Lifestyle
Can you make music from Joshua trees — or is that wild science? Yes.
Artist Scott Kildall waves his microcontroller over a Joshua tree, recording wavelengths of light that are not perceptible by humans.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
The artist Scott Kildall is waving his hand over the contours of a Joshua tree, just inches from its spiky green, bayonet-like leaves.
“If I get too close to it, it will prick me and draw blood,” he says. “And it’s done that before.”
In his palm, he has a microcontroller — just about the size of a credit card. It’s got a few wires sticking out, and an infrared sensor, which picks up wavelengths of light just beyond what the human eye can perceive.
“It’s kind of like magic,” Kildall says. “And the magic is just revealing something that’s right beyond our levels of perception.”
The magic is part of Kildall’s latest sound installation — a work he calls Infrared Reflections. He developed the piece as an artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park this spring, and it transforms near-infrared light bouncing off the iconic scraggly yuccas into a shimmering mosaic of otherworldly music — essentially turning the Joshua tree into an instrument.
Kildall is neither a computer scientist nor a musician, though he does play the ukulele. This artwork relies on both disciplines, as Kildall needs to build sensors, route their data to a computer, process and smooth that data, and convert it all into something beautiful for the ear.
“With art and technology, you have to constantly think about wearing multiple hats. Are you an IT person? Are you an artist? And you have to be able to troubleshoot on the fly,” he says.
The installation relies on a fundamental interplay between the sun and the Joshua tree. When sunlight hits the plant, cells in its healthy leaves soak up lots of red and blue light, and reflect back most of the green – which is why the clusters of piercing leaves at the end of the Joshua tree’s branches appear green to the human eye. (It’s also why most plants on Earth appear green to us.)
Spiky Joshua trees grow in Arthur B. Ripley Desert Woodland State Park, north of Los Angeles.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
But other types of light rain down on the Joshua tree too, including wavelengths we can’t see, like near-infrared light. The plant’s shaggy, grayish-brown bark doesn’t reflect much of that infrared light, but its healthy leaves — packed with compounds like water, carbohydrates and defense chemicals — reflect much more. And that’s exactly what Kildall sees as he passes his sensor from the yucca’s dead bark to its green, leafy buds.
“Beyond our perceptions lies a whole realm of invisible data,” he explains. “And so what I do is I find some sort of invisible phenomena such as water quality or air quality or infrared light reflection, and then map that data into sounds, so that we can hear that data.”
That technique is known as sonification, and Kildall has previously designed installations that sonify water flow in trees, or tap into the electrical signals of mushrooms. Infrared Reflections follows in that vein, but it’s much more site-specific — it’s meant to be played on the Joshua tree, which is endemic to the Mojave Desert.
Kildall needs a speaker and a bag of equipment on site to make his music.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
With that in mind, earlier today Kildall lugged his laptop, a box of electronics and a giant speaker into a field full of Joshua trees at the Arthur B. Ripley Desert Woodland State Park, north of Los Angeles.
Gusts of wind scream through the high desert here, and Kildall eyes individual Joshua trees with the eagerness of a kid at Guitar Center, ready to pick out an axe.
“I see one Joshua tree that’s about a hundred feet away that is moving a little bit in the wind and has multiple leafy sections and bark sections,” he says. “And that one really looks like it is asking to be sonified.”
Kildall’s speaker sits next to several Joshua trees.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
After a short walk, Kildall sets down the speaker and begins fiddling with his laptop. It’s perched on a camp chair, in direct sun, and refuses to boot up — a reminder, Kildall says, of how preparing for a field installation is like planning a NASA space mission (though with non-lethal stakes.)
“You want to reduce the number of points of failure. And so with the system I have, I have backup electronics, I only have one laptop. So that’s the only point of failure that I’m really worried about.”
But not to fear. The machine soon boots up, along with a local Wi-Fi network — which connects the small infrared sensor to the computer — and Kildall is ready to rock.
A view of Joshua trees at Arthur B. Ripley Desert Woodland State Park.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
Here’s the same landscape viewed through a thermal infrared camera. It captures a different part of the infrared spectrum from what Kildall is picking up with his sensor, but gives a sense of how these plants appear differently when viewed at different wavelengths of light.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
As he caresses the air just above the tree, the yowling of a theremin rises and falls from the speaker, lending an eerie soundtrack to the already alien-looking landscape. A few hikers walk by, but seem unphased by the guy performing reiki on a Joshua tree. The high desert is known for its eccentrics, after all.
Kildall has designed three more “instruments” to be played like this, along with the theremin sound.
His favorite combines the drone of a theremin with spiraling arpeggios.
Another sounds more like haunting electric guitars, reverberating in a cathedral.
The final sound is more pared-back and simple — resembling a kid plinking at the piano.
“In some ways, it feels a little bit more direct and accessible because we all kind of understand how to press notes randomly on the piano,” Kildall explains. “And as I move the sensor over these sort of leafy spots in the sun, those will produce a higher pitch on the piano.”
As he slides the sensor further down the branch, to the bark, the notes get lower and lower, moving deeper into the bass clef.
Kildall holds his device a few inches above a spiky Joshua tree to avoid getting pricked.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
It’s a fascinating way to make music. The infrared-sensing technology at the heart of the work also happens to be something scientists have employed for decades.
“From our aircraft or satellites, we use it to separate the living vegetation from the dead vegetation,” says Greg Asner of Arizona State University in Hawaii. “That’s very important in a grassland — is the grassland dry and ready to go up in smoke in a fire, or is it wet and green and living? And so we can translate that to fire fuel load for grasslands.”
Joshua trees viewed through a thermal infrared camera.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
Asner has also soared above the Amazon basin, measuring infrared signals from a plane — which allows him to tease out individual tree species, based on the fingerprints of infrared light that bounce off the trees.
“When I fly over a tropical rainforest with the infrared sensors, the maps literally are like Willy-Wonka-candy-store-style variation. They are amazing to look at,” he says.
“So there’s this enormous diversity of plants when you look at them in infrared light. And unfortunately, a lot of people just see them as green because that’s all we can see with our limited eyesight. There’s much more variety out there. And it’s a very beautiful world when you look at it in the infrared.”
Asner says he’s thrilled to see artists now experimenting with the same technology.
Left: A close up view of a Joshua tree. Right: A thermal infrared view of Kildall holding his device in front of a Joshua tree.
Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
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Carlos Jaramillo for NPR
“Our studies for decades now have been stuck in the halls of science. And this will help translate what we have come to understand, utilize, love as scientists — it’s going to translate it to a much wider audience.”
Kildall says, in some sense, that’s his goal.
“One of the things I like to do is to engage people with nature and issues of climate change and issues of ecology through means other than science articles,” he says. “Science articles are great. I read them all the time. However, they don’t engage people on a more visceral storytelling level, as artwork does.”
And though this installation was conceived and developed with the Joshua tree at its center, it could work with the infrared reflections of other plants, if Kildall calibrates his code — which is a good thing, since Kildall calls San Francisco home.
“There aren’t any Joshua trees in San Francisco, so I might have to go to Golden Gate Park and see what I come up with.”
Lifestyle
Nature needs a little help in the inventive Pixar movie ‘Hoppers’ : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Piper Curda as Mabel in Hoppers.
Disney
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Disney
In Disney and Pixar’s delightful new film Hoppers, a young woman (Piper Curda) learns a beloved glade is under threat from the town’s slimy mayor (Jon Hamm). But luckily, she discovers that her college professor has developed technology that can let her live as one of the critters she loves – by allowing her mind to “hop” into an animatronic beaver. And it just might just allow her to help save the glade from serious risk of destruction.
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Kim Kardashian
never denied rare hermés bag for north west …
It Never Happened!!!
Published
Kim Kardashian is not the celebrity who got turned away trying to buy a rare Hermès bag for her daughter, despite a viral claim suggesting otherwise … TMZ has learned.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … the story circulating online that Kim once attempted to purchase a coveted Mini Kelly bag for her daughter North West and was rejected simply never happened.
We’re told Kim has maintained a very friendly relationship with the luxury brand for years but not through the channels described in the report.
According to our sources, Kim has a very friendly relationship with the brand and has only used the same contact for over ten years in Paris and not the press office.
The sources also shut down the central claim behind the rumor telling us Kim did not request a bag for North, nor did she visit any Hermes store recently or get turned down.
We’re told those close to the situation are particularly bothered by the story because it involves a child. One source said, “They find it very disturbing that anyone would make up stories about a child for clicks.”
The claim appears in journalist Amy Odell’s “Back Row” newsletter, which cited a former employee of the Beverly Hills Hermès boutique who alleged Kim and Kanye West once tried to purchase a black Mini Kelly bag for North but were denied.
The ultra-rare alligator Mini Kelly is one of the most coveted Hermès bags on the market and can fetch more than $75,000 on resale.
In 2013, historian Rhae Lynn Barnes was researching blackface in America when she encountered a stumbling block at the Library of Congress: Various primary sources on the subject were listed as “missing on shelf.”
Barnes spoke to one of the librarians, and explained that she was writing a history of minstrel shows and white supremacy. Barnes says the librarian admitted that, in 1987, she had personally hidden some of these books because she feared the material would be used by the Ku Klux Klan.
“Once [the librarian] understood the research I was doing … a few hours later, she came up with a cart packed to the brim with all of the material that I had been hoping to see,” Barnes says.
In her new book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment, Barnes traces the origin of minstrel shows, performances in which an actor portrays an exaggerated and racist depiction of Black, often formerly enslaved, people.
Barnes says minstrel became so popular in the 1800s that the stars began publishing “step-by-step guides” explaining how amateurs could create their own shows. By the end of the century, amateur minstrel performances became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the U.S. Many groups, including fraternal orders, PTAs, police and firemen’s associations and soldiers on military bases, put on their own shows.
During the Great Depression, Barnes notes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration sought to “preserve American heritage” by promoting blackface. As part of the effort, she says, the government distributed lists of “top minstrel plays that they recommended to schools, to local charities, to colleges.” Roosevelt was such a fan of minstrel shows that he co-wrote a script, to be performed by children with polio.
Barnes credits the civil rights era and especially mothers with helping de-popularize blackface in the 1970s, first in schools and then in the larger culture. “They successfully get the shows out of school curriculum piece by piece. And by 1970, most of these publishing houses are going under because of the incredible work of Black and white mothers who worked with them,” she says.
Interview highlights
Stein’s makeup company created multiple shades of blackface for performers in amateur minstrel shows.
WW Norton
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WW Norton
On commercial blackface makeup that replaced shoe polish and burnt cork
It’s an entire commercial empire. So Stein’s makeup was one of the largest. They were a theatrical makeup company. And you’ll actually find today when you go into Halloween stores that a lot of these blackface makeup companies still exist today for Halloween costume makeup and also for clown makeup. …
Burnt cork was incredibly difficult to get off of your face. You’re essentially taking fire ash and then mixing it with shoe polish or some sort of shiny ingredients, and so it was incredibly hard to get it off. So when Stein and these other cosmetic companies begin to create the tubes … that did come in 29 colors and you could pick which bizarre racial calculus you wanted to represent, they would come off with cold cream or makeup remover and that was one of their selling points — now it’s easy to take off.
On Stephen Foster‘s songs for minstrel shows, like “Oh Susannah!”
What’s interesting about those songs is they are romanticizing the relationship between an enslaved person and their enslaver. And so when we have commentary, even from the president now, who recently said slavery wasn’t so bad, well, slavery was horrific, but if you were raised on a diet of Stephen Foster music, and going to minstrel shows, you can somewhat understand how somebody at the time could easily be led to believe that slavery was a grand old party because that’s what it was supposed to be telling you. It’s pro-slavery propaganda.
On the slogan “Make America Great Again” originating from early 20th-century minstrel shows
“Make America Great Again” or “This Is Our Country” or “Take Back Our Country” are all slogans and songs that were very common in minstrel shows. And so a lot of minstrel shows reinterpreted slavery in a fantastical way, that the Civil War ended and that in these minstrel shows there was Black rule and that everything America held dear was desecrated. And so this [blackface] “Zip” character … sometimes he’s named “Rastus” — he has different names that he goes by — runs for office, political office, becomes president, and he’s the first Black president and the first thing he does is he takes away America’s guns. Sound familiar? And so a lot of these terms that you could perhaps say [are] dog whistles in white of supremacy are taken line for line from these minstrel shows.
On not censoring this history
Historians right now are in somewhat of a culture war in that it is our patriotic duty as American citizens and as patriots to help make sure that the American public has access to our history in all of its complexity. And the truth is that you can’t understand the victories and the triumphs without understanding how far Americans had to push. And I think that’s especially true of blackface. When we didn’t adequately understand how long blackface was a mainstay in American culture. Because many historians believe that it had died out by 1900, when in fact it only accelerates and increases up through the 1970s. And so if you just say, “Oh, it just died out. It was no longer in fashion,” then what you’re losing is the incredible, dangerous, and brave work of thousands of Black and white mothers across the United States in the 1950s and the 1960s, of students who stood up during Jim Crow America and said, “This is not OK. We are humans. We deserve dignity. And we want you to understand our history.” …
I think these are the hard conversations Americans actually want to have. And I think America is completely ready for those hard conversations and moving forward.
Anna Bauman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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