Watch the Behind-the-Scenes Blade Runner Promo Film … Created to Prevent a Box Office Flop (1982)

in Film | August 26th, 2015

I have a con­fes­sion to make. This may anger some peo­ple, but I have to get it off my chest. I actu­al­ly like the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover in the 1983 the­atri­cal release of Blade Run­ner, though I do revile the hokey, hap­py end­ing. I guess I’m in pret­ty good com­pa­ny. Even the movie’s screen­writer, Hamp­ton Fanch­er, went on record to say “the old voiceover in the first ver­sion I sort of like bet­ter than all the rest of them.” In this regard, Fanch­er and I exist in what Col­in Mar­shall called “a curi­ous minor­i­ty” in a recent post on yet anoth­er recut of Blade Run­ner, a defin­i­tive ref­er­ence for almost every android/robot/AI movie made since.

It’s okay to like the the­atri­cal cut, or the 1992 director’s cut, or the 2007 “final cut”—let a thou­sand Blade Run­ner fan­doms bloom, I say, as long as the film remains a crit­i­cal ref­er­ence for sci-fi cin­e­ma for many years to come. But part of the rea­son for all these lat­er ver­sions, besides that tacked-on end­ing, is the voiceover, which direc­tor Rid­ley Scott hat­ed, and Har­ri­son Ford hat­ed, and even the stu­dio exec­u­tives, who forced him to record it, hat­ed. The stu­dio hat­ed almost every­thing about the movie, and the crit­ics were most­ly unim­pressed. Siskel called it “a waste of time”; Ebert gave it an unen­thu­si­as­tic thumbs up. (Philip K. Dick, on the oth­er hand, made some prophet­ic pre­dic­tions based on the lit­tle he saw of the film.)

Audi­ences didn’t cozy up to Blade Run­ner either. They went to see E.T. instead. Blade Run­ner opened at the box office with a dis­ap­point­ing $6 mil­lion week­end. Sens­ing all this trou­ble even before the film’s release, exec­u­tives com­mis­sioned M.K. Pro­duc­tions to shoot the pro­mo­tion­al film above, a behind-the-scenes short doc­u­men­tary that cir­cu­lat­ed at hor­ror and sci-fi con­ven­tions in 1982. Intro­duced by a bored-look­ing Rid­ley Scott (and some cheesy sev­en­ties funk), the 16mm short gave poten­tial fans a glimpse of Blade Run­ner’s heav­i­ly Tokyo-accent­ed future Los Ange­les, its clas­sic noir plot ele­ments, and its visu­al effects by mas­ter­minds Syd Mead and Dou­glas Trum­bull, both of whom appear here.

Those of us fans now liv­ing in the future may find the footage of the movie’s pro­duc­tion and the detailed expla­na­tions of its set design fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s hard to know what the orig­i­nal view­ers of this extend­ed trailer/promotional vehi­cle might have thought, though it clear­ly did­n’t move enough of them to fill the the­ater seats. I can imag­ine, though, that many a sci­ence fic­tion lover and Blade Run­ner fan who missed the movie’s first run might regret it now. Voiceover, sap­py end­ing and all, it would have been a treat to be one of the first to see this now ubiquitous—and deserved­ly so—sci-fi detec­tive sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Blade Runner’s Minia­ture Props Revealed in 142 Behind-the-Scenes Pho­tos

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

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

Kickstart a Documentary on Emily Dickinson, Narrated by Cynthia Nixon

in Film, Poetry | August 26th, 2015

Lat­er this year, Hur­ri­cane Films will release A Qui­et Pas­sion, a film about Emi­ly Dick­in­son, which will be direct­ed by Ter­ence Davies and star Cyn­thia Nixon as the great Amer­i­can poet.

