Clash of the Titans: Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power on Dutch TV, 1971

in Philosophy | March 14th, 2013

Today, we’re revis­it­ing the clash of two intel­lec­tu­al titans, Noam Chom­sky and Michel Fou­cault. In 1971, at the height of the Viet­nam War, the Amer­i­can lin­guist and the French theorist/historian of ideas appeared on Dutch TV to debate a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Is there such a thing as innate human nature? Or are we shaped by expe­ri­ences and the pow­er of cul­tur­al and social insti­tu­tions around us? The thinkers answered these ques­tions rather dif­fer­ent­ly, giv­ing view­ers a fair­ly suc­cinct intro­duc­tion to their basic the­o­ries of lan­guage, knowl­edge, pow­er and beyond.

42 years lat­er, you can watch the debate on YouTube in parts or in its entire­ty. Above you will find two excerpts that show you the high­lights, com­plete with sub­ti­tles. Below you can watch the entire debate online, from start to fin­ish. Sub­ti­tles should be pro­vid­ed, but if you have any prob­lems, you can read a full tran­script of the debate online (it’s entire­ly in Eng­lish), or pur­chase a copy in book for­mat.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer 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:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Michel Fou­cault, “Philoso­pher of Pow­er”

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Jacques Lacan Speaks; Zizek Pro­vides Free Cliffs Notes

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

Donald Barthelme’s Syllabus Highlights 81 Books Essential for a Literary Education

in Books, Literature | March 14th, 2013

We’ve had a lot of fun—and some debate—lately with read­ing lists from peo­ple like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and even Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe (via her library). And we’ve fea­tured under­grad­u­ate syl­labi from the teach­ing days of David Fos­ter Wal­lace and W.H. Auden. Now for some­thing more-or-less for­mal than those. This one comes via a 2003 piece by Kevin Mof­fett in McSweeney’s spin-off The Believ­er (10 years old this month—I know, right?). The list (first page above and full list below) has a some­what illus­tri­ous her­itage. Com­piled by post­mod­ernist writer Don­ald Barthelme for his stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, it then made its way to Barthelme’s stu­dent, South­ern writer Pad­gett Pow­ell. The list then came to Mof­fett when he was a stu­dent of Powell’s at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da.

Con­sist­ing of 81 books, most­ly nov­els and short sto­ry col­lec­tions (and the work of Samuel Beckett—“entire”), and most­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry mod­ernist fic­tion, the list came to Pow­ell with Barthelme’s instruc­tion to attack the books, “in no par­tic­u­lar order, just read them.”

This Mof­fett did, and his sto­ry of how he sought the books—in the used book­shops, ware­house sales, and libraries of north Florida—lends to his expe­ri­ence the air of a sub­ur­ban knight’s quest tale, with Mof­fett as under­dog hero. The list spans a range of dif­fi­cul­ty, from the aca­d­e­m­ic obscu­ran­tism of Roland Barthes to the gen­er­al acces­si­bil­i­ty of Updike (Barthelme mod­est­ly exempts him­self). But the text that turns Mof­fett from dif­fi­dent to avid read­er, Flan­nery O’Connor’s “A Late Encounter With the Ene­my,” also turns his “res­o­lu­tion into a vow.” It’s almost as though his engage­ment with Barthelme’s list ini­ti­ates him into a mys­ti­cal order of lan­guage.

The list itself, as you can see from the scans, shows the wear of sev­er­al pairs of hands—hands hold­ing late-night cof­fees in col­lege-town cafes and felt-tip pens with which to make tiny check­marks of accom­plish­ment. We do not know from Moffett’s piece whose hands did the cof­fee-spilling, check­mark­ing, and anno­tat­ing, whether Powell’s, Moffett’s, or some stu­dent or pri­vate read­er unmen­tioned. Some of the books left unchecked are those with which I have had read­er­ly epipha­nies: Borges’ Oth­er Inqui­si­tions, Barthes’ Mytholo­gies, Beck­ett (“entire”), Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. And what strikes me, as with all such lists, are the num­ber of books I haven’t read but have wished to, meant to, promised that I would. Per­haps it’s not too late to turn a res­o­lu­tion to a vow and hit the stacks.

Here is the com­plete list:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Hux­ley and Gide

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

Rare Live Footage Documents The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defining London Calling (1977–1980)

in Music | March 13th, 2013

For all their left­ist polit­i­cal fer­vor, musi­cal rich­ness, and fierce­ly uncom­pro­mised deliv­ery, The Clash still suf­fered accu­sa­tions that they sold out when they signed what looked like a rel­a­tive­ly lucra­tive deal with CBS records in 1977. Those charges came from grass­roots fans and crit­ics like Mark Per­ry, who wrote in his sem­i­nal British punk fanzine Snif­fin’ Glue that “Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS.” A a cou­ple years lat­er, they were grandiose­ly billed as “the only band that mat­ters,” a quote then CBS employ­ee and NYC-based gui­tarist Gary Lucas takes cred­it for.  While they would come to regret the CBS deal, even after their breakup in 1986, it’s also undoubt­ed­ly true that their uncom­fort­able tenure with the cor­po­rate giant helped their ear­ly, career-defin­ing work reach a much wider public—and, as one writer argues,  may even have bro­ken bar­ri­ers for the rise of inde­pen­dent punk labels.

But enough about commerce—I’ll let the music speak. In video above, the band per­forms at Sus­sex Uni­ver­si­ty Brighton on May 25, 1977. This show, part of the White Riot Tour, marks the begin­ning of their time with CBS, short­ly after the release of debut album, The Clash. In very washed-out, grainy black and white, watch them play “Cap­i­tal Radio,” “Pro­tex Blue,” “Cheat,” and “Remote Con­trol.” Joe Strum­mer begins the set with a nod to the band’s own sense of how much they “mat­tered,” mum­bling “Okay, ‘Cap­i­tal Radio’… with words that mean some­thing” before they tear into the track.

In the sec­ond part of this footage (above) the band bangs out “White Riot” and “Police and Thieves.” It’s hard­ly a qual­i­ty edit­ing job, here, and the audio is most­ly boomy reverb (despite the major label deal), but it’s still some pret­ty amaz­ing archival footage. One thing to note is that this 1977 film doc­u­ments the band after a cru­cial line­up change.  While drum­mer Ter­ry Chimes played on record­ed ver­sions of these songs (cred­it­ed as “Tory Crimes” on record), he left the band soon after, to be replaced by the excel­lent “Top­per” Head­on (Chimes returned in 1982 when Head­on was over­come by his hero­in addic­tion). Their head­lin­ing White Riot Tour includ­ed sup­port­ing bands The Jam, The Buz­zcocks, and The Slits.

If debut album The Clash was most­ly raw, grit­ty punk rock with sprin­klings of reg­gae, and the fol­low-up Give ‘Em Enough Rope a lit­tle too pol­ished for some fans (at CBS’s insis­tence), the dou­ble album Lon­don Call­ing sure­ly marks the band’s writ­ing and record­ing apex. It tops so many crit­ics’ “top” lists that I hard­ly need say more about it to intro­duce the high-qual­i­ty film above of a Feb­ru­ary 27, 1980 Paris show. The con­trast between the White Riot tour footage and this is stark: we get full-col­or, well-lit video and fair­ly decent live sound, and the band is much tighter, hav­ing worked a full three years at this point with drum­mer Head­on. The above set includes Lon­don Call­ing clas­sics like the title track, “Wrong ‘Em Boyo,” “Jim­my Jazz,” and “Train in Vain.” Part of what the con­trast between these two sets of footage sig­ni­fies is the increas­ing con­fi­dence and pol­ish of The Clash as they made their way from their first gig at the Black Swan open­ing for the Sex Pis­tols in ’76 to the world­wide punk phe­nom­e­non they became by 1980. If it’s true The Clash sold out, they most­ly did it with more style and integri­ty than pret­ty much any­one before or since.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

The Clash: West­way to the World

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

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

Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove: Documentary Reveals How a Cold War Story Became a Kubrick Classic

in Film | March 13th, 2013

Stan­ley Kubrick direct­ed Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb, but view­ers only famil­iar with his more overt­ly lav­ish films—The Shin­ing, A Clock­work Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey—might not real­ize it at first. (Unless, of course, they paid atten­tion to its dis­tinc­tive Pablo Fer­ro-designed open­ing cred­its.) Kubrick­’s fifth fea­ture, released in 1964 and set in that same era, did not require the direc­tor and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to build an entire space sta­tion, nor to write dia­logue in the spe­cial­ized slang of the hooli­gans of Lon­don’s apoc­a­lyp­tic future, nor to release crash­ing waves of blood from ele­va­tor doors. A few rough-and-ready fly­ing and shoot­ing sequences aside, the phys­i­cal pro­duc­tion of Dr. Strangelove required only the accou­trements of the Unit­ed States military—mostly real, some imag­ined.

Yet more than a few of Kubrick­’s fans now hold up Dr. Strangelove as the direc­tor’s most intri­cate work. By my own high­ly per­son­al mea­sure of the sheer fre­quen­cy with which I can watch the movie (I attend near­ly every the­atri­cal screen­ing, no mat­ter what), it cer­tain­ly ranks as his rich­est.

This owes in large part to Kubrick­’s sig­na­ture per­fec­tion­ism, which forged Dr. Strangelove as much as it did the films that fol­lowed. Watch Inside: Dr. Strangelove (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five), and you can learn just what went into film­ing this sto­ry of a crazed gen­er­al, a gung-ho bomber, a frus­trat­ed RAF cap­tain, a Ger­man nuclear sci­en­tist in mor­tal com­bat with his own right hand, and the loom­ing prospect of mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion. Inter­views with cast mem­bers, crit­ics, edi­tors, pro­duc­ers and oth­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the pic­ture reveal how this Cold War worst-case-sce­nario devel­oped into some­thing so very… Kubrick­ian. And into a Kubrick­ian com­e­dy, at that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

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.

The Math in Good Will Hunting is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

in Film, Math | March 13th, 2013

Per­haps you remem­ber the scene (above) in Gus Van San­t’s 1997 film, Good Will Hunt­ing. MIT pro­fes­sor Ger­ald Lam­beau, win­ner of the cov­et­ed Fields Medal, chal­lenges his grad­u­ate stu­dents to solve a math prob­lem that he, him­self, spent two years try­ing to crack. That set the bar pret­ty high. So, imag­ine every­one’s sur­prise when Will Hunt­ing, a jan­i­tor at MIT played by Matt Damon, wres­tles the prob­lem to the ground with­out break­ing a men­tal sweat.

?t=13s

Well, not quite every­one was sur­prised, espe­cial­ly not the math­e­mati­cians behind the Num­ber­phile video series. Right above James Grime, who resides at the Depart­ment of Math­e­mat­ics and The­o­ret­i­cal Physics at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, breaks down the famous “Home­o­mor­phi­cal­ly Irre­ducible Trees of Degree Ten” prob­lem. And, it turns out, it’s a prob­lem mere mor­tals can solve fair­ly eas­i­ly at home.

Num­ber­phile also offers a quick bonus video that tries to answer anoth­er tough ques­tion: Who was the real Will Hunt­ing? Who was the char­ac­ter mod­eled after? There are a few prime can­di­dates.…

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:

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

Math: Free Cours­es

The Mirroring Mind: An Espresso-Fueled Interpretation of Douglas Hofstadter’s Groundbreaking Ideas

in Philosophy | March 13th, 2013

Today, Jason Sil­va serves up anoth­er philo­soph­i­cal espres­so shot with The Mir­ror­ing Mind, a two-minute video inspired by the ideas explored in Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter’s influ­en­tial book, Gödel, Esch­er, Bach: An Eter­nal Gold­en Braid. The film — which you may need to watch twice, ide­al­ly after you’ve had your own stiff cup of cof­fee  — offers Sil­va’s “inter­pre­ta­tion of Strange Loops of Self Ref­er­ence, recur­sion, and the emer­gence of con­scious­ness and self-aware­ness.” Once you’ve got a han­dle on things, you can watch Sil­va’s pre­vi­ous films on The Immer­sive Pow­er of Cin­e­ma, The Bio­log­i­cal Advan­tage of Being Awestruck, and The Gospel of Rad­i­cal Open­ness.

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

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sampling Revolution

in Music | March 12th, 2013

So much of what enters the pop­u­lar lex­i­con depends upon small hap­py acci­dents: chance encoun­ters, mis­read­ings, gaffes, extem­po­ra­ne­ous bursts of inspi­ra­tion. Artists attuned to the strange in the mun­dane pick up on odd moments of beau­ty and weird­ness and rede­ploy them in new works. And in the dawn of the dig­i­tal age, that rede­ploy­ment accel­er­ates to such a degree that one such moment can spawn whole move­ments in months.

This is sort of what hap­pened with the so-called “Amen Break,” per­haps the most sam­pled six sec­onds of music in dig­i­tal his­to­ry. As the brief 2004 video above—from artist and writer Nate Har­ri­son—explains, the Amen break “has been used as the rhyth­mic back­drop in every­thing from late 80s gang­ster rap to cor­po­rate America’s recy­cling hip-hop forms to sell things like Jeeps and blue jeans to sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca.”

The Amen Break orig­i­nat­ed in hum­ble cir­cum­stances, as the drum break on a B‑side record­ing from DC-based soul group the Win­stons. Hav­ing run out of mate­r­i­al, the Win­stons decid­ed to record an instru­men­tal of gospel stan­dard “Amen, Broth­er” on the obverse of their now-most­ly-for­got­ten, but once Gram­my-win­ning 1969 R&B hit “Col­or Him Father.” It’s pos­si­ble you’ll rec­og­nize the tune of “Amen, Broth­er” (above), but I guar­an­tee you’ll know the “Amen Break” (below, in three speeds), per­formed by Win­stons’ drum­mer G.C. Cole­man. It’s every­where.

Long before the Amen Break’s crude use in adver­tis­ing, it was a key­stone in such diverse cul­tur­al moments as black nation­al­ist group Pub­lic Enemy’s “Bring the Noise”—from their fero­cious 1988 ground­break­er It Takes a Nation of Mil­lions to Hold Us Back—to N.W.A.’s “Straight Out­ta Comp­ton,” to the theme song of Matt Groening’s Futu­ra­ma. And as this Econ­o­mist arti­cle explains, the Amen break also under­lay the 90s British rave-cul­ture phe­nom­e­na known as jun­gle and drum & bass. (BBC radio even pro­duced an hour-long seg­ment on the Amen Break, inter­view­ing pio­neers and main­stays of the rave scene). The re-use of the Amen Break began in the 1980s with the sam­pler, which gave DJs and bed­room pro­duc­ers the abil­i­ty to cre­ate new sound­scapes from old records, usu­al­ly as back­ing tracks for rap­pers (such as New York pro­duc­er Mantronix’s “King of the Beats”).

As the Amen Break became more pop­u­lar, and hip hop DJs more orga­nized and in-demand, it worked its way onto the first offi­cial release of a com­pi­la­tion specif­i­cal­ly for rap DJs called Ulti­mate Breaks and Beats, a series that col­lect­ed clas­sic rhythm tracks of rock, funk, and pop songs stripped of their vocals. And as its use evolved in a British con­text, says Nate Har­ri­son in his his­to­ry at the top, “Amen tracks” reached lev­els of “high­brow pos­tur­ing” in which the speed and lack of syn­co­pa­tion lead to undance­able “absur­di­ties.” No doubt jun­gle purists would sneer at Harrison’s con­tention, but take a lis­ten to the track he ref­er­ences, UK artist Squarepusher’s 1997 “Vic Acid” (below) and decide for your­self. (Oth­er Amen jun­gle tracks, like Shy FX’s “Orig­i­nal Nut­tah” crash along at even more jack­ham­mer speeds).

How­ev­er, while the Amen Break was clipped and re-sequenced into greater lev­els of abstrac­tion by IDM exper­i­men­tal­ists like Square­push­er, one par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing effect of its meme-ifi­ca­tion is its pas­sage from orig­i­nal live drum break, to ubiq­ui­tous sam­ple, then back to a part played again by live drum­mers, such as YouTube “Hi-Hat Mas­ter” Ydna Murd below.

It may be the case that almost every drum­mer who came of age in the late eight­ies and nineties plays some ver­sion of the Amen Break. But just what con­sti­tutes the end­less appeal of this snip­pet of sound, and how did the loop­ing of a few bars of drum­ming help lay the foun­da­tion for sev­er­al new gen­res of music in the late 2oth cen­tu­ry? The author of The Econ­o­mist piece on the Amen break spec­u­lates it’s drum­mer G.C. Coleman’s indi­vid­ual style as well as cer­tain qual­i­ties of the record­ing:

Amen also has cer­tain son­ic qual­i­ties that set it aside from its rivals. Rather than keep­ing time with a hi-hat, Cole­man uses the loose sound of the ride cym­bal, fill­ing out the aur­al space. And the record­ing has a “crunch” to it, says Tom Skin­ner, a Lon­don-based ses­sion drum­mer: “That qual­i­ty is appeal­ing to beat­mak­ers.” The pitched tone of the snare drum is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tinc­tive; as any junglist will tell you, a snare can be as evoca­tive as a smell.

Author Michael S. Schnei­der, how­ev­er, has a more rar­i­fied answer: he spec­u­lates that the Amen break has the prop­er­ties of the geo­met­ric gold­en mean, that ancient Greek pro­por­tion that sup­pos­ed­ly describes the shape of truth and beau­ty.

Is this like­ly? Was Win­stons’ drum­mer Cole­man chan­nel­ing Apol­lon­ian ratios from the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, or was he just doing his thing, play­ing his heart out? If Cole­man him­self had some insight into why the Amen Break explod­ed, we will nev­er know; he died in 1996. And for all of the cre­ative recy­cling of the Amen Break, nei­ther Cole­man nor Win­stons’ band­leader Richard L. Spencer ever received a dime in roy­al­ties, a fact that has left Spencer—who calls the use of the break plagiarism—somewhat bit­ter. But British music jour­nal­ist Simon Reynolds puts it this way: “It’s a bit like the man who goes to the sperm bank and unknow­ing­ly sires hun­dreds of chil­dren.” Hun­dreds of chil­dren, he might have added, beloved by mil­lions of music fans across the globe.

a big h/t goes to @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

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

Eric Clapton in the 60s: Film Revisits the Young Guitarist When He Took the Rock World by Storm

in Film, Music | March 12th, 2013

In recent decades, Eric Clap­ton has set­tled into a kind of com­mer­cial­ly com­fort­able respectabil­i­ty. His songs, like “Tears From Heav­en” and “My Father’s Eyes,” are easy on the ears but hard to get enthused about. So it might be dif­fi­cult for those of younger gen­er­a­tions to under­stand how Clap­ton’s gui­tar play­ing once inspired fanat­ics to spray-paint “Clap­ton is God” across walls all over Lon­don.

This two-hour doc­u­men­tary takes us back to those excit­ing times: to when Clap­ton joined the Yard­birds at the age of 18, only to leave a year and a half lat­er because he was unhap­py with the band’s com­mer­cial­ism; to his leg­endary blos­som­ing as an elec­tric blues gui­tar vir­tu­oso with John May­all & the Blues­break­ers; to his emer­gence as a super­star with Cream and his brief exper­i­ment with Blind Faith. The film explores the ear­ly devel­op­ment of Clap­ton’s play­ing through inter­views with fel­low musi­cians May­all, Chris Dre­ja, Ben Palmer, Neil Innes and oth­ers, along with Cream pro­du­cr Bill Halver­son and a group of vet­er­an music jour­nal­ists.

Eric Clapton–The 1960’s Review is not the film to watch for extend­ed musi­cal per­for­mances by Clap­ton, but it’s a great way to learn more about what made him, if not God, cer­tain­ly one of the great­est blues and rock gui­tarists of all time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of his Gui­tar Sound

Eric Clap­ton Tries Out Gui­tars at Home and Talks About the Bea­t­les, Cream, and His Musi­cal Roots

Eric Clap­ton and Steve Win­wood Join Forces at the His­toric Blind Faith Con­cert in Hyde Park, 1969

Watch Powers of Ten and Let Designers Charles & Ray Eames Take You on a Brilliant Tour of the Universe

in Film | March 12th, 2013

All our child­hood homes con­tained books we could­n’t quite explain. I remem­ber feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­ti­fied, though not dis­pleas­ing­ly so, by a slim vol­ume called Cos­mic View, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1957. The book seemed to me unimag­in­ably old, strik­ing­ly lav­ish, and faint­ly alien, like a visu­al time cap­sule from a for­got­ten era in a par­al­lel real­i­ty.

The out­landish name of the author, Kees Boeke—surely not a name at all—only strength­ened these imag­i­na­tive impres­sions. Every few months, I would flip through and won­der at Cos­mic View’s full-page images. A girl with a cat? Plan­e­tary orbits? The galaxy itself? A bug? A cell?

I sup­pose I could have read a bit of the text and under­stood the con­text for all of this, but I pre­ferred at the time to leave the strange lit­tle vol­ume’s rhyme or rea­son obscure. Today I under­stand Boeke’s aim: to view our uni­verse at every pos­si­ble scale, cos­mic and oth­er­wise, zoom­ing all the way in and then all the way out from our every­day per­spec­tive.

The 1977 short film Pow­ers of Ten would do the same, but in motion. Tak­ing Cos­mic View as a start­ing point, Charles and Ray Eames’ icon­ic lit­tle film (first above) starts with a fixed point in Chica­go, then moves out into the uni­verse by fac­tors of ten. And, before too long, you find your­self 100 mil­lion light years away. It’s eight min­utes of bril­liant work. But they did­n’t come eas­i­ly. Almost a decade before releas­ing Pow­ers of Ten, the Eames pro­duced a less wide­ly seen pro­to­type. 1968’s A Rough Sketch for a Pro­posed Film Deal­ing with the Pow­ers of Ten and the Rel­a­tive Size of Things in the Uni­verse reveals some of the think­ing and process the Amer­i­can design­ers under­took to envi­sion a cin­e­mat­ic Cos­mic View. They ulti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed, hav­ing fleshed out this basic but still impres­sive con­cept over the fol­low­ing decade. In 1982, the project would come full cir­cle by return­ing to print with Pow­ers of Ten: A Book About the Rel­a­tive Size of Things in the Uni­verse and the Effect of Adding Anoth­er Zero.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pow­ers of Ten: 1977 Short Film by Design­ers Ray & Charles Eames Gives Bril­liant Tour of Uni­verse

Charles and Ray Eames’ Pow­ers of Ten: The Clas­sic Film Re-Imag­ined By 40 Artists

Mag­ni­fy­ing the Uni­verse: Move From Atoms to Galax­ies in HD

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.

FOUND: A New Collection of Rare Photos from the National Geographic Archives

in Photography | March 11th, 2013

Ladies and gen­tle­men, we present FOUND, a new site that fea­tures a curat­ed col­lec­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic archives. Launched as part of Nat­Geo’s 125th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion (hope­ful­ly we’re around in anoth­er 119 years too!), FOUND show­cas­es “pho­tographs that reveal cul­tures and moments of the past.” Many of these rare pho­tos have nev­er been pub­lished. We picked an imme­di­ate favorite from the col­lec­tion: Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell and his wife Mabel kiss­ing with­in a tetra­he­dral kite, one of his many inven­tions, in Octo­ber 1903. You can start perus­ing the pho­to archive here.

via Kot­tke

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll make it easy to share intel­li­gent media with your friends!