New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appreciate Poetry

in Poetry, Technology | June 4th, 2015

Jorge Luis Borges, as any read­er of his sto­ries knows, had a lot of ideas. Some of his ideas must have seemed pret­ty fan­tas­ti­cal when he wrote sto­ries around them from the 1920s to the 1950s. But their myth­ic qual­i­ties have made them endure, and now Borges’ imag­i­na­tive, tech­nol­o­gy-rich 21st-cen­tu­ry fans have start­ed to put their philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions into prac­tice: you may remem­ber, for instance, the online Library of Babel, ulti­mate­ly to con­tain every pos­si­ble 410-page book, which we fea­tured in April.

Borges also came up with intrigu­ing and then-untestable notions about, in the words of Vice’s Daniel Ober­haus, “the impor­tance of metaphor and its lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties in lan­guage. Borges the­o­rized [lis­ten above] that despite these bound­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for poet­ic lan­guage, there were nev­er­the­less dis­tinct pat­terns of metaphors that kept crop­ping up — a favorite exam­ple of his being the metaphor­i­cal equiv­a­lence of ‘stars’ and ‘eyes.’ ” Now a site called Poet­ry for Robots, a joint effort between Neo­log­ic, Web­vi­sions, and The Cen­ter for Sci­ence and the Imag­i­na­tion at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, “seeks to put Borges’ the­o­ry to the test, ask­ing on their web­site whether it is pos­si­ble to teach machines the poet­ic qual­i­ty of human lan­guage.”

“What if we used poet­ry and metaphor as meta­da­ta?” asks Poet­ry for Robots’ front page. “Would a search for ‘eyes’ return images of stars?” To find out, the site has begun crowd­sourc­ing poet­ry from its users, who they’ve asked to sub­mit pieces of verse (150 char­ac­ters or few­er) prompt­ed by a series of images post­ed there: you can write your poet­ry in response to the open ocean, an urban land­scape, a cap­puc­ci­no, paths diverg­ing in a wood, or 117 oth­er actu­al images meant to draw out tex­tu­al imagery.

Then comes the test: can com­put­ers learn to make the same poet­ic asso­ci­a­tions humans do between word and image, image and word? If the Bor­ge­sian vision of metaphors exist­ing in pat­terns holds true, then they will — com­put­ers per­form few tasks bet­ter than pat­tern recog­ni­tion, after all. This could lead not just to, say, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence that can com­pose and even appre­ci­ate poet­ry, but poet­ic-lan­guage search engines —  a deeply artis­tic exten­sion of the seem­ing­ly frus­trat­ed nat­ur­al-lan­guage search engine efforts pio­neered by the likes of Ask Jeeves.

And if none of that works out, we’ll still have wit­nessed a fas­ci­nat­ing thought exper­i­ment, just like Borges’ sto­ries them­selves. The writer’s orig­i­nal thoughts on the sub­ject will cer­tain­ly remain com­pelling, and you can hear them in his 1967–8 Har­vard lec­tures on poet­ry (from where the clip above came) that we first fea­tured here a few years back. Who knows — they might even give lit­er­a­ture-inclined com­put­er sci­ence stu­dents, or com­put­er sci­ence-inclined lit­er­a­ture stu­dents, the idea for their next big project.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Vis­it The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

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.

My First Time: Paris Review Video Series Features Writers Talking About Getting Started as Writers

in Creativity, Literature | June 4th, 2015

Do you spend your days sweat­ing blood over a lap­top, work­ing on a nov­el or poem or screen­play that always seems to fall short of the bril­liant ver­sion that is in your head? Are you ter­ri­fied that if you don’t squeeze out a first nov­el that will instant­ly make you the toast of the New York lit­er­ary estab­lish­ment you will be an abject fail­ure? Do you feel com­pelled to work on a book but are still plagued with the slow cor­ro­sive drip of doubt? Well, take heart. Every­one feels like that when he or she starts out.

The Paris Review, one of the most impor­tant lit­er­ary mag­a­zines around, made its name with long, in-depth inter­views with lit­er­ary fig­ures. Now they are launch­ing a video series called “My First Time,” where they inter­view authors, car­toon­ists and play­wrights about the begin­ning of their careers.

“This is a chance to see how suc­cess­ful authors got their start, in their own words,” as the Paris Review’s Dan Piepen­bring writes. “It’s a por­trait of the artist as a begin­ner and a look at the cre­ative process, in all its joy, abjec­tion, delu­sion, and eupho­ria.”

It’s strange­ly com­fort­ing to watch these peo­ple talk about strug­gling with all the psy­cho­log­i­cal crap that con­fronts any­one who has the audac­i­ty to try to cre­ate. They suc­ceed­ed. Maybe you can too.

Above is the trail­er for the series and low­er down are inter­views with author J. Robert Lennon, car­toon­ist Gabrielle Bell and play­wright Bran­den Jacobs-Jenk­ins.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

H.P. Love­craft High­lights the 20 “Types of Mis­takes” Young Writ­ers Make

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Staggering Human Cost of World War II Visualized in a Creative, New Animated Documentary

in Animation, History | June 3rd, 2015

“More peo­ple died in World War II than any oth­er war in his­to­ry,” explains Neil Hal­lo­ran in The Fall­en of World War II. In his 15-minute film, Hal­lo­ran uses inno­v­a­tive data visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques to put the human cost of WW II into per­spec­tive, show­ing how some 70 mil­lion lives were lost with­in civil­ian and mil­i­tary pop­u­la­tions across Europe and Asia, from 1939 to 1945. As one com­menter put it, “One mil­lion, six mil­lion, sev­en­ty mil­lion. Spo­ken or writ­ten, these num­bers become … incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Pre­sent­ed graph­i­cal­ly, they hit clos­er to the heart. As the Sovi­et loss­es climbed, I thought my brows­er had become frozen. Sure­ly the top of the col­umn must have been reached by now, I thought.” He’s refer­ring to the stag­ger­ing num­ber of Sovi­ets who died fight­ing the Nazis. If you fast for­ward to the 6‑minute mark above, you can see what he means.

The video comes accom­pa­nied by an inter­ac­tive web­site, where users can “pause dur­ing key moments to inter­act with the charts and dig deep­er into the num­bers.” To use this inter­ac­tive web­site, you will need a fair­ly new com­put­er and a mod­ern brows­er.

You can con­tribute mon­ey and sup­port the ongo­ing Fall­en of World War II project here.

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:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

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

in Film | June 3rd, 2015

Cities as we know them came into being when they indus­tri­al­ized in the 19th cen­tu­ry. Film as we know it came into being when its own indus­try devel­oped in the 20th. And so film came into its own in an era when cities around the world had become the most fas­ci­nat­ing places going. It makes sense, then, that ear­ly motion pic­tures — even the very ear­li­est, in the form of the Lumière broth­ers’ shots of the streets of 1980s Lyon — often took cities as their sub­jects.

“The 1920s were a key decade in the devel­op­ment of cities,” writes urban car­tog­ra­ph­er and explor­er Eric Bright­well. Not only did that era see the begin­ning of the preser­va­tion move­ment, “built around the notion that archi­tec­ture and his­to­ry were some­times as worth pre­serv­ing as wilder­ness and nature,” but “the 1920 cen­sus revealed that for the first time more Amer­i­cans lived in cities than the coun­try. Le Cor­busier began writ­ing his series, ‘1925 Expo: Arts Déco,’ and Art Deco soon became one of the archi­tec­tur­al styles most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with high-ris­es.”

Bright­well adds that “the 1920s also gave rise to the city sym­pho­ny.” They’ve been loose­ly defined “as a poet­ic, exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary that presents a por­trait of dai­ly life with­in a city while attempt­ing to cap­ture some­thing of the city’s spir­it.”

Some impor­tant exam­ples with­in the genre include films such as Paul Strand and Charles Sheel­er’s short Man­hat­ta (1921), Alber­to Cav­al­can­ti’s Rien que les heures (1926) on Paris, Wal­ter Ruttman­n’s Berlin: Die Sin­fonie der Großs­tadt (1927), André Sauvage’s Études sur Paris (1928), Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man With a Movie Cam­era (1929), Adal­ber­to Keme­ny and Rudolf Rex Lustig’s São Paulo, Sin­fo­nia da Metró­pole (1929), and Alexan­der Ham­mid’s Bezúčel­ná procház­ka (1930). (Even fic­tion films of the era took notice of the new urban con­di­tion in a big way; see, to name one obvi­ous exam­ple, Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis.)

These films, each of a slight­ly dif­fer­ent and some­times more than slight­ly exper­i­men­tal form, do indeed cap­ture the sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty that only a city can give off. Alas, the next eighty years of the 20th century—a time when even some of the great­est metrop­o­lis­es would suf­fer pop­u­la­tion exo­dus, free­way-build­ing, and “urban renew­al” in all its forms—wouldn’t treat cities very well. But they’ve now made a come­back, sig­naled by the much-dis­cussed fact that, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, more human beings every­where live in cities than not. Maybe this new era of cities will bring about a new era of city sym­phonies. If so, its film­mak­ers will cer­tain­ly have a rich tra­di­tion to work with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Paris Through Pen­tax: Short Film Lets You See a Great City Through a Dif­fer­ent Lens

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

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

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

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.

13-Year-Old Jimmy Page Plays Guitar on TV in 1957, an Early Moment in His Spectacular Career

in Music | June 3rd, 2015

These days, most of our pop stars seem to come pre-print­ed from child-star fac­to­ries, their looks and sound care­ful­ly craft­ed for max­i­mum appeal. But every gen­er­a­tion has its child stars, espe­cial­ly since the advent of radio and tele­vi­sion, and many greats of the past got their start as kids, even if they made their way in a more indi­vid­u­al­ized fash­ion. Elvis made his first pub­lic appear­ance onstage at a state fair at ten years of age, fol­lowed by a local radio appear­ance when he was twelve. Ste­vie Won­der made his pub­lic debut on TV at age twelve, show­ing off his har­mon­i­ca skills at the Apol­lo the­ater and on the Ed Sul­li­van Show. And Jim­my Page—he of Yard­birds and Led Zep­pelin fame—first caught the public’s eye as the thir­teen-year old mem­ber of a skif­fle band on the BBC’s All Your Own in 1957. See the shy, fresh-faced young “James Page” above.

Page dis­cuss­es with the show’s host Huw Whel­don not just his musi­cal ambi­tions, but his aca­d­e­m­ic ones, specif­i­cal­ly his inter­est in find­ing a cure for can­cer, “if it isn’t cov­ered by then.” Page stuck with his bio­log­i­cal research, for a while, then went to art school for two years. But through it all there was the gui­tar, his true pas­sion and life’s work. By 1963, Page was work­ing full time as a ses­sion gui­tarist and seemed eager to dis­cuss his new career in the recent­ly re-dis­cov­ered tele­vi­sion inter­view above. It was at this point, as he recount­ed to jour­nal­ist Steven Rosen in 1977, that he reached a “cross­roads,” as he called it: “is it an art career or is it going to be music?”

Page obvi­ous­ly sort­ed out it out quick­ly. He may not have cured can­cer, but he did re-invent rock and roll. Last year saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Jim­my Page by Jim­my Page, a 512-page auto­bi­og­ra­phy in pho­tographs, each one cho­sen by Page him­self. His ear­ly teenage skif­fle and ses­sion years are cov­ered, all the way through his 2012 recep­tion at the White House, and every­thing in-between. In Novem­ber of 2014, Page sat down with super­star pop artist Jeff Koons at New York’s 92nd Street Y to dis­cuss the book and his life­long love of the gui­tar, includ­ing that “very embar­rass­ing” 1957 TV appear­ance. “When you’ve had a whole life­time full of music,” Page says, “there are cer­tain things that sort of come up and haunt you, and that is one of them… but it’s got a charm about it.” Indeed it does, and there are cer­tain­ly worse things that could haunt an artist of Page’s stature. See Page and Koons’ full con­ver­sa­tion above, and watch Page dis­cuss his “auto­bi­og­ra­phy with pho­tographs” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Stair­way to Heav­en”: How the Most Played Rock Song Came To Be

Jim­my Page Gives Com­mence­ment Address at Berklee; Stu­dents Per­form Led Zep Clas­sics for Him

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994

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

Gustav Machatý’s Erotikon (1929) & Ekstase (1933): Cinema’s Earliest Explorations of Women’s Sensuality

in Film | June 3rd, 2015

Czech cin­e­ma gained inter­na­tion­al acclaim in the 1960s with films like Close­ly Watched Trains (1966) and The Fireman’s Ball (1967) – movies that con­flat­ed the polit­i­cal with the sex­u­al in ways that were as inno­v­a­tive as they were sub­ver­sive. Much of the fuel of this New Wave of Czech film was the utter absur­di­ty of the Com­mu­nist rule and the hor­rors inflict­ed by the Nazis. Yet beneath that, there’s some­thing with­in Czech cul­ture that seems nat­u­ral­ly skep­ti­cal of author­i­ty. Franz Kaf­ka was a native of Prague, after all. And one of the most beloved books in the Czech lan­guage is Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Sol­dier Šve­jk (1923), a fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous satire on the idio­cy of war.

The works of Czech film­mak­er Gus­tav Machatý weren’t overt­ly polit­i­cal yet they were still very sub­ver­sive. At a time when the bat­tles for uni­ver­sal suf­frage was still a recent mem­o­ry, Machatý had the audac­i­ty to show women as sex­u­al­ly autonomous beings.

Born in Prague in 1901, Machatý went to Hol­ly­wood at a young age and report­ed­ly appren­ticed under D. W. Grif­fith and Erich von Stro­heim. When he returned to his home coun­try, he start­ed mak­ing movies.

Machatý’s third fea­ture and final silent movie was Erotikon (1929), a sto­ry about a coun­try girl seduced by an upper-class cad only to get preg­nant and ostra­cized by her vil­lage. The film recalls F.W. Mur­nau in his empha­sis on faces and his expres­sion­is­tic use of the cam­era. This is per­haps most clear­ly seen in the scene above where the girl sur­ren­ders to her slick para­mour and dis­cov­ers sex­u­al bliss. The cam­era spins around as she writhes on the bed. Show­ing female sex­u­al­i­ty frankly was dar­ing at that time. Women in movies by D. W. Grif­fith and Char­lie Chap­lin were chaste and pure. They received male appetites, per­haps, but were not sub­ject to ani­mal­is­tic urges them­selves.

Four years lat­er, Machatý went even fur­ther with his movie Ekstase (1933). Ear­ly in the movie, we see the lumi­nous­ly beau­ti­ful Hedy Lamarr skin­ny-dip­ping in a pond. When her horse runs off with her clothes, she run naked over hill and dale to catch it. A bit lat­er in the movie, in a scene that recalls Erotikon, she has an earth-shat­ter­ing orgasm thanks to the strap­ping young work­er who finds her horse. Ekstase might not be the first non-porno­graph­ic film to have nude scenes but it was cer­tain­ly one of the first. And it was def­i­nite­ly the first film to clear­ly show a female orgasm.

The movie was an inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion. It received raves at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val only to be denied a prize because the Vat­i­can object­ed. Worse, it couldn’t get a prop­er release in the US. First Ekstase was seized by U.S. Cus­toms as pornog­ra­phy. Then, when it final­ly cleared that hur­dle, the movie ran afoul of Hollywood’s self-cen­sor­ing Hays Code. Ekstase only man­aged to screen in a hand­ful of inde­pen­dent the­aters in 1940, sev­en years after it first came out.

Nonethe­less, the noto­ri­ety of the movie turned Hedy Lamarr into a star and soon she was star­ring oppo­site Hol­ly­wood icons like Jim­my Stew­art and Clark Gable. (And just in case you thought that Lamarr was just a pret­ty face, she also co-invent­ed and patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy dur­ing WWII that laid the ground­work for things like Wi-Fi.)

Machatý had less suc­cess. As the threat of Nazism loomed, he fled back to Hol­ly­wood and end­ed up being an uncred­it­ed direc­tor for such stu­dio films as The Good Earth and Madame X. He spent the last part of his life teach­ing film at the Munich Film School before dying in 1963.

