Did Santa Claus & His Reindeers Begin with a Mushroom Trip?: Discover the Psychedelic, Shamanistic Side of Christmas

in Religion | December 25th, 2017

Just when you thought you had Christ­mas all fig­ured out, Matthew Salton comes along with this new ani­mat­ed short, “San­ta Is a Psy­che­del­ic Mush­room.” It makes the case that maybe, just maybe, “the sto­ry of our mod­ern San­ta Claus, the omnipo­tent man who trav­els the globe in one night, bear­ing gifts, and who’s camped out in shop­ping malls across the Unit­ed States, is linked to a hal­lu­cino­genic mush­room-eat­ing shaman from the Arc­tic.” Specif­i­cal­ly a his­toric Shaman from Lap­land, in north­ern Fin­land, who tripped out on Amani­ta mus­caria, the tox­ic, red-and-white toad­stool mush­room you’ve seen in fairy tales so many times before. Elab­o­rat­ing, Salton talks with Carl Ruck, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who stud­ies mythol­o­gy, reli­gion and the sacred role of psy­choac­tive plants. And also Lawrence Mill­man. Writ­ing at The New York Times, Salton adds:

Accord­ing to the writer and mycol­o­gist Lawrence Mill­man, the shaman would make use of Amani­ta muscaria’s psy­choac­tive effects in order to per­form heal­ing rit­u­als. The use of Amani­ta mus­caria as an entheogen (that is, a drug used to bring about a spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence) would enable the shamans to act as inter­me­di­aries between the spir­it and human world, bring­ing gifts of heal­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing. (Although these mush­rooms are poi­so­nous, the Sami reduced their tox­i­c­i­ty by dry­ing them..) Var­i­ous accounts describe the shaman and the rit­u­als per­formed in ways that are fas­ci­nat­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the nar­ra­tive of San­ta. An all-know­ing man who defies space and time? Fly­ing rein­deer? Rein­deer-drawn sleds? Climb­ing down the chim­ney? The giv­ing of gifts? The tales of the Sami shamans have it all.

To learn more about the psy­che­del­ic ori­gins of San­ta, you can read this 2010 arti­cle pub­lished at NPR, “Did ‘Shrooms Send San­ta And His Rein­deer Fly­ing?”

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:

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD (1963)

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David Bowie & Bing Crosby Sing “The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” (1977)

in Music | December 22nd, 2017

We like to bring this chest­nut back from time to time. Watch it, and you’ll know why.

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died of a heart attack, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. (You can watch the writ­ers tell the sto­ry, years lat­er, below.)

After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made a lit­tle clas­sic. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. Also find a Will Fer­rell par­o­dy of the meet­ing here. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

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:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

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Hear Kurt Cobain’s 50 Favorite Albums: A 38 Hour Playlist Featuring Lead Belly, David Bowie, Public Enemy, The Breeders & More

in Music | December 22nd, 2017

Sev­er­al years ago, we fea­tured a list Kurt Cobain made of his top 50 albums, which appeared in his jour­nals, pub­lished in 2002. It’s most­ly a typ­i­cal list of stan­dards one would find in any young punk’s record col­lec­tion in the late 80s/90s. As we wrote then, his “‘Top 50 by Nir­vana’… seems like the ide­al code for pro­duc­ing a 90s alter­na­tive star.” But these sources were not wide­ly acces­si­ble at the time. Cobain’s influ­ence was such that he turned mil­lions of peo­ple on to music they’d nev­er heard before. That influ­ence con­tin­ues, of course, and you can par­take of it your­self in the playlist below.

Amid the clas­sic rock and clas­sic punk—the Bea­t­les, the Clash, the Sex Pistols—are a few slabs of clas­sic DC hard­core, then and now pret­ty obscure. Dave Grohl—stalwart of the DC scene before Cobain recruit­ed him to move across the coun­try and join Nirvana—may have added these albums to the list, or Cobain might have done so him­self. In any case, his men­tions of them, and their posthu­mous appear­ance in his let­ters and notes, brought bands like long-defunct Faith and Void new recog­ni­tion, as well as post-hard­core pio­neers Rites of Spring, who helped inspire the emo and screamo to come, for bet­ter or worse.

