The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained

in History, Technology | December 17th, 2024

The video above from Sabins Civ­il Engi­neer­ing promis­es to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Sup­port­ing Bridge.” That sounds like a typ­i­cal exam­ple of YouTube hyper­bole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvi­ous how the frag­ile-look­ing struc­ture can stay up, much less sup­port the weight of a cross­ing army. Not only does the design use no per­ma­nent joints, says the nar­ra­tor, “the more weight on the bridge, the stronger it becomes.” The key is the dis­tinc­tive man­ner in which the pieces inter­lock, and how it directs force to cre­ate a “fric­tion lock” that ensures sta­bil­i­ty.

Remove just one piece of the bridge, how­ev­er, and it all comes crash­ing down, which is more fea­ture than bug: designed to facil­i­tate troop move­ments, the struc­ture could be dis­man­tled to pre­vent use by the ene­my even more eas­i­ly than it was put up in the first place.

Just one of the var­i­ous tools of war Leonar­do came up with, this bridge was con­ceived under the patron­age of the famous states­man Cesare Bor­gia (a chief inspi­ra­tion for Nic­colò Machi­avel­li’s The Prince), who employed him as an archi­tect and mil­i­tary engi­neer in the ear­ly fif­teen-hun­dreds.

Though Leonar­do’s bridge designs have proven influ­en­tial in the half-mil­len­ni­um since his death — think of him next time you cross the Gala­ta Bridge in Istan­bul — no evi­dence remains that he ever built one in his life­time. But unlike most of his inven­tions, real­ized or the­o­ret­i­cal, you can build it your­self today with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. The video presents an exam­ple large enough to walk across, which may make it feel rather less sta­ble than it actu­al­ly is. Luck­i­ly for stu­dents look­ing to under­stand the self-sup­port­ing bridge in a hands-on man­ner, the same engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples apply just as well on the more man­age­able scale of pop­si­cle sticks — a mod­ern build­ing mate­r­i­al at which Leonar­do him­self would sure­ly have mar­veled.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch The Insects’ Christmas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Starring a Cast of Dead Bugs

in Film | December 16th, 2024

Kind Read­er,

Will you do us the hon­or of accept­ing our hol­i­day invi­ta­tion?

Carve five min­utes from your hol­i­day sched­ule to spend time cel­e­brat­ing The Insects’ Christ­mas, above.

In addi­tion to offer­ing brief respite from the chaos of con­sumerism and mod­ern expec­ta­tions, this sim­ple stop-motion tale from 1913 is sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive at chas­ing away hol­i­day blues.

Not bad for a short with a sup­port­ing cast of dead bugs.

Ani­ma­tor Ladis­las Stare­vich began his cin­e­mat­ic manip­u­la­tions of insect car­cass­es ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry while serv­ing as Direc­tor of Kau­nas, Lithuania’s Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. He con­tin­ued the exper­i­ment after mov­ing to Moscow, where he added such titles as Insects’ Avi­a­tion Week, Amus­ing Scenes from the Life of Insects and famous­ly, The Cameraman’s Revenge, a racy tale of pas­sion and infi­deli­ty in the insect world.

The Insects’ Christ­mas is far gen­tler.

Think Frog­gy Went a Courtin’, or Miss Spider’s Wed­ding with an old-time Christ­mas spin.

Shades too of John­ny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and oth­er sto­ries where­in toys wait for their human own­ers to retire, so they may spring to life—though Starevich’s sleepy doll seems to have more in com­mon with the Christ­mas tree’s absent own­ers than the tiny Father Christ­mas orna­ment who clam­ors down to par­ty al fres­co with the insects.

Con­tem­po­rary com­pos­er Tom Peters under­scores the whole­some vin­tage action—skiing, skat­ing, squab­bling over a Christ­mas cracker—with a mix of tra­di­tion­al car­ols and orig­i­nal music per­formed on ukulele, drum, and a six-string elec­tric bass with a 5‑octave range.

And the moment when Father Christ­mas con­jures fes­tive dec­o­ra­tions for a Char­lie Brown-ish tree is tru­ly mag­i­cal. See if your lit­tlest Hayao Miyaza­ki fan does­n’t agree.

Enjoy more of Ladis­las Starevich’s stop-motion ouevre on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912): The Tru­ly Weird Ori­gin of Mod­ern Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

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

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How Keith Jarrett Played on a Broken Piano & Turned a Potentially Disastrous Concert Into the Best-Selling Piano Album of All Time (1975)

in Music | December 16th, 2024

Near­ly fifty years ago, the cel­e­brat­ed young pianist Kei­th Jar­rett arrived in the West Ger­man city of Köln (bet­ter known in Eng­lish as Cologne). Hav­ing just come off a 500-mile-long road trip from Switzer­land, where he’d played a con­cert the pre­vi­ous day, he was left with bare­ly any time to recov­er before going onstage at the Köln Opera House that night — at 11:30 that night, to be pre­cise, the only time that august cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion would give a jazz musi­cian. Because the restau­rant where he attempt­ed to have din­ner before­hand mixed up his order, he could bare­ly eat a thing before show­time. And his back was act­ing up.

Yet all of those dif­fi­cul­ties were as noth­ing against the mis­er­able instru­ment await­ing Jar­rett at the opera house. He’d request­ed a Bösendor­fer 290 Impe­r­i­al grand piano, but a series of errors led to the staff set­ting up a dilap­i­dat­ed, frail-sound­ing baby grand of the same make.

Unable to pro­cure a replace­ment, the con­cert’s teenage orga­niz­er Vera Bran­des called in a tuner to do his best to bring the piano up to playa­bil­i­ty and man­aged to per­suade Jar­rett to go on with the show. All the seats were sold, after all, and the record­ing engi­neers had their gear ready to roll; in the worst case sce­nario, he’d end up with anoth­er tape for the archives.

In the event, the con­cert was more of a best-case sce­nario. “What Kei­th Jar­rett did so bril­liant­ly was to take this bro­ken piano and use it to play music that only that piano could have played,” says Youtu­ber David Hart­ley in the video above. “He did­n’t hide away from the faults of the piano; instead, he embraced them and put them in the music. This is the very essence of impro­vi­sa­tion.” A clas­si­cal musi­cian with a defined set of pieces could nev­er have worked at all under these con­di­tions, but Jar­rett end­ed up putting on quite a suc­cess­ful show — and, with the record­ing, putting out a huge­ly suc­cess­ful album.

After it came out in Novem­ber that same year, The Köln Con­cert went on to become both the best-sell­ing solo jazz album and the best-sell­ing piano album. For decades, it was eas­i­ly found even in the record col­lec­tions of those who owned no oth­er releas­es from ECM, the Ger­man jazz and avant-garde label with which Jar­rett has long been asso­ci­at­ed, and heard on the sound­tracks of films by auteurs like Nico­las Roeg and Nan­ni Moret­ti. Still today, it stands in sup­port of any num­ber of proverbs about neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, play­ing the hand you’re dealt, and not wait­ing for ide­al con­di­tions. If we lis­ten to it enough, we may even find our­selves wait­ing for ter­ri­ble ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Brains of Jazz and Clas­si­cal Musi­cians Work Dif­fer­ent­ly, New Research Shows

The Piano Played with 16 Increas­ing Lev­els of Com­plex­i­ty: From Easy to Very Com­plex

Neu­ro­science & Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: How Impro­vi­sa­tion Shapes Cre­ativ­i­ty and What Hap­pens Inside Our Brain

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Piano Jazz Album by Come­di­an H. Jon Ben­jamin — Who Can’t Play Piano

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Simple, Down-to-Earth Christmas Card from the Great Depression (1933)

in Life | December 15th, 2024

The Smith­son­ian sets the scene for this Christ­mas card sent in 1933, a few years into the Great Depres­sion. They write:

Despite the glum eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, the Pinero fam­i­ly used a brown paper bag to fash­ion an inex­pen­sive hol­i­day greet­ing card. They penned a clever rhyme and added some charm­ing line draw­ings of Mom, Dad, and the kids with the mes­sage: “Oh, well—in spite of it all—here’s a Mer­ry Christ­mas from the Pineros.” On Decem­ber 19, 1933, they mailed it from Chica­go to friends in Mass­a­chu­setts, using a one-and-a-half-cent stamp. For a min­i­mal out­lay of cash, they were able to keep in touch with friends and com­ment on their reduced cir­cum­stances with wit and humor.

This hand-let­tered poem is a delight­ful exam­ple of light verse, a whim­si­cal form of poet­ry intend­ed to enter­tain or amuse, even if treat­ing a seri­ous sub­ject in a humor­ous man­ner. In the poem, the Pineros sug­gest that they had strug­gled eco­nom­i­cal­ly for some time, but now, due to the con­tin­u­ing Depres­sion, oth­ers shared their finan­cial plight, which enabled them to be more open and can­did about their sit­u­a­tion.

Like many fam­i­lies, the Pineros prob­a­bly had lots of bills for neces­si­ties includ­ing rent, gro­ceries, util­i­ties, milk, and ice. Because not every fam­i­ly had elec­tric refrig­er­a­tion in 1933, many relied on reg­u­lar deliv­er­ies of ice to keep their per­ish­able foods cold. These bills for milk and ice were sep­a­rate; they were not part of the gro­cery account. Local dairies sup­plied milk and oth­er prod­ucts on a dai­ly basis. Both the Ice Man and the Milk Man would cometh, as long as they were paid!

It’s a his­tor­i­cal case of when less is indeed more…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold! The Very First Christ­mas Card (1843)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

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How Medieval Islamic Engineering Brought Water to the Alhambra

in Architecture, History | December 13th, 2024

Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la, includ­ing mod­ern-day Spain, was under Mus­lim rule. Not that it was easy to hold on to the place for that length of time: after the fall of Tole­do in 1085, Al-Andalus, as the ter­ri­to­ry was called, con­tin­ued to lose cities over the sub­se­quent cen­turies. Cór­do­ba and Seville were recon­quered prac­ti­cal­ly one right after the oth­er, in 1236 and 1248, respec­tive­ly, and you can see the inva­sion of the first city ani­mat­ed in the open­ing scene of the Pri­mal Space video above. “All over the land, Mus­lim cities were being con­quered and tak­en over by the Chris­tians,” says the com­pan­ion arti­cle at Pri­mal Neb­u­la. “But amidst all of this, one city remained uncon­quered, Grana­da.”

“Thanks to its strate­gic posi­tion and the enor­mous Alham­bra Palace, the city was pro­tect­ed,” and there the Alham­bra remains today. A “thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry pala­tial com­plex that’s one of the world’s most icon­ic exam­ples of Moor­ish archi­tec­ture,” writes BBC.com’s Esme Fox, it’s also a land­mark feat of engi­neer­ing, boast­ing “one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed hydraulic net­works in the world, able to defy grav­i­ty and raise water from the riv­er near­ly a kilo­me­ter below.”

The jew­el in the crown of these elab­o­rate water­works is a white mar­ble foun­tain that “con­sists of a large dish held up by twelve white myth­i­cal lions. Each beast spurts water from its mouth, feed­ing four chan­nels in the patio’s mar­ble floor that rep­re­sent the four rivers of par­adise, and then run­ning through­out the palace to cool the rooms.”

The fuente de los Leones also tells time: the num­ber of lions cur­rent­ly indi­cates the hour. This works thanks to an inge­nious design explained both ver­bal­ly and visu­al­ly in the video. Any­one vis­it­ing the Alham­bra today can admire this and oth­er exam­ples of medieval opu­lence, but trav­el­ers with an engi­neer’s cast of mind will appre­ci­ate even more how the palace’s builders got the water there at all. “The hill was around 200 meters above Granada’s main riv­er,” says the nar­ra­tor, which entailed an ambi­tious project of damming and redi­rec­tion, to say noth­ing of the pool above the palace designed to keep the whole hydraulic sys­tem pres­sur­ized. The Alham­bra’s heat­ed baths and well-irri­gat­ed gar­dens rep­re­sent the lux­u­ri­ous height of Moor­ish civ­i­liza­tion, but they also remind us that, then as now, beneath every lux­u­ry lies an impres­sive feat of tech­nol­o­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

