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Wednesday, June 12th, 2019
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| 11:00a | Leonardo da Vinci’s Huge Notebook Collections, the Codex Forster, Now Digitized in High-Resolution: Explore Them Online
It may seem like a bizarre question, but indulge me for a moment: could it be possible that the most famous artist of the Renaissance and maybe in all of art history, Leonardo da Vinci, is an underrated figure? Consider the fact that until relatively recently, a huge amount of his work—maybe a majority of his drawings, plans, sketches, notes, concepts, theories, etc.—has been unavailable to all but specialized scholars who could access (and read) his copious notebooks, spanning the most productive period of his career. “Leonardo seems to have begun recording his thoughts in notebooks from the mid-1480s,” writes the Victoria & Albert Museum (the V&A), “when he worked as a military and naval engineer for the Duke of Milan. None of Leonardo’s predecessors, contemporaries or successors used paper quite like he did—a single sheet contains an unpredictable pattern of ideas and inventions.” He worked on loose sheets, which were later bound together in books, or codices, by the artists who inherited them. As we have been reporting, these notebook collections have been coming available online in open, high-resolution digital versions. [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<div [...] http://cdn8.openculture.com/>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <p><img class="alignnone wp-image-1065907 size-full" src="https://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11223416/forster_i-e1560319644651.jpg" alt="" width="320"/></p>
<p>It may seem like a bizarre question, but indulge me for a moment: could it be possible that the most famous artist of the Renaissance and maybe in all of art history, Leonardo da Vinci, is an <em>underrated </em>figure? Consider the fact that until relatively recently, a huge amount of his work—maybe a majority of his drawings, plans, sketches, notes, concepts, theories, etc.—has been unavailable to all but specialized scholars who could access (and read) his copious notebooks, spanning the most productive period of his career.</p>
<p>“Leonardo seems to have begun recording his thoughts in notebooks from the mid-1480s,”<a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks"> writes the Victoria & Albert Museum</a> (the V&A), “when he worked as a military and naval engineer for the Duke of Milan. None of Leonardo’s predecessors, contemporaries or successors used paper quite like he did—a single sheet contains an unpredictable pattern of ideas and inventions.” He worked on loose sheets, which were later bound together in books, or codices, by the artists who inherited them. As we have been <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=openculture.com+da+vinci+digitize&oq=openculture.com+da+vinci+digitize&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l3.7144j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">reporting</a>, these notebook collections have been coming available online in open, high-resolution digital versions.</p>
<div class="oc-center-da"http://cdn8.openculture.com/>
<p>Now the V&A has announced that all three of its Leonardo codices, called the Forster Codices after the collector who bequeathed them to the museum, are available to view “in amazing detail.” Click here to see <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vinci-codex-forster-i#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-981%2C-78%2C3436%2C2144">Codex Forster 1</a>, <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vincis-notebook-codex-forster-ii#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-1197%2C-319%2C9242%2C6367">Codex Forster 2</a>, and <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks-codex-forster-iii">Codex Forster 3</a>. Here we see further evidence that Leonardo was a supreme draughtsman. As Claudio Giorgione, curator at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/davinci">Leonardo da Vinci</a> National Science and Technology Museum in Milan, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/22/who-was-leonardo-da-vinci-and-what-can-we-learn-from-him">points out</a>, “Leonardo was not the only one to draw machines and to do scientific drawings, many other engineers did that,” and many artists as well. “But what Leonardo did better than others is to make a revolution of the technical drawing,” almost defining the field with his meticulous attention to detail.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1065911" src="https://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster.jpg" alt="" srcset="http://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster.jpg 903w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster-240x167.jpg 240w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster-360x250.jpg 360w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster-768x533.jpg 768w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230708/codexforster-300x208.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 903px) 100vw, 903px" width="320"/></p>
<p>What’s more, notes <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-martin-kemp">University of Oxford Professor Martin Kemp</a>, “while other artists might have been probing some aspects of anatomy—muscles, bones, tendons—Leonardo took the study to a new level.” Such a level, in fact, that he "can be regarded as the father of bioengineering,” argues John B. West in the <em><a href="https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajplung.00378.2016">American Journal of Physiology</a></em>.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Little attention has been paid to [Leonardo] as a physiologist. But he was an outstanding engineer, and he was one of the first people to apply the principles of engineering to understand the function of animals including humans.</em></p></blockquote>
<p>Giorgione warns against seeing Leonardo as a prophetic visionary for his innovations. He was not a man out of time; “the artist engineer is a known figure in Renaissance Italy.” But he perfected the tools and methods of this dual profession with such restless ingenuity and skill that we still find it astonishing over 500 years later. His lengthy explanations of these exceptional technical drawings are written, naturally, in his <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2017/11/why-did-leonardo-da-vinci-write-backwards-a-look-into-the-ultimate-renaissance-mans-mirror-writing.html">famous mirror writing</a>.</p>
<p>Of Leonardo’s odd writing system, we may learn something new as well, though we may find this part, at least, a little disappointing. As the V&A points out, his idiosyncratic method might not have been so unique after all, or have been a sophisticated device for Leonardo to hide his ideas from competitors and future curious readers. It might have come about “because he was left-handed and may have found it easier to write from right to left…. Writing masters at the time would have made demonstrations of mirror writing, and his letter-shapes are in fact quite ordinary.”</p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1065912" src="https://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/11230932/forster_ii-e1560319781541.jpg" alt="" width="320"/></p>
<p>Nothing else about the man seems to warrant that description. See all three Forster Codices the Victoria & Albert Museum site here: <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vinci-codex-forster-i#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-981%2C-78%2C3436%2C2144">Codex Forster 1</a>, <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vincis-notebook-codex-forster-ii#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-1197%2C-319%2C9242%2C6367">Codex Forster 2</a>, and <a href="https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/explore-leonardo-da-vincis-notebooks-codex-forster-iii">Codex Forster 3</a>. And see one codex from the collection, as the V&A <a href="https://twitter.com/V_and_A/status/1138455895292223489">announced on Twitter</a>, live in person at the British Library’s <em>Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion </em>exhibit.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/HerHandsMyHands">h/t AtzecLady</a></p>
<p><strong>Related Content:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2017/07/leonardo-da-vincis-visionary-notebooks-now-online-browse-570-digitized-pages.html">Leonardo da Vinci’s Visionary Notebooks Now Online: Browse 570 Digitized Pages</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2019/05/a-complete-digitization-of-leonardo-da-vincis-codex-atlanticus.html">A Complete Digitization of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, the Largest Existing Collection of His Drawings & Writings</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2018/08/leonardo-da-vincis-earliest-notebooks-now-digitized-and-made-free-online.html">Leonardo da Vinci’s Earliest Notebooks Now Digitized and Made Free Online: Explore His Ingenious Drawings, Diagrams, Mirror Writing & More</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2017/11/why-did-leonardo-da-vinci-write-backwards-a-look-into-the-ultimate-renaissance-mans-mirror-writing.html">Why Did Leonardo da Vinci Write Backwards? A Look Into the Ultimate Renaissance Man’s “Mirror Writing”</a></p>
<p><em><a href="http://about.me/jonesjoshua">Josh Jones</a> is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at <a href="https://twitter.com/jdmagness">@jdmagness</a></em></p>
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| 3:31p | The Recorder Played Like You’ve Never Heard it Before: Hear a Stunning Solo from Vivaldi’s Recorder Concerto in C Major
Owing to its simplicity and inexpensiveness, the recorder has become one of the most commonly taught instruments in grade-school music classes. But that very position has also, perhaps, made it a less respected instrument than it could be. We may vividly remember the hours spent fumbling with the holes on the front of our plastic recorders in an attempt to master the basic melodies assigned to us as homework, but did we ever learn anything of the instrument's long history — or, for that matter, anything of what it can sound like in the hands of a virtuoso instead of those of a frustrated ten-year-old? The recorder goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages, and with its pastoral associations it remained a popular instrument throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods. But then came a period of widespread disinterest in the recorder that lasted at least until the 20th century, when musicians started performing pieces with instruments from the same historical periods as the music itself. Despite the instrument's going in and out of style, the list of composers who have written for the recorder does boast some formidable names, including Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, and Antonio Vivaldi, whose Recorder Concerto in C Major you can see performed in the video at the top of the post.
"After a few measures, musician Maurice Steger stepped up to the microphone and with amazing skill, shredded several serious solos on the recorder," Laughing Squid's Lori Dorn reports of the spectacle. "Steger rested for a few bars to catch his breath and then start all over again. Simply a wonder to behold." We also, in the video just above, have Lucie Horsch's also-virtuosic performance of Vivaldi's Flautino Concerto in C Major, albeit transposed to G major transposition for soprano recorder. Even among those who learned to despise the recorder in school, there will be some who now can't get enough. But even if it hasn't become your favorite instrument, you've got to admit that we're a long way indeed from "Hot Cross Buns." via Laughing Squid Related Content: 14-Year-Old Girl’s Blistering Heavy Metal Performance of Vivaldi Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson Stream 58 Hours of Free Classical Music Selected to Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax The World Concert Hall: Listen To The Best Live Classical Music Concerts for Free Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram. The Recorder Played Like You’ve Never Heard it Before: Hear a Stunning Solo from Vivaldi’s Recorder Concerto in C Major 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.  |
| 5:58p | Radiohead Releases 18 Hours of Demos from OK Computer for a Limited Time–After Hackers Try to Hold Them for Ransom
This strategy will not work in most ransomware attacks—if your personal data is stolen, releasing all of it to the public for a small fee might diffuse the blackmailer’s bomb, but your problems will only have just begun. But for Radiohead, releasing 18 hours of demo material from minidisks recorded between 1995 and 1998, during the making of their landmark OK Computer, turned out to be just the thing. For a limited time, 18 days from the announcement, you can buy all 18 hours of that material on Bandcamp for the low price of £18 (about $23), with all proceeds benefiting the climate change advocacy group Extinction Rebellion. The music can also be streamed for free (click on the player above) during that time. The minidisk archive was stolen from Thom Yorke by a hacker who demanded $150,000 or threatened to release them. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood announced the theft on Twitter and Facebook. "We got hacked last week—someone stole Thom's minidisk archive from around the time of OK Computer…. For £18 you can find out if we should have paid that ransom.” He prefaced the demos with some modest commentary: “Never intended for public consumption (though some clips did reach the cassette in the OK Computer reissue) it's only tangentially interesting. And very, very long. Not a phone download. Rainy out, isn’t it though?" Although bands release demo material all the time—or their record companies do, at least—few go out of their way to talk up alternate takes, sketches, skeletal early versions, and rejected songs. But fan communities often treat such material as akin to finding lost ancient literary sources. Witness the 65-page document titled OK Minidisc already published online, a detailed analysis of the demos by a group from online Radiohead fandom that will likely now forever feature in the band’s accumulated lore. The demo collection, simply called MINIDISCS [HACKED], will give Radiohead scholars lay and professional a wealth of evidence to draw on for decades—insights into their production process and the evolution of Thom Yorke’s writing. (The first track is an early version of OK Computer’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” with mopey, self-pitying lyrics that might have fit better on the band’s debut album). As a listening experience, sitting through 18 hours of outtakes may be “only tangentially interesting” and certainly “very, very long.” But when it comes to an album as widely and deeply worshipped as OK Computer, this material might as well be Dead Sea Scrolls. Surely the minidisk archive’s kidnapper(s) counted on the massive profile of the 1997 album when they named their price, but they didn’t know quite who they were dealing with. Contribute to climate action and become an independent Ok Computer yourself by purchasing and downloading (with a solid broadband connection) all 18 hours of the MINIDISCS [HACKED] collection at Bandcamp. Or stream it all above. Related Content: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endearing Advice About Boys (And Much More) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Radiohead Releases 18 Hours of Demos from OK Computer for a Limited Time–After Hackers Try to Hold Them for Ransom 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. |
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