Along­side Iggy Pop, Black Flag, and Bad Brains are less­er-known punk bands like the Rain­coats, the Vase­lines, and the Saints, play­ful lo-fi weirdos like Daniel John­son, the Shag­gs, and Half Japan­ese; the coun­try blues of Lead Bel­ly, caus­tic noise of But­t­hole Surfers, thun­der­ous, pun­ish­ing nihilism of Swans…. Cobain may have helped them all sell a few records, and he def­i­nite­ly inspired new bands that sound like them by turn­ing peo­ple on to their music for the first time. (When Cobain cov­ered David Bowie, how­ev­er, fans start­ed to mis­take “The Man Who Sold the World” for a Nir­vana song, to Bowie’s under­stand­able con­ster­na­tion.)

Cobain’s list is lim­it­ed to a fair­ly nar­row range of styles, with some rare excep­tions: Lead Bel­ly, Pub­lic Ene­my, Aero­smith (!)—it’s an almost purist punk and punk-derived palate, the DNA of Nir­vana. In the age of the inter­net, one can cob­ble togeth­er a list like this—with no real pri­or knowledge—in an hour or so, sim­ply by googling around and doing a bit of research. Dur­ing Cobain’s for­ma­tive years on the out­skirts of Seat­tle, when a lot of this music cir­cu­lat­ed only on lim­it­ed cas­sette runs and poor­ly record­ed mix­tapes and copies, on record labels financed by veg­an bake sales and loans from the ‘rents—it could be very hard to come by.

While Cobain’s list may look, in hind­sight, like stan­dard fare to many long­time fans, what it rep­re­sents for those who came of age musi­cal­ly in the years just before the Web is a phys­i­cal jour­ney through all of the rela­tion­ships, con­certs, and record shops one had to move through to dis­cov­er the bands that spoke direct­ly to you and your friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Ear­ly Ver­sions of Nir­vana Hits, and Nev­er-Released Songs

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Watch The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain on the 20th Anniver­sary of the Musician’s Sui­cide

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

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Hear the Christmas Carols Made by Alan Turing’s Computer: Cutting-Edge Versions of “Jingle Bells” and “Good King Wenceslas” (1951)

in History, Music, Radio, Technology | December 22nd, 2017

Alan Tur­ing (right) stands next to the Fer­ran­ti Mark I. Pho­to cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter

This Christ­mas, as our com­put­ers fast learn to com­pose music by them­selves, we might gain some per­spec­tive by cast­ing our minds back to 66 Christ­mases ago, a time when a com­put­er’s ren­di­tion of any­thing resem­bling music at all had thou­sands and thou­sands lis­ten­ing in won­der. In Decem­ber of 1951, the BBC’s hol­i­day broad­cast, in most respects a nat­u­ral­ly tra­di­tion­al affair, includ­ed the sound of the future: a cou­ple of much-loved Christ­mas car­ols per­formed not by a choir, nor by human beings of any kind, but by an elec­tron­ic machine the likes of which almost nobody had even laid eyes upon.

“Among its Christ­mas fare the BBC broad­cast two melodies that, although instant­ly rec­og­niz­able, sound­ed like noth­ing else on earth,” write Jack Copeland and Jason Long at the British Library’s Sound and Vision Blog. “They were Jin­gle Bells and Good King Wences­las, played by the mam­moth Fer­ran­ti Mark I com­put­er that stood in Alan Tur­ing’s Com­put­ing Machine Lab­o­ra­to­ry” at the Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. Tur­ing, whom we now rec­og­nize for a vari­ety of achieve­ments in com­put­ing, cryp­tog­ra­phy, and relat­ed fields (includ­ing crack­ing the Ger­man “Enig­ma code” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War), had joined the uni­ver­si­ty in 1948.

That same year, with his for­mer under­grad­u­ate col­league D. G. Cham­per­nowne, Tur­ing began writ­ing a pure­ly the­o­ret­i­cal com­put­er chess pro­gram. No com­put­er exist­ed on which he could pos­si­bly try run­ning it for the next few years until the Fer­ran­ti Mark 1 came along, and even that mam­moth proved too slow. But it could, using a func­tion designed to give audi­to­ry feed­back to its oper­a­tors, play music — of a kind, any­way. The com­put­er com­pa­ny’s “mar­ket­ing supre­mo,” accord­ing to Copeland and Long, called its brief Christ­mas con­cert “the most expen­sive and most elab­o­rate method of play­ing a tune that has ever been devised.”