How Toi­lets Worked in Ancient Rome and Medieval Eng­land

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Roman Baths

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

His­toric Spain in Time Lapse Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Sinking of the Britannic: An Animated Introduction to the Titanic’s Forgotten Sister Ship

in History | December 13th, 2024

We all know about the Titan­ic. Less often do we hear about the Bri­tan­nic—the sis­ter pas­sen­ger lin­er that the British turned into a hos­pi­tal ship dur­ing World War I. Launched in 1914, two years after the Titan­ic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Bri­tan­nic fea­tured a num­ber of safe­ty improve­ments. It had enhanced water­tight com­part­ments, an increased num­ber of lifeboats, and improved ven­ti­la­tion and escape routes. Those refine­ments paid div­i­dends when the Bri­tan­nic struck a Ger­man naval mine in 1916, then sank near the Greek island of Kea. Of the 1,066 peo­ple on board, most man­aged to escape on lifeboats and only 30 peo­ple ulti­mate­ly lost their lives. (An esti­mat­ed 1,500 peo­ple died on the Titan­ic.) The ani­ma­tion above tells the tale of the Bri­tan­nic in an hour, rough­ly the same time that the ship took to slip into the sea.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in This Real-Time 3D Ani­ma­tion

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

See the First 8K Footage of the Titan­ic, the High­est-Qual­i­ty Video of the Ship­wreck Yet

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Binge-Watch Classic Television Programs Free: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, That Girl & More

in Television | December 12th, 2024

Ear­li­er this week, we fea­tured the 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke’s per­for­mance in Cold­play’s new music video, full of visu­al ref­er­ences to the sit­com that made him a house­hold name in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties. And a house­hold name he remains these six decades lat­er, though one does won­der how many of those who appre­ci­ate his extreme longevi­ty — both cul­tur­al and bio­log­i­cal — have ever seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I myself only caught the occa­sion­al late-night rerun in child­hood, but how­ev­er much he indulged his char­ac­ter­is­tic goofi­ness, the thir­ty-some­thing Van Dyke in the role of com­e­dy writer Rob Petrie always struck me as the very image of mature adult­hood.

Whether or not you saw it in the first place, you can now watch The Dick Van Dyke Show’s five sea­sons free on Youtube, start­ing with the first here. They’ve come avail­able at a chan­nel called Film­Rise Tele­vi­sion, on whose col­lec­tion of playlists you’ll also find such pil­lars of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion as Drag­net, The Lone Ranger, Bonan­za, and That Girl.

Hard though it may be to under­stand for any­one who came of age under the fire­hose of on-demand con­tent these reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled enter­tain­ments became ver­i­ta­ble cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions when they orig­i­nal­ly aired on major net­works in the fifties and six­ties, with an influ­ence that extend­ed far beyond their already con­sid­er­able view­er­ship.

The mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion grew up regard­ing shows of this kind as hokey but suf­fi­cient­ly amus­ing diver­sions when noth­ing more irrev­er­ent or post­mod­ern hap­pened to be on. At worst, they felt like infe­ri­or pre­de­ces­sors of the then-cur­rent sit­coms and dra­mas we were watch­ing in prime time. But then began the long “gold­en age” of pres­tige tele­vi­sion, with its new lev­els of aes­thet­ic and nar­ra­tive com­plex­i­ty, which changed our very con­cep­tion of tele­vi­sion.

Today, watch­ing The Dick Van Dyke Show or any of the oth­er hits with which it shared the scarce air­waves feels almost exot­ic, like trav­el­ing to the past: a for­eign coun­try, as L. P. Hart­ley famous­ly put it, where they do things dif­fer­ent­ly — and a few of whose cit­i­zens are, for­tu­nate­ly, still around to enter­tain us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touch­ing New Cold­play Video, Direct­ed by Spike Jonze

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

757 Episodes of the Clas­sic TV Game Show What’s My Line?: Watch Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Louis Arm­strong, Sal­vador Dali & More

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Surrealist Glass Harmonica, the Only Animated Film Ever Banned by Soviet Censors (1968)

in Animation, History | December 11th, 2024

The Sovi­et Union’s repres­sive state cen­sor­ship went to absurd lengths to con­trol what its cit­i­zens read, viewed, and lis­tened to, such as the almost com­i­cal removal of purged for­mer com­rades from pho­tographs dur­ing Stalin’s reign. When it came to aes­thet­ics, Stal­in­ism most­ly purged more avant-garde ten­den­cies from the arts and lit­er­a­ture in favor of didac­tic Social­ist Real­ism. Even dur­ing the rel­a­tive­ly loose peri­od of the Khrushchev/Brezhnev Thaw in the 60s, sev­er­al artists were sub­ject to “severe cen­sor­ship” by the Par­ty, writes Keti Chukhrov at Red Thread, for their “’abuse’ of mod­ernist, abstract and for­mal­ist meth­ods.”

