Do All Roads Lead to Philosophy on Wikipedia?: They Do About 97.3% of the Time

in Philosophy, Wikipedia | September 19th, 2024

Pull up the Wikipedia page for Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love,” the 1984 sin­gle now known for re-pop­u­lar­iz­ing the genre of Japan­ese “city pop.” Then click the first of its links (not relat­ed to the lan­guage of the arti­cle itself), which leads to Takeuchi’s own page. If you keep fol­low­ing that same pro­ce­dure, you’ll con­tin­ue on to City Pop, then Japan­ese Pop Music, then Pop­u­lar Music. Keep drilling down, and you’ll pass the very con­cepts of music and sound, then enter the realms of physics, the sci­en­tif­ic method, log­i­cal propo­si­tions, and the phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage. This is one exam­ple pro­vid­ed by the video above from YouTu­ber Not David, which inves­ti­gates whether all roads on Wikipedia even­tu­al­ly lead to phi­los­o­phy.

There is, of course, a Wikipedia page about this, called “Get­ting to Phi­los­o­phy.” “Fol­low­ing the first hyper­link in the main text of an Eng­lish Wikipedia arti­cle, and then repeat­ing the process for sub­se­quent arti­cles, usu­al­ly leads to the Phi­los­o­phy arti­cle,” it says. “In Feb­ru­ary 2016, this was true for 97% of all arti­cles on Wikipedia (includ­ing this one).” As for the rest, they “lead to an arti­cle with­out any out­go­ing wik­ilinks, to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in loops.” This is actu­al­ly the case with the path start­ing from “Plas­tic Love,” after Phi­los­o­phy of Lan­guage goes in cir­cles around con­cepts, abstrac­tion, and log­ic itself, nev­er quite reach­ing Phi­los­o­phy prop­er.

Or at least that’s what hap­pened for me today; it could go dif­fer­ent­ly tomor­row, or even a few sec­onds from now. Ever since Wikipedia went live in 2001, its main dif­fer­ence from oth­er ency­clo­pe­dias has been that it’s con­stant­ly chang­ing, and the rate of that change has only increased over time. The “phi­los­o­phy game,” as Not David calls it, is at all times sub­ject to break­age, but also to un-break­age. At nor­mal times, Orange Juice to Phi­los­o­phy takes thir­teen steps, Apple Juice to Phi­los­o­phy takes fif­teen steps; both the Cal­gary Flames and Edmon­ton Oil­ers lie six­teen steps from Phi­los­o­phy. But things go hay­wire if some­one goes and, say, re-orders the links on the Aware­ness arti­cle so Psy­chol­o­gy comes first.

These things hap­pen: Wikipedia is, after all, the ency­clo­pe­dia that any­one can edit. And as you can see (at least as of this writ­ing), Aware­ness now links first to Phi­los­o­phy again. These changes play hav­oc with the efforts of any­one try­ing to map out the con­nec­tions between one part of Wikipedia and anoth­er, as Not David does in this video. But they don’t alter the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of net­work design, which his analy­sis illu­mi­nates. As with the cor­pus cal­lo­sum, which con­nects the two hemi­spheres of the human brain, Phi­los­o­phy is less impor­tant for what direct­ly con­nects to it than for its own func­tion as a con­nec­tor. And indeed, haven’t philoso­phers always want­ed to know how every­thing fits togeth­er?

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy

A Data Visu­al­iza­tion of Mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy, 1950–2018

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

Philo­graph­ics Presents a Visu­al Dic­tio­nary of Phi­los­o­phy: 95 Philo­soph­i­cal Con­cepts as Graph­ic Designs

Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Course

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

in Literature, Writing | September 18th, 2024

Samuel Beck­ett: avant-garde drama­tist, brood­ing Nobel Prize win­ner, poet, and…gritty tele­vi­sion detec­tive?

Sad­ly, no, but he had the mak­ings of a great one, at least as cut togeth­er by play­wright Dan­ny Thomp­son, cofounder of Chicago’s The­ater Oobleck.

Some 35 years after Beckett’s death, Thompson—whose cred­its include the Com­plete Lost Works of Samuel Beck­ett as Found in a Dust­bin in Paris in an Enve­lope (Par­tial­ly Burned) Labeled: Nev­er to Be Per­formed. Nev­er. Ever. Ever! Or I’ll Sue! I’ll Sue From the Grave!!!-–repur­posed Rosa Veim and Daniel Schmid’s footage of the moody genius wan­der­ing around 1969 Berlin into the open­ing cred­its of a nonex­is­tent, 70s era Quinn Mar­tin police pro­ce­dur­al.

The title sequence hits all the right peri­od notes, from the jazzy graph­ics to the pre­sen­ta­tion of its sup­port­ing cast: Andre the Giant, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean “Hug­gy Bear” Cocteau. (Did you know that Beck­ett drove a young Andre the Giant to school in real life?)

Thomp­son ups the verisimil­i­tude by cop­ping Pat Williams’ theme for The Streets of San Fran­cis­co and nam­ing the imag­i­nary pilot episode after a col­lec­tion of Beckett’s short sto­ries.

He also jok­ing­ly notes that a DVD release of the first, only and, again, entire­ly non-exis­tent sea­son has been held up by the Beck­ett estate. Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

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

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

in Maps, Travel | September 18th, 2024

No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through. I myself once took a more souther­ly route, road-trip­ping from Los Ange­les to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na over a week or two; these days, I dream of an east-coast jour­ney from Maine all the way down to Key West, a rel­a­tive­ly man­age­able 1,900 miles. But if you take your road-trip­ping seri­ous­ly, you’ve got to go to anoth­er con­ti­nent entire­ly.

Such is the con­clu­sion to be drawn from the Half as Inter­est­ing video above, which finds the longest dri­vable dis­tance on Earth. “The North Amer­i­can road sys­tem goes as far as Prud­hoe Bay in Canada’s Cana­da, Alas­ka, and as far south as Yav­iza in Pana­ma,” says the video’s cre­ator Sam Den­by, “but this only clocks in at 7,500 miles.”

That may require six straight days of dri­ving, but it does­n’t set any records. A route from south­ern Africa and east Asia may seem promis­ing, but they can’t be dri­ven with­out pass­ing through west­ern Europe. That requires pas­sage across the Mediter­ranean on a fer­ry, which — for the true road-trip­per — taints the puri­ty of the endeav­or.

Start­ing in Europe, then, you should begin in Sagres, Por­tu­gal, “the most extreme point on the con­tigu­ous road net­work.” From there, you can dri­ve as far east as “the banks of the Aldan Riv­er in Rus­sia,” a dis­tance of 8,437 miles. But wait, there’s longer: you could keep going to Khasan, “the only Russ­ian town to bor­der North Korea,” and bring the mileage up to 8,726, thus com­plet­ing “the longest direct dri­ving route in the world.” If you go ped­al-to-the-met­al (to the extent pos­si­ble while observ­ing local speed lim­its, any­way) it will take six days and 19 hours — book­end­ed, ide­al­ly, by one meal of cat­a­plana and anoth­er of Khasan oys­ters.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­en­tists Fig­ure Out What’s the Longest Dis­tance You Could Sail at Sea With­out Hit­ting Land

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ani­mat­ed Maps Reveal the True Size of Coun­tries (and Show How Tra­di­tion­al Maps Dis­tort Our World)

Why Route 66 Became America’s Most Famous Road

12 Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Road Trips in One Handy Inter­ac­tive Map

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

in Graduation Speech, Life | September 17th, 2024

John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this to say:

Uh, don’t hate all rich peo­ple. They’re not all awful. Believe me, I know some evil poor peo­ple, too. We need some rich peo­ple: Who else is going to back our movies or buy our art? I’m rich! I don’t mean mon­ey-wise. I mean that I have fig­ured out how to nev­er be around ass­holes at any time in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life. That’s rich. And not being around ass­holes should be the goal of every grad­u­ate here today.

It’s OK to hate the poor, too, but only the poor of spir­it, not wealth. A poor per­son to me can have a big bank bal­ance but is stu­pid by choice – uncu­ri­ous, judg­men­tal, iso­lat­ed and unavail­able to change.

I’m also sor­ry to report there’s no such thing as kar­ma. So many of my tal­ent­ed great friends are dead and so many of the fools I’ve met and loathed are still alive. It’s not fair, and it nev­er will be.

Like I said, irrev­er­ent­ly phrased. But when stripped down to their basics, some very good prin­ci­ples to live by.

Watch the speech above; read the com­plete tran­script 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:

John Waters Takes You on a Com­i­cal Tour of His Apart­ment (1986)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters’ Com­i­cal & Inspir­ing Com­mence­ment Speech: “You Too Can Fail Upwards” (2022)

How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting

in Language, Television | September 17th, 2024

Many of us grew up see­ing hard­back copies of Shō­gun on var­i­ous domes­tic book­shelves. Whether their own­ers ever actu­al­ly got through James Clavel­l’s famous­ly hefty nov­el of sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan is open to ques­tion, but they may well have seen the first tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion, which aired on NBC in 1980. Star­ring Richard Cham­ber­lain and Toshi­ro Mifu­ne (and nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles), that ten-hour minis­eries offered an unprece­dent­ed­ly cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence to the home view­ers of Amer­i­ca, pre­sent­ing them with things they’d nev­er before seen on tele­vi­sion — and things they’d nev­er heard on tele­vi­sion, not least numer­ous lines deliv­ered in untrans­lat­ed Japan­ese.

The idea, accord­ing to screen­writer Eric Bercovi­ci, was to put the view­ers in the shoes of Cham­ber­lain’s pro­tag­o­nist John Black­thorne, an Eng­lish ship pilot marooned in Japan with no knowl­edge of the local lan­guage. Dur­ing the show’s run, news­pa­pers print­ed glos­saries of the Japan­ese words most impor­tant to the sto­ry. The sec­ond adap­ta­tion of Shō­gun, which aired ear­li­er this year on FX, does things dif­fer­ent­ly. For one thing, it makes use of those help­ful devices known as sub­ti­tles, which over the past four and a half decades have become not just accept­ed but demand­ed by West­ern audi­ences (even for pro­duc­tions in their own lan­guage).

This choice, as Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak says in his video on the new Shō­gun, “lets us into the minds and con­ver­sa­tions of the Japan­ese char­ac­ters,” much like the omni­scient nar­ra­tion of Clavel­l’s nov­el. Puschak high­lights how the series “uses the act of trans­la­tion to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions of com­mu­ni­ca­tion across cul­tures and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, peri­od.” One notable exam­ple is its por­tray­al of the var­i­ous bilin­gual char­ac­ters who inter­pret for Black­thorne, each of whom does so dif­fer­ent­ly accord­ing to his or her moti­va­tions. The 1980 Shō­gun also had a few such scenes, but their dra­mat­ic irony was inac­ces­si­ble to mono­lin­gual view­ers.

Even if you speak both Eng­lish and Japan­ese, you know how lit­tle pro­tec­tion that real­ly offers against cul­tur­al mis­un­der­stand­ings. The new Shō­gun’s drama­ti­za­tion of that truth has sure­ly done its part to win the show more Emmy awards than any oth­er sin­gle sea­son of tele­vi­sion. A com­par­i­son to the 1980 adap­ta­tion, which rep­re­sent­ed the height of dra­mat­ic tele­vi­sion in its day, reveals the ways in which our expec­ta­tions of the form have changed over time. Nev­er­the­less, even the 2024 Shō­gun takes its lib­er­ties, the most brazen being the use of Eng­lish instead of Por­tuguese, the real lan­guage of first con­tact between Japan and the West. Clear­ly, Por­tu­gal has its work cut out: to raise a gen­er­a­tion of actors ready to star in the next adap­ta­tion by the late twen­ty-six­ties. がんば っ て and boa sorte.

Relat­ed con­tent:

16th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese His­to­ri­ans Describe the Odd­ness of Meet­ing the First Euro­peans They Ever Saw

The 17th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

The His­to­ry of Ancient Japan: The Sto­ry of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Wit­nessed It (297‑1274)

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | September 16th, 2024

Jean Giraud, aka Moe­bius, was a com­ic book artist who com­bined blind­ing speed with bound­less imag­i­na­tion. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Ele­ment. He reimag­ined the Sil­ver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowl­edged influ­ence on every­one from Japan­ese ani­mat­ing great Hayao Miyaza­ki to sci-fi writer William Gib­son.

In 1996, the Mex­i­can news­pa­per La Jor­na­da pub­lished a lec­ture giv­en by Moe­bius called “Breve man­u­al para his­to­ri­etis­tas”  – a brief man­u­al for car­toon­ists – which con­sists of 18 tips for aspir­ing artists. If your Span­ish isn’t up to snuff – mine cer­tain­ly isn’t – then there are a cou­ple trans­la­tions out there. Some­one called Xurxo g Penal­ta cranked out a direct ver­sion in Eng­lish, but to get the true nuances of Moe­bius’ wise words, famed illus­tra­tor William Stout’s excel­lent anno­tat­ed ver­sion is best.

For instance, Moebius’s first tip is “When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.”

Stout ampli­fies this with the fol­low­ing:

These feel­ings are typ­i­cal­ly emo­tion­al prej­u­dices that func­tion as a block to cre­ativ­i­ty.

This was some­thing I learned from draw­ing and hang­ing out with anoth­er French­man, the bril­liant car­toon­ist-illus­tra­tor (and reg­u­lar Atlantic Month­ly con­trib­u­tor) Guy Bill­out, when we were trav­el­ing togeth­er in Antarc­ti­ca and Patag­o­nia back in 1989. Until I spent time with Guy, I had no idea how many pre-con­ceived notions and assump­tions I held with­in me regard­ing peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions and what a block they were to the flow of my cre­ativ­i­ty.

