Shared posts

07 Feb 15:26

Hearing Modernity: Overview

by Brandon Evans

Here we present a collection of critical media responses to the Hearing Modernity lectures and discussions of the 2013-14 Sawyer Seminar. Over the course of the year, graduate students met in a parallel seminar with Dr. Alexander Rehding (Music 230R) to discuss the core texts of each of the the seminar presenters and contextualize their work in the development of sound studies as an emerging field.  The graduate seminar had the additional goal of producing experimental critical media responses to the events of the Sawyer Seminar. Each Sawyer Seminar event featured two speakers, whose projects and conclusions sometimes overlapped and sometimes conflicted.  Graduate students met with presenters and then developed a series of critical media projects to synthesize, contest, respond to, or re-envision the themes of the discussion.  Each project responds to the Sawyer events in a different register and with approaches to audiovisual experimentation.  Graduate students also wrote textual summaries and responses to the events, which can be read on the Soundblog of the Hearing Modernity site.

–T. Brandon Evans and Caufield Schnug, guest editors

(back to all projects)

The post Hearing Modernity: Overview appeared first on Sensate Journal.

19 Nov 05:39

Vintage photos of NYC from the 50s to the 80s

by Jason Kottke

I don't know what is going on, but in the past few days, several sites have linked to rarely seen or recently uncovered photos of vintage New York. In no particular order:

Paige Powell's photos of 80s culture in NYC, stored in boxes under her bed until very recently. She dated Basquiat and hung with Haring, Warhol, and Madonna. Below, Warhol and Grace Jones chat. Click through...there's another photo of Sting, Bob Dylan, and Warhol having dinner together.

Paige Powell

David Attie's photographs of Brooklyn Heights from 1958, stored in wooden boxes in closets until recently. Attie was accompanied on his journey through the neighborhood by Truman Capote, a resident of the area. The photos are featured in a new edition of Capote's Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir.

David Attie

Charles Traub's street style photos from the late 70s. He took the photos during his lunch breaks of everyday people he thought were interesting in some way. Traub's photos are collected in a new book, Lunchtime.

Charles Traub

Janet Delaney's photos of NYC in the mid-80s. These photos have also been stored in a box until recently. Delaney also took dozens of photographs of SoMa in SF from 1978-1986.

Janet Delaney

Tags: Charles Traub   David Attie   Janet Delaney   NYC   Paige Powell   photography   Truman Capote
03 Nov 04:41

Finally!

by Ted May

finally1finally2finally3finally4

14 Oct 03:39

Race Halfway Run

by Dorothy

Comic

30 Sep 03:28

Children of Men: Don't Ignore the Background

by Jason Kottke
Jess

I love video essays on film.

The Nerdwriter takes on Children of Men, specifically what's going in the background of Alfonso Cuarón's film, both in terms of references to other works of art & culture and to things that push the plot along and contribute to the tone and message of the film.

Tags: Alfonso Cuaron   art   Children of Men   movies   video
30 Sep 02:45

The Paradox of Choice

by Dorothy

Comic

29 Sep 01:03

Computer graphics circa 1968

by Tim Carmody

"The Incredible Machine" (not to be confused with the 1975 film) is a 1968 documentary about experiments at Bell Labs focusing on graphics, voice, and other art and media applications. Technicians draw circuits using an electric stylus, animate titles for a movie presentation, and look at sound waveforms of different words trying to replicate speech.

It's a treat to see the state-of-the-art the year of 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially when one of the Bell Labs computers sings "Daisy Bell"/"A Bicycle Built For Two".

Also, mind the rabbit hole: the related links bar on YouTube leads to dozens of similar vintage computing videos.

(Via @katecrawford)

Tags: 2001   classic computing   computers   graphics
06 Jul 14:02

Mining the internet for time lapses

by Jason Kottke

Software from a group at the University of Washington and Google discovers time lapses lurking in photos posted to the internet. For example, their bot found hundreds of photos of a Norwegian glacier on the Web, taken over a span of 10 years. Voila, instant time lapse of a retreating glacier.

First, we cluster 86 million photos into landmarks and popular viewpoints. Then, we sort the photos by date and warp each photo onto a common viewpoint. Finally, we stabilize the appearance of the sequence to compensate for lighting effects and minimize flicker. Our resulting time-lapses show diverse changes in the world's most popular sites, like glaciers shrinking, skyscrapers being constructed, and waterfalls changing course.

This is like a time machine, allowing you to go back 5 or 10 years and position a camera somewhere to take photos every few days or weeks. Pretty clever.

Tags: time lapses   video
24 Apr 17:32

The Rites of Spring

by Jason Kottke
Jess

RIOTS!

WQXR took 46 performances of a selection of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and spliced them together into one piece, highlighting the how varied the performance of the notes on the page can be.

Tags: Igor Stravinsky   music   remix
23 Mar 18:55

Two women leading parallel lives are getting to know each other through data

by Susannah Breslin

dear-data.jpg

Giorgia Lupi, who lives in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, who lives in London, are engaged in a long-distance, postcard-based data exchange in order to get to know each other better: "Dear Data." They've only met in person twice, and they're both interested in data, so they're sending each other postcard drawings of data about their day-to-day lives.

Each week we collect and measure a particular type of data about our lives, use this data to make a drawing on a postcard-sized sheet of paper, and then drop the postcard in an English "postbox" (Stefanie) or an American "mailbox" (Giorgia)!

Eventually, the postcard arrives at the other person's address with all the scuff marks of its journey over the ocean: a type of "slow data" transmission.

By creating and sending the data visualizations using analogue instead of digital means, we are really just doing what artists have done for ages, which is sketch and try to capture the essence of the life happening around them. However, as we are sketching life in the modern digital age, life also includes everything that is counted, computed, and measured.

We are trying to capture the life unfolding around us, but instead we are capturing this life through sketching the hidden patterns found within our data.

The data appears on the front of the postcard, and a key explaining how to read the data appears on the back of the postcard. (via Coudal)

Tags: art   data   postcards
11 Mar 18:25

Ommmm

by nedroid
Jess

medtation.

Ommmm

03 Mar 21:00

Cartoonists don't understand net neutrality

by Jason Kottke

This collection of political cartoons depict the FCC's recent ruling on net neutrality as Big Government throttling the free internet, except that every caption has been replaced with "the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works". Here's one example followed by the unadulterated cartoon:

Cartoon Net Neutrality

Cartoon Net Neutrality

The zingers get zinged. (via @john_overholt)

Tags: cartoons   net neutrality   politics
03 Mar 20:58

Tutankhamun's unbroken rope seal

by Jason Kottke

King Tut Rope Seal

This is the rope seal securing the doors of Tutankhamun's tomb, unbroken for more than 3200 years until shortly after Harry Burton took this photo in 1923. A description from National Geographic:

Still intact in 1923 after 32 centuries, rope secures the doors to the second of four nested shrines in Tutankhamun's burial chamber. The necropolis seal -- depicting captives on their knees and Anubis, the jackal god of the dead -- remains unbroken, a sign that Tut's mummy lies undisturbed inside.

How did the rope last for so long? Rare Historical Photos explains:

Rope is one of the fundamental human technologies. Archaeologists have found two-ply ropes going back 28,000 years. Egyptians were the first documented civilization to use specialized tools to make rope. One key why the rope lasted so long wasn't the rope itself, it was the aridity of the air in the desert. It dries out and preserves things. Another key is oxygen deprivation. Tombs are sealed to the outside. Bacteria can break things down as long as they have oxygen, but then they effectively suffocate. It's not uncommon to find rope, wooden carvings, cloth, organic dyes, etc. in Egyptian pyramids and tombs that wouldn't have survived elsewhere in the world.

Tags: archaeology   Egypt   Harry Burton   photography   Tutankhamun
24 Feb 00:08

Hark, A Vagrant: Katherine Sui Fun Cheung

Jess

"What's the point of flying a plane if you can't have fun doing it?"




buy this print!

I read this quote, from an interview with Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, and the interviewer asked about why she was a pilot and all that, and she just said "I wanted to fly, so I did." And I thought MAN! I can't even figure out what to eat for breakfast, never mind sailing through a load of barriers just because I think I want to give something a shot. "Flying? Whatever, I'll just Do It."

Another quote? "What's the point of flying a plane if you can't have fun doing it?" I love her!

Look at her! We all want to be her.

I love early aviatrices - Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham, etc - they were like "oh is there a brand new job on the face of the earth? Think I'll invite myself to do it before anyone says I can't."

Not too much time goes by before Top Gun washes up once again on these shores.
21 Feb 05:18

The art of staying aloft

by Jason Kottke

Photographer Gloria Wilson takes photos of birds in flight. A few favorites:

Gloria Wilson

Gloria Wilson

Gloria Wilson

Wilson sells prints of this series in her Etsy shop. (thx, meg)

Tags: Gloria Wilson   photography
17 Feb 18:56

Happy Presidents' Day

by Jason Kottke

On the intersection of Presidents' Day and Black History Month, Erica Armstrong Dunbar highlights an uncomfortable truth about George Washington: he was a proud and fervent slave owner.

During the president's two terms in office, the Washingtons relocated first to New York and then to Philadelphia. Although slavery had steadily declined in the North, the Washingtons decided that they could not live without it. Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region -- Pennsylvania's Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.

The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president.

Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president's slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock. The president was secretive when writing to his personal secretary Tobias Lear in 1791: "I request that these Sentiments and this advise may be known to none but yourself & Mrs. Washington."

(via mr)

Tags: Erica Armstrong Dunbar   George Washington   holidays   slavery   USA
06 Feb 04:04

The endlessly rolling ocean

by Jason Kottke

If you'd like to relax for 80 minutes, watch this 4K video shot from the bow of a container ship navigating the South China Sea. Strangely compelling.

If you put this on the biggest, highest definition screen you have, it really looks like you're on the deck of a ship looking out at the ocean. Pretty cool.

Tags: video
03 Feb 15:43

Hark, A Vagrant: Founding Fathers in a mall




buy this print!

Before you read this comic I want you to know that my favorite part of the tv show Sleepy Hollow is when Ichabod Crane has no idea what a tv or an iphone or a light switch is, and is confused. As hard hitting films such as Bill and Ted or perhaps Encino Manhave taught us, historical figures out of place do not know who the Burger King really is. But do any of us really know who the Burger King really is? A question we must all ask.

I'm just kidding about "before you read this," of course you read the comic first.

PS, have you seen 1776 The Musical? If you've been around here for two seconds, you know I have. Referenceeeesssss ho ho
17 Jan 00:24

John Muir and the Decline of Yosemite

by Jason Kottke
Jess

:(

One of the major points in Charles Mann's 1491 (great book, a fave) is that the indigenous peoples of the Americas did not live in pristine wilderness. Through techniques like cultivation and controlled burning, they profoundly shaped their environments, from the forests of New England to the Amazon.

In the 1850s, the indigenous inhabitants of Yosemite Valley, who used controlled burning to maintain the health of the forest, were driven out by a militia. As Eric Michael Johnson writes in Scientific American, the belief in the myth of pristine wilderness by naturalist John Muir has had a negative impact on the biodiversity and the ability to prevent catastrophic fire damage in Yosemite National Park.

The results of this analysis were statistically significant (p < 0.01) and revealed that shade-tolerant species such as White fir and incense cedar had increased to such an extent that Yosemite Valley was now two times more densely packed than it had been in the nineteenth century. These smaller and more flammable trees had pushed out the shade-intolerant species, such as oak or pine, and reduced their numbers by half. After a century of fire suppression in the Yosemite Valley biodiversity had actually declined, trees were now 20 percent smaller, and the forest was more vulnerable to catastrophic fires than it had been before the U.S. Army and armed vigilantes expelled the native population.

(via @charlescmann)

Tags: 1491   Charles Mann   Eric Michael Johnson   Yosemite National Park
26 Dec 23:23

BOBBINS for December 24th 2014

comic
10 Dec 13:10

Kowloon Walled City

by Jason Kottke

Overseen and designed by its residents until its destruction by the Hong Kong government in 1993, Kowloon Walled City was once the most densely populated place on Earth. Before demolition, a group of Japanese researchers scoured the city, documenting every inch of the cramped settlement, resulting in a book full of dense drawings of the city. Here's just some of the detail from one of the drawings:

Kowloon Walled City

You can view the full-size image here. (via @themexican)

Tags: cities   Hong Kong   Kowloon Walled City
26 Nov 16:59

You should consider subscribing to Wikipedia

by Jason Kottke
Jess

Oh, haha, we're paying for things again.

Last week, Emily Dreyfuss wrote a piece at about Why I'm Giving Wikipedia 6 Bucks a Month.

"Give me money, Emily," Wales begged, "then go back to researching Beyonce lyrics."

"Excuse me, Jimmy," I wanted to say, "I don't appreciate being watched as I read about how her song "Baby Boy" includes a lyrical interpolation of "No Fear" by O.G.C."

Later, Wikipedia replaced Wales with other employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia with grants and donations. They moved me about as much as Wales did, which is to say not at all.

Today, while scanning my third Wikipedia article in as many hours, I saw the beggi.... er, note was back. It's at the bottom now, without the pleading visage of a Wikipedian, and now includes an option to pay monthly.

I was annoyed, again. That's the first instinct of anyone who spends time on the Internet and is constantly bombarded by pleas for money. But then I realized something: My annoyance was a symptom of my dependence on Wikipedia. I rely on it utterly. I take it completely for granted.

I found her argument persuasive, so much so that I just signed up to give Wikipedia a monthly amount as well. I consider it a subscription fee to an indispensable and irreplaceable resource I use dozens of times weekly while producing kottke.org. It's a business expense, just like paying for server hosting, internet access, etc. -- the decision to pay became a no-brainer for me when I thought of it that way.

Do other media companies subscribe to Wikipedia in the same fashion? How about it Gawker, NY Times, Vox, Wired, ESPN, WSJ, New York Magazine, Vice, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post? Even $500/month is a drop in the bucket compared to your monthly animated GIF hosting bill and I know your writers use Wikipedia as much as I do. Come on, grab that company credit card and subscribe.

Tags: business   Emily Dreyfuss   journalism   Wikipedia
04 Nov 23:29

Parenting around the world

by Jason Kottke

For the past year, Joanna Goddard has been running a series on her blog called Motherhood Around the World. The goal of the series was to tease out how parenting in other countries is different than parenting in the US. From the introduction to the series:

We spoke to American mothers abroad -- versus mothers who were born and bred in those countries -- because we wanted to hear how motherhood around the world compared and contrasted with motherhood in America. It can be surprisingly hard to realize what's unique about your own country ("don't all kids eat snails?"), and it's much easier to identify differences as an outsider.

The results, as Goddard states upfront, are not broadly representative of parenting in the different countries but they are fascinating nonetheless. I've picked out a few representative bits below. On parenting in Norway:

Both my kids attended Barnehage (Norwegian for "children's garden"), which is basically Norwegian pre-school and daycare. Most kids here start Barnehage when they're one year old -- it's subsidized by the government to encourage people to go back to work. You pay $300 a month and your kids can stay from 8am to 5pm. They spend a ton of time outside, mostly playing and exploring nature. At some Barnehage, they only go inside if it's colder than 14 degrees. They even eat outdoors-with their gloves on! When I was worried about my son being cold, my father-in-law said, "It's good for him to freeze a little bit on his fingers." That's very Norwegian -- hard things are good for you.

The Democratic Republic of Congo:

No one thinks twice here about sharing breastmilk. Why let something so valuable go to waste? Not long after my second daughter was born, I went on a work trip to Kenya. I pumped the whole time I was there and couldn't bear to throw away my breast milk, nor imagine the nightmare scenario of leakage in my luggage. So I saved it all up in the hotel fridge in Ziploc bags. On the day I left, I took all the little bags to the local market and said, "All right, ladies. Who's got babies and wants breast milk?!" Not a single Kenyan woman at the market thought twice about taking a random white woman's breast milk. My driver even heard I was handing out milk and asked if I could pump some extra to take home to his new baby.

Abu Dhabi:

There are no car seat or seatbelt laws here. You will regularly see toddlers with their heads peeking out of sunroofs or moms holding their infants in the front seat. The government and the car companies are trying to educate people about the dangers, but the most locals (Emiratis as well as people from countries like India and Egypt) believe that a mother's arms are the safest place for her child.

India:

In a country in which space comes at such a premium, few parents would dream of allocating a separate room for each child. Co-sleeping is the norm here, regardless of class. Children will usually sleep with their parents or their ayah until they are at least six or seven. An American friend of mine put her son in his own room, and her Indian babysitter was aghast. The young children from middle class Indian families I know also go to sleep whenever their parents do -- often as late as 11pm. Our son sleeps in our bed, as well. He has a shoebox of a room in our house where we keep his clothes and crib, and he always starts the night in there, falling asleep around 8pm. That way Chris and I get a few hours to ourselves. Then, around 11pm, Will somehow senses that we are about to fall asleep and calls out to come to our bed. It's like clockwork, and he falls right back into a deep sleep the second his head hits the pillow.

Australia:

On sleep camps: Government-subsidized programs help parents teach their babies to sleep. I haven't been to one (though I did consider it when we were in the middle of sleep hell with our daughter) but many of my friends have. The sleep camps are centers, usually attached to a hospital, that are run by nurses. Most mums I know went when their babies were around six or seven months old. You go for five days and four nights, and they put you and your baby on a strict schedule of feeding, napping and sleeping. If you're really desperate for sleep, you also have the option of having a nurse handle your baby for the whole first night so you can sleep, but after that you spend the next few nights with your baby overnight while the nurses show you what to do. They use controlled crying and other techniques. I have friends who say it saved their lives, friends who left feeling "meh" about the whole thing, and a friend who left after a day because, in her words, "they left my baby in a cupboard to cry."

Chile:

Giving treats to children is seen as a sign of affection, so strangers will offer candy to kids on the street. I'll sometimes turn around and a stranger will be handing my daughter a chocolate bar! Several months ago, we were on a bus, and a woman near us was eating cookies. She saw my daughter Mia and said "Oh, let me give you some cookies." I said, "No, thank you." But she kept on insisting. Then, a random stranger, who was not even connected to the first woman, chimed in, "You should give your daughter the cookies!" They were very serious about it! I was frustrated at the time, but after the fact I found it funny.

And then more recently, they talked to a group of foreign mothers about how parenting in the US differs from the rest of the world. For one thing, there's the babyproofing:

Here in the U.S., there is a huge "baby industry," which does not exist in Romania. There's special baby food, special baby utensils, special baby safety precautions and special baby furniture. In Romania, children eat with a regular teaspoon and drink from a regular glass. They play with toys that are not specifically made for "brain development from months 3-6." Also, before I came here, I had never heard of babyproofing! Now I'm constantly worried about my daughter hurting herself, but my mom and friends from home just laugh at me and my obsession that bookshelves might fall.

And the more permissive and involved parenting:

I was surprised that American children as young as one year old learn to say please, thank you, sorry and excuse me. Those things are not actively taught in India. Another difference is how parents here tend to stay away from "because I said so" and actually explain things to their children. It's admirable the way parents will go into basic reasoning to let the child know why some things are the way they are. When I last visited Bombay, I explained to my then four-year-old about that we couldn't buy too many things because of weight restrictions in the flight, etc. My relatives were genuinely wondering why I didn't just stop at "no."

Like I said, the whole series is fascinating...I could easily see this being a book or documentary (along the lines of Babies).

Tags: Joanna Goddard   parenting   travel   USA
16 Oct 15:14

Pac-Man is the Pac-Measure

by Dorothy

Comic

16 Oct 15:10

The Dailies (2 Comments)

by Dakota
Jess

Humans: The Worst Animal (to be, also)

The Dailies

16 Oct 15:09

The Dailies (No Comments)

by Dakota

The Dailies

15 Oct 19:50

Hark, A Vagrant: Femme Fatale

Jess

"It's like, get out of my LIFE, Google!"




buy this print!

Watch out! Dames like this are dangerous. But you know, they have other things going on in their lives than walking through a detective's door through a dangerous cloud of fog. Probably.

I've watched some noir films while drawing this comic, and where has that dialogue been all my life? Also, if you read essays on how femme fatales threw out conventions of the day you realize they are all basically the best characters ever. Too bad for any lousy rat they cross paths with though.

The store is going to update as soon as the new merchandise comes in. STAY TUNED
04 Oct 00:38

Truth will out

by Jason Kottke

Emergent follows recent stories in the news and confirms their veracity. Some recent examples:

Claim: White House fence-jumper made it inside the main floor (Confirmed true)

Claim: A Florida woman got a third breast (Confirmed false)

Claim: Apple is buying Path (Unverified)

(via waxy)

Tags: journalism
04 Oct 00:35

The world's loudest sound

by Jason Kottke

Krakatoa

The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.

Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you're in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you're probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we're talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Travelling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history.

A much much smaller eruption occurred recently in Papua New Guinea. From the video, you can get a tiny sense of the sonic damage unleashed by Krakatoa:

Holy smoking Toledos indeed. On Reddit, a user details how loud a Saturn V rocket is and what the effects would be at different distances. At very close range, the sound from the Saturn V measures an incredible 220 db, loud enough to melt concrete just from the sound.

At 500 meters, 155 db you would experience painful, violent shaking in your entire body, you would feel compressed, as though deep underwater. Your vision would blur, breathing would be very difficult, your eardrums are obviously a lost cause, even with advanced active noise cancelling protection you could experience permanent damage. This is the sort of sound level aircraft mechanics sometimes experience for short periods of time. Almost twice as "loud" as putting your ear up to the exhaust of a formula 1 car. The air temperature would drop significantly, perhaps 10-25 degrees F, becoming suddenly cold because of the air being so violently stretched and moved.

Even at three miles away, the sound is loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage. But that's nothing compared to the Krakatoa sound. The Saturn V sound is ~170 db at 100 meters away while the Krakatoa explosion was that loud 100 miles away! What happens at 170 db?

...you would be unable to breathe or likely see at all from the sound pressure, glass would shatter, fog would be generated as the water in the air dropped out of suspension in the pressure waves, your house at this distance would have a roughly 50% chance of being torn apart from sound pressure alone. Military stun grenades reach this volume for a split second... if they are placed up to your face. Survival chance from sound alone, minimal, you would certainly experience permanent deafness but probably also organ damage.

The word "loud" is inadequate to describe how loud that is. (thx, david)

Tags: audio   Krakatoa   science
03 Oct 23:49

Wonderful combination of science and design

by Jason Kottke
Jess

YES!

Eleanor Lutz has a degree in molecular biology, works as a designer, and loves to combine the two interests by making these wonderful information graphics on her site, Tabletop Whale. Her most recent post is an animated graphic showing how several animals (birds, bats, insects) move their wings while flying.

Animal Flight Wing Movements

I love love love Lutz's animated chart of North American butterflies. So playful!

Butterflies Animation

There are only four posts on the site so far, but she's done other stuff as well; this woodcut map for instance. Prints are available...I'm getting one of the butterflies for sure.

Tags: design   Eleanor Lutz   infoviz   science