Since no record­ing of the broad­cast sur­vives, what you hear here is a painstak­ing recon­struc­tion made from tapes of the com­put­er’s even ear­li­er ren­di­tions of “God Save the King,” “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and “In the Mood.” By man­u­al­ly chop­ping up the audio, write Copeland and Long, “we cre­at­ed a palette of notes of var­i­ous pitch­es and dura­tions. These could then be rearranged to form new melodies. It was musi­cal Lego.” But do “beware of occa­sion­al dud notes. Because the com­put­er chugged along at a sedate 4 kilo­hertz or so, hit­ting the right fre­quen­cy was not always pos­si­ble.” Even so, some­where in there I hear the his­tor­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal seeds of the much more elab­o­rate elec­tron­ic Christ­mas to come, from Mannheim Steam­roller to the Jin­gle Cats and well beyond.

via The British Library

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the First Record­ing of Com­put­er Music: Researchers Restore Three Melodies Pro­grammed on Alan Turing’s Com­put­er (1951)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Eudora Welty’s Handwritten Eggnog Recipe, and Charles Dickens’ Recipe for Holiday Punch

in Food & Drink, Letters, Life, Literature | December 22nd, 2017

’Tis the sea­son to break out the fam­i­ly recipes of beloved rel­a­tives, though often their prove­nance is not quite what we think.

(Imag­ine the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance upon dis­cov­er­ing that Moth­er swiped “her” Ital­ian Zuc­chi­ni Cres­cent Pie from Pills­bury Bake-Off win­ner, Mil­li­cent Nathan of Boca Raton, Flori­da…)

When it came to cred­it­ing the eggnog she dubbed “the taste of Christ­mas Day,” above, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Eudo­ra Wel­ty shared it out equal­ly between her moth­er and author Charles Dick­ens:

In our house while I was grow­ing up, I don’t remem­ber that hard liquor was served at all except on one day in the year. Ear­ly on Christ­mas morn­ing, we woke up to the sound of the egg­beat­er: Moth­er in the kitchen was whip­ping up eggnog. All in our bathrobes, we began our Christ­mas before break­fast. Through­out the day Moth­er made batch­es afresh. All our callers expect­ed her eggnog.

It was ladled from the punch bowl into punch cups and sil­ver gob­lets, and had to be eat­en with a spoon. It stood up in peaks. It was rich, creamy and strong. Moth­er gave full cred­it for the recipe to Charles Dick­ens.

Nice, but per­haps Dick­ens is unde­serv­ing of this hon­or? The con­tents of his punch­bowl bore lit­tle resem­blance to Moth­er Welty’s, as evi­denced by an 1847 let­ter to his child­hood friend, Amelia Fil­loneau, in which he shared a recipe he promised would make her “a beau­ti­ful Punch­mak­er in more sens­es than one”:

Peel into a very strong com­mon basin (which may be bro­ken, in case of acci­dent, with­out dam­age to the owner’s peace or pock­et) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin, and with as lit­tle as pos­si­ble of the white coat­ing between the peel and the fruit, attached. Add a dou­ble-hand­full of lump sug­ar (good mea­sure), a pint of good old rum, and a large wine-glass full of brandy — if it not be a large claret-glass, say two. Set this on fire, by fill­ing a warm sil­ver spoon with the spir­it, light­ing the con­tents at a wax taper, and pour­ing them gen­tly in. Let it burn for three or four min­utes at least, stir­ring it from time to Time. Then extin­guish it by cov­er­ing the basin with a tray, which will imme­di­ate­ly put out the flame. Then squeeze in the juice of the three lemons, and add a quart of boil­ing water. Stir the whole well, cov­er it up for five min­utes, and stir again.

This sounds very like the “seething bowls of punch” the jol­ly Ghost of Christ­mas Present shows Ebenez­er Scrooge in A Christ­mas Car­ol, dim­ming the cham­ber with their deli­cious steam.

It’s also veg­an, in con­trast to what you might have been served in the Wel­ty ladies’ home.

Why not serve both? In the words of Tiny Tim, “Here’s to us all!”

Eudo­ra Welty’s Mother’s Eggnog (Attrib­uted, Per­haps Erro­neous­ly, to Charles Dick­ens)

6 egg yolks, well beat­en

Add 3 tbsp. pow­dered sug­ar

Add 1 cup whiskey, added slow­ly, beat­ing all the while

Fold in 1 pint whipped cream

Whip 6 whipped egg whites and add to the mix­ture above.

 

Charles Dick­ens’ Hol­i­day Punch (adapt­ed from Punch by David Won­drich)

3/4 cup sug­ar

3 lemons

2 cups rum

1 1/4 cups cognac

5 cups black tea (or hot water)

Gar­nish: lemon and orange wheels, fresh­ly grat­ed nut­meg

In the basin of an enam­eled cast-iron pot or heat­proof bowl, add sug­ar and the peels of three lemons.

Rub lemons and sug­ar togeth­er to release cit­rus oils. For more greater infu­sion, let sit for 30 min­utes.

Add rum and cognac to the sug­ar and cit­rus.

Light a match, and, using a heat­proof spoon (stain­less steel is best), pick up a spoon­ful of the spir­it mix.

Care­ful­ly bring the match to the spoon to light.

Care­ful­ly bring the lit spoon to the spir­its in the bowl.

Let the spir­its burn for about three min­utes. The fire will melt the sug­ar and extract the oil from the lemon peels.

Extin­guish the bowl by cov­er­ing it with a heat­proof pan or tray.

Skim off the lemon peels (leav­ing them too long in may impart a bit­ter fla­vor).

Squeeze in the juice of the three peeled lemons, and add hot tea or water.

If serv­ing the punch hot, skip to the next step. If serv­ing cold, cool punch in the refrig­er­a­tor and, when cooled, add ice.

Gar­nish with cit­rus wheels and grat­ed nut­meg.

Ladle into indi­vid­ual glass­es.

Learn more about these and oth­er fes­tive hol­i­day drinks in Mas­ter of Wine Eliz­a­beth Gabay’s essay “Cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas and New Year With Punch.”

Image above via Gar­den and Gun

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Min­gus’ “Top Secret” Eggnog Recipe Con­tains “Enough Alco­hol to Put Down an Ele­phant”

Blue Christ­mas: Feed Your Sea­son­al Depres­sion with Hol­i­day Mas­ter­pieces

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

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Need a Last Minute Gift? Give Online Courses Created by Cultural Icons Like Annie Leibovitz, Herbie Hancock, Werner Herzog and Many More

in Online Courses | December 22nd, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

If you’re look­ing for a last minute gift for a thought­ful per­son in your life, here’s one option to con­sid­er. Mas­ter­Class lets you elec­tron­i­cal­ly pur­chase online courses and give them as gifts to fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends. For $90, you could give the gift of a sin­gle course. (The recip­i­ent gets to choose which par­tic­u­lar course they want to take.) Or, for $180, you can give the recip­i­ent a year-long pass to every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue. You can get start­ed with the gift-giv­ing process here. And find a list of avail­able cours­es below.

  • Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy
  • Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing
  • Frank Gehry Teach­es Archi­tec­ture & Design
  • Samuel Jack­son Teach­es Act­ing
  • Judy Blume Teach­es Writ­ing
  • Steve Mar­tin Teach­es Com­e­dy
  • Jane Goodall Teach­es Con­ser­va­tion
  • Her­bie Han­cock Teach­es Jazz
  • Gar­ry Kas­parov Teach­es Chess
  • Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es Film­mak­ing
  • Aaron Sorkin Teach­es Screen­writ­ing
  • David Mamet Teach­es Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing
  • James Pat­ter­son Teach­es Writ­ing
  • Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing
  • Thomas Keller Teach­es Cook­ing Tech­niques
  • Stephen Cur­ry Teach­es Shoot­ing, Ball-Han­dling, Scor­ing
  • Christi­na Aguil­era Teach­es Singing
  • Deadmau5 Teach­es Elec­tron­ic Music Pro­duc­tion
  • Shon­da Rhimes Teach­es Writ­ing for Tele­vi­sion
  • Marc Jacobs Teach­es Fash­ion Design
  • Ush­er Teach­es the Art of Per­for­mance
  • Ser­e­na Williams Teach­es Ten­nis
  • Reba McEn­tire Teach­es Coun­try Music

See the full cat­a­log here.

Note: Mas­ter­Classs and Open Cul­ture have a part­ner­ship. If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course, it ben­e­fits not just you and Mas­ter­Class. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

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!

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Algorithms for Big Data: A Free Course from Harvard

in Computer Science, Harvard, Online Courses | December 21st, 2017

From Har­vard pro­fes­sor Jelani Nel­son comes “Algo­rithms for Big Data,” a course intend­ed for grad­u­ate stu­dents and advanced under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. All 25 lec­tures you can find on Youtube here.

Here’s a quick course descrip­tion:

“Big data is data so large that it does not fit in the main mem­o­ry of a sin­gle machine, and the need to process big data by effi­cient algo­rithms aris­es in Inter­net search, net­work traf­fic mon­i­tor­ing, machine learn­ing, sci­en­tif­ic com­put­ing, sig­nal pro­cess­ing, and sev­er­al oth­er areas. This course will cov­er math­e­mat­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous mod­els for devel­op­ing such algo­rithms, as well as some prov­able lim­i­ta­tions of algo­rithms oper­at­ing in those mod­els. Some top­ics we will cov­er include”:

  • Sketch­ing and Stream­ing. Extreme­ly small-space data struc­tures that can be updat­ed on the fly in a fast-mov­ing stream of input.
  • Dimen­sion­al­i­ty reduc­tion. Gen­er­al tech­niques and impos­si­bil­i­ty results for reduc­ing data dimen­sion while still pre­serv­ing geo­met­ric struc­ture.
  • Numer­i­cal lin­ear alge­bra. Algo­rithms for big matri­ces (e.g. a user/product rat­ing matrix for Net­flix or Ama­zon). Regres­sion, low rank approx­i­ma­tion, matrix com­ple­tion, …
  • Com­pressed sens­ing. Recov­ery of (approx­i­mate­ly) sparse sig­nals based on few lin­ear mea­sure­ments.
  • Exter­nal mem­o­ry and cache-obliv­i­ous­ness. Algo­rithms and data struc­tures min­i­miz­ing I/Os for data not fit­ting on mem­o­ry but fit­ting on disk. B‑trees, buffer trees, mul­ti­way merge­sort.

“Algo­rithms for Big Data” will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course: The 2016 Edi­tion

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How the Russian Theatre Director Constantin Stanislavski Revolutionized the Craft of Acting: A New Video Essay

in Film | December 21st, 2017

From Travis Lee Rat­cliff comes a video essay that explores the influ­ence of Con­stan­tin Stanislavs­ki, the Russ­ian the­atre direc­tor whose “sys­tem” of actor train­ing shaped a gen­er­a­tion of icon­ic Amer­i­can actors. Here’s how Rat­cliff sets the stage for his video essay.

In the 1950s, a wave of “method actors” took Hol­ly­wood by storm.

Actors like James Dean, Mar­lon Bran­do, and Mont­gomery Clift, brought a whole new toolset and per­spec­tive on the actor’s craft to the films they per­formed in.

The foun­da­tion of their work, how­ev­er, was laid in Rus­sia more than fifty years pri­or to their star­dom.

Stanislavski’s con­cep­tion of “psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism” in per­for­mance chal­lenged ideas about the essen­tial fea­tures of the actor’s craft that had been held for cen­turies.

In the­atre before Stanislavs­ki, act­ing was defined as a craft of vocal and ges­tur­al train­ing. The role the actor played was to give life to the emo­tions of the text in a broad illus­tra­tive fash­ion. For­mal cat­e­gories such as melo­dra­ma, opera, vaude­ville, and musi­cals, all played to this notion of the actor as chief rep­re­sen­ter of dra­mat­ic ideas.

Stanislavski’s key insight was in see­ing the actor as an expe­ri­encer of authen­tic emo­tion­al moments.

Sud­den­ly the craft of per­for­mance could be about seek­ing out a gen­uine inter­nal expe­ri­ence of the narrative’s emo­tion­al jour­ney.

From this foun­da­tion, real­ism in per­for­mance began to flour­ish. This not only changed our fun­da­men­tal idea of the actor but invit­ed a rein­ven­tion of the whole endeav­or of telling sto­ries through dra­ma.

Teach­ers would adopt Stanisvlaski’s meth­ods and ideas and elab­o­rate upon them in Amer­i­can the­atre schools. The result, in the 1950s, would be a new wave of actors and a style of act­ing that empha­sized psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism to a greater degree than their peers in motion pic­tures.

This idea of real­ism grew to dom­i­nate our notion of suc­cess­ful per­for­mances in cin­e­ma. Stanislavskian-real­ism is now cen­tral to the DNA of how we direct and read per­for­mances, whether we are con­scious of it or not.

I think it is impor­tant to know this his­to­ry and con­sid­er its rev­o­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter. Under­stand­ing the nature of Stanislavski’s insights allows us to look at oth­er unasked ques­tions, oth­er foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of our craft that we might take for grant­ed.

Beyond this, Ratliff also pro­vides a list of Stanislavski’s books, which still pro­vide “fas­ci­nat­ing explo­rations of the craft of per­for­mance.” Check them out:

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

The James Dean Sto­ry: The Ear­ly Doc­u­men­tary by Robert Alt­man

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The First Photographs of Snowflakes: Discover the Groundbreaking Microphotography of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley (1885)

in History, Photography, Science | December 21st, 2017

What kind of a blight­ed soci­ety turns the word “snowflake” into an insult?, I some­times catch myself think­ing, but then again, I’ve nev­er under­stood why “tree­hug­ger” should offend. All irony aside, being known as a per­son who loves nature or resem­bles one of its most ele­gant cre­ations should be a mark of dis­tinc­tion, no? At least that’s what Wil­son “Snowflake” Bent­ley sure­ly thought.

The Ver­mont farmer, self-edu­cat­ed nat­u­ral­ist, and avid pho­tog­ra­ph­er, was the first per­son to offer the fol­low­ing wis­dom on the record, then illus­trate it with hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of pic­tures of snowflakes, 5,000 in all:

I found that snowflakes were mir­a­cles of beau­ty; and it seemed a shame that this beau­ty should not be seen and appre­ci­at­ed by oth­ers. Every crys­tal was a mas­ter­piece of design and no one design was ever repeat­ed. When a snowflake melt­ed, that design was for­ev­er lost. Just that much beau­ty was gone, with­out leav­ing any record behind.

Bent­ley left a con­sid­er­able record—though still an insignif­i­cant sam­ple size giv­en the scope of the object of study. But his pho­tographs give the impres­sion of an infi­nite vari­ety of dif­fer­ent types, each with the same basic crys­talline lat­tice­work struc­ture. He took his first pho­to­graph of a snowflake, the first ever tak­en, in 1885, by adapt­ing a micro­scope to a bel­lows cam­era, after years of mak­ing sketch­es and much tri­al and error.

Some great por­tion of this work must have been tedious and frustrating—Bentley had to hold his breath for each expo­sure lest he destroy the pho­to­graph­ic sub­ject. But it was worth the effort. Bent­ley, the Smith­son­ian informs us, “was a pio­neer in ‘pho­tomi­crog­ra­phy,’ the pho­tograph­ing of very small objects.” Five hun­dred of his pho­tographs now reside at the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion Archives, “offered by Bent­ley in 1903 to pro­tect against ‘all pos­si­bil­i­ty of loss and destruc­tion, through fire or acci­dent.” You can see a huge dig­i­tal gallery of those hun­dreds of pho­tos here.

Along with U.S. Weath­er Bureau physi­cist William J. Humphreys, he pub­lished 2300 of his snowflake pho­tographs in a mono­graph titled Snow Crys­tals. Bent­ley also pub­lished over 60 arti­cles on the sub­ject (read two of them here). Despite his con­tri­bu­tions, he receives no men­tion in most his­to­ries of pho­tomi­crog­ra­phy. This may be due to his provin­cial loca­tion (he nev­er left Jeri­cho, VT) or his lack of sci­en­tif­ic train­ing and cre­den­tials, or a lack of inter­est in pho­tos of snowflakes on the part of most pho­tomi­crog­ra­phy his­to­ri­ans.

Or it may be because Bent­ley was thought to be a fraud. When a Ger­man mete­o­rol­o­gist com­mis­sioned some images of his own and got some very dif­fer­ent results, he accused the farmer of retouch­ing. Bent­ley read­i­ly admit­ted it, say­ing, “a true sci­en­tist wish­es above all to have his pho­tographs as true to nature as pos­si­ble, and if retouch­ing will help in this respect, then it is ful­ly jus­ti­fied.”

The defense is a good one. Although the “nature” Bentley’s pho­tos show us may be a the­o­ret­i­cal ide­al­iza­tion, so too are the hand-ren­dered illus­tra­tions of most sci­en­tists through­out his­to­ry (and near­ly every med­ical dia­gram today). Take, for exam­ple, the psy­che­del­ic, bright­ly col­ored pat­terns of accom­plished biol­o­gist Ernst Haeck­el, who turned the micro- and macro­scop­ic world into sur­re­al­ly sym­met­ri­cal art in his draw­ings. Though he might not have said so direct­ly, Bent­ley was doing some­thing sim­i­lar with a cam­era. Just lis­ten to him describe his process in a 1900 issue of Harper’s:

Quick, the first flakes are com­ing; the couri­ers of the com­ing snow storm. Open the sky­light, and direct­ly under it place the care­ful­ly pre­pared black­board, on whose ebony sur­face the most minute form of frozen beau­ty may be wel­come from cloud-land. The mys­ter­ies of the upper air are about to reveal them­selves, if our hands are deft and our eyes quick enough.

In the “qui­et fren­zy of his winter’s quest,” writes Alli­son Meier at Hyper­al­ler­gic, he pro­duced images of “beau­ti­ful ghosts from a win­ter that bris­tled the air over a cen­tu­ry ago.” Learn more about Bentley’s life, work, and the Smith­son­ian col­lec­tion in the short doc­u­men­tary fur­ther up, the Wash­ing­ton Post video above, and the Radi­o­lab episode below, in which a breath­less Latif Nass­er takes us into the heart of Bentley’s ori­gin sto­ry, and “snowflake expert and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ken Lib­brecht helps set the record straight.”

Real snowflakes have many imper­fec­tions, and per­haps Bent­ley did snow a dis­ser­vice to so stren­u­ous­ly sug­gest oth­er­wise. But the record he left us, Meier notes, “is appre­ci­at­ed as much as an artis­tic archive as a mete­o­ro­log­i­cal one.” He might have been a sci­en­tist when it came to tech­nique, but Bent­ley was a roman­tic when it came to snow. His sto­ry is as fas­ci­nat­ing as his pho­tographs. Maybe a delight­ful alter­na­tive to the usu­al Christ­mas fare. There’s even a chil­dren’s book called… what else?…  Snowflake Bent­ley.

via Smith­son­ian/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The First Known Pho­to­graph of Peo­ple Shar­ing a Beer (1843)

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

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“Inemuri,” the Japanese Art of Taking Power Naps at Work, on the Subway, and Other Public Places

in Health | December 21st, 2017

If you’ve vis­it­ed any big city in Japan, you’ve no doubt seen a fair few com­muters sleep­ing on the sub­way. The more time you spend there, the more places in which you’ll see nor­mal, every­day-look­ing folks fast asleep: parks, cof­fee shops, book­stores, even the work­place dur­ing office hours. Peo­ple in Korea, where I live, have also been known to fall asleep in places not nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with sleep­ing, but the Japan­ese take it to such a lev­el that they’ve actu­al­ly got a word for it: inemuri (居眠り, a mash-up of the verb for being present and the one for sleep­ing.

“I first encoun­tered these intrigu­ing atti­tudes to sleep dur­ing my first stay in Japan in the late 1980s,” writes Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge lec­tur­er Brigitte Ste­ger. “At that time Japan was at the peak of what became known as the Bub­ble Econ­o­my, a phase of extra­or­di­nary spec­u­la­tive boom. Dai­ly life was cor­re­spond­ing­ly hec­tic. Peo­ple filled their sched­ules with work and leisure appoint­ments, and had hard­ly any time to sleep.” Amid it all, she heard many a boast­ful com­plaint that “We Japan­ese are crazy to work so much!” Yet “at the same time, I observed count­less peo­ple doz­ing on under­ground trains dur­ing my dai­ly com­mute. Some even slept while stand­ing up, and no one appeared to be at all sur­prised by this.”

Ste­ger, who research­es the social and cul­tur­al aspects of sleep in Japan, has found a rich sub­ject in inemuri, which on a cer­tain lev­el “is not con­sid­ered sleep at all,” and in fact works more like “a sub­or­di­nate involve­ment which can be indulged in as long as it does not dis­turb the social sit­u­a­tion at hand – sim­i­lar to day­dream­ing. Even though the sleep­er might be men­tal­ly ‘away’, they have to be able to return to the social sit­u­a­tion at hand when active con­tri­bu­tion is required. They also have to main­tain the impres­sion of fit­ting in with the dom­i­nant involve­ment by means of body pos­ture, body lan­guage, dress code and the like.”

Inemuri, a phe­nom­e­non whose doc­u­men­ta­tion goes back a mil­len­ni­um, also offers an uncon­ven­tion­al­ly angled win­dow onto sev­er­al aspects of Japan­ese cul­ture, such as the belief that “co-sleep­ing with chil­dren until they are at least at school age will reas­sure them and help them devel­op into inde­pen­dent and social­ly sta­ble adults.” That sure­ly gets peo­ple more com­fort­able, in every sense, with the idea of falling asleep in a pub­lic or qua­si-pub­lic space, as does Japan’s famous­ly high lev­el of pub­lic safe­ty. (Nobody who has some­where else to sleep does so on, say, the New York sub­way.)

In recent years, as you can see in the TRT World report above, Japan­ese com­pa­nies have actu­al­ly made pro­vi­sions for prop­er work­day nap­ping on the the­o­ry that a bet­ter-rest­ed work­er is the more pro­duc­tive work­er. (And they could­n’t be much worse-rest­ed there: “accord­ing to the US Nation­al Sleep Foun­da­tion’s poll of sleep­ing habits around the world,” reports the Guardian, “Japan­ese work­ers sleep, on aver­age, for just six hours 22 min­utes on work nights – less than those in any oth­er coun­try.”) That sounds for­ward-think­ing enough, and the most intense days of the Bub­ble Econ­o­my have indeed long gone, but do bear in mind that in Japan, one still does occa­sion­al­ly hear the word karōshi (過労死) — death by over­work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized & Made Freely Available Online, Thanks to Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

in Books | December 20th, 2017

If there’s one thing The Da Vin­ci Code’s Dan Brown and “The Library of Babel”’s Jorge Luis Borges have in com­mon it is a love for obscure reli­gious and occult books and arti­facts. But why do I com­pare Borges—one of the most high­ly-regard­ed, but dif­fi­cult, of Latin Amer­i­can poets and writers—to a famous Amer­i­can writer of enter­tain­ing paper­back thrillers? One rea­son only: despite the vast dif­fer­ences in their styles and reg­is­ters, Borges would be deeply moved by Brown’s recent act of phil­an­thropy, a dona­tion of €300,000 to Amsterdam’s Rit­man Library, also known as the Bib­lio­the­ca Philo­soph­i­ca Her­met­i­ca House of Liv­ing Books.

The gen­er­ous gift will enable the Rit­man to dig­i­tize thou­sands of “pre-1900 texts on alche­my, astrol­o­gy, mag­ic, and theos­o­phy,” reports Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz, includ­ing the Cor­pus Her­meticum (1472), “the source work on Her­met­ic wis­dom”; Gior­dano Bruno’s Spac­cio de la bes­tia tri­on­fante (1584); and “the first print­ed ver­sion of the tree of life (1516): A graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the sefirot, the 10 virtues of God accord­ing to the Kab­bal­ah.”

Brown, the Rit­man notes, “is a great admir­er of the library and vis­it­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions while writ­ing his nov­els The Lost Sym­bol and Infer­no.” Now he’s giv­ing back. Some of the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by his best­selling nov­els, along with a €15,000 con­tri­bu­tion from the Dutch Prins Bern­hard Cul­tu­ur­fonds, will allow the library’s core col­lec­tion, “some 3,500 ancient books,” to come online soon in an archive called “Her­met­i­cal­ly Open.”

For now, the curi­ous can down­load the 44-page guide to the col­lec­tion as a free ebook, and watch the ani­mat­ed video at the top, a breezy explain­er of how the books will be trans­port­ed, dig­i­tized, and uploaded. Just above, see a trail­er for a doc­u­men­tary about the Rit­man, found­ed by busi­ness­man Joost R. Rit­man in 1984. The library holds over 20,000 vol­umes on mys­ti­cism, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, reli­gion, alche­my, Gnos­ti­cism, and more.

Many a writer, like Brown, has found inspi­ra­tion among the Rit­man’s more acces­si­ble works (though, sad­ly, Borges, who was blind in 1984 and died two years lat­er, could not have appre­ci­at­ed it). Now, thanks to the Da Vin­ci Code author’s mag­na­nim­i­ty, a new gen­er­a­tion of schol­ars will be able to vir­tu­al­ly access, for exam­ple, the first Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the works of 17-cen­tu­ry Ger­man mys­tic Jakob Böhme, which librar­i­an and direc­tor Esther Rit­man describes as “trav­el­ling in an entire new world.”

In an intro­duc­to­ry essay, the Rit­man notes that aca­d­e­m­ic inter­est in occult and her­met­ic writ­ing has increased late­ly among schol­ars like W.J. Hane­graaff, who tells “the ‘neglect­ed’ sto­ry of how the intel­lec­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty since the Renais­sance has tried to come to terms with ‘eso­teric’ and ‘occult’ cur­rents present in West­ern cul­ture.” That those cur­rents are as much a part of the cul­ture as the sci­en­tif­ic or indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions need not be in doubt. The Her­met­i­cal­ly Open project opens up that his­to­ry with “an invi­ta­tion to any­one wish­ing to con­sult or study sources belong­ing to the field of Chris­t­ian-Her­met­ic Gno­sis for per­son­al, aca­d­e­m­ic or oth­er pur­pos­es.” Look for the dig­i­ti­za­tion project to hit the web in the com­ing months.

Note: You can now see the first texts online. See our fol­low up post here:

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

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

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