All posts tagged: Introduction

An Introduction to Brutalism: The Iconic Postwar Architectural Style That Combined Utopianism and Concrete

An Introduction to Brutalism: The Iconic Postwar Architectural Style That Combined Utopianism and Concrete

Published by José Betancourt

The arti­fi­cial lan­guage of Esperan­to was con­ceived with high ideals in mind. In the eigh­teen-eight­ies, its cre­ator L. L. Zamen­hof envi­sioned it as the uni­ver­sal sec­ond lan­guage of human­i­ty, and if it has­n’t achieved that sta­tus by now, it at least remains the world’s most wide­ly spo­ken con­struct­ed aux­il­iary lan­guage. One fac­tor com­pli­cat­ing its spread is that no lan­guage, even one guid­ed by inter­na­tion­al­ism, can remain the same for long enough in two dif­fer­ent cul­tures. As in spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guages, so in the con­crete one of archi­tec­ture — and in the case of the style known as Bru­tal­ism, that would be lit­er­al con­crete. Meant to make human­i­ty whole again after the Sec­ond World War, its build­ings end­ed up being rather more par­tic­u­lar, and less utopi­an, than their archi­tects intend­ed. Exam­ples aplen­ty appear in the new video above from Built Nar­ra­tive, which offers what amounts to a post­card tour of Bru­tal­ist (and Bru­tal­ism-adja­cent) build­ings from around the world. Named for its main mate­r­i­al béton brut, or raw con­crete, the style came into its own dur­ing …

How the Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

How the Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

Published by José Betancourt

When it comes to tourist pil­grim­age sites in the Unit­ed States, the Hoover Dam may not quite rank up there with the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, Mount Rush­more, the Grand Canyon, or Dis­ney­land. But that’s not due to a lack of impor­tance, nor even a lack of impres­sive­ness. Prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of its man-made majesty, how­ev­er, requires an under­stand­ing of not just the vital func­tion it serves, but the enor­mous task of its con­struc­tion. The guides at the Hoover Dam have been trained to explain just that to its many vis­i­tors, of course, but all of us could ben­e­fit from going in pre­pared with a lit­tle knowl­edge. Watch the hour-long video on the dam’s design and con­struc­tion from Ani­ma­graffs above, and you may be pre­pared with enough knowl­edge to tell the guides a thing or two. Ani­ma­graffs is the YoT­tube chan­nel of Jacob O’Neal, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its acclaimed expla­na­tions on a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship and the Gold­en Gate Bridge, anoth­er icon­ic con­struc­tion project of the Great Depres­sion. Like those, …

An Introduction to the Strait of Hormuz and Its Role in the Longstanding US-Iran Conflict

An Introduction to the Strait of Hormuz and Its Role in the Longstanding US-Iran Conflict

Published by José Betancourt

Above, you can watch a primer on the Strait of Hor­muz, the nar­row pas­sage between Iran and Oman through which rough­ly 20% of the world’s oil sup­ply flows. Pro­duced by Vox, the video explains why this choke­point has long played a cen­tral role in ten­sions between the Unit­ed States and Iran. Since the 1980s, Iran has threat­ened to dis­rupt traf­fic through the Strait, all as a way to exert pres­sure on the glob­al econ­o­my. Now, fac­ing an attack from the Unit­ed States and Israel, it’s mak­ing good on its threats, slow­ing traf­fic to a trick­le. With oil prices surg­ing, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has yet to demon­strate that it has a coher­ent plan for coun­ter­ing a strat­e­gy that Iran announced decades ago. Stay tuned for more… 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 …

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

Published by José Betancourt

Imag­ine you could talk to Hierony­mus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, or of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script—a bizarre 15th cen­tu­ry text writ­ten in an uncrack­able code; that you could solve cen­turies-old mys­ter­ies by ask­ing them, “what were you think­ing?” You might be dis­ap­point­ed to hear them say, as does Lui­gi Ser­afi­ni, author and illus­tra­tor of the Codex Seraphini­anus, “At the end of the day [it’s] sim­i­lar to the Rorschach inkblot test. You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speak­ing to you, but it’s just your imag­i­na­tion.” If you were a long­time devo­tee of an intense­ly sym­bol­ic, myth­ic text, you might refuse to believe this. It must mean some­thing, fans of the Codex have insist­ed since the book’s appear­ance in 1981. It shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Voyn­ich Man­u­script, save its rel­a­tive­ly recent vin­tage and liv­ing author: both the Seraphini­anus and the Voyn­ich seem to be com­pendi­ums of an oth­er­world­ly nat­ur­al sci­ence and art, and both are writ­ten in a whol­ly invent­ed lan­guage. Ser­afi­ni tells Wired he thinks Voyn­ich is …

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

How the Golden Gate Bridge Was Built: A 3D Animated Introduction

Published by José Betancourt

Built dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion (from 1933 to 1937), the Gold­en Gate Bridge became the longest and tallest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Dur­ing its con­struc­tion, work­ers bat­tled harsh con­di­tions — strong winds, thick fog, and the risk of plung­ing into the San Fran­cis­co Bay. 11 souls per­ished. Like­wise, the engi­neer Joseph Strauss had to work through com­pli­cat­ed design chal­lenges to anchor the struc­ture in the deep waters, then spin mas­sive cables and ten­sion them across the 4,000-foot span. Cre­at­ed by the YouTube chan­nel Ani­ma­graffs, the 3D ani­mat­ed video above takes view­ers on a tech­ni­cal tour of the Gold­en Gate Bridge’s con­struc­tion, decon­struct­ing the engi­neer­ing that makes the bridge both beau­ti­ful and endur­ing. 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 …

An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork

An Introduction to Outsider Artist Henry Darger and His Bizarre 15,000-Page Illustrated Masterwork

Published by José Betancourt

The expres­sion “Don’t quit your day job” is often used as an insult, imply­ing that the recip­i­en­t’s cre­ative skills aren’t up to attract­ing a career-sup­port­ing audi­ence. But it can also be prac­ti­cal advice in cer­tain cas­es, espe­cial­ly those of artists pos­sessed of a sen­si­bil­i­ty too par­tic­u­lar and strange to bear direct expo­sure to the mar­ket­place. So it was with Hen­ry Darg­er, who delib­er­ate­ly passed his 81 years in near-absolute obscu­ri­ty, work­ing increas­ing­ly menial jan­i­to­r­i­al jobs by day and, when not attend­ing one of his five dai­ly mass­es, obsess­ing over his art the rest of the time. That art took var­i­ous forms, most notably The Sto­ry of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unre­al, of the Glandeco–Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebel­lion, which has been described as the longest work of fic­tion ever writ­ten — and the strangest. As described in the video above from Fredrik Knud­sen (and in the 2004 fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary In the Realms of the Unre­al), its 15,145 pages relate the adven­tures of a …

An Animated Introduction to the Antikythera Mechanism: The World’s First Analog Computer from Ancient Greece

An Animated Introduction to the Antikythera Mechanism: The World’s First Analog Computer from Ancient Greece

Published by José Betancourt

From TED-Ed comes an ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism, an ancient Greek device that dates back to the 2nd cen­tu­ry BCE. TED writes: “In 1900, Greek divers stum­bled upon a 2,000-year-old ship­wreck whose con­tents would shake our under­stand­ing of the ancient world. Among the remains were frag­ments of man­gled wood and cor­rod­ed met­al, which archae­ol­o­gists soon real­ized were parts of the old­est geared device ever dis­cov­ered — and humankind’s first com­put­er. So, how did it work?” Above, sci­ence jour­nal­ist Max G. Levy explains the inner work­ings of the Antikythera Mech­a­nism and how the Greeks put the device to use. For those who want to take a deep­er dive into this ancient ana­log com­put­er (there’s a lot more to learn), we invite you to explore the titles in the Relat­eds sec­tion below. They’ll take you deep­er into this mar­vel of ancient engi­neer­ing. 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 …

A Brief Introduction to Buckminster Fuller and His Techno-Optimistic Ideas

A Brief Introduction to Buckminster Fuller and His Techno-Optimistic Ideas

Published by José Betancourt

Buck­min­ster Fuller was, in many ways, a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry man: an achieve­ment in itself, con­sid­er­ing he was born in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and died in the twen­ti­eth. In fact, it may actu­al­ly count as his defin­ing achieve­ment. For all the inven­tions pre­sent­ed as rev­o­lu­tion­ary that nev­er real­ly caught on — the Dymax­ion house and car, the geo­des­ic dome — as well as the count­less pages of eccen­tri­cal­ly the­o­ret­i­cal writ­ing and even more count­less hours of talk, it can be dif­fi­cult for us now, here in the actu­al twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, to pin down the civ­i­liza­tion­al impact he so earnest­ly longed to make. But to the extent that he embod­ied the faith, born of the com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al might and exis­ten­tial dread that col­ored the post­war Amer­i­can zeit­geist, that tech­nol­o­gy can ratio­nal­ly re-shape the world, we’re all his intel­lec­tu­al chil­dren. In the video above, Joe Scott pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to Fuller and his world in about ten min­utes. After a much-ref­er­enced Dam­a­scene con­ver­sion, the once-dis­solute Fuller spent most of his life “try­ing to solve the world’s prob­lems,” Scott says, …

An Introduction to Hilma af Klint: Once a Forgotten Painter, Now a Celebrated Pioneer of Abstract Art

An Introduction to Hilma af Klint: Once a Forgotten Painter, Now a Celebrated Pioneer of Abstract Art

Published by skeptic

If pressed to pick the most inter­na­tion­al art fig­ure of the past dozen years, one could do much worse than the Swedish artist-mys­tic Hilma af Klint, despite her hav­ing been dead for more than 80 years now. As evi­denced by the links at the bot­tom of the post, we’ve been fea­tur­ing her here on Open Cul­ture since 2017, first in the con­text of whether she counts as the first abstract painter. Just a few years before that, prac­ti­cal­ly no one in the world had ever heard her name, let alone beheld any of her more than 1,200 paint­ings and draw­ings. In fact, it was only in 2013, with the show Hilma af Klint — A Pio­neer of Abstrac­tion at Stock­holm’s Mod­er­na Museet, that she first became pub­licly known. From there, her can­on­iza­tion pro­ceed­ed rapid­ly. One uses that word advis­ed­ly, giv­en af Klin­t’s reli­gios­i­ty, whose inten­si­ty, eso­teri­cism, and rig­or con­sti­tute one of the themes of Alice Gre­go­ry’s recent New York­er piece on the artist’s work, lega­cy, and rel­a­tive­ly new­found pop­u­lar­i­ty, all of it col­ored by the fact that none of …

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai: An Introduction to the Iconic Japanese Woodblock Print in 17 Minutes

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai: An Introduction to the Iconic Japanese Woodblock Print in 17 Minutes

Published by José Betancourt

When wood­cut artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai made his famous print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa in 1830 — part of the series Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji — he was 70 years old and had lived his entire life in a Japan closed off from the rest of the world. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, “the rest of the world was becom­ing indus­tri­al­ized,” James Payne explains above in his Great Art Explained video, “and the Japan­ese were con­cerned about for­eign inva­sions.” The Great Wave shows “an image of Japan fear­ful that the sea — which has pro­tect­ed its peace­ful iso­la­tion for so long — would become its down­fall.” It’s also true, how­ev­er, that The Great Wave would not have exist­ed with­out a for­eign inva­sion. Pruss­ian blue, the first sta­ble blue pig­ment, acci­den­tal­ly invent­ed around 1705 in Berlin, arrived in the ports of Nagasa­ki on Dutch and Chi­nese ships in the 1820s. Pruss­ian Blue would start a new artis­tic move­ment in Japan, aizuri‑e, wood­cuts print­ed in bright, vivid blues. “Hoku­sai was one of the first Japan­ese print­mak­ers …