You can watch the entire­ty of Erotikon below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fritz Lang’s M: Watch the Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Kafka’s Famous Char­ac­ter Gre­gor Sam­sa Meets Dr. Seuss in a Great Radio Play

Broke­back Before Broke­back: The First Same-Sex Kiss in Cin­e­ma (1927)

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

David Bowie Launches His Acting Career in the Avant-Garde Play Pierrot in Turquoise (1967)

in Music, Theatre | June 2nd, 2015

We’ve post­ed plen­ty here from David Bowie the singer, which stands to rea­son, giv­en his promi­nence in the set of all pos­si­ble David Bowies. But rock-and-rol­l’s best-known shapeshifter has worked in oth­er fields as well: a huge num­ber of peo­ple love Bowie the singer, of course, but Bowie the actor has also accrued devot­ed fans of his own. Many con­tin­ue to dis­cov­er him through such “cult clas­sic” films as Nico­las Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth and Nag­isa Oshi­ma’s Mer­ry Christ­mas, Mr. Lawrence. Here, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his turns along­side Ricky Ger­vais and as Bertolt Brecht’s Baal. Plen­ty of suc­cess­ful musi­cians start up high-pro­file side careers as actors, but Bowie the actor got his break before Bowie the singer did.

“With hind­sight, you can see where his career was going,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher, “but by 1967, the teenager’s first record­ing career had come to a halt after the release of his odd­ment Laugh­ing Gnome after which, Bowie didn’t release a record for anoth­er two years.” Hav­ing stud­ied under Lind­say Kemp, Bowie placed him­self well to appear in the famed Eng­lish mime’s 1967 pro­duc­tion of Pier­rot in Turquoise or, The Look­ing Glass Mur­ders. Bowie did­n’t just act in it, but also wrote and per­formed its music. You can watch sev­er­al clips of a 1969 pro­duc­tion of the show cap­tured by Scot­tish tele­vi­sion, includ­ing the songs “Columbine,” “The Mir­ror,” and “Three­pen­ny Pier­rot.” (This Youtube playlist rounds up all the Bowie music from the show avail­able.)

As much work as the young Bowie took on for Pier­rot in Turquoise, he did­n’t star in it. The title role of the Com­me­dia del­l’Arte’s beloved sad clown went to Kemp him­self, though in 1976, Bowie declared him­self as play­ing it in his career as a whole, through all his var­i­ous per­son­ae: “I’m Pier­rot. I’m Every­man. What I’m doing is the­atre, and only the­atre. What you see on stage isn’t sin­is­ter. It’s pure clown. I’m using myself as a can­vas and try­ing to paint the truth of our time.” So we per­haps can’t speak of “Bowie the singer” and “Bowie the actor” after all — if they were insep­a­ra­ble back then, sure­ly they’ve always been. And if Zig­gy Star­dust (in whose con­certs Kemp per­formed) does­n’t count as the­atre, what does?

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

David Bowie Stars in a Clas­sic Per­for­mance of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal (1982)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

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.

Hear Toni Morrison’s Poetic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech on the Radical Power of Language (1993)

in Literature | June 2nd, 2015

Since her first nov­el, 1970’s The Bluest Eye, Toni Mor­ri­son has daz­zled read­ers with her com­mand­ing language—colloquial, mag­i­cal, mag­is­te­r­i­al, even fan­ci­ful at times, but held firm to the earth by a com­mit­ment to his­to­ry and an unspar­ing explo­ration of racism, sex­u­al abuse, and vio­lence. Read­ing Mor­ri­son can be an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence, and a har­row­ing one. We nev­er know where she is going to take us. But the jour­ney for Mor­ri­son has nev­er been one of escapism or art for art’s sake. In a 1981 inter­view, she once said, “the books I want­ed to write could not be only, even mere­ly, lit­er­ary or I would defeat my pur­pos­es, defeat my audi­ence.” As she put it then, “my work bears wit­ness and sug­gests who the out­laws were, who sur­vived under what cir­cum­stances and why.”

