Koyaanisqatsi at 1552% Speed

in Film, Technology | February 7th, 2012

Koy­aanisqat­si: Life Out of Bal­ance — God­frey Reg­gio direct­ed the 1982 film, and Philip Glass com­posed the music. Lat­er, Reg­gio said that the film is wide open to inter­pre­ta­tion, that “the view­er can take for her­self what the film means.” “For some peo­ple it’s an envi­ron­men­tal film, for some peo­ple it’s an ode to tech­nol­o­gy, for some peo­ple it’s a piece of shit, for oth­er peo­ple it moves them deeply.” And for Wyatt Hodg­son, it’s a film worth watch­ing in a com­pressed, five-minute for­mat, maybe because (as one view­er sug­gest­ed) it high­lights “one of the main dimen­sions of the film: the break­neck speed of our (crazy) world.”

Hodg­son’s ver­sion strips out Glass’ orig­i­nal sound­track, replac­ing it with music by the Art of Noise. But some crafty indi­vid­ual found a way to repro­duce Glass’ com­po­si­tion at 1552% speed. You can lis­ten below.

h/t Kot­tke

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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An Animated History Of Aviation: From da Vinci’s Sketches to Apollo 11

in Animation, Technology | February 6th, 2012

It starts with Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s famous sketch­es of fly­ing machines, then moves to the first hot air bal­loon launched by the Mont­golfi­er broth­ers in 1783, the glid­ers cre­at­ed by Sir George Cay­ley (1804), and the Wright broth­ers’ first flight at Kit­ty Hawk in 1903. These great moments and oth­ers all get cov­ered in this Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Avi­a­tion, an ele­gant lit­tle film pro­duced by Utah Val­ley Uni­ver­si­ty, a col­lege with a large avi­a­tion pro­gram of its own. We’ll add it to our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukowski

in Literature, Technology | January 30th, 2012

On Feb­ru­ary 18, 1994, Charles Bukows­ki had a fax machine installed in his home and imme­di­ate­ly sent his first Fax poem to his pub­lish­er:

oh, for­give me For Whom the Bell Tolls,
oh, for­give me Man who walked on water,
oh, for­give me lit­tle old woman who lived in a shoe,
oh, for­give me the moun­tain that roared at mid­night,
oh, for­give me the dumb sounds of night and day and death,
oh, for­give me the death of the last beau­ti­ful pan­ther,
oh, for­give me all the sunken ships and defeat­ed armies,
this is my first FAX POEM.
It’s too late:
I have been
smit­ten.

Alas this was also Bukowski’s last poem. Just 18 days after Bukows­ki embraced tech­nol­o­gy, the poet (once famous­ly called the “lau­re­ate of Amer­i­can lowlife” by Pico Iyer) died of leukemia in Cal­i­for­nia. He was 73 years old. Accord­ing to John Mar­tin at Black Spar­row Press, the Fax poem has nev­er been pub­lished or col­lect­ed in a book. Book­tryst has a whole lot more on the sto­ry, and we have the singer/songwriter Tom Waits read­ing Charles Bukowski’s poem, The Laugh­ing Heart. You can also lis­ten to three oth­er Bukows­ki poems (in audio) here on YouTube:

Find more great reads in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

via Poet­ry Foun­da­tion

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Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncovered by AT&T: Watch Online

in Film, Technology | January 25th, 2012

Before Jim Hen­son joined Sesame Street in 1969, the great pup­peteer took on var­i­ous projects dur­ing the 60s, some­times cre­at­ing exper­i­men­tal films (for exam­ple, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short Time Piece), oth­er times pro­duc­ing primers on pup­pet mak­ing, and then pur­su­ing the occa­sion­al com­mer­cial project — like the one just uncov­ered by AT&T.

Back in 1963, Hen­son was asked to cre­ate a short film for a Bell Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sem­i­nar held in Chica­go. The con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers sent a three-page memo to Hen­son out­lin­ing the main themes of the con­fer­ence — one being the strange and some­times fraught rela­tion­ship between man and machine. Hen­son’s film only runs three min­utes, but it gets the mes­sage across … and then some.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

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What is Wrong with SOPA?

in Current Affairs, Media, Politics, Technology | January 18th, 2012

Some of the big web­sites are going black today to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Pira­cy Act, that has been wind­ing its way through Con­gress. We’re going to han­dle things in our own way — by illu­mi­nat­ing the mat­ter with a lit­tle intel­li­gent media.

Backed by the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca, SOPA is designed to debil­i­tate and effec­tive­ly shut down for­eign-based web­sites that sell pirat­ed movies, music and oth­er goods. That all sounds fine on the face of things. But the leg­is­la­tion, if enact­ed, would car­ry with it a series of unex­pect­ed con­se­quences that could change the inter­net as we know it. Among oth­er things, the law could be used to shut down Amer­i­can sites that unwit­ting­ly host or link to ille­gal con­tent — and with­out giv­ing the sites due process, a real day in court. Big sites like YouTube and Twit­ter could fall under pres­sure, and so could count­less small sites. Need­less to say, that could have a seri­ous chill­ing effect on the open­ness of the web and free speech.

To give a quick exam­ple: It could con­ceiv­ably be the case that Stan­ford might object to my fea­tur­ing their video above, file a claim, and shut the site down with­out giv­ing me notice and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remove the mate­r­i­al (as exists under cur­rent law). It’s not like­ly. But it is pos­si­ble, and the risk increas­es with every post we write. If this law pass­es, the amount of mate­r­i­al we could tru­ly safe­ly cov­er would become ludi­crous­ly small, so much so that it would­n’t be worth run­ning the site and using the web as an edu­ca­tion­al medi­um.

The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has come out against SOPA and PIPA, sidelin­ing the leg­is­la­tion for now. But you can almost guar­an­tee that revi­sions will be made, and the bills will return soon. So, while oth­er sites go black, we’re going to do what we do best. We’re fea­tur­ing video of an event held in Decem­ber by the Stan­ford Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety (SCIS). What’s Wrong with SOPA brings togeth­er a series of informed oppo­nents to SOPA, includ­ing Stan­ford law pro­fes­sors and busi­ness lead­ers with­in Sil­i­con Val­ley. (Find their bios below the jump.) Some of the most inci­sive com­ments are made by Fred von Lohmann, a Google lawyer, start­ing at the 19:10 mark.

Note: If you’re look­ing to under­stand the debate from the per­spec­tive of copy­right hold­ers, then we’d rec­om­mend you spend time watch­ing, Fol­low the Mon­ey: Who Prof­its from Pira­cy?, a video that tracks the theft of one movie, mak­ing it a micro­cosm of a larg­er prob­lem.

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M.I.T. Camera Captures Speed of Light: A Trillion-Frames-Per-Second

in MIT, Physics, Technology | December 15th, 2011

Think of it as the ulti­mate slow-motion movie cam­era. Researchers at M.I.T. have devel­oped an imag­ing sys­tem so fast it can trace the motion of puls­es of light as they trav­el through liq­uids and solids. To put it into per­spec­tive, writes John Markoff in The New York Times, “If a bul­let were tracked in the same fash­ion mov­ing through the same flu­id, the result­ing movie would last three years.”

The research was direct­ed by Ramesh Raskar of the Cam­era Cul­ture group at the M.I.T. Media Lab. In an abstract, the research team writes:

We have built an imag­ing solu­tion that allows us to visu­al­ize the prop­a­ga­tion of light. The effec­tive expo­sure time of each frame is two tril­lionths of a sec­ond and the resul­tant visu­al­iza­tion depicts the move­ment of light at rough­ly half a tril­lion frames per sec­ond. Direct record­ing of reflect­ed or scat­tered light at such a frame rate with suf­fi­cient bright­ness is near­ly impos­si­ble. We use an indi­rect ‘stro­bo­scop­ic’ method that records mil­lions of repeat­ed mea­sure­ments by care­ful scan­ning in time and view­points. Then we rearrange the data to cre­ate a ‘movie’ of a nanosec­ond long event.

