Johnny Rotten’s Cordial Letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pistols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

in Letters, Music | July 10th, 2013

The Sex Pis­tols cer­tain­ly weren’t the first to balk at show­ing up to receive a tro­phy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induc­tion cer­e­mo­ny. They were, how­ev­er, notable for the style in which they declined to attend. When word came in ear­ly 2006 that the Pis­tols would be induct­ed, the band’s singer John Lydon, whose stage name was “John­ny Rot­ten,” faxed the Hall of Fame a hand­writ­ten note. “Next to the SEX-PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain,” wrote Lydon. “Your muse­um. Urine in wine. Were not com­ing. Were not your mon­key and so what?” You can read the rest above, or watch below as a bemused Jann Wen­ner, co-founder of the muse­um, reads the let­ter out loud dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock: A Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Doc­u­men­taries, Begins with Black Flag

Mal­colm McLaren on The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Punk Meets High Fash­ion in Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Exhi­bi­tion PUNK: Chaos to Cou­ture

Download a Free Course from “The Great Courses” Through Audible.com’s Free Trial Program

in Audio Books, Online Courses | July 10th, 2013

Hard­ly a day goes by where I’m not doing one of two things — lis­ten­ing to an audio book from Audible.com, or lis­ten­ing to a lec­ture from The Great Cours­es (for­mer­ly known as The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny). So, I was nat­u­ral­ly pleased when the two com­pa­nies announced a part­ner­ship yes­ter­day. From now on, Audi­ble sub­scribers can down­load courses/lectures from The Great Cours­es, and they’re pret­ty cheap. For exam­ple, mem­bers of Audi­ble’s Gold plan can pur­chase a pol­ished 36-hour course, such as How to Lis­ten to and Under­stand Great Music, for rough­ly $15. Not bad, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that it would cost expo­nen­tial­ly more to buy it direct­ly through the Great Cours­es’ web site. If you’ve nev­er tried out Audi­ble or The Great Cours­es, then you may want to sign up for Audible’s 30-Day Free Tri­al. It will let you down­load any one course for free. NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram.

If none of the above sounds any good, well, you could always lose your­self in our col­lec­tions of 900 Free Audio Books and 1700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

The Grateful Dead’s “Ultimate Bootleg” Now Online & Added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry

in Music | July 10th, 2013

I have known many a Dead­head, and I’ve loved ‘em—friends and friends of friends; I’ve hung out in park­ing lots, at par­ties and camp­sites, and done what ‘Heads do in such gath­er­ings. And yet, to para­phrase St. Paul, I was in the scene but not of it, nev­er one of the faith­ful, just a hang­er-on in a world that bemused me, lis­ten­ing to music whose intense appeal I didn’t quite get. Don’t get me wrong; I thought the first album was a coun­try-rock clas­sic. But that’s where my Dead knowl­edge end­ed. Of the two six­ties bands who both once called them­selves The Warlocks—The Dead and The Vel­vet Underground—my psy­che­del­ic tastes ran decid­ed­ly in the East Coast direc­tion.

So I’m prob­a­bly as far as it gets from an expert on the labyrinthine world of Grate­ful Dead bootlegs. But I have to admit, just like the park­ing lot scene the young, aloof me observed through the eyes of my old hip­pie friends, I’m intrigued and a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed by the obses­sive cat­a­logu­ing of Dead­head fan­dom.

My teenage punk-rock self admired the DIY ethos, despite seri­ous styl­is­tic mis­giv­ings, and now as a grown-up who couldn’t care less about labels, I’m find­ing the time to go back and re-lis­ten to some of those boot­leg record­ings. I’m catch­ing up on the his­to­ry of live Dead by read­ing Nick Paumgarten’s exhaus­tive “Dead­head: The After­life” arti­cle in The New York­er, and luck­i­ly for me, and for the real fans too, the days of trad­ing tapes are gone. Hun­dreds of hours of live con­cert audio now exist in the Inter­net Archive.

