Arts and Culture

Everyone in Japan knows the story of Momotaro, the boy born from a peach who goes on to defeat the marauding ogres known as oni . The oldest known written versions of Momotaro's adventures date back to the 17th century, but even then the tale almost certainly had a long history of passage through oral tradition. And though Momotaro may well be the best-known Japanese folk hero, his story is just one in a body of folklore vast enough that few, even among avid enthusiasts, can claim to have mastered it in its entirety. That vast body of Japanese folklore has provided no small amount of inspiration to comics, animation, and the other modern forms of storytelling that have brought many of these folktales to wider audiences — even global audiences, a project that began in the late 19th century. Their Western popularization has no greater figurehead than Lafcadio Hearn. A Greek-British writer who moved to Japan in 1890, Hearn later became a naturalized Japanese citizen and wrote suc...

Whether you see it as a good faith effort to correct past mistakes or a bid to distract from more recent fumbles—the New York Times' “ Overlooked ” obituary series has done its readers a service by recovering the bios of “remarkable people whose deaths… went unreported in The Times. ” Most of the profiles are of people who were public figures at the time of their death. Some had achieved international recognition, like Alan Turing, and others were royalty, like Rani, queen of the kingdom of Jhansi in Northern India and one of the leaders of a revolt against the British in 1857. The latest “Overlooked” is an oddity. Its subject may be the most famous person of all to get the belated Times obit since the series began. Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the devil at the crossroads has become as foundational to U.S. mythology as John Henry’s hammer or George Washington’s cherry tree. At the very same time, Johnson may be the most obscure figure to appear in “Overlooked.” And th...

She’s worked with Stanley Kubrick *and* “Weird Al” Yankovic, and helped Robert Moog in the development of his eponymous synthesizer. Wendy Carlos is also one of the first high profile transgender artists--credited as Walter Carlos for Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange but having transitioned to Wendy by the time of The Shining , in which only a few of her pieces were used. In this brief clip from a 1989 BBC episode of Horizon , Carlos, accompanied by her two cats, explains how she uses analog synths to create electronic facsimiles of real instruments--in this case creating an approximation of a xylophone, sculpting a sine wave until it sounds like a mallet on wood. The segment also shows Carlos operating one of the original Moog synths, about the size of a fridge and looking like an old telephone switchboard with a keyboard attached. By plugging and unplugging a series of cables, she demonstrates, the sine wave is deconstructed from its original “pure” but harsh sound. Later anal...

The Last Supper … The Birth of Venus … The Mona Lisa … American Gothic , Grant Wood’s celebrated depiction of two Depression-era Iowa farmers, holds its own against those iconic European works as one of  the world’s most parodied artworks . Vox’s Phil Edwards  dispenses with that status quickly in the above video for  Overrated ,  a series that unpacks the reasons behind iconic works’ lasting fame. By his reckoning, American Gothic ’s success hinges on the dual nature of its creator, a native Iowan who traveled extensively in Europe, gravitating to such sophisticated fare as Impressionism,  Pointillism , and the work of Flemish master  Jan van Eyck . While he didn’t express  satirist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken's overt disdain  for his rural-dwelling subjects, his rendering suggests that he perceived them incapable of understanding the appeal of his own rarified pleasures. As  Karal Ann Marling , professor of art history ...

Image by Jason "Textfiles" Scott, via Wikimedia Commons All books in the public domain are free. Most books in the public domain are, by definition, on the old side, and a great many aren't easy to find in any case. But the books now being scanned and uploaded by libraries aren't quite so old, and they'll soon get much easier to find. They've fallen through a loophole because their copyright-holders never renewed their copyright, but until recently the technology wasn't quite in place to reliably identify and digitally store them. Now, though, as Vice's Karl Bode writes , "a coalition of archivists, activists, and libraries are working overtime to make it easier to identify the many books that are secretly in the public domain, digitize them, and make them freely available online to everyone." These were published between 1923 and 1964, and the goal of this digitization project is to upload all of these surprisingly out-of-copyright books ...

It took a half century. But better late than never. Exactly 50 years after the release of Abbey Road , the Beatles have released the first official video of "Here Comes the Sun." The clip, writes NME , "set to a new stereo mix of the George Harrison composition, captures a gorgeous sunrise illuminating Abbey Road Studios’ Studio Two, where the Fab Four recorded most of the legendary album." Later today, the Beatles will release the 50th anniversary reissue of Abbey Road . It comes in CD and CD/Blu Ray versions. Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Please 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. Also consider following Open Culture on Facebook  and   Twitter  and  sharing intelligent media with your friends. Or sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Cu...

Listen to the Whistleblower Complaint released by the House Intelligence Committee, as read by Saskia Maarleveld. Stream or download it above . Find more of Maarleveld's narrated books on Audible . This recording will be added to our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free . Free: A Professionally-Read Version of the Ukraine Whistleblower Complaint, Released by Penguin Random House Audio is a post from: Open Culture . Follow us on Facebook , Twitter , and Google Plus , or get our Daily Email . And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses , Free Online Movies , Free eBooks ,  Free Audio Books , Free Foreign Language Lessons , and MOOCs . from Open Culture https://ift.tt/2ncBkth via Ilumina