You can learn more by watch­ing the video above by Melanie Gonick of the M.I.T. News Office, or by vis­it­ing the project web­site.

via Kot­tke

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HDR Skies: Beautiful Time-Lapse Film of the French Countryside

in Art, Technology | December 9th, 2011

French pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tan­guy Lou­vi­gny cre­at­ed this time-lapse film of bucol­ic Nor­mandy and Brit­tany using High Dynam­ic Range (HDR) imag­ing tech­niques.

From for­est floor to set­ting sun, Lou­vi­gny’s shots ren­der fine detail across an extreme­ly wide range of lumi­nos­i­ty. To achieve this he used the auto-brack­et­ing fea­ture of his Canon EOS 400D and 60D cam­eras to cre­ate three dif­fer­ent expo­sures for each frame in the film. (At 30 frames per sec­ond, that’s 90 expo­sures for each sec­ond of screen time.) Lou­vi­gny then merged each set of three expo­sures into one image using Pho­toma­trix Pro 4.0 soft­ware, selec­tive­ly tone map­ping each sequence to hold detail in some areas while allow­ing oth­ers to go dark.

To cre­ate the mov­ing-cam­era effects, Lou­vi­gny designed and built his own robot­ic three-axis motion sys­tem using Tetrix motors and a LEGO Mind­storms con­trol sys­tem, which he pro­grammed in ROBOTC lan­guage. This allowed him to auto­mate the tor­toise-like dol­ly, pan and tilt move­ments. Lou­vi­gny edit­ed the dig­i­tal film in Adobe Pre­miere and After Effects soft­ware. To top it off he com­posed his own music on a Roland MC-808 groove­box. For more infor­ma­tion, go to the pho­tog­ra­pher’s web­site and Vimeo page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Invent­ing the Dig­i­tal Cam­era: A Short Por­trait of Steven Sas­son

Darren’s Big DIY Cam­era

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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The World’s Highest Artificial Tornado

in Art, Technology | November 29th, 2011

The Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in Stuttgart, Ger­many, is a remark­able struc­ture. Designed by Ben van Berkel and Car­o­line Bos of the Dutch firm UN Stu­dio, the build­ing received rave reviews when it opened in May of 2006. Influ­enced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggen­heim Muse­um in New York, the build­ing was described as “jet-age baroque” by The Guardian archi­tec­ture crit­ic Jonathan Glancey. “It twists and turns with breath­tak­ing com­plex­i­ty,” Glancey wrote in 2006, “clever as a con­jur­ing trick.”

The archi­tects need­ed a bit of mag­ic to bring the muse­um’s open plan into com­pli­ance with fire codes. Like in the Guggen­heim, the inte­ri­or is one con­tin­u­ous­ly unfold­ing space that spi­rals around a cen­tral atri­um. As a con­se­quence there could be no fire doors to con­tain smoke if a blaze broke out in one sec­tion of the build­ing. To solve the prob­lem, UN Stu­dio hired the engi­neer­ing firm Imtech to design a sys­tem that would draw smoke away from all areas of the muse­um, allow­ing peo­ple to escape.

The result is the world’s largest man-made air vor­tex, a 112-foot-high tor­na­do that auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vates in the event of a fire, draw­ing smoke into the cen­ter of the atri­um and mov­ing it upward through an axi­al fan in the ceil­ing. An array of 144 out­lets in the sur­round­ing walls emit pow­er­ful jets of air to gen­er­ate a cen­tral region of low pres­sure, just like in a real tor­na­do. Imtech engi­neers per­fect­ed the design using com­pu­ta­tion­al flu­id dynam­ic (CDF) sim­u­la­tions and lab­o­ra­to­ry mod­els.  The firm has cre­at­ed sim­i­lar sys­tems for air­ports in sev­er­al Ger­man cities, includ­ing Düssel­dorf and Ham­burg. You can watch the tor­na­do at the Mer­cedes-Benz Muse­um in action above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The DIY Tor­na­do Machine

 

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