Paris Had a Moving Sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison Film Captured It in Action

in History, Technology | March 9th, 2020

It’s fair to say that few of us now mar­vel at mov­ing walk­ways, those stan­dard infra­struc­tur­al ele­ments of such util­i­tar­i­an spaces as air­port ter­mi­nals, sub­way sta­tions, and big-box stores. But there was a time when they astound­ed even res­i­dents of one of the most cos­mopoli­tan cities in the world. The inno­va­tion of the mov­ing side­walk demon­strat­ed at the Paris Expo­si­tion of 1900 (pre­vi­ous­ly seen here on Open Cul­ture when we fea­tured Lumière Broth­ers footage of that peri­od) com­mand­ed even Thomas Edis­on’s atten­tion. As Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak tells it at Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, “Thomas Edi­son sent one of his pro­duc­ers, James Hen­ry White, to the Expo­si­tion and Mr. White shot at least 16 movies,” a clip of which footage you can see above.

White “had brought along a new pan­ning-head tri­pod that gave his films a new­found sense of free­dom and flow. Watch­ing the film, you can see chil­dren jump­ing into frame and even a man doff­ing his cap to the cam­era, pos­si­bly aware that he was being cap­tured by an excit­ing new tech­nol­o­gy while a fun nov­el­ty of the future chugs along under his feet.”

Novak also includes hand-col­ored pho­tographs from the Paris Exhi­bi­tion and quotes a New York Observ­er cor­re­spon­dent describ­ing the mov­ing side­walk as a “nov­el­ty” con­sist­ing of “three ele­vat­ed plat­forms, the first being sta­tion­ary, the sec­ond mov­ing at a mod­er­ate rate of speed, and the third at the rate of about six miles an hour.” Thus “the cir­cuit of the Expo­si­tion can be made with rapid­i­ty and ease by this con­trivance. It also affords a good deal of fun, for most of the vis­i­tors are unfa­mil­iar with this mode of tran­sit, and are awk­ward in its use.”

Novak fea­tures con­tem­po­rary images of the Paris Exhi­bi­tion’s mov­ing side­walk at Pale­o­fu­ture, found in the book Paris Expo­si­tion Repro­duced From the Offi­cial Pho­tographs. Its authors describe the trot­toir roulant as “a detached struc­ture like a rail­way train, arriv­ing at and pass­ing cer­tain points at stat­ed times” with­out a break. “In engi­neers’ lan­guage, it is an ‘end­less floor’ raised thir­ty feet above the lev­el of the ground, ever and ever glid­ing along the four sides of the square — a wood­en ser­pent with its tail in its mouth.” But the his­to­ry of the mov­ing walk­way did­n’t start in Paris: “In 1871 inven­tor Alfred Speer patent­ed a sys­tem of mov­ing side­walks that he thought would rev­o­lu­tion­ize pedes­tri­an trav­el in New York City,” as Novak notes, and the first one actu­al­ly built was built for Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Expo­si­tion — but it cost a nick­el to ride and “was unde­pend­able and prone to break­ing down,” mak­ing Paris’ ver­sion the more impres­sive spec­ta­cle.

Still, the Columbian Expo­si­tion’s vis­i­tors must have got a kick out of glid­ing down the pier with­out hav­ing to do the walk­ing them­selves. You can learn more about this first mov­ing walk­way and its suc­ces­sors, the one at the Paris Exhi­bi­tion includ­ed, from the Lit­tle Car video above. How­ev­er much these ear­ly mod­els may look like quaint turn-of-the cen­tu­ry nov­el­ties, some still see in the tech­nol­o­gy gen­uine promise for the future of pub­lic tran­sit. Mov­ing walk­ways work well, writes Tree­hug­ger’s Lloyd Alter, “when the walk­ing dis­tance and time is just a bit too long.” And they remind us that “trans­porta­tion should be about more than just get­ting from A to B; it should be a plea­sure as well.” Parisians “kept the Eif­fel Tow­er from the exhi­bi­tion” — it had been built for the 1889 World’s Fair — but “it is too bad they did­n’t keep this, a sort of mov­ing High Line that is both trans­porta­tion and enter­tain­ment.”

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:

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recreated in Authentic Byzantine Chant

in Architecture, History, Music | March 9th, 2020

Audio tech­nol­o­gy has made many excit­ing advances in the past few years, one of which enables record­ing engi­neers to cap­ture the sound of a spe­cif­ic space and recre­ate it else­where. Through a process called “con­vo­lu­tion reverb,” the sound of a con­cert hall or club can be portable, so to speak, and a band or group of singers in a stu­dio can be made to sound as if they were per­form­ing in Carnegie Hall, or inside a cave or grain silo.

Also being recre­at­ed are the sounds of goth­ic cathe­drals and Byzan­tine churches—acoustic envi­ron­ments being pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty in dig­i­tal record­ings as their phys­i­cal forms decay. This tech­nol­o­gy has giv­en schol­ars the means to rep­re­sent the music of the past as it sound­ed hun­dreds of years ago and as it was orig­i­nal­ly meant to be heard by its devout lis­ten­ers.

Music took shape in par­tic­u­lar land­scapes and archi­tec­tur­al envi­ron­ments, just as those envi­ron­ments evolved to enhance cer­tain kinds of sound. Medieval Chris­t­ian church­es were espe­cial­ly suit­ed to the hyp­not­ic chants that char­ac­ter­ize the sacred music of the time. As David Byrne puts it in his TED Talk on music and archi­tec­ture:

In a goth­ic cathe­dral, this kind of music is per­fect. It doesn’t change key, the notes are long, there’s almost no rhythm what­so­ev­er, and the room flat­ters the music. It actu­al­ly improves it.

