Animations Revive Lost Interviews with David Foster Wallace, Jim Morrison & Dave Brubeck

in Animation, Music | April 19th, 2013

David Ger­lach left a com­fort­able job work­ing as a TV pro­duc­er to launch Blank on Blank, a mul­ti­me­dia non­prof­it with a sim­ple mis­sion — to curate jour­nal­ists’ for­got­ten inter­views with cul­tur­al icons, and then bring them back to life again, some­times as ani­mat­ed shorts. You can start enjoy­ing the fruit of Blank on Blank’s labors by watch­ing a series of web ani­ma­tions, recent­ly pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios. Above, we’re start­ing you off with a four-minute ani­ma­tion of David Fos­ter Wal­lace reflect­ing on his ear­ly ten­nis days, the per­ils of per­fec­tion­ism, and his ten­den­cy to be a “gram­mar nazi” when teach­ing col­lege stu­dents — some­thing we’ve cov­ered here before. The inter­view orig­i­nal­ly aired on WNY­C’s Leonard Lopate Show in 1996, and you can lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty here.

Next comes some mem­o­rable moments with Jim Mor­ri­son, the great singer-song­writer, who met with Vil­lage Voice writer Howard Smith back in Novem­ber, 1969. Going into the meet­ing, Smith sensed that things would­n’t be easy. He lat­er recalled, “I had a feel­ing that it was going to be a tough inter­view. I just kin­da had a feel­ing that … it was going to be tricky, and I said .… if things get real­ly dif­fi­cult with him, I’m gonna sug­gest that we arm wres­tle.” As you’ll hear, Smith made his great arm-wrestling escape an inevitabil­i­ty when he nee­dled Mor­ri­son, sug­gest­ing that the singer had put on too much weight. You can see how things played out above, or catch the com­plete inter­view here.

Blank on Blank has pro­duced oth­er ani­mat­ed inter­views with Bono, Lar­ry King, and surfer Kel­ly Slater. But we’re going to wind things down with Dave Brubeck recall­ing how Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er sent him to East­ern Europe to fight Com­mu­nism with Jazz. Brubeck relat­ed this sto­ry at the Litch­field Jazz Fes­ti­val in 2008.

If you’re look­ing to rum­mage through a big archive of lost inter­views, I’d encour­age you to spend time with the Blank on Blank pod­cast avail­able on iTunes and rss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

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CERN Physicist Explains the Origins of the Universe for Beginners with a Short Animated Video

in Animation, Astronomy, K-12 | April 17th, 2013

If you have kids, you’re going to get the inevitable ques­tion: Where did the uni­verse come from? And you’re like­ly going to take a long pause before try­ing to present the sci­ence of the big bang. Before you head down that path, know this: CERN physi­cist Tom Whyn­tie has cre­at­ed a new TED-ED video that explains, in three ani­mat­ed min­utes, how the uni­verse began, why it’s expand­ing, and oth­er basic phe­nom­e­na that con­cern cos­mol­o­gists and par­ti­cle physi­cists. Phew. By the time you’re done, you might be eager­ly await­ing a where-do-babies-come-from video. That’s hope­ful­ly some­where in TED-ED’s media pipeline too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

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The Film Before the Film: An Introduction to the History of Title Sequences in 10 Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film | April 11th, 2013

Some watch the Super Bowl for just the com­mer­cials. Oth­ers watch films for the title sequences that book­end a movie. Title sequences can be “engag­ing or wild­ly enter­tain­ing … or sim­ply drop dead beau­ti­ful.” They can “ooze with visu­al poet­ry and sophis­ti­cat­ed imagery,” or they can put the audi­ence in the right mood for the movie, or close it in the right way, writes the web site For­get the Films, Watch the Titles.

But it has­n’t always been this way. Dur­ing the ear­ly days of cin­e­ma, title sequences were often crude and infor­ma­tion­al. That start­ed to change with the advent of sound film, when title sequences took on aes­thet­ic dimen­sions they had­n’t known before. By the 1950s and 1960s, they became a high art form, espe­cial­ly in the hands of the icon­ic graph­ic design­er Saul Bass. The his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics of the title sequence — espe­cial­ly the open­ing cred­its — all get cov­ered by The Film Before the Film, a short, infor­ma­tive film born out of a research project at the Berlin­er Tech­nis­che Kun­sthochschule. It runs 9 to 11 min­utes, depend­ing on whether you count the clos­ing title sequence!

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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60 Second Adventures in Astronomy Explains the Big Bang, Relativity & More with Fun Animation

in Animation, Astronomy | April 8th, 2013

Like many pos­i­tive terms, the phrase “big bang” orig­i­nat­ed as a pejo­ra­tive. Fred Hoyle coined the term in 1949 as a way of deflat­ing the con­cept of an expand­ing uni­verse. It stuck, even after Edwin Hub­ble showed that 13.7 bil­lion years ago, all of the mat­ter in our mas­sive uni­verse was indeed com­pact­ed into “one super­dense ball.” Astronomers have also fig­ured out that the vol­ume of the big bang was only 120 deci­bels, about the loud­ness of your aver­age rock show (though how there might have been sound with­out an atmos­phere escapes me). There is some irony in Hoyle’s dig: the “big bang” wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly big, and wasn’t much of a bang, but it hap­pened.

We learn all this and more in the video above from The Open Uni­ver­si­ty, and all with­in a minute, as the title of the series, 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Astron­o­my, promis­es. These amus­ing ani­ma­tions are very much like oth­er OU series we’ve fea­tured in the past: 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics; 60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: and 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought. (Find them all on iTune­sU here.)

The uni­ver­si­ty describes the new astron­o­my series like this:

Ever won­dered where the Uni­verse came from? Or more impor­tant­ly, where it’s head­ed? Voiced by David Mitchell, this series of twelve 60 sec­ond ani­ma­tions exam­ines dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts from the big bang to rel­a­tiv­i­ty, from black holes to dark mat­ter. The series also explores the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life beyond Earth and con­sid­ers why David Bowie is still none the wis­er about life on Mars.

Spend a few extra min­utes edu­cat­ing your­self with some more 60 sec­ond astron­o­my adven­tures below, or vis­it the com­plete col­lec­tion here on YouTube or iTune­sU.

Super­novae

Exo­plan­ets

Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

Event Hori­zons

Life on Mars

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchi­la­da Ques­tion, “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose?”

Mea­sur­ing the Uni­verse: How Astronomers Learned to Mea­sure Celes­tial Dis­tances Explained with Ani­ma­tion

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Hig­gs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String The­o­ry

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Clever Animation Brings Figure Drawings to Life

in Animation, Art | March 27th, 2013

The cre­ative team of Tom Wrig­glesworth & Matt Robin­son went to an art class at The Book Club in Lon­don, and there cre­at­ed an ani­ma­tion that breathes life into a series of fig­ure draw­ings. Every easel in the class cap­tured a nude mod­el from a dif­fer­ent angle. The film then gath­ered them all togeth­er, pro­duc­ing one won­der­ful­ly ani­mat­ed com­pos­ite fig­ure. Pret­ty neat stuff. If you’re in Lon­don, you can check out the next Life Draw­ing class on April 6.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Draw­ing of Leopold Bloom: The Sto­ry Behind the Sketch

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

Famous Lit­er­ary Char­ac­ters Visu­al­ized with Police Com­pos­ite Sketch Soft­ware

Oxford’s “The Ele­ments of Draw­ing” in our Col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es

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Drones Over America!: Two Animated Satires of Misguided American Policy

in Animation, Current Affairs | March 25th, 2013

Drones over Amer­i­ca –they’re a high tech assault on Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and they deserve to be met with a mod­ern form of dis­sent, some­thing more than a cranky op-ed in the pages of The New York Times. In this case, ani­mat­ed satire feels just about right. Enter Drew Christie, who cre­at­ed a satir­i­cal “Op-Doc” for the Times that mocks plans to use drones to police Amer­i­ca. Christie hails from Seat­tle, whose police force recent­ly announced it would adopt an aer­i­al drone pro­gram. When the plan was lat­er scut­tled, K.G.B. agents every­where were very upset. Who could blame them, see­ing that we were so close to achiev­ing our brave new world?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1nYvTB3Pxs&feature=share&list=UUINqjVOLoht3hhez0hZA6fw

If Mr. K.G.B. feels a lit­tle too severe, then why not have a lit­tle fun with Mr. Blasty? He’s adorable, a bar­rel of laughs, but he pulls no punch­es. “While you’re all sud­den­ly won­der­ing about me and my drone friends blow­ing you to bits in Bowl­ing Green, I’ve been busy abroad for years killing thou­sands!…” “Don’t wor­ry, they’re usu­al­ly just for­eign­ers though. But whether they’re for­eign­ers or cit­i­zens– first comes fire­pow­er [blam], then comes legalese! And if the legalese does­n’t work, there’s always “state secrets” where nobody knows noth­in’–.” The more the admin­is­tra­tions the change, the more they stay the same.

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The Zen Wisdom of Alan Watts Animated by the Creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone

in Animation, Life, Religion | March 17th, 2013

Alan Watts began pop­u­lar­iz­ing the teach­ings of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, and Tao­ism in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1950s. He taught at the Acad­e­my of Asian Stud­ies in San Fran­cis­co, wrote Way of Zen and oth­er best­selling books, gave talks on the radio (lis­ten here), and devel­oped TV pro­grams intro­duc­ing Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion. Don’t miss his 1960 TV pro­gram called “The Silent Mind.”

Watts died almost 40 years ago, but his lega­cy remains alive, part­ly thanks to his son, part­ly thanks to vin­tage videos cap­tured on YouTube, and part­ly thanks to peo­ple like Trey Park­er and Matt Stone — that’s right, the cre­ators of South Park. There’s not much infor­ma­tion known about them, but some­where back in 2007, Park­er and Stone pro­duced videos that ani­mat­ed (audio) lec­tures giv­en by Watts many moons ago. The top­ics deal with music, life, and philo­soph­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty types. Mean­while, the aes­thet­ic is dis­tinct­ly South Parkean, minus the out­ra­geous pot­ty humor, of course. The project is an old favorite of ours and today we decid­ed to bring it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

“The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet” by Robert Thur­man, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Added to the Phi­los­o­phy Sec­tion of our list of Free Online Cours­es

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

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A Gallery of Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs: Iconic Moments Briefly Animated

in Animation, Film, Technology, Web/Tech | March 16th, 2013

shining2_32677

Type “stu­pid ani­mat­ed gif”—or words to that effect—into your pre­ferred search engine and you’ll be reward­ed with an abun­dance of ger­mane mate­r­i­al.

Mean­while a search on “ani­mat­ed gif of Stan­ley Kubrick rolling in his grave” fails to yield any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.

Pity. I guess we’ll just have to imag­ine how the late per­fec­tion­ist and cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor would have react­ed to a gallery of his most icon­ic images, down­loaded and doc­tored into infi­nite­ly loop­ing, min­i­mal­ly ani­mat­ed snip­pets.

clockwork_27123

Per­haps I pre­sume. Per­haps he’d be pray­ing for some­one to rean­i­mate him, so he could haunt the realm of the late night cha­t­rooms, his every obser­va­tion and opin­ion punc­tu­at­ed with a lan­guid Sue Lyons lift­ing her head in Loli­ta, or a dia­bol­i­cal Clock­work Orange toast.

Admit­ted­ly, the longer one watch­es George C Scot­t’s Gen­er­al Turgid­son work­ing over a mouth­ful of gum, or Jack Nichol­son act­ing four kinds of crazy, the more tempt­ing it is to put togeth­er a cin­ema­graph of one’s own. That’s the high fly­ing term assigned to the form by artist Kevin Burg and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Beck who alleged­ly invent­ed (and lat­er trade­marked) it while cov­er­ing New York Fash­ion Week. To quote super­mod­el Coco Rocha, as they do on their web­site, “it’s more than a pho­to but not quite a video.”

Be fore­warned that it’s not a project for the Pho­to­shop new­bie. Maybe the instruc­tion­al video below just makes it seem so.  (Though if you’re look­ing for an instruc­tion­al video on how not to make an instruc­tion­al video, this is very instruc­tion­al indeed. If not, stick with a more straight for­ward, non-film-based how to. Stan­ley Kubrick, this guy ain’t.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cin­ema­graph: A Haunt­ing Photo/Video Hybrid

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Ayun Hal­l­i­day rec­om­mends Stan­ley Kubrick­’s “Paths of Glo­ry” in its orig­i­nal form.

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