Hear Siouxsie and the Banshee’s Raw & Completely Improvised First Show, with Sid Vicious on Drums (1976)

in Music | July 31st, 2017

We could argue all day about whether punk start­ed in the US or UK (it’s the US), but why both­er? Why not spend our time doing more inter­est­ing things—like dig­ging up rare his­tor­i­cal arti­facts from the ear­li­est days of punk rock in Lon­don, New York and, yes, Detroit. Punk may have devolved into a prêt-à-porter sig­ni­fi­er, but its gold­en age was dom­i­nat­ed by bespoke per­son­al­i­ties the size of Texas. And no ori­gin sto­ry (except maybe this one) bet­ter exem­pli­fies punk’s found­ing ethos than that of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees’ first gig in Lon­don in 1976, which you can hear in all of its def­i­n­i­tion-of-lo-fi glo­ry in two parts above and below.

Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Janet Dal­lion) already stood out as one of the Sex Pis­tols’ ded­i­cat­ed fol­low­ers, her Egypt-inspired eye make­up and black lip­stick stak­ing out the Goth ter­ri­to­ry she would con­quer in just a few short years. She was a born per­former, but up until this first appear­ance at 19, had nev­er been on stage before or front­ed a band.

The “band” itself didn’t exist until the last minute, when Siouxsie and bassist Steve Sev­erin (then “Steve Spunker”) decid­ed they should take the place of a group that pulled out of the 100 Club Punk Fes­ti­val, a show­case for the Sex Pis­tols, The Clash, The Damned, and a hand­ful of oth­er unsigned (at the time) bands.

“Suzie and the Ban­shees,” as they were billed, con­sist­ed of the mag­nif­i­cent­ly shrill Siouxsie, Sev­erin, future Adam Ant gui­tarist Mar­co Pir­roni, and the most infa­mous non-musi­cian in punk, Sid Vicious, on drums, before he pre­tend­ed to play bass in the Sex Pis­tols. They hadn’t writ­ten any songs, and so they smashed through a 20-minute med­ley of “Deutsch­land, Deutsch­land über alles,” “Knock­ing on Heaven’s Door,” “Twist and Shout,” and the Lord’s Prayer. Show pro­mot­er Ron Watts called it “per­for­mance art,” and not in a good way.

Sum­ming up the eter­nal inter­play between punk bands and club own­ers, Watts remem­bered their debut as “weak, it was weedy. You couldn’t say it was a gig…. It was just peo­ple, get­ting up and try­ing to do some­thing. I let them do it, you know.” The supreme­ly con­fi­dent Siouxsie didn’t care. In an inter­view a cou­ple of months lat­er (above) she admits, “it got a bit bor­ing in some parts, but it picked up.” So did the band, pick­ing up actu­al­ly very good drum­mer Ken­ny Mor­ris and cycling through a few gui­tarists, includ­ing The Cure’s Robert Smith for a spell. A cou­ple of the oth­er bands at that noto­ri­ous show made good as well. (One even got their own cred­it card.) Hear The Clash’s set from the night here, here, and here, and see a pho­to set of Siouxsie and friends from 1976 here.

via Post Punk

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Play in Dal­las’ Long­horn Ball­room; Next Show Is Mer­le Hag­gard (1978)

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

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

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Accidental Wes Anderson: Every Place in the World with a Wes Anderson Aesthetic Gets Documented by Reddit

in Design, Film, Photography | July 31st, 2017

Wes Ander­son­’s immac­u­late­ly art-direct­ed, imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able films may take place in a real­i­ty of their own, but that does­n’t mean a real­i­ty with no con­nec­tion to ours. To go by their results, the direc­tor of The Life Aquat­ic, Moon­rise King­dom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel (to name only three of his most visu­al­ly dis­tinc­tive pic­tures) and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have clear­ly immersed them­selves in the very real his­to­ry of the West in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, drink­ing deeply of its fash­ion, its archi­tec­ture, and its indus­tri­al and graph­ic design.

So no mat­ter how fan­ci­ful his con­struct­ed set­tings — The Roy­al Tenen­baums’ dream of New York City, The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed’s train cross­ing India in quirky old-school splen­dor, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s unspe­cif­ic Alpine mit­teleu­ropa — Ander­son always assem­bles them from prece­dent­ed ele­ments.

And so the habitués of a sub­red­dit called Acci­den­tal Ander­son have set out to post pic­tures of his sources, or places that might well pass for his sources, all over not just Europe, of course — where they found the Vien­nese cafe at the top of the post and the Berlin­er deliv­ery van with wag­on just above — but Amer­i­ca, Asia, the Mid­dle East, and else­where.

Much of a loca­tion’s acci­den­tal Ander­son­ian poten­tial comes down to its geom­e­try and its col­ors: deep reds, bright yel­lows, and espe­cial­ly pale pinks and greens. Many of Ander­son­’s pre­ferred hues appear in the Gold Crest Resort Motel just above, which may strike a fan as hav­ing come right out of an Ander­son pic­ture even more so than the motel he actu­al­ly used in his debut fea­ture Bot­tle Rock­et. The direc­tor has since moved on to much fin­er hostel­ries, which thus form a strong thread among Acci­den­tal Ander­son­’s pop­u­lar post­ings: Flori­da’s Don CeSar Hotel (known as the “Pink Lady”), Cuba’s Hotel Sarato­ga, Switzer­land’s Hotel Belvédère, Italy’s Grand Hotel Mis­ur­nia.

Berlin’s hum­bler Ostel, a themed trib­ute to the design sen­si­bil­i­ties of the for­mer East Ger­many, might also res­onate with the ever-deep­en­ing his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness of Ander­son­’s movies. (Remem­ber The Grand Budapest Hotel’s tit­u­lar build­ing, sad­ly redone in a util­i­tar­i­an, faint­ly Sovi­et avo­ca­do-and-ochre dur­ing the film’s 1960s pas­sages.)

To think that Ander­son came from a place no less impos­si­bly dis­tant from the realm of mid­cen­tu­ry Europe than Texas, home of the Dal­las music store pic­tured below. Giv­en his increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty, it’s hard­ly a sur­prise to see his sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic being not just reflect­ed but adopt­ed around the world. If life con­tin­ues to imi­tate art, Acci­den­tal Ander­son­’s con­trib­u­tors will long have their work cut out for them. Pay a vis­it to Acci­den­tal Ander­son here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Introducing the New PEN America Digital Archive: 1,500 Hours of Audio & Video Featuring 2,200 Eminent Writers

in Books, Literature, Politics, Writing | July 31st, 2017

Image via Pen.Org

The recent­ly launched PEN Amer­i­ca Dig­i­tal Archive is an Aladdin’s cave of lit­er­ary trea­sures. An incred­i­ble amount of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming has grown up around the orga­ni­za­tion’s com­mit­ment to cham­pi­oning writ­ers’ civ­il liberties–over 1,500 hours worth of audio and visu­al files.

Delve into this free, search­able archive for pre­vi­ous­ly inac­ces­si­ble lec­tures, read­ings, and dis­cus­sions fea­tur­ing the lead­ing writ­ers, intel­lec­tu­als, and artists of the last 50 years. Many of these New York City-based events were planned in response to the oppres­sion and hard­ship suf­fered by fel­low writ­ers around the world.

Feel­ing over­whelmed by this all-you-can-eat buf­fet for the mind? The archivists have your back with fea­tured col­lec­tions–an assort­ment of rau­cous, polit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions from the 1986 PEN World Con­gress and a thir­ty year ret­ro­spec­tive of Toni Mor­ri­son.

We are lucky that Nobel Prize-win­ner Mor­ri­son, a vig­or­ous cul­tur­al observ­er and crit­ic, still walks among us. Also, that the archive affords us a chance to spend qual­i­ty time with so many great lit­er­ary emi­nences who no longer do:

John Stein­beck reads excerpts of The Grapes of Wrath and his short sto­ries, “The Snake,” “John­ny Bear,”  and “We’re Hold­ing Our Own.”

Jerzy Kosin­s­ki dis­cuss­es teach­ing, and the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ele­ments of his con­tro­ver­sial 1965 nov­el, The Paint­ed Bird.

Madeleine L’En­gle con­sid­ers myth, sci­ence, faith, and the con­nec­tion between art and fear.

Saul Bel­low tack­les how intel­lec­tu­als influ­ence and use tech­nol­o­gy, a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing top­ic in light of the dystopi­an fiction’s cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Nadine Gordimer relives the pub­li­ca­tion, ban­ning and swift unban­ning of her polit­i­cal his­tor­i­cal nov­el, Burg­er’s Daugh­ter.

Susan Son­tag uses a PEN Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence to draw atten­tion to ways in which the host coun­try, Korea, was falling short in regard to free­dom of expres­sion.

Gwen­dolyn Brooks reveals the back­sto­ry on her poems, includ­ing “The Lovers of the Poor,” and “We Real Cool.”

Begin your adven­tures in the PEN Amer­i­ca Dig­i­tal Archive here.

via Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Speech Bites: Nigel War­bur­ton, Host of Phi­los­o­phy Bites, Cre­ates a Spin Off Pod­cast Ded­i­cat­ed to Free­dom of Expres­sion

Great Writ­ers on Free Speech and the Envi­ron­ment

Penn Sound: Fan­tas­tic Audio Archive of Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Poets

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

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When J.M. Coetzee Secretly Programmed Computers to Write Poetry in the 1960s

in Literature, Poetry, Technology | July 29th, 2017

Before J.M. Coet­zee became per­haps the most acclaimed nov­el­ist alive, he worked as a pro­gramer. That may not sound par­tic­u­lar­ly notable these days, but bear in mind that the Nobel lau­re­ate and two-time Book­er-win­ning author of Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians, Dis­grace, and Eliz­a­beth Costel­lo held that day job first at IBM in the ear­ly 1960s — back, in oth­er words, when nobody had a com­put­er on their desk. And back when IBM was IBM: that mighty Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tion had brought the kind of com­put­ing pow­er it alone could com­mand to branch offices in cities around the world, includ­ing Lon­don, where Coet­zee land­ed after leav­ing his native South Africa after grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cape Town.

The years Coet­zee spent “writ­ing machine code for com­put­ers,” he once wrote in a let­ter to Paul Auster, saw him “get­ting so deeply sucked into the process that I some­times felt I was descend­ing into a mad­ness in which the brain is tak­en over by mechan­i­cal log­ic.” This must have caused some dis­tress to a lit­er­ar­i­ly mind­ed young man who heard his true call­ing only from poet­ry.

“I was very heav­i­ly under the influ­ence, in my teens and ear­ly twen­ties, of, first, T.S. Eliot, but then, more sub­stan­tial­ly, Ezra Pound, and lat­er of Ger­man poet­ry, of Rilke in par­tic­u­lar,” he says to Peter Sacks in the inter­view above, remem­ber­ing the years before he put poet­ry aside as a craft in favor of the nov­el.

“Under the shad­ow­less glare of the neon light­ing, he feels his very soul to be under attack,“Coetzee writes, in the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el Youth, of the pro­tag­o­nist’s time as a pro­gram­mer. “The build­ing, a fea­ture­less block of con­crete and glass, seems to give off a gas, odour­less, colour­less, that finds its way into his blood and numbs him. IBM, he can swear, is killing him, turn­ing him into a zom­bie.” Only in the evening can he “leave his desk, wan­der around, relax. The machine room down­stairs, dom­i­nat­ed by the huge mem­o­ry cab­i­nets of the 7090, is more often than not emp­ty; he can run pro­grams on the lit­tle 1401 com­put­er, even, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, play games on it.”

He could also use these clunky, punch­card-oper­at­ed com­put­ers to write poet­ry. “In the mid 1960s Coet­zee was work­ing on one of the most advanced pro­gram­ming projects in Britain,” writes King’s Col­lege Lon­don researcher Rebec­ca Roach. “Dur­ing the day he helped to design the Atlas 2 super­com­put­er des­tined for the Unit­ed Kingdom’s Atom­ic Ener­gy Research Estab­lish­ment at Alder­mas­ton. At night he used this huge­ly pow­er­ful machine of the Cold War to write sim­ple ‘com­put­er poet­ry,’ that is, he wrote pro­grams for a com­put­er that used an algo­rithm to select words from a set vocab­u­lary and cre­ate repet­i­tive lines.”

These lines, as seen here in one page of the print-outs held at the Coet­zee archive at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, include “INCHOATE SHARD IMAGINE THE OUBLIETTE,” “FRENETIC AMBIENCE DISHEARTEN THE ROSE,” “PASSIONATE PABULUM CARPET THE MIRROR,” and “FRENETIC TETANUS DEADEN THE DOCUMENT.” Though he nev­er pub­lished these results, writes Roach, he “edit­ed and includ­ed phras­es from them in poet­ry that he did pub­lish.” Is this a curi­ous chap­ter in the ear­ly life of a promi­nent man of let­ters, or was this realm of “flat metal­lic sur­faces” an ide­al forge for the sen­si­bil­i­ties of a writer now known, as John Lan­ches­ter so apt­ly put it, for his “unusu­al qual­i­ty of pas­sion­ate cold­ness” — a kind of bril­liant aus­ter­i­ty that hard­ly dead­ens any of his doc­u­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.M. Coet­zee on the Plea­sures of Writ­ing: Total Engage­ment, Hard Thought & Pro­duc­tive­ness

Read and Hear Famous Writ­ers (and Arm­chair Sports­men) J.M. Coet­zee and Paul Auster’s Cor­re­spon­dence

New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appre­ci­ate Poet­ry

Japan­ese Com­put­er Artist Makes “Dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans” in 1964: When Giant Main­frame Com­put­ers Were First Used to Cre­ate Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD)

in Food & Drink, History | July 28th, 2017

Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervil­lain, offers his dis­tin­guished guest a bot­tle of wine, his finest, an ancient vin­tage from one of the most ven­er­a­ble vine­yards. We might fol­low the motif back at least to Edgar Allan Poe, whose “Cask of Amon­til­la­do” puts an espe­cial­ly devi­ous spin on the trea­sured bottle’s sin­is­ter con­no­ta­tions.

If our suave and pos­si­bly dead­ly host were to offer us the bot­tle you see here, we might hard­ly believe it, and would hard­ly be keen to drink it, though not for fear of being mur­dered after­ward. The Römer­wein, or Spey­er wine bottle—so called after the Ger­man region where it was dis­cov­ered in the exca­va­tion of a 4th cen­tu­ry AD Roman nobleman’s tomb—dates “back to between 325 and 359 AD,” writes Aban­doned Spaces, and has the dis­tinc­tion of being “the old­est known wine bot­tle which remains unopened.”

A 1.5 liter “glass ves­sel with ampho­ra-like stur­dy shoul­ders” in the shape of dol­phins, the bot­tle is of no use to its own­er, but no one is cer­tain what would hap­pen to the liq­uid if it were exposed to air, so it stays sealed, its thick stop­per of wax and olive oil main­tain­ing an impres­sive­ly her­met­ic envi­ron­ment. Sci­en­tists can only spec­u­late that the liq­uid inside has prob­a­bly lost most of its ethanol con­tent. But the bot­tle still con­tains a good amount of wine, “dilut­ed with a mix of var­i­ous herbs.”

The Römer­wein resides at the His­tor­i­cal Muse­um of the Palati­nate in Spey­er, which seems like an incred­i­bly fas­ci­nat­ing place if you hap­pen to be pass­ing through. You won’t get to taste ancient Roman wine there, but you may, per­haps, if you trav­el to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cata­nia in Sici­ly where in 2013, sci­en­tists recre­at­ed ancient wine-mak­ing tech­niques, set up a vine­yard, and fol­lowed the old ways to the let­ter, using wood­en tools and strips of cane to tie their vines.

They pro­ceed­ed, writes Tom Kingston at The Guardian, “with­out mech­a­niza­tion, pes­ti­cides or fer­til­iz­ers.” Only the organ­ic stuff for Roman vint­ners.

The team has faith­ful­ly fol­lowed tips on wine grow­ing giv­en by Vir­gil in the Geor­gics, his poem about agri­cul­ture, as well as by Col­umel­la, a first cen­tu­ry AD grow­er, whose detailed guide to wine­mak­ing was relied on until the 17th cen­tu­ry.

Those ancient wine­mak­ers added hon­ey and water to their wine, as well as herbs, to sweet­en and spice things up. And unlike most Ital­ians today who “drink mod­er­ate­ly with meals,” ancient Romans “were more giv­en to drunk­en carous­ing.” Maybe that’s what the gen­tle­man in the Spey­er tomb hoped to be doing in his Roman after­life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

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

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Google Launches Free Course on Deep Learning: The Science of Teaching Computers How to Teach Themselves

in Computer Science, Google, Online Courses | July 28th, 2017

Last Fri­day, we men­tioned how Google’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence soft­ware Deep­Mind has the abil­i­ty to teach itself many things. It can teach itself how to walk, jump and run. Even take pro­fes­sion­al pic­tures. Or defeat the world’s best play­er of the Chi­nese strat­e­gy game, Go. The sci­ence of teach­ing com­put­ers how to do things is called Deep Learn­ing. And you can now immerse your­self in this world by tak­ing a free, 3‑month course on Deep Learn­ing itself. Offered through Udac­i­ty, the course is taught by Vin­cent Van­houcke, the tech­ni­cal lead in Google’s Brain team. You can learn more about the course via Van­houck­e’s blog post. Or just enroll here. (You will need to cre­ate an account with Udac­i­ty to get start­ed.)

The free course takes about 3 months to com­plete. It will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ences cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion,  1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Google’s Deep­Mind AI Teach­es Itself to Walk, and the Results Are Kooky, No Wait, Chill­ing

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

 

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Miyazaki Meets Warhol in Campbell’s Soup Cans Reimagined by Designer Hyo Taek Kim

in Animation, Art, Design, Film, Life | July 28th, 2017

M’m! M’m! Good! M’m! M’m! Good!,

That’s what Warhol Campbell’s Soup Cans recon­ceived as Miyaza­ki films are,

M’m! M’m! Good! 

Brazil­ian-Kore­an design­er Hyo Taek Kim has found a con­tin­u­ing font of inspi­ra­tion in his child­hood love of Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed films.

He has decon­struct­ed them into a series of Pan­tone of col­or palettes and cap­tured sev­er­al favorite moments through the lens of VHS tape glitch­es.

Miyazaki–Special Soup Series, his lat­est explorato­ry jour­ney into the enchant­ed world of the revered mas­ter ani­ma­tor and director–finds him reduc­ing each film to a cou­ple of essen­tial fla­vors.

One can imag­ine Mom call­ing the kids in from an after­noon of sled­ding for a warm, Cream of Toma­to-ish bowl of Totoro.

Spir­it­ed Away and Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle are slight­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed fla­vors, that may involve leafy greens.

Princess Mononoke and Por­co Rosso are Grandpa’s favorites–real stick to your ribs fare.

The sub­tle iconog­ra­phy brings added dimen­sion to the stark prod­uct design Warhol dupli­cat­ed to such acclaim.

As Kim told the Cre­ators Project:

Sim­ple design that works is always so much hard­er to cre­ate than you might expect. It’s just very fun to mar­ry two ideas, artists and/or con­cepts into one big image. Andy Warhol changed the world of phys­i­cal arts. Hayao Miyaza­ki changed the world of ani­mat­ed arts.

This is not Kim’s first go at Campbell’s. His ear­li­er Super­soup Series reduced super­heroes to con­som­mé and cream ofs. Don’t for­get the oys­ter crack­ers.

Posters and t‑shirts of Hyo Taek Kim’s Miyaza­ki Spe­cial Soup and Souper­soup Series can be pur­chased here.

View more of Kim’s soup cans online at the Cre­ators Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

A New Theme Park Based on Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neigh­bor Totoro Set to Open in 2020

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

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

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Watch 50 Hours of Nature Soundscapes from the BBC: Scientifically Proven to Ease Stress and Promote Happiness & Awe

in Nature | July 27th, 2017

A recent study from BBC Earth and UC-Berke­ley has shown that watch­ing nature doc­u­men­taries can inspire “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in feel­ings of awe, con­tent­ed­ness, joy, amuse­ment and curios­i­ty” and con­verse­ly “reduce feel­ings of tired­ness, anger and stress.” In short, they can engen­der what the authors of the study call ‘real hap­pi­ness’ – a kind of hap­pi­ness that leads to actu­al improve­ment in indi­vid­u­als’ health and well­be­ing,

With that in mind, the BBC has just released 50 hours of HD “visu­al sound­scapes” on YouTube, using left­over footage from their Plan­et Earth II TV series. Ten hours of moun­tains; ten hours of jun­gle; ten hours of islands; ten hours of desert; and ten hours of grass­lands–they’re all fea­tured in the long, sooth­ing sound­scape playlist fea­tured above. Use them well.

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 Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.