The Best of Open Culture 2012: Free Music, Film, Books, Life Advice & More

in Art, e-books, Film, Literature, Music | January 1st, 2013

Anoth­er year gone by. Anoth­er 1200+ cul­tur­al blog posts in the books. Which ones did you like best? We let the data decide. Below, you’ll find the 17 that struck a chord with you.
Free Art Books from The Guggen­heim and The Met: Way back in Jan­u­ary, the Guggen­heim made 65 art cat­a­logues avail­able online, all free of charge. The cat­a­logues offer an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al intro­duc­tion to the work of Calder, Munch, Bacon, and Kandin­sky, among oth­ers. Then, months lat­er, The Met fol­lowed suit and launched Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, a por­tal that now makes avail­able 370 out-of-print art titles, includ­ing works on Ver­meer, da Vin­ci, Degas and more.

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam: Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here), cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Hands down, it was the biggest sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery of the year. But what is the Hig­gs Boson exact­ly? Are you still not sure? Phd Comics explains the con­cept with ani­ma­tion.

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son: Here’s anoth­er great dis­cov­ery — the long lost gui­tar solo by George Har­ri­son from my favorite Bea­t­les’ song, “Here Comes the Sun.” In this clip, George Mar­tin (Bea­t­les’ pro­duc­er) and Dhani Har­ri­son (the gui­tarist’s son) bring the for­got­ten solo back to life. When you’re done tak­ing this sen­ti­men­tal jour­ney, also see anoth­er favorite of mine: gui­tarist Randy Bach­man demys­ti­fy­ing the open­ing chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Calvi­no: Over the years we have fea­tured lit­er­ary works that have been won­der­ful­ly re-imag­ined by ani­ma­tors. Rather than leav­ing these won­drous works buried in the archives, we brought them back and put them all on dis­play. And what bet­ter place to start than with a foun­da­tion­al text — Plato’s Repub­lic.

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion: In June, we lost Ray Brad­bury, who now joins Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Hein­lein, and Philip K. Dick in the pan­theon of sci­ence fic­tion. In this post, we revis­it two moments when Brad­bury offered his per­son­al thoughts on the art and pur­pose of writ­ing — some­thing he con­tem­plat­ed dur­ing the 74 years that sep­a­rat­ed his first sto­ry from the last.

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Speak­ing of sci­ence fic­tion, we brought you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web in audio, video and text for­mats. They include Orwell’s 1984, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, C.S. Lewis’ Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, many sto­ries by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman, and much more. Find more great works in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion: Can one per­son expe­ri­ence love more deeply than anoth­er? That’s what Stan­ford researchers and film­mak­er Brent Hoff set out to under­stand when they host­ed the 1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion. Sev­en con­tes­tants, rang­ing from 10 to 75 years of age, took part. And they each spent five min­utes in an fMRI machine. It’s to hard watch this short film and not shed a hap­py tear.

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’: In April of 1959–five years before her death at the age of 39 from lupus–Flannery O’Connor ven­tured away from her seclud­ed fam­i­ly farm in Milledgeville, Geor­gia, to give a read­ing at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. She read one of her most famous and unset­tling sto­ries, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The audio is one of two known record­ings of the author read­ing that sto­ry.

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web: On the eve of the 2012 Acad­e­my Awards, we scout­ed around the web and found 33 Oscar-win­ning (or nom­i­nat­ed) films from pre­vi­ous years. The list includes many short films, but also some long ones, like Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic ver­sion of War & Peace. Sit back, enjoy, and don’t for­get our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online, where you’ll find many great noir films, west­erns, clas­sics, doc­u­men­taries and more.

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946: Stay­ing with movies for a sec­ond, we also showed you a very dif­fer­ent mid-1940s Dis­ney pro­duc­tion – The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion. Made in the 1940s, an esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex ed class­es across the US.

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web: We spent some time track­ing down 23 free sto­ries and essays pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975): In Jan­u­ary 1975, Buck­min­ster Fuller sat down to deliv­er the twelve lec­tures that make up Every­thing I Know, all cap­tured on video and enhanced with the most excit­ing blue­screen tech­nol­o­gy of the day. The lec­ture series is now online and free to enjoy, so please do so.

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More: It’s pret­ty much what the title says. Great per­for­mances by some of our great­est jazz artists. It starts with Bil­lie Hol­i­day singing “Strange Fruit.”

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938: On Decem­ber 7, 1938, a British radio crew vis­it­ed Sig­mund Freud at his newhome at Hamp­stead, North Lon­don. He was 81 years old and suf­fer­ing from incur­able jaw can­cer. Every word was an agony to speak. The record­ing is the only known audio record­ing of Freud, the founder of psy­cho­analy­sis and one of the tow­er­ing intel­lec­tu­al fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Also see: Sig­mund Freud’s Home Movies: A Rare Glimpse of His Pri­vate Life.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”: Phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur” Damon Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford. Read­ers will also enjoy The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973): Deliv­ered at Har­vard in ’73, Leonard Bernstein’s lec­ture series, “The Unan­swered Ques­tion,” cov­ered a lot of ter­rain, touch­ing on poet­ry, lin­guis­tics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. But the focus inevitably comes back to music — to how music works, or to the under­ly­ing gram­mar of music. The mas­ter­ful lec­tures run over 11 hours. They’re added to our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es. You can also find Borges’ lec­tures at Har­vard here.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry:  When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” In this brief video, Von­negut offers eight tips on how to write a short sto­ry.

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List:  We gath­ered a list of 200 free mas­sive open online cours­es (MOOCs) offered by lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties. Most of these free cours­es offer “cer­tifi­cates” or “state­ments of com­ple­tion.” Many new cours­es start in Jan­u­ary 2013. So be sure to check it out. Also don’t miss our oth­er new resource col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & Beyond.

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The Clock, the 24-Hour Montage of Clips from Film & TV History, Introduced by Alain de Botton

in Art, Film, Life, Philosophy, Video - Arts & Culture | January 1st, 2013

To ful­ly expe­ri­ence the clip above, you’ll need to be awake and press­ing play at pre­cise­ly 12:04 am. What you’ll be see­ing is a very small seg­ment of The Clock, a 24-hour video assem­blage that keeps time with clips culled from a cen­tu­ry’s worth of film his­to­ry. Some of these mark­ers are in the dia­logue, but most are shots of clocks and watch­es in which a spe­cif­ic time is clear­ly vis­i­ble.

If view­ing the com­plete piece sounds like a marathon, con­sid­er that artist Chris­t­ian Mar­clay and a pha­lanx of assis­tants spent three years locat­ing and plac­ing the clips and smooth­ing out the result­ing sound­track. Some of these moments came pre­loaded with the import of a High Noon. Oth­ers were of a more inci­den­tal, back­ground-type nature pri­or to being cast in Mar­clay’s project.

Those unable to spend qual­i­ty time with The Clock at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art this Jan­u­ary can get a feel for it via philoso­pher and writer Alain de Bot­ton’s  brief chat with Mar­clay below.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day resolves to use it bet­ter in 2012. Per­haps you should­n’t fol­low her on Twit­ter @AyunHalliday.

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Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten: The Classic Film Re-Imagined By 40 Artists

in Art, Film | December 31st, 2012

Thinkers, cre­ators, and imag­in­ers of all kinds love Pow­ers of Ten, with good cause. If you’ve nev­er seen Charles and Ray Eames’ still-influ­en­tial film on all the var­i­ous scales at which one can view the uni­verse, take nine min­utes and watch it free online. Though the orig­i­nal pow­er cou­ple of mod­ern Amer­i­can design pro­duced the film 35 years ago, the short has stayed as crisp, strik­ing, and (lit­er­al­ly) per­spec­tive-alter­ing as ever. We may not need a new Pow­ers of Ten, per se, but who would­n’t be inter­est­ed in see­ing how many 21st-cen­tu­ry inter­pre­ta­tions of its theme 40 artists can come up with? The Pow­ers Project has tak­en on this very idea, invit­ing con­trib­u­tors from Los Ange­les to Köln to Welling­ton to Kyoto to re-envi­sion each of the dis­tances from which the orig­i­nal film views human­i­ty, from one meter away to 1024 meters away to .000001 angstroms away.

Just above, you can watch one com­plet­ed seg­ment of the Pow­ers Project from Lon­don’s Jor­di Pagès. In it, the cam­era moves toward the sur­face of a hand and into the skin, even­tu­al­ly find­ing its way into a sin­gle blood ves­sel. When it even­tu­al­ly comes avail­able online, the fin­ished project will include almost as many styles of film­mak­ing as it does scales of view­ing. Open to as many tech­niques of and per­spec­tives on mov­ing image cre­ation as its con­trib­u­tors could sum­mon, the film will take the Eames’ idea, orig­i­nal­ly all about the straight-on per­cep­tion of real­i­ty, into a new realm of abstrac­tion. Who’d have guessed how much rich artis­tic poten­tial remained in, as Pow­ers of Ten’s sub­ti­tle puts it, the Rel­a­tive Size of Things in the Uni­verse and the Effect of Adding Anoth­er Zero?

via Fast­CoDe­sign

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Watch Portrait of an Artist: Jackson Pollock, the 1987 Documentary Narrated by Melvyn Bragg

in Art, Film | December 27th, 2012

Jack­son Pol­lock paint­ed with the kind of vis­cer­al imme­di­a­cy that frees you from hav­ing to know much about his ideas, his meth­ods, or his life. But spend enough time gaz­ing at his can­vas­es and you’ll sure­ly start to get curi­ous. If you’ve seen Melvyn Bragg talk to Fran­cis Bacon in stu­dio, gallery, café, and bar on the South Bank Show’s pro­file of the painter, you know how expert­ly he can open up an artist’s world. Two years after that Inter­na­tion­al Emmy-win­ning pro­gram, the broad­cast­er, writer, and House of Lords Mem­ber applied his tal­ents to a per­haps even less under­stood painter in Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock. Where Bragg appeared as a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry pres­ence in The South Bank Show — to the extent, at one drink-sod­den point, of get­ting tip­sy him­self — here he sticks to nar­ra­tion. His rel­e­ga­tion to the sound­track per­haps reflects a cer­tain cul­tur­al dis­tance: to an Amer­i­can, Bragg seems about as Eng­lish a host as they come, and to the rest of the world, Pol­lock seems about as Amer­i­can a painter as they come — in his work as well as his life.

The Library Media Project describes Pol­lock as a “ ‘cow­boy’ from Wyoming” instru­men­tal in forg­ing the Amer­i­can art move­ment, Abstract Expres­sion­ism. They describe his life in the small­est nut­shell: “His famous ‘drip’ paint­ings earned him both noto­ri­ety and abuse and the pres­sures of new-found celebri­ty com­pound­ed his life­long strug­gle with alco­holism, a fight he lost when he died in a car crash at the age of 44,” In its 50 Bragg-nar­rat­ed min­utes, Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock goes into far greater detail, using exist­ing radio con­ver­sa­tions with Pol­lock, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Hans Namuth’s film of Pol­lock at work, and inter­views with crit­ics, cura­tors, Pol­lock­’s col­leagues, his friends, his wid­ow, and his mis­tress. Where a biopic like Ed Har­ris’ Pol­lock plunges straight into the artist’s brash con­duct and volatile mix­ture of work and life, this doc­u­men­tary steps slight­ly back, exam­in­ing Pol­lock­’s paint­ings and the Hem­ing­wayesque exis­tence that gave rise to them in a cool­er — not to say more Eng­lish — light. Make them a dou­ble fea­ture, if you can.

Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock will be added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Fran­cis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets in Vintage Primer From 1969

in Art, Television | December 27th, 2012

Give Jim Hen­son 15 min­utes of your time, and the father of the Mup­pets will teach you how to make your own pup­pets, using noth­ing oth­er than house­hold items – socks, pota­toes, tacks, ten­nis balls, rub­ber bands, wood­en spoons, and the rest. This primer orig­i­nal­ly aired on Iowa Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion back in 1969, not long before Hen­son joined a fledg­ling TV pro­duc­tion, Sesame Street, where he helped cre­ate the most famous pup­pets of our gen­er­a­tion: Oscar, Ernie, Ker­mit, Bert, Cook­ie Mon­ster, Big Bird and the rest. Though record­ed 40+ years ago, the advice is sim­ple and time­less. When you’re done watch­ing this old favorite of ours, you can go deep­er into Jim Hen­son’s imag­i­nary world with these var­ied clips.

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show (1975)

Watch Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

in Art, e-books, iPad, K-12, Science | December 20th, 2012

In 1960, NASA put its first “Earth-observ­ing envi­ron­men­tal satel­lite” into orbit, and, ever since, these satel­lites have let us observe the dynam­ics of our plan­et in a new way.  They can tell us all about chang­ing weath­er pat­terns, the impact of cli­mate change, what’s hap­pen­ing in the oceans, the coast­lines, rivers and more.

The satel­lites have also demon­strat­ed again and again the Earth’s aes­thet­ic beau­ty, revealed in the pat­terns, shapes, col­ors, and tex­tures seen from space. That beau­ty is what gets cel­e­brat­ed in NASA Earth As Art, a new visu­al pub­li­ca­tion made avail­able as a Free 160-Page eBook (PDF) and a Free iPad App. Fea­tur­ing 75 images in total, the app gives you a very aer­i­al look at places like the Himalayas, Arizona’s Paint­ed Desert, the Lena Riv­er Delta in Rus­sia (shown above), the Byrd Glac­i­er in Antarc­ti­ca, and much more. Enjoy the images, from the sur­re­al to the sub­lime.

You’ll find NASA Earth As Art list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Also see these relat­ed NASA mate­ri­als:

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

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Enthusiastic Futurist Jason Silva Waxes Theoretical About the Immersive Power of Cinema

in Art, Film | December 13th, 2012

No one will ever accuse Jason Sil­va of lack­ing in enthu­si­asm. The self-pro­fessed “film­mak­er, futur­ist, epiphany addict” is in love, head over heels, with tech­nol­o­gy, and it’s a love infec­tious, as he shows us above in his short mono­logue, Atten­tion: The Immer­sive Pow­er of Cin­e­ma. Inspired by Diana Slattery’s essay “Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty and Hal­lu­ci­na­tion,” Sil­va extracts a the­o­ry of cin­e­ma as a “rhetor­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy, a shrine to immer­sion.” His ideas are also built around a nar­ra­tive and lin­guis­tic con­cept known as “deic­tic shift the­o­ry,” from deix­is or “self-ori­en­ta­tion.” For Sil­va, the deic­tic shift occurs when the “view­er assumes a view­point in the sto­ry,” and, in total immer­sion, “enters the dream as dream.” He spec­u­lates that at this point, the “pre-frontal lobe dims, and there’s a loss of ego,” such that “cin­e­ma is akin to god­li­ness.” Hog­wash, you say? Per­haps, but it’s enter­tain­ing hog­wash, and if one takes the time to process the ideas embed­ded in Silva’s man­ic, form-is-con­tent pre­sen­ta­tion, it’s even per­sua­sive. But poor Beethoven. Fur Elise doesn’t deserve anoth­er beat­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Neil Gaiman Gives Sage Advice to Aspiring Artists

in Art, Literature | December 10th, 2012

“I want to be a direc­tor, and I’ve been told that there are enough artists in the world, and that’s not some­thing I should pur­sue. Do you [agree with that]?”

A young woman put that ques­tion to sci-fi and fan­ta­sy writer Neil Gaiman at The Con­necti­cut Youth Forum last week. And he respond­ed with an answer that might sound famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you viewed the thought­ful com­mence­ment speech he gave at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Philadel­phia last spring. There, he gave 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts, and, if you have a real­ly sharp mem­o­ry, you’ll recall sug­ges­tions #6 and #10.

  • Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.
  • Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

They’re wise tips, but they’re bet­ter tak­en in con­junc­tion with sug­ges­tions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. Watch them all here. And don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Neil Gaiman Sto­ries, avail­able in text, audio and video.

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