Shakespeare’s Satirical Sonnet 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

“My mis­tress’ eyes are noth­ing like the sun,” begins Son­net 130 by William Shake­speare. But why read the rest when you can see and hear it, in the video above, from Stephen Fry? No mat­ter how often I’ve wished the voice inside my head could sound like his, I just can’t mas­ter intracra­nial­ly repli­cat­ing his dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of accent and man­ner. This defi­cien­cy both­ers me espe­cial­ly when read­ing works as wor­thy as Shake­speare’s son­nets. Son­net 130 in par­tic­u­lar, a satire of the increas­ing­ly and obvi­ous­ly hyper­bol­ic odes to female beau­ty pop­u­lar in Shake­speare’s day, prac­ti­cal­ly demands a per­sona as dry­ly know­ing as Fry’s. But nei­ther Fry in any of his work nor the Shake­speare of Son­net 130 seem con­tent to sim­ply pop bal­loons of grotesque­ly over­in­flat­ed sen­ti­ment. They know that, in refus­ing to trot out grand­ly tired com­par­isons of lips to coral and cheeks to ros­es, they pay their sub­jects a more last­ing, gen­uine trib­ute in the end.

Fry’s read­ing comes from a new iPad app, Shake­speare’s Son­nets. In an appar­ent real­iza­tion of all those lit­er­ary “mul­ti­me­dia expe­ri­ences” we dreamed of but could nev­er quite achieve in the mid-nineties, it presents the 154 son­nets as they looked in their 1609 quar­to edi­tion with schol­ar­ly notes, com­men­tary, and inter­views with experts. Oth­er per­form­ers enlist­ed to read them include Patrick Stew­art (pre­sum­ably anoth­er sine qua non for such a project), David Ten­nant, and — because hey, why not — Kim Cat­trall. A fine idea, but new-media vision­ar­ies should take note that I and many oth­ers are even now wait­ing for apps ded­i­cat­ed to noth­ing more than Stephen Fry read­ing things. Some­one’s got to cap­i­tal­ize on this demand.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Shake­speare in the Orig­i­nal Voice

Shakespeare’s Julius Cae­sar Read in Celebri­ty Voic­es

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

City Poems: A New Lit­er­ary iPhone App

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Stanford Launches iPhone/iPad App Course on iTunesU (with New Peer-to-Peer Learning Features)

Just about every­body these days is devel­op­ing an app, right? A few lucky coders might see their work up in lights if they act fast.

Apps designed by the first 1,000 devel­op­ers to reg­is­ter for Stanford’s new online course on iTune­sU will be con­sid­ered for show­cas­ing on the university’s iTunes site.

The course, Cod­ing Togeth­er, is based on the pop­u­lar class­room ver­sion taught by Paul Hegar­ty at Stan­ford. It cov­ers iOS 5 and focus­es on apps for the iPhone and iPad plat­form. Sign-up ends on July 6 and the course runs until August 27. Lec­tures from ear­li­er ver­sions of the iTune­sU course were incred­i­bly pop­u­lar. Some were down­loaded more than 10 mil­lion times. But the new iTune­sU course offers some new social net­work­ing and learn­ing tools.

Stan­ford has teamed up with the social learn­ing plat­form Piaz­za to enable stu­dents to pose ques­tions to course instruc­tors, oth­er stu­dents and app devel­op­ers around the world 24 hours a day. It’s a fea­ture that on-cam­pus Stan­ford stu­dents already have access to, but it’s a first for iTune­sU. And it adds a whole new degree of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty to the iTune­sU course expe­ri­ence.

As of Thurs­day after­noon, 11,065 stu­dents enrolled in the course, with signups con­tin­u­ing in the hun­dreds per day. And, col­lab­o­ra­tive study groups have spon­ta­neous­ly popped up all around the world — from Sil­i­con Val­ley, to Brazil and Ger­many, to India, Chi­na and Bangladesh.

Again, you can find the Cod­ing Togeth­er lec­tures on iTune­sU here, and sign up for Piaz­za­’s peer-to-peer learn­ing groups here. We also have 50 more Free Com­put­er Sci­ence cours­es in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Cours­es Online.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Check out her work at .

Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Tablet in Fine Apple Style

This week, Microsoft rolled out its new tablet, sim­ply called Sur­face, which gives you anoth­er way to enjoy our cours­es, moviesebooks, audio books and the rest. In many ways, Sur­face resem­bles the iPad in its look and feel. And when it came to unveil­ing the tablet, Microsoft­’s execs could­n’t think out­side the box cre­at­ed by Steve Jobs. A video made by Read­WriteWeb makes that rather painful­ly yet amus­ing­ly clear.…

Don’t for­get to fol­low us on Twit­terFace­book and now Google+

Download David Hockney’s Playful Drawings for the iPhone and iPad

Last year, the Roy­al Ontario Muse­um (ROM) in Toron­to staged an exhib­it of David Hock­ney’s play­ful draw­ings pro­duced with/for the iPhone and iPad. Hock­ney became an ear­ly adopter of Apple’s pop­u­lar devices and start­ed cre­at­ing fin­ger-drawn images (using the Brush­es app) in 2008. Ini­tial­ly, the Eng­lish painter only shared his dig­i­tal draw­ings with a small cir­cle of friends. Then he decid­ed to make them avail­able to the larg­er world, pre­sent­ing them first in Paris in 2010, and then lat­er in Toron­to. Here, Hock­ney explains the basic think­ing behind his Fresh Flow­ers exhi­bi­tions.

Through­out the Cana­di­an exhi­bi­tion, the ROM invit­ed the pub­lic to down­load a series of free images by Hock­ney. They’re all still online, and we’ve gath­ered them below. What will you do with them? Put them on your iPhone or iPad, of course. (Find instruc­tions here and here.) Or what­ev­er oth­er device you please.

via coudal.com

 

Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge with a Free iPad App

When it opened to vehi­cle traf­fic in May, 1937 the Gold­en Gate Bridge was the longest sus­pen­sion bridge in the world. Since then eight bridges have sur­passed it in length, but the icon­ic inter­na­tion­al orange span is still the most pho­tographed bridge in the world. This month marks the Gold­en Gate’s 75th anniver­sary and the Cal­i­for­nia His­tor­i­cal Society’s exhib­it, A Wild Flight of the Imag­i­na­tion, cel­e­brates the event with a look at the bridge’s con­struc­tion. The exhib­it has also been made avail­able as a free eBook for the iPad, which includes his­toric pho­tographs by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange as well as a short film of bridge design­er Joseph Strauss speak­ing to a reporter dur­ing the bridge’s con­struc­tion. At the time, experts said that the Gold­en Gate strait’s fero­cious winds and strong, swirling cur­rents would make con­struc­tion impos­si­ble. But the design intro­duced deflec­tion the­o­ry, which uti­lizes a thin, flex­i­ble road­way and long cables that reduce struc­tur­al stress.

The inter­ac­tive app is accom­pa­nied by a musi­cal score—the open­ing selec­tion from com­pos­er Rob Kapilow’s Chrysopy­lae, Greek for “Gold­en Gate.” Ear­ly users of the eBook report­ed glitch­es with the app’s audio. The cul­prit may have been the side mute switch, which must be flipped off for the audio to work. Also, make sure your iPad’s vol­ume is up. Like the exhib­it in the society’s San Fran­cis­co muse­um, the app includes access to images of some 350 objects and ephemera relat­ed to the span’s con­struc­tion. Almost as nice as a walk across the bridge’s 1.7 miles, and not near­ly as windy.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds

What if you took great works of art, stacked them side by side, and had them tell a sto­ry? You’d have a decid­ed­ly art­ful video … and a great teas­er for the new art­Cir­cles iPad app that brings you col­lec­tions of images curat­ed by well-known fig­ures includ­ing Yves Behar (named one of the “World’s 7 Most Impor­tant Peo­ple in Design”) and John Mae­da (pres­i­dent of Rhode Island School of Design). The app is free on iTunes, and if you pick up the new iPad with reti­na dis­play, you can see where the device real­ly excels. Or at least that was my expe­ri­ence when I gave it a spin.

And while we’re on the top­ic, here’s anoth­er free app worth check­ing out: â€śThe Life of Art.” Pro­duced by the Get­ty Muse­um in LA, the “Life of Art” gives users a chance to under­stand how objects end up in a muse­um in the first place. Pho­tog­ra­phy, ani­ma­tions, video, and 360 degree rota­tions nar­rate the artis­tic lives of these objects. Find the app here. H/T Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Fol­low us on Face­bookTwit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! It will bright­en their day.

Dhani Harrison Presents The George Harrison Guitar App for the iPad

About a month back, we fea­tured George Har­rison’s long lost gui­tar solo on “Here Comes the Sun,” and you went gaga for it. Lit­tle did we know that George Har­rison’s son, Dhani, was just about ready to unveil a new iPad app called The Gui­tar Col­lec­tion: George Har­ri­son. It runs $9.99, and it’s only avail­able on the iPad, which hard­ly makes it an instance of Open Cul­ture. But we love The Bea­t­les around here, and the app does some­thing fair­ly spe­cial. It gives you a high-tech intro­duc­tion to sev­en George Har­ri­son gui­tars, using 360° images, sound files, videos, and lots of text and fac­toids. The video above offers a quick tour of the app. In the video below, Dhani Har­ri­son explains how the the app came togeth­er on the Conan O’Brien Show. Thanks for the heads up Liz.

Create iPhone/iPad Apps in iOS 5 with Free Stanford Course

Back in 2009, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty start­ed record­ing lec­tures giv­en in its iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment course and then plac­ing them on iTunes, mak­ing them free for any­one to view. The course hit a mil­lion down­loads in a mat­ter of weeks, and now, two years lat­er, here’s where we stand. The course remains the most pop­u­lar item on Stan­ford’s iTune­sU site, hav­ing clocked in 10 mil­lion down­loads. And the school has released a new ver­sion of the course that focus­es on iOS 5, the lat­est ver­sion of the iPhone/iPad oper­at­ing sys­tem. You can down­load the course on iTunes (in HD video or stan­dard-def­i­n­i­tion video) and start cre­at­ing apps on your own.

The iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment course is now list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will find 40+ free cours­es that will teach you to code.…

via Stan­ford News

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.