Pink Floyd Streaming Free Classic Concert Films, Starting with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Performance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

in Music | April 20th, 2020

If you’re feel­ing a lit­tle stressed today—maybe a lot stressed today, maybe severe­ly-rationing-your-social-media stressed—it might do you some good to get com­fort­ably numb. And unless the laws of your local­i­ty pre­vent it, you can reach a safe state of bliss at home with his­toric live con­cert films from Pink Floyd. “Fol­low­ing the lead of Radio­head and Metal­li­ca and launch­ing a YouTube con­cert series,” notes Con­se­quence of Sound, “the band will release unseen, rare, or archived mate­r­i­al from their vault and stream it for free” over the next few weeks.

It may or may not be nec­es­sary to qual­i­fy that Pink Floyd these days con­sists of only two peo­ple, David Gilmour and drum­mer Nick Mason, key­boardist Richard Wright hav­ing passed away in 2008 and bassist/rock opera impre­sario Roger Waters hav­ing stormed off to make his own records in 1985, nev­er to return. Per­haps only coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the first film the band has released is 1994’s Pulse, a 22-song set from the Divi­sion Bell tour, the sec­ond stu­dio album made with­out Waters. But it’s got quite a lot to rec­om­mend it despite his absence.

“Filmed at London’s now-defunct Earls Court dur­ing the band’s record-break­ing 14-night res­i­den­cy,” this show is notable par­tic­u­lar­ly for “the inclu­sion of the first-ever film record­ing of Pink Floyd play­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in full.” The 1972 album’s sar­don­ic rumi­na­tions on the banal­i­ty of mod­ern life in an econ­o­my that can­not stop its con­stant grind might strike us as par­tic­u­lar­ly grim while we’re fac­ing such huge col­lec­tive loss­es of life and liveli­hood. But as always, the band knows how to make its med­i­cine go down with some sweet eye and ear can­dy.

Mixed in 5.1 sur­round sound and dig­i­tal­ly re-mas­tered by James Guthrie, Pulse also includes some of orig­i­nal screen films used for the 1970s con­cert per­for­mances of The Dark Side of the Moon (which were nev­er filmed) as well as the visu­al com­po­nents for the piece which were remade for the 1994 tour.

On their Face­book page, the band promis­es more “inter­est­ing and divert­ing images, music and video to help us all get through this”—as best as we can, in any case. And if you run out of Pink Floyd to help you get through a tough time of day, head over to see anoth­er band bring­ing blues-based psych-rock, Amer­i­can style, to the shut-in mass­es this spring. The Grate­ful Dead have their own week­ly stream­ing series of full con­cert films. Of the first con­cert post­ed, they write, “Its excel­lence is indis­putable and is some­thing that we think pret­ty much every­one will enjoy in the absence of actu­al­ly being able to see live con­certs.”

Take an hour or two to relax with some clas­sic live shows from clas­sic bands of yore, and maybe make a list of all the cur­rent bands you want to go out and sup­port as soon as you get out of quar­an­tine. Some­thing tells me after all this livestream­ing, there’ll be waves of renewed appre­ci­a­tion for live music. Good­ness knows, musi­cians every­where will need it.

Vis­it the Pink Floyd Youtube chan­nel for more lives streams in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch the First of an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

Dead & Com­pa­ny Announces Couch Tour, Let­ting You Stream Free Con­certs at Home

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

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

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Netflix Makes Documentaries Free to Stream: Design, Politics, Sports, Sir David Attenborough & More

in Education, Film | April 20th, 2020

Many of us kept indoors by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for days — or rather weeks, or per­haps months — have been imbued with a new sense of won­der about our world. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’re won­der­ing what’s going on in it. At the same time as the glob­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles to deter­mine the nature of the new and still poor­ly under­stood virus tak­ing lives and immo­bi­liz­ing economies, we hear dig­i­tal word of con­se­quent phe­nom­e­na also pre­vi­ous­ly unknown in our life­times: wild ani­mals, for instance, mak­ing their way into the streets of major cities. We live, it turns out, in a stranger, more mys­te­ri­ous real­i­ty than we’d imag­ined. For­tu­nate­ly, the inter­net makes it pos­si­ble for us to start get­ting a grip on that real­i­ty here in our homes, not least through free stream­ing Net­flix doc­u­men­taries.

“In the Before Times, Net­flix let teach­ers stream their pro­gram­ming in the class­room,” writes Jason Kot­tke. With schools out of ses­sion, “Net­flix has decid­ed to put some of their edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming on YouTube for free (full playlist here). For instance, they’ve put all 8 episodes of David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et online in their entire­ty.”

Released just last year, that Net­flix debut of the high­ly respect­ed nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and broad­cast­er cov­ers in great visu­al detail — and, need­less to say, with high­ly evoca­tive nar­ra­tion — every­where from forests and deserts to jun­gles and high seas. If as a start­ing point that all seems a bit epic, as they say, Net­flix has also made free sin­gle-serv­ing doc­u­men­tary shorts on sub­jects like the stock mar­ket, the excla­ma­tion point, and crick­et (the British Empire sport, not the insect).

Those come from the series Explained, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Net­flix and Vox, a site known for its brief “explain­er” videos on cul­ture, sci­ence, and cur­rent events — one of which, on the coro­n­avirus itself, we fea­tured last month here on Open Cul­ture. Net­flix has also made free to stream on Youtube oth­er series like Abstract, which looks at the art of design (and whose debut we fea­tured here a few years ago), and Babies, a five-part jour­ney into the life of the human infant. If you pre­fer a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary expe­ri­ence to a dai­ly view or a binge-watch, you’ll also find on the playlist Ava DuVer­nay’s 13th, Rachel Lears’ Knock Down the House, and Jeff Orlowski’s Chas­ing Coral. When the orders of “stay home” and “social-dis­tance” come to an end, many of us will feel a stronger desire to explore and learn about the world than ever before — in part because of how much of the time indoors we’ve spent stok­ing our curios­i­ty with doc­u­men­taries like these. Access the playlist of doc­u­men­taries here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

200 Free Doc­u­men­taries: A Super Rich List of Fine­ly-Craft­ed Doc­u­men­taries on the Web

Cours­era Makes Cours­es & Cer­tifi­cates Free Dur­ing Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine: Take Cours­es in Psy­chol­o­gy, Music, Well­ness, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment & More Online

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

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.

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Quarantine Cooking: 13 Professional Chefs Cook Pasta at Home with the Most Basic Ingredients Available

in Food & Drink | April 20th, 2020

Bon Appétit takes you to the homes of 13 pro­fes­sion­al chefs, each cook­ing pas­ta with what­ev­er they hap­pen to have on hand. In the next half hour, you may pick up a few handy tips.

Chefs fea­tured include: Claire Saf­fitz, Brad Leone, Chris Moroc­co, Gaby Melian, Andy Baraghani, Sohla El-Wayl­ly, Amiel Stanek, Alex Delany, Car­la Lal­li Music, Priya Krish­na, Rick Mar­tinez, Christi­na Chaey and Mol­ly Baz.

via Mefi

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

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Banksy Debuts His COVID-19 Art Project: Good to See That He Has TP at Home

in Art | April 20th, 2020

“Who is Banksy?” asked an Art­net roundup of pos­si­ble sus­pects in 2016. One might well respond, “who cares?”—a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion Artnet’s Hen­ri Neuen­dorf answers. At least a few years ago, before some oth­er things got seri­ous­ly out of hand, the iden­ti­ty of the noto­ri­ous gueril­la street artist turned inter­na­tion­al man of mys­tery was “an obses­sion that seems to have gripped the world.”

One answer, assessed by cura­tor and street art expert Car­lo McCormick, was arrived at through the use of geo­graph­ic pro­fil­ing, a “sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis tech­nique used in crim­i­nol­o­gy to locate repeat offend­ers.” McCormick rates its con­clu­sion as prob­a­ble, but also finds it “scary” to bend such meth­ods to such ends, an anx­i­ety res­o­nant with con­cerns over sur­veil­lance tech used to track COVID-19 vec­tors.

Anoth­er ques­tion is whether it mat­ters who Banksy is. “The improb­a­bly ornate fic­tion is always going to be more com­pelling than the sim­ple mun­dane truth.” Do we real­ly need to ruin the illu­sion? If those who want to remain anony­mous can be tracked with algorithms—while the rest of us vol­un­teer our per­son­al data dai­ly in a cul­ture of com­pet­i­tive oversharing—is there any room left for pri­va­cy? Now that we’re trapped inside for days on end with fam­i­lies, room­mates, part­ners, pets, maybe our only per­son­al space is in the loo (where we’re still inclined to bring our phones).

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

. . My wife hates it when I work from home.

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on

Banksy’s lat­est work, post­ed on Insta­gram, plays with all of these themes and shows he doesn’t have a prob­lem defac­ing his own prop­er­ty, and shar­ing an inti­mate por­trait with his mil­lions of fol­low­ers. Hell, it’s almost a self­ie, minus the preen­ing, duck-faced self.

As Daria Harp­er writes at Art­sy:

The noto­ri­ous­ly elu­sive street artist Banksy debuted his lat­est work in a rather pecu­liar place: his bath­room. With much of the world on lock­down due to the COVID-19 cri­sis, artists like Banksy have been forced to get inno­v­a­tive with their artis­tic prac­tices. The artist post­ed pho­tos of the new art­work on his Insta­gram page yes­ter­day with the cap­tion: “My wife hates it when I work from home.”

Is this real­ly Banksy work­ing from home? (“One par­tic­u­lar­ly baf­fled com­menter,” notes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “wrote: ‘You are one of the world’s most famous artists… and THAT’S YOUR shit­ty lit­tle BATHROOM????’”)

Is there real­ly a Mrs. Banksy? Lit­tle Banksies run­ning around the yard, wear­ing coro­n­avirus face­masks and hood­ies? Is he on the verge of out­ing him­self? At least we know he’s still got toi­let paper.

Maybe you find this tan­ta­liz­ing win­dow on the artist’s inner sanc­tum cred­i­ble evi­dence of his mun­dane real life. Maybe the sig­na­ture rats destroy­ing his crap­per are his cab­in-fever dream. Or maybe, as usu­al, he’s just tak­ing the piss with this cre­ative instal­la­tion. We await com­ment from Mrs. Banksy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Break­down of the Artist’s Self-Shred­ding Paint­ing

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

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Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Distancing in Quarantine

in Music | April 18th, 2020

Ladies and gen­tle­man, the great­est rock n roll band in the world, the Rolling Stones. Live, in quar­an­tine, at home, per­form­ing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Any the­o­ries on what’s the sto­ry with Char­lie’s drum kit? And why they have red in their homes? Enjoy.

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:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: From Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

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Neil Finn Sings a Lovely Version of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Live from Home

in Music | April 18th, 2020

I need­ed a lift today. This did the trick. Neil Finn–you know him from Crowd­ed House and Split Enz–plays a beau­ti­ful acoustic ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

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Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Releases Free Backgrounds for Virtual Meetings: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Art, Film | April 17th, 2020

To a degree that sur­pass­es any oth­er stu­dio in ani­ma­tion his­to­ry, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has cre­at­ed a real­i­ty of its own. All of its fans around the world appre­ci­ate the artistry of its films, direct­ed by such lumi­nar­ies of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion as Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta, and many appre­ci­ate it so fer­vent­ly that they’d pre­fer to occu­py any of Ghi­b­li’s worlds to this one. The stu­dio has respond­ed to their desires by not just con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce motion pic­tures — the “retired” Miyaza­ki is now at work on his lat­est, How Do You Live? — but by autho­riz­ing a wide and ever-chang­ing range of mer­chan­dise, and even build­ing a muse­um out­side Tokyo and a theme park out­side Nagoya.

Alas, like most muse­ums, Ghi­b­li’s is tem­porar­i­ly closed. Nei­ther the Ghi­b­li theme park nor How Do You Live? will open any time soon, and even if they could open today, it would hard­ly be an oppor­tune time to do so. With so few of us any­where able to go to movie the­aters, let alone theme parks (though we can now, at long last, stream Ghi­b­li movies online), we have to enter the realm of Ghi­b­li in a dig­i­tal fash­ion.

To make this a bit more pos­si­ble, the stu­dio has offi­cial­ly released a set of eight back­grounds, suit­able for use as back­drops on Zoom or oth­er video-con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tions. You’ll find them all at Ghi­b­li’s web site: in Japan­ese only, true to form, but even non-Japan­ese speak­ers can eas­i­ly click and save the images. (For instruc­tions on how to set one as your back­ground, see our pre­vi­ous post on the sub­ject.)

Drawn from the sweep of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s his­to­ry, from Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind to Cas­tle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, Ponyo, Arri­et­ty, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, the back­drops show the wide aes­thet­ic range of its work. Some of them depict mem­o­rable set­tings from these films (any Ghi­b­li fan will know exact­ly where you “are” the moment you con­nect) but oth­ers cap­ture a char­ac­ter, an icon, or an atmos­phere.

Whichev­er Ghi­b­li back­ground you pick, it will remind your inter­locu­tors of the for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion exer­cised by each and every one of the stu­dio’s films, whether its char­ac­ters soar across the sky, live beneath the sea, or plunge into an unseen under­world — do any­thing, essen­tial­ly, but stay at home mak­ing calls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

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

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Cus­tomize Your Zoom Vir­tu­al Back­ground with Free Works of Art

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.

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Watch Samuel Beckett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

in Film, Literature | April 17th, 2020

Samuel Beck­ett long had a fond­ness for Berlin, from his first trip in the late 1920s–when he fell in love with his cousin while vis­it­ing his uncle on his mom’s side–to his long­time rela­tion­ship with his Ger­man trans­la­tor Eri­ka Tophoven and with the Schiller The­ater, which pro­duced many of his plays.

The above footage shows the 63-year old Beck­ett walk­ing the streets of Berlin, ask­ing for direc­tions, or read­ing the dai­ly paper at a cafe. At one point he is seen walk­ing with a woman (pos­si­bly Tophoven?).

Why was this film shot? It has the feel­ing of sur­veil­lance footage, but the more log­i­cal expla­na­tion is that it was b‑roll for some news fea­ture. Beck­ett was award­ed the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1969, so that might be the rea­son.

How­ev­er, the illog­i­cal but *best* rea­son is that Beck­ett was film­ing the title sequence for his detec­tive show pilot, named, of course, Beck­ett. YouTube user oobleck­boy cre­at­ed this hilar­i­ous rework a few years ago, which we told you about then. But it’s worth anoth­er look, sure­ly.

On a more seri­ous note, Beck­et­t’s main tour of Berlin came long before his jour­ney as a play­wright. Self-taught in the lan­guage and inter­est­ed in the cul­ture, he trav­eled to Berlin right after the 1936 Olympic Games and stayed through 1937. He had lost his job in Dublin, and he had fall­en out with James Joyce, so he was avoid­ing Paris. So Beck­ett trav­eled to Berlin to devour the arts. He knew the dan­gers of the ris­ing Nazi threat and took it seri­ous­ly. Instead he want­ed to see the cul­ture before it dis­ap­peared. (And it would, on one hand through the Nazis and their cam­paign against “degen­er­ate art.” On the oth­er, from the Allies bomb­ing dur­ing the war.) Beck­ett spent count­less hours in muse­ums. He attend­ed operas. He got so flu­ent in the lan­guage he could read Schopen­hauer (for the style, not the con­tent, appar­ent­ly).

But it was such a pri­vate trip that his Ger­man friends from the ‘60s nev­er knew of it. He did not men­tion it to them. The only rea­son we know is because in 1989, his nephew dis­cov­ered his diary from that time–the only diary Beck­ett ever kept–and after years of it being avail­able only to researchers, it was pub­lished in 2011. (Or rather, selec­tions of the 120,000 word jour­nal, were pub­lished.)

Last­ly, it was on one of those Berlin muse­um trips where he saw the paint­ing Two Men Con­tem­plat­ing the Moon by Cas­par David Friedrich. The image would stick in his mind until many years lat­er when it would influ­ence the set design for his most famous play, Wait­ing for Godot. (A coun­try road. A tree. Evening.) You can see the paint­ing here.

via Ubu Web

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

When Robin Williams & Steve Mar­tin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing For Godot (1988)

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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How to Paint Water Lilies Like Monet in 14 Minutes

in Art, Travel | April 17th, 2020

Some of us are using this peri­od of self-iso­la­tion to make sour­dough.

Oth­ers are learn­ing to play an instru­ment or ini­ti­at­ing a dai­ly yoga prac­tice.

For those con­sid­er­ing tak­ing up paint­ing, David Dun­lop’s Emmy-Award win­ning PBS series Land­scapes Through Time offers an excel­lent alter­na­tive (or sup­ple­ment) to the well-estab­lished joys of cult fig­ure Bob Ross, the eter­nal king of tele­vi­sion art instruc­tion.

Like Ross, Dun­lop has a mel­low onscreen tem­pera­ment that pairs beau­ti­ful­ly with the enchant­i­ng set­ting of Claude Monet’s famous water gar­den, above.

(Those who’ve vis­it­ed Monet’s house and gar­den at Giverny will envy him his tourist-free access to the site. Even those with no inten­tion of pick­ing up a brush should find it restora­tive to spend time gaz­ing at the same love­ly view that Dun­lop, like Mon­et before him, looks at through a delib­er­ate­ly Impres­sion­is­tic squint.)

He packs a lot of art appre­ci­a­tion into 14 eas­i­ly digest­ed min­utes, touch­ing on art his­to­ry, brush tech­nique, com­po­si­tion, use of light, and, in par­tic­u­lar, col­or the­o­ry.

When the muse­ums reopen, you may find this crash course has enhanced your enjoy­ment, espe­cial­ly as per­tains to can­vas­es by Mon­et and his fel­low Impres­sion­ists.

For those pur­su­ing the hands-on oil paint­ing expe­ri­ence, Dun­lop pro­vides a sup­ply list of col­ors, all read­i­ly avail­able:

Cobalt Blue

Cad­mi­um Yel­low

Alizarin Crim­son

Ultra­ma­rine

Bril­liant Rose

Emer­ald Green

Hooker’s Green

Tita­ni­um White

His brush­es and paper appear to be gar­den vari­ety, and his approach, like Ross’, is fast and loose.

Those who favor a less brazen approach may feel more at home with his water­col­or paint­ing demon­stra­tion in Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Vic­toire in Provence, France, below.

There are more excerpts and instruc­tion on Dunlop’s YouTube chan­nel. For those wish­ing to take it to the next lev­el, Dun­lop is teach­ing a series of inter­ac­tive stu­dio demon­stra­tion class­es via Zoom. Reg­is­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare 1915 Film Shows Claude Mon­et at Work in His Famous Gar­den at Giverny

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Bob Ross’ Christ­mas Spe­cial: Cel­e­brate, Relax, Nod Off

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her art in iso­la­tion has tak­en the form of a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Experience the Van Gogh Museum in 4K Resolution: A Video Tour in Seven Parts

in Art, Technology | April 16th, 2020

When we think of the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inclined artists of all time, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think of Vin­cent van Gogh. Though he wrote of his deter­mi­na­tion to cre­ate “the art of the future,” when he got down to paint­ing he did so with tra­di­tion­al tools. What­ev­er Van Gogh’s own feel­ings about tech­nol­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy cer­tain­ly seems to like him: take, for exam­ple, 2017’s Lov­ing Vin­cent, a fea­ture film about him ani­mat­ed with 65,000 paint­ings; the dig­i­tal exhi­bi­tion of his work that took place in Paris last year; his paint­ings brought to life with 3D ani­ma­tion and visu­al map­ping; and a vir­tu­al-real­i­ty ver­sion of The Night Cafe, all pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — not to men­tion the 1,400 paint­ings and draw­ings by van Gogh made avail­able online by the Van Gogh Muse­um.

How­ev­er for­ward-look­ing its full-fea­tured online pres­ence made the Van Gogh Muse­um seem before, this par­tic­u­lar moment has made it look like an even more pre­scient insti­tu­tion. With it and so many oth­er brick-and-mor­tar muse­ums tem­porar­i­ly closed due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, online is the only way any of us can enjoy them.

In addi­tion to its exist­ing resources on the web, the Van Gogh Muse­um has over the past month been upload­ing a pri­vate tour, all shot in 4K video. Much like the five-hour iPhone ad shot in the Her­mitage about which we post­ed last month, this series pro­vides a drift­ing, float­ing view of the muse­um’s gal­leries and the works they proud­ly dis­play, all quite unlike any expe­ri­ence one could ever have had there in per­son.

In the six parts of the series that have gone up so far, with a sev­enth and final install­ment to come next, not a sin­gle oth­er per­son appears to get between you and Van Gogh’s por­traits, Van Gogh’s still lifes, Van Gogh’s scenes urban and rur­al. But you do get some accom­pa­ni­ment in the form of a full musi­cal score, an ele­ment that has become quite impor­tant for this now-emerg­ing form of cin­e­mat­ic, high-res­o­lu­tion muse­um tour video.

Though brief, this Van Gogh Muse­um tour in 4K cov­ers a wide swath of the artist’s work, and will sure­ly only whet the appetite of view­ers who’ve been mean­ing to make the trip to Ams­ter­dam them­selves. Until then, we can take in Van Gogh’s “art of the future” using the tech­nol­o­gy of the present — the likes of which would­n’t have appeared in even his wildest visions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore 1400 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh–and Much More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Col­lec­tion

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

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.

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See Web Cams of Surreally Empty City Streets in Venice, New York, London & Beyond

in Current Affairs, Travel | April 16th, 2020

The lack of human pres­ence in major­ly pol­lut­ed cities these past cou­ple months has had some peo­ple see­ing utopias as the skies begin to clear. But emp­ty cities seem a lit­tle more dystopi­an to me. Dystopias are “a kind of sur­re­al­ism,” writes Kim Stan­ley Robin­son. They unearth the dream­like dread beneath the veneer of the nor­mal. No mat­ter when they’re set, dystopias don’t depict the future so much as “the feel­ing of the present… height­ened by exag­ger­a­tion to a kind of dream or night­mare.” The events in dystopi­an fic­tion approach the truth of someone’s sit­u­a­tion some­where in the world and make vis­i­ble what has been hid­den.

We know ghost cities exist as ancient dis­as­ters like Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum and mod­ern ones like Pripy­at, Ukraine, out­side Cher­nobyl. But there are more of them than many of us know. Gleam­ing cities like Ash­ga­bat, Turk­menistan, which broke ground in 1991 and con­tains the largest num­ber of mar­ble build­ings in the world.

The 4.5 mil­lion square meter metrop­o­lis has almost no inhab­i­tants, an enor­mous gov­ern­ment fol­ly. Towns and cities around the world have been aban­doned for for all sorts of rea­sons, and they con­tin­ue to as sea lev­els rise. Which is what makes view­ing live cam­era footage of some of the world’s most icon­ic streets—almost com­plete­ly emp­tied by the pan­dem­ic at the height of tourist season—so… sur­re­al.

It’s true that peo­ple haven’t fled these cities, but made cozy bunkers of their apart­ments. Yet see­ing the vacant streets live on cam­era, in Venice, Lon­don, New York, and else­where in the world,  I get the uncan­ny feel­ing of look­ing at pro­to-sur­re­al­ist painter Gior­gio de Chirico’s The Enig­ma of a Day, a depic­tion of a shad­owy, unin­hab­it­ed street through which we expect the Ital­ian ver­sion of a tum­ble­weed to roll. Sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy has inad­ver­tent­ly become a medi­um of mod­ernist art.

There is so much beau­ty in the live view at the top of the Ponte delle Guglie in Venice from the Hotel Filù Venezia, and there is also such lone­ly melan­choly, depend­ing on the time of day and where the shad­ows fall. See a live view of Times Square, above, and anoth­er Times Square view at Earth­Cam, where you can also catch a feed of a most­ly emp­ty Abbey Road (some times of day emp­ti­er than oth­ers, as in the ear­ly-morn­ing screen­shot below). Sky­line Web­cams hosts even more live cam­era views of Venice, includ­ing feeds from the Rial­to Bridge and the Piaz­za San Mar­co, as well as live feeds from sev­er­al sites in Pad­ua and oth­er places in Italy.

These real-time visions are trans­port­ing in their strange­ness. Are we liv­ing in the present or the future? In a dystopi­an world, there isn’t any dif­fer­ence. All futures are fore­closed by cat­a­stro­phe, “all dis­tances in time and space are shrink­ing,” wrote Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, a thinker who under­stood dis­as­ter, and who fell in line behind it. In that same essay, “The Thing” (as trans­lat­ed by Albert Hof­s­tad­er), the Ger­man philoso­pher made his famous com­ment, “the ter­ri­ble has already hap­pened.”

The ter­ri­ble that has hap­pened to us is not only a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The virus is not like­ly to dis­ap­pear on its own; who knows how long this will go on? But not far behind the cur­rent cri­sis are more cli­mate events that threat­en to emp­ty streets. If we emp­ty cities not only as indica­tive of tem­porar­i­ly social dis­tanc­ing, but as images of the pos­si­ble near-future, maybe we’ll be far less inclined to come out of this sur­re­al expe­ri­ence and get right back to busi­ness-as-usu­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

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

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