ri­or Viaduct.

In these ses­sions, record­ed in the base­ment of The Eng­lish Book­shop in Paris, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch as well as Nova Express, the third book in the “Nova Tril­o­gy” that the author con­sid­ered a “math­e­mat­i­cal con­tin­u­a­tion” of his best-known work. Both emerged as the fruits of the “cut-up” tech­nique of lit­er­ary com­po­si­tion Bur­roughs devel­oped with artist Brion Gysin, cre­at­ing new texts out of decon­tex­tu­al­ized and reassem­bled pieces of exist­ing text found in the mass media.

“Bur­roughs believed that lan­guage and image were viral and that the mass-dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion was part of an arch-con­spir­a­cy that restrict­ed the full poten­tial of the human mind,” writes Glenn O’Bri­an at Elec­tron­ic Beats. “With cut-up, Bur­roughs found a means of escape; an anti­dote to the sick­ness of ‘con­trol’ mes­sages that mutat­ed their orig­i­nal con­tent. If mass media already func­tioned as an enor­mous bar­rage of cut-up mate­r­i­al, the cut-up method was a way for the artist to fight back using its same tac­tics.”

Call Me Bur­roughs, which at one point became a deep-out-of-print col­lec­tor’s item, has now come avail­able free on Spo­ti­fy. (You can down­load its free soft­ware here.) You can also stream it on Youtube. Coun­ter­cul­ture chron­i­cler Bar­ry Miles notes that the Bea­t­les all had copies (and Paul McCart­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with it, went on to hire its pro­duc­er him­self), and “art deal­er Robert Fras­er bought ten copies to give to friends such as Bri­an Jones and Mick Jag­ger. Mar­i­anne Faith­ful and Kei­th Richards’ deal­er had copies, as did numer­ous painters and writ­ers.” So what­ev­er inspi­ra­tion you draw from this “tal­is­man of cool in Green­wich Vil­lage in the mid-1960s,” as Greil Mar­cus once called it, you’ll cer­tain­ly join a long line of dis­tin­guished lis­ten­ers.

Call Me Bur­roughs will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads & Sings His Exper­i­men­tal Prose in a Big, Free 7‑Hour Playlist

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

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.

Becoming Bilingual Can Give Your Brain a Boost: What Recent Research Has to Say

in Education, Language Lessons, Neuroscience | April 21st, 2016

From the time my daugh­ter was born, my wife and I took her out to restaurants—not to annoy the oth­er din­ers, mind you, she was usu­al­ly very well behaved—but to expose her palate to as much vari­ety as pos­si­ble and social­ize her ear­ly to new and unfa­mil­iar envi­ron­ments. At one estab­lish­ment, dur­ing her sec­ond year, anoth­er tod­dler her age approached us, her moth­er trail­ing behind. “Can we say hi?” the moth­er asked. We said, “of course.” “What lan­guages does your child speak?” the woman polite­ly inquired.

We looked at each oth­er, a lit­tle cha­grined. Par­ents of young chil­dren often play sub­tle games of one-ups­man­ship, whether they mean to or not, and most par­ents fret over whether they’re offer­ing their kids the rich­est learn­ing expe­ri­ences they can.

At that moment we felt slight­ly inad­e­quate. “She just knows the one lan­guage,” we mum­bled, turn­ing back to our menus after a few more pleas­antries. I may have stud­ied Latin for sev­er­al years, learned to read a lit­tle French and Ital­ian and speak enough Span­ish for some halt­ing small talk, but for all intents and pur­pos­es, we’re a mono­lin­gual house­hold.

And accord­ing to cur­rent research on infant brain devel­op­ment, this may put our poor preschool­er at a dis­ad­van­tage to chil­dren who can greet her in two or more tongues. That’s not only because those chil­dren will grow up able to eas­i­ly con­duct busi­ness across coun­tries and con­ti­nents, but also because, Big Think reports, “a new study shows that babies raised in bilin­gual envi­ron­ments devel­op more cog­ni­tive skills like deci­sion-mak­ing and problem-solving—before they can even speak.” The brains of bilin­gual (and trilin­gual, etc.) peo­ple “look and act dif­fer­ent­ly,” the TED-Ed video at the top of the post claims, than those of the mono­lin­gual. (The New York Times puts things more blunt­ly: “Being bilin­gual, it turns out, makes you smarter.”)

Is this real­ly so? Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty neu­ro­sci­en­tist Sam Wang explains why it may be in the short Big Think video fur­ther up. Wang and oth­er researchers have acquired their find­ings by con­duct­ing research on some of the most adorable sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects ever. One study, con­duct­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, test­ed 16 babies—half from only Eng­lish-speak­ing fam­i­lies and half from Eng­lish- and Span­ish-speak­ing house­holds. As you can see in the video clip above, the tots were mon­i­tored via a mag­ne­toen­cephalo­graph­ic hel­met designed spe­cial­ly for babies, as they lis­tened to sounds spe­cif­ic to one or both lan­guages.

Lead author of the study Naja Fer­jan Ramirez writes, “results sug­gest that before they even start talk­ing, babies raised in bilin­gual house­holds are get­ting prac­tice at tasks relat­ed to exec­u­tive func­tion.” Her co-author Patri­cia Kuhl elab­o­rates:

Babies raised lis­ten­ing to two lan­guages seem to stay ‘open’ to the sounds of nov­el lan­guages longer than their mono­lin­gual peers, which is a good and high­ly adap­tive thing for their brains to do.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton researchers are but one team among sev­er­al dozen who have drawn these kinds of con­clu­sions about the ben­e­fits of grow­ing up bilin­gual. Both The New York Times and The New York­er sur­vey and link to much of this research. The New York­er also pro­files a skep­ti­cal study by psy­chol­o­gist Angela de Bru­in that under­cuts some of the enthu­si­asm and pos­si­ble over­state­ment of the ben­e­fits of bilin­gual­ism; and yet her research doesn’t deny that they exist. What­ev­er their degree, the ques­tion might arise for anx­ious par­ents like myself: Is there any­thing we can do to help our mono­lin­gual chil­dren catch up?

Nev­er fear, they can still prof­it from expo­sure to oth­er lan­guages, though you may not speak them flu­ent­ly at home. Big Think offers a cou­ple point­ers for rais­ing a bilin­gual child, even if you’re not bilin­gual your­self.

Lots of for­eign words make their way into Eng­lish. You can point out for­eign foods every time you have them, or watch a bilin­gual show with your child. As long as you expose them to the for­eign words in a con­sis­tent way with the same con­text, they’ll reap the ben­e­fits.

Try using a Lan­guage Exchange com­mu­ni­ty, where you and your child can speak anoth­er lan­guage with native speak­ers togeth­er. You’ll both reap the ben­e­fits with con­stant prac­tice.

Every lit­tle bit of expo­sure helps, and no amount of lan­guage train­ing will ever do any harm. “Basi­cal­ly,” writes Big Think, “there is no down­side to being bilin­gual.” The ear­li­er we start, the bet­ter, but there’s no rea­son not to engage with oth­er lan­guages at any age. We can help you do that here with our expan­sive col­lec­tion of lessons in 48 lan­guages. And to learn even more about bilin­gual­ism and its preva­lence amidst rapid­ly chang­ing demo­graph­ics in the U.S. and around the world, see the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Span­ish lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor Kim Potows­ki’s TEDx talk below, “No Child Left Mono­lin­gual.”

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More 

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More 

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

Hear the Vintage Sherlock Holmes Radio Drama, Starring John Gielgud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richardson

in Literature, Radio | April 20th, 2016

Can there ever be such a thing as too much Sher­lock Holmes? Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s cre­ation of the char­ac­ter in 1887, he’s nev­er gone out of style; there are often sev­er­al adap­ta­tions of Sher­lock Holmes—in film, tele­vi­sion, and otherwise—running simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and I nev­er hear any­one com­plain about Holmes over­load. In fact, Holmes holds the Guin­ness World Record for the most-por­trayed lit­er­ary char­ac­ter ever, with over 70 actors (but alas, no actress­es, yet) play­ing the bril­liant detec­tive in 254 screen adap­ta­tions. And that’s not even to men­tion the thou­sands of detec­tives and detec­tive-like char­ac­ters inspired by Holmes, or his many cameo appear­ances in oth­er fic­tion­al uni­vers­es.

Com­ments sec­tions may quib­ble and snipe, but it seems to me that we’ll nev­er run out of oppor­tu­ni­ties to make more Sher­lock Holmes films, tele­vi­sion shows, video games, ful­ly immer­sive holo­graph­ic vir­tu­al real­i­ty sim­u­la­tions…. But there’s one medi­um that seems to have slowed when it comes to adapt­ing Holmes—and every­thing else lit­er­ary: Radio. (Though sev­er­al pod­casts have picked up the slack.) And as much as we love to see the arch looks on Holmes actors’ faces as they aston­ish and per­plex their var­i­ous Watsons—radio is a medi­um well suit­ed to the dia­logue-dri­ven dra­ma of Conan Doyle’s sto­ries. One clas­sic demon­stra­tion of this is a series of Holmes radio plays that ran from 1939 to 1947 and starred for a time per­haps the quin­tes­sen­tial screen inter­preters of Holmes and Wat­son, Basil Rath­bone and Nigel Bruce.

The New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes, as it was called, took a light­heart­ed approach to the char­ac­ters and, as one review­er puts it, could feel “quite rushed,” with the actors giv­en lit­tle time to rehearse. Although the orig­i­nal series has many mer­its, in the ‘50s, NBC decid­ed to improve upon it, tak­ing the radio tran­scrip­tions of the Conan Doyle sto­ries and re-record­ing them with new actors. Which actors? In many episodes, two of the finest British stage actors of their gen­er­a­tion: Sir John Giel­gud as Holmes and Ralph Richard­son as Wat­son. And in one episode, an adap­ta­tion of “The Final Prob­lem,” the pro­duc­ers found to play their Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty an actor whose voice dom­i­nat­ed some of the most pop­u­lar radio broad­casts of the age: Orson Welles.

You can lis­ten to “The Final Prob­lem” with Giel­gud, Richard­son, and Welles at the top of the post; hear all of the 1950’s New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes episodes (125 in all) just above, and down­load them at the Inter­net Archive. And, fur­ther up, hear thir­ty-two broad­casts of the orig­i­nal New Adven­tures star­ring Rath­bone and Bruce. Like all com­mer­cial media then and now, each episode fea­tures its share of… well, com­mer­cials. But they also fea­ture some very fine voice act­ing and excel­lent music and sound design. Most impor­tant­ly, they fea­ture the genius of Sher­lock Holmes, who will live for­ev­er, it seems, in our imag­i­na­tive media, what­ev­er form it hap­pens to take.

These fine record­ings will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

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

Hear Rufus Wainwright Sing Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A New Album Featuring Florence Welch, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner & More

in Literature, Music | April 20th, 2016

How to clas­si­fy the singing-song­writ­ing of Rufus Wain­wright? Pop? Folk? Sure­ly we’ll have to throw a “neo-” or two in there. And we can’t ignore the impor­tance of all things oper­at­ic to the work of this musi­cian who grows more sui gener­is with every album he puts out — and indeed, with every stage pro­duc­tion he puts on. His inter­est in opera dates back to his youth, and as ear­ly as his self-titled 2001 debut we can hear its direct influ­ence in a song like “Barcelona,” whose lyrics bor­row from Verdi’s Mac­beth. Ver­di, of course, was also work­ing with some pret­ty rich inspi­ra­tional mate­r­i­al him­self, and Wain­wright has found an occa­sion to pay more direct trib­ute to William Shake­speare this April 22nd, on almost the 400th anniver­sary of that most influ­en­tial Eng­lish play­wright’s death.

On that date, he’ll release Take All My Loves: 9 Shake­speare Son­nets, an album that finds him, in the words of NPR’s Stephen Thomp­son, “tack­ling the Bard’s work in a grand­ly sweep­ing col­lec­tion of record­ings” fea­tur­ing the tal­ents of “an assort­ment of singers and actors to per­form these 16 tracks, many of which pair rich orches­tral pieces with dra­mat­ic read­ings by the likes of Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, Car­rie Fish­er, and even William Shat­ner.” Yes, Wain­wright has some­how man­aged to bring Star Wars and Star Trek togeth­er — and in the least like­ly of all pos­si­ble con­texts, one in which we also hear Aus­tri­an sopra­no Anna Pro­has­ka, Flo­rence of Flo­rence + the Machine, Wain­wright’s sis­ter Martha, and a fair bit of Ger­man.

Fans of both the ambi­tious and near­ly uncat­e­go­riz­able singer, fans of the (if you believe Harold Bloom) human­i­ty-invent­ing drama­tist, and many in-between will find in Take All My Loves many more feats of musi­cal crafts­man­ship, lit­er­ary cre­ativ­i­ty, and sheer clev­er­ness. And they don’t have to wait until the actu­al anniver­sary (or in any case the day before) to do it. You can hear “A Wom­an’s Face Reprise” (based on Son­net 20, for those play­ing the Shake­speare-schol­ar­ship home game) at the top of the post; “When in Dis­grace with For­tune and Men’s Eyes” (Son­net 29) below that; and for a lim­it­ed time, the entire album avail­able to stream free from NPR, which gives every­one a chance to hear what one of our age’s most inter­est­ing bards has done in part­ner­ship with the Bard him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays (Free Course)

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Such Sweet Thun­der: Duke Elling­ton & Bil­ly Strayhorn’s Musi­cal Trib­ute to Shake­speare (1957)

Lou Reeds Sings “Blue Christ­mas” with Lau­rie Ander­son, Rufus Wain­wright & Friends

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.