There’s no doubt about that, espe­cial­ly in the case of the Greek Ortho­dox cathe­dral Hagia Sophia. Built in 537 AD in what was then Con­stan­tino­ple, it was once the largest build­ing in the world. Though it lost the title ear­ly on, it remains on incred­i­bly impres­sive feat of engi­neer­ing. While the struc­ture is still very much intact, no one has been able to hear its music since 1453, when the Ottoman Empire seized the city and the mas­sive church became a mosque. “Choral music was banned,” notes Scott Simon on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion, “and the sound of the Hagia Sophia was for­got­ten until now.”

Now (that is, in the past ten years or so), well over five cen­turies lat­er, we can hear what ear­ly medieval audi­ences heard in the mas­sive Byzan­tine cathe­dral, thanks to the work of two Stan­ford pro­fes­sors, art his­to­ri­an Bis­sera Pentche­va and Jonathan Abel, who teach­es in the com­put­er music depart­ment and stud­ies, he says, “the analy­sis, syn­the­sis and pro­cess­ing of sound.”

Now a muse­um, the Hagia Sophia allowed Pentche­va and Abel to record the sound of bal­loons pop­ping in the space after-hours. “Abel used the acoustic infor­ma­tion in the bal­loon pops to cre­ate a dig­i­tal fil­ter that can make any­thing sound like it’s inside the Hagia Sophia,” as Week­end Edi­tion guest host Sam Hart­nett explains.

Pentche­va, who focus­es her work “on rean­i­mat­ing medieval art and archi­tec­ture,” was then able to “rean­i­mate” the sound of high Greek Ortho­dox chant as it would have been heard in the heart of the Byzan­tine Empire. “It’s actu­al­ly some­thing that is beyond human­i­ty that the sound is try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate,” she says.” That mes­sage needs a larg­er-than-life space for its full effect.

Hear more about how the effect was cre­at­ed in the Week­end Edi­tion episode above. And in the videos fur­ther up, see the choral group Capel­la Romana per­form Byzan­tine chants with the Hagia Sophia effect applied. Just last year, the ensem­ble released the album of chants above, Lost Voic­es of Hagia Sophia, using the fil­ter. It is a col­lec­tion of music as valu­able to our under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the art of the Byzan­tine Empire as a restored mosa­ic or recon­struct­ed cathe­dral.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The Same Song Sung in 15 Places: A Won­der­ful Case Study of How Land­scape & Archi­tec­ture Shape the Sounds of Music

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

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

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The Summerhill School, the Radical Educational Experiment That Let Students Learn What, When, and How They Want (1966)

in Education, K-12 | March 9th, 2020

Among the polit­i­cal and social rev­o­lu­tions of the 1960s, the move­ment to democ­ra­tize edu­ca­tion is of cen­tral his­tor­i­cal impor­tance. Par­ents and politi­cians were entrenched in bat­tles over inte­grat­ing local schools years after 1954’s Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. Sit-ins and protests on col­lege cam­pus­es made sim­i­lar stu­dent unrest today seem mild by com­par­i­son. Mean­while, qui­eter, though no less rad­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al move­ments pro­lif­er­at­ed in com­munes, home­schools, and com­mu­ni­ties that could pay for pri­vate schools.

Most of these exper­i­men­tal meth­ods drew from old­er sources, such as the the­o­ries of Rudolf Stein­er and Maria Montes­sori, both of whom died before the Age of Aquar­ius. One move­ment that got its start decades ear­li­er was pop­u­lar­ized in the 60s when its founder A.S. Neill pub­lished the influ­en­tial Sum­mer­hill: A Rad­i­cal Approach to Child Rear­ing, a clas­sic work of alter­na­tive ped­a­gogy in which the Scot­tish writer and edu­ca­tor described the rad­i­cal ideas devel­oped in his Sum­mer­hill School in Eng­land, first found­ed in 1921.

Neill’s school “helped to pio­neer the ‘free school’ phi­los­o­phy,” writes Aeon, “in which lessons are nev­er manda­to­ry and near­ly every aspect of stu­dent life can be put to a vote.” His meth­ods “and a ris­ing coun­ter­cul­tur­al move­ment inspired sim­i­lar insti­tu­tions to open around the world.” When Neill first pub­lished his book, how­ev­er, he was very much on the defen­sive, against “an increas­ing reac­tion against pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” psy­chol­o­gist Erich Fromm wrote in the book’s fore­word.

At the extreme end of this back­lash Fromm sit­u­ates “the remark­able suc­cess in teach­ing achieved in the Sovi­et Union,” where “the old-fash­ioned meth­ods of author­i­tar­i­an­ism are applied in full strength.” Fromm defend­ed exper­i­ments like Neill’s, despite their “often dis­ap­point­ing” results, as a nat­ur­al out­growth of the Enlight­en­ment.

