Madeline 365: A Year in the Life

in Art, Life | January 17th, 2012

Remem­ber Jeff Har­ris? He’s the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has doc­u­ment­ed every day of his life with a self-por­trait since 1999. Now meet Made­line Schich­tel, a young pro­duc­tion assis­tant liv­ing in LA. She record­ed her dai­ly life in 2011 with a Canon Pow­er­shot, then edit­ed each day down to a mean­ing­ful one-sec­ond shot, cre­at­ing the video mon­tage “This is What Made­line Did.” Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @SteveSilberman) found the video unex­pect­ed­ly charm­ing, and we have to agree. “All My Friends,” by LCD Soundsys­tem, serves as the sound­track for this endear­ing lit­tle film.

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The Page Turner: A Fabulous Rube Goldberg Machine for Readers

in Art | January 12th, 2012

Last week, The New York Times pro­filed Joseph Her­sch­er, a 26-year-old kinet­ic artist who hails from New Zealand and now devel­ops inten­tion­al­ly “absurd” and “use­less” Rube Gold­berg machines in his Brook­lyn apart­ment. His lat­est con­trap­tion, called “The Page Turn­er,” just gets bet­ter as it rolls along. Per­haps the best part comes towards the end when Her­scher’s pet ham­ster, Chester, makes a cameo appear­ance. Enjoy…

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Underground Cartoonist R. Crumb Introduces Us to His Rollicking Album Cover Designs

in Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, Music | January 11th, 2012

Music and com­ic book art are the two pas­sions of Robert Crumb’s cre­ative life. In this video from W.W. Nor­ton, Crumb talks about his obses­sive inter­est in the old-time blues, folk and coun­try music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neu­ro­log­i­cal,” he says. “Some quirky types of ner­vous sys­tems are just attract­ed to that old music.”

As one of the pio­neers of the under­ground comix move­ment in the late 1960s, Crum­b’s work often relat­ed in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’ ” com­ic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Broth­er & the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, asked Crumb to design the cov­er of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.

Since then, Crumb has designed hun­dreds of album cov­ers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Com­plete Record Cov­er Col­lec­tion, brings togeth­er all the cov­ers and many relat­ed works. The book con­tains por­traits of famous artists like Robert John­son and Woody Guthrie, along with works fea­tur­ing obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also cov­ers and posters made for Crum­b’s own band, the Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders.

Crumb is a ban­jo and man­dolin play­er. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band. This video was direct­ed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appear­ances by him­self and his part­ner Eden Brow­er. The video fea­tures the fol­low­ing songs:

  1. “Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
  2. “Some of these Days” by Cab Cal­loway (1930)
  3. “Lind­berg Hop” by the Mem­phis Jug Band (1928)
  4. “Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Fam­i­ly (1930)
  5. “Chasin’ Rain­bows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1976)
  6. “Singing in the Bath­tub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Ser­e­naders (1978)
  7. “So Sor­ry Dear” by Eden & John’s East Riv­er String Band, fea­tur­ing R. Crumb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

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Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series

in Animation, Art, Film | January 9th, 2012

In his 1997 book of draw­ings and verse, The Melan­choly Death of Oys­ter Boy & Oth­er Sto­ries, Tim Bur­ton imag­ines a bizarre menagerie of mis­fits with names like Tox­ic Boy, Junk Girl, the Pin Cush­ion Queen and the Boy with Nails in his Eyes.

“Inspired by such child­hood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl,” writes James Ryan in the New York Times, “Mr. Bur­ton’s slim vol­ume exquis­ite­ly con­veys the pain of an ado­les­cent out­sider. Like his movies, the work man­ages to be both child­like and sophis­ti­cat­ed, blend­ing the inno­cent with the macabre.”

One of those ado­les­cent out­siders is Stain Boy, a strange kind of super­hero:

He can’t fly around tall build­ings,
or out­run a speed­ing train,
the only tal­ent he seems to have
is to leave a nasty stain.

Some­times I know it both­ers him,
that he can’t run or swim or fly,
and because of this one abil­i­ty,
his dry clean­ing bill is sky-high.

In 2000, Bur­ton extend­ed Stain Boy’s adven­tures (and com­pressed his name into one word) with The World of Stain­boy, a series of short ani­ma­tions com­mis­sioned for the Inter­net by Shockwave.com. “For some sto­ries you have to wait for the right medi­um,” Bur­ton said at the time. “I think (the Inter­net’s) the per­fect forum to tell a sad lit­tle sto­ry like this one. Stain­boy is a char­ac­ter that does­n’t do much. He’s just per­fect for four-minute ani­ma­tions.”

Bur­ton cre­at­ed a series of sketch­es, water­col­ors and pas­tel-accent­ed gray-on-gray wash­es and brought them, along with a script and sto­ry­boards, to Flinch Stu­dio for trans­la­tion into Macro­me­dia Flash ani­ma­tion. Twen­ty-six episodes were planned, but only six were com­plet­ed. “Stain­boy was an exper­i­ment in devel­op­ing rev­enue streams for the Web,” writes Ali­son McMa­han in The Films of Tim Bur­ton: Ani­mat­ing Live Action in Con­tem­po­rary Hol­ly­wood, “but it did not suc­ceed, at least not finan­cial­ly.”

The Stain­boy char­ac­ter was res­ur­rect­ed briefly in late 2010, when Bur­ton invit­ed fans to com­pose a new Stain­boy adven­ture in brief install­ments via Twit­ter. Bur­ton pieced togeth­er a sto­ry using the best tweets. (You can read the final result here.) Mean­while, the orig­i­nal Web ani­ma­tions have con­tin­ued to attract a fol­low­ing. You can watch the com­plete six-part series below in HD. As you will see, some episodes intro­duce new char­ac­ters — Stare Girl, Tox­ic Boy, Bowl­ing Ball Head and the rest:

Episode 1: Stare Girl

Episode 2: Tox­ic Boy

Episode 3: Bowl­ing Ball Head

Episode 4: Robot Boy

Episode 5: Match­stick Girl

Episode 6: The Ori­gin of Stain­boy

You can find the Stain­boy videos on our list of Free Online Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

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Remembering Eve Arnold, Pioneering Photojournalist

in Art, Media | January 6th, 2012

Eve Arnold, one of the pio­neer­ing women of pho­to­jour­nal­ism, died Wednes­day at the age of 99.

Wide­ly known for her pho­tographs of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe and oth­er celebri­ties, Arnold just as often pho­tographed the poor and the unknown. “I don’t see any­body as either ordi­nary or extra­or­di­nary,” she told the BBC in 1990. “I see them sim­ply as peo­ple in front of my lens.”

Born Eve Cohen in Philadel­phia on April 21, 1912, she was one of nine chil­dren of Ukrain­ian immi­grant par­ents. When she was 28 years old she gave up plans to become a doc­tor after a boyfriend gave her a cam­era. She stud­ied pho­tog­ra­phy for a brief time under Alex­ey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research before going out on her own and find­ing her style.

“I did­n’t work in a stu­dio, I did­n’t light any­thing,” Arnold would lat­er say. “I found a way of work­ing which pleased me because I did­n’t have to fright­en peo­ple with heavy equip­ment. It was that lit­tle black box and me.”

A series of pho­tographs Arnold took of fash­ion shows in Harlem attract­ed the atten­tion of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, one of the founders of Mag­num Pho­tos, and she was invit­ed to con­tribute to the agency. In 1957 Arnold became the first woman pho­tog­ra­ph­er to join Mag­num as a full mem­ber. She worked often for Life and lat­er, after mov­ing to Eng­land in 1961, for The Sun­day Times Mag­a­zine, trav­el­ing to places like Afghanistan, South Africa, Mon­go­lia and Cuba while always main­tain­ing a per­son­al point of view. In her 1976 book, The Unre­touched Woman, Arnold wrote:

Themes recur again and again in my work. I have been poor and I want­ed to doc­u­ment pover­ty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics and I want­ed to know how it affect­ed our lives; I am a woman and I want­ed to know about women.

Arnold pub­lished 15 books in her life­time, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award-win­ning In Chi­na. In 2003 she was award­ed the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elis­a­beth II, whom she had once pho­tographed. In the 2007 book Mag­num Mag­num, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Elliott Erwitt summed things up:

Eve Arnold’s lega­cy is as var­ied as it is fas­ci­nat­ing. It is hard to fath­om how one per­son­’s work can be so diverse. I cov­ers the hum­blest to the most exalt­ed, the mean­est to the kind­est, and every­thing in between. The sub­jects are all there in Eve Arnold’s pho­tographs and they are treat­ed with intel­li­gence, con­sid­er­a­tion and sym­pa­thy. Most impor­tant is Eve’s abil­i­ty to visu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate her con­cerns direct­ly, with­out fan­fare or pre­tense, in the best human­is­tic tra­di­tion.

Eve Arnold on the set of Beck­ett, 1963, by Robert Penn.                                       (© Copy­right Eve Arnold/Magnum Pho­tos)

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Life in 4,748 Self-Portraits

in Art, Life | January 6th, 2012

It start­ed sim­ply enough in 1999. Jeff Har­ris, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er based in Toron­to, took his first self-por­trait, some­thing he has since repeat­ed every day. His visu­al diary now amounts to 4,748 pho­tos and they tell a very per­son­al sto­ry. They show the pass­ing of time, some fair­ly nor­mal moments, but also some dif­fi­cult ones. In Novem­ber 2008, Har­ris was diag­nosed with can­cer, and his expe­ri­ence with it — his surgery, radi­a­tion treat­ment, even­tu­al paral­y­sis in one leg — all gets visu­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed by his project. The video above, orig­i­nal­ly appear­ing on TIME’s web site, takes you inside Har­ris’ project. The clip runs 5 min­utes.

via @SteveSilberman

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The Zen of Steve Jobs: A New Graphic Novel

in Apple, Art, Books | January 5th, 2012

Wal­ter Isaac­son’s new biog­ra­phy of Steve Jobs (click image below to get a free audio copy) cov­ers a lot of ground in 571 pages. By design, it’s broad and com­pre­hen­sive, but it does­n’t always go deep. One facet of Steve Jobs’ life that does­n’t get much cov­er­age here was his rela­tion­ship with Kobun Chi­no Oto­gawa (1938–2002), a Bud­dhist priest who taught Jobs the way of Zen and shared his pas­sion for art and design. The two became close — close enough that Kobun presided over the Steve Jobs-Lau­rene Pow­ell wed­ding in 1991. This rela­tion­ship receives a fuller treat­ment in The Zen of Steve Jobs, a new 80-page graph­ic nov­el that uses stripped down dia­logue and bold cal­li­graph­ic pan­els to tell this sto­ry. The book was authored by Forbes writer Caleb Mel­by, and the art­work pro­vid­ed by the cre­ative agency JESS3. The video above gives you a good intro­duc­tion to the imag­i­na­tive work. h/t Boing­Bo­ing


1 FREE Audiobook RISK-FREE from Audible

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The Best of Open Culture 2011

in Art, Books, Education, Film, Music, Online Courses | January 2nd, 2012

Before we rush head­long into a new year, it’s worth paus­ing, ever so briefly, to con­sid­er the ground we cov­ered in 2011. What top­ics res­onat­ed with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re high­light­ing 10 the­mat­ic areas (and 46 posts) that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief jour­ney back into time. Tomor­row, we start look­ing for­ward again.

1) Uni­ver­si­ties Offer More Free Cours­es, Then Start Push­ing Toward Cer­tifi­cates: The year start­ed well enough. Yale released anoth­er 10 stel­lar open cours­es. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Cours­es). Then oth­er uni­ver­si­ties start­ed push­ing the enve­lope on the open course for­mat. This fall, Stan­ford launched a series of free cours­es that com­bined video lec­tures with more dynam­ic resources — short quizzes; the abil­i­ty to pose ques­tions to Stan­ford instruc­tors; feed­back on your over­all per­for­mance; a state­ment of accom­plish­ment from the instruc­tor, etc. A new round of free cours­es will start in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Final­ly, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer sim­i­lar cours­es, but with one big dif­fer­ence. Stu­dents will get an offi­cial cer­tifi­cate at the end of the course, all at a very min­i­mal charge. More details here.

2) Cul­tur­al Icons at Occu­py Wall Street: OWS was a big nation­al sto­ry, and we were always intrigued by its cul­tur­al dimen­sion — by the cul­tur­al fig­ures who cham­pi­oned the move­ment. You can revis­it performances/speeches by: Philip Glass & Lou Reed; Willie Nel­son, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie; David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash; Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig; Noam Chom­sky; and Slavoj Zizek. Also check out: 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard and Artis­tic Posters From Occu­py Wall Street.

3) Books Intel­li­gent Peo­ple Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read” end­ed up gen­er­at­ing far more con­ver­sa­tion and con­tro­ver­sy than we would have expect­ed. (Users have left 83 com­ments at last count.) No mat­ter what you think of his ratio­nale for choos­ing these texts, the books make for essen­tial read­ing, and they’re freely avail­able online.

Tyson’s list dove­tails fair­ly nice­ly with anoth­er list of essen­tial texts — The Har­vard Clas­sics, a 51 vol­ume set that’s avail­able online. Accord­ing to Charles W. Eliot, the leg­endary Har­vard pres­i­dent, if you were to spend just 15 min­utes a day read­ing these books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. And that could part­ly apply to anoth­er list we pulled togeth­er: 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books — the great lit­er­ary clas­sics taught in class­rooms all across Amer­i­ca, all free…

4) Christo­pher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christo­pher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — pro­lif­ic, inci­sive, surly and defi­ant, espe­cial­ly when asked about whether he’d change his posi­tion on reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the after­life. All of this was on dis­play when he spoke at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les last Feb­ru­ary. We cov­ered his com­ments in a post called, No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forc­ing us to ques­tion the whole mod­ern mean­ing of Christ­mas.

Dur­ing Hitch’s final days, Stephen Fry emceed a large trib­ute to his friend in Lon­don, an event that brought togeth­er Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, poet James Fen­ton and actor Sean Penn. It’s well worth a watch. But you also should­n’t miss some oth­er great videos fea­tur­ing the wis­dom of Mr. Fry — his intro­duc­tion to the strange world of nanoscience, his ani­mat­ed debate on the virtues (or lack there­of) of the Catholic Church, and his thought­ful reflec­tion, What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18.

5) Four for the Fab Four: John, Paul, Ringo and George. We sneak them in when­ev­er we can. A sprin­kling here and there. This year, we served up an ever-pop­u­lar post, Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, and a no less pop­u­lar free­bie: Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook. Trail­ing right behind are two oth­er good Bea­t­les picks: All Togeth­er Now: Every Bea­t­les Song Played at Once and The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig.

6) Wis­dom from Great Philoso­phers: Want the chance to take cours­es from great philoso­phers? Here’s your oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our meta post brought togeth­er courses/lectures from Bertrand Rus­sell, Michel Fou­cault, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel. You could get lost in this for days. Also while you’re at it, you should check out The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps, an ongo­ing pod­cast cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son (King’s Col­lege Lon­don) that moves from the Ancients to the Mod­erns. Plus we’d encour­age you to revis­it: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er in 1971.

7) Vin­tage Film Col­lec­tions: Scour­ing the web for vin­tage films. It’s some­thing we love to do. In 2011, we brought you 22 films by Alfred Hitch­cock, 25 West­erns with John Wayne, 32 Film Noir clas­sics, and a series of films by the great Russ­ian direc­tor Andrei Tarkovsky. All are list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

8) Back to the Future: We had fun going back — way back — and see­ing how past gen­er­a­tions imag­ined the future. Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dict­ed the Future in 1964 … And Pret­ty Much Nailed It. Before that, Amer­i­can fash­ion design­ers looked rough­ly 70 years into the future and guessed how women might dress in Year 2000. Turns out fash­ion design­ers aren’t the best futur­ists. And, even before that (cir­ca 1922), we get to see the world’s first mobile phone in action. Seri­ous­ly!

9) Ani­mat­ed Films: 2011 start­ed off on exact­ly the right note. On Jan­u­ary 1, we fea­tured Shel Sil­ver­stein’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree. Then some oth­er gems fol­lowed: Des­ti­no, the Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney col­lab­o­ra­tion that start­ed in 1946 and fin­ished in 1999; Spike Jonze’s Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny; John Tur­tur­ro nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Ita­lo Calvino’s fairy tale, “The False Grand­moth­er;” and a series of ani­mat­ed films fea­tur­ing the voice of Orson Welles. Also let’s not for­get these splen­did ani­ma­tion con­cepts for The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay and, just for good mea­sure, Ter­ry Gilliam’s vin­tage primer on mak­ing your own cut-out ani­ma­tion.

10) New Archives & Art on the Web: Last but not least — 2011’s new archival projects that brought great cul­ture to the web.

And now onward into 2012.…

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