Pioneering Electronic Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen Presents “Four Criteria of Electronic Music” & Other Lectures in English (1972)

in Music | January 19th, 2016

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Where did mod­ern elec­tron­ic music come from? What­ev­er the genre markers—EDM, house, glitch, dub­step, ambient—any dis­cus­sion of the his­to­ry will inevitably pay homage to a few found­ing names: Bri­an Eno, Kraftwerk, Afri­ka Bam­baataa, syn­the­siz­er inven­tor Robert Moog, Daft Punk’s per­son­al hero Gior­gio Moroder, super­star DJs Lar­ry Lev­an and Frankie Knuck­les… the list could go on. In most main­stream dis­cus­sions, it will often leave out the name Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. And yet, though he decid­ed­ly did not make dance music, no his­to­ry of elec­tron­i­ca writ large is com­plete with­out him, some­thing film­mak­er Iara Lee rec­og­nized when she fea­tured him promi­nent­ly in her 1999 elec­tron­i­ca doc­u­men­tary Mod­u­la­tions.

In an intro­duc­tion to Lee’s tran­scribed inter­view with Stock­hausen, James Wes­ley John­son describes the exper­i­men­tal Ger­man elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and the­o­rist as “his own best spokesman,” for the way he “describes the the­o­ret­i­cal under­pin­nings of his work with a sim­ple clar­i­ty which belies its com­plex­i­ty.”

Try­ing to describe Stock­hausen’s work proves dif­fi­cult, since “he’s always exper­i­ment­ing.” Any­one who thinks they “ ‘know’ what to expect from him,” John­son remarks, is “des­tined to be sur­prised by fur­ther muta­tions.”

Stock­hausen, who died in 2007, began his career as a stu­dent in the 1950s, study­ing under influ­en­tial French com­pos­er Olivi­er Mes­si­aen while devel­op­ing his own con­cept of musi­cal spa­tial­iza­tion. Through­out the fifties and six­ties, he pio­neered live per­for­mance and record­ed com­po­si­tions with tape recorders, micro­phones, ring mod­u­la­tors, Ham­mond Organ, and oth­er ana­log elec­tron­ic devices, along with tra­di­tion­al instru­ments, voice, and musique con­crete tech­niques.

Stock­hausen com­bined—writes Ed Chang at the Stock­hausen blog Sounds in Space—the results of his exper­i­men­ta­tion with the “har­mon­i­cal­ly-lib­er­at­ing meth­ods of the 2nd Vien­nese School (basi­cal­ly Arnold Schön­berg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who explored the chro­mat­ic scale through the use of unique ordered tone rows and inter­vals).” This fusion gave rise to the lec­ture at the top of the post, deliv­ered at the Oxford Union in Eng­land on May 6th, 1972, in which Stock­hausen lays out his “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music.” They are as fol­lows:

1. Uni­fied Time Struc­tur­ing
2. Split­ting of the Sound
3. Mul­ti-Lay­ered Spa­tial Com­po­si­tion
4. Equal­i­ty of Sound and Noise

Chang pro­vides a detailed, tech­ni­cal sum­ma­ry of each point. Much more enter­tain­ing, how­ev­er, is watch­ing the eccen­tric and enthu­si­as­tic Stock­hausen elab­o­rate his the­o­ry. “One might ask,” he says at the open­ing of his lec­ture, “why are [the four cri­te­ria] inter­est­ing, as there is elec­tron­ic music, and every­body can make up his mind about what to think about this music?” His answer is clas­sic Stockhausen—cryptic, ellip­ti­cal, intrigu­ing­ly vague yet self-assured:

New means change the method; new meth­ods change the expe­ri­ence, and new expe­ri­ences change man. When­ev­er we hear the sounds we are changed: we are no longer the same after hear­ing cer­tain sounds, and this is the more the case when we hear orga­nized sounds, sounds orga­nized by anoth­er human being: music.