Divorc­ing your­self from such emo­tion­al­ly blind­ing pre-con­cep­tions allows you to see things with fresh eyes. Solu­tions and ideas then flow with much greater ease. I have noticed with all the cre­ative genius­es I have met that they all share a child­like delight with what­ev­er or whomev­er they encounter in life (they can even find amuse­ment in life’s vil­lains). For them, all cre­ative bar­ri­ers are down; life and cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing for them is like con­stant­ly play­ing. They gush great ideas all day long like a foun­tain.

All of Stout’s anno­ta­tions are like this. It should be required read­ing for any­one even vague­ly inter­est­ed in visu­al sto­ry­telling. Below are Moe­bius’ orig­i­nal obser­va­tions. Stout’s thoughts on Moe­bius can be found here.

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse your­self of deep feel­ings, like hate, hap­pi­ness, ambi­tion, etc.

2) It’s very impor­tant to edu­cate your hand. Make it achieve a lev­el of high obe­di­ence so that it will be able to prop­er­ly and ful­ly express your ideas. But be very care­ful of try­ing to obtain too much per­fec­tion, as well as too much speed as an artist. Per­fec­tion and speed are dan­ger­ous — as are their oppo­sites. When you pro­duce draw­ings that are too quick or too loose, besides mak­ing mis­takes, you run the risk of cre­at­ing an enti­ty with­out soul or spir­it.

3) Knowl­edge of per­spec­tive is of supreme impor­tance. Its laws pro­vide a good, pos­i­tive way to manip­u­late or hyp­no­tize your read­ers.

4) Anoth­er thing to embrace with affec­tion is the study of [the] human body — it’s anato­my, posi­tions, body types, expres­sions, con­struc­tion, and the dif­fer­ences between peo­ple.

Draw­ing a man is very dif­fer­ent from draw­ing a woman. With males, you can be loos­er and less pre­cise in their depic­tion; small imper­fec­tions can often add char­ac­ter. Your draw­ing of a woman, how­ev­er, must be per­fect; a sin­gle ill-placed line can dra­mat­i­cal­ly age her or make her seem annoy­ing or ugly. Then, no one buys your com­ic!

For the read­er to believe your sto­ry, your char­ac­ters must feel as if they have a life and per­son­al­i­ty of their own.

Their phys­i­cal ges­tures should seem to emanate from their character’s strengths, weak­ness­es and infir­mi­ties. The body becomes trans­formed when it is brought to life; there is a mes­sage in its struc­ture, in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its fat, in each mus­cle and in every wrin­kle, crease or fold of the face and body. It becomes a study of life.

5) When you cre­ate a sto­ry, you can begin it with­out know­ing every­thing, but you should make notes as you go along regard­ing the par­tic­u­lars of the world depict­ed in your sto­ry. Such detail will pro­vide your read­ers with rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ter­is­tics that will pique their inter­est.

When a char­ac­ter dies in a sto­ry, unless the char­ac­ter has had his per­son­al sto­ry expressed some way in the draw­ing of his face, body and attire, the read­er will not care; your read­er won’t have any emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Your pub­lish­er might say, “Your sto­ry has no val­ue; there’s only one dead guy — I need twen­ty or thir­ty dead guys for this to work.” But that is not true; if the read­er feels the dead guy or wound­ed guys or hurt guys or whomev­er you have in trou­ble have a real per­son­al­i­ty result­ing from your own deep stud­ies of human nature — with an artist’s capac­i­ty for such obser­va­tion — emo­tions will surge.

By such stud­ies you will devel­op and gain atten­tion from oth­ers, as well as a com­pas­sion and a love for human­i­ty.

This is very impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of an artist. If he wants to func­tion as a mir­ror of soci­ety and human­i­ty, this mir­ror of his must con­tain the con­scious­ness of the entire world; it must be a mir­ror that sees every­thing.

6) Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky says I don’t like draw­ing dead hors­es. Well, it is very dif­fi­cult.

It’s also very dif­fi­cult to draw a sleep­ing body or some­one who has been aban­doned, because in most comics it’s always action that is being stud­ied. It’s much eas­i­er to draw peo­ple fight­ing — that’s why Amer­i­cans near­ly always draw super­heroes. It’s much more dif­fi­cult to draw peo­ple that are talk­ing, because that’s a series of very small move­ments — small, yet with real sig­nif­i­cance.

His counts for more because of our human need for love or the atten­tion of oth­ers. It’s these lit­tle things that speak of per­son­al­i­ty, of life. Most super­heroes don’t have any per­son­al­i­ty; they all use the same ges­tures and move­ments.

7) Equal­ly impor­tant is the cloth­ing of your char­ac­ters and the state of the mate­r­i­al from which it was made.

These tex­tures cre­ate a vision of your char­ac­ters’ expe­ri­ences, their lives, and their role in your adven­ture in a way where much can be said with­out words. In a dress there are a thou­sand folds; you need to choose just two or three — don’t draw them all. Just make sure you choose the two or three good ones.

8) The style, styl­is­tic con­ti­nu­ity of an artist and its pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion are full of sym­bols; they can be read just like a Tarot deck. I chose my name “Moe­bius” as a joke when I was twen­ty-two years old — but, in truth, the name came to res­onate with mean­ing. If you arrive wear­ing a T‑shirt of Don Quixote, that tells me who you are. In my case, mak­ing a draw­ing of rel­a­tive sim­plic­i­ty and sub­tle indi­ca­tions is impor­tant to me.

9) When an artist, a real work­ing artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “nor­mal” peo­ple. His unique vision is cru­cial to doc­u­ment­ing a way of life and the peo­ple who live it.

10) Anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment is com­po­si­tion. The com­po­si­tions in our sto­ries should be stud­ied because a page or a paint­ing or a pan­el is a face that looks at the read­er and speaks to him. A page is not just a suc­ces­sion of insignif­i­cant pan­els. There are pan­els that are full. Some that are emp­ty. Oth­ers are ver­ti­cal. Some hor­i­zon­tal. All are indi­ca­tions of the artist’s inten­tions. Ver­ti­cal pan­els excite the read­er. Hor­i­zon­tals calm him. For us in the West­ern world, motion in a pan­el that goes from left to right rep­re­sents action head­ing toward the future. Mov­ing from right to left directs action toward the past. The direc­tions we indi­cate rep­re­sent a dis­per­sion of ener­gy. An object or char­ac­ter placed in the cen­ter of a pan­el focus­es and con­cen­trates ener­gy and atten­tion. These are basic read­ing sym­bols and forms that evoke in the read­er a fas­ci­na­tion, a kind of hyp­no­sis. You must be con­scious of rhythm and set traps for the read­er to fall into so that, when he falls, he gets lost, allow­ing you to manip­u­late and move him inside your world with greater ease and plea­sure. That’s because what you have cre­at­ed is a sense of life. You must study the great painters, espe­cial­ly those who speak with their paint­ings. Their indi­vid­ual paint­ing schools or gen­res or time peri­ods should not mat­ter. Their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with phys­i­cal as well as emo­tion­al com­po­si­tion must be stud­ied so that you learn how their com­bi­na­tion of lines works to touch us direct­ly with­in our hearts.

11) The nar­ra­tion must har­mo­nize with the draw­ings. There must be a visu­al rhythm cre­at­ed by the place­ment of your text. The rhythm of your plot should be reflect­ed in your visu­al cadence and the way you com­press or expand time. Like a film­mak­er, you must be very care­ful in how you cast your char­ac­ters and in how you direct them. Use your char­ac­ters or “actors” like a direc­tor, study­ing and then select­ing from all of your char­ac­ters’ dif­fer­ent takes.

12) Beware of the dev­as­tat­ing influ­ence of North Amer­i­can com­ic books. The artists in Mex­i­co seem to only study their sur­face effects: a lit­tle bit of anato­my mixed with dynam­ic com­po­si­tions, mon­sters, fights, scream­ing and teeth. I like some of that stuff too, but there are many oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties and expres­sions that are also wor­thy of explo­ration.

13) There is a con­nec­tion between music and draw­ing. The size of that con­nec­tion depends upon your per­son­al­i­ty and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been work­ing in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Draw­ing at times is a search for dis­cov­er­ies. A pre­cise, beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed line is like an orgasm!

14) Col­or is a lan­guage that the graph­ic artist uses to manip­u­late his reader’s atten­tion as well as to cre­ate beau­ty. There is objec­tive and sub­jec­tive col­or. The emo­tion­al states of the char­ac­ters can change or influ­ence the col­or from one pan­el to the next, as can place and time of day. Spe­cial study and atten­tion must be paid to the lan­guage of col­or.

15) At the begin­ning of an artist’s career, he should prin­ci­pal­ly involve him­self in the cre­ation of very high qual­i­ty short sto­ries. He has a bet­ter chance (than with long for­mat sto­ries) of suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing them, while main­tain­ing a high stan­dard of qual­i­ty. It will also be eas­i­er to place them in a book or sell them to a pub­lish­er.

16) There are times when we know­ing­ly head down a path of fail­ure, choos­ing the wrong theme or sub­ject for our capa­bil­i­ties, or choos­ing a project that is too large, or an unsuit­able tech­nique. If this hap­pens, you must not com­plain lat­er.

17) When new work has been sent to an edi­tor and it receives a rejec­tion, you should always ask for and try to dis­cov­er the rea­sons for the rejec­tion. By study­ing the rea­sons for our fail­ure, only then can we begin to learn. It is not about strug­gle with our lim­i­ta­tions, with the pub­lic or with the pub­lish­ers. One should treat it with more of an aiki­do approach. It is the very strength and pow­er of our adver­sary that is used as the key to his defeat.

18) Now it is pos­si­ble to expose our works to read­ers in every part of the plan­et. We must always keep aware of this. To begin with, draw­ing is a form of per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but this does not mean that the artist should close him­self off inside a bub­ble. His com­mu­ni­ca­tion should be for those aes­thet­i­cal­ly, philo­soph­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly close to him, as well as for him­self — but also for com­plete strangers. Draw­ing is a medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the great fam­i­ly we have not met, for the pub­lic and for the world.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2015.

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: 

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. 

The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse: Rick Beato Explains

in Music, Technology | September 16th, 2024

Ear­li­er this month, a North Car­oli­na man was charged with gen­er­at­ing songs using an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem and con­fig­ur­ing bots to stream them auto­mat­i­cal­ly, thus rack­ing up some $10 mil­lion in ille­gal roy­al­ties. Though that amount no doubt star­tles many of us, in this age when legit­i­mate musi­cians pub­licly lament the pit­tance they earn through stream­ing plat­forms, such a case prob­a­bly comes as no sur­prise to Rick Beato. This past June, the promi­nent music YouTu­ber put out a video deal­ing with just that inter­sec­tion of cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, with the high­ly click­able title “The Real Rea­son Why Music Is Get­ting Worse.”

Con­sid­er the ques­tion of how we evoke one par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al era rather than anoth­er. We can use its fash­ions, its slang, or its inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, to name just a few pos­si­bil­i­ties, but noth­ing works as pow­er­ful­ly or imme­di­ate­ly as its music. Most of us grew up in a world where the sound of pop­u­lar songs changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly every decade or so. This hap­pened for many rea­sons, prac­ti­cal­ly all of them down­stream of devel­op­ments in tech­nol­o­gy. Blues­men elec­tri­fy­ing their gui­tars; Frank Sina­tra singing into micro­phones sen­si­tive enough to pick up his nuances; the Bea­t­les cre­at­ing com­plex, often strange minia­ture sound worlds in the stu­dio; rap­pers telling their sto­ries over looped frag­ments of dis­co records: all of it was made pos­si­ble by feats of engi­neer­ing.

Yet, in Beat­o’s view, tech­no­log­i­cal progress has late­ly back­fired on music, and both musi­cians and lis­ten­ers are feel­ing it. The con­ver­gence of com­put­ers and music pro­duc­tion is now com­plete, mak­ing any sound the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble at vir­tu­al­ly no cost. But “the cre­ative depen­dence on tech­nol­o­gy lim­its the abil­i­ty of peo­ple to inno­vate,” and “the over­re­liance on sim­i­lar tools” brings about “a lack of diver­si­ty” and a per­sis­tence of for­mu­la­ic trend-fol­low­ing. The ease of cre­ation has caused “an over­sat­u­ra­tion of music, mak­ing it hard­er to find real­ly excep­tion­al things.” This is tak­en to an extreme by the only-just-begin­ning avalanche of AI-gen­er­at­ed songs (and the storm of law­suits it has drawn).

Of course, if I’d known back when I was grow­ing up in the nine­teen-nineties that all the music I want­ed to lis­ten to would be made instant­ly avail­able at lit­tle or no cost, I’d have regard­ed it as the immi­nent arrival of heav­en on earth. Pre­sum­ably, the prospect would also have excit­ed the ado­les­cent Beato, bag­ging gro­ceries to save up the mon­ey to buy Led Zep­pelin and Pat Methe­ny albums in the sev­en­ties. Today, by con­trast, “music is not as val­ued by young peo­ple. There is no sweat equi­ty put into obtain­ing it, hav­ing it be part of your col­lec­tion, hav­ing it be a part of your iden­ti­ty, of who you are.”

Music, in short, has become both too easy to pro­duce and too easy to con­sume. It would be easy for any­one under 30 to dis­miss Beat­o’s argu­ment as that of a mid­dle-aged man reflex­ive­ly insist­ing that things were bet­ter in his day, when we knew the val­ue of an album. But even the youngest gen­er­a­tion of music-lovers must, at times, feel a cer­tain dis­sat­is­fac­tion amid this end­less abun­dance. To them — and to all of us — Beato says this: “Vote with your atten­tion” by try­ing to lis­ten to music delib­er­ate­ly, with­out dis­trac­tion. Per­son­al­ly, I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to not just full albums but com­plete discogra­phies, which at the very least cul­ti­vates a cer­tain dis­cern­ment. And to cross the musi­cal land­scape ahead of us, we’ll need all the dis­cern­ment we can get.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sur­pris­ing­ly Long His­to­ry of Auto-Tune, the Vocal-Pro­cess­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Music Crit­ics Love to Hate

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Bowie Songs Reimagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers: Space Oddity, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature, Music | September 15th, 2024

In the last year, screen­writer Todd Alcott’s hob­by has blown up into a legit side career.

This Etsy sell­er isn’t ped­dling kom­bucha SCOBYs, let­ter press­ing new baby announce­ments, or repur­pos­ing old barns for use as cut­ting boards.

No, Alcott’s crafty for­tunes fall square­ly at the inter­sec­tion of pulp fic­tion and rock and roll, with clas­sic song titles, lyrics, and oth­er cun­ning ref­er­ences replac­ing the cov­er text of pre-exist­ing vin­tage paper­backs.

David Bowie’s life­long fas­ci­na­tion with space trav­el, tor­tured anti heroes, and out­ra­geous fash­ion make him a nat­ur­al fit with Alcott’s ongo­ing project, which has lav­ished sim­i­lar atten­tion on such lumi­nar­ies as Bob Dylan, Radio­head, Talk­ing Heads, and Elvis Costel­lo.

As Alcott, who con­ceives of his mash ups as trib­utes to his long time musi­cal favorites, told Open Cul­ture:

Bowie dressed as an androg­y­nous alien, went out onstage and told his audi­ence “You’re not alone, give me your hands,” I can’t think of a more encom­pass­ing ges­ture to a mis­fit. No mat­ter how weird you were in your com­mu­ni­ty, you would always find some­one like you at a Bowie con­cert. Dur­ing a time of my life when I felt incred­i­bly iso­lat­ed and alone, (Bowie was one of) the key artists who made me feel like I was part of a big­ger world, an artis­tic con­tin­u­um.

Mean­while, Alcott is tend­ing to anoth­er con­tin­u­um by posthu­mous­ly pair­ing such late greats as Bowie and Queen’s Fred­die Mer­cury (“co-author” of the deep sea-themed Under Pres­sure cov­er, above) with the sort of adven­tur­ous, occa­sion­al­ly steamy read­ing mate­r­i­al that were among the hall­marks of their 1950s’ boy­hoods.

Many of these items have found their way to used book and thrift stores, where, tat­tered and worn, they pro­vide a vast trove for some­one like Alcott, who brows­es with his favorite acts’ cat­a­logues deeply imprint­ed on his men­tal hard dri­ve.

It must’ve been a grand day when he hap­pened across the above 1970s sci fi cov­er. A few deft tweaks, and Life on Mars, a nonex­is­tent “new adven­ture from the author of Space Odd­i­ty,” was born.

(Hard­core fans, take note of the doc­tored pub­lish­er in the upper left cor­ner)

Heroes, which takes its inspi­ra­tion from the 1981 X‑Men com­ic Days of Future Past, is crammed full of such East­er eggs. Can you spot them all?

What a fit­ting trib­ute to the Starman’s endur­ing hold on the public’s imag­i­na­tion.

Browse Todd Alcott’s Bowie-themed pulp fic­tion col­lec­tion in his Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury & David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Art Col­lec­tion of David Bowie: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive Tour

in History, Technology | September 13th, 2024

These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past anoth­er announce­ment about some new tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment (real­ized or sched­uled) relat­ed to space explo­ration. Some react to this by won­der­ing what could pos­si­bly be out there in the uni­verse to jus­ti­fy such enor­mous­ly cap­i­tal- and research-inten­sive projects. Cen­turies ago, sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were no doubt voiced about the more adven­tur­ous kinds of sea­far­ing. In the new Ani­ma­graffs video above, you can see all that went into the con­struc­tion and equip­ment of a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship in great detail, from the keel to the fish davit.

The par­tic­u­lar ship you see bro­ken down into its con­stituent parts in this video nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed. But it may look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you’ve seen the recon­struc­tion in Lon­don of Gold­en Hind, the galleon in which Fran­cis Drake cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the world in the fif­teen-sev­en­ties. The video’s cre­ator Jacob O’Neal drew a good deal of inspi­ra­tion from that par­tic­u­lar ship, but also incor­po­rat­ed oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics bor­rowed from the Mary Rose, the Mayflower, Swe­den’s Vas­sa, and var­i­ous Span­ish galleons of what we now regard as “the ear­ly age of sail, when ships began to cross the globe instead of mere­ly fol­low­ing coast­lines or cross­ing inter­nal bod­ies of water.”

How­ev­er advanced a mod­el it would’ve been in its day, this ship could only make a long transocean­ic jour­ney so com­fort­able for its crew of 80 or so, most of whom would’ve been sleep­ing on mats, sub­sist­ing pri­mar­i­ly on bread and beer (rationed at one gal­lon per man per day), and using rudi­men­ta­ry out­door toi­lets. Pre­sum­ably, few would have signed up for such a tri­al if not for the promise of bring­ing rich­es back from dis­tant lands — sup­ple­ment­ed, in the par­tic­u­lar case of the Gold­en Hind, by “unof­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned pira­cy of Span­ish galleons.” We have here, in oth­er words, a vari­ety of pirate ship, the vehi­cle for swash­buck­ling adven­tures fan­ta­sized about by gen­er­a­tions upon gen­er­a­tions of young­sters.

I myself nev­er dreamed of pira­cy, but I do remem­ber the rap­tur­ous gid­di­ness with which my first-grade class react­ed to learn­ing about the sail­ing ship’s “poop deck.” O’Neal does­n’t neglect that com­po­nent, but nor does he dwell on it, hav­ing many more impor­tant parts to explain and con­tex­tu­al­ize in 40 min­utes. To get an idea of how dra­mat­i­cal­ly ships evolved as the age of sail pro­gressed, have a look at his hit video on the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry HMS Vic­to­ry just above. Though the age of space explo­ration seems to have yet to begin in earnest, some of us are no doubt already psych­ing our­selves up to climb into the mod­ern equiv­a­lent of the Gold­en Hind for the 34-month trip to Mars.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

16th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese His­to­ri­ans Describe the Odd­ness of Meet­ing the First Euro­peans They Ever Saw

How an Ancient Roman Ship­wreck Could Explain the Uni­verse

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Stanford Continuing Studies Offering an Online Course Exploring the Music of the Grateful Dead

in Music | September 12th, 2024

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: On Octo­ber 3rd, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies will kick off an 8‑week online course called Did It Mat­ter? Does It Now? The Music and Cul­ture of the Grate­ful Dead. Led by David Gans (author of Play­ing in the Band: An Oral and Visu­al Por­trait of the Grate­ful Dead), the course will fea­ture a num­ber of spe­cial guests, includ­ing Jesse Jarnow (host of The Good Ol’ Grate­ful Dead­cast), Den­nis McNal­ly (author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside His­to­ry of the Grate­ful Dead) and David Lemieux (Grate­ful Dead Archivist). Open to any adult, the course descrip­tion reads:

The Grate­ful Dead’s ground­break­ing fusion of music, coun­ter­cul­ture, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment forged an endur­ing lega­cy that tran­scends gen­er­a­tions while shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of music and cul­tur­al expres­sion. Near­ly 30 years after the band played its last show, Grate­ful Dead music is more pop­u­lar than ever—in both live and record­ed form. This course invites stu­dents to delve into the phe­nom­e­non that is the Grate­ful Dead through a cap­ti­vat­ing explo­ration of the band’s his­to­ry, music, and cul­tur­al impact.

The course will fea­ture a col­lec­tion of sto­ries and con­ver­sa­tions with schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, each offer­ing facts and per­son­al per­spec­tives illu­mi­nat­ing every aspect of the Grate­ful Dead cul­ture. Togeth­er, we will take a guid­ed tour of the music in the form of focused excerpts from live and stu­dio per­for­mances to learn what makes the Dead’s music-mak­ing unique and explore the broad musi­cal uni­verse the band cre­at­ed in its 30-year his­to­ry.

Final­ly, we’ll exam­ine the Dead’s impact on soci­ety, div­ing into the band’s influ­ence on art, lit­er­a­ture, and social change, as well as its unique fan cul­ture and the phe­nom­e­non of the Dead­head. By the end of the course, stu­dents will have a well-round­ed appre­ci­a­tion for the roots, strug­gles, and mile­stones that shaped the Grate­ful Dead’s tra­jec­to­ry, an under­stand­ing of their pro­found impact on music and cul­ture, and insight into a lega­cy that still res­onates deeply today.

Again, the course starts on Thurs­day, Octo­ber 3rd. Tuition is $465. You can enroll here.

Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies also offers many oth­er cours­es online, across many dis­ci­plines, at a rea­son­able price. Check out the cat­a­logue here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er