But one oft-exper­i­men­tal art form thrived through­out the exis­tence of the Sovi­et Union and its vary­ing degrees of state con­trol: ani­ma­tion. “Despite cen­sor­ship and pres­sure from the Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment to adhere to cer­tain Social­ist ideals,” writes Pol­ly Dela Rosa in a short his­to­ry, “Russ­ian ani­ma­tion is incred­i­bly diverse and elo­quent.”

Many ani­mat­ed Sovi­et films were express­ly made for pro­pa­gan­da purposes—such as the very first Sovi­et ani­ma­tion, Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys, below, from 1924. But even these dis­play a range of tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty com­bined with dar­ing styl­is­tic exper­i­ments, as you can see in this io9 com­pi­la­tion. Ani­mat­ed films also served “as a pow­er­ful tool for enter­tain­ment,” notes film schol­ar Bir­git Beumers, with ani­ma­tors, “large­ly trained as design­ers and illus­tra­tors… drawn upon to com­pete with the Dis­ney out­put.”

Through­out the 20th cen­tu­ry, a wide range of films made it past the cen­sors and reached large audi­ences on cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion screens, includ­ing many based on West­ern lit­er­a­ture. All of them did so, in fact, but one, the only ani­mat­ed film in Sovi­et his­to­ry to face a ban: Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s The Glass Har­mon­i­ca, at the top, a 1968 “satire on bureau­cra­cy.” At the time of its release, the Thaw had encour­aged “a cre­ative renais­sance” in Russ­ian ani­ma­tion, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, and the film’s sur­re­al­ist aesthetic—drawn from the paint­ings of De Chiri­co, Magritte, Grosz, Bruegel, and Bosch (and reach­ing “pro­to-Python-esque heights towards the end”)—testifies to that.

At first glance, one would think The Glass Har­mon­i­ca would fit right into the long tra­di­tion of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da films begun by Ver­tov. As the open­ing titles state, it aims to show the “bound­less greed, police ter­ror, [and] the iso­la­tion and bru­tal­iza­tion of humans in mod­ern bour­geois soci­ety.” And yet, the film offend­ed cen­sors due to what the Euro­pean Film Phil­har­mon­ic Insti­tute calls “its con­tro­ver­sial por­tray­al of the rela­tion­ship between gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ty and the artist.” There’s more than a lit­tle irony in the fact that the only ful­ly cen­sored Sovi­et ani­ma­tion is a film itself about cen­sor­ship.

The cen­tral char­ac­ter is a musi­cian who incurs the dis­plea­sure of an expres­sion­less man in black, ruler of the cold, gray world of the film. In addi­tion to its “col­lage of var­i­ous styles and a trib­ute to Euro­pean painting”—which itself may have irked censors—the score by Alfred Schnit­tke “push­es sound to dis­turb­ing lim­its, demand­ing extreme range and tech­nique from the instru­ments.” (Fans of sur­re­al­ist ani­ma­tion may be remind­ed of 1973’s French sci-fi film, Fan­tas­tic Plan­et.) Although Khrzhanovsky’s film rep­re­sents the effec­tive begin­ning and end of sur­re­al­ist ani­ma­tion in the Sovi­et Union, only released after per­e­stroi­ka, it stands, as you’ll see above, as a bril­liant­ly real­ized exam­ple of the form.

The Glass Har­mon­i­ca will be added to our list of Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Come Soft Rain’

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

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

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The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

in Art, Technology | December 11th, 2024

Life evolves, but machines are invent­ed: this dichoto­my hard­ly con­flicts with what most of us have learned about biol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy. But cer­tain spec­i­mens roam­ing around in the world can blur that line — and in the curi­ous case of the Strand­beesten, they real­ly are roam­ing around. First assem­bled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strand­beest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­ture designed to “walk” around the sea­side in an organ­ic-look­ing fash­ion. Jansen has made them not just ever larg­er and more elab­o­rate over the decades, but also more sta­ble and more resilient, with an eye toward their even­tu­al­ly out­liv­ing him.

Improv­ing the Strand­beest has been a long process of tri­al and error, as explained in the Ver­i­ta­si­um video above. Jansen’s process espe­cial­ly resem­bles bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion in that the changes he makes to his cre­ations tend to be retained or dis­card­ed in accor­dance with the degree to which they assist in adap­ta­tion to their sandy, watery envi­ron­ment.

Get­ting them to walk upright in the sand was hard enough, and ulti­mate­ly required com­put­er mod­el­ing to deter­mine just the right angles at which to con­nect their joints. But the joints them­selves have also demand­ed improve­ment, giv­en that the rig­ors of a Strand­beest’s “life” neces­si­tate both flex­i­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty.

We’ve fea­tured Jansen and his Strand­beesten more than once here on Open Cul­ture, but this new video reveals anoth­er dimen­sion of his life­long project: to keep them from walk­ing into the sea. This chal­lenge has led him to build “brains” that detect when a Strand­beest has drawn too close to the water. Con­struct­ed with sim­ple mechan­i­cal valves, these sys­tems are rem­i­nis­cent of not just the neu­rons in our own heads, but also of the col­lec­tions of bina­ry switch­es that, assem­bled in much greater num­bers, have tech­no­log­i­cal­ly evolved into the basis of the dig­i­tal devices that we use every day. While a com­put­er can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly last for­ev­er, a liv­ing crea­ture can’t — and nor, so far, can a Strand­beest. But now that Jansen has dis­cov­ered their “genet­ic code,” inven­tors all over the world have already begun their own work prop­a­gat­ing this diverse, cap­ti­vat­ing species world­wide.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Strand­beest, the Mechan­i­cal Ani­mals That Roam the Beach­es of Hol­land

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When Christmas Was Legally Banned for 22 Years by the Puritans in Colonial Massachusetts

in Uncategorized | December 10th, 2024

Com­plaints about the com­mer­cial-age cor­rup­tion of Christ­mas miss one crit­i­cal fact: as a mass pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion, the hol­i­day is a rather recent inven­tion. Whether we cred­it Charles Dick­ens, Bing Cros­by, or Frank Capra—men not opposed to marketing—we must reck­on with Christ­mas as a prod­uct of moder­ni­ty. That includes the sacred ideas about fam­i­ly, piety, and grat­i­tude we attach to the sea­son.

The Puri­tans of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony “despised Christ­mas,” notes Boing Boing. They asso­ci­at­ed it with debauch­ery: heavy drink­ing, glut­tony, riots, “row­di­ness and sin­ful behav­ior.” Not only that, but they “saw it as a false hol­i­day with stronger ties to pagan­ism than Chris­tian­i­ty,” writes Rebec­ca Beat­rice Brooks at the His­to­ry of Mass­a­chu­setts blog, and “they were cor­rect, accord­ing to the book The Bat­tle for Christ­mas.”

The His­to­ry Dose video above informs us that in 1659, “the Gen­er­al Court of Mass­a­chu­setts made it ille­gal to cel­e­brate Christ­mas.” Feast­ing, or even tak­ing off work on Decem­ber 25th would result in a fine of five shillings. It seems extreme, but the hol­i­day had a car­ni­va­lesque rep­u­ta­tion at the time. Not only were rev­el­ers, at the end of a long year’s work, eager to enjoy the spoils of their labor, but their car­ol­ing might even turn into a kind of vio­lent trick-or-treat­ing.

“On some occa­sions the car­ol­ers would become row­dy and invade wealthy homes demand­ing food and drink,” Brooks writes. They “would van­dal­ize the home if the own­er refused.” The Puri­tans’ author­i­tar­i­an streak, and respect for the sanc­ti­ty of pri­vate prop­er­ty, made can­cel­ing Christ­mas the only seem­ing­ly log­i­cal thing to do, with a ban last­ing 22 years. In any case, explic­it ban or no, spurn­ing Christ­mas was com­mon prac­tice for two hun­dred years of New England’s colo­nial his­to­ry.

In the end, for all its sup­posed intru­sions into the snow globe of Christ­mas purism, “we can par­tial­ly thank com­mer­cial­iza­tion for sus­tain­ing the domes­tic brand of Christ­mas we have today”—the brand, that is, that ensures we can’t stop talk­ing about, read­ing about, and hear­ing about Christ­mas, what­ev­er our beliefs, in the sev­er­al weeks lead­ing up to Decem­ber 25th.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold! The Very First Christ­mas Card (1843)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christ­mas Nativ­i­ty Sto­ry on an Ice­landic TV Spe­cial (1976)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

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

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Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019

in History, Music | December 10th, 2024

It’s easy to get the impres­sion that enthu­si­asts of elec­tron­ic music lis­ten to noth­ing else. (Not that it isn’t true for some of them, who tend to rel­e­gate them­selves to small­er sub­gen­res: con­sult Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music for a map of the son­ic ter­ri­to­ry.) And it’s equal­ly easy to believe that, if you aren’t explic­it­ly into elec­tron­ic music, then you don’t lis­ten to it. But in fact, its his­to­ry is one of long-term inte­gra­tion so thor­ough that many of us fre­quent­ly lis­ten to elec­tron­ic music — or at any rate, elec­tron­ic-adja­cent music — with­out being con­scious of that fact.

Watch the video above, a 24-minute jour­ney through the evo­lu­tion of elec­tron­ic music from 1929 to 2019, and take note of how many songs you know after hear­ing them for only a few sec­onds. Ear­ly exper­i­ments by the likes of Olivi­er Mes­si­aen, Hal­im El-Dabh, and Rune Lind­blad may ring no bells (and to the unini­ti­at­ed, may not sound like music at all). Doc­tor Who fans will perk up when the time­line reach­es 1963, with the appear­ance of that show’s theme song — a record­ing by Delia Der­byshire, inci­den­tal­ly, whose pio­neer­ing work we’ve often fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The first piece of full-fledged pop music is Ger­shon Kings­ley’s “Pop­corn,” from 1969, one of those songs whose melody we all know even if we’d nev­er be able to come up with the title.

In the mid-sev­en­ties, the names now wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of mod­ern elec­tron­ic music start to emerge: Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” in 1974, Tan­ger­ine Dream’s “Ruby­con” in 1975, Jean-Michel Jar­re’s “Oxy­gene” in 1976. But more impor­tant to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar cul­ture is the song that rep­re­sents the fol­low­ing year: Don­na Sum­mer’s hit “I Feel Love,” which was co-pro­duced by a cer­tain Gior­gio Moroder. Per­haps the defin­ing fig­ure of elec­tron­ic music’s pas­sage through the dis­cos into the main­stream, Moroder made an even big­ger impact in 1978 with his own instru­men­tal com­po­si­tion “Chase,” which won him an Acad­e­my Award by being includ­ed in the film Mid­night Express.

The movies did a great deal to sell the world on the fusion of elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy and pop music in the eight­ies. Who in the devel­oped world — or indeed, in most of the devel­op­ing world — could fail to rec­og­nize, for instance, Harold Fal­ter­mey­er’s “Axel F”? (And sure­ly nobody who came of age at the time of A Night at the Rox­bury can claim igno­rance of Had­daway’s “What Is Love.”) As this video assem­bles its his­to­ry, elec­tron­ic music finds its way back to the dance floor in the nineties, and it more or less stays there through the twen­ty-tens; per­haps you would’ve had to spend a lot of time in the clubs in that decade to know such seem­ing­ly era-defin­ing names as Marsh­mel­lo, Armin van Buuren, Shapov, Major Laz­er, and DJ Snake. But from an elec­tron­ic-influ­enced hit like Ed Sheer­an’s “Shape of You,” alas, there was no escape.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

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

What is Elec­tron­ic Music?: Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

A Huge Anthol­o­gy of Noise & Elec­tron­ic Music (1920–2007) Fea­tur­ing John Cage, Sun Ra, Cap­tain Beef­heart & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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