Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Support the City Threatened by Climate Change: A Poignant New Sculpture

in Art, Science | May 17th, 2017

Upon arriv­ing in Venice in the late 1930s, colum­nist and Algo­nquin Round Table reg­u­lar Robert Bench­ley imme­di­ate­ly sent a telegram back home to Amer­i­ca: “Streets full of water. Please advise.” The line has tak­en its place in the canon of Amer­i­can humor, but in more recent times the image of water-filled streets — unin­ten­tion­al­ly water-filled streets, that is — has arisen most often in the con­ver­sa­tion about cli­mate change. Some of the poten­tial dis­as­ter sce­nar­ios envi­sion every major coastal city on Earth even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a kind of Venice, albeit a much less pleas­ant ver­sion there­of.

And so what bet­ter place than the one that hosts per­haps the world’s best known art exhi­bi­tion, the Venice Bien­nale, to express cli­mate-change anx­i­ety in the form of pub­lic sculp­ture? “Venice is known for its gon­do­las, canals, and his­toric bridges,” writes Condé Nast Trav­el­er’s Sebas­t­ian Modak, “but vis­i­tors will now also be greet­ed by anoth­er, albeit tem­po­rary, reminder of the city’s inti­mate rela­tion­ship with water: a giant pair of hands reach­ing out of the Grand Canal and appear­ing to sup­port the walls of the his­toric Ca’ Sagre­do Hotel.” The piece is called Sup­port, and it’s cre­at­ed by Barcelona-based Ital­ian sculp­tor Loren­zo Quinn.

“I have three chil­dren, and I’m think­ing about their gen­er­a­tion and what world we’re going to pass on to them,” Quinn told Mash­able’s Maria Gal­luc­ci. “I’m wor­ried, I’m very wor­ried.” The hands of his 11-year-old son actu­al­ly pro­vid­ed the mod­el for the polyurethane-and-resin hands of Sup­port, weigh­ing 5,000 pounds each, that stand on 30-foot pil­lars at the bot­tom of the Grand Canal. Modak quotes one of Quin­n’s Insta­gram posts which describes the work as speak­ing to the peo­ple “in a clear, sim­ple and direct way through the inno­cent hands of a child and it evokes a pow­er­ful mes­sage, which is that unit­ed we can make a stand to curb the cli­mate change that affects us all.”

Those argu­ing in favor of more aggres­sive polit­i­cal mea­sures to coun­ter­act the effects of cli­mate change have gone to great lengths to point out what forms those effects have so far tak­en. But the fact that, apart from a stretch of hot sum­mers, few of those effects have yet man­i­fest­ed unde­ni­ably in most peo­ple’s lives has cer­tain­ly made their job hard­er. But nobody who vis­its Venice dur­ing the Bien­nale could fail to pause before Sup­port, a work whose visu­al dra­ma demands a reac­tion that tem­per­a­ture charts or data-filled stud­ies can’t hope to pro­voke by them­selves. And even apart from the issue at hand, as it were, Quin­n’s sculp­ture reminds us that art, even in as deeply his­tor­i­cal a set­ting as Venice, can also keep us think­ing about the future.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Music for a String Quar­tet Made from Glob­al Warm­ing Data: Hear “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World”

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

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

Frank Capra’s Sci­ence Film The Unchained God­dess Warns of Cli­mate Change in 1958

Watch Episode 1 of Years of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly, The New Show­time Series on Cli­mate Change

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Edward Gorey Illustrates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inimitable Gothic Style (1960)

in Art, Literature, Sci Fi | May 16th, 2017

The sto­ry of mali­cious space aliens invad­ing Earth has a res­o­nance that knows no nation­al bound­aries. In fact, many mod­ern ver­sions make explic­it the moral that only fight­ing off an exis­ten­tial threat from anoth­er plan­et could uni­fy the inher­ent­ly frac­tious human species. H.G. Wells’ 1898 nov­el The War of the Worlds, in many ways the arche­typ­al telling of the space-invaders tale, cer­tain­ly proved com­pelling on both sides of the pond: though set in Wells’ home­land of Eng­land, it made a last­ing impact on Amer­i­can cul­ture when Orson Welles pro­duced a thor­ough­ly local­ized ver­sion for radio, his infa­mous War of the Worlds Hal­loween 1938 broad­cast. (Lis­ten to it here.)

And so who bet­ter to illus­trate a mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry edi­tion of the nov­el than Edward Gorey? He was born in and spent near­ly all his life in Amer­i­ca, but devel­oped an artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty that struck its many appre­ci­a­tors as uncan­ni­ly mid-Atlantic. His work con­tin­ues to draw descrip­tions like “Vic­to­ri­an” and “goth­ic,” sure­ly under­scored by his asso­ci­a­tion with the British lit­er­a­ture-adapt­ing tele­vi­sion show Mys­tery!, for whose title sequences he drew char­ac­ters and set­tings, and the young-adult goth­ic mys­tery nov­els of Anglophile author John Bel­lairs. The Gorey-illus­trat­ed War of the Worlds came out in 1960 from Look­ing Glass Library, fea­tur­ing his draw­ings not just at the top of each chap­ter but on its wrap­around cov­er as well. Though out of print, you can find old copies for sale online.

Gorey had begun his career in the ear­ly 1950s at the art depart­ment of pub­lish­er Dou­ble­day Anchor, cre­at­ing book cov­ers and occa­sion­al­ly inte­ri­or illus­tra­tions. In addi­tion to Bel­lairs’ nov­els, he would also go on to put his artis­tic stamp on such lit­er­ary clas­sics as Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la and T.S. Eliot’s Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, bring­ing to each his sig­na­ture com­bi­na­tion of whim­sy and dread in just the right pro­por­tions. Giv­en the inher­ent omi­nous­ness and threat of The War of the Worlds, Gorey’s dark side comes to the fore as the sto­ry’s long-legged ter­rors arrive and wreak hav­oc on Earth, only to fall vic­tim to com­mon dis­ease.

Gorey’s War of the Worlds illus­tra­tions also seem to draw some inspi­ra­tion from the very first ones that accom­pa­nied the nov­el upon its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion as a Pear­son­’s Mag­a­zine ser­i­al in 1897. You can com­pare and con­trast them by brows­ing the high-res­o­lu­tion scans of the out-of-print 1960 Look­ing Glass Library War of the Worlds at this online exhi­bi­tion at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go Dig­i­tal Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, in part­ner­ship with the Edward Gorey Char­i­ta­ble Trust.

Though con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar to the illus­tra­tions in Pear­son’s, drawn by an artist (usu­al­ly of chil­dren’s books) named War­wick Gob­le, they don’t get into quite as much detail — but then, they don’t have to. To evoke a com­plex mix­ture of fas­ci­nat­ed antic­i­pa­tion and creep­ing fear, Gorey nev­er need­ed more than an old house, a hud­dle of sil­hou­ettes, or a pair of eyes glow­ing in the dark­ness.

via Heavy Met­al

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

Hear the Prog-Rock Adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Mil­lion Copies World­wide

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The MC5 Performs at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

in Music, Politics | May 16th, 2017

With some rare excep­tions (Sid and Nan­cy, I’m Not There, maybe Walk the Line and Cadil­lac Records), biopics usu­al­ly stum­ble bad­ly when they try to recre­ate the per­son­al­i­ties and atmos­pheres of famous musi­cians. For this rea­son I am grate­ful that no stu­dio has yet attempt­ed a nar­ra­tive of one of my favorite bands, the not-quite-famous MC5. On the oth­er hand, it’s hard to believe there’s no script in devel­op­ment some­where. If there’s one band whose story—and music—deserves a wider audi­ence, it’s this one. Sad­ly, gui­tarist Wayne Kramer has sup­pressed a very well-reviewed doc­u­men­tary that might do them as much jus­tice as any film can.

Formed in Lin­coln Park Michi­gan in 1964, the “Motor City 5” became syn­ony­mous with Detroit’s left­ist polit­i­cal scene. They were also some of the most uncom­pro­mis­ing garage rock­ers to emerge from the era, along with pro­to-punks The Stooges, with whom they often per­formed.

By the time of the infa­mous 1968 Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tion in Chica­go—well-known for the bru­tal attacks of police against thou­sands of aggriev­ed protesters—the MC5 had become heav­i­ly influ­enced by Fred Hamp­ton and Huey New­ton. Under their man­ag­er John Sin­clair, they became promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the “White Pan­thers,” an anti-racist ana­logue of the Black Pan­thers formed on a sug­ges­tion of Newton’s.

In Sep­tem­ber of 1968, Sin­clair would be indict­ed for tak­ing part in the bomb­ing a CIA office in Ann Arbor. But exact­ly one month pri­or, he presided over the MC5’s appear­ance at the riotous Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. The band was booked as part of Abbie Hoffman’s attempt to stage a “Fes­ti­val of Life,” bring­ing 100,000 young peo­ple to the city “for five days of peace, love, and music,” writes the site Chica­go ’68, to “redi­rect youth cul­ture and music toward polit­i­cal ends.” Fit­ting­ly, per­haps, the MC5 was the only band that showed up after Hoff­man and his Yip­pies failed to secure the per­mits. They played for less than an hour to a crowd of a few thou­sand. Kramer remem­bered the day in a 2008 inter­view:

There was no stage, there was no flatbed truck, there was no sound sys­tem, there were no por­ta-toi­lets, there was no elec­tric­i­ty. We had to run an elec­tri­cal cord from the hot dog stand to pow­er our gear. We played on the ground in the mid­dle of Lin­coln Park in Chica­go with the crowd all around us sit­ting on the ground, in the back stand­ing. I’m going to guess there were maybe 3,000 young peo­ple there. And it was very tense. The Chica­go police had been very aggres­sive and very intim­i­dat­ing all day, and even though it was a rock con­cert and we were the only band to play, it didn’t feel like a rock con­cert. There was a dark cloud over the day because we knew the like­li­hood of peo­ple being hurt was great.

The only film we seem to have of the event is silent sur­veil­lance footage at the top of the post. Fur­ther down, see clips of the riot­ing that ensued, with the band’s hit “Kick Out the Jams” played over it. And just below, see a video of them play­ing the song over a back­drop of riot footage. They released their debut album, Kick Out the Jams , the fol­low­ing year. It was an uneven col­lec­tion of per­for­mances, but “when they got it right,” says Michael Hann, “they sim­ply got it com­plete­ly right.” It was cer­tain­ly their phi­los­o­phy to go all in. As Kramer described it, “You have to come ear­ly, and you have to stay late. The song doesn’t say, ‘Slide out the jams.” It doesn’t say, ‘Stroll out the jams.” It says, ‘Kick out the jams!’”

What I find fas­ci­nat­ing about the emer­gence of the MC5 at this time in his­to­ry is how great of a con­trast they pre­sent­ed to the weary blues of the Rolling Stones, who became grim­ly linked in ’69 at Alta­mont with the cyn­i­cal end of flower pow­er. Despite their asso­ci­a­tion with the vio­lent spec­ta­cle of the DNC riots—another sign of the hip­pie apocalypse—the MC5 became the sound­track for peo­ple pow­er, and in a way bridged the R&B, garage rock, psy­che­delia, punk, and met­al of the grit­ty 1970s to come. But addic­tion, polit­i­cal repres­sion, and cen­sor­ship killed the band a few years lat­er. Lead singer Rob Tyn­er died in 1991, and gui­tarist Fred “Son­ic” Smith, who mar­ried Pat­ti Smith, passed away in 1994.

Kramer has car­ried on, and still tours (and gives lec­tures). When he revis­it­ed the DNC in 2008 for an unof­fi­cial per­for­mance and anti-war protest, he reflect­ed on the pol­i­tics of the day. “It will be help­ful not to have to bat­tle as hard as we have with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion,” he told The Huff­in­g­ton Post, “but Barack Oba­ma can­not save us. It’s real­ly a mat­ter of peo­ple them­selves tak­ing action in their own neigh­bor­hoods, at their own jobs, in their own homes, with their own friends, their own co-work­ers, to move us into the future, a more just world.” The peo­ple pow­er the MC5 rep­re­sent­ed lives on even into this grim era, and the band itself will always live in leg­end, if not—for good or ill—in cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Web Com­ic Revis­its the Artists & Writ­ers at the Bloody ’68 Con­ven­tion: Jean Genet, William S. Bur­roughs & More

Hear the First Live Per­for­mance of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar:” Record­ed at the Fate­ful Alta­mont Free Con­cert in 1969

A Gallery of Visu­al­ly Arrest­ing Posters from the May 1968 Paris Upris­ing

New Jim Jar­musch Doc­u­men­tary on Iggy Pop & The Stooges Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

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

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Meet the Iconic Figures on the Cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

in Art, Music | May 16th, 2017

June 1 will mark the 50th anniver­sary of the release of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, an album con­sid­ered rev­o­lu­tion­ary in every respect. Every­thing from the music itself, down to the album’s cov­er design, broke new ground. To com­mem­o­rate the upcom­ing anniver­sary, the BBC has start­ed to release a series of videos intro­duc­ing you to the 60+ fig­ures who appeared in the cutout card­board col­lage that graced the album’s icon­ic cov­er. (See a map­ping of the fig­ures here.)

Some of the fig­ures are endur­ing legends–Carl Jung, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and James Joyce. Oth­ers (e.g., Tom­my Han­d­ley, Bob­by Breen and Tom Mix) have fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty.

Up top, watch the video fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan. No stranger, right? Down below, see the video on Aubrey Beard­s­ley, the Eng­lish artist who cre­at­ed strik­ing illus­tra­tions for works by Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, both also fea­tured in the col­lage.

At the bot­tom, see a clip on pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. The BBC will be adding yet more videos here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

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“Calling Bullshit”: Watch Lectures for the College Course Designed to Combat the BS in our Information Age

in Current Affairs, Online Courses | May 15th, 2017

This past Jan­u­ary, we high­light­ed a syl­labus for a ten­ta­tive course called “Call­ing Bull­shit,” designed by two pro­fes­sors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West.

The course–also some­times called “Call­ing Bull­shit in the Age of Big Data”–ended up being offered this spring. And now you can see how it unfold­ed in the class­room. The 10 video lec­tures from the class are avail­able online. Watch them above, or at this YouTube playlist. Also find them housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Accord­ing to The Seat­tle Times, the course “achieved the aca­d­e­m­ic ver­sion of a chart-top­ping pop sin­gle: At the UW [Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton], it reached its 160-stu­dent capac­i­ty short­ly after reg­is­tra­tion opened this spring.” And now col­leges “in Cana­da, France, Por­tu­gal, Eng­land and Aus­tralia have con­tact­ed the pro­fes­sors about teach­ing a ver­sion of the course this fall.”

The course itself was premised on this basic idea: “Bull­shit is every­where, and we’ve had enough. We want to teach peo­ple to detect and defuse bull­shit wher­ev­er it may arise.”

A longer overview of the course appears below. It was cit­ed in our orig­i­nal post. And it’s worth high­light­ing again:

The world is awash in bull­shit. Politi­cians are uncon­strained by facts. Sci­ence is con­duct­ed by press release. High­er edu­ca­tion rewards bull­shit over ana­lyt­ic thought. Start­up cul­ture ele­vates bull­shit to high art. Adver­tis­ers wink con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly and invite us to join them in see­ing through all the bull­shit — and take advan­tage of our low­ered guard to bom­bard us with bull­shit of the sec­ond order. The major­i­ty of admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, whether in pri­vate busi­ness or the pub­lic sphere, seems to be lit­tle more than a sophis­ti­cat­ed exer­cise in the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al reassem­bly of bull­shit.

We’re sick of it. It’s time to do some­thing, and as edu­ca­tors, one con­struc­tive thing we know how to do is to teach peo­ple. So, the aim of this course is to help stu­dents nav­i­gate the bull­shit-rich mod­ern envi­ron­ment by iden­ti­fy­ing bull­shit, see­ing through it, and com­bat­ing it with effec­tive analy­sis and argu­ment.

What do we mean, exact­ly, by the term bull­shit? As a first approx­i­ma­tion, bull­shit is lan­guage, sta­tis­ti­cal fig­ures, data graph­ics, and oth­er forms of pre­sen­ta­tion intend­ed to per­suade by impress­ing and over­whelm­ing a read­er or lis­ten­er, with a bla­tant dis­re­gard for truth and log­i­cal coher­ence.

While bull­shit may reach its apogee in the polit­i­cal domain, this is not a course on polit­i­cal bull­shit. Instead, we will focus on bull­shit that comes clad in the trap­pings of schol­ar­ly dis­course. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such high­brow non­sense has come couched in big words and fan­cy rhetoric, but more and more we see it pre­sent­ed instead in the guise of big data and fan­cy algo­rithms — and these quan­ti­ta­tive, sta­tis­ti­cal, and com­pu­ta­tion­al forms of bull­shit are those that we will be address­ing in the present course….

Our aim in this course is to teach you how to think crit­i­cal­ly about the data and mod­els that con­sti­tute evi­dence in the social and nat­ur­al sci­ences.

If you’re inter­est­ed in watch­ing the course, get start­ed with Lec­ture 1: Intro­duc­tion to Bull­shit.

To learn more about the course, please vis­it this web­site.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

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Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Selected by Hunter S. Thompson

in Music | May 15th, 2017

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Hunter S. Thomp­son, the writer who gave vivid, inim­itable form to “gonzo jour­nal­ism,” honed his lit­er­ary chops the hard way, using rig­or­ous tech­niques includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to retyp­ing the entire texts of The Great Gats­by and A Farewell to Arms him­self. But he would let no one claim that his artis­tic appre­ci­a­tion extend­ed only to the print­ed word: “I resent your assump­tion that Music is Not My Bag,” he wrote in late 1970 to Rolling Stone edi­tor John Lom­bar­do, “because I’ve been argu­ing for the past few years that music is the New Lit­er­a­ture, that Dylan is the 1960s’ answer to Hem­ing­way, and that the main voice of the ’70s will be on records & video­tape instead of books.”

In this same let­ter, col­lect­ed in his sec­ond vol­ume of cor­re­spon­dence Fear and Loathing in Amer­i­ca, Thomp­son includ­ed a list of the best albums of the “rock age” of the 1960s, “because the ’60s are going to go down like a repeat, some­how, of the 1920s; the par­al­lels are too gross for even his­to­ri­ans to ignore.”

The list did­n’t come from Thomp­son, strict­ly speak­ing, but “from Raoul Duke,” the hard-liv­ing alter-ego who would star in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, pub­lished the fol­low­ing year. You can find a slight­ly cleaned-up ver­sion of the list in this Beat­dom post by David S. Willis:

  1. Her­bie Mann’s 1969 Mem­phis Under­ground (“which may be the best album ever cut by any­body”)
  2. Bob Dylan’s 1965 Bring­ing It All Back Home
  3. Dylan’s 1965 High­way 61 Revis­it­ed
  4. The Grate­ful Dead’s 1970 Workingman’s Dead (“the heav­i­est thing since High­way 61 and ‘Mr. Tam­bourine Man‘”)
  5. The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Let it Bleed
  6. Buf­fa­lo Springfield’s 1967 Buf­fa­lo Spring­field
  7. Jef­fer­son Airplane’s 1967 Sur­re­al­is­tic Pil­low
  8. Roland Kirk’s “var­i­ous albums”
  9. Miles Davis’s 1959 Sketch­es of Spain
  10. Sandy Bull’s 1965 Inven­tions

You can also hear most of Thompson/Duke’s Best Albums of the 1960s selec­tions gath­ered in the Spo­ti­fy playlist embed­ded above. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.) Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Spo­ti­fy has­n’t yet incor­po­rat­ed into its col­lec­tion the work of exper­i­men­tal solo folk gui­tarist Sandy Bull, whose 1965 Inven­tions takes tenth place. (You can hear it on YouTube, how­ev­er.) Bull, whose life was as abun­dant with cre­ativ­i­ty as it was with sub­stances, cut some­thing of a Thomp­son­ian — or Dukean? — fig­ure him­self. His long-form com­po­si­tions “Blend” and “Blend II,” the lat­ter of which opens Inven­tions, will give you a sense of how far he pushed the bound­aries of his tra­di­tion.

“Jesus, what a has­sle to even think quick­ly about a list like that,” wrote Thomp­son, bring­ing the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly expan­sive let­ter to a close, still try­ing to con­vince Lom­bar­di that such a then-untest­ed con­cept as a 1960s top-ten-albums list could work. “Even now I can think of 10 more I might have added… but what the fuck, it’s only a rude idea. But a good one, I think.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Franz Kafka’s Unfinished Novel, The Castle, Gets Turned Into an Album by Czech Musicians: Watch a Music Video for the Song, “The Grave”

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons, Literature, Music, Theatre | May 15th, 2017

If, for some unfath­omable rea­son, author Franz Kaf­ka should emerge from his grave to direct a music video, the result would most cer­tain­ly resem­ble the one for “The Grave” by The Kaf­ka Band, above.

The air of futil­i­ty and social fore­bod­ing…

The chilly bro­ken land­scape, ren­dered in black and white…

Biki­nis and bling…

(Kid­ding! Over­coats and hag­gard expres­sions.)

“The Grave” was direct­ed by ani­ma­tor, Noro Hold­er, but the lyrics are cred­it­ed to Kaf­ka, drawn direct­ly from his unfin­ished nov­el, The Cas­tle. As the band’s name might imply, this is no fick­le flir­ta­tion with the author’s sen­si­bil­i­ties.

“The Grave” is actu­al­ly part of a ten-song album inspired by The Cas­tle. (Stream it on Spo­ti­fy below.) As band­mate, author Jaroslav Rudiš, observed:

Kaf­ka is often deemed as a dark author, yet we strive to chal­lenge this cliché. The nov­el pos­sess­es plen­ty of black and absurd humour, which we reflect­ed in some of our com­po­si­tions.

The album led to a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Germany’s The­ater Bre­men on a the­atri­cal adap­ta­tion that fea­tured the music played live.

The moody wood­cut-inspired visu­als seen above come from a graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tion of The Cas­tle illus­trat­ed by Rudiš’ band­mate, Jaromír 99, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with David Zane Mairowitz, an Amer­i­can play­wright who pre­vi­ous­ly tack­led Kafka’s The Tri­al. 

At the point where anoth­er group might decide to take a detour into sun­nier territory—a pop romp through the oeu­vre of Milan Kun­dera perhaps—the Kaf­ka Band is dou­bling down on anoth­er copro­duc­tion with The­ater Bre­men, an adap­ta­tion of Kafka’s nov­el Ameri­ka (or The Man Who Dis­ap­peared), slat­ed to open this fall.

The Grave

I’m dream­ing of

Being with you

With­out inter­rup­tion

On earth

There is no space

For our love

Not in the vil­lage

Not any­where else.

Deep in the earth / around us only death / the liv­ing won’t find us.

I’m imag­in­ing a grave

Deep and tight

We hold each oth­er

My face next to yours

Yours next to mine

Nobody will ever see us

On earth there is no space

For our love.

Deep in the earth / around us only death / the liv­ing won’t find us.

Watch the video for “Arrival,” anoth­er track inspired by The Cas­tle, with draw­ings by Jaromír 99 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meta­mor­fo­s­is: Franz Kafka’s Best-Known Short Sto­ry Gets Adapt­ed Into a Tim Bur­tonesque Span­ish Short Film

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kafka’s Exis­ten­tial Para­ble “Before the Law” Gets Brought to Life in a Strik­ing, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er, soon to be appear­ing in a clown adap­ta­tion of Faust, inspired by the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion and open­ing in New York City this June. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover “The Ghost Club,” the Historic Paranormal Society Whose Members Included Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle & W.B. Yeats

in History, Literature | May 15th, 2017

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All 886 episodes of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood Streaming Online (for a Limited Time)

in K-12, Television | May 14th, 2017

It’s a beau­ti­ful day in the neigh­bor­hood, kids. On Mon­day, at noon Cal­i­for­nia time, Twitch will start a marathon air­ing of Mis­ter Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, stream­ing all 886 episodes of the clas­sic children’s TV show. If you have 17 free days, you can watch the marathon from start to fin­ish. Dur­ing this time, Twitch will also be run­ning a fundrais­er for PBS, which faces stiff fund­ing cuts if  “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” has his way.

Enjoy the epic broad­cast, and don’t miss some clas­sic Mis­ter Rogers scenes in the Relat­eds below.

PBS has more infor­ma­tion on the Twitch-PBS part­ner­ship here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Goes to Con­gress and Saves PBS: Heart­warm­ing Video from 1969

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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Japanese Computer Artist Makes “Digital Mondrians” in 1964: When Giant Mainframe Computers Were First Used to Create Art

in Art, Technology | May 12th, 2017

In the 21st cen­tu­ry, most of us have tried our hand at mak­ing some kind of dig­i­tal art or anoth­er — even if only touch­ing up cell­phone pho­tos of our­selves — but imag­ine the task of pro­duc­ing it 50 years ago. To make dig­i­tal art before the world had bare­ly heard the term “dig­i­tal” required access to a main­frame com­put­er, those huge­ly expen­sive hulks that filled rooms and print­ed out reams and reams of paper data, and the con­sid­er­able tech­ni­cal know-how to oper­ate it.

But the achieve­ment also, to go by the very ear­ly exam­ple of Hiroshi Kawano, required a back­ground in phi­los­o­phy. A grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo major­ing in aes­thet­ics and the phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence before becom­ing a research assis­tant at that school and then a lec­tur­er at the Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Col­lege of Air-Tech­nol­o­gy, Kawano mar­shaled his knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to cre­ate these “dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans,” so described because of their com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed resem­blance to that Dutch painter’s most rig­or­ous­ly angu­lar, solid­ly col­ored work.

Kawano had drawn inspi­ra­tion, accord­ing to a Deutsche Welle arti­cle on his dona­tion of his archives to Ger­many’s Cen­ter for Media Art, from “the writ­ings of the Ger­man philoso­pher Max Bense, who pro­posed (among oth­er things) the idea of mea­sur­ing beau­ty using sci­en­tif­ic rules. At the same time, Kawano heard that sci­en­tists were using com­put­ers to cre­ate music. Putting the two togeth­er, he decid­ed to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using a com­put­er to pro­gram beau­ty.”

Doing so required “writ­ing pro­grams in com­plex com­put­er lan­guages, then labo­ri­ous­ly punch­ing these pro­grams into hun­dreds of cards before feed­ing them into the machine.” And “while the design of his works pro­duced dur­ing the 1960s might look sim­ple — they’re not. They are the result of com­plex math­e­mat­i­cal algo­rithms pro­grammed so that, although Kawano sets the rules for how the pic­ture could look, he can’t deter­mine exact­ly what will appear on the print­er.”

Just before Kawano passed away in 2012, the ZKM (or Cen­ter for Art and Media Karl­sruhe), cel­e­brat­ed his pio­neer­ing dig­i­tal art with the exhi­bi­tion “The Philoso­pher at the Com­put­er,” some of which you can see in this Ger­man-lan­guage video clip. “The ret­ro­spec­tive empha­sizes Kawano’s spe­cial role in the cir­cle of pio­neers in ‘com­put­er art,’ ” says its intro­duc­tion. “He was nei­ther artist, who dis­cov­ered the com­put­er as a new pro­duc­tion medi­um and theme, nor engi­neer who came to art via the new machine, but a philoso­pher, who left his desk for the com­put­er cen­ter to exper­i­ment with the­o­ret­i­cal mod­els.”

Can com­put­ers cre­ate art? Can they even be used to cre­ate art? These ques­tions now have prac­ti­cal­ly obvi­ous answers in the affir­ma­tive, but back in 1964 when Kawano pro­duced the first of these pieces, work­ing through tri­al and error with the advice of the curi­ous staff of his uni­ver­si­ty’s com­put­er cen­ter, the ques­tions must have sound­ed impos­si­bly philo­soph­i­cal. Today, writes Over­head Com­part­men­t’s Clau­dio Rivera, Kawano’s dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans “sug­gest them­selves as an odd­ly ephemer­al tran­si­tion in the nexus of tech­nol­o­gy and art. The famil­iar col­ors and forms are flash-frozen in crys­talline pix­e­la­tion, almost as if seized up in the final, over­heat­ed throes of a sud­den­ly-too-old com­put­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch the Dutch Paint “the Largest Mon­dri­an Paint­ing in the World”

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Sigmund Freud, Father of Psychoanalysis, Introduced in a Monty Python-Style Animation

in Neuroscience, Psychology | May 12th, 2017

Pity the hedge­hog. The freez­ing tem­per­a­tures of win­ter com­pel them to cozy up to oth­ers of its kind, but the prick­ly spines cov­er­ing their bod­ies pre­vent them from sus­tain­ing the easy, ongo­ing inti­ma­cy they so crave.

It’s a hell of a metaphor for human rela­tion­ships, com­pli­ments of 19th-cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Arthur Schopen­hauer. It cer­tain­ly spoke to Sig­mund Freud, who devot­ed his life try­ing to fig­ure out why so many of us resort to pet­ty behav­iors, spurn­ing those we love, and sab­o­tag­ing our­selves at every turn.

Pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions would have us believe that the father of psy­cho­analy­sis was a detached sort of know-it-all, emo­tion­al­ly supe­ri­or to the bas­ket cas­es snivel­ing on his couch. Not so. As he not­ed in 1897:

I have been through some kind of neu­rot­ic expe­ri­ence, curi­ous states… twi­light thoughts, veiled doubts… The chief patient I am pre­oc­cu­pied with is myself… my lit­tle hys­te­ria… the analy­sis is more dif­fi­cult than any oth­er. Some­thing from the deep­est depths of my own neu­ro­sis sets itself against any advance in under­stand­ing neu­roses…

We feel ya’, doc, and so does The School of Life, the Lon­don-based orga­ni­za­tion for devel­op­ing emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, co-found­ed by philo­soph­i­cal essay­ist, Alain de Bot­ton:

… con­sult­ing a psy­chother­a­pist should be as acces­si­ble and as nor­mal as devel­op­ing your career, get­ting help for a phys­i­cal prob­lem, or going to the gym to get healthy. Just as we take care of our bod­ies and phys­i­cal health, a vital ele­ment of self-care is devot­ing focused time and ener­gy to explor­ing and under­stand­ing our thoughts and feel­ings.

The school puts your mon­ey where its mouth is by retain­ing a ros­ter of licensed psy­chother­a­pists who can be booked for in-per­son or Skype ses­sions.

It’s not for every­one. There are those who are deter­mined to pur­sue the path to con­tent­ment and self-knowl­edge solo, imper­vi­ous to Freud’s belief that “No one who dis­dains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.”

The ther­a­py-averse can still learn some­thing from the video above. Nar­ra­tor de Bot­ton charms his way through an eas­i­ly digest­ed overview of Freud’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life, and the result­ing tenets of psy­cho­analy­sis.

And film­mak­er Mad Adam ensures that this brief trip through the infant phases—oral, anal, phallic—will be a jol­ly one, replete with droll, most­ly vin­tage images.

Release more mon­sters of the id with the School of Life’s psy­chother­a­py playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20,000 Let­ters, Man­u­scripts & Arti­facts From Sig­mund Freud Get Dig­i­tized and Made Avail­able Online

Down­load Sig­mund Freud’s Great Works as Free eBooks & Free Audio Books: A Dig­i­tal Cel­e­bra­tion on His 160th Birth­day

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

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

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