Thus he launch­es into his fascinating—if not always ful­ly comprehensible—theory of music as “orga­nized sound,” with ani­mat­ed ges­tures and sev­er­al exam­ples from his own com­po­si­tion from the late 50s, Kon­tak­te. “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” is the fifth in a long series of lec­tures Stock­hausen deliv­ered in Lon­don that year. If you have any inter­est in music the­o­ry, avant-garde com­po­si­tion, or in how elec­tron­ic music—and hence how our world—came to sound the way it does, you should not miss these. You can watch them all on Youtube (or below) or at Ubuweb. If you can­not sit in front of the screen and watch Stock­hausen’s strange­ly com­pelling deliv­ery, you can also down­load a PDF of a pub­lished ver­sion of “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” at Mono­skop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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

Artist Turns Famous Paintings, from Raphael to Monet to Lichtenstein, Into Innovative Soundscapes

in Art, Technology | January 19th, 2016

I’ve long won­dered what it would feel like to have synes­the­sia, the neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non — this straight from Wikipedia — “in which stim­u­la­tion of one sen­so­ry or cog­ni­tive path­way leads to auto­mat­ic, invol­un­tary expe­ri­ences in a sec­ond sen­so­ry or cog­ni­tive path­way.” A synes­thete, in oth­er words, might “see” cer­tain col­ors when they read cer­tain words, or “hear” cer­tain sounds when they see cer­tain col­ors. Non-synes­thetes such as myself have trou­ble accu­rate­ly imag­in­ing such an expe­ri­ence, but we can get one step clos­er with the work of Greek artist-musi­cian-physi­cist Yian­nis Krani­d­i­o­tis, who, in his “Ichographs” series, turns the col­ors of famous paint­ings into sound.

“Exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ship between col­or and sound fre­quen­cies,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Claire Voon, “Krani­d­i­o­tis has recent­ly com­posed a sound­scape for Raphael’s ‘Madon­na del Pra­to’ (1505), or ‘Madon­na of the Mead­ow.’ His result­ing video work, ‘Ichographs MdelP,’ visu­al­izes the break­ing up of the paint­ing into 10,000 cubic par­ti­cles that cor­re­spond to var­i­ous sounds, hon­ing in on spe­cif­ic parts of the can­vas to explore the dif­fer­ent tones of dif­fer­ent col­ors.” You can view that video at the top of the post, and see even more at Krani­d­i­o­tis’ Vimeo chan­nel.

Voon quotes Krani­d­i­o­tis as explain­ing the basic idea behind the project: “Each col­or of a paint­ing can be an audio fre­quen­cy. Each par­ti­cle, like a pix­el in our com­put­er screen, car­ries a col­or and at the same time an audio fre­quen­cy (sinu­soidal wave).” He chose a Renais­sance paint­ing “to gen­er­ate a high con­trast between the clas­si­cal aes­thet­ics and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions that occur,” as well as to make use of its “blue and red col­ors that help to cre­ate a com­plex and inter­est­ing audio result.”

The artist has more to say at The Cre­ators Project, explain­ing that “there are areas of sound and col­or (light) that humans can per­ceive with their eyes and ears (hear­ing and vis­i­ble range) and areas where we need spe­cial equip­ment (like infrasound—ultrasound and infrared—ultraviolet ranges). As a physi­cist, I was always fas­ci­nat­ed by these com­mon prop­er­ties and I was inves­ti­gat­ing ways to high­light and jux­ta­pose them.”

You can enjoy more Icho­graph­ic expe­ri­ences in the oth­er two videos embed­ded here, the first an overview of the process as applied to a vari­ety of paint­ings from a vari­ety of eras, and then a piece focused on trans­form­ing into sound the col­ors of Claude Mon­et’s 1894 “Rouen Cathe­dral, West Facade.” While Krani­d­i­o­tis’ process does­n’t draw from these works of visu­al art any­thing you’d call music, per se, the son­ic tex­tures do make for an intrigu­ing­ly incon­gru­ous ambi­ent accom­pa­ni­ment to these well-known can­vas­es. If the Lou­vre offered his “com­po­si­tions” loaded onto those lit­tle audio-tour devices, maybe I’d actu­al­ly use one.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic/The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to #4, Visu­al­ized by the Great Music Ani­ma­tion Machine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Dave: The Best Tribute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

in Film, Music | January 18th, 2016

Bel­gian DJs Soul­wax (aka 2ManyDJs) have been blend­ing rock and dance since 1995. You may have heard some of their mashups or remix­es over the years. But in 2012 they cre­at­ed Radio Soul­wax, a com­bi­na­tion app and live expe­ri­ence, and went big with a series of 24 hour-long mix­es, all with accom­pa­ny­ing music videos. The most rel­e­vant to our cur­rent inter­ests, and very much wor­thy of an hour of your time, is their re-mix­tape of David Bowie’s career, called Dave.

In the above video, mod­el Han­nelore Knuts plays a very faith­ful look­ing 1976-era Bowie, nav­i­gat­ing a mys­te­ri­ous hotel in which every room con­tains some recre­ation of a clas­sic (or rare!) Bowie record cov­er, and is laced through­out with sym­bol­ism and nods to the artist’s life and career. It’s a con­ceit that builds through­out this phan­tas­magoric tale into a spec­tac­u­lar, heart­break­ing, and round­ly sat­is­fy­ing pay­off, all the while bol­stered by Radio Soulwax’s clever blends of Bowie’s back cat­a­log, includ­ing rare cuts and cov­ers. (I espe­cial­ly love the mix of “Heroes” of “Absolute Begin­ners,” one of his most famous songs along­side his most under­rat­ed one, which now seem to be flip­sides of the same sto­ry).

A labor of love accord­ing to direc­tor Wim Rey­gaert, the film con­tains oth­er dop­pel­gangers that inter­act with Bowie: William S. Bur­roughs, Iggy Pop, Fred­die Mer­cury, Lulu, Tony Vis­con­ti, John Lennon, and rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er Andy Kent all make an appear­ance, along with numer­ous Bowie incar­na­tions. Of all the trib­utes to the Thin White Duke out there in the last week, this is one of the few that will ful­ly assuage the soul. Check it out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936–66)

in Books, History, Life, Travel | January 18th, 2016

Pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment has roman­ti­cized the idea of the road trip as a whol­ly spon­ta­neous adven­ture, but for mid-cen­tu­ry African Amer­i­can motorists, plan­ning was essen­tial. The lodg­ings, restau­rants, and tourist attrac­tions where they could be assured of a warm wel­come were often few and far between in the era of seg­re­ga­tion.

The Negro Trav­el­ers’ Green Book, first print­ed in 1936, was an invalu­able resource for trav­el­ers of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their route took them out­side of urban areas. In the pre-Inter­net age, pub­lish­er Vic­tor Green, a Harlem-dwelling mail­man, relied on read­ers to sup­ply feed­back and new loca­tions for sub­se­quent edi­tions:

There are thou­sands of first class busi­ness places that we don’t know about and can’t list, which would be glad to serve the trav­el­er, but it is hard to secure list­ings of these places since we can’t secure enough agents to send us the infor­ma­tion. Each year before we go to press the new infor­ma­tion is includ­ed in the new edi­tion. When you are trav­el­ing please men­tion the Green Book, in order that they might know how you found their place of busi­ness, as they can see that you are strangers. If they haven’t heard about this guide, ask them to get in touch with us so that we might list their place. If this guide has proved use­ful to you on your trips, let us know. If not, tell us also as we appre­ci­ate your crit­i­cisms and ideas in the improve­ment of this guide from which you ben­e­fit. There will be a day some­time in the near future when this guide will not have to be pub­lished. That is when we as a race will have equal oppor­tu­ni­ties and priv­i­leges in the Unit­ed States. It will be a great day for us to sus­pend this pub­li­ca­tion for then we can go wher­ev­er we please, and with­out embar­rass­ment. But until that time comes we shall con­tin­ue to pub­lish this infor­ma­tion for your con­ve­nience each year.

- from the intro­duc­tion to the 1949 edi­tion

The New York Pub­lic Library’s Schom­burg Cen­ter for Research in Black Cul­ture has dig­i­tized 21 vol­umes of its Green Book col­lec­tion for your brows­ing plea­sure. It’s a trip back in time.

1936’s pre­mier edi­tion is geared toward vis­i­tors spend­ing time in and around New York City. In appear­ance, it resem­bles a church bul­letin or com­mu­ni­ty the­ater pro­gram, with busi­ness card ads for beau­ty salons spe­cial­iz­ing in mar­cel wav­ing and restau­rants serv­ing South­ern home cook­ing. Pub­lish­er Green extols the won­ders of Coney Island, Chi­na­town, and the The­atri­cal Dis­trict, even as he notes that “the col­ored show hous­es are in Harlem.” He also seeks to give read­ers a laugh with “How to Keep From Grow­ing Old,” a dri­ver-spe­cif­ic list that could be read aloud from the pas­sen­ger seat for the mer­ri­ment of every­one in the car. (“In slop­py weath­er, dri­ve close to pedes­tri­ans. Dry clean­ers appre­ci­ate this.”)

The Green Book soon swelled to include nation­al list­ings, as tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers heed­ed Green’s call to beef up the info.

1961’s 25th anniver­sary edi­tion includes a his­to­ry of the enter­prise, a fair amount of typos, newsy updates on the staff, and a renewed promise to list the best places on the moon, should lunar trav­el become an option.

Arm­chair trav­el­ers can take the NYPL’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion out for a spin by enter­ing coor­di­nates into a map­ping fea­ture for 1947 or 1956.

Start­ing in my Indi­ana home­town with sights set on Man­hat­tan took me to the Cot­tage Restau­rant in Colum­bus, Ohio, the Jones Restau­rant in Grafton, West Vir­ginia, and the beau­ti­ful­ly named Trott Inn in Philadel­phia, before I final­ly lay my vir­tu­al head at the Amer­i­ca Hotel. (These days, it would be the Mil­len­ni­um Broad­way.)

Enjoy your trip. In the words of Vic­tor Green, “let’s all get togeth­er and make motor­ing bet­ter.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Robert Penn War­ren Archive Brings Ear­ly Civ­il Rights to Life

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She doc­u­ment­ed her mis­ad­ven­tures on the road in No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Attention K‑Mart Shoppers: Hear 90 Hours of Background Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Heyday

in History, Music | January 18th, 2016

Back in high school, I worked part-time at the Gap, a job that, for all its dis­com­forts — the late-night restock­ing, the Sisyphean fold­ing and re-fold­ing, those head­sets — real­ly only left a bit­ter mem­o­ry because of the music. Each month, the store received a new disc of back­ground shop­ping sound­track, but only an hour-long sound­track, to be played on loop over over and over again, and so to be heard by me six or sev­en times per shift. Need­less to say, the start of a new month, and, with this, the arrival of a new mix of bland pop hits, felt like a sal­va­tion.

This sort of pro­gram­mat­ic musi­cal engi­neer­ing already had plen­ty of prece­dent by that point, as thor­ough­ly doc­u­ment­ed by Mark Davis, who spent the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s work­ing at K‑Mart’s cus­tomer ser­vice desk and — per­haps fore­see­ing both the future ease of shar­ing audio­vi­su­al mate­ri­als over the inter­net and the waves of nos­tal­gia for the recent past that ease would enable — pock­et­ed all the shopp­ping-sound­track cas­sette tapes that passed through his hands, build­ing the impres­sive col­lec­tion you can see in the video above.