But that’s not where their ambi­tions end. If they can get your sup­port on Kick­starter, Hur­ri­cane Films also hopes to make a doc­u­men­tary (nar­rat­ed by Nixon) that will take every­one deep­er into Dick­in­son’s life & times. You can learn more about the promis­ing film–tentatively to be called Phos­pho­res­cence: A Film about the Life of Emi­ly Dick­in­son–in the video above, or the text down below. Please note: If you’re inclined to sup­port this kind of enrich­ing project, please do so now. There are only a few short days left in the Kick­starter cam­paign:

The doc­u­men­tary will be an essen­tial com­pan­ion piece to the nar­ra­tive. Nar­rat­ed by Cyn­thia Nixon (who plays Emi­ly in the fea­ture film) PHOSPHORESCENCE will take us on a jour­ney through the sea­sons of Emi­ly’s life in mid 1800’s New Eng­land as we engage with her pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ships via her let­ters and poems. Emily’s deep love of hor­ti­cul­ture and music as well as her close­ness to her fam­i­ly and friends will form a rich tapes­try — com­bin­ing ele­ments of a nat­ur­al his­to­ry film and a Koy­aanisqat­si-esque trav­el­ogue. Togeth­er with an ensem­ble cast of high­ly rec­og­nized actors lend­ing their voic­es to her many cor­re­spon­dences not dis­sim­i­lar in tone and feel to Ken Burns’ Amer­i­can Civ­il War. And with the dif­fer­ing views and inter­pre­ta­tions of her poet­ry by con­tem­po­rary experts we aim to weave a sto­ry that will both sur­prise, delight and throw light on some con­tro­ver­sial opin­ion from unex­pect­ed quar­ters.

The doc­u­men­tary will endeav­or to reflect qual­i­ties inspired by its sub­ject, Emi­ly Dick­in­son – deft words, pas­sion­ate beliefs, sear­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and a great sto­ry well told. The film has the sup­port of the Emi­ly Dick­in­son Muse­um and will be com­plet­ed in mid 2016.

Get more infor­ma­tion and make a con­tri­bu­tion over on Kick­starter.

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:

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

Emi­ly Dickinson’s Hand­writ­ten Coconut Cake Recipe Hints at How Bak­ing Fig­ured Into Her Cre­ative Process

The Sec­ond Known Pho­to of Emi­ly Dick­in­son Emerges

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Film of Emi­ly Dickinson’s Poem ‘I Start­ed Early–Took My Dog’

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Who Was Afraid of Ray Bradbury & Science Fiction? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

in History, Sci Fi | August 25th, 2015

When you think of the most astute minds of our time, you might well think of Ray Brad­bury’s — but you prob­a­bly don’t think of him as one of the most astute ter­ror­ist minds of our time. The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, how­ev­er, saw things dif­fer­ent­ly. Col­lab­o­ra­tive news site Muck­Rock found that out through files “released to for­mer Muck­Rock­er Inkoo Kang [which] doc­u­ment the decade the Bureau spent try­ing to deter­mine if Brad­bury was, if not a card-car­ry­ing Com­mu­nist, at least a sym­pa­thet­ic ‘fel­low trav­el­er.’ ” See snip­pets of doc­u­ments here from 1959.

You can view the files them­selves, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, at Muck­Rock. There, the site’s JPat Brown also sum­ma­rizes the orga­ni­za­tion’s basis for sus­pi­cion against the author: his “mem­ber­ship in the Screen Writer’s Guild, as well as his vocal oppo­si­tion to McCarthy­ism, drew par­tic­u­lar atten­tion,” as did the use in The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles of the “repeat­ed theme that earth­men are despoil­ers and not devel­op­ers.” Not just Brad­bury’s work but the whole of sci­ence fic­tion, which infor­mant Mar­tin Berke­ley calls a pos­si­bly “lucra­tive field for the intro­duc­tion of Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy,” comes in for an indict­ment.

