From the mak­er of Sita Sings the Blues comes a new short film that artis­ti­cal­ly deliv­ers a sim­ple mes­sage: “All cre­ative work builds on what came before.” Using arti­facts from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, Nina Paley draws the visu­al con­clu­sion that art bor­rows and remix­es – that noth­ing is real­ly out of the box. This argu­ment res­onates for some. For oth­ers, it falls flat. Either way, the film is worth a watch. (You can down­load high-res and Ogg ver­sions at the Inter­net Archive.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing is a Remix (A Short Film)

The New York Times has described Robert Wil­son, the avant-garde artist, as “a tow­er­ing fig­ure in the world of exper­i­men­tal the­ater and an explor­er in the uses of time and space onstage.” Known for break­ing con­ven­tions and weav­ing togeth­er sound, images and text in evoca­tive ways, Wil­son cre­at­ed a series of “Voom” por­traits in 2007. As he explains in this inter­view (lis­ten here), the Voom series rein­vents the por­trait by pre­sent­ing fig­ures (includ­ing many celebri­ties) in high-def video rather than the tra­di­tion­al still image. And although the fig­ures remain still (per the con­ven­tion), there’s nonethe­less a cer­tain life and motion to them. Above, we fea­ture the Voom por­trait of actor John­ny Depp. Metafil­ter gives you links to 12 oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

This past week, an Ital­ian web site (Hal­tadefinizione) placed online six mas­ter­pieces from the famous Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, all in super high res­o­lu­tion. Each image is packed with close to 28 bil­lion pix­els, a res­o­lu­tion 3,000 times greater than your nor­mal dig­i­tal pho­to. And this gives art con­nais­seurs every­where the abil­i­ty to zoom in and explore these paint­ings in exquis­ite­ly fine detail – to see strokes and details not nor­mal­ly seen even by vis­i­tors to the Uffizi. The paint­ings fea­tured here include Bot­ti­cel­li’s The Birth of Venus; Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Annun­ci­a­tion and The Last Sup­per; The Bap­tism of Christ by Ver­roc­chio and da Vin­ci; Car­avag­gio’s Bac­chus; and the Por­trait of Eleono­ra of Tole­do by Bronzi­no. These mas­ter­pieces will remain online for free until Jan­u­ary 29. For more details on the project, look here. Thanks Clau­dia for the great heads up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel