Andy Warhol’s Lost Computer Art Found on 30-Year-Old Floppy Disks

in Art, Technology | April 25th, 2014

If you saw our post on Andy Warhol dig­i­tal­ly paint­ing Deb­bie Har­ry at the 1985 launch of the Com­modore Ami­ga 1000, you know how effu­sive­ly — effu­sive­ly by the impas­sive Warho­lian stan­dard, any­way — the artist praised the com­put­er’s artis­tic pow­er. Now, thanks to a recent dis­cov­ery by mem­bers of Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty’s Com­put­er Club, we know for sure that the mas­ter­mind behind the Fac­to­ry did­n’t sim­ply shill for Com­modore; he actu­al­ly spent time cre­at­ing work with their then-graph­i­cal­ly advanced machine, a few pieces of which, unseen for near­ly thir­ty years, just came back to light on mon­i­tors every­where. Above we have the 1985 self-por­trait Andy2. The 27 oth­er finds include a mouse-drawn ren­di­tion of his sig­na­ture Camp­bel­l’s soup can and a three-eyed Venus, sure­ly one of the eerier ear­ly uses of cut-and-paste func­tion­al­i­ty, all prod­ucts, explains the press release from The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Cre­ative Inquiry at Carnegie Mel­lon,” of a com­mis­sion by Com­modore Inter­na­tion­al to demon­strate the graph­ic arts capa­bil­i­ties of the Ami­ga 1000 per­son­al com­put­er.” 

1980s elec­tron­ics-lov­ing artist Cory Arcan­gel, upon watch­ing the video of Warhol at the launch, con­tact­ed the Andy Warhol Muse­um “regard­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of restor­ing the Ami­ga hard­ware in the museum’s pos­ses­sion.” The effort neces­si­tat­ed acts of “foren­sic retro­com­put­ing” — a del­i­cate process, since “even read­ing the data from the diskettes entailed sig­nif­i­cant risk to the con­tents.” The CMU Com­put­er Club team even had to reverse-engi­neer the “com­plete­ly unknown file for­mat” in which Warhol had saved his images. “By look­ing at these images, we can see how quick­ly Warhol seemed to intu­it the essence of what it meant to express one­self, in what then was a brand-new medi­um: the dig­i­tal,” Arcan­gel says in the press release. “FYI, it was the most fun project I ever worked on,” he says on his blog — a mean­ing­ful state­ment indeed, since so much of his oth­er work involves old Nin­ten­do games. The Hill­man Pho­tog­ra­phy Ini­tia­tive cap­tured it all in a film called Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments, which pre­mieres Sat­ur­day, May 10, at Pitts­burgh’s Carnegie Library Lec­ture Hall, there­after becom­ing view­able at nowseethis.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s Christ­mas Art

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Made Drugs Look Like Fun

in Animation, Film | April 24th, 2014

The Rea­gan pres­i­den­cy was prob­a­bly the gold­en age of anti-drug mes­sag­ing. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a fry­ing pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids sim­ply to “Just Say No.” The mes­sage was stu­pe­fy­ing­ly sim­ple. Drugs, like Com­mu­nism and tax­es, are bad.

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970s, how­ev­er, that anti-drug mes­sage was much more con­fused. Take for exam­ple Curi­ous Alice, a visu­al­ly stun­ning, deeply odd movie about the per­ils of drug abuse that makes the stuff look like a lot of fun. Cre­at­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health in 1971, the film shows young Alice read­ing Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land in a sun­ny dap­pled mead­ow before nod­ding off. She soon finds her­self plung­ing down the rab­bit hole and in a won­der­land … of drugs. The King of Hearts is hawk­ing hero­in. The Mad Hat­ter is trip­ping balls on LSD. The hookah-smok­ing Cater­pil­lar is stoned out of his gourd. The Dor­mouse is in a bar­bi­tu­rate-induced stu­por and the March Hare, who looks like the Trix Bunny’s ne’er-do-well broth­er, is a fid­get­ing tweak­er. “You ough­ta have some pep pills! Uppers!” he exclaims. “Amphet­a­mines! Speed! You feel super good.”

The movie was report­ed­ly intend­ed for eight year-olds. While it’s unlike­ly that your aver­age third grad­er is going to absorb Alice’s mor­al­iz­ing about acid, they will almost cer­tain­ly respond to the film’s trip­py, Mon­ty Pythonesque ani­ma­tion. The ani­ma­tors clear­ly had a blast mak­ing this movie, but their efforts didn’t exact­ly trans­late into an effec­tive mes­sage. After the movie came out, the Nation­al Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil on Drug Edu­ca­tion slammed the movie, call­ing it con­fus­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

As an adult, how­ev­er, the movie is a lot of fun. So check it out above. And if you live in either Col­orado or Wash­ing­ton, feel free to enjoy the movie in a state that it is prob­a­bly best appre­ci­at­ed.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reefer Mad­ness, 1936′s Most Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Hilar­i­ous “Anti-Drug” Exploita­tion Film, Free Online

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Alice in Won­der­land: The Orig­i­nal 1903 Film Adap­ta­tion

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

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.

Who Are the Most Pernicious Thinkers? A List of Five Bad Western Philosophers: Name Your Own

in Philosophy | April 24th, 2014

Over at his blog Leit­er Reports, UC Chica­go pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy Bri­an Leit­er is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a very inter­est­ing poll, ask­ing his read­ers to rank the 25 philoso­phers of “the mod­ern era” (the last 200 years) who “have had the most per­ni­cious influ­ence on phi­los­o­phy.” The pool of can­di­dates comes from an ear­li­er sur­vey of influ­en­tial philoso­phers, and Leit­er has imposed some con­di­tions on his respon­dents, ask­ing that they only rank philoso­phers they have read, and only include “seri­ous philosophers”–“no char­la­tans like Der­ri­da or ama­teurs like Rand.” While I per­son­al­ly wince at Leit­er’s Der­ri­da jab (and cheer his exclu­sion of Rand), I think his ques­tion may be a lit­tle too aca­d­e­m­ic, his field per­haps too nar­row.

But the polem­i­cal idea is so com­pelling that I felt it worth adopt­ing for a broad­er infor­mal sur­vey: con­tra Leit­er, I’ve ranked five philoso­phers who I think have had a most per­ni­cious influ­ence on the world at large. I’m lim­it­ing my own choic­es to West­ern philoso­phers, with which I’m most famil­iar, though obvi­ous­ly by my first choice, you can tell I’ve expand­ed the tem­po­ral para­me­ters. And in sport­ing lis­ti­cle fash­ion, I’ve not only made a rank­ing, but I’ve blurbed each of my choic­es, inspired by this fun Neatora­ma post, “9 Bad Boys of Phi­los­o­phy.”

While that list uses “bad” in the Michael Jack­son sense, I mean it in the sense of Leit­er’s “per­ni­cious.” And though I would also include the pro­vi­so that only “seri­ous” thinkers war­rant inclu­sion, I don’t think this nec­es­sar­i­ly rules out any­one on the basis of aca­d­e­m­ic canons of taste. One might as well include C.S. Lewis as Jean Bau­drillard, both of whom tend to get dis­missed in most phi­los­o­phy depart­ments. My own list sure­ly reveals my anti-author­i­tar­i­an bias­es, just as some oth­ers may rail at fuzzy think­ing with a list of post­mod­ernists, or social­ism with a list of Marx­ists. This is as it should be. Defin­ing the “bad,” after all, is bound to be a high­ly sub­jec­tive exer­cise, and one about which we can and should dis­agree, civil­ly but vig­or­ous­ly. So with no more ado, here are my five choic­es for “Most Per­ni­cious West­ern Philoso­phers.” I invite—nay urge you—to make your own lists in the com­ments, with expla­na­tions terse or pro­lix as you see fit.

1. Thomas Aquinas

The Domini­can fri­ar and author of the near-unread­ably dense Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca made it his life’s work to har­mo­nize log­i­cal Aris­totelian thought and mys­ti­cal Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, to the detri­ment of both. While for Aquinas and his medieval con­tem­po­raries, nat­ur­al the­ol­o­gy rep­re­sents an ear­ly attempt at empiri­cism, the empha­sis on the “the­ol­o­gy” meant that the West has endured cen­turies of spu­ri­ous “proofs” of God’s exis­tence and com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble ratio­nal­iza­tions of the Trin­i­ty, the vir­gin birth, and oth­er mirac­u­lous tales that have no ana­logue in observ­able phe­nom­e­na.

