The Mother of All Funk Chords

in Media, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | September 30th, 2010

Who said there’s not an art to remix­ing? The Israeli artist Ophir Kutiel, oth­er­wise known as Kuti­man, cre­at­ed this video by weav­ing togeth­er scenes and tracks from 22 sep­a­rate music videos, all found ran­dom­ly on YouTube. (Find the full list below the jump.) First he lay­ered in the drums, then the bass and the gui­tar. And it’s hard to argue that the total isn’t greater than the sum of the parts. The video fig­ures into Kuti­man’s larg­er remix project called ThruY­OU, which TIME called one of the 50 best inven­tions of last year. Vis­it the ThruY­OU site to watch more remix videos in Kuti­man’s trade­mark style.

Thanks Evan for flag­ging this for us…

(more…)

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Ira Glass Cameo on The Simpsons

in Media | September 28th, 2010

If you did­n’t watch the sea­son pre­miere of The Simp­sons this week­end, here is what you missed: The host of This Amer­i­can Life, Ira Glass, mak­ing a brief cameo appear­ance and pok­ing some fun at his ever pop­u­lar show. Watch above.

Mean­while, speak­ing of Ira Glass, be sure to get his thoughts on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time. He offers some excel­lent advice for any­one work­ing in a cre­ative field…

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Jason Schwartzman Introduces New Yorker iPad App

in iPad, Media | September 27th, 2010

The New York­er iPad app. It’s final­ly out, and they have actor Jason Schwartz­man tak­ing the wraps off in a wit­ty video. Give The New York­er points for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Now the big ques­tion. Will read­ers pay $4.99 to have the plea­sure of read­ing each week­ly issue on the iPad? That’s $234 over a year. Or will you be stick­ing with the print sub­scrip­tion that runs a cool­er $1.00 per week? You’ll find me in the lat­ter camp until they work out a more sen­si­ble annu­al pric­ing scheme — some­thing that, accord­ing to recent reports, may be right around the bend.

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Stairway to Heaven

in Media | September 26th, 2010

With­out these guys, you would­n’t have broad­cast radio or TV. It’s hard to watch beyond the 1:30 mark. Thanks Ian for send­ing along…

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

in History, Media | September 23rd, 2010

Where do good ideas come from? Places that put us togeth­er. Places that allow good hunch­es to col­lide with oth­er good hunch­es, some­times cre­at­ing big break­throughs and inno­va­tions. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, this all hap­pened in Parisian salons and cof­fee hous­es. Nowa­days, it’s hap­pen­ing on the web, in places that defy your ordi­nary def­i­n­i­tion of “place.” In four ani­mat­ed min­utes, Steven John­son out­lines the argu­ment that he makes more ful­ly in his soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Inno­va­tion. The video is the lat­est from the RSAn­i­mate series.

PS: Last week, I wrote a guest post on 5 cap­ti­vat­ing RSA videos that mull over the flaws run­ning through mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. You can find it on Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time

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Everything is a Remix

in Art, Media, Music | September 15th, 2010


“Remix­ing” has fig­ured cen­tral­ly in the Web 2.0 vocab­u­lary. But, remix­ing isn’t new. It has a long his­to­ry, going back as long as we’ve been mak­ing art. Artists have always been col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al, com­bin­ing it, and trans­form­ing it into some­thing new. Kir­by Fer­gu­son’s new video, Every­thing is a Remix, teas­es this apart as he brings you back to 1960s Paris and Lon­don – to the cut-up lit­er­a­ture of William S. Bur­roughs and the songs writ­ten by Led Zep­pelin with a lib­er­al amount of bor­row­ing. This video, the first in a series of four, appears on Fer­gu­son’s web site in a nice large for­mat. Have a look and con­sid­er donat­ing to his Every­thing is a Remix project.

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Free Golden Age Comics

in Media | September 14th, 2010

A quick fyi for the com­ic fan: A newish web­site, The Dig­i­tal Com­ic Archive, opens up free access to pub­lic domain Gold­en Age Comics, which fell into kids’ hands from the late 1930s until the ear­ly 1950s. You won’t find here the big name comics from the peri­od (Super­man, Bat­man, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Won­der Woman, Cap­tain Mar­vel, etc). But that should­n’t stop you from giv­ing the archive a good look. There are still a lot of gold­en comics to rum­mage through.

To get start­ed, sim­ply reg­is­ter for an account and then start sift­ing and down­load­ing the texts. The down­load­ing part can be a lit­tle tricky in some cas­es. So please vis­it their FAQs if you run into any prob­lems. Hap­py read­ing…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Big Thinkers: A Look Back

in Media, Technology | September 9th, 2010

Back in 1999, ZDTV launched Big Thinkers, a week­ly cable TV pro­gram that fea­tured half-hour inter­views with thinkers on the bleed­ing edge of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The show did­n’t have the longest run. But it did man­age to shine the spot­light on some impor­tant minds – Michio Kaku (the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist), Sher­ry Turkle (MIT psy­cho­an­a­lyst), Lawrence Lessig (law pro­fes­sor & free cul­ture advo­cate), and Esther Dyson (tech­nol­o­gy investor), to name a few. Big Thinkers was per­fect Open Cul­ture mate­r­i­al before the days of Open Cul­ture. So we’re pay­ing a lit­tle trib­ute to the show. Above, you will find an episode ded­i­cat­ed to Daniel Den­nett, the Amer­i­can philoso­pher and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist who has done exten­sive research on the phi­los­o­phy of mind. Part 1 appears above, and Part 2 and Part 3 here. Final­ly, you can watch oth­er Big Thinkers episodes (includ­ing those men­tioned above) on this YouTube chan­nel.

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