Dur­ing the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, the ideas of free­dom, democ­ra­cy, and self-deter­mi­na­tion were pro­claimed by pro­gres­sive thinkers; and by the first half of the 1900’s these ideas came to fruition in the field of edu­ca­tion. The basic prin­ci­ple of such self-deter­mi­na­tion was the replace­ment of author­i­ty by free­dom, to teach the child with­out the use of force by appeal­ing to his curios­i­ty and spon­ta­neous needs, and thus to get him inter­est­ed in the world around him. This atti­tude marked the begin­ning of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion and was an impor­tant step in human devel­op­ment.

What seemed anar­chic to its detrac­tors had its roots in the tra­di­tion of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty against feu­dal tra­di­tions of unques­tioned author­i­ty. But Neill was less like John Locke, who includ­ed chil­dren in his cat­e­go­ry of irra­tional beings (along with “idiots” and “Indi­ans”) than he was like Jean Jacques Rousseau. Fromm sug­gests this too: “A.S. Neill’s sys­tem is a rad­i­cal approach to child rear­ing because it rep­re­sents the true prin­ci­ple of edu­ca­tion with­out fear. In Sum­mer­hill School author­i­ty does not mask a sys­tem of manip­u­la­tion.”

Stu­dents decide what they want to learn, and what they don’t, with no cur­ricu­lum, require­ments, or test­ing to speak of and no struc­tured time or manda­to­ry atten­dance. Is such a thing even pos­si­ble in prac­tice? How could edu­ca­tors man­age and mea­sure stu­dent progress, or ensure their stu­dents learn any­thing at all? What might this look like? Find out in the 1966 Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da doc­u­men­tary Sum­mer­hill, above, full of “can­did moments and scenes,” Aeon writes, “that evoke the rhythms of dai­ly life at the school and give a sense of the children’s lived expe­ri­ence.”

Dis­or­ga­nized, but not chaot­ic, class­room bus­tle con­trasts with idyl­lic, sun­lit moments on Summerhill’s ver­dant grounds and hon­est crit­i­cism, some from the stu­dents them­selves. One girl admits that the free play wears thin after a while and that “there prob­a­bly aren’t such good facil­i­ties for learn­ing here, after a cer­tain lev­el. But you can always go some­where else after­wards” (though many would have dif­fi­cul­ty with entrance exams). Anoth­er stu­dent talks about the strug­gle to study with­out struc­ture to help min­i­mize dis­trac­tions. Despite Neill’s philo­soph­i­cal aver­sion to fear, she says “you’re always afraid of miss­ing some­thing.”

We also meet the man him­self, A.S. Neill, a rum­pled, avun­cu­lar fig­ure at 83 years old, who pro­claims free­dom as the answer for stu­dents who strug­gle in school, and for stu­dents who don’t. If we’re hon­est, we might all admit we felt this strong­ly as chil­dren our­selves. It may nev­er be an impulse that’s com­pat­i­ble with con­tem­po­rary goals for edu­ca­tion, which is often geared toward work­place train­ing at the expense of cre­ative think­ing. But for many stu­dents, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue their own course on their own terms can become the impe­tus for a life­time of inde­pen­dent thought and action. I can’t think of a lofti­er edu­ca­tion­al goal.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

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

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Jeremy Bentham’s Mummified Body Is Still on Display–Much Like Other Aging British Rock Stars

in Philosophy, Random | March 9th, 2020

Plato’s ide­al of philoso­pher-kings seems more unlike­ly by the day, but most mod­ern read­ers of The Repub­lic don’t see his state as an improve­ment, with its rigid caste sys­tem and state con­trol over child­bear­ing and rear­ing. Plato’s Socrates did not love democ­ra­cy, though he did argue that men and women (those of the guardian class, at least) should receive an equal edu­ca­tion. So too did many promi­nent Euro­pean polit­i­cal philoso­phers of the 18th and 19th cen­turies, who had at least as much influ­ence on world affairs as Pla­to did on Athens, for bet­ter and worse.

One such thinker, Jere­my Ben­tham, is often remem­bered as the inven­tor of the panop­ti­con, a dystopi­an prison design that makes inmates inter­nal­ize their own sur­veil­lance, believ­ing they could be watched at any time by unseen eyes. Made infa­mous by Michel Fou­cault in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the pro­pos­al was first intend­ed as humane reform, con­sis­tent with the tenets of Bentham’s philo­soph­i­cal inno­va­tion, Util­i­tar­i­an­ism, often asso­ci­at­ed with his most famous dis­ci­ple, John Stu­art Mill.

Ben­tham may also have been one of the most pro­gres­sive sec­u­lar philoso­phers of any age—espousing full polit­i­cal rights for everyone—by which he actu­al­ly meant every­one, not only Euro­pean landown­ing men. “In his own time,” writes Faramerz Dab­hoi­wala at The Guardian, Ben­tham “was cel­e­brat­ed around the globe. Count­less prac­ti­cal efforts at social and polit­i­cal reform drew inspi­ra­tion from him. […] He was made an hon­orary cit­i­zen of rev­o­lu­tion­ary France, while the Guatemalan leader José del Valle acclaimed him as ‘the leg­is­la­tor of the world.’ Nev­er before or since has the Eng­lish-speak­ing world pro­duced a more polit­i­cal­ly engaged and inter­na­tion­al­ly influ­en­tial thinker across such a broad range of sub­jects.”

Ben­tham took the role seri­ous­ly, though there may be the seeds of a mor­bid prac­ti­cal joke in his last philo­soph­i­cal act.