Like many church fathers before him, Thomas’s employ­ment as a kind of Grand Inquisi­tor of heretics and a cod­i­fi­er of dog­ma makes me all the more averse to his thought, though much of it is admit­ted­ly of great his­tor­i­cal import.

2. Carl Schmitt

Schmitt was a Nazi, which—as in the case of Mar­tin Heidegger—strangely hasn’t dis­qual­i­fied his thought from seri­ous appraisal across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. But some of Schmitt’s ideas—or at least their application—are par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling even when ful­ly divorced from his per­son­al pol­i­tics. Schmitt the­o­rized that sov­er­eign rulers, or dic­ta­tors, emerge in a “state of exception”—a secu­ri­ty cri­sis with which a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety can­not seem to cope, but which is ripe for exploita­tion by dom­i­neer­ing indi­vid­u­als. These “states” can legit­i­mate­ly appear at any time, or can be ginned up by unscrupu­lous rulers. The cru­cial insight has inspired such left­ist thinkers as Wal­ter Ben­jamin and the­o­rists on the right like Leo Strauss. Its polit­i­cal effects are some­thing alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent. Writes Scott Hor­ton in Harper’s:

It was Schmitt who, as the crown jurist of the new Nazi regime, pro­vid­ed the essen­tial road map for Gle­ich­schal­tung – the lev­el­ing of oppo­si­tion with­in Germany’s vast bureau­cra­cy – and it was he who pro­vid­ed the legal tools used to trans­form the Weimar democ­ra­cy into the Nazi night­mare that fol­lowed it.

This same road map—many have alleged—guided the uni­lat­er­al sus­pen­sions of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions and human rights pro­to­cols machi­nat­ed by Bush and Cheney’s Neo­con­ser­v­a­tive legal advi­sors after 9/11, who read Schmitt thor­ough­ly. (I intend here no direct com­par­i­son what­ev­er between these two regimes, God­win will­ing.)

3. John Locke

Though he wrote copi­ous­ly on epis­te­mol­o­gy, reli­gious tol­er­a­tion, edu­ca­tion, and all sorts of oth­er impor­tant top­ics, Locke is often remem­bered as everyone’s favorite lib­er­al polit­i­cal philoso­pher. His anony­mous­ly pub­lished Two Trea­tis­es of Gov­ern­ment has had an out­sized influ­ence on most mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tions, and giv­en his pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist in the first part of that work—Sir Robert Filmer, staunch defend­er of the divine right of kings and nat­ur­al hierarchies—Locke seems pos­i­tive­ly pro­gres­sive, what with his defense of a civ­il soci­ety based on respect for labor and pri­vate prop­er­ty against the unwar­rant­ed pow­er and abuse of the aris­toc­ra­cy.

But Locke’s Filmer works as some­thing of a straw man. Exam­ined crit­i­cal­ly, Locke is no demo­c­ra­t­ic cham­pi­on but an apol­o­gist for the pet­ty tyran­ny of landown­ers who grad­u­al­ly erod­ed the com­mons, dis­placed the com­mon­ers, and seized greater and greater tracts of land in Eng­land and the colonies under the Lock­ean jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that a man is enti­tled to as much prop­er­ty as he can make use of. Of course, in Locke’s time, and in our own, pro­pri­etors and landown­ers seize and “make use of” the resources and labor of others—slaves, indige­nous peo­ple, and exploit­ed, land­less workers—in order to make their extrav­a­gant claims to pri­vate prop­er­ty. This kind of appro­pri­a­tion is also enabled by Locke’s thought, since prop­er­ty only just­ly belongs to the “indus­tri­ous and the ratio­nal”— char­ac­ter­is­tics that tend to get defined against their oppo­sites (“lazy and stu­pid”) in any way that suits those in pow­er.

4. Rene Descartes

Anoth­er dar­ling of Enlight­en­ment tra­di­tion, Descartes gets all the cred­it for found­ing a phi­los­o­phy on rad­i­cal doubt, and there­by doing away with the pre­sup­po­si­tion­al the­o­log­i­cal bag­gage imposed on thought by scholas­tics like Aquinas. And yet, like Locke, Descartes gets too easy a pass for reduc­ing his method to terms that are by no means unequiv­o­cal or uni­ver­sal­ly mean­ing­ful, though he pre­tends that they are.

Descartes explains his method as a means of elim­i­nat­ing from his mind all con­cep­tu­al clut­ter but those ideas that seem to him “clear and dis­tinct.” Odd­ly the two bedrock con­cepts he’s left with are an unshake­able faith in his own indi­vid­ual ego—or soul—and the exis­tence of a monothe­is­tic cre­ator-God. Thus, Descartes’ method of rad­i­cal doubt leads him to reaf­firm the two most core con­cepts of clas­si­cal West­ern phi­los­o­phy, con­cepts he more or less assumes on the basis of intuition—or per­haps unex­am­ined ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments.

5. Søren Kierkegaard

This is a tough one, because I actu­al­ly adore Kierkegaard, but I love him as a writer, not as a philoso­pher. His cri­tiques of Hegel are scathing and hilar­i­ous, his take­downs of the self-sat­is­fied Dan­ish petit-bour­geoisie are epic, and the tonal range and iron­ic deft­ness of his numer­ous lit­er­ary voices—personae as diverse as desert saints and schem­ing seducers—are unequalled.

But I recoil from the eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of Søren Kierkegaard, as so many peo­ple recoil from Nietzsche’s brinks­man­ship with tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. Kierkegaard’s reduc­tion of the human expe­ri­ence to a false choice paradigm—“Either/Or”—, his ethics of blind irra­tional­ism couched as a jus­ti­fi­able leap of faith, exem­pli­fied by his glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Abraham’s will­ing­ness to kill his son Isaac… these things I can’t help but find abhor­rent, and if I’ve ever been tempt­ed to read them as iron­ic expres­sions of the author’s many masks, fur­ther study has robbed me of this balm. Kierkegaard the writer offers us a great deal; Kierkegaard the moral philoso­pher, not so much.

So there you have my list—riddled, to be sure, with inac­cu­ra­cies, prej­u­dice, and super­fi­cial mis­read­ings, but an hon­est attempt nonethe­less, giv­en my inad­e­quate philo­soph­i­cal train­ing. Again I’ll say that the inclu­sion of any of these five names in a list of philoso­phers, per­ni­cious or no, means that I believe they are all thinkers worth read­ing and tak­ing seri­ous­ly to some degree, even if one vio­lent­ly dis­agrees with them or finds glar­ing and griev­ous error in the midst of seas of bril­liance.

Now that you’ve read my “Five Most Per­ni­cious Philoso­phers,” please tell us read­ers, who are yours, and why? Your grip­ing expla­na­tions can be as short or long as you see fit, and feel free to vio­lent­ly dis­agree with my hasty judg­ments above. Ad hominem attacks aside, it’s all with­in the spir­it of the enter­prise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Forrest Gump Directed by Wes Anderson: Here’s What It Would Look Like

in Film | April 24th, 2014

Take For­rest Gump, the 1994 film direct­ed by Robert Zemeck­is and star­ring Tom Han­ks. Now let’s give it a Wes Ander­son makeover. That’s the exer­cise Louis Paquet went through above, in mak­ing a short Ander­so­n­ion ver­sion of For­rest Gump’s open­ing cred­its. If you need an intro­duc­tion to Ander­son­’s sig­na­ture style, we’ve got a few help­ful posts for you below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch a Super Cut of Wes Anderson’s Sig­na­ture Slo-Mo Shots

Take a Virtual Tour of the Dictionary Shakespeare May Have Owned and Annotated

in History, Literature | April 24th, 2014

You sure­ly heard plen­ty about Shake­speare’s birth­day yes­ter­day. But did you hear about Shake­speare’s bee­hive? No, the Bard did­n’t moon­light as an api­arist, though in his main line of work as a poet and drama­tist he sure­ly had to con­sult his dic­tio­nary fair­ly often. The ques­tion of whether human­i­ty has an iden­ti­fi­able copy of such an illus­tri­ous ref­er­ence vol­ume gets explored in the new book Shake­speare’s Bee­hive: An Anno­tat­ed Eliz­a­bethan Dic­tio­nary Comes to Light by book­seller-schol­ars George Kop­pel­man and Daniel Wech­sler. In their study, they reveal that they may have come into pos­ses­sion of Shake­speare’s very own copy of Baret’s Alvearie, a pop­u­lar clas­si­cal quote-laden Eng­lish-Latin-Greek-French dic­tio­nary the man who wrote King Lear would have found “the per­fect tool, a hon­ey-combed bee­hive of pos­si­bil­i­ties that may not have formed his way of think­ing, but cer­tain­ly fed his appetite and nour­ished his selec­tion.” He would have, at least, if indeed he owned it. Some sol­id Shake­speare schol­ar­ship points toward his own­ing a copy of Baret’s Alvearie, but did he own this one, the rich­ly anno­tat­ed one these guys found on eBay?

Experts haven’t exact­ly stepped for­ward in force to back up their claim. Plau­si­ble objec­tions include, as Adam Gop­nik puts it in a (sub­scribers-only) New York­er piece on this Alvearie in par­tic­u­lar and human­i­ty’s desire for Shake­speare­an arti­facts in gen­er­al: “the hand­writ­ing just does­n’t look like Shake­speare’s,” “since Shake­speare wrote Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish, any work of Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish is going to con­tain echoes of Shake­speare,” and, of all pos­si­ble anno­ta­tors of this par­tic­u­lar phys­i­cal book, Shake­speare “is a prime can­di­date only because we don’t know the names of all the oth­er bird-lov­ing, inquis­i­tive read­ers who also liked their dabchicks and their French verbs.” Still, in a strik­ing act of open­ness, Kop­pel­man and Wech­sler have made their — and Shake­speare’s? — Alvearie avail­able for your dig­i­tal perusal on their site. You have to reg­is­ter as a mem­ber first, but then you can draw your own con­clu­sions about Kop­pel­man and Weschler’s dis­cov­ery — or, as even they call it, their “leap of faith.” Over­en­thu­si­as­tic words, per­haps, but sel­dom do either suc­cess­ful anti­quar­i­an book deal­ers or ded­i­cat­ed Shake­speare fans lack enthu­si­asm.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed  Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How British Codebreakers Built the First Electronic Computer

in Google, History, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2014

It was only a mat­ter of time before the folks at Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute wan­dered down the road in Moun­tain View to vis­it the Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um. Togeth­er they’ve tak­en on a slim lit­tle sub­ject, Rev­o­lu­tion: The First 2000 Years of Com­put­ing

Unlike the best Cul­tur­al Insti­tute exhibits (the fall of the Iron Cur­tain and the daz­zling array of oth­er art and his­to­ry col­lec­tions come to mind) this one doesn’t do enough to lever­age video to bring the mate­r­i­al to life. It’s a breezy lit­tle tour from the hum­ble (but effec­tive) aba­cus to punched cards, mag­net­ic discs and the dawn of minia­tur­iza­tion and net­work­ing.

But noth­ing about how the Inter­net devel­oped, lead­ing to the Web and, now, the Inter­net of Every­thing?

I’ll admit that I learned a few things. I hadn’t heard of the design-for­ward Cray 1 super­com­put­er with its round tow­er (to min­i­mize wire lengths) and bench to dis­crete­ly hide pow­er sup­plies. The Xerox Alto came with con­sumer friend­ly fea­tures includ­ing a mouse, email and the capac­i­ty to print exact­ly what was on the screen. The unfor­tu­nate acronym for this asset wasWYSI­WYG (What You See Is What You Get).

I had also nev­er heard about the Utah teapot, a pic­ture of a gleam­ing white ceram­ic urn used for 20 years as the bench­mark for real­is­tic light, shade and col­or in com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images.

“>http://youtu.be/amRQ-xfCuR4

More inter­est­ing, and up to the Cul­tur­al Institute’s stan­dards, is the exhib­it built in part­ner­ship with the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing in Buck­ing­hamshire, Eng­land. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of his­to­ry, focus­ing on Hitler’s efforts to encrypt mes­sages dur­ing the war and stump the Allied forces. He com­mis­sioned con­struc­tion of a super-sophis­ti­cat­ed machine (not Enig­ma, if you’re think­ing of that). The machine was called Lorenz and it took encryp­tion to an entire­ly new lev­el.

“>http://youtu.be/knXWMjIA59c

British lin­guists and oth­ers labored to man­u­al­ly deci­pher the mes­sages. Attempts to speed the process led to devel­op­ment of Colos­sus, the world’s first elec­tron­ic comuter. The project was kept secret by the British gov­ern­ment until 1975.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

H.G. Wells Interviews Joseph Stalin in 1934; Declares “I Am More to The Left Than You, Mr. Stalin”

in History, Literature | April 23rd, 2014

From the 20/20 point of view of the present, Joseph Stal­in was one of the 20th century’s great mon­sters. He ter­ri­fied the Sovi­et Union with cam­paign after cam­paign of polit­i­cal purges, he moved whole pop­u­la­tions into Siberia and he arguably killed more peo­ple than Hitler. But it took decades for the scope of his crimes to get out, most­ly because, unlike Hitler, Stal­in stuck to killing his own peo­ple.

In ear­ly 1930s, how­ev­er, Stal­in was con­sid­ered by many to be the leader of the future. That peri­od was, of course, the nadir of the Great Depres­sion. Cap­i­tal­ism seemed to be com­ing apart at the seams. The USSR promised a new soci­ety ruled not by the oli­garchs of Wall Street but by the peo­ple — a soci­ety where every­one was equal.

H.G. Wells inter­viewed Stal­in in Moscow in 1934 for the mag­a­zine The New States­man. Wells was an avowed social­ist and one of the left’s most influ­en­tial authors. His first nov­el, The Time Machine, is essen­tial­ly an alle­go­ry for class strug­gle after all. The inter­view between the two is fas­ci­nat­ing.

Wells opens the piece by stat­ing that he speaks for the com­mon peo­ple. While that point is debat­able — Stal­in calls him out on that asser­tion – Wells does speak in a man­ner that is read­i­ly under­stand­able. Stal­in, in con­trast, speaks in flu­ent Polit­buro. The bland­ness of his speech, choked with Com­mu­nist boil­er­plate, seems designed to make the lis­ten­er tune out. But then he drops lit­tle bon mots into his mono­logues that hint at the vio­lence he has unleashed on his coun­try. Take this line for instance:

Rev­o­lu­tion, the sub­sti­tu­tion of one social sys­tem for anoth­er, has always been a strug­gle, a painful and a cru­el strug­gle, a life-and-death strug­gle.

It’s a chill­ing line. Espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that at the time of this inter­view, Stal­in was just start­ing to launch his first wave of polit­i­cal purges and he was plot­ting to assas­si­nate his main polit­i­cal rival Sergei Kirov.

As the inter­view unfolds, you can imag­ine Wells grow­ing increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed by Stalin’s nar­row, dog­mat­ic view of the world. The Sovi­et leader, as Wells lat­er wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “has lit­tle of the quick uptake of Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt and none of the sub­tle­ty and tenac­i­ty of Lenin. … His was not a free impul­sive brain nor a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly orga­nized brain; it was a trained Lenin­ist-Marx­ist brain.”

At sev­er­al points in the inter­view Wells chal­lenges Stal­in: “I object to this sim­pli­fied clas­si­fi­ca­tion of mankind into poor and rich,” the author fumes.

And when Stal­in doesn’t agree with Wells that the Cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem was on its last legs, the author actu­al­ly chides him for not being rev­o­lu­tion­ary enough. “It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stal­in; I think the old sys­tem is near­er to its end than you think.” Now that’s chutz­pah.

In the end, the inter­view presents a duel­ing ver­sion of the future of the left. Wells believed, in essence, that the Cap­i­tal­ist world only need­ed to be reformed, albeit dras­ti­cal­ly, to achieve eco­nom­ic jus­tice. And Stal­in argued that Cap­i­tal­ism had to be torn down com­plete­ly before any oth­er reform could take place.

In spite of their dif­fer­ences, Wells left the inter­view with a pos­i­tive impres­sion of the Sovi­et leader. “I have nev­er met a man more fair, can­did, and hon­est,” he wrote.

Wells died in 1946 before the worst of Stalin’s crimes became known to the out­side world. Stal­in died in 1953.  Fol­low­ing a stroke, his body remained on the floor in a pool of urine for hours before a doc­tor was called. His min­ions were ter­ri­fied that he might wake up and order their exe­cu­tion.

You can read the entire inter­view between H.G. Wells and Stal­in on The New States­men’s web­site here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co

Learn Russ­ian from our List of Free Lan­guage Lessons

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.

Free Stream of Indie Cindy, the Pixies’ First Album in 23 Years

in Music | April 22nd, 2014

A quick fyi: Indie Cindy, the Pix­ies’ first album since 1991, will be released on April 29th. But thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site, you can stream the entire LP online for free, for a lim­it­ed time. Though the band might not sound the same with­out Kim Deal, Pix­ies fans will instant­ly rec­og­nize the “dis­arm­ing beau­ty nes­tled against dis­so­nant snarls.” Above, you can lis­ten to the album’s title track. Here you can stream the entire album or the indi­vid­ual tracks — or pre-order it on iTunes or over at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pix­ies “Acoustic Ses­sions”: See the Alt-Rock Stars Rehearse for the 2005 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis Cre­ates Sound­track for Famous Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem

Slavoj Žižek: What Fulfils You Creatively Isn’t What Makes You Happy

in Philosophy | April 22nd, 2014

While the­o­rist and provo­ca­teur Slavoj Žižek tends to get characterized—especially in a recent, testy exchange with Noam Chom­sky—as obscu­ran­tist and mud­dle-head­ed, I’ve always found him quite read­able, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to his men­tor, psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic philoso­pher Jacques Lacan. As an inter­preter of Lacan’s the­o­ries, Žižek always does his read­er the cour­tesy of pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic, con­crete exam­ples to anchor the the­o­ret­i­cal jar­gon (where Lacan gives us pseu­do-math­e­mat­i­cal sym­bols). In the short Big Think clip above, Žižek’s exam­ples range from the his­to­ry of physics to the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence to the famil­iar “male chau­vin­ist” sce­nario of a man, his wife, and his mis­tress. Žižek’s point, the point of psy­cho­analy­sis, he alleges, is that “peo­ple do not real­ly want or desire hap­pi­ness.”

This seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive. Happiness—our own and others—is after all the goal of our lofti­est endeav­ors, no? This seems to be the pop-psych ren­di­tion of, say, Maslow’s the­o­ry of self-actu­al­iza­tion. But no, says Zizek, hap­pi­ness is an inte­gral part of fan­ta­sy. Like the philanderer’s mis­tress, the object of desire must be kept at a dis­tance, he says. Once it is achieved, we no longer want it: “We don’t real­ly want what we think we desire.” And in keep­ing with Žižek’s exam­ple of infidelity—which may or may not involve the chau­vin­ist killing his wife—he tells us that for him, “hap­pi­ness is an uneth­i­cal cat­e­go­ry.” I find this state­ment intrigu­ing, and per­sua­sive, though Žižek doesn’t elab­o­rate on it above.

He does in much of his writ­ing however—explaining in Lacan­ian terms in his essay col­lec­tion Inter­ro­gat­ing the Real that our desire for some­thing we think will bring us hap­pi­ness can be con­strued as a kind of envy: “I desire an object only inso­far as it is desired by the Oth­er.” Fur­ther­more, he writes, “what I desire is deter­mined by the sym­bol­ic net­work with­in which I artic­u­late my sub­jec­tive posi­tion.” In oth­er words, what we think we want is deter­mined by ideology—by the cul­tur­al prod­ucts we con­sume, the soup of mass media and adver­tis­ing in which we are per­ma­nent­ly immersed, and the polit­i­cal ideals we are taught to revere. What does authen­tic “self-actu­al­iza­tion” look like for Slavoj Žižek? He tells us above—it means being “ready to suf­fer” for the cre­ative real­iza­tion of a goal: “Hap­pi­ness doesn’t enter into it.”

Žižek cites the exam­ple of nuclear sci­en­tists who will­ing­ly exposed them­selves to radi­a­tion poi­son­ing in pur­suit of dis­cov­ery, but he could just as well have point­ed to artists and writ­ers who sac­ri­fice com­fort and plea­sure for lives of pro­found uncer­tain­ty, reli­gious fig­ures who prac­tice all kinds of aus­ter­i­ties, or ath­letes who push their bod­ies past all ordi­nary lim­its. While there are sev­er­al degrees of plea­sure involved in these endeav­ors, it seems shal­low at best to describe the goals of such peo­ple as hap­pi­ness. It seems that many, if not most, of the peo­ple we admire and strive to emu­late lead lives char­ac­ter­ized by great risk—by the will­ing­ness to suf­fer; lives often con­tain­ing lit­tle in the way of actu­al hap­pi­ness.

What­ev­er stock one puts in psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry, it seems to me that Žižek rais­es some vital ques­tions: Do we real­ly want what we think we want, or is the “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” an uneth­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy? What do you think, read­ers?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Slavoj Žižek on the Feel-Good Ide­ol­o­gy of Star­bucks

In His Lat­est Film, Slavoj Žižek Claims “The Only Way to Be an Athe­ist is Through Chris­tian­i­ty”

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

Close Personal Friend: Watch a 1996 Portrait of Gen‑X Definer Douglas Coupland

in Film, Literature, Technology | April 22nd, 2014

Whether we lived through them as kids or as grown-ups, few of us feel sure about whether we miss the 1990s. No gen­er­a­tion did more to define the decade before last, at least in the West, than the unmoored, irony-lov­ing, at once deeply cyn­i­cal and deeply earnest “Gen­er­a­tion X” that suc­ceed­ed the wealth­i­er, more influ­en­tial Baby Boomers. No writer did more to define that gen­er­a­tion than Dou­glas Cou­p­land, the Cana­di­an nov­el­ist, visu­al artist, and seer of the imme­di­ate future whose 1991 lit­er­ary debut Gen­er­a­tion X: Tales for an Accel­er­at­ed Cul­ture gave the cohort its name. There he wrote of the twen­tysome­things who lived through the 1990s def­i­nite­ly not as kids, yet, frus­trat­ing­ly, not quite as grown-ups, com­ing hap­less­ly to grips in the mar­gins of a human expe­ri­ence that an advanced civ­i­liza­tion had already begun detach­ing from sup­posed expec­ta­tions — jobs, hous­es, sta­bil­i­ty, tight con­nec­tion between mind and body, unques­tion­ably “real” lived expe­ri­ence — of gen­er­a­tions before.

Cou­p­land, also a pro­lif­ic sculp­tor (next time you get to his home­town of Van­cou­ver, do vis­it the some­how always strik­ing Dig­i­tal Orca), writer of the film Every­thing’s Gone Green, star of the doc­u­men­tary Sou­venir of Cana­da, and now the devel­op­er of a snor­ing-assis­tance smart­phone app, knows a thing or two about switch­ing media. Five years after break­ing out with Gen­er­a­tion X, he also made Close Per­son­al Friend, the not-quite-cat­e­go­riz­able short about tech­nol­o­gy, mem­o­ry, and iden­ti­ty at the top of the post. In what plays as a cross between a Chris Mark­er-style essay film and a mid­dle-peri­od MTV music video, Cou­p­land con­tin­ues his career-long rumi­na­tion about our “accel­er­at­ed cul­ture” and the fas­ci­nat­ing­ly empow­ered yet com­pro­mised human beings to which it gives rise. What does it mean in this mod­ern, hyper­me­di­at­ed con­text, he won­ders, that we now won­der whether we actu­al­ly have lives? “Not hav­ing a life is so com­mon,” he says. “It’s almost become the norm. […] Peo­ple just aren’t get­ting their year’s worth of year any­more.”

Giv­en our cul­ture’s fur­ther accel­er­a­tion since he spoke those words in 1996 — the world wide web as we know it hav­ing got its start just three years before — Cou­p­land’s thoughts on the sub­ject, whether expressed in fic­tion, through sculp­ture, or onscreen, still sound plen­ty rel­e­vant. Close Per­son­al Friend, with its void­like back­drops, video-blender edit­ing, and scat­tered clips of whole­some mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana, bears the aes­thet­ic mark of its era. Cou­p­land’s faint­ly omi­nous talk of “FedEx, Prozac, microwave ovens, and fax machines” also time-stamps it tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. But the obser­va­tions have car­ried through, only grow­ing sharp­er, to his lat­est work. Asked to imag­ine the “two dom­i­nant activ­i­ties” of life twen­ty years hence, the Cou­p­land of 1996 names “going shop­ping and going to jail,” pur­suits he sees as now merged in his essay col­lec­tion pub­lished last year, Shop­ping in Jail. Just above, we have a half-hour con­ver­sa­tion between Cou­p­land and Q host Jian Ghome­shi about his even new­er book, a study of mis­an­thropy in nov­el form called Worst. Per­son. Ever. In the talk, he cites “I miss my pre-inter­net brain,” a slo­gan he made up that has gained much trac­tion in recent years. But does he real­ly? “No,” he admits. “It was bor­ing back then!” Close Per­son­al Friend will be added to our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Pod­cast

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.