Santiago de Compostela: A View From the Octocopter

in Art, Technology | September 2nd, 2011

Micro­copter­video is a Span­ish com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in shoot­ing videos using small remote-con­trol heli­copters called “octo­copters.” (You can see the one used in this video here; and if you want to build one your­self, you can find instruc­tions here.) Since these small heli­copters go places where nor­mal cam­eras can’t, these new­fan­gled cam­eras can offer views that are sim­ply out of this world.

The lat­est video gives you a tour of the medieval San­ti­a­go de Com­postela Cathe­dral locat­ed in north­ern Spain. It starts with beau­ti­ful views of the exte­ri­or, but the most impres­sive shots are saved for inside the cathe­dral, espe­cial­ly when the octo­copter soars high above the chamades of the organ, giv­ing us an incred­i­ble look at the choir.

Some of these views have been cap­tured as stills and can be seen at Flickr. And don’t for­get to enjoy some more of those won­der­ful octo­copter videos on this Vimeo page.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Paola Antonelli on Design as the Interface Between Progress and Humanity

in Art, Education, Video - Arts & Culture | September 1st, 2011

Pao­la Antonel­li — Senior Cura­tor of Archi­tec­ture and Design at the MoMA, long­time pro­po­nent of human­ized tech­nol­o­gy, self-described “curi­ous octo­pus” — has arguably done more for the main­stream infil­tra­tion of design lit­er­a­cy than any oth­er indi­vid­ual in con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. In her recent open­ing keynote at the unequiv­o­cal­ly titled media and ideas con­fer­ence The Con­fer­ence in Malmö, Swe­den, Antonel­li pulls the cur­tain on her cura­to­r­i­al process and, with her sig­na­ture on-stage charis­ma, takes a reveal­ing look at how her shows go about the incred­i­ble bal­anc­ing act of being both bea­cons of the bleed­ing edge of design and an approach­able edu­ca­tion plat­form for instill­ing in the gen­er­al pub­lic a basic under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of design — some­thing she describes as “push[ing] design down from the realm of art and up from the realm of dec­o­ra­tion and pret­ti­fi­ca­tion into real life.”

“What design­ers do is they take rev­o­lu­tions that hap­pen maybe in sci­ence or tech­nol­o­gy or pol­i­tics, and they trans­form them into objects that you and I can use, that you and I can feel some famil­iar­i­ty or at least some curios­i­ty about, so we can be drawn in and we can start a new life and a new behav­ioral pat­tern. And this idea of design­ers as the inter­face of progress, between progress and human­i­ty, is what I try to stay with.” ~ Pao­la Antonel­li

Antonel­li’s excel­lent new show, Talk to Me: Design and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Between Peo­ple and Objects, is on dis­play at the MoMA through Novem­ber 7.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Jerry’s Map: An Amazing Half Century Act of Imagination

in Art | August 30th, 2011

Way back in 1963, Jer­ry Gret­zinger began mak­ing a map of his imag­i­nary world. And now, almost 50 years lat­er, the Map weaves togeth­er more than 2,000 pan­els, and cov­ers more than 1,600 square feet of sur­face area (see pho­to here).

What start­ed as a sim­ple doo­dle took on an amaz­ing life of its own. Jer­ry tells the rest of this sto­ry in this short video shot by Greg Whit­more.

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

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Anselm Kiefer at Work, Creating His “World of Ruination”

in Art | August 25th, 2011

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a newish film direct­ed by Sophie Fiennes, lets you sit back and watch the Ger­man artist Anselm Kiefer at work, cre­at­ing his large-scale â€śworld of ruina­tion.” The film has no nar­ra­tion, only some musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. And, more than any­thing, it gives you a direct, unem­bell­ished view of Kiefer’s “alchem­i­cal cre­ative process” that reg­u­lar­ly takes over his stu­dio in south­ern France. Above, Kiefer puts the fin­ish­ing touch­es on, then rais­es, one of his elab­o­rate cre­ations. The clip, along with oth­ers, appears in a larg­er, more com­pelling for­mat on the film’s offi­cial web site. H/T NYRB

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep dai­ly.

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Richard Feynman: The New Graphic Novel

in Art, Books, Physics | August 24th, 2011


Last week, we high­light­ed The Last Jour­ney Of A Genius, a doc­u­men­tary that record­ed the final days of the great physi­cist Richard Feyn­man and his obses­sion with trav­el­ing to Tan­nu Tuva, a state out­side of out­er Mon­go­lia.

Now here is what next week will bring — a new “sub­stan­tial graph­ic nov­el biog­ra­phy” that “presents the larg­er-than-life exploits of the Nobel-win­ning quan­tum physi­cist, adven­tur­er, musi­cian and world-class racon­teur.” The book writ­ten by Jim Otta­viani and illus­trat­ed by Leland Myrick runs a fair­ly hefty 272 pages. The video clip on Youtube will give you a good feel for the art­work that tells Feyn­man’s per­son­al tale.

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:

Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures Online

The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out

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Jackson Pollock 51: Short Film Captures the Painter Creating Abstract Expressionist Art

in Art, Film | August 24th, 2011

In the sum­mer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jack­son Pol­lock and asked the abstract expres­sion­ist painter if he could pho­to­graph him in his stu­dio, work­ing with his “drip” tech­nique of paint­ing. When Namuth arrived, he found:

A drip­ping wet can­vas cov­ered the entire floor. Blind­ing shafts of sun­light hit the wet can­vas, mak­ing its sur­face hard to see. There was com­plete silence.… Pol­lock looked at the paint­ing. Then unex­pect­ed­ly, he picked up can and paint­brush and start­ed to move around the can­vas. It was as if he sud­den­ly real­ized the paint­ing was not fin­ished. His move­ments, slow at first, grad­u­al­ly became faster and more dance­like as he flung black, white and rust-col­ored paint onto the can­vas.

The images from this shoot “helped trans­form Pol­lock from a tal­ent­ed, cranky lon­er into the first media-dri­ven super­star of Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary art, the jeans-clad, chain-smok­ing poster boy of abstract expres­sion­ism,” one crit­ic lat­er wrote in The Wash­ing­ton Post.

But Namuth was­n’t sat­is­fied that he had real­ly cap­tured the essence of Pol­lock­’s work. He want­ed to cap­ture Pol­lock in motion and col­or, to focus on the painter and paint­ing alike.

Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s sec­ond effort. The ten-minute film, sim­ply called Jack­son Pol­lock 51 (the 51 being short for 1951), lets you see Pol­lock paint­ing from a unique angle — through glass. The film achieved Namuth’s aes­thet­ic goals, but it came at a price. Appar­ent­ly the film­ing taxed Pol­lock emo­tion­al­ly, and by the evening, the painter decid­ed to pour him­self some bour­bon, his first drink in two years. A blowout argu­ment fol­lowed; Pol­lock nev­er stopped drink­ing again; and it was down­hill from there…

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:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol

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Extreme Photography: Shooting Big Climbs at Yosemite

in Art | August 19th, 2011

When you think pho­tog­ra­phy and Yosemite Nation­al Park, you think of Ansel Adams shoot­ing â€śMoon and Half Dome” or “El Cap­i­tan.”

But today we’re think­ing about some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — about the ver­ti­go-induc­ing pho­tog­ra­phy of Renan Ozturk. Work­ing on behalf of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Ozturk heads to Yosemite to shoot a fea­ture sto­ry on the climb­ing cul­ture that thrives in this val­ley sur­round­ed by 3000-foot rock walls. The park fea­tures extreme A5 climbs that con­stant­ly push climbers to new lim­its, and nat­u­ral­ly it takes a spe­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er to record the action. How Renan does it? We’ll let him tell the rest of the sto­ry … H/T Curios­i­ty Counts

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

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William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique

in Art, Books, Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2011

In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tris­tan Tzara wrote “dada man­i­festo on fee­ble love and bit­ter love,” which includ­ed a sec­tion called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instruc­tions:

Take a news­pa­per.
Take some scis­sors.
Choose from this paper an arti­cle of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the arti­cle.
Next care­ful­ly cut out each of the words that makes up this arti­cle and put them all in a bag.
Shake gen­tly.
Next take out each cut­ting one after the oth­er.
Copy con­sci­en­tious­ly in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resem­ble you.
And there you are — an infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.

Decades lat­er, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs took this basic con­cept and put his own twist on it. Between 1961 and 1964, Bur­roughs pub­lished The Nova Tril­o­gy, a series of three exper­i­men­tal nov­els fash­ioned with his own cut-up method. Often con­sid­ered his defin­i­tive work of cut-up writ­ing, The Soft Machine, the first nov­el in the tril­o­gy, stitched togeth­er pages from a series of man­u­scripts that Bur­roughs him­self wrote between 1953 and 1958.

You can watch Bur­roughs demon­strat­ing his cut-up tech­nique above, and for­ev­er find this clip in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons, which lets you see great writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and thinkers talk­ing in their own words.

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:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

 

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