Mapping the Sounds of Greek Byzantine Churches: How Researchers Are Creating “Museums of Lost Sound”

in Architecture, Art, History | March 9th, 2016

Unless you’re an audio engi­neer, you’ll have lit­tle rea­son to know what the term “con­vo­lu­tion reverb” means. But it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept nonethe­less. Tech­ni­cians bring high-end micro­phones, speak­ers, and record­ing equip­ment to a par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant space—a grain silo, for exam­ple, or famous con­cert hall. They cap­ture what are called “impulse respons­es,” sig­nals that con­tain the acoustic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the loca­tion. The tech­nique pro­duces a three dimen­sion­al audio imprint—enabling us to recre­ate what it would sound like to sing, play the piano or gui­tar, or stage an entire con­cert in that space. As Adri­enne LaFrance writes in The Atlantic, “you can apply [impulse respons­es] to a record­ing cap­tured in anoth­er space and make it sound as though that record­ing had tak­en place in the orig­i­nal build­ing.”

This kind of map­ping, writes Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic, allows researchers to “build an archive of a building’s sound, with all its nuances, echoes, and ric­o­chets, that could sur­vive even if the build­ing fell.” And that is pre­cise­ly what researchers have been doing since 2014 in ancient Greek Byzan­tine church­es. The project began when Sharon Ger­s­tel, Pro­fes­sor of Byzan­tine Art His­to­ry and Arche­ol­o­gy at UCLA, and Chris Kyr­i­akakis, direc­tor of the Immer­sive Audio Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, met to dis­cuss their mutu­al inter­est in cap­tur­ing the sound of these spaces.

(Hear them both explain the gen­e­sis of the project in the CBC inter­view above.) The two researchers trav­eled to Thes­sa­loni­ki, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Kyr­i­akakis’ home­town, and began, as Ger­s­tel puts it, to “mea­sure the church­es.” LaFrance’s Atlantic arti­cle gives us a detailed descrip­tion of the mea­sure­ment process, which involves play­ing and record­ing a tone that sweeps through the audi­ble fre­quen­cy spec­trum. You’ll hear it in the video at the top of the post as a “chirp”—bouncing off the var­i­ous archi­tec­tur­al sur­faces as the voic­es of singers would have hun­dreds of years ago.

In that video and in the audio record­ing above, chanters in a stu­dio had the audio char­ac­ter­is­tics of these church­es applied to their voic­es, recre­at­ing the sounds that filled the spaces in the ear­ly Chris­t­ian cen­turies. As anoth­er mem­ber of the team, James Don­ahue—Pro­fes­sor of Music Pro­duc­tion and Engi­neer­ing at Berklee Col­lege of Music—discovered, the church­es had been acousti­cal­ly designed to pro­duce spe­cif­ic sound effects. “It wasn’t just about the archi­tec­ture,” says Don­ahue, “they had these big jugs that were put up there to sip cer­tain fre­quen­cies out of the air… They built dif­fu­sion, a way to break up the sound waves… They were active­ly try­ing to tune the space.” In addi­tion, the builders “dis­cov­ered some­thing that we call slap echo. [In the ancient world], they described it as the sound of angels’ wings.”

The project not only allows art his­to­ri­ans to enter the past, but it also pre­serves that past far into the future, cre­at­ing what LaFrance calls a “muse­um of lost sound.” After all, the church­es them­selves will even­tu­al­ly recede into his­to­ry. “Some of these build­ings may not exist lat­er,” says Kyr­i­akakis, “Some of these his­toric build­ings are being destroyed.” With immer­sive video and audio tech­nol­o­gy, we will still be able to expe­ri­ence much of their grandeur long after they’re gone.

via the CBC/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Same Song Sung in 15 Places: A Won­der­ful Case Study of How Land­scape & Archi­tec­ture Shape the Sounds of Music

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

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

Stephen Fry Launches Pindex, a “Pinterest for Education”

in Education, Science, Web/Tech | March 8th, 2016

Who can now deny that, in the inter­net, we have the great­est edu­ca­tion­al tool ever con­ceived by mankind? Sure­ly no Open Cul­ture read­er would deny it, any­way, nor could they fail to take an inter­est in a new start­up aim­ing to increase the inter­net’s edu­ca­tion­al pow­er fur­ther still: Pin­dex, which calls itself “a Pin­ter­est for edu­ca­tion.” No oth­er com­pa­ny has yet staked that ter­ri­to­ry out, and cer­tain­ly no oth­er com­pa­ny has done it with the sup­port of Stephen Fry.

The Tele­graph’s Cara McCoogan describes Pin­dex, which launched just last month (vis­it it here), as “a self-fund­ed online plat­form that cre­ates and curates edu­ca­tion­al videos and info­graph­ics for teach­ers and stu­dents,” found­ed and run by a four-per­son team.

Fry’s role in the quar­tet includes offer­ing “cre­ative direc­tion,” but he’s also put his unmis­tak­able voice to one of Pin­dex’s first videos, an “explain­er about the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, dark mat­ter and extra dimen­sions. Oth­er videos will focus on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing ones on the Hyper­loop, colonis­ing Mars, and robots and drones. Mr Fry is expect­ed to do the voiceovers for sev­er­al of these.”

Have a look around the site and you’ll also find a col­lec­tion of mate­r­i­al on grav­i­ta­tion­al waves, some cre­ative writ­ing resources, an info­graph­ic guide to nutri­tion, details on a vari­ety of fun sci­ence exper­i­ments, and much more besides. There’s even a guide to Pin­dex itself, which explains how to use the site and what you can get out of it going for­ward, whether as a teacher, a stu­dent, or just some­one into learn­ing as much as pos­si­ble — a pur­suit that, even in what Fry calls “a time when it is easy to lose faith in an online world that seems to cen­tre around trolling, bul­ly­ing, hat­ing, triv­i­al­iz­ing and belit­tling,” gets more reward­ing by the day.

via The Tele­graph

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hig­gs Boson and Its Dis­cov­ery Explained with Ani­ma­tion

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

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Explains Human­ism in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos: Hap­pi­ness, Truth and the Mean­ing of Life & Death

Stephen Fry Explains the Rules of Crick­et in 10 Ani­mat­ed Videos

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.

A Collection of Sun Ra’s Business Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This World

in Music | March 8th, 2016

One of the hard­est things to mas­ter as an inde­pen­dent musi­cian is the art of pro­mo­tion. Though many artists are extro­verts and atten­tion-seek­ers, many more are by nature intro­vert­ed, or at least inner-direct­ed, and dis­in­clined to embrace the tools of the mar­ket­ing trade. In days of yore, when such things as major record labels still roamed the earth at large, much of the pro­mo­tion could be left up to those majes­tic, lum­ber­ing beasts. These days, when the major­i­ty of work­ing musi­cians have to keep their day jobs and learn to do their own pro­duc­tion, styling, book­ing, and PR, it’s essen­tial to get over any squea­mish­ness about blow­ing your own horn. If you’re look­ing for point­ers, con­sid­er the exam­ple of self-invent­ed musi­cal genius Sun Ra, a mas­ter of self-pro­mo­tion.

No one bet­ter under­stood what Sun Ra was up to than Sun Ra him­self, and he knew how to sell his very out-there free jazz move­ment to a pub­lic used to more mun­dane pre­sen­ta­tions. As Mike Walsh at Mis­sion Creep suc­cinct­ly puts it, “noth­ing about Sun Ra’s six-decade musi­cal career could be called nor­mal.” He more or less re-invent­ed what it meant to be a jazz musi­cian and band­leader. It was in the 1950s that he real­ly came into his own. After work­ing steadi­ly as a tour­ing side­man for sev­er­al oth­er musi­cians, the man born Her­man Blount changed his name first to Le Sony’r Ra, then Sun Ra, and put togeth­er his famous “Arkestra.”

His shows began to incor­po­rate the elab­o­rate cos­tum­ing he became known for, and he would often stop the music “to lec­ture on his favorite sub­jects,” writes Jez Nel­son at The Guardian, “Egyp­tol­ogy and space. He began to claim he had been abduct­ed by aliens and was in fact from Sat­urn.” The act was both dead­ly seri­ous space opera (he rehearsed his band for 12 hours at a stretch, after all) and absur­dist schtick, and it both trans­port­ed audi­ences to new worlds and made them laugh out loud.

Sun Ra’s busi­ness cards from the 50s cap­ture this tonal spec­trum between avant-garde per­for­mance art and high-con­cept free jazz com­e­dy. Adver­tis­ing new releas­es, a band-for-hire, and ongo­ing local Chica­go res­i­den­cies, they com­bine the strict pro­fes­sion­al­ism of a work­ing band­leader with the word­play and silli­ness Ra loved: he calls his coterie “Atonites,” which psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Robert L. Camp­bell reads as mean­ing both “wor­ship­pers of Aton,” Egypt­ian sun god, and “per­form­ers of aton­al music.” Audi­ences are invit­ed to “Dance the Out­er Space Way. Hear songs sung the Out­er Space Way by Clyde ‘Out of Space’ Williams” (one­time singer with the band). And the card at the top of the post makes per­haps the sim­plest, most com­pelling pitch of them all: “Why buy old sounds?” Indeed.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

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

A Clockwork Orange Author Anthony Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopian Novels: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

in Literature | March 7th, 2016

From Sir Thomas More’s 1516 philo­soph­i­cal nov­el Utopia to Dis­ney’s 2016 adult-friend­ly kids’ movie Zootopia, the genre of the “-top­ia” has been remark­ably durable. Tak­ing Pla­to’s Repub­lic as their mod­el, the first utopi­an fic­tions flour­ished in an opti­mistic age, when polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy imag­ined a per­fect union between gov­ern­ment and sci­ence. Such fic­tion por­trayed most­ly har­mo­nious, high-func­tion­ing civ­i­liza­tions as con­trasts to real, imper­fect societies—and yet, as mod­ern indus­try began to threat­en human well-being and for­mer­ly ide­al­ized forms of gov­ern­ment acquired a tyran­ni­cal hue, the genre began to project into the future not hopes of free­dom, ease, and plen­ty but rather fears of mass suf­fer­ing, impris­on­ment, and mis­rule. In place of utopias, moder­ni­ty gave us dystopias, ter­ri­fy­ing fic­tions of a hell­ish future birthed by war, total­i­tar­i­an rule, gross eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, and mis­ap­plied tech­nolo­gies.

Before John Stu­art Mill coined the word “dystopia” in 1868, pes­simistic post-Enlight­en­ment thinker Jere­my Ben­tham cre­at­ed an ear­li­er, per­haps even scari­er, word, “caco­topia,” the “imag­ined seat of the worst gov­ern­ment.” This was the term favored by Antho­ny Burgess, author of one of the most unset­tling dystopi­an nov­els of the last cen­tu­ry, A Clock­work Orange. Depict­ing a chaot­ic future Eng­land filled with extreme crim­i­nal vio­lence and an unnerv­ing gov­ern­ment solu­tion, the nov­el can be read as either, writes Ted Gioia, “a look into the moral­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual, or as an inquiry into the moral­i­ty of the State.” It seems to me that this dual focus marks a cen­tral fea­ture of much suc­cess­ful dystopi­an fic­tion: despite its thor­ough­ly grim and pes­simistic nature, the best rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the genre present us with human char­ac­ters who have some agency, how­ev­er lim­it­ed, and who can choose to revolt from the oppres­sive con­di­tions (and usu­al­ly fail in the attempt) or to ful­ly acqui­esce and remain com­plic­it.

The rebel­lion of a sin­gle non-con­formist gen­er­al­ly forms the basis of con­flict in dystopi­an fic­tion, as we’ve seen in recent, pop­ulist iter­a­tions like The Hunger Games series and their more deriv­a­tive coun­ter­parts. And yet, in most clas­sic dystopi­an nov­els, the hero remains an anti-hero—or an un-hero, rather: unex­cep­tion­al, unim­por­tant, and gen­er­al­ly unno­ticed until he or she decides to cross a line. A few of Burgess’s own favorites of the genre rough­ly fol­low this clas­sic for­mu­la, includ­ing Orwell’s 1984. In the short list below, Burgess com­ments on five works of dystopi­an fic­tion he held in par­tic­u­lar­ly high regard. Two of them, Aldous Hux­ley’s Island and Rus­sell Hoban’s Rid­dley Walk­er, break the mold, and show us two oppo­site extremes of civ­i­liza­tions per­fect­ed, and com­plete­ly anni­hi­lat­ed, by West­ern progress. Burgess’s first choice, Nor­man Mail­er’s The Naked and the Dead seems not to fit at all, being an account of past atroc­i­ties rather than a spec­u­la­tive look into the future.

Nev­er­the­less, Burgess seems will­ing to stretch the bound­aries of what we typ­i­cal­ly think of as dystopi­an fic­tion in order to include books that offer, as Mail­er’s nov­el has it, “a pre­view of the future.” See Burgess’s picks below, and read excerpts from his com­men­tary on these five nov­els. You can read his full descrip­tions at The Inter­na­tion­al Antho­ny Burgess Foun­da­tion web­site.

• The Naked and the Dead by Nor­man Mail­er

The futil­i­ty of war is well pre­sent­ed. The island to be cap­tured has no strate­gic impor­tance. The spir­it of revolt among the men is stirred by an acci­dent: the patrol stum­bles into a hor­nets’ nest and runs away, drop­ping weapons and equip­ment, the naked leav­ing the dead behind them. An impulse can con­tain seeds of human choice: we have not yet been turned entire­ly into machines. Mailer’s pes­simism was to come lat­er — in The Deer Park and Bar­bary Shore and An Amer­i­can Dream — but here, with men grant­i­ng them­selves the pow­er to opt out of the col­lec­tive sui­cide of war, there is a heart­en­ing vision of hope. This is an aston­ish­ing­ly mature book for a twen­ty-five-year-old nov­el­ist. It remains Mailer’s best, and cer­tain­ly the best war nov­el to emerge from the Unit­ed States.

• Nine­teen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

This is one of the few dystopi­an or caco­topi­an visions which have changed our habits of thought. It is pos­si­ble to say that the ghast­ly future Orwell fore­told has not come about sim­ply because he fore­told it: we were warned in time. On the oth­er hand, it is pos­si­ble to think of this nov­el as less a prophe­cy than the com­ic join­ing togeth­er of two dis­parate things — an image of Eng­land as it was in the imme­di­ate post-war era, a land of gloom and short­ages, and the bizarrely impos­si­ble notion of British intel­lec­tu­als tak­ing over the gov­ern­ment of the coun­try (and, for that mat­ter, the whole of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world).

• Facial Jus­tice by L.P. Hart­ley

Jael 97 is facial­ly over­priv­i­leged: her beau­ty must be reduced to a drab norm. But, like the heroes and hero­ines of all caco­topi­an nov­els, she is an eccen­tric. See­ing for the first time the west tow­er of Ely Cathe­dral, one of the few lofty struc­tures left unflat­tened by the war, she expe­ri­ences a trans­port of ecsta­sy and wish­es to cher­ish her beau­ty. Her revolt against the regime results in no bru­tal reim­po­si­tion of con­for­mi­ty — only in the per­sua­sions of sweet rea­son. This is no Orwellian future. It is a world inca­pable of the dynam­ic of tyran­ny. Even the weath­er is always cool and grey, with no room for either fire or ice. The state mot­to is ‘Every val­ley shall be exalt­ed.’ This is a bril­liant pro­jec­tion of ten­den­cies already appar­ent in the post-war British wel­fare state but, because the book lacks the expect­ed hor­rors of caco­topi­an fic­tion, it has met less appre­ci­a­tion than Nine­teen Eighty-Four.

• Island by Aldous Hux­ley

Nobody is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly con­di­tioned to be hap­py: this new world is real­ly brave. It has learned a great deal from East­ern reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy, but it is pre­pared to take the best of West­ern sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and art. The peo­ple them­selves are a sort of ide­al Eurasian race, equipped with fine bod­ies and Hux­leyan brains, and they have read all the books that Hux­ley has read.

All this sounds like an intel­lec­tu­al game, a hope­less dream in a founder­ing world, but Hux­ley was always enough of a real­ist to know that there is a place for opti­mism. Indeed, no teacher can be a pes­simist, and Hux­ley was essen­tial­ly a teacher. In Island the good life is even­tu­al­ly destroyed by a bru­tal, stu­pid, mate­ri­al­is­tic young raja who wants to exploit the island’s min­er­al resources.

• Rid­dley Walk­er by Rus­sell Hoban

Eng­land… after nuclear war, is try­ing to orga­nize trib­al cul­ture after the total destruc­tion of a cen­tral­ized indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion. The past has been for­got­ten, and even the art of mak­ing fire has to be relearned. The nov­el is remark­able not only for its lan­guage but for its cre­ation of a whole set of rit­u­als, myths and poems. Hoban has built a whole world from scratch.

Burgess’s list gives us such a small sam­pling of dystopi­an fic­tion, and with so many clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary exam­ples about, it’s tempt­ing to add to his list (one won­ders why he choos­es Hux­ley’s Island and not Brave New World). There’s no rea­son why we can’t. If you’re so inclined, tell us your favorite dystopi­an nov­els, or films, in the com­ments, with a brief descrip­tion of their mer­its.

H/T to one of our fans on our Face­book page, John B.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Sur­pris­ing List of His 10 Favorite Books, from C.S. Lewis to Tom Clan­cy

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

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

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learning HTML, Python, Javascript & More

in Computer Science, How to Learn for Free | March 7th, 2016

This week, we’re launch­ing the begin­ning of a new, ongo­ing series. We’re cre­at­ing guides that will teach you how to learn impor­tant sub­jects on your own, using free resources avail­able on the web. Want an exam­ple? Just look below. Here you’ll find a list of free resources–online cours­es, instruc­tion­al videos, YouTube chan­nels, text­books, etc.–that will teach how to code for free. If we’re miss­ing great items, please add your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments below.

This col­lec­tion is just a start, and it will con­tin­ue to grow over time. In the mean­time, if there are oth­er guides you’d like to see us devel­op in the com­ing weeks, please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion too. We’re hap­py to get your feed­back.

How to Code (Soft­ware)

• Codecad­e­my: A free site for learn­ing every­thing from Mak­ing a Web­site to Python in a “user active” style—meaning that users can use tuto­ri­als to design projects of their own choos­ing. The site also makes it easy to track your progress. Oth­er top­ics you can learn include: Cre­ate an Inter­ac­tive Web­site, Ruby, Javascript, HTML & CSS, SQL and more. Reg­is­ter and sign up for all class­es here. (See our post on Codecad­e­my here.)
• Code School: Code School cours­es are built around a cre­ative theme and sto­ry­line so that it feels like you’re play­ing a game, not sit­ting in a class­room. The site offers a set of free cours­es cov­er­ing JavaScript, jQuery, Python, Ruby and more.
• Free Code Camp: An open source com­mu­ni­ty that helps you learn to code. You can work through self-paced cod­ing chal­lenges, build projects, and earn cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. Accord­ing to Wired, the site “fea­tures a sequence of online tuto­ri­als to help the absolute begin­ner learn become a web devel­op­er, start­ing with build­ing a sim­ple web­page. Stu­dents move on to pro­gram­ming with JavaScript and, even­tu­al­ly, learn­ing to build com­plete web appli­ca­tions using mod­ern frame­works such as Angu­lar and Node.”
• The Odin Project: Made by the cre­ators of Viking Code School, an online cod­ing boot­camp, the Odin Project offers free cod­ing lessons in web devel­op­ment. Top­ics include: HTML, CSS, JavaScript & jQuery, Ruby pro­gram­ming, Ruby on Rails. Find an intro­duc­tion to the cur­ricu­lum here.

• Google’s Python Class:  A free class (used with­in Google itself) for peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence who want to learn Python. The class includes writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, and lots of code exer­cis­es to prac­tice Python cod­ing.
• Google’s C++ Course: Wel­come to Google’s C++ Class. This class includes writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, exam­ples, and exer­cis­es to prac­tice C++ cod­ing.
• Cod­ing for Kids from Code.org: Code.org, a non-prof­it, has cre­at­ed a fun way for stu­dents to learn the basics of cod­ing. They’ve launched Star Wars: Build­ing a Galaxy with Code, a tuto­r­i­al designed to teach stu­dents how to write JavaScript. There’s also a ver­sion that teach­es code with Minecraft, and a sep­a­rate beginner’s tuto­r­i­al for kids between the ages of 6 and 10.
• Online Computer/Coding Cours­es from Major Uni­ver­si­ties:
  • You can find dozens of free cours­es, cov­er­ing all facets of cod­ing, list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es. The cours­es come from top uni­ver­si­ties.
  • Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es (MOOCs) focused on Cod­ing are reg­u­lar­ly offered through providers like Cours­era, edx, Udac­i­ty, Ali­son, Future­Learn, MIT, and Khan Acad­e­my. Ude­my itself has a short course called “The Best Free Resources To Learn How To Pro­gram.”
  • Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence: Get free access to Har­vard’s pop­u­lar intro­duc­to­ry cod­ing course designed for majors and non-majors alike. Com­bines cours­es typ­i­cal­ly known else­where as “CS1” and “CS2.”
  • Stan­ford’s Free Course on Devel­op­ing Apps with iOS: If you’re look­ing to devel­op apps for iPhone or iPad, this handy Stan­ford course will go a long way.

• YouTube Chan­nels for Learn­ing Cod­ing: Chan­nels you might want to vis­it include:
  • Coder’s Guide: Fea­tures videos on HTML web devel­op­ment, cross-plat­­form Java pro­gram­ming, begin­ner .net pro­gram­ming with Visu­al Basic and client side JavaScript web devel­op­ment.
  • Code Course: Learn to code and build things with easy to fol­low tuto­ri­als. A num­ber of videos focus on PHP. Find more mate­ri­als on the chan­nel’s web site.
  • LearnCode.academy: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CSS Lay­outs, Respon­sive Design etc.
  • DevTips: Web design and web devel­op­ment.
  • The New Boston: Pro­gram­ming, web design, net­work­ing, video game devel­op­ment, graph­ic design, etc.
  • The Google Devel­op­ers Chan­nel: Offers lessons, talks, the lat­est news & best prac­tices in sub­jects like Android, Chrome, Web Devel­op­ment, Poly­mer, Per­for­mance, iOS & more.
  • You can find more YouTube Chan­nels here: 33 Use­ful Youtube-chan­nels for learn­ing Web Design and Devel­op­ment.
• Free Pro­gram­ming Text­books from Github: Access 500+ “free pro­gram­ming books that cov­er more than 80 dif­fer­ent pro­gram­ming lan­guages on the pop­u­lar web-based Git repos­i­to­ry host­ing ser­vice.”
• Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Text­books: On our site, find a list of free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars.

Sources that helped us cre­ate this list above include: Inc., Learn to Code with Me, and Web­Build­De­sign.

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!

Charlie Chaplin Gets Strapped into a Dystopian “Rube Goldberg Machine,” a Frightful Commentary on Modern Capitalism

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Technology | March 7th, 2016

I get into a lot of con­ver­sa­tions these days about how we used to con­sid­er tech­no­log­i­cal progress good by def­i­n­i­tion, but now — despite or maybe because of the far­ther-pro­gressed-than-ever state of our tech­nol­o­gy — we feel a bit wary about it all. We line up for the lat­est smart­phone, but as we do we reflect upon how it increas­ing­ly looks we’ll nev­er line up for the jet­packs, fly­ing cars, and moon colonies we dreamed of in child­hood. We enjoy our phones, but we resent them as well, remem­ber­ing those long-ago assur­ances that tech­nol­o­gy would increase our leisure, not fill it with anx­i­ety about insuf­fi­cient­ly rapid respons­es, nag­ging left­over work, and missed-out-on infor­ma­tion of every kind. When did the trust between our tech and our­selves break down?

Not so recent­ly, it turns out — or rather, not just recent­ly. The human-tech­nol­o­gy rela­tion­ship goes through its good times and its bad patch­es, and at any giv­en time some of us like the direc­tion its progress looks to be mov­ing in more than oth­ers do. You may have heard of one par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known tech­no­log­i­cal crit­ic of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, a car­toon­ist by the name of Rube Gold­berg. More like­ly, you’ve heard of the pre­pos­ter­ous­ly elab­o­rate machines he drew in his car­toons.

One rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ple, an “auto­mat­ic sui­cide device for unlucky stock spec­u­la­tors,” involves the ring of a phone (“prob­a­bly a mes­sage from your bro­ker say­ing you are wiped out”) which wakes up a doz­ing office man­ag­er whose stretch­ing hits a lever which launch­es a toy glid­er which hits a dwarf whose jump­ing up and down in pain works a jack which lifts up a pig to the lev­el of a pota­to, and when he eats the pota­to… well, in any case, the process ends up, some time lat­er, pulling the trig­ger of a gun mount­ed right over the tick­er­tape machine. “If the tele­phone call is not from your bro­ker,” Gold­berg notes, you’ll nev­er find out the mis­take because you’ll be dead any­way.

“The sur­re­al­ism of Goldberg’s car­toon inven­tions,” writes Bren­dan O’Con­nor at The Verge, while meant to enter­tain, “also reveals a dark skep­ti­cism of the era in which they were made. The machines were sym­bols, Gold­berg wrote, of ‘man’s capac­i­ty for exert­ing max­i­mum effort to accom­plish min­i­mal results.’ ” They had a strong appeal in that “era of increas­ing automa­tion, and increas­ing con­cern about automa­tion, exem­pli­fied in Char­lie Chaplin’s 1936 mas­ter­piece Mod­ern Times. One of the film’s dystopi­an curiosi­ties, the Bil­lows Feed­ing Machine, invent­ed by Mr. J. Wid­de­combe Bil­lows, has a dis­tinct­ly Rube Gold­ber­gian qual­i­ty to it — this is like­ly no coin­ci­dence, as Gold­berg and Chap­lin were friends.”

In the clip at the top, we see the Bil­lows Feed­ing Machine in action, not quite ful­fill­ing its promise to “elim­i­nate the lunch hour, increase your pro­duc­tion, and decrease your over­head.” The dis­ap­point­ed high­er-ups ren­der their ver­dict: “It’s no good — it isn’t prac­ti­cal.” A mod­ern-day J. Wid­de­combe Bil­lows would know bet­ter how to respond to them: it’s still in beta.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Falling Water: A Rube Gold­berg Machine That Makes a Fine Cock­tail

Stu­dents Tells the Passover Sto­ry with a Rube Gold­berg Machine

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

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.

American History: An Off-Kilter 1992 Student Film from South Park Creator Trey Parker

in Animation, Film, History, Television | March 4th, 2016

Here’s a lit­tle exer­cise:

Spend five min­utes record­ing your­self recap­ping every­thing you know about Japan­ese his­to­ry.

(Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies majors and Japan­ese cit­i­zens, please sit this one out.)

Most of us will wind up with a pas­tiche that’s heavy on pop cul­ture and rel­a­tive­ly recent events. The aver­age Japan­ese school­child should have no dif­fi­cul­ty iden­ti­fy­ing the glar­ing holes and fac­tu­al errors in our nar­ra­tives.

If this idea amus­es you, you’ll like­ly enjoy Amer­i­can His­to­ry, above, South Park cre­ator Trey Park­er’s ear­ly ani­mat­ed short, a 1993 Stu­dent Acad­e­my Award sil­ver medal­ist.

Parker’s Japan­ese-born Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado class­mate, Junichi Nishimu­ra, pro­vid­ed the nar­ra­tion, begin­ning with Christo­pher Colum­bus in 1492 and end­ing with the “Japan bash­ing” 41st pres­i­dent, George H.W. Bush. High­lights along the way include the Salem Witch Tri­als, the Boston Tea Par­ty, the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dents Lin­coln and Kennedy, Leave It to Beaver, and that time Bush barfed at a state din­ner host­ed by Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Kiichi Miyaza­wa.

He also remem­bers the Alamo, prov­ing one Red­dit wag’s hypoth­e­sis: If there’s one thing peo­ple remem­ber about the Alamo, it is to remem­ber the Alamo…

And then….

Park­er and anoth­er class­mate, Chris Graves, his soon-to-be DP on Can­ni­bal: The Musi­cal, ani­mat­ed the results using the most rudi­men­ta­ry of paper cut outs. It’s easy to spot the fledg­ling South Park style, as well as Python ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam’s influ­ence. This may be Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but the anony­mous top hat­ted hordes bear an awful­ly close resem­blance to South Park’s res­i­dent Cana­di­ans, Ter­rance and Phillip.

If the pho­net­ic spellings of non-native speak­er Nishimura’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion makes you uncom­fort­able, it’s worth not­ing that he not only worked as an ani­ma­tor on South Park, but also rep­re­sent­ed his coun­try by play­ing “Pres­i­dent” Hiro­hi­to on the extreme­ly fun­ny (and NSFW) “Chin­pokomon” episode.

Amer­i­can His­to­ry will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion,

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Wis­dom of Alan Watts Ani­mat­ed by the Cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Read her most recent dra­ma-in-real com­ic on Nar­ra­tive­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Unearthed Songs by Jeff Buckley Now Streaming Online (Free For a Limited Time)

in Music | March 4th, 2016

A quick fyi: Thanks to NPR, you can now stream You and I, a not-yet released album fea­tur­ing long-lost record­ings by Jeff Buck­ley, the singer-song writer who died in 1997, just as he seemed poised to be the heir appar­ent to Bob Dylan and Bruce Spring­steen. Here’s how NPR describes the album that will be offi­cial­ly released next week:

You And I col­lects 10 of his demos, which were record­ed in Feb­ru­ary 1993, short­ly after he’d signed to his label. For more than 20 years, they sat for­got­ten in the vaults — and, more to the point, were nev­er boot­legged or oth­er­wise cir­cu­lat­ed. New­ly unearthed, they show­case a late-bloom­ing 26-year-old artist who’s still find­ing and har­ness­ing his voice: learn­ing how to manip­u­late its gale-force pow­er, learn­ing when and whether to hold back, and learn­ing how to ful­ly trans­late his influ­ences into a sound of his own.

The songs are most­ly cov­ers of artists like The Smiths, Bob Dylan, Sly & The Fam­i­ly Stone, and Led Zep­pelin. You can stream the album below, or hear it over at NPR. But hur­ry up, it will only be free for a lim­it­ed time.

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!

3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Presenting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)

in Art | March 3rd, 2016

Paul Klee led an artis­tic life that spanned the 19th and 20th cen­turies, but he kept his aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty tuned to the future. Because of that, much of the Swiss-Ger­man Bauhaus-asso­ci­at­ed painter’s work, which at its most dis­tinc­tive defines its own cat­e­go­ry of abstrac­tion, still exudes a vital­i­ty today.

And he left behind not just those 9,000 pieces of art (not count­ing the hand pup­pets he made for his son), but plen­ty of writ­ings as well, the best known of which came out in Eng­lish as Paul Klee Note­books, two vol­umes (The Think­ing Eye and The Nature of Nature) col­lect­ing the artist’s essays on mod­ern art and the lec­tures he gave at the Bauhaus schools in the 1920s.

“These works are con­sid­ered so impor­tant for under­stand­ing mod­ern art that they are com­pared to the impor­tance that Leonardo’s A Trea­tise on Paint­ing had for Renais­sance,” says Mono­skop. Their descrip­tion also quotes crit­ic Her­bert Read, who described the books as  “the most com­plete pre­sen­ta­tion of the prin­ci­ples of design ever made by a mod­ern artist – it con­sti­tutes the Prin­cip­ia Aes­thet­i­ca of a new era of art, in which Klee occu­pies a posi­tion com­pa­ra­ble to Newton’s in the realm of physics.”

More recent­ly, the Zen­trum Paul Klee made avail­able online almost all 3,900 pages of Klee’s per­son­al note­books, which he used as the source for his Bauhaus teach­ing between 1921 and 1931. If you can’t read Ger­man, his exten­sive­ly detailed tex­tu­al the­o­riz­ing on the mechan­ics of art (espe­cial­ly the use of col­or, with which he strug­gled before return­ing from a 1914 trip to Tunisia declar­ing, “Col­or and I are one. I am a painter”) may not imme­di­ate­ly res­onate with you. But his copi­ous illus­tra­tions of all these obser­va­tions and prin­ci­ples, in their vivid­ness, clar­i­ty, and reflec­tion of a tru­ly active mind, can still cap­ti­vate any­body  — just as his paint­ings do.

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 Mono­skop

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Home­made Hand Pup­pets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

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

815 Free Art Books from World Class Muse­ums: The Met, the Guggen­heim, the Get­ty & LACMA

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Stun­ning High Res­o­lu­tion)

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.

Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” Played with Medieval Instruments, and Kickstart More Medieval Covers

in Music | March 3rd, 2016

Last year, we intro­duced you to Stary Olsa, a band from East­ern Europe (Belarus, to be pre­cise) who has a knack for rework­ing famous rock songs in a Medieval Belaru­sian folk style. Our orig­i­nal post fea­tured adap­ta­tions of clas­sic songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca and Deep Pur­ple. Above you can watch Stary Olsa play “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd on the Belaru­sian TV-show “Leg­ends Live.” Part of the rea­son we’re fea­tur­ing the band again is because Stary Olsa has launched a Kick­starter cam­paign to fund the record­ing of its 12th album, Old Time Rock n Roll, which will bring more met­al music back to the Mid­dle Ages. You can watch the video for the cam­paign below, and make your con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er big or small, here. They’ll super appre­ci­ate any sup­port you can offer. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment