A Beautiful Drone’s Eye View of Antarctica

in Travel | May 4th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already, check it out. When Stock­holm-based film­mak­er Kalle Ljung spent 16 days in the Antarc­tic ear­li­er this year, he “got to expe­ri­ence the most amaz­ing scenery and wildlife” and cap­tured some beau­ti­ful footage with a DJI Phan­tom 2 drone cam­era. Ready for some goose­bumps? Catch the scene (around the 6 minute mark) where Ljung dri­ves the cam­era straight through a hole in an ice­berg. Pret­ty amaz­ing to watch.

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!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage

A Eery Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

Drones over Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

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The Poetry of the Cherry Blossoms Comes to Life in a One Minute Time Lapse Video

in Biology, Life, Poetry, Travel | April 29th, 2015

Are we to look at cher­ry blos­soms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloud­less? To long for the moon while look­ing on the rain, to low­er the blinds and be unaware of the pass­ing of spring—these are even more deeply mov­ing. Branch­es about to blos­som or gar­dens strewn with fad­ed flow­ers are wor­thi­er of our admi­ra­tion.

-Yoshi­da Kenko, Essays in Idle­ness (1330–1332)

Depend­ing on your coor­di­nates, cher­ry blos­som sea­son is either approach­ing, over, or in full riotous bloom. Every year, the Brook­lyn Botan­ic Gar­den sched­ules its annu­al Saku­ra Mat­suri fes­ti­val in igno­rance of what the weath­er may hold. Will lin­ger­ing win­ter tem­per­a­tures delay the blos­soms, or will spring come ear­ly, caus­ing the trees to erupt way ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed?

The only thing one can be cer­tain of is a mob scene, as ardent flower-view­ers of all ages stam­pede toward the cot­ton can­dy-col­ored trees, devices in hand. Mod­ern hana­mi prac­tice would sure­ly con­found the elite of the 8th Cen­tu­ry Impe­r­i­al Court. They wouldn’t have under­stood the con­cept of “self­ie” if it bit ‘em in the shakuhachi.

Of course, for every deter­mined 21st-cen­tu­ry soul who makes a point of admir­ing the blos­soms dur­ing their brief appear­ance, there are thou­sands more who, in the words of bureau­crat-turned-monk, Kenko, “low­er the blinds…unaware of the pass­ing of spring.”

Per­haps this lat­ter group is who Dave Allen, the Brook­lyn Botan­ic Garden’s for­mer web­mas­ter, had in mind when he installed a cam­era in a weath­er­proof box near the Cher­ry Esplanade. Every 3 min­utes, the shut­ter snapped, cap­tur­ing not just the glo­ri­ous Prunus ‘Kan­zan’ (aka Sekiya­ma) that line the walk­ways, but also a wide range of vis­i­tors who flocked to the gar­den between April 18 to April 26, 2008, seek­ing respite from the pres­sures of urban liv­ing.

The time lapse video Allen assem­bled from 3000 cap­tured moments takes slight­ly more than a minute to view. I think we have time to spare…

Watch it once for the main attrac­tion…

And then again for the (pix­il­lat­ed) peo­ple. Ran­dom­ly press “pause” to catch a kiss­ing cou­ple, a Hasidic man in a shtreimel, and a lit­tle girl in pink who some­how found her­self the sole human on the path…

Then one more time for the shad­ows of the clouds. Ah… That’s like­ly the time-strapped vir­tu­al viewer’s best chance for achiev­ing the sort of mind­set one might ascribe to The Tale of Gen­ji.

(Though per­haps a calm and con­tem­pla­tive mood was nev­er the goal. As ninth cen­tu­ry aris­to­crat­ic poet Ari­wara no Nar­i­hi­ra wrote (in trans­la­tion by Hiroa­ki Sato & Bur­ton Wat­son):

If there were no such thing

as cher­ry blos­soms

in this world,

in spring­time how untrou­bled

our hearts would be!

There is a mod­ern schol­ar on Tum­blr whose research sup­ports this take on the pink blooms’ blood quick­en­ing effects.)

In a week or two it will all be over.

As the petals fall, take refuge in Toi Der­ri­cotte’s recent poem. Its set­ting should feel famil­iar…

Cher­ry blos­soms

I went down to

min­gle my breath

with the breath

of the cher­ry blos­soms.

There were pho­tog­ra­phers:

Moth­ers arrang­ing their

chil­dren against 

gnarled old trees;

a cou­ple, hug­ging, 

asks a passer­by

to snap them

like that,

so that their love

will always be caught

between two friend­ships:

ours & the friend­ship

of the cher­ry trees.

Oh Cher­ry,

why can’t my poems

be as beau­ti­ful?

A young woman in a fur-trimmed

coat sets a card table

with linens, can­dles,

a pic­nic bas­ket & wine.

A father tips

a boy’s wheel­chair back

so he can gaze

up at a branched

heav­en.

                     All around us

the blos­soms

flur­ry down

whis­per­ing,

        Be patient

you have an ancient beau­ty.

                                            Be patient,

                                  you have an ancient beau­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Mem­oir

Venice in a Day: From Day­break to Sun­set in Time­lapse

The Beau­ty of Namib­ian Nights in Time­lapse Motion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be releas­ing the 55th issue of her zine, the East Vil­lage Inky at the Brook­lyn Zine Fest this Sun­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Notebook on Cities and Culture’s Yearlong Podcast Exploration of Seattle Is Kickstarting Now

in Podcasts, Travel | April 8th, 2015

 

Just about as long as I’ve writ­ten here at Open Cul­ture, I’ve also host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a world-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Over five sea­sons so far, I’ve record­ed each and every inter­view “on loca­tion,” from Los Ange­les to Kyoto to Lon­don to Port­land to Mex­i­co City to Copen­hagen to Van­cou­ver to Seoul. Next comes the show’s sixth and most in-depth sea­son yet: A Year in Seat­tle.

Think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, of grunge, of Microsoft and Ama­zon, of the Space Nee­dle, of Frasi­er Crane, of Bud­dy Bradley, of Archie McPhee, of sleep­less­ness, of Star­bucks. But hav­ing spent my own ado­les­cence hang­ing out there, I know Seat­tle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more inter­est­ing since I’ve grown up. Now to explore the Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture way, through a year of in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with Seattle’s nov­el­ists, jour­nal­ists, com­ic artists, film­mak­ers, broad­cast­ers, explor­ers, gourmets, aca­d­e­mics, archi­tects, plan­ners, cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

ncc-season-six-logo-med

As with every sea­son, I’m rais­ing the bud­get for Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Year in Seat­tle on Kick­starter. If feel so inclined, you can have a look at its Kick­starter page and find out how you can help make it a hap­pen, receive post­cards from Seat­tle, or even get your project or mes­sage men­tioned at the top of every show.

And as a spe­cial pre­view, I’ve just post­ed an inter­view with com­ic artist Peter Bagge, cre­ator of the leg­endary alt-com­ic series Hate, author of the graph­ic nov­els Apoc­a­lypse Nerd, Oth­er Lives, Reset, Woman Rebel: The Mar­garet Sanger Sto­ry, and just about as Seat­tle a fig­ure as they come. There are 51 more where that came from — but only if we can suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start the sea­son by this Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 10:00, Pacif­ic time.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

in Art, Google, Museums, Travel | March 22nd, 2015

circling

Cir­cling Birdies by Cheko, Grana­da Spain

Since last we wrote, Google Street Art has dou­bled its online archive by adding some 5,000 images, bring­ing the tal­ly to 10,000, with coor­di­nates pin­point­ing exact loca­tions on all five con­ti­nents (though as of this writ­ing, things are a bit thin on the ground in Africa). Giv­en the tem­po­ral real­i­ties of out­door, guer­ril­la art, pil­grims may arrive to find a blank can­vas where graf­fi­ti once flour­ished. (RIP New York City’s 5 Pointz, the “Insti­tute of High­er Burn­ing.”)

A major aim of the project is vir­tu­al preser­va­tion. As with per­for­mance art, doc­u­men­ta­tion is key. Not all of the work can be attrib­uted, but click on an image to see what is known. Guid­ed tours to neigh­bor­hoods rich with street art allow arm­chair trav­el­ers to expe­ri­ence the work, and inter­views with the artists dis­pel any num­ber of stereo­types.

Cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions like Turkey’s Pera Muse­um and Hong Kong’s Art Research Insti­tute, and street art projects based in such hubs as Rome, Paris, Syd­ney, and Bangkok, have pulled togeth­er offi­cial col­lec­tions of pho­tos and videos, but you can play cura­tor too.

It’s easy to add images to a col­lec­tion of your own mak­ing that can be shared with the pub­lic at large or saved for pri­vate inspi­ra­tion. Care­ful, you could lose hours…it’s like Pin­ter­est for peo­ple who grav­i­tate toward spray paint and rub­bish strewn vacant lots over ging­ham wrapped Mason jars.

It’s been a long and bru­tal win­ter here on the east coast, so for my first for­ay, I prowled for Signs of Spring. One of my first hits was “Cir­cling Birdies” by Cheko, above. Locat­ed in Grana­da, Spain, it’s one of the exist­ing works Google has turned into a GIF with some light, log­i­cal ani­ma­tion.

Behold a bit of what typ­ing “flower,” “baby ani­mals,” “plants,” and “trees” into a search box can yield! You can enter Google Street Art here.

Child With Windmill

Artist: Wal­ter Ker­shaw
Lon­don UK

Thrashbird

Artists: Thrash­bird and Renee Gagnon
Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

Baby Chick

Artist: unknown
Rochester, NY

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 11.07.58 PM

Icy and Sot
Rochester NY

Freedom Fighter

Artist: Kristy San