Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling

in Art, Media, Radio | October 23rd, 2009

Since 1995, Ira Glass has host­ed and pro­duced This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the award-win­ning radio show that presents mas­ter­ful­ly-craft­ed sto­ries to almost 2 mil­lion lis­ten­ers each week. What’s the secret sauce that goes into mak­ing a great sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Part 1 (above) gets into the build­ing blocks of a good sto­ry. Part 2 talks about the impor­tance of find­ing the right sto­ry. Part 3 reas­sures you that cre­ative excel­lence takes time to devel­op. It also comes with hard work. And Part 4 flags com­mon errors to avoid. Give Glass 17 min­utes, and you will be a bet­ter sto­ry­teller for it…

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Beauty Through a Microscope

in Art, Science | October 15th, 2009


vangoghish

This year, Nikon held a con­test and select­ed the best “pho­tomi­cro­graphs,” essen­tial­ly pic­tures tak­en through the micro­scope. 20 final­ists were select­ed in total, and you can view them on Nikon’s web site, or even more eas­i­ly on Wired’s web site. Among the final­ists, you’ll find the pic­ture above. Nope, it isn’t a Van Gogh. It’s a “10-year old prepa­ra­tion of bar­bi­tal, fenace­tine, val­i­um and acetic acid” cap­tured under a micro­scope.

via @timoreilly

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Hidden America Exposed

in Art | October 4th, 2009

Taryn Simon pho­tographs the hid­den and unfa­mil­iar in Amer­i­ca (see book here). Above, her 18 minute pre­sen­ta­tion takes you inside the Amer­i­ca not often seen, pro­vid­ing glimpses of the CIA’s abstract art col­lec­tion, the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s mar­i­jua­na grow room, a Braille edi­tion of Play­boy pro­duced by the Library of Con­gress (just the arti­cles, not the pic­tures, of course), and more. I’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites. Thanks to the var­i­ous Twit­ter streams that flagged this clip for me this week­end.

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Caravaggio and Rembrandt Side by Side

in Art | August 6th, 2009

Straight from Metafil­ter. Seemed worth pass­ing along to our read­ers:

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam invites you to com­pare Car­avag­gio and Rem­brandt. For an overview of Rem­brandt’s work here are Rem­brandt van Rijn: Life and Work and A Web Cat­a­logue of Rem­brandt Paint­ings. For Car­avag­gio there’s caravaggio.com which makes use of the Ital­ian web­site Tut­ta l’opera del Car­avag­gio.

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Art on the iPhone

in Art, iPhone | June 11th, 2009

This caught my atten­tion today:

“The Nation­al Gallery is the first ever gallery to make its paint­ings acces­si­ble through a down­load­able iPhone appli­ca­tion, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to take a mini tour of the Gallery any­where in the world.

The Gallery, in part­ner­ship with Anten­na Audio and Apple Inc., has designed a new appli­ca­tion for iPhones and iTouch devices that enables peo­ple to explore a sam­ple of the col­lec­tion while they’re on the move. Designed to appeal to art enthu­si­asts and fans of the Gallery, this appli­ca­tion is the first of its kind to be released by a major gallery.

This Pen­ti­men­to appli­ca­tion, called Love Art (get the free app here), fea­tures 250 paint­ings from the col­lec­tion along with around 200 min­utes of audio and video con­tent, includ­ing inter­views with Nation­al Gallery Direc­tor Dr Nicholas Pen­ny, drama­tist Robin Brooks, artist Mag­gie Ham­bling and Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring author Tra­cy Cheva­lier.

Mak­ing use of spe­cial iPhone fea­tures such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrol­lable menus, Love Art offers a play­ful explo­ration of the col­lec­tion, togeth­er with infor­ma­tive com­men­taries. The paint­ings are show­cased to the best advan­tage using high-res­o­lu­tion images on the iPhone’s excel­lent-qual­i­ty screen. Due to a tac­tile inter­face the expe­ri­ence gained through this appli­ca­tion is not only high­ly enjoy­able, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed”

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Masterpieces of Western Art

in Art | May 25th, 2009

“Mas­ter­pieces of West­ern Art” has been a degree require­ment at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty since 1947. The long-estab­lished  course is not your tra­di­tion­al his­tor­i­cal sur­vey. Rather, it focus­es on a select num­ber of artists and mon­u­ments, with the larg­er goal of help­ing stu­dents think crit­i­cal­ly about art. Over on iTunes, you can find some videos from the course. They cov­er the Amiens Cathe­dral, Raphael, Michelan­ge­lo, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­ter. These videos aren’t in lec­ture for­mat. Instead, they’re per­haps bet­ter described as visu­al tours. Although the clips don’t real­ly form a coher­ent whole, there are cer­tain­ly some good nuggets here. For 200 free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, see our big list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Art­Bab­ble: The New Des­ti­na­tion for Art Videos

The Gates of Hell

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

World Dig­i­tal Library

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

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Did Gauguin Cut Off Van Gogh’s Ear?

in Art | May 6th, 2009

Curi­ous piece in the Tele­graph. It starts:

He is known as the tor­tured genius who cut off his own ear as he strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness after the break­down of his friend­ship with a fel­low artist. But a new study claims Vin­cent Van Gogh may have made up the sto­ry to pro­tect painter Paul Gau­guin who actu­al­ly lopped it off with a sword dur­ing an argu­ment…

Ge the full sto­ry here.

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World Digital Library

in Art, Books, History, Media | April 22nd, 2009

wdl2Anoth­er big dig­i­tal archive went live this week. Backed by the Unit­ed Nations, the World Dig­i­tal Library wants to cen­tral­ize cul­tur­al trea­sures from around the world. Man­u­scripts, maps, rare books, musi­cal scores, record­ings, films, prints, pho­tographs, and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings — they will all be absorbed into this grow­ing online col­lec­tion, and users will be able to nav­i­gate through these mate­ri­als in sev­en dif­fer­ent lan­guages (Ara­bic, Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Por­tuguese, Span­ish and Russ­ian). The col­lec­tion (to which Google con­tributed $3 mil­lion in 2005) now hosts about 1,250 arti­facts, a frac­tion of what it will even­tu­al­ly include. The ini­tial col­lec­tion fea­tures some gems. Take for exam­ple the Tale of the Gen­ji, a Japan­ese text from the ear­ly 11th cen­tu­ry that’s often con­sid­ered “the first great nov­el in world lit­er­a­ture.” You can also take a close look at some Ora­cle Bones from Chi­na cir­ca 1200 BC. Or how about these icon­ic pho­tos from The Great Depres­sion or these shots of the great Jack­ie Robin­son. To learn more about this new dig­i­tal archive, read this piece in The Wash­ing­ton Post.

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