She has sus­tained such a weighty mis­sion not only with a love of lan­guage, but also with a crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of its power—to seduce, to manip­u­late, con­found, wound, twist, and kill. Which brings us to the record­ed speech above, deliv­ered in 1993 at her accep­tance of the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture. After briefly thank­ing the Swedish Acad­e­my and her audi­ence, she begins, “Fic­tion has nev­er been enter­tain­ment for me.” Wind­ing her speech around a para­ble of “an old woman, blind but wise,” Mor­ri­son illus­trates the ways in which “oppres­sive lan­guage does more than rep­re­sent vio­lence; it is vio­lence; does more than rep­re­sent the lim­its of knowl­edge; it lim­its knowl­edge.”

Anoth­er kind of lan­guage takes flight, “surges toward knowl­edge, not its destruc­tion.” In the folk­tale at the cen­ter of her speech, lan­guage is a bird, and the blind seer to whom it is pre­sent­ed gives us a choice: “I don’t know whether the bird you are hold­ing is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Lan­guage, she sug­gests, is in fact our only human pow­er, and our respon­si­bil­i­ty. The con­se­quences of its mis­use we know all too well, and Mor­ri­son does not hes­i­tate to name them. But she ends with a chal­lenge for her audi­ence, and for all of us, to take our own mea­ger lit­er­ary resources and put them to use in heal­ing the dam­age done. You should lis­ten to, and read, her entire speech, with its maze-like turns and folds. Near its end, the dis­cur­sive­ness flow­ers into exhor­ta­tion, and—though she has said she dis­likes hav­ing her work described thus—poetry. “Make up a sto­ry,” she says, “Nar­ra­tive is rad­i­cal, cre­at­ing us at the very moment it is being cre­at­ed.”

We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and noth­ing is left but their scald. Or if, with the ret­i­cence of a sur­geon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can nev­er do it prop­er­ly — once and for all. Pas­sion is nev­er enough; nei­ther is skill. But try. For our sake and yours for­get your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unrav­els fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blind­ness, can speak the lan­guage that tells us what only lan­guage can: how to see with­out pic­tures. Lan­guage alone pro­tects us from the scari­ness of things with no names. Lan­guage alone is med­i­ta­tion

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:

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

7 Nobel Speech­es by 7 Great Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er, and More

Toni Mor­ri­son, Nora Ephron, and Dozens More Offer Advice in Free Cre­ative Writ­ing “Mas­ter Class”

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

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

in Design, Magazines, Music | June 1st, 2015

Per­form an inter­net search on the phrase “David Bowie Paper Doll” and what do you get? Hint: it’s not a cov­er of the Mills Broth­ers hit. David Bowie paper dolls are pro­lif­er­at­ing in aston­ish­ing num­bers.

Sharp­en your scis­sors and behold!

The most com­pre­hen­sive career rep­re­sen­ta­tion is the Thin White Paper Doll Cutout Heather Col­lett designed for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (above). There’s even a print­er friend­ly ver­sion for those who are seri­ous about play­ing with Aladdin Sane, Zig­gy Star­dust, Labyrinth’s Gob­lin King, and oth­er Bowie alter egos.

But wait! There’s more…

Elu­sive design­er Vod­ka Caramel’s Amaz­ing 70’s Bowie Paper Doll cel­e­brates some of our hero’s most glam­orous looks, but sad­dles him with the crotch of a Ken doll and no few­er than four inter­change­able heads! And we thought the Thin White Paper Doll’s crew socks were an indig­ni­ty.

A Span­ish fan observed Bowie’s 65th birth­day by updat­ing the abbre­vi­at­ed tighty whities of a noto­ri­ous 1973 pho­to shoot to a mod­est pair of stan­dard issue Y‑fronts. Inter­est­ing­ly, this paper dol­l’s sus­pendered Hal­loween Jack suit arrives with bulge intact.

Points to Serge Baeken above for rec­og­niz­ing the paper doll pos­si­bil­i­ties in the Pier­rot cos­tume Bowie sport­ed in the video for 1980’s “Ash­es to Ash­es.” (Fun fact: Bowie made his the­atri­cal debut—and wrote the music for—a bizarre 1968 pan­tomime about Pier­rot.… His char­ac­ter’s name was “Cloud”)

Artist Clau­dia Varo­sio’s entry in the Bowie paper doll stakes could pass as illus­tra­tions for a 1970’s children’s book. Title? Boys Keep Swing­ing, after a cut from Bowie’s 1979 Lodger album. Chaste young girls would love the t‑shirted, non-threat­en­ing Bowie.

The com­par­a­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, full-faced Bowie above comes to us via Swedish fam­i­ly mag­a­zine Året Runt. I may nev­er learn anoth­er word of Swedish, but thanks to David Bowie, I can now say paper doll (klip­p­dock­or). In appre­ci­a­tion, allow me to share anoth­er exam­ple of David Bowie klip­p­dock­or…

If it all starts seem­ing a bit rote, mix things up by hav­ing artist Mel Elliot’s paper doll Bowie swap  duds with fel­low pop star / style icon paper dolls, Bey­once, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Rihan­na.

(image by Elec­tric Sor­bet)

There is only one David Bowie, but there can nev­er be too many David Bowie paper dolls. Make your own today!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

The Musi­cal Career of David Bowie in One Minute … and One Con­tin­u­ous Take

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

JS Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier Artistically Animated with Pulsing Neon Lights

in Animation, Music | May 29th, 2015

The Well-Tem­pered Clavier, com­posed by JS Bach between 1722 and 1742, remains one of the most inno­v­a­tive and influ­en­tial works in the his­to­ry of West­ern clas­si­cal music. A web­site from North­ern Ari­zona State U. sums up what essen­tial­ly made Bach’s com­po­si­tion — a col­lec­tion of 48 pre­ludes and fugues spread across two vol­umes — so inno­v­a­tive, so influ­en­tial.

One of Bach’s pri­ma­ry pur­pos­es in com­pos­ing these cycles was to demon­strate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the “well tem­pered” tun­ing sys­tem that would allow for com­po­si­tion in every key.

Anoth­er pur­pose of the Well-Tem­pered Clavier was to reveal how mod­ern and pro­gres­sive com­po­si­tion could be informed by con­ser­v­a­tive ideas. The Well-Tem­pered Clavier is an ency­clo­pe­dia of nation­al and his­tor­i­cal styles and idioms. Its influ­ences range from the white-note style of the Renais­sance motet to the French manier. Iron­i­cal­ly, half of this styl­is­tic smor­gas­bord is expressed in fugue, a form that was out of date upon the cycle’s com­ple­tion. Bach was of course aware of this. His hope was to defend the ven­er­a­ble form by demon­strat­ing how it could absorb con­tem­po­rary fla­vors.

If you’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced Bach’s piece, then I’d encour­age you to lis­ten to the 1960s record­ing by Glenn Gould. Or watch a sec­tion of the piece being per­formed on the All of Bach web­site — a site that will even­tu­al­ly put 1080 Bach per­for­mances online, for free.

Above, we have some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Cre­at­ed by direc­tor and visu­al artist Alan War­bur­ton, this new­ly-released video takes a famous sec­tion of Bach’s com­po­si­tion and ani­mates it with puls­ing neon lights. Describ­ing what went into mak­ing this video, the Sin­fi­ni Music web­site writes:

Alan’s incred­i­ble design incor­po­rat­ed many thou­sands of sep­a­rate CGI lights, every one of which had to be tai­lored to the pre­cise dura­tion of Pierre-Lau­rent Aimard’s note strikes. ‘I need­ed to find a way of automat­ing the process of these turn­ing on and off in time with the music,’ says Alan. With no midi file of the per­for­mance avail­able, he was faced with the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task of match­ing every note of a stand-in midi file to the record­ing, by ear alone…

Then it was a ques­tion of ren­der­ing the ani­mat­ed data in CGI with­in the vir­tu­al space cre­at­ed espe­cial­ly for the ani­ma­tion. This too, was no mean feat, even for the army of cloud-based com­put­ers that had a hand in the task. Each frame took 15 min­utes to ren­der because of the thou­sands of cal­cu­la­tions involved in acti­vat­ing each light as well as the shad­ows, glows and reflec­tions required to make the scene look tru­ly life-like.

Sin­fi­ni Music, which com­mis­sioned this project, has more on War­bur­ton’s cre­ation here.

Hope this gets your week­end start­ed on the right, er, note.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip