What Entered the Public Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

in Film, Law, Literature | January 22nd, 2013

Last year, key works by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf finally entered the public domain, at least in Europe. (Find them in our collections of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.) This year, we got pretty much bupkis, especially if we’re talking about the United States. Over at the website run by The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University, they write:

What is entering the public domain in the United States? Nothing. Once again, we will have nothing to celebrate this January 1st. Not a single published work is entering the public domain this year. Or next year. In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019. Even more shockingly, the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress can take back works from the public domain. Could Shakespeare, Plato, or Mozart be pulled back into copyright? The Supreme Court gave no reason to think that they could not be.

The Center then goes on to enumerate the works that would have entered the commons had we lived under the copyright laws that prevailed until 1978. Under those laws, “thousands of works from 1956 would be entering the public domain. They range from the films The Best Things in Life Are Free, Around the World in 80 Days, Forbidden Planet, and The Man Who Knew Too Much, to the Phillip K. Dick’s The Minority Report and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, to seminal articles on artificial intelligence.” Have a look at some of the others, several of which appear in the mosaic above.

Lawrence Lessig Speaks Once Again About Copyright and Creativity

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National Geographic Photographer Steve McCurry Shoots the Very Last Roll of Kodachrome

in Photography | January 22nd, 2013

Ask a photographer from the century that just passed to name his or her favorite film, and the answer, very often, will be Kodachrome.

The crisp emulsion, beautifully saturated colors and archival stability of Kodachrome made it a sentimental favorite among photographers long after other, more practical color films had all but pushed it out of the marketplace. The problem was, the very qualities that made the film special stemmed from a highly cumbersome technical process. Kodachrome was a “non-substantive” film, meaning the dye couplers were not built into the emulsion, as they are in other color films, but had to be added during development. The process was complex, and few labs could afford to offer it. Even before the digital revolution, Kodachrome was an endangered species.

So while it came as an emotional shock to many photographers, it was no real surprise when the Eastman Kodak Company announced in 2009 that it was halting production of Kodachrome. One of the photographers who had long-since moved on to digital imaging but who was saddened by the demise of Kodachrome was Steve McCurry, an award-winning photojournalist for National Geographic who is best known for his haunting 1984 image (shot on Kodachrome) of a 12-year-old Afghan refugee girl with piercing green eyes. When McCurry heard the news, he arranged to obtain the very last roll of Kodachrome to come off the assembly line at the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. The challenge, then, was this: What do you do with the last 36 exposures of a legendary film?

The half-hour documentary above from National Geographic tells the story of that roll and how McCurry used it. The filmmakers followed the photographer on an odyssey that began at the factory in Rochester and ended at a laboratory (the last Kodachrome lab open) in a small town in Kansas. Over the course of about six weeks, from late May to early July, 2010, McCurry traveled halfway around the world to make those final 36 exposures. The resulting photographs iclude street scenes in New York and Kansas, portraits of a movie star (Robert De Niro) in New York, intellectuals and ethnic tribesmen in India, colleagues in Turkey and New York, and one of himself. It’s a remarkable take. Although a few of the shots appear spontaneous, most are the result of careful planning. McCurry donated all 36 slides to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, but you can see almost all of the photos online at the Vanity Fair Web site. As McCurry tells the magazine:

I’ve been shooting digital for years, but I don’t think you can make a better photograph under certain conditions than you can with Kodachrome. If you have good light and you’re at a fairly high shutter speed, it’s going to be a brilliant color photograph. It had a great color palette. It wasn’t too garish. Some films are like you’re on a drug or something. Velvia made everything so saturated and wildly over-the-top, too electric. Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance. With digital photography, you gain many benefits [but] you have to put in post-production. [With Kodachrome] you take it out of the box and the pictures are already brilliant.

by Mike Springer | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929

in Archives, Biology, Science | January 22nd, 2013

Ornithologists and bird watchers rejoice. After a dozen years, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library has fully digitized its nearly 150,000 audio recordings (a total running time of 7,513 hours), representing close to 9,000 different species, such as the very unsettling-sounding Barred Owl (above). While the collection also includes the sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates, and other animals, the primary emphasis here is on birds (it is a Lab of Ornithology, after all), and there is an incredible range of calls. Cornell recommends some of the highlights below:

Earliest recording: Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen was a pioneer in sound recording. On a spring day in 1929 he recorded this Song Sparrow sounding much as they do today

Youngest bird: This clip from 1966 records the sounds of an Ostrich chick while it is still inside the egg – and the researchers as they watch

Liveliest wake-up call: A dawn chorus in tropical Queensland, Australia is bursting at the seams with warbles, squeals, whistles, booms and hoots

Best candidate to appear on a John Coltrane record: The indri, a lemur with a voice that is part moan, part jazz clarinet

Most spines tingled: The incomparable voice of a Common Loon on an Adirondacks lake in 1992

Most erratic construction project: the staccato hammering sounds of a walrus under water

Most likely to be mistaken for aliens arriving: Birds-of-paradise make some amazing sounds – here’s the UFO-sound of a Curl-crested Manucode in New Guinea

Whether you’re an enthusiastic birder, practicing scientist, or sound-sample hunter, you’ll find something to blow your mind at the extensive collections of the Macaulay Library. Both amateur and professional naturalists, for example, can acquire, visualize, measure, and analyze animal sounds with a free version of the Cornell Lab’s proprietary interactive sound analysis software, Raven.

And admirers of the astonishing variety and beauty of the bird-of-paradise should stay tuned for the Bird-of-Paradise Project website, launching this month. Sign up to receive an email when the full site launches. Meanwhile, watch the project’s spellbinding trailer below.

Visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s YouTube page for more fascinating bird videos.

The Wild Kingdom: Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha (and YouTube)

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

John Hodgman’s Advice for Writers: The Competition is Insane, and Persistence Trumps Talent

in Writing | January 22nd, 2013

If you only know John Hodgman as the earnestly inept “P.C.” of those “I’m a Mac” Apple television commercials, you may wonder why you’d go to him for writing advice. Or maybe you’ve read his books The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That is All. But just because a man can pen three satirical volumes of made-up knowledge doesn’t mean he can teach you how to properly cast your own ideas into print. No, to do that, Hodgman draws on his shadowy past as a literary agent, “a bold seven-year attempt to convince myself I didn’t want to be a writer.” Remembering that stint spent reading through piles upon piles of submissions, “the most elaborate procrastination technique that I came up with to avoid writing,” he confirms what we all suspect: a great many people want to write for a living, “but luckily, very few of them are sane.” And among that same minority, the “medium- to low-talented but persistent” succeed where the “merely super-talented” don’t.

Here we have an adaptation of a theory I’ve often heard, living as I do in Los Angeles, applied to film and television: while millions of hopefuls turn up every year trying to make it in The Industry, most of them are idiots. Hodgman delivers his version of these sage words with a newish look, miles away from the deliberately stodgy, poorly-tailored appearance with which he pitched the dubious virtues of the P.C. Behind his ascot, rounded mustache, and orange-tinted aviator glasses, he looks like nothing so much as a faintly disreputable Hollywood mogul of the seventies. But the subtle outlandishness of his self-presentation belies the sense of his advice. Whatever your level of talent, put yourself in the running with “the people who keep submitting and keep doing and keep making.” And make sure that, while writing what you know, you also know what you know.

John Hodgman@Google

John Hodgman Riffs on Magicians and Their Craft at Maker Faire

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.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The First Pizza Ordered by Computer, 1974

in Technology | January 22nd, 2013

By the late 1960s, technologists were already inventing the future we now inhabit. Arthur C. Clarke peered into the future and saw a wired world where information and communication would be immediate and borderless. Marshall McLuhan foresaw the rough outlines of what we now call “social media.” And others predicted that email and ecommerce were on the not-so-distant horizon. It should perhaps then come as no surprise that, just a few years later, The Artificial Language Laboratory at Michigan State developed a way for the computer to start doing some everyday commerce — like ordering pizza.

In 1974 Donald Sherman, whose speech was limited by a neurological disorder called Moebius Syndrome, used a new-fangled device designed by John Eulenberg to dial up a pizzeria. The first call went to Dominos, which hung up. They were apparently too busy becoming a behemoth. Mercifully, a humane pizzeria — Mr. Mike’s — took the call, and history was made. It all plays out above, and we hope that Mr. Mike’s is still thriving all these years later.…

via Coudal

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Nichelle Nichols Explains How Martin Luther King Convinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

in History, Sci Fi, Television | January 21st, 2013

Nichelle Nichols played Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek series (1966–1969). During the days when African-Americans were still fighting for legal equality in America, her role took on special importance. Her inclusion on the Enterprise pointed to a future when Americans could live and work together, putting race aside. And Nichols made history when Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk embraced in the first inter-racial kiss on American television.

We can partly thank Martin Luther King, Jr. for all of this. As Nichols explains below, she gave considered leaving Star Trek at the end of Season 1, hoping to pursue a broadway career. But MLK asked her to reconsider. A big fan of the show, Dr. King underscored the importance of her character, of what it meant to future African-Americans, of how her character, through the power of TV, was opening a door that could never be closed. Needless to say, he persuaded her to stay on the show, and the rest is glorious history.

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Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson Delivers the Greatest Science Sermon Ever

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Listen to Robert Frost Read ‘The Gift Outright,’ the Poem He Recited from Memory at JFK’s Inauguration

in History, Poetry | January 21st, 2013

The reading from Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration ceremony today follows a tradition that began 52 years ago, when John F. Kennedy invited his fellow New Englander Robert Frost to read at his inaugural.

Frost was an early supporter of Kennedy. On his 85th birthday (March 26, 1959) he was asked by a reporter about the decline of New England’s cultural influence in America. “The next President of the United States will be from Boston,” replied Frost, according to Poets.org. “Does that sound as if New England is decaying?” At that time Kennedy had yet to formally announce his candidacy, so Frost was asked to explain who he was talking about. “He’s a Puritan named Kennedy. The only Puritans left these days are the Roman Catholics. There. I guess I wear my politics on my sleeve.” When President-elect Kennedy invited the 86-year-old poet to read a poem at his inauguration, if it was not too arduous, Frost cabled his response:

IF YOU CAN BEAR AT YOUR AGE THE HONOR OF BEING MADE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I OUGHT TO BE ABLE AT MY AGE TO BEAR THE HONOR OF TAKING SOME PART IN YOUR INAUGURATION. I MAY NOT BE EQUAL TO IT BUT I CAN ACCEPT IT FOR MY CAUSE–THE ARTS, POETRY, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TAKEN INTO THE AFFAIRS OF STATESMEN.

Frost wrote a new poem, “Dedication,” especially for the occasion. But conditions on inauguration day conspired against the old poet. A heavy blanket of snow fell on Washington the night before, and the sunlight that day was intense. In the harsh glare from the sun and snow, Frost found that he couldn’t read the typescript of his new poem. Kennedy had earlier asked Frost, if he wasn’t going to write a new poem, to consider reading his poem on American history, “A Gift Outright.” So when Frost found that he couldn’t read the new poem, he recited “A Gift Outright” from memory.

In the video above, we hear Frost reading the poem, which was written in the late 1930s and first published in 1942. Although some have said the audio is from the Kennedy inauguration, it apparently is not, because Frost reads the original text. For the inauguration, the poet reportedly agreed to Kennedy’s request to make a change in the final line. The phrase “Such as she would become” was changed to a more optimistic “Such as she will become.” (You can read the full text of the poem in a new window.) Sometime after the event, Kennedy put Frost’s inaugural appearance in perspective:

I asked Robert Frost to come and speak at the inauguration because I felt he had something important to say to those of us who are occupied with the business of government, that he would remind us that we were dealing with life, of hopes and fears of millions of people. He has said it well in a poem called “Choose Something Like a Star,” in which he speaks of the fairest star in sight and says, “It asks little of us here./It asks of us a certain height./So when at times the mob is swayed/to carry praise or blame too far,/we may choose something like a star/ to stay our mind on and be stayed.”

by Mike Springer | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

An Animated Interpretation of Billy Collins’ Poem, “Forgetfulness”

in Animation, Life, Poetry | January 21st, 2013

Some twenty-five years ago, my acting class spent an entire semester on the plays of Anton Chekhov. At the time, it felt very vital, but like so much else I studied in college, what I wound up retaining is sadly piecemeal. One thing I do remember is the youngest of the Three Sisters breakdown upon realizing that they’ll never make it to Moscow. At the heart of this freak-out is her despair that she, and everyone who matters to her, is aging, a condition she defines as diminishment. It seemed a bit over-the-top to me at the time. For god’s sake, she’s only 24. So what if she can’t remember a few words of schoolgirl Italian? Two and a half decades out, I was misremembering her name as Anya, a momentary confusion easily righted on my third Google search.

(IRINA. (Sobbing.) Where? Where has it all gone? Where is it? Oh my God, my God! I have forgotten everything, forgotten everything… Everything is confused in my head… I can’t remember what is the word for window in Italian, or for ceiling… I am forgetting everything, I forget more every day, and life flies past and never returns, never, and we will never go to Moscow… I see now that we will never go…)

I flashed on this long ago meltdown while watching “Forgetfulness,” the lovely animation of the Billy Collins poem, above. As Collins lists the seemingly inconsequential things lost, it occurred to me that the central “you” could stand for anybody: you, me, an elderly relative, Chekhov’s Irina. (Not Anya. If we’re to make it to Moscow, we better get cracking.)

We’re lucky to have artists like Chekhov, Collins, and by extension, animator Julian Grey, all possessed of the ability to imbue one of mankind’s most depressing and timely realities with tenderness and lyricism. Perhaps you’ll remember someone with whom to share “Forgetfulness”.

Related Content:

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Ayun Halliday describes some of the places she has been (not Moscow) in No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch Häxan, the Classic Cinematic Study of Witchcraft Narrated by William S. Burroughs (1922)

in Film | January 21st, 2013

Some pictures from the silent era, like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, couldn’t look more clearly like ancestors of the modern horror film. Tracing the distant origins of other forms — of documentary, say — proves a trickier task. Hence the value of a movie like Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan, also known as Witchcraft Through the Ages, which not only mounts a nonfictional investigation into humanity’s perception of “witches” throughout the ages, but does so with the aid of dramatic sequences as eerie as any of Count Orlok running amok. Given that Christensen’s meticulously researched historical creation demanded a larger budget than any other Scandinavian film to that point, you could also view it as an antecedent of today’s visually elaborate, spectacle-intensive blockbusters. Like many well-known silent films, Häxan has undergone multiple releases, each running different lengths, with different scores. You see above the 1968 version, which reduces Christensen’s original 104-minute cut to a brisk 77 minutes and accompanies it with a jaunty, richly incongruous five-piece jazz score by Daniel Humair.

Atop the music we hear the history of the persecution of “witches,” from the primitive era to medieval times to then-modern times, when the idea of the “hysterical woman” gained purchase in the zeitgeist. Narrating this story in the 1968 version is none other than writer and Beat icon William S. Burroughs, who, despite his flamboyantly artistic personality, delivers an ultimately sober analysis. The film takes the position that witchcraft, far from a reality in and of itself, arises and re-arises as an invention of the superstitious, the irrational, and those disinclined to understand the nature of mental illness. If that subject sounds more suitable for an academic paper, remember that this research comes delivered by the bold visual strokes of proto-horror silent film, close reading of the fifteenth-century inquisitor’s treatise Malleus Maleficarum, and the man who wrote Naked Lunch.

via Biblioklept

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

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.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

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

in Film, Music | January 21st, 2013

Over the past several years, we’ve seen experimental artists adapt gracefully (or cash in, if you’re cynical) to the user-generated world we live in now. While the predictably unpredictable Flaming Lips have been at the interactive media game for a while in their own weird way, we’ve also seen Bjork branch out into multimedia with the Biophilia iPhone/iPad app to accompany the album of the same name, and last week we covered Philip Glass’s foray into the app market with his Glass Machine remixing app.

Not ever to be outdone, producer/composer/multimedia genius Brian Eno released his own app last year, Scape, which allows users to generate their own ambient compositions on their i‑devices. Scape’s release came just before that of Eno’s latest ambient album, Lux, a collection of soundscapes that were initially installed in art galleries and airport terminals. On the album’s release date this past November, Eno had more in store for fans. He streamed the entire album online at four different times during the same day: sunrise, daylight, sunset, and night.

Listeners were invited to upload photos of each time of day, under the general theme of “play of light” (a title Eno considered for the album). Eno and his team then curated their favorite images, from all over the globe, and edited them together into the short film above, entitled “Day of Light.” The idea, he says, was to “make a collaborative, generative work… to see what happened if you just made a space for it to happen in.” Judge the results for yourself. Does this product from the minds and eyes of the Eno collective add up to more than the sum of its parts?

Brian Eno Once Composed Music for Windows 95; Now He Lets You Create Music with an iPad App

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

in Music | January 20th, 2013

Take R.E.M.‘s 1991 ballad “Losing My Religion” and rework it from minor to major scale, and here’s what you get — something that’s, as one Vimeo commenter called it, “recognizable enough to be nostalgic…unique enough to be shared!” Other songs digitally reworked by MajorScaled TV include “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors, Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” and Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing.” Follow MajorScaled TV on Facebook for eventual additions to the collection.

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!

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emotionally-Charged Songs: “Losing My Religion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their National Television Debut on The David Letterman Show (1983)

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 29 ) |

What Entered the Public Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

National Geographic Photographer Steve McCurry Shoots the Very Last Roll of Kodachrome

Cornell Launches Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Animal Sounds, with Recordings Going Back to 1929

John Hodgman’s Advice for Writers: The Competition is Insane, and Persistence Trumps Talent

The First Pizza Ordered by Computer, 1974

Nichelle Nichols Explains How Martin Luther King Convinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

Listen to Robert Frost Read ‘The Gift Outright,’ the Poem He Recited from Memory at JFK’s Inauguration

An Animated Interpretation of Billy Collins’ Poem, “Forgetfulness”

Watch Häxan, the Classic Cinematic Study of Witchcraft Narrated by William S. Burroughs (1922)

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

R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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