One of those con­cert recordings—the May 8, 1977 Bar­ton Hall/Cornell Uni­ver­si­ty gig avail­able above in its entirety—is said by some to be the “ulti­mate boot­leg.” I’m in no posi­tion to judge, so I’ll quote the Library of Congress’s Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry, who write that this record­ing “has achieved almost myth­ic sta­tus among ‘Dead­head’ tape traders because of its excel­lent sound qual­i­ty and ear­ly acces­si­bil­i­ty.” The LOC also points out that “fans of the Grate­ful Dead will nev­er com­plete­ly agree about which one of their over 2,300 con­certs was the best.” Debates like this can, and should, go on for­ev­er. If they didn’t, whole sub­cul­tures would shriv­el up and die. The arm­chair anthro­pol­o­gist in me thinks that would be a shame. The music fan (and inner hip­pie) in me is hap­py to groove to what­ev­er catch­es my fan­cy these days, and I’m get­ting down to this one, for sure.

Note: You can find more infor­ma­tion on the Bar­ton Hall/Cornell con­cert here. And here you can find 13 essen­tial bootlegs select­ed by Nick Paum­garten, com­plete with links to audio from the con­certs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

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

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

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

Three Great Films Starring Charlie Chaplin, the True Icon of Silent Comedy

in Comedy, Film | July 10th, 2013

Writ­ing about the sort of cre­ators and works of art we do here at Open Cul­ture, I con­stant­ly strug­gle not to overuse the word “icon­ic.” But in the case of actor and film­mak­er Char­lie Chap­lin, no oth­er adjec­tive could do. When we call Chap­lin icon­ic, we mean it lit­er­al­ly: not only did he find great suc­cess as a com­ic fig­ure in the silent-film era, he visu­al­ly rep­re­sents the con­cept of a com­ic fig­ure in the silent film era. Yet he did­n’t attain icon sta­tus in just one form, hav­ing con­tin­u­al­ly tweaked, refined, and improved his look and sen­si­bil­i­ty through­out his 75-year career. Now, 35 years after his death, we see all of these per­for­mances as sub­tly dif­fer­ent but still rec­og­nize them as expres­sions of the broad­er Chap­lin per­sona. At the top of the post, you can watch the film that estab­lished his most beloved one, 1915’s The Tramp.

But the Lit­tle Tramp did­n’t emerge ful­ly formed just then and there. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the char­ac­ter debuted in the pre­vi­ous year’s Kid Auto Races at Venice, and even before that, Chap­lin por­trayed a few fel­lows we might call pro­to-Tramps. Just above, you’ll find 1914’s Mak­ing a Liv­ing, a pic­ture that casts the Lon­don-born Chap­lin, with hat, cane, and mus­tache, as flir­ta­tious thief Hen­ry Eng­lish. His crim­i­nal ways lead him into the path of those oth­er silent-com­e­dy stal­warts (if not quite icons), the Key­stone Kops. A decade lat­er, Chap­lin, by that point the quin­tes­sen­tial writ­ing-direct­ing-act­ing auteur, would­n’t need to share the screen. In 1925, he made the Klondike-set The Gold Rush, whose “streaks of poet­ry, pathos, ten­der­ness, linked with brusque­ness and bois­ter­ous­ness” drew spe­cial praise from the New York Times, and for which Chap­lin said he want­ed to be remem­bered. You can watch it below, and then you can browse our col­lec­tion of 25 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films on the web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

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

New Robert Rauschenberg Digital Collection Lets You Download Free High-Res Images of the Artist’s Work

in Art | July 10th, 2013

After the wan­ing of abstract expres­sion­ism, Robert Rauschenberg’s exu­ber­ant prints, paint­ings, sculp­tures, and three-dimen­sion­al col­lages he called “Com­bines” reju­ve­nat­ed the New York art world and helped bring pop art to promi­nence, antic­i­pat­ing Warhol’s exper­i­ments. And now stu­dents of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can art can con­nect with all of the artist’s work in the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion with­out set­ting foot in the Bay area, thanks to SFMOMA’s Rauschen­berg Research Project, which allows users to down­load high res images of the muse­um’s Rauschen­bergs. Research materials—including com­men­tary, inter­views, essays, and more—accompany each image. Click­ing on the main link for each image will send you to a page with a lengthy descrip­tion. Scrolling down to the bot­tom of the page, you’ll find indi­vid­ual links for each of the asso­ci­at­ed files and an omnibus link for all of them at once.

