learnodes.com » art

Learn Node: Visualizing Cultures and Perry Landing in Japan 1854

Judy Breck — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:47:59 +0000

Through a project called Visualizing Cultures, launched in 2002, MIT faculty explore, as the project link describes:

. . . the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto largely inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be.)

The 2008 course centered on this project is summarized:

Using new technologies, Visualizing Cultures weds images and commentary to illuminate social and cultural history in innovative ways. A narrative “Core Exhibit” not only gives the historical significance of the images, but also addresses issues such as genre and medium. Each unit comes with a comprehensive curriculum and carefully annotated digital archive of images from public and private sources.

The VC course is a superb learn node because it connects richly to closely related webpages that offer high quality knowledge substance. An example of a wonderful part of this VC network is a 2004 MIT project: Black Ships & Samurai: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan (1853-1854). To round out this learn node with something for those who prefer text to pictures, a detailed historical essay on Perry’s Japan arrival can be found in Fordham University’s Modern History SourceBook: Commodore Matthew Perry: When We Landed in Japan, 1854.

Learn node: Geometry of musical chords

Judy Breck — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:30:52 +0000

” Coooool site. I never thought of music this way…” wrote Brian, a gifted, highly trained musician, when he sent me links that sparked this learn node from the work at Princeton by Dmitri Tymoczko. The illustration to the right is 2 frames from a Tymoczko animation of chords in four-dimensional space.
An article in Science about The Geometry of Musical Chords begins with this abstract:

A musical chord can be represented as a point in a geometrical space called an orbifold. Line segments represent mappings from the notes of one chord to those of another. Composers in a wide range of styles have exploited the non-Euclidean geometry of these spaces, typically by using short line segments between structurally similar chords. Such line segments exist only when chords are nearly symmetrical under translation, reflection, or permutation. Paradigmatically consonant and dissonant chords possess different near-symmetries and suggest different musical uses.

The article is by Dmitri Tymoczko who illustrates ChordGeometries on animations with sounds on his Web pages at Princeton University. He invites you to: “Watch as Chopin moves around in a circle, a Mobius strip, and in four-dimensional space! Or try Deep Purple on a Mobius strip!”

For some background to the topic, an introduction to Form in Music by Catherine Schmidt-Jones is available in Rice University’s Connexions. Anthony Brandt, also in Connexions, gives an overview of Musical Form, with examples from Schumann, Bach, Boulez, and Beethoven.

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Learn node: Ragtime music, Scott Joplin and Sedalia, Missouri

Judy Breck — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:38:00 +0000

Here as this learn node begins are links to two of the many superb music modules on Connexions by Catherine Schmidt-Jones:
One is about Ragtime.
The other is about the great Ragtime artist Scott Joplin.

Scott Joplin and Ragtime are booming at The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation, where the biography page about Scott Joplin includes the piano-player illustration shown here. Moving on through this virtual Ragtime online network, an invitation to the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival (every June) takes us to Sedalia, Missouri.
On a visit to Sedalia’s Web site for a look at its music history, it is easy to get sidetracked into its rich railroad history, as this Katy engine image from the Sedalia site recalls. It seems certain Scott Joplin often passed through the now restored Katy Depot — and perhaps there was a piano in the waiting room where ragtime was played in his hey day.

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Learn node: Search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Judy Breck — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:03:42 +0000

This learn node is about one elusive bird: The Big Woods Conservation Partnership is on the hunt to spot more Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. You can follow the search or join it to attempt your own sightings by clicking here where you will learn about the search and how you can spot the difference between ivory-billed and pileated woodpeckers. Long thought to have gone extinct, the Ivory-billed woodpecker seems only to have gone into hiding. The present hunt’s many aspects includes this recent story of attempting spotings from a helicopter: Onward and Upward in the Search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The illustration show in this post is by John James Audubon, who drew these biggest woodpeckers of North America in the 19th century when they were plentiful. You will be successful in hunting this beautiful bird in New York City in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where a painting by Joseph Barthomew Kidd, based on Audubon’s drawing hangs in the American Wing.

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Learn node Preserving World War I memories in voices and art

Judy Breck — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:41:02 +0000

In this history learn node, the World War I soldier shown is my grandfather Clarence L. North (1884-1969). In his obituary, which is posted on my family website, his role in assisting General John Pershing is recorded. Grandpa would have loved the Internet. He was a very innovative guy: as the obituary records, he invented cinder-brick! By posting his story here, I am putting his memory a bit into recorded history. Perhaps future scholars of Pershing’s war management and/or the history of brick manufacturing will add Grandpa in as a footnote somewhere, citing the obituary. By posting Grandpa here, I have created an online node where one can learn his story in the vast Internet network.

Biography of people alive today is being preserved with new, robust digital methods. A good place to find out examples of this kind of preservation is the Library of Congress Blog, where for example the new recording of people recalling history is described in this post: Library Preserves Voice of Last Living World War I Veteran.

Remembering World War I in a different way are memorial structures and spaces. These are studied in The Open University’s Arts and History course on the Commemoration of War, which includes this page on The Royal Artillery Memorial.

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Learn node:Campfire Stories with George Catlin

Judy Breck — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:56:03 +0000

This learn node from American history begins where the Smithsonian American Art Museum hosts the website where you can:

“Take a virtual journey to meet American Indians of the 1830s with artist, ethnologist, and showman George Catlin. This site compiles paintings, historical documents, and commentary from contemporary experts so you can explore the intersections of two cultures, both in Catlin’s time and today.”

The museum also welcomes visitors to a George Catlin Indian Gallery where 34 of his paintings can be studied individually. As an example of following history and art through the fenceless trail of the open Internet:

- Catlin’s painting of Pipestone Quarry leads us to locate a National Parks Website about that famous Minnesota location.
- The Pipestone County Museum provides very local and detailed memory of the area’s history.
- And the famed poem The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow echoes in our thoughts:

On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.

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