“Until around 1992, the cas­settes were rotat­ed month­ly,” writes Davis. “Then, they were replaced week­ly. Final­ly some­time around 1993, satel­lite pro­gram­ming was intro­duced which elim­i­nat­ed the need for these tapes alto­geth­er. The old­er tapes con­tain canned ele­va­tor music with instru­men­tal ren­di­tions of songs. Then, the songs became com­plete­ly main­stream around 1991. All of them have adver­tise­ments every few songs. The month­ly tapes are very, very, worn and rip­pled. That’s because they ran for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week on auto-reverse.”

The high­ly delib­er­ate, near-fric­tion­less mild­ness; the inter­spersed spo­ken-word adver­tise­ments and their hyp­not­i­cal­ly repet­i­tive empha­sis on low, low prices; the wob­ble and hiss of the bat­tered record­ing media; all of it adds up to a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence his­tor­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly like no oth­er. (If you enjoy this sort of thing and haven’t yet heard of the move­ment called “vapor­wave,” hie thee to Google, look it up, and pre­pare for aston­ish­ment.) You can hear over 90 hours of it at Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers, Davis’ dig­i­tized repos­i­to­ry of his cas­settes at the Inter­net Archive.

If you have any mem­o­ries of shop­ping at K‑Mart twen­ty to thir­ty years ago, these tapes may bring on a rush of Prous­t­ian rec­ol­lec­tion. But not all of them scored the aver­age shop­ping day. One, for exam­ple, came just for play on March 1st, 1992, K‑Mart’s 30th anniver­sary. “This was a spe­cial day at the store where employ­ees spent all night set­ting up for spe­cial pro­mo­tions and extra excite­ment. It was a real fun day, the store was packed wall to wall, and I recall that the stores were asked to play the music at a much high­er vol­ume,” a pro­gram which includ­ed “oldies and all sorts of fun facts from 1962.” Final­ly, a way to feel nos­tal­gia for one era’s nos­tal­gia of anoth­er era. How’s that for a 21st-cen­tu­ry expe­ri­ence?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

As Benev­o­lent Dic­ta­tor, Vladimir Nabokov Would Abol­ish Muzak & Bidets: What Would Make Your List?

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Literature | January 15th, 2016

Just this week we lost Alan Rick­man, one of the most beloved British actors of his gen­er­a­tion. And like all the best beloved British actors of any gen­er­a­tion, he could, of course, do Shake­speare the way the rest of us can tie our shoes — and not just the lines from the plays, but the son­nets. In the clip above, you can hear Rick­man give a read­ing of the satir­i­cal Son­net 130, which sends up the wor­ship­ful excess­es of con­tem­po­rary court­ly son­nets with lines like “My mis­tress’ eyes are noth­ing like the sun” and “I have seen ros­es damask’d, red and white, but no such ros­es see I in her cheeks.”

To prop­er­ly deliv­er this mate­r­i­al requires a cer­tain sense of irony, and we could rely on Rick­man to bring his own for­mi­da­ble yet sub­tle iron­ic capac­i­ty to the screen.

We always enjoyed see­ing him pop up in a movie — no mat­ter how impres­sive or mediocre the movie in ques­tion — because, I would argue, of the dis­tinc­tive sense of intel­li­gence with which he imbued all his char­ac­ters, from the ghost boyfriend in Tru­ly, Mad­ly, Deeply to the Sher­iff of Not­ting­ham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to Har­ry Pot­ter’s Severus Snape to the bad guy in Die Hard. And nat­u­ral­ly, he does­n’t leave it at home when assum­ing the role of the nar­ra­tor of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, a sam­ple of which you can hear above.

One must strike an even more com­pli­cat­ed bal­ance of emo­tions to do jus­tice to the prose of Mar­cel Proust, a task to which the actor proves him­self equal in his recita­tion just above.  “I think that life would sud­den­ly seem won­der­ful to us if we were threat­ened to die,” he says, using his inim­itable voice for words that now sound more mean­ing­ful than ever:

Just think of how many projects, trav­els, love affairs, stud­ies, it – our life – hides from us, made invis­i­ble by our lazi­ness which, cer­tain of a future, delays them inces­sant­ly.

But let all this threat­en to become impos­si­ble for ever, how beau­ti­ful it would become again! Ah! If only the cat­a­clysm doesn’t hap­pen this time, we won’t miss vis­it­ing the new gal­leries of the Lou­vre, throw­ing our­selves at the feet of Miss X, mak­ing a trip to India.

The cat­a­clysm doesn’t hap­pen, we don’t do any of it, because we find our­selves back in the heart of nor­mal life, where neg­li­gence dead­ens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have need­ed the cat­a­clysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.

Mr. Rick­man, you, too, will be missed…

Note: Do you want to hear Alan Rick­man read Hardy’s Return of the Native in its entire­ty for free? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al and you can down­load that, and anoth­er book of your choice, at no cost. Find more details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Rick­man Does Epic Vio­lence to a Cup of Tea in Super Slow Motion

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

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

Lis­ten­ing to Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Artist Julie Green Paints the Last Suppers of 600+ Death Row Inmates on Ceramic Plates

in Art, Food & Drink, History, Law, Life, Politics | January 15th, 2016

What would you choose for your last meal?

The com­fort food of your child­hood?

Or some lav­ish dish you nev­er had a chance to taste?

What might your choice reveal about your race, region­al ori­gins, or eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances?

Artist Julie Green devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion with death row inmates’ final meals while teach­ing in Okla­homa, where the per capi­ta exe­cu­tion rate exceeds Texas’ and con­demned pris­on­ers’ spe­cial menu requests are a mat­ter of pub­lic record:

Fried fish fil­lets with red cock­tail sauce from Long John Silver’s

Large pep­per­oni piz­za with sausage and extra mush­rooms and a large grape soda.

Chateaubriand steak, medi­um rare with A‑1 steak sauce, fried shrimp entree with cock­tail sauce, large baked pota­to with but­ter, sour cream, chopped scal­lions, bacon bits, salt and pep­per, six pieces of gar­lic but­ter toast, whole Ken­tucky Bour­bon pecan pie, one liter of Coca Cola Clas­sic, and bag of ice. 

The lat­ter order, from April 29, 2014, was denied on the grounds that it would have exceed­ed the $15-per-cus­tomer max. The pris­on­er who’d made the request skipped his last meal in protest.

Green recre­ates these, and hun­dreds of oth­er death row pris­on­ers’ last sup­pers in cobalt blue min­er­al paint on care­ful­ly select­ed sec­ond-hand plates. The influ­ence of Dutch Delft­ware and Span­ish still life paint­ing are evi­dent in her depic­tion of burg­ers, Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en, and pie.

Many of the requests betray a child­like poignan­cy:

A sin­gle hon­ey bun (North Car­oli­na, Jan­u­ary 30, 1998) 

Shrimp and ice cream  (New Mex­i­co, Novem­ber 6, 2001)

 A peanut but­ter and jel­ly sand­wich (Flori­da, Feb­ru­ary 26, 2014)

One man got per­mis­sion for his moth­er to pre­pare his last meal in the prison kitchen. Anoth­er was sur­prised with a birth­day cake after prison staff learned he had nev­er had one before.

Some refrain from exer­cis­ing their right to a spe­cial request, a choice Green doc­u­ments in text. She resorts to sim­i­lar tac­tics when a pris­on­er requests that his final meal be kept con­fi­den­tial.

Each meal Green paints is accom­pa­nied by a menu, the date, and the state in which it was served, but the pris­on­ers and their crimes go unnamed. She has com­mit­ted to pro­duc­ing fifty plates a year until cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is abol­ished.

Green nar­rates a Last Sup­per slideshow above, or you can browse all the plates in the project, orga­nized by state here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

Mod­ern Art Was Used As a Tor­ture Tech­nique in Prison Cells Dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War

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

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Commercials from the 1960s Through 2013

in Music | January 14th, 2016

As the mourn­ing peri­od for David Bowie con­tin­ues this week, for which I am very much tak­ing part (my favorite Bowie is the Berlin tril­o­gy Bowie in case you’re inter­est­ed), the Inter­net con­tin­ues through its own stages of grief. First brief news sto­ries and anec­dotes from fel­low artists, then long think-pieces (some very good), then to best-of lists, and now to inter­est­ing ephemera.

For an artist who saw both sides of com­mer­cial suc­cess, Bowie’s tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial appear­ances num­ber less than a dozen over his life. Part of that comes from his mas­tery and con­trol over his image–he knew when to go out, and when to stay in, to get things done, you might say–and part may come from his ear­ly his­to­ry behind the scenes where the com­mer­cial sausage gets made.

In 1963, Bowie left school to go work at Nevin D. Hirst Adver­tis­ing on London’s Bond Street, where he worked as a sto­ry­board artist for about a year, a job he took to please his father. Although he was dis­mis­sive of that time doing his 9‑to‑5, it was lat­er clear to friends, band mates, and biog­ra­phers that he had picked up a lot from advertising–how to pack­age him­self, how to manip­u­late feel­ing, the pow­er of image and words.

Jump for­ward to 1967 and a long haired Davy Jones makes one of his ear­li­est appear­ances in this ice cream ad for Luv “The Pop Ice Cream,” direct­ed by anoth­er up-and-com­er, Rid­ley Scott, who had recent­ly made his first short film, “A Boy and a Bicy­cle.” It’s groovy, but, as Luv’s not around any more, appar­ent­ly didn’t move enough units.

And then Davy Jones turns into Major Tom and the ‘70s belonged to him. He final­ly agrees in 1980 to do a com­mer­cial, but only in Japan. In this min­i­mal ad for Crys­tal Jun Rock Sake, Bowie looks beau­ti­ful, hand­some, and sleek, right at the height of his sophis­ti­cat­ed Lodger-era glam­our. He plays a piano, gazes at a post-mod­ern Mt. Fuji, and utters one word: “Crys­tal.” Bowie wrote the music, an out­take from the Lodger ses­sions, and it was released as a sin­gle in Japan, and a b‑side in the West. Bowie com­ment­ed that “the mon­ey is a use­ful thing” for doing ads like this, out of sight from the West.

The next time Bowie appears is in 1983, call­ing out for Amer­i­cans to demand their MTV in a series of roto­scoped and col­orized ads near the dawn of the net­work. (This is a bad­ly edit­ed com­pi­la­tion of Bowie’s spots).

If Bowie had yet to “sell out” it was only four years lat­er, dur­ing the Glass Spi­der Tour, that he did, with this re-word­ed, re-record­ed ver­sion of “Mod­ern Love,” duet­ting with Tina Turn­er. At the time it felt like the end of a career that had turned Bowie into an over­ly coiffed par­o­dy of him­self. In ret­ro­spect, if you can look past the soda, it’s a cute com­mer­cial, with the star look­ing a bit like “Blind­ed by Science”-era Thomas Dol­by.

Then more silence and, by the time Bowie reap­pears in 2001, it is lit­er­al­ly as the man who falls to earth in an ad for XM satel­lite radio. (Bowie made yet anoth­er appear­ance in an XM ad in 2005.)

In 2004, he appears again, shilling Vit­tel water. Here Bowie’s in full career ret­ro­spec­tive mode, mak­ing peace with his chameleon self and appre­ci­at­ing it all. Set to the Real­i­ty track “Nev­er Get Old” (our dear wish that was not to be), it fea­tures Bowie trib­ute per­former David Brighton try­ing on every out­fit from the Starman’s crowd­ed wardrobe in a house filled with incar­na­tions.

That leaves us with his final tele­vi­sion ad appear­ance in 2013, seen at the top of this post, still look­ing fit, and per­form­ing a baroque ver­sion of The Next Day track “I’d Rather Be High” for a Venet­ian ball-set ad for Louis Vuit­ton. Fit­ting to go out sur­round­ed by beau­ty and glam­or, but check those lyrics:

I stum­ble to the grave­yard and I
Lay down by my par­ents, whis­per
Just remem­ber duck­ies
Every­body gets got

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Are You One of the 2% Who Can Solve “Einstein’s Riddle”?

in Random | January 14th, 2016

It’s some­times called “Ein­stein’s Rid­dle” because, accord­ing to leg­end, Ein­stein invent­ed it as a child. Oth­ers say that the puz­zle was actu­al­ly designed by Lewis Car­roll, best known as the author of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. (Car­roll was also a logi­cian.) Where did this brain teas­er orig­i­nate? We’re not real­ly sure. Per­haps it was a 1962 issue of Life Inter­na­tion­al mag­a­zine.

In any event, “Ein­stein’s Rid­dle” is a good test of your men­tal agili­ty. They say that only 2% of the pop­u­la­tion can solve the prob­lem. The TED-Ed video above will walk you through one ver­sion of the rid­dle. If you don’t want any assis­tance, you can find oth­er ver­sions online.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Download 650 Soviet Book Covers, Many Sporting Wonderful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

in Archives, Books, Design | January 14th, 2016

Amer­i­cans like to pride our­selves on the numer­ous ways our pop cul­ture pen­e­trat­ed the Sovi­et Union and seduced its young­sters, send­ing them to bed with dreams of Mick­ey Mouse, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Elvis, and Star Wars. Whether it’s jazz in the ear­ly decades after the rev­o­lu­tion, or rock and roll in the 50s and after, Sovi­et youth so craved the ways of the West, it seems, that they famous­ly boot­legged Amer­i­can music on used X‑rays, with results of wide­ly vary­ing degrees of qual­i­ty. That’s all well and good, but we rarely ask what Sovi­et cul­tur­al exports we were miss­ing while we trum­pet­ed our supe­ri­or­i­ty. (I mean, besides Ayn Rand or the com­e­dy of Yakov Smirnoff.)

A few of those exports have become high water­marks of cre­ative inno­va­tion and aes­thet­ic beau­ty, such as the film­mak­ing of Dzi­ga Ver­tov and Andrei Tarkovsky. At least one Sovi­et export, the Theremin, rad­i­cal­ized music with its haunt­ing elec­tron­ic whine. Much less well-known, how­ev­er, are the fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ments in ani­ma­tion and illus­tra­tion (such as these out­er space utopias). Now—thanks to the New York Pub­lic Library’s huge­ly expan­sive, free dig­i­tal image archive—we can view and down­load 650 exam­ples of Sovi­et book cov­er design between the years 1917 and 1942 (most date from the 30s). Many of these cov­ers are as unre­mark­ably vanil­la as some of their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts, but no small num­ber offer unique looks into avant-garde Sovi­et design trends.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the archive gives us a broad overview of the kinds of books that were pub­lished in the Sovi­et Union dur­ing these pre-Cold War years. It’s unlike­ly many of these titles saw trans­la­tion into Eng­lish and unlike­ly many of them ever will. In some cas­es, the author and title of the book rep­re­sent­ed have been lost to his­to­ry (as with the col­or­ful cov­er sec­ond from the top). Each of the images here links to a page on the NYPL’s online data­base, where you can see pub­li­ca­tion info and down­load high-res­o­lu­tion scans. Browse, and down­load, hun­dreds more pre-War Sovi­et book cov­er designs at the NYPL’s “Scrap­book of Russ­ian Book­jack­ets, 1917–1942,” or see a few more choice selec­tions at The Paris Review, who drew our atten­tion to this won­der­ful online col­lec­tion.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Watch Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Win­nie the Pooh, Cre­at­ed by the Inno­v­a­tive Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

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