It’s cer­tain­ly not a sub­sti­tute for see­ing the work up close in all its onto­log­i­cal mate­ri­al­i­ty, but it’s still quite a won­der­ful resource for researchers, art his­to­ri­ans, and even gen­er­al enthu­si­asts of Rauschen­berg, par­tic­u­lar­ly since many of the works in SFMOMA’s data­base are not cur­rent­ly on dis­play (and the muse­um is tem­porar­i­ly closed dur­ing an expan­sion). A paint­ing you can’t see in per­son is the dense col­lage Moth­er of God (at top), one of Rauschenberg’s ear­li­est sur­viv­ing paint­ings from a peri­od in the 50s when the artist explored sev­er­al reli­gious themes. The painting’s brown back­ground is com­posed of lay­ers of maps of Amer­i­can locales, and the site allows you to zoom in and exam­ine each one in fine detail. In the video above—one of the dig­i­tal project’s col­lec­tion of artifacts—see Rauschen­berg dis­cuss the paint­ing with cura­tor Wal­ter Hopps and SFMOMA Direc­tor David A. Ross in a 1999 inter­view.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rauschen­berg Eras­es De Koon­ing

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

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

Alfred Hitchcock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuffin’

in Animation, Film | July 9th, 2013

Alfred Hitch­cock liked to call it the “MacGuf­fin” — the mys­te­ri­ous object in a spy thriller that sets the whole chain of events into motion.

But despite the sup­posed cen­tral­i­ty of the MacGuf­fin, a Hitch­cock movie is always about some­thing else. In The 39 Steps, for exam­ple, the MacGuf­fin turns out to be the cov­et­ed plans for an advanced air­plane engine, stored in the mind of a vaude­ville per­former named “Mr. Mem­o­ry.” But real­ly the film is about a wrong­ful­ly accused man’s des­per­ate strug­gle to solve a mys­tery so he can clear his name and live to see anoth­er day.

The MacGuf­fin is always par­tic­u­lar — often to the point of absur­di­ty — while the hero’s moti­va­tion is uni­ver­sal. Some of the char­ac­ters may care about the MacGuf­fin, but the audi­ence cer­tain­ly does not. In his 1962 inter­view with François Truf­faut, Hitch­cock explains:

The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuf­fin is noth­ing. I’m con­vinced of this, but I find it very dif­fi­cult to prove it to oth­ers. My best MacGuf­fin, and by that I mean the emp­ti­est, the most nonex­is­tent, and the most absurd, is the one we used in North by North­west. The pic­ture is about espi­onage, and the only ques­tion that’s raised in the sto­ry is to find out what the spies are after. Well, dur­ing the scene at the Chica­go air­port, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence man explains the whole sit­u­a­tion to Cary Grant, and Grant, refer­ring to the James Mason char­ac­ter, asks, “What does he do?”  The coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence man replies, “Let’s just say that he’s an importer and exporter.” “But what does he sell?” “Oh, just gov­ern­ment secrets!” is the answer. Here, you see, the MacGuf­fin has been boiled down to its purest expres­sion: noth­ing at all!

The term “MacGuf­fin” was coined by a screen­writer Hitch­cock worked with named Angus MacPhail, accord­ing to Don­ald Spo­to in The Art of Alfred Hitch­cock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pic­tures. But the prin­ci­ple goes back at least as far as Rud­yard Kipling, as Hitch­cock explains in this whim­si­cal lit­tle film by Isaac Nie­mand with audio from Hitch­cock­’s June 8, 1972 appear­ance on the Dick Cavett Show. Per­haps the most impor­tant thing to remem­ber about the MacGuf­fin is that it con­tains the word “guff,” which means a load of non­sense. “There’s a lot to look for in Hitch­cock­’s films,” writes Spo­to, “but watch out for the MacGuf­fin. It will lead you nowhere.”

NOTE: The 39 Steps and oth­er Hitch­cock thrillers can be found in our col­lec­tion of 16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, not to men­tion our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Film­mak­er’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

Four American Composers: Peter Greenaway on John Cage, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Robert Ashley (1983)

in Film, Music, Television | July 9th, 2013

Why would a not­ed British film­mak­er want to take as a sub­ject four Amer­i­can com­posers? Per­haps the ques­tion answers itself, in part, when I tell you the iden­ti­ty of the film­mak­er, Peter Green­away, and the com­posers, Philip Glass, Mered­ith Monk, John Cage, and Robert Ash­ley. No won­der this selec­tion of musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties appealed to the direc­tor of The Draughts­man­’s Con­tract;The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover; and Pros­per­o’s Books, whom crit­ics have labeled, at var­i­ous times, a clas­si­cist, an exper­i­menter, a for­mal­ist, and a weirdo. Alas, Green­away’s fans may not know much about Glass, Monk, Cage, and Ash­ley, just as those com­posers’ adher­ents may nev­er have encoun­tered a movie of Green­away’s. To bridge the gap, we give you the doc­u­men­tary series Four Amer­i­can Com­posers, free to watch online. At the top of this post, you’ll find the first episode, on Cage. The sec­ond, below, cov­ers Glass. The third and fourth take on Monk and Ash­ley, respec­tive­ly.

Green­away die-hards such as myself may, watch­ing these doc­u­men­taries the film­mak­er cre­at­ed in 1983, think back to his ear­ly career. At that time, he made pic­tures like The Falls, which rigid­ly fol­lowed the doc­u­men­tary form while com­plete­ly aban­don­ing its aspi­ra­tions to cap­ture the lit­er­al truth. Thor­ough­ly non­fic­tion­al, or at least seem­ing that way, the doc­u­men­taries that make up Four Amer­i­can Com­posers nonethe­less exude the Green­away sen­si­bil­i­ty. “Because he made most­ly mock-doc­u­men­taries in the sev­en­ties,” writes Amy Lawrence in The Films of Peter Green­away, “the ‘real’ doc­u­men­taries are near­ly indis­tin­guish­able from the fakes. Real peo­ple (espe­cial­ly John Cage) tend to become Green­away char­ac­ters.” The project thus slides neat­ly in with his oth­er, more “straight­for­ward” films, all of which take place in a delib­er­ate­ly struc­tured labyrinth of joke and allu­sion peo­pled by archi­tects, inven­tors, aris­to­crats, and artists — obses­sives, all.

You can find two oth­er films by Green­away — Dar­win and Rembrandt’s J’accuse — in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Peter Green­away Looks at the Day Cin­e­ma Died — and What Comes Next

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

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

in Audio Books, Literature | July 9th, 2013

I’m impressed by the under­tak­ing. Neville Jason and Nax­os Audio Books have com­plet­ed an unabridged audio ver­sion of Proust’s epic, sev­en-part nov­el, Remem­brance of Things Past. Proust pub­lished the first vol­ume, Swan­n’s Way, one hun­dred years ago, in 1913, and com­plet­ed the last vol­ume, Time Regained, four­teen years lat­er, in 1927. By that time, Proust had a mas­ter­piece on his hands — a very long mas­ter­piece. The clas­sic (avail­able in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) spans some 3,000 pages and con­tains more than 1.5 mil­lion words. Until now, Remem­brance of Things Past has nev­er been avail­able in an unabridged audio for­mat, per­haps because it would amount to the longest audio book ever made (or some­thing approach­ing that). But Neville Jason has pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a 151-hour record­ing that’s now avail­able on Audible.com. Below, we’ve pro­vid­ed sev­en free audio excerpts (one from each vol­ume), and if you care to sign up for Audi­ble’s 30-Day Free Tri­al, you can down­load any one vol­ume for free. NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram. If Proust isn’t your cup of tea, you can find many oth­er great works in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

Swan­n’s Way 

With­in a Bud­ding Grove

The Guer­mantes Way 

Sodom and Gomor­rah

The Cap­tive 

The Fugi­tive 

Time Regained

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Marvin Gaye’s Classic Vocals on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’: The A Cappella Version

in Music | July 8th, 2013

It’s hard to believe, but Mar­vin Gaye’s clas­sic 1967 record­ing of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was reject­ed by his record label.

The song, about a man’s grief over hear­ing rumors of his lover’s infi­deli­ty, was writ­ten by the leg­endary Motown Records pro­duc­er Nor­man Whit­field and singer Bar­rett Strong. It was first record­ed in 1966 by Smokey Robin­son and the Mir­a­cles, but that ver­sion was nixed by Motown founder Berry Gordy dur­ing a week­ly qual­i­ty con­trol meet­ing. Whit­field record­ed the song with Gaye in ear­ly 1967, but for some rea­son Gordy did­n’t like that ver­sion either. So Whit­field changed the lyrics a bit and record­ed it with Gladys Knight and the Pips. The fast-tem­po arrange­ment, influ­enced by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” was released as a sin­gle in Sep­tem­ber of 1967 and rose to num­ber one on the Bill­board R&B chart.

Gaye’s ver­sion might have been for­got­ten had it not been includ­ed in his 1968 album, In the Groove, where it soon became noticed. “The DJs played it so much off the album,” Gordy said lat­er, “that we had to release it as a sin­gle.” Gaye’s record­ing of the song became a cross-over hit. It rose not only to the top of the R&B charts, but also spent sev­en weeks at the top of the Bill­board Pop Sin­gles chart. It was Motown’s biggest-sell­ing sin­gle up to that time, and the In the Groove album name was changed to I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Gaye was known for his sweet-sound­ing tenor voice, which he could mod­u­late from a bari­tone to a silky high falset­to. Dur­ing the “Grapevine” ses­sions, the singer report­ed­ly quar­reled with Whit­field over the pro­duc­er’s insis­tence that he sing the song in a high rasp. Whit­field pre­vailed, and Gaye’s per­for­mance is one of the great­est of the Motown era. You can hear his clas­sic vocals “a cap­pel­la” in the video above. And for a reminder of Whit­field­’s clas­sic arrange­ment, with its puls­ing elec­tric piano intro­duc­tion and shim­mer­ing strings, see the video below. The Funk Broth­ers, the leg­endary Motown back­ing group, played on the track, as did the back­ing vocal group The Andantes and the Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Magic to Demystify Stravinsky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Compositions

in Literature, Math, Music, Random | July 8th, 2013

Hav­ing one of those morn­ings where you wake up think­ing it’d be “awe­some” if you jazzed up Stravin­sky’s aton­al musi­cal set­ting of Edward Lear’s famous non­sense poem, “The Owl and the Pussy­cat”?

You are? Wow! What luck! Appar­ent­ly Recre­ation­al Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart had the exact same kind of morn­ing recent­ly, and used it as the spring­board for address­ing the 12-Tone Tech­nique orig­i­nal­ly devised by Arnold Schoen­berg. Unini­ti­at­ed philistines may want to dou­ble down on the caf­feinat­ed bev­er­age of their choice, as this stuff is dense, and Hart talks the way a hum­ming­bird flies.

But as she notes at the 15 minute mark, “Cre­ativ­i­ty means fear­less­ly embrac­ing things that seem odd, even ran­dom, know­ing that if you keep your brain open you’ll even­tu­al­ly find the con­nec­tions.”

Ergo, those of us whose ref­er­ence lev­el (or, it must be said, inter­est) is no match for a 30 minute trea­tise on the his­to­ry and log­ic of order­ing the twelve pitch-class­es of the chro­mat­ic scale into numer­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed sets should find some­thing to chew on, too: copy­right and Fair Use Law, for starters; the con­straint-bound exper­i­men­tal fic­tion of French lit­er­ary group Oulipo, not to men­tion Borges’ “Library of Babel” and the orga­nized ran­dom­ness of Rorschach blots and con­stel­la­tions; zom­bies… John Cage…

(Easy to imag­ine the sort of jacked-up, expla­na­tion-crazed, bed-resis­tant child she must have been.)

As ever, her sharpie-on-spi­ral stop-motion visu­als add dimen­sion, espe­cial­ly now that she seems to be exper­i­ment­ing with giv­ing her on-the-fly stick fig­ures a cer­tain Hyper­bole-and-a-Half exu­ber­ance.

For good mea­sure, we’ve added a con­ven­tion­al video primer on the 12 Tone Tech­nique by The New York Times below.

H/T Hannes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Math Doo­dling

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

Ayun Hal­l­i­day would’ve resort­ed to Vi Hart’s snake draw­ing tech­nique had this been a live lec­ture. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday