Cutting-Edge Technology Reconstructs the Battle of Gettysburg 150 Years Later

in History, Technology | July 4th, 2013

Today, as the U.S. cel­e­brates the “nation’s birth­day,” we also round the cor­ner of the 150th anniver­sary of Get­tys­burg, the blood­i­est and arguably most deci­sive bat­tle of an inter­nal strug­gle that nev­er ceas­es to haunt the nation­al psy­che. With over 50,000 Union and Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers killed, injured, gone miss­ing, or cap­tured dur­ing the days of July 1–3, 1863, his­to­ri­ans con­tin­ue to pore over the most minute details of the bat­tle strate­gies of Gen­er­als Lee and Meade. Today’s dig­i­tal imag­ing and satel­lite tech­nol­o­gy means that our views of the action are in many ways far supe­ri­or to any­thing com­man­ders on the field could have hoped for.

Since 2000, the Nation­al Park Ser­vice has used mil­i­tary engi­neer­ing tech­niques to restore the his­toric bat­tle­field to some­thing resem­bling its 1863 state, and, in the past few years, car­tog­ra­phers and researchers Anne Kel­ly Knowles, Dan Miller, Alex Tait, and Allen Car­roll have ana­lyzed new and old maps of the Penn­syl­va­nia ter­rain in and around Get­tys­burg to get a renewed appre­ci­a­tion for what the gen­er­als could and could not see dur­ing the con­flict. Con­fed­er­ate offi­cers had their views obstruct­ed not only by lim­it­ed map­ping tech­nol­o­gy and rel­a­tive field posi­tions, but also by their own com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ures. As Knowles points out at the Smithsonian’s web­site:

We know that Con­fed­er­ate gen­er­al Robert E. Lee was vir­tu­al­ly blind at Get­tys­burg, as his for­mer­ly bril­liant cav­al­ry leader J.E.B. Stu­art failed to inform him of Fed­er­al posi­tions, and Con­fed­er­ate scouts’ recon­nais­sance was poor. The Con­fed­er­ates’ field posi­tions, gen­er­al­ly on low­er ground than Yan­kee posi­tions, fur­ther put Lee at a dis­ad­van­tage. A strik­ing con­trast in visu­al per­cep­tion came when Union Gen. Gou­vernour K. War­ren spot­ted Con­fed­er­ate troops from Lit­tle Round Top and called in rein­force­ments just in time to save the Fed­er­al line.

Using so-called GIS (Geo­graph­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems), Knowles and her team are able to show what was hid­den from the sol­ders’ views dur­ing such key moments as Pickett’s Charge. The team used sev­er­al peri­od maps, like the 1863 “iso­met­ri­cal draw­ing” at the top, in their recon­struc­tions. They also used satel­lite images from NASA, includ­ing the May 2013 pic­ture below from the Oper­a­tional Land Imager (OLI). You can see Knowles and her team’s painstak­ing geo­graph­i­cal and topo­graph­ic recon­struc­tions of the coun­try’s costli­est rift at the Smith­son­ian Magazine’s site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

The Get­tys­burg Address Ani­mat­ed

Behold Charles Laughton Deliv­er­ing the Get­tys­burg Address in its Entire­ty in Rug­gles of Red Gap

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

Teacher Wears Same Groovy Outfit In Yearbook Photo 40 Years Straight

in Random | July 4th, 2013

In 1973, Dale Irby, a teacher at Pre­ston­wood Ele­men­tary in Dal­las, decid­ed to wear a poly­ester shirt and cof­fee-col­ored sweater for school-pic­ture day. With­out real­iz­ing it, he wore the same out­fit the fol­low­ing year. Accord­ing to the Dal­las News, Dale’s wife noticed the emerg­ing trend and dared him to do it a third year. And then they fig­ured, ‘Why stop?’ The tra­di­tion con­tin­ued 40 years in total, until Dale and his out­fit retired this year.

via Mash­able

Great Moments in Computer History: Douglas Engelbart Presents “The Mother of All Demos” (1968)

in History, Technology | July 4th, 2013

Dou­glas Engel­bart, a tech­nol­o­gy pio­neer best known for his inven­tion of the com­put­er mouse, died in Ather­ton, Cal­i­for­nia on Wednes­day. He was 88 years old. Engel­bart began work­ing at the Stan­ford Research Insti­tute (SRI Inter­na­tion­al) in 1957, and there, accord­ing to John Markof­f’s obit­u­ary in The New York Times, he began try­ing to make the com­put­er screen “a work­sta­tion that would orga­nize all the infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for a giv­en project.” It’s a con­cept we take for grant­ed today. But it was con­sid­ered far-fetched back then. A decade lat­er, Engel­bart brought us all into the world of inter­ac­tive com­put­ing and graph­ic inter­faces when, in 1968, he pre­sent­ed what’s now called “The Moth­er of All Demos.” You can watch it in its entire­ty above. Stan­ford’s Mous­eSite sets the stage for what you’re going to see:

On Decem­ber 9, 1968, Dou­glas C. Engel­bart and the group of 17 researchers work­ing with him in the Aug­men­ta­tion Research Cen­ter at Stan­ford Research Insti­tute in Men­lo Park, CA, pre­sent­ed a 90-minute live pub­lic demon­stra­tion of the online sys­tem, NLS, they had been work­ing on since 1962. The pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion was a ses­sion of the Fall Joint Com­put­er Con­fer­ence held at the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in San Fran­cis­co, and it was attend­ed by about 1,000 com­put­er pro­fes­sion­als. This was the pub­lic debut of the com­put­er mouse. But the mouse was only one of many inno­va­tions demon­strat­ed that day, includ­ing hyper­text, object address­ing and dynam­ic file link­ing, as well as shared-screen col­lab­o­ra­tion involv­ing two per­sons at dif­fer­ent sites com­mu­ni­cat­ing over a net­work with audio and video inter­face.

If you want to get right to the action, you can watch the sec­tion where Engel­bart demos the mouse here, plus see pic­tures of his orig­i­nal mouse here. Through the links below, you can relive oth­er great moments in com­put­ing his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pong, 1969: A Mile­stone in Video Game His­to­ry

The First 3D Dig­i­tal Film Cre­at­ed by Ed Cat­mull, Co-Founder of Pixar (1970)

The First Piz­za Ordered by Com­put­er, 1974

Steve Jobs Demos the First Mac­in­tosh in 1984

Watch the World’s Old­est Work­ing Dig­i­tal Com­put­er — the 1951 Har­well Deka­tron — Get Fired Up Again

Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala

in Animation, Film, Literature | July 3rd, 2013

Let’s sneak in a quick birth­day cel­e­bra­tion before the 4th. Franz Kaf­ka was born on this day (July 3), a good 130 years ago. To com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion, we’re pre­sent­ing Piotr Dumala’s 1992 short ani­mat­ed film called, quite sim­ply, Franz Kaf­ka. Dumala’s ani­ma­tion tech­nique grew out of his train­ing as a sculp­tor, when he start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with scratch­ing images into paint­ed plas­ter. Lat­er he devel­oped a more full blown method known as “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” which is on full dis­play in the film. You can learn more about Dumala and his approach here. The 16-minute film is based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf­ka, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online. Also on our site, you can view Dumala’s adap­ta­tion of Dos­to­evsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment.

Note: This film/post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2010. Still enam­ored by Dumala’s work, we thought it was time to bring it back.

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:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Improve­ments to Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Find works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

Hearsay of the Soul: A 5‑Channel Video Installation by Celebrated German Filmmaker Werner Herzog

in Art | July 3rd, 2013

David Lynch has embraced visu­al art and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the new music indus­try. With Pina, Wim Wen­ders made one of the most acclaimed works in the lat­est, super­hero-filled wave of 3D movies. Jean-Luc Godard… well, I could­n’t quite tell you what he has got up to with his lat­est pic­ture, but it sounds con­cep­tu­al­ly and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly for­ward-look­ing indeed. Clear­ly, some of the cre­ators best suit­ed for the new cin­e­mat­ic real­i­ty in which we find our­selves also hap­pen to have already logged decades and decades in the craft. Wern­er Her­zog, direc­tor of Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, anoth­er one of the few recent 3D movies you still hear peo­ple talk­ing about, has exe­cut­ed his lat­est project not in the the­ater, but in a muse­um, and not as a tra­di­tion­al film, but as a five-chan­nel video instal­la­tion.

Hearsay of the Soul will run at the Get­ty Cen­ter, a par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known muse­um over­look­ing Los Ange­les — Her­zog’s city of res­i­dence and my own — from July 23 to Jan­u­ary 19. In it, Her­zog com­bines land­scape etch­ings by Dutch Gold­en Age mas­ter print­mak­er and Rem­brandt-influ­encer Her­cules Segers with music from two of Segers’ mod­ern coun­try­men, cel­list Ernst Rei­jseger and organ­ist Har­men Fraan­je. (Her­zog afi­ciona­dos will, in fact, rec­og­nize Rei­jseger’s work from the score of Cave of For­got­ten Dreams.) “They are like flash­lights held in our uncer­tain hands,” Herz­zog says of Segers’ images, “a fright­ened light that opens breach­es into the recess­es of a place that seems some­what known to us: our selves. We morph with these images. Her­cules Segers’s images and my films do not speak to each oth­er, but for a brief moment, I hope, they might dance with each oth­er.” You can glimpse a few of the instal­la­tion’s images and hear a few of its sounds just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Watch Wern­er Her­zog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank, Direc­tor of Qui­et, Quirky Films

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.

A Song of Our Warming Planet: Cellist Turns 130 Years of Climate Change Data into Music

in Music, Science | July 3rd, 2013

If you use data graph­ics and tech­ni­cal illus­tra­tions to explain cli­mate change to most Amer­i­cans, their eyes will glaze over. So Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta under­grad Daniel Craw­ford is try­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. He’s using music to com­mu­ni­cate the lat­est in cli­mate sci­ence. Draw­ing on a method called “data soni­fi­ca­tion” that con­verts glob­al tem­per­a­ture records into a series of musi­cal notes, Craw­ford and his trusty cel­lo have cre­at­ed “A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et.” Here’s some of the tech­ni­cal back­sto­ry you need to know:

Craw­ford based his com­po­si­tion on sur­face tem­per­a­ture data from NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute of Space Stud­ies. The tem­per­a­ture data were mapped over a range of three octaves, with the cold­est year on record (–0.47 °C in 1909) set to the low­est note on the cel­lo (open C). Each ascend­ing halftone is equal to rough­ly 0.03°C of plan­e­tary warm­ing.

In Crawford’s com­po­si­tion, each note rep­re­sents a year, ordered from 1880 to 2012. The pitch reflects the aver­age tem­per­a­ture of the plan­et rel­a­tive to the 1951–80 base line. Low notes rep­re­sent rel­a­tive­ly cool years, while high notes sig­ni­fy rel­a­tive­ly warm ones.

Craw­ford has released the score and sound files under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Down­load the sheet music (PDF) | Down­load the audio file (MP3) | Play the audio file only | Code to embed the audio file

To delve deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing to our cli­mate, we sug­gest you spend time with Glob­al Warm­ing: a free course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

via i09

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Learn 48 Languages for Free Online: A Big Update to Our Master List

in Language Lessons | July 3rd, 2013

Right in time for your trav­els, we’ve just com­plet­ed a big update to our rich col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Fea­tur­ing free audio and video lessons, this handy resource will help you learn to speak Span­ish, French, Ger­man, Eng­lish, Chi­nese, Ara­bic, Ital­ian, and Russ­ian, plus 36 oth­er lan­guages. And it’s all for free, which is a lot less than what Roset­ta Stone and oth­er ven­dors will charge you. Not bad, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that some of the lessons come from ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tions like Yale, Cam­bridge, Carnegie Mel­lon, Emory, the BBC, the US Peace Corps, the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute, and more.

The com­plete list of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons, includes the fol­low­ing lan­guages: Ara­bic, Bul­gar­i­an, Cam­bo­di­an, Cata­lan, Chi­nese (Man­darin & Can­tonese), Czech, Dan­ish, Dutch, Eng­lish, Finnish, French, Gael­ic, Ger­man, Greek, Hebrew, Hin­di, Hun­gar­i­an, Ice­landic, Indone­sian, Irish, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Lao, Latin, Lithuan­ian, Lux­em­bour­gish, Maori, Nor­we­gian, Pol­ish, Por­tuguese, Roman­ian, Russ­ian, Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian, Sign Lan­guage, Span­ish, Swahili, Taga­log, Thai, Turk­ish, Ukrain­ian, Urdu, Viet­namese, Welsh and Yid­dish.

If we’re miss­ing any great resources, please tell us in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates)

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

The Earliest Footage of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash (1955)

in Music | July 2nd, 2013

Here are some rare home movies from the ear­li­est days of rock and roll. Although accounts dif­fer, this is appar­ent­ly the old­est footage of four leg­endary per­form­ers: Elvis Pres­ley, Bud­dy Hol­ly, John­ny Cash and Carl Perkins. The film was shot in 1955 with an 8mm cam­era in Hol­ly’s home­town of Lub­bock, Texas, by his friend Ben Hall, a local disc jock­ey and musi­cian who would lat­er write the song “Blue Days, Black Nights” from Hol­ly’s That’ll Be The Day album. The silent footage is wide­ly report­ed to have been tak­en at one of Pres­ley’s April 29, 1955 shows at the Cot­ton Club in Lub­bock. But that may not be entire­ly true, because Hol­ly, Cash and Perkins were not on the adver­tised bill for those shows.

Pres­ley per­formed in Lub­bock sev­er­al times that year. He first met Hol­ly at a show at the Fair Park Col­i­se­um on Feb­ru­ary 13, when Hol­ly and his friend Bob Mont­gomery appeared at the bot­tom of the bill as the coun­try duo Bud­dy & Bob. Hol­ly was 18 years old and still a senior in high school. The charis­mat­ic Pres­ley, though still unknown in most parts of the coun­try in 1955, was already treat­ed as a star in the South, where he was mobbed by fans.

Accord­ing to the Scot­ty Moore Web site, the footage of Pres­ley was tak­en on April 29 and the oth­ers were filmed lat­er in the year. Pres­ley is shown onstage and off with his orig­i­nal band, the Blue Moon Boys, with Scot­ty Moore on gui­tar and Bill Black on bass. Perkins appears in an orange jack­et, Cash is wear­ing a white string tie over a black shirt, and Hol­ly, who turned 19 around that time, is eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able in his trade­mark eye­glass­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

Library Card Signed by 13-Year-Old Elvis Pres­ley, the Ear­li­est Known Sig­na­ture of the King

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

Deconstructing The Master Track of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

in Music | July 2nd, 2013

There are sev­er­al ver­sions of the sto­ry of how The Bea­t­les’ most high­ly-acclaimed album Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club came to be. In one, John gives the full cred­it to Paul, who, inspired by “Amer­i­ca and the whole West Coast, long-named group thing”—of bands like Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice and Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Company—came up with the con­cept. Accord­ing to Lennon, Paul “was try­ing to put some dis­tance between the Bea­t­les and the pub­lic”:

And so there was this iden­ti­ty of Sgt. Pep­per…. Sgt. Pep­per is called the first con­cept album, but it doesn’t go any­where. All my con­tri­bu­tions to the album have absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the idea of Sgt. Pep­per and his band; but it works ‘cause we said it worked, and that’s how the album appeared. But it was not as put togeth­er as it sounds, except for Sgt. Pep­per intro­duc­ing Bil­ly Shears and the so-called reprise. Every oth­er song could have been on any oth­er album.

Lennon’s typ­i­cal mix of grandios­i­ty and self-dep­re­ca­tion prob­a­bly sells the album short in any fan’s esti­ma­tion (cer­tain­ly in mine), but I  believe that Paul cooked up the goofy per­sonas and march­ing-band look. It is, after all, as Lennon says, “his way of work­ing.” Paul him­self has said of Sgt. Pepper’s: “I thought it would be nice to lose our iden­ti­ties, to sub­merge our­selves in the per­sona of a fake group. We could make up all the cul­ture around it and col­lect all our heroes in one place.”

Despite the com­plex of per­son­al­i­ties (both real and imag­ined) in the writ­ing and record­ing of what many con­sid­er the band’s mas­ter­piece, the record­ing process was incred­i­bly sim­ple, at least by today’s stan­dards. Today’s dig­i­tal record­ing enables bands to record an unlim­it­ed num­ber of tracks—either live or, more often, in lay­ers upon lay­ers of overdubs—leaving mix­ing engi­neers with some­times hun­dreds of indi­vid­ual tracks to inte­grate into a coher­ent whole. In 1967, dur­ing the age of tape and the track­ing of Sgt. Pepper’s, engi­neers were lim­it­ed to four tracks at a time, which they could then “bounce,” or merge togeth­er, to free up room for addi­tion­al record­ing.

This is how the title song “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band” was made, and you can hear the four final mas­ter tracks “decon­struct­ed” above. First, in green, you’ll hear the orig­i­nal rhythm tracks, with drums, bass, and two gui­tars, all record­ed on two tracks. The red line rep­re­sents tracks 3 and 4—all of the vocals. The blue por­tion is the horns and lead gui­tar, and yel­low is the audi­ence sounds. You’ll hear each track indi­vid­u­al­ly, then hear them all come togeth­er, so to speak. The descrip­tion below of the record­ing process comes from that inerrant (so I’ve heard) source, The Bea­t­les Bible:

The song was record­ed over four days. On 1 Feb­ru­ary 1967 The Bea­t­les taped nine takes of the rhythm track, though only the first and last of these were com­plete. They record­ed drums, bass and two gui­tars — the lat­ter played by McCart­ney and Har­ri­son.

The next day McCart­ney record­ed his lead vocals, and he, Lennon and Har­ri­son taped their har­monies. The song was then left for over a month, until the French horns were over­dubbed on 3 March. McCart­ney also record­ed a lead gui­tar solo, leav­ing the song almost com­plete.

On 6 March they added the sounds of the imag­i­nary audi­ence and the noise of an orches­tra tun­ing up, a com­bi­na­tion of crowd noise from a 1961 record­ing of the com­e­dy show Beyond The Fringe and out-takes from the 10 Feb­ru­ary orches­tral over­dub ses­sion for A Day In The Life.

For the segue into With A Lit­tle Help From My Friends, mean­while, they insert­ed screams of Beat­le­ma­ni­acs from the record­ings of The Bea­t­les live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

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

Jump Start Your Creative Process with Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” Deck of Cards (1975)

in Art, Creativity, Music, Random | July 2nd, 2013

Image by Bas­ti­aan Ter­horst, via Flickr Com­mons

The likes of U2, Cold­play, and David Bowie can afford to hire pro­duc­er, artist, and thinker Bri­an Eno to shake up their cre­ative process­es. You and I, alas, prob­a­bly can’t. We can, how­ev­er, afford to con­sult the Oblique Strate­gies, a deck of cards invent­ed by Eno and painter Peter Schmidt in 1975. Each card offers, in its own oblique fash­ion, a strat­e­gy you can fol­low when you find your­self at an impasse in your own work, be it music, paint­ing, or any form at all: “Hon­or thy error as a hid­den inten­tion.” “State the prob­lem in words as clear­ly as pos­si­ble.” “Remem­ber those qui­et evenings.” “Once the search is in progress, some­thing will be found.” “Work at a dif­fer­ent speed.” “Look close­ly at the most embar­rass­ing details and ampli­fy them.”

“The Oblique Strate­gies evolved from me being in a num­ber of work­ing sit­u­a­tions when pan­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in stu­dios, tend­ed to make me quick­ly for­get that there were oth­ers ways of work­ing,” said Eno in a 1980 radio inter­view, “and that there were tan­gen­tial ways of attack­ing prob­lems that were in many sens­es more inter­est­ing than the direct head-on approach.”

Should you feel the need for just such a break with the obvi­ous approach, you can track down one of the offi­cial phys­i­cal edi­tions of the Oblique Strate­gies deck. Or you can con­sult one of  its many vir­tu­al ver­sions avail­able on the inter­net. Eno talks about how the deck of cards came into being. Vin­tage sets can be found on Ama­zon here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

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.