“Com­mu­nists have found fer­tile oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ment,” Berke­ley says, “for spread­ing dis­trust and lack of con­fi­dence in Amer­i­ca [sic] insti­tu­tions in the area of Sci­ence Fic­tion writ­ing.” Anoth­er, unsur­pris­ing­ly clear­er view of the genre comes from Brad­bury him­self, quot­ed dis­ap­prov­ing­ly in the file from a 1959 Wom­en’s Leg­isla­tive Action Bul­letin. There, he said he uses the medi­um of sci­ence fic­tion to “try to bring to light some of the cur­rent fal­lac­i­es in human val­ues today” — the one thing, as the author of Fahren­heit 451 must have known full well, that the pow­ers that be least want any­body to do. Get more at Muck­Rock.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: “I Am Not Afraid of Robots. I Am Afraid of Peo­ple” (1974)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

FBI’s “Vault” Web Site Reveals Declas­si­fied Files on Hem­ing­way, Ein­stein, Mar­i­lyn & Oth­er Icons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Stream 36 Recordings of Legendary Grateful Dead Concerts Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

in Music | August 25th, 2015

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There’s no short­age of Grate­ful Dead con­certs freely avail­able on the web. Indeed, head over to Archive.org and you’ll find hun­dreds of Dead shows, some going as far back as the 1960s. But when you start rum­mag­ing around, you’ll dis­cov­er that some nights were mag­ic, while many oth­ers fell far short. That’s why we can be thank­ful that Dick­’s Picks came along. Named after the band’s tape archivist Dick Lat­vala, Dick­’s Picks (released between 1993 and 2005) fea­tured 36 volumes/albums of Grate­ful Dead con­certs, all sourced from sound­board record­ings cap­tured on two-track mas­ter tapes. The record­ings, as Tony Sclafani notes in The Grate­ful Dead FAQ, gave every­one a chance to “expe­ri­ence what going to a clas­sic Dead show was like” — “to eas­i­ly access record­ings of leg­endary shows.”

Caught up in some Grate­ful Dead nos­tal­gia myself, I quick­ly real­ized that all 36 vol­umes of Dick­’s Picks are avail­able on Spo­ti­fy — at no cost. As much for my own musi­cal edi­fi­ca­tion as for yours, I’ve cre­at­ed a list below. (Some of you might have a beef with Spo­ti­fy, or want to own your own copies, so I’ve includ­ed Ama­zon links too.) You can reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy and down­load the free soft­ware here.

Dead fans will sure­ly argue over which Dick­’s Picks are the best. But, from what I’ve seen, Vol. 4 (above), Vol. 8, Vol. 10, and Vol. 12. offer great places to begin.

And although it does­n’t appear in the Dick­’s Picks series, you can find on Archive.org what’s often con­sid­ered one of the Dead­’s finest live record­ings — their May 8, 1977 con­cert in Bar­ton Hall, at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty.

Also, if you’re look­ing for a good intro­duc­tion to the Dead­’s musi­cal career, lis­ten to this recent episode of the Sound Opin­ions pod­cast, com­ing out of WBEZ in Chica­go.

Enjoy.

• Vol. 1, 1993 : Tam­pa, 12/19/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 2, 1995 : Colum­bus, 10/31/71 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 3, 1995 : Pem­broke Pines, 5/22/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 4, 1996 : Fill­more East, 2/13–14/70 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 5, 1996 : Oak­land, 12/26/79 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 6, 1996 : Hart­ford, 10/14/83 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 7, 1997 : Lon­don, 9/9–11/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 8, 1997 : Bing­ham­ton, 5/2/70 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 9, 1997 : Madi­son Square Gar­dens, 9/16/90 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 10, 1998 : Win­ter­land, 12/29–30/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 11, 1998 : Jer­sey City, 9/27/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 12, 1998 : Prov­i­dence & Boston, 6/26 & 28/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 13, 1999 : Nas­sau Col­i­se­um, 5/6/81 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 14, 1999 : Boston, 11/30/73 & 12/2/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 15, 1999 : Eng­lish­town, 9/3/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 16, 2000 : Fill­more Aud, 11/8/69 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 17, 2000 : Boston, 9/25/91 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 18, 2000 : Madi­son & Cedar Falls, 2/3 & 5/78 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 19, 2000 : Okla­homa City, 10/19/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 20, 2001 : Lan­dover & Syra­cuse, 9/25 & 28/76 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 21, 2001 : Rich­mond, 11/1/85 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 22, 2001 : Lake Tahoe, 2/23 & 24/68 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 23, 2001 : Bal­ti­more, 9/17/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 24, 2002 : Cow Palace, 3/23/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 25, 2002 : New Haven & Spring­field, 5/10–11/78 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 26, 2002 : Chica­go & Min­neapo­lis, 4/26–27/69 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 27, 2003 : Oak­land, 12/16–17/92 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 28, 2003 : Lin­coln & Salt Lake City, 2/26 & 28/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 29, 2003 : Atlanta & Lake­land, 5/19 & 21/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 30, 2003 : Acad­e­my of Music, NYC, 3/25 & 28/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 31, 2004 : Philadel­phia & Jer­sey City, 8/4–6/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 32, 2004 : Alpine Val­ley, East Troy , 8/7/82 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 33, 2004 : Oak­land, 10/9 & 10/76 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 34, 2005 : Rochester, 11/5/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 35, 2005 : San Diego, Chica­go and Hol­ly­wood, August 1971 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 36, 2005 : Philadel­phia 9/21/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Jared Diamond Identifies the Real, Unexpected Risks in Our Everyday Life (in a Psychedelic Animated Video)

in Animation, Psychology | August 25th, 2015

Jared Dia­mond is a true poly­math. He got his start research­ing how the gall blad­der absorbed salt and then moved on to oth­er fields of study – ornithol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, lin­guis­tics. His wild­ly diverse inter­ests have giv­en him a unique per­spec­tive of how and why our species evolved. His Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book Germs, Guns and Steel makes a pret­ty con­vinc­ing argu­ment about why Europe — and not Chi­na or South Amer­i­ca — end­ed up dom­i­nat­ing the world. The answer, it turns not, has every­thing to do with geog­ra­phy and lit­tle to do with any kind of cul­tur­al supe­ri­or­i­ty.

Back in 2013, Dia­mond spoke at The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion about how we think of risk in the first world ver­sus those who live in remote New Guinea. The RI has tak­en a por­tion of that hour and a half talk and set it to some glo­ri­ous ani­ma­tion. You can watch it above.

Ear­ly in Diamond’s career, he was in the jun­gle with his New Guinean guides. He found what he thought was a per­fect spot to pitch camp – under a mas­sive dead tree. His guides refused to sleep there, fear­ing that the tree might fall in the mid­dle of the night. He thought that they were being over­ly para­noid until he start­ed see­ing things from their per­spec­tive.

Every night you’re in New Guinea sleep­ing in a for­est, you hear a tree fall some­where and then you go do the num­bers. Sup­pose the risk of that tree falling on me tonight is 1 in 1000. If I sleep under dead trees for 1000 nights, in three years I’m going to be dead. … The New Guinea atti­tude is sen­si­tive to the risks of things you are going to do reg­u­lar­ly. Each time they car­ry a low risk but if you are not cau­tious it will catch up with you.

Dia­mond then extrap­o­lat­ed this real­iza­tion to mod­ern life. He notes that he is 76 years old and will sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing prob­a­bly live anoth­er 15 or so years. Yet if the risk of tak­ing a fall in the show­er is rough­ly the same as get­ting brained by a dead tree in the jun­gles of New Guinea (1 in 1000), then Dia­mond fig­ures he could kill him­self 5 ½ times over his the course of those 15 years.

“And so I’m care­ful about show­ers,” he says in the full video of the talk. “I’m care­ful about side­walks. I’m care­ful about steplad­ders. It dri­ves many of my Amer­i­can friends crazy but I will sur­vive and they won’t.”

Peo­ple in the first world are ter­ri­fied by the wrong things, Dia­mond argues. The real dan­ger isn’t ter­ror­ism, ser­i­al killers or sharks, which kill a very, very small per­cent­age of peo­ple annu­al­ly. The real risks are those things that we do dai­ly that car­ry a low risk but that even­tu­al­ly catch up with you – dri­ving, tak­ing stairs, using step lad­ders.

You can watch the full inter­view, which is fas­ci­nat­ing, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jared Dia­mond Explains Haiti’s Endur­ing Pover­ty

The Evo­lu­tion of Reli­gions: A Talk by Jared Dia­mond

“Pro­fes­sor Risk” at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Says “One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious”

MIT’s Intro­duc­tion to Pok­er The­o­ry: A Free Online Course

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Free: William S. Burroughs 1993 Album Spare Ass Annie & Other Tales

in | August 24th, 2015

Spare Ass Annie and Oth­er Tales is a spo­ken word col­lab­o­ra­tion fea­tur­ing William S. Bur­roughs read­ing excerpts from his books set to music by The Dis­pos­able Heroes of Hipho­prisy. Released in 1993, the album is–surprise, sur­prise– Not-Safe-for Work. But it’s freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy. Access it here, or stream it below:

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty

Philosophy Explained With Donuts

in Comedy, Philosophy | August 24th, 2015

We’ve all seen them, on the board­walks of Venice Beach or of the Jer­sey Shore: poop-joke t‑shirts that state the gist of var­i­ous world reli­gions or philoso­phies by ref­er­ence to the afore­men­tioned bod­i­ly func­tion. Clever they aren’t, but the form adapts to anoth­er, more taste­ful for­mu­la­tion (pun most def­i­nite­ly intend­ed) in the list above, which briefly describes the philo­soph­i­cal pro­grams of six­teen promi­nent West­ern thinkers with ref­er­ence to that uni­ver­sal­ly beloved food, the donut. To wit: pre-Socrat­ic Greek philoso­pher Her­a­cli­tus gets summed up with “You can’t eat the same donut twice,” a twist on one of his famous few apho­risms. Lud­wig Wittgen­stein’s phi­los­o­phy becomes an ellip­ti­cal series of pos­si­ble donuts in var­i­ous lan­guage games: “Fried Pas­try, Zero, Park­ing lot spin, Spare tire.” And so on.

No need to point out the over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion inher­ent in this strat­e­gy; that’s kind of the point. It’s a joke, after all, but one the author—whoever that is—clearly intends as a means of break­ing the ice and get­ting down to more seri­ous explo­rations. But what if the donut is the seri­ous explo­ration? Such is the case in a 2001 arti­cle pub­lished in the jour­nal Basic Objects: Case Stud­ies in The­o­ret­i­cal Prim­i­tives by Colum­bia phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Achille C. Varzi.

Sim­ply titled (in the British spelling) “Dough­nuts,” Varzi’s paper explores the donut, or “torus” in the lan­guage of topog­ra­phers, as a the­o­ret­i­cal object for an onto­log­i­cal thought exper­i­ment. In short, he asks whether or not we can say that the donut hole is an actu­al exist­ing enti­ty or sim­ply a fig­ure of speech, a “façon de par­ler.” In the tra­di­tion­al view, that of the topog­ra­phers, who prac­tice “a sort of rub­bery geom­e­try…. The only thing that mat­ters is the edi­ble stuff. The hole is a mere façon de par­ler.”

On anoth­er, more three-dimen­sion­al view of the rela­tion­ship “between void and mat­ter,” things look dif­fer­ent: “We must be very seri­ous about treat­ing them [donut holes] as ful­ly-fledged enti­ties, on a par with the mate­r­i­al objects that sur­round them.” The real exis­tence of the hole can­not be eas­i­ly dis­missed with­out run­ning into a prob­lem, “the dilem­ma of every elim­i­na­tive strat­e­gy: if suc­cess­ful, it ends up elim­i­nat­ing every­thing just in order to elim­i­nate noth­ings.” No hole, no donut. (Though, as Simone De Beau­voir appar­ent­ly rec­og­nized, “Patri­archy is respon­si­ble for the shape of the donut.”) The donut hole the­sis also forms part of the argu­ment in an aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy paper from 2012 enti­tled “Being Pos­i­tive About Neg­a­tive Facts” from Phi­los­o­phy & Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal Research. On the way to show­ing that “neg­a­tive facts exist in the usu­al sense of exis­tence,” authors Stephen Bark­er and Mark Jago, both of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, come to sim­i­lar con­clu­sions about the donut, with ref­er­ence to ear­li­er work by Varzi:

Holes pose some­thing of a philo­soph­i­cal quandary and, per­haps as a result of their mys­tery, are often treat­ed as imma­te­r­i­al enti­ties (Casati and Varzi 1994). Yet we seem to be able to per­ceive holes, gaps, dents and the like. The view of holes as imma­te­r­i­al objects is, we think, very much in line with think­ing of the neg­a­tive as the meta­phys­i­cal­ly undead. Giv­en our accep­tance of neg­a­tive facts, we can offer a sto­ry about holes on which they are mate­r­i­al enti­ties. If there is a donut hole then there is a spa­tial region involv­ing the instan­ti­a­tion of donut-dough which is inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with an absence there­of.

Make of these claims what you will, but I think what we see in both essays is that seri­ous inter­est in a friv­o­lous object can pro­duce illu­mi­nat­ing dis­cus­sion. That describes the the­sis of the site Improb­a­ble Research, who bring us both of these donut exam­ples; their motto—“Research that makes peo­ple LAUGH and then THINK.” I don’t know if either essay—or even the donut joke at the top of the page—really makes for ha-ha laughs so much, but these argu­ments about the mate­r­i­al exis­tence of the imma­te­r­i­al space of donut holes cer­tain­ly chal­lenged my think­ing.

via Improb­a­ble Research

Relat­ed Con­tents:

140+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Phi­los­o­phy Ref­er­ee Hand Sig­nals

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

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

Marshall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Thinking

in Creativity | August 24th, 2015

Image via EricMcluhan.com

Six years before Bri­an Eno and Peter Schmidt designed their first pack of Oblique Strate­gies cards—a set of ran­dom apho­risms meant to clear cre­ative blocks—communication the­o­rist and philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan had designed a very sim­i­lar deck in 1969, this one with a more direct nod to the clas­sic play­ing card deck.

The name of the card deck, Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing, was a ref­er­ence to the 3,000 mile long DEW Line, a sys­tem of 63 radar sta­tions that act­ed as an ear­ly detec­tion inva­sion buffer dur­ing the Cold War. And in his 1964 book Under­stand Media, McLuhan explained,

“I think of art, at its most sig­nif­i­cant, as a DEW line, a Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing sys­tem that can always be relied on to tell the old cul­ture what is begin­ning to hap­pen to it.”

And so with help from adver­tis­ing and pub­lish­ing guru Eugene Schwartz, The Mar­shall McLuhan DEW-Line Newslet­ter and its spin­off deck of cards was born. Schwartz saw the newslet­ter much like we see blogs today: a very imme­di­ate way of dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion, deep­er than tele­vi­sion and faster than books. The newslet­ter last­ed only two years, came in sev­er­al forms (one issue was a set of slides, anoth­er a record), and rep­re­sents the height of “McLuhan Mania” in Amer­i­can cul­ture. Busi­ness and thought lead­ers were its tar­get audi­ence.

Much like Oblique Strate­gies (you can still find vin­tage ver­sions online), the instruc­tions for Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing (also avail­able online here) sug­gest that the user think of a per­son­al or busi­ness prob­lem, shuf­fle the deck, choose a card and inter­pret its mean­ing. Although div­ina­to­ry cards have long been a part of west­ern cul­ture, the idea of inde­ter­mi­na­cy and con­sult­ing the I Ching was very much in vogue through artists like John Cage.

The cards con­tain plays on apho­risms, like “The Vic­tor Belongs to the Spoils” or “Thanks for the Mam­maries.” Some­times they quote Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ist Samuel But­ler, like “The chick­en was the egg’s idea for get­ting more eggs” or W.C. Fields (“How do you like kids?” “Well cooked,” he said stern­ly), or John Cage (“Silence is all the sounds of the envi­ron­ment at once.”) Many are McLuhan’s own quotes.

McLuhan and Schwartz’ ideas can still be felt in any num­ber of TED talks or when­ev­er a busi­ness leader talks about think­ing out­side the box. Steve Jobs was a walk­ing deck of these cards.

Should you feel like push­ing your brain lat­er­al­ly, check out the full deck here at this Flickr feed, and if you long to own a phys­i­cal copy, it can still be had for Cana­di­an dol­lars at the site run by McLuhan’s son.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

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.

A Wonderfully Illustrated 1925 Japanese Edition of Aesop’s Fables by Legendary Children’s Book Illustrator Takeo Takei

in Art, Books | August 24th, 2015

Most of us have inter­nal­ized the con­tent of a fair few of Aesop’s fables but have long since for­got­ten the source — if, indeed, we read it close to the source in the first place. Whether or not we’ve had any real aware­ness of the ancient Greek sto­ry­teller him­self, we’ve cer­tain­ly encoun­tered his sto­ries in count­less much more recent inter­pre­ta­tions over the decades. My per­son­al favorite ren­di­tions came, skewed, in the form of the “Aesop and Son” seg­ments on Rocky and Bull­win­kle, but this 1925 Japan­ese edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables, illus­trat­ed by huge­ly respect­ed chil­dren’s artist Takeo Takei, must cer­tain­ly rank in the same league.

Takei began his career in the ear­ly 1920s, illus­trat­ing chil­dren’s mag­a­zine cov­ers, col­lec­tions of Japan­ese folk­tales and orig­i­nal sto­ries, and even young­ster-ori­ent­ed writ­ings of his own. Even in that ear­ly peri­od, he showed a pro­fes­sion­al inter­est in giv­ing new aes­thet­ic life to not just old sto­ries but old non-Japan­ese sto­ries, such as The Thou­sand and One Nights and Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen’s fairy tales. It was dur­ing that time that he took on the chal­lenge of putting his own aes­thet­ic stamp on Aesop.

You can see quite a few of Takei’s Aesop illus­tra­tions at the book design and illus­tra­tion site 50watts, whose author notes that he found the images in the data­base of Japan’s Nation­al Diet Library. Even if you can’t read the Japan­ese, you’ll know the fables in ques­tion — “The Tor­toise and the Hare,” “The North Wind and the Sun,” “The Wolf and the Crane” — after noth­ing more than a glance at Takei’s live­ly art­work, which takes Aesop’s well-known char­ac­ters (often ani­mals or nat­ur­al forces per­son­i­fied) and dress­es them up in the nat­ty style of jazz-age Tokyo high soci­ety.

Takei would go on to enjoy a long career after illus­trat­ing Aesop’s Fables. A decade after its pub­li­ca­tion, he would begin pro­duc­ing his best-known series of works, the “kam­pon” (in Japan­ese, “pub­lished book”). With these 138 vol­umes, he explored the form of the illus­trat­ed chil­dren’s book in every way he pos­si­bly could, using, accord­ing to rarebook.com, “tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of let­ter­press, wood­block, wood engrav­ing, sten­cil, etch­ing and lith­o­g­ra­phy,” as well as clay block-prints and “def­i­nite­ly non-tra­di­tion­al images of woven labels, paint­ed glass, ceram­ic, and cel­lo-slides — trans­paren­cies com­posed of bright cel­lo­phane paper.” He would con­tin­ue work­ing work­ing right up until his death in 1983, leav­ing a lega­cy of influ­ence on Japan­ese visu­al cul­ture as deep as the one Aesop left on sto­ry­telling.

via 50watts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Glo­ri­ous Ear­ly 20th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Walt Whitman’s Poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider” Brought to Life in Three Animations

in Animation, Poetry, TED Talks | August 24th, 2015

How can a mod­ern edu­ca­tor go about get­ting a stu­dent to con­nect to poet­ry?

For­get the emo kid pour­ing his heart out into a spi­ral jour­nal.

Dit­to the youth­ful slam poet­ess, wield­ing pro­nun­ci­a­tion like a cud­gel.

Think of some­one tru­ly hard to reach, a reluc­tant read­er per­haps, or maybe just some­one (doesn’t have to be a kid) who’s con­vinced all poet­ry sucks.

You could stage a rap bat­tle.

Take the drudgery out of mem­o­riza­tion by find­ing a pop melody well suit­ed to singing Emi­ly Dick­in­son stan­zas.

Or appeal to the YouTube gen­er­a­tion via short ani­ma­tions, as edu­ca­tor Justin Moore does in the TED-Ed les­son, above.

Ani­ma­tion, like poet­ry, is often a mat­ter of taste, and Moore’s les­son hedges its bets by enlist­ing not one, but three ani­ma­tor-nar­ra­tor teams to inter­pret Walt Whit­man’s “A Noise­less Patient Spi­der.”

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as part of the poem “Whis­pers of Heav­en­ly Death,” and includ­ed in the 1891 “deathbed edi­tion” of Leaves of Grass, the poem equates the soul’s des­per­ate strug­gle to con­nect with some­thing or some­one with that of a spi­der, seek­ing to build a web in a less than ide­al loca­tion.

Two of the ani­ma­tors, Jere­mi­ah Dick­ey and Lisa LaBra­cio launch them­selves straight toward the “fil­a­ment, fil­a­ment, fil­a­ment.” Seems like a sol­id plan. An indus­tri­ous spi­der indus­tri­ous­ly squirt­ing threads out of its nether region cre­ates a cool visu­al that echoes both Charlotte’s Web and the rep­e­ti­tion with­in the poem.

Mahogany Browne’s nar­ra­tion of Dickey’s paint­ing on glass mines the stri­den­cy of slam. Nar­ra­tor Rives gives a more low key per­for­mance with LaBracio’s scratch­board inter­pre­ta­tion.

In-between is Joan­na Hoffman’s spi­der­less exper­i­men­tal video, voiced with a wee bit of vocal fry by Joan­na Hoff­man. Were I to pick the one least like­ly to cap­ture a student’s imag­i­na­tion…

Once the stu­dent has watched all three ani­ma­tions, it’s worth ask­ing what the poem means. If no answer is forth­com­ing, Moore sup­plies some ques­tions that might help stuck wheels start turn­ing. Ques­tion num­ber five strikes me as par­tic­u­lar­ly ger­mane, know­ing the ruinous effect the teenage ten­den­cy to gloss over unfa­mil­iar vocab­u­lary has on com­pre­hen­sion.

Ulti­mate­ly, I pre­fer the below inter­pre­ta­tion of Kristin Sirek, who uses her YouTube chan­nel to read poet­ry, includ­ing her own, out loud, with­out any bells or whis­tles what­so­ev­er.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hys­ter­i­cal Lit­er­a­ture: Art & Sex­u­al­i­ty Col­lide in Read­ings of Whit­man, Emer­son & Oth­er Greats (NSFW)

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

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1952)

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