As he lay dying in the spring of 1832, the great philoso­pher Jere­my Ben­tham left detailed direc­tions for the preser­va­tion of his corpse. First, it was to be pub­licly dis­sect­ed in front of an invit­ed audi­ence. Then, the pre­served head and skele­ton were to be reassem­bled, clothed, and dis­played ‘in the atti­tude in which I am sit­ting when engaged in thought and writ­ing.’ His desire to be pre­served for­ev­er was a polit­i­cal state­ment. As the fore­most sec­u­lar thinker of his time, he want­ed to use his body, as he had his mind, to defy reli­gious super­sti­tions and advance real, sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. Almost 200 years lat­er, Ben­tham’s ‘auto-icon’ still sits, star­ing off into space, in the clois­ters of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don.

His full-body par­o­dy of saints’ relics doesn’t just sit in Lon­don, in the “appro­pri­ate box or case” he spec­i­fied in his instruc­tions. It has also sat in its box in cities across Eng­land, Ger­many, and New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. “Not unlike an aging British rock star,” writes Isaac Schultz at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the old­er he gets, the more tours he seems to go on. Some­times Bentham’s sev­ered, mum­mi­fied head,” with its ter­ri­fy­ing, unblink­ing glass eyes, “accom­pa­nies the rest of him.” Some­times it doesn’t.

The head, which was sup­posed to have been kept atop the ful­ly dressed skele­ton, was mis­han­dled and dam­aged in the cre­ation of the “auto-icon” and replaced by a wax repli­ca (sure­ly an acci­dent and not a way to mit­i­gate the creepi­ness). What did Ben­tham mean by all of this? And what is an “auto-icon”? Though it sounds like the sort of inscrutable prank Sal­vador Dali might have played at the end, Ben­tham described the idea straight­for­ward­ly in his pam­phlet Auto-Icon; or, Far­ther Uses of the Dead to the Liv­ing. The philoso­pher, says Han­nah Cor­nish, sci­ence cura­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, gen­uine­ly “thought it’d catch on.”

Pho­to via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his short, final work of moral phi­los­o­phy, Ben­tham shows that, like Pla­to, he didn’t quite get the point of mak­ing art, advanc­ing a the­o­ry that becom­ing one’s own icon would elim­i­nate the need for paint­ings, stat­ues, and the like, since “iden­ti­ty is prefer­able to simil­i­tude” (to the extent that a mum­mi­fied corpse is iden­ti­cal to a liv­ing per­son). Oth­er util­i­tar­i­an rea­sons include ben­e­fits to sci­ence, reduced pub­lic health risks, and cre­at­ing “agree­able asso­ci­a­tions with death.”

Also, in what must have been intend­ed with at least some under­cur­rent of humor, he asked that his remains “occa­sion­al­ly be brought into meet­ings involv­ing his still-liv­ing friends,” writes Schultz, “so that what’s left of Ben­tham might enjoy their com­pa­ny.”

Learn more about Bentham’s “auto-icon” in the Atlas Obscu­ra videos here, includ­ing the video fur­ther up show­ing how a team of pro­fes­sion­als packed up and moved the whole macabre assem­blage to its new home across the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don cam­pus. And read an even more detailed descrip­tion, with sev­er­al pho­tographs, of how the old­est par­tial­ly mum­mi­fied British rock star philoso­pher trav­els, here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

97-Year-Old Philoso­pher Pon­ders the Mean­ing of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?”

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

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

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Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vividly Restored with Artificial Intelligence (Circa 1890)

in History | March 6th, 2020

In his lat­est act of dig­i­tal restora­tion, Denis Shiryaev has used AI to revive and col­orize footage doc­u­ment­ing dai­ly life in Paris dur­ing the 1890s. The remark­ably clear footage lets you see hors­es and bug­gies move past Notre Dame; young­sters float­ing their boats at Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens; the Eif­fel Tour dur­ing its first decade of exis­tence; fire­men dash­ing down the city’s grands boule­vards; and peo­ple hop­ping onto futur­is­tic mov­ing side­walks. Quite a delight to see.

Find oth­er recent video restora­tions in the Relat­eds below.

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:

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

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Hear H.P. Lovecraft Horror Stories Read by Roddy McDowall

in Literature | March 6th, 2020

“Most dae­mo­ni­a­cal of all shocks is that of the abysmal­ly unex­pect­ed and grotesque­ly unbe­liev­able,” goes a typ­i­cal line in the work of H.P. Love­craft. “Noth­ing I had before under­gone could com­pare in ter­ror with what I now saw; with the bizarre mar­vels that sight implied.” As a writer of what he called “weird fic­tion,” Love­craft spe­cial­ized in the nar­ra­tor plunged into a loss for words by the sheer incom­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty of that which he sees before him. But in the case of this par­tic­u­lar sen­tence, the nar­ra­tor sees not an ancient mon­ster awak­ened from its mil­len­nia of slum­ber but “noth­ing less than the sol­id ground” — or as the read­er put it, noth­ing more than the sol­id ground. But then, most of us haven’t lived our entire lives locked up high in a cas­tle.

The sto­ry is “The Out­sider,” some­thing of an out­lier in the Love­craft canon due to its out­sized pop­u­lar­i­ty as well as its Goth­ic tinge. By the author’s own admis­sion, it owes a debt to his lit­er­ary idol Edgar Allan Poe, and indeed rep­re­sents Love­craft’s “lit­er­al though uncon­scious imi­ta­tion of Poe at its very height.”

In 1926 or today, one could do much worse for a mod­el than Poe, and crit­ics have also detect­ed in “The Out­sider” the pos­si­ble influ­ence of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shel­ley, and Oscar Wilde. Any­one dar­ing to read the sto­ry aloud must thus strike a bal­ance between sev­er­al dif­fer­ent com­pet­ing tones, and few could hope to out­do Rod­dy McDowal­l’s per­for­mance on the 1966 record above. But as Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher notes, that actor, “child star of Lassie Come Home and My Friend Flic­ka,” is “hard­ly a name one would asso­ciate with the mas­ter of the unname­able.”

Though McDowall would lat­er “star in some jol­ly decent hor­ror movies like The Leg­end of Hell House and Fright Night, he was in 1966 best known for the likes of “That Darn Cat! or Lord Love a Duck or the stage musi­cal Camelot.” In the event, McDow­ell proved “almost a per­fect choice to give life to Lovecraft’s words,” deliv­er­ing a “light boy­ish charm” com­bined with an into­na­tion that “caus­es a grow­ing dis­qui­et and a dread­ful sense of unease,” alto­geth­er suit­able for the work of “the weird and reclu­sive Love­craft.” He also brings to the role the kind of faint, unex­pect­ed­ly refined men­ace that would make him famous as Cor­nelius and Cae­sar in the Plan­et of the Apes films. After “The Out­sider” McDowall reads Love­caft’s ear­li­er sto­ry “The Hound,” and sure­ly his voice is just the one in which Love­craft fans would want to hear spo­ken, for the very first time in Love­craft’s oeu­vre, the name of the Necro­nom­i­con.

Be sure to explore out col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

23 Hours of H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries: Hear Read­ings & Drama­ti­za­tions of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth,” & Oth­er Weird Tales

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to H.P. Love­craft and How He Invent­ed a New Goth­ic Hor­ror

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Mak­ing The Plan­et of the Apes: Rod­dy McDowall’s Home Movies and a 1966 Make­up Test

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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The Internet Archive Hosts 20,000 VHS Recordings of Pop Culture from the 1980s & 1990s: Enter the VHS Vault

in Video - Arts & Culture | March 5th, 2020

Image by Evan-Amos, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

My neigh­bor­hood thrift store has a very large VHS wall, filled with Hol­ly­wood movies, end­less chil­dren’s videos, instruc­tion­al tapes, and best of all a box of unknown vids. Maybe they’re blank. Maybe they con­tain 6 episodes of Mat­lock. And maybe, just maybe, they have some­thing com­plete­ly nuts.

But who has time or the old tech­nol­o­gy for that, espe­cial­ly when the Inter­net Archive has recent­ly expand­ed its VHS Vault sec­tion to 20,000 dig­i­tized tapes under the (non) cura­tion of archivist Jason Scott. We make no claims for the qual­i­ty of the videos con­tained there­in, because that’s real­ly up to you. A cur­so­ry glance shows episodes of Blues Clues next to Traci Lords’ work­out tape next to Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater along­side Ger­ry Anderson’s Laven­der Cas­tle, a mix of clay­ma­tion, pup­petry, and rudi­men­ta­ry CGI.

So look: you have to go dig­ging. There’s gems among the junk. There’s That’s My Bush! the ill-con­ceived and ill-fat­ed sit­com from South Park’s Trey Park­er and Matt Stone that dis­ap­peared down the mem­o­ry hole after 9–11.

Or check out this Law Enforce­ment Guide to Satan­ic Cults, 75 min­utes of para­noid luna­cy with a halfway decent ambi­ent sound­track and some groovy visu­als. Once you hear “abnor­mal sex­ol­o­gy” you’ll be hooked!

This 1994 footage/interviews from the playa at Burn­ing Man is a fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule. “We have enough guns out here to start World War III,” one man says. Yep, it was cer­tain­ly a dif­fer­ent time.

You’ll also find plen­ty of just straight-up “no idea what’s on this, just hit play and record” VHS tapes, like this 4 hour block of MTV from 1995.

The Archive also serves anoth­er pur­pose: right now it acts as a kind of “safe space” from the increas­ing­ly unfor­giv­ing algo­rithms of YouTube, designed to take down any­thing its AI hears as unli­censed footage or music. It’s one rea­son for the amount of Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater episodes up here, as some can no longer be shown due to expired film rights.

And unlike YouTube, all the videos are avail­able for you to down­load, keep, remix, edit, and/or purge. You won’t have to wash your hands like after a trip to the thrift store, but your soul will feel equal­ly gross. Enjoy! Enter the archive here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Is Dig­i­tiz­ing & Pre­serv­ing Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Watch 700 Videos Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Videos from the Ear­ly Days of MTV

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How African-American Explorer Matthew Henson Became the First Person to Reach the North Pole, Then Was Forgotten for Almost 30 Years

in History | March 5th, 2020

The his­to­ry of explo­ration is replete with famous names every­one knows, like Robert Peary, the man most often cred­it­ed with first reach­ing the North Pole. Those who work along­side the legends—doing the heavy lift­ing, sav­ing lives, mak­ing essen­tial calculations—tend to be for­got­ten or mar­gin­al­ized almost imme­di­ate­ly in the telling of the sto­ry, espe­cial­ly when they don’t fit the pro­file for the kinds of peo­ple allowed to make his­to­ry.

In Peary’s case, it seems that the most impor­tant mem­ber of his team—his assis­tant, African Amer­i­can explor­er Matthew Hen­son—may have actu­al­ly reached the North Pole first, along with four of the team’s Inu­it crew mem­bers.

Hen­son and Per­ry first met in a Wash­ing­ton, DC cloth­ing store where Hen­son worked. When they struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, Peary learned that Hen­son had fled Mary­land “after his par­ents were tar­get­ed by the Ku Klux Klan,” as Messy Nessy writes. He had then signed on as a cab­in boy at 12 and sailed around the world, includ­ing the Russ­ian Arc­tic seas, learn­ing to read and write while aboard ship.

Peary was impressed and “hired him on the spot,” and “from that point for­ward, Hen­son went on every expe­di­tion Peary embarked on; trekking through the jun­gles of Nicaragua and, lat­er, cov­er­ing thou­sands of miles of ice in dog sleds to the North Pole.” Also on their last expe­di­tion were 39 Inu­it men, women, and chil­dren, includ­ing the four Inu­it men— Ootah, Egig­ing­wah, See­gloo, and Oogueah—who accom­pa­nied Hen­son and Peary on the final leg of the 1909 jour­ney, Peary and Henson’s eighth attempt.

As the six men neared the pole, Peary “grew more and more weary, suf­fer­ing from exhaus­tion and frozen toes, unable to leave their camp, set up five miles” away. Hen­son and the oth­ers “scout­ed ahead,” and, accord­ing to Hen­son’s account, actu­al­ly over­shot the pole before dou­bling back. “I could see that my foot­prints were the first at the spot,” he lat­er wrote.

Peary even­tu­al­ly caught up and “the sled-bound Admi­ral alleged­ly trudged up to plant the Amer­i­can flag in the ice—and yet, the only pho­to­graph of the his­toric moment shows a crew of faces that are dis­tinct­ly not white.” Either Peary took the pho­to­graph as a “way of hon­or­ing the crew” or he wasn’t there at all when it was tak­en. The for­mer does­n’t seem like­ly giv­en Peary’s eager­ness to claim full cred­it for the feat.

Peary accept­ed the sole hon­or from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety and an award from Con­gress in 1911, while Henson’s “con­tri­bu­tions were large­ly ignored” at the time and “he returned to a very nor­mal life” in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty, work­ing as a U.S. Cus­toms clerk for 23 years, unable to mar­shal the resources for fur­ther expe­di­tions once Peary retired.

In his writ­ings, Peary char­ac­ter­ized Hen­son accord­ing to his use­ful­ness: “This posi­tion I have giv­en him pri­mar­i­ly because of his adapt­abil­i­ty and fit­ness for the work and sec­ond­ly on account of his loy­al­ty. He is a bet­ter dog dri­ver and can han­dle a sledge bet­ter than any man liv­ing, except some of the best Eski­mo hunters them­selves.” The pas­sage is rem­i­nis­cent of Lewis and Clark’s descrip­tions of Saca­gawea, who nev­er emerges as a full per­son with her own moti­va­tions.

Sad­ly, in his 1912 account, A Negro Explor­er at the North Pole, it seems that Hen­son inter­nal­ized the racism that con­fined him to sec­ond-class sta­tus. “Anoth­er world’s accom­plish­ment was done and fin­ished,” he writes, pas­sive­ly elid­ing the doer of the deed. He then invokes a trope that appears over and over, from Shakespeare’s Tem­pest to Defoe’s Robin­son Cru­soe: “From the begin­ning of his­to­ry, wher­ev­er the world’s work was done by a white man, he had been accom­pa­nied by a col­ored man. From the build­ing of the pyra­mids and the jour­ney to the cross, to the dis­cov­ery of the new world and the dis­cov­ery of the North Pole.”

The kind of his­to­ry Hen­son had learned is obvious—a white­wash­ing on a world-his­tor­i­cal scale. It would take almost 30 years for him to final­ly receive recog­ni­tion, though he lived to become the first black mem­ber of The Explor­ers Club in 1937 and “with some irony,” Messy Nessy writes, he “was award­ed the Peary Polar Expe­di­tion Medal” in 1944. Since then, his name has usu­al­ly been men­tioned with Peary’s in his­to­ries of the expe­di­tion, but rarely as the first per­son to reach the pole. Watch two short pro­files of Hen­son’s accom­plish­ments above, and see many more pho­tos from the expe­di­tion at Messy Nessy.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explor­er David Livingstone’s Diary (Writ­ten in Berry Juice) Now Dig­i­tized with New Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy

Watch the Very First Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary: Nanook of the North by Robert J. Fla­her­ty (1922)

African Amer­i­can His­to­ry-Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

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

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The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Create an “Open-Source” Record of Our Planet

in Environment, Science | March 5th, 2020

If you keep up with cli­mate change news, you see a lot of pre­dic­tions of what the world will look like twen­ty years from now, fifty years from now, a cen­tu­ry from now. Some of these pro­jec­tions of the state of the land, the shape of con­ti­nents, and the lev­els of the sea are more dra­mat­ic than oth­ers, and in any case they vary so much that one nev­er knows which ones to cred­it. But of equal impor­tance to fore­see­ing what Earth will look like in the future is not for­get­ting what it looks like now — or so holds the premise of the Earth Archive, a sci­en­tif­ic effort to “scan the entire sur­face of the Earth before it’s too late.”

This ambi­tious project has three goals: to “cre­ate a base­line record of the earth as it is today to more effec­tive­ly mit­i­gate the cli­mate cri­sis,” to “build a vir­tu­al, open-source plan­et acces­si­ble to all sci­en­tists so we can bet­ter under­stand our world,” and to “pre­serve a record of the Earth for our grandchildren’s grand­chil­dren so they can study & recre­ate our lost her­itage.”

All three depend on the cre­ation of a detailed 3D mod­el of the globe — but “globe” is the wrong word, bring­ing to mind as it does a sphere cov­ered with flat images of land and sea.

Using lidar (short for Light Detec­tion & Rang­ing), a tech­nol­o­gy that “involves shoot­ing a dense grid of infrared beams from an air­plane towards the ground,” the Earth Archive aims to cre­ate not an image but “a dense three-dimen­sion­al cloud of points” cap­tur­ing the whole plan­et. At the top of the post, you can see a TED Talk on the Earth Archive’s ori­gin, pur­pose, and poten­tial by archae­ol­o­gist and anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Chris Fish­er, the pro­jec­t’s founder and direc­tor. “Fish­er had used lidar to sur­vey the ancient Purépecha set­tle­ment of Anga­mu­co, in Mexico’s Michoacán state,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Isaac Schultz. “In the course of that work, he saw human-caused changes to the land­scape, and decid­ed to broad­en his scope.”

Now, Fish­er and Earth Archive co-direc­tor Steve Leisz want to cre­ate “a com­pre­hen­sive archive of lidar scans” to “fuel an immense dataset of the Earth’s sur­face, in three dimen­sions.” This comes with cer­tain obsta­cles, not the least the price tag: a scan of the Ama­zon rain­for­est would take six years and cost $15 mil­lion. “The next step,” writes Schultz, “could be to use some future tech­nol­o­gy that puts lidar in orbit and makes cov­er­ing large areas eas­i­er.” Dis­in­clined to wait around for the devel­op­ment of such a tech­nol­o­gy while forests burn and coast­lines erode, Fish­er and Leisz are tak­ing their first steps — and tak­ing dona­tions — right now. On the off chance that humans of cen­turies ahead devel­op the abil­i­ty to recre­ate the plan­et as we know it today, it’s the Earth Archive’s data they’ll rely on to do it.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

Explore Metic­u­lous 3D Mod­els of Endan­gered His­tor­i­cal Sites in Google’s “Open Her­itage” Project

Earth­rise, Apol­lo 8’s Pho­to of Earth from Space, Turns 50: Down­load the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph from NASA

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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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Updating Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to Cover Female Action Heroes–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #33

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 5th, 2020

This week’s guest Vi Burlew has arisen, a shin­ing fig­ure clad in mail, car­ry­ing aloft a shim­mer­ing broadsword to bring your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt this top­ic about the hero’s jour­ney.

This gen­er­al plot struc­ture dat­ing back to ancient myth was detailed by Joseph Camp­bell and famous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly plun­dered to cre­ate the plot of the orig­i­nal Star Wars. So how has this evolved with the increas­ing intro­duc­tion of female heroes in recent, large­ly Dis­ney-owned block­busters? We talk Won­der Woman and Cap­tain Mar­vel, antic­i­pate Black Wid­ow and the new Mulan, but also bring in Lord of the Rings, Har­ry Pot­ter, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Lit­tle Women, Jane Eyre, Work­ing Girl, and of course Road House.

What com­pli­cates this issue is that a dis­tinct “hero­ine’s jour­ney” had already been plot­ted in response to Camp­bell by fem­i­nist thinkers at least back to Mau­reen Mur­dock in 1990. The key dif­fer­ence is that while the hero achieves the goal and comes home in tri­umph, the hero­ine then real­izes that there was some­thing self-betray­ing about the tri­umph and requires an addi­tion­al step of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her ori­gins. This is like if Luke real­ized after destroy­ing the Death Star that he was a mois­ture farmer all along and had to come to terms with that. (Maybe he could actu­al­ly grieve for his dead aunt and uncle and his best friend Big­gs!)

It’s been argued that Har­ry Pot­ter’s jour­ney more close­ly resem­bles that hero­ine’s jour­ney, where­as, say, Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (“I am no man!”) is a more tra­di­tion­al hero. Action films of today may fea­ture female heroes, but when this is done thought­ful­ly (not just by tak­ing an action hero and swap­ping the gen­der with­out fur­ther alter­ation), then film­mak­ers may tweak the struc­ture of the myth to include some gen­der-spe­cif­ic ele­ments and per­haps blend the two types of jour­ney. These new vari­ants that may or may not res­onate in the way that caused the orig­i­nal Star Wars/Campbell for­mu­la to become so pop­u­lar.

Two arti­cles we specif­i­cal­ly cite in our dis­cus­sion are:

For some basics about the jour­neys described by Joseph Camp­bell, Mau­reen Mur­dok, and a dif­fer­ent ver­sion by Vic­to­ria Lynn Schmidt, see the Wikipedia entries on Hero’s Jour­ney and Hero­ine’s Jour­ney.

In addi­tion, The Hero­ine Jour­neys Project web­site fea­tures numer­ous arti­cles about female heroes in media. We also looked at this red­dit thread, which among oth­er things pro­vides some oppos­ing views to those of our guests about the Star Wars fran­chise char­ac­ter Rey.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Every Possible Melody Has Been Copyrighted, and They’re Now Released into the Public Domain

in Law, Music, Technology | March 4th, 2020

When Helen Keller was only twelve years old, she stood accused of pla­gia­riz­ing a short sto­ry. A tri­bunal acquit­ted her of the charges, but when her dear friend Mark Twain read about the inci­dent years lat­er, he stren­u­ous­ly protest­ed, exclaim­ing in a 1903 let­ter, “the ker­nel, the soul—let us go fur­ther and say the sub­stance, the bulk, the actu­al and valu­able mate­r­i­al of all human utterance—is pla­gia­rism.”

Giv­en the finite num­ber of pos­si­ble nar­ra­tives, and com­bi­na­tions of phras­es, words, and syl­la­bles, he’s got a point, though it wouldn’t hold up in court where the ques­tion of intent comes into play.

Liti­gious artists and their estates fre­quent­ly sue oth­er artists whose work is too close to what they claim as their own inven­tion. Twain might say (his own copy­rights aside) that the idea of invent­ing art from scratch is an “owlish­ly idi­ot­ic and grotesque” fan­ta­sy. He might say so, for exam­ple, of the recent legal deci­sion that keeps Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” a form of pri­vate prop­er­ty, despite its author’s desire for any­one and every­one to sing and record the song. (Guthrie’s daugh­ter Nora claims she is pro­tect­ing it from “evil forces” who would mis­use it.)

If lit­er­a­ture is most­ly pla­gia­rism, what about music? How is it pos­si­ble to copy­right melodies when they float through the cul­tur­al ether, appear­ing in sim­i­lar forms in song after song around the world? What would have become of the blues, blue­grass, and near­ly every form of tra­di­tion­al folk music from time immemo­r­i­al had copy­right law pre­vent­ed unau­tho­rized bor­row­ings? These are ques­tions judges and juries often pon­der when faced with two sim­i­lar sound­ing pieces of music.

In one recent case, for exam­ple, a jury found that pop star Katy Per­ry had “infringed upon the copy­right of Flame, a Chris­t­ian rap­per who’d post­ed a song” with the same melody as her song “Dark Horse,” even though Per­ry “insist­ed that she’d nev­er heard of the song or the rap­per” as Alex­is Madri­gal writes at The Atlantic. “For some musi­cians, musi­col­o­gists, and lawyers, the ver­dict felt scary; after all, large num­bers of songs now live on Sound­Cloud and YouTube. It became think­able to ask: Could the world run out of orig­i­nal melodies?”

This seems unlike­ly giv­en the “func­tion­al­ly infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties” for melodies result­ing from “all the notes and all the tra­di­tions of music around the world.” How­ev­er, when it comes to West­ern pop music and the more lim­it­ed para­me­ters that gov­ern its com­po­si­tion, the num­ber reach­es a more “com­pre­hen­si­ble part of fini­tude.” Pro­gram­mer, lawyer, and musi­cian Damien Riehl and his fel­low pro­gram­mer and musi­cian Noah Rubin decid­ed to “brute force” their way out of the prob­lem entire­ly, as Riehl tells Adam Neely above, using an algo­rithm that gen­er­at­ed all of the melodies in the range they’d seen in copy­right law­suits.

By gen­er­at­ing all pos­si­ble melodies above the middle‑C octave as MIDI files, the two artists hope to head off cost­ly infringe­ment lit­i­ga­tion that can hob­ble cre­ative free­dom. Riehl explains the inge­nious con­cept in the TEDx Min­neapo­lis talk at the top of the post, begin­ning with the issue of “sub­con­scious” copy­right infringe­ment that some­times forces artists to pay out mil­lions in dam­ages, as hap­pened to George Har­ri­son when he was sued for pla­gia­riz­ing “My Sweet Lord” from the Chif­fons’ “He’s So Fine.”

Maybe what the law has not con­sid­ered, says Riehl, is that “since the begin­ning of time, the num­ber of melodies is remark­ably finite.” Rather than invent­ing out of whole cloth, artists choose melodies from an already extant “melod­ic dataset” to which every­one poten­tial­ly has men­tal access. Now, every­one could poten­tial­ly have legal access. By com­mit­ting melod­ic data to a “tan­gi­ble for­mat,” Saman­tha Cole reports at Vice, “it’s con­sid­ered copy­right­ed.” Or as Riehl explains:

Under copy­right law, num­bers are facts, and under copy­right law, facts either have thin copy­right, almost no copy­right, or no copy­right at all. So maybe if these num­bers have exist­ed since the begin­ning of time and we’re just pluck­ing them out, maybe melodies are just math, which is just facts, which is not copy­rightable.

Riehl and Rubin have released their bil­lions of melodies under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, mean­ing they have “no rights reserved” and are sim­i­lar to pub­lic domain. Avail­able as open-source down­loads on Github and the Inter­net Archive, along with the code for the algo­rithm the artists used to make them, the dataset might actu­al­ly have side­stepped the prob­lem of musi­cal copy­right infringe­ment with tech­nol­o­gy, though whether the law, writes Cole, with its “com­pli­cat­ed and often non­sen­si­cal” appli­ca­tion, will agree is anoth­er issue entire­ly.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

Down­load Theft! A His­to­ry of Music, a New Free Graph­ic Nov­el Explor­ing 2,000 Years of Musi­cal Bor­row­ing

Pub­lic Domain Day Is Final­ly Here!: Copy­right­ed Works Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain Today for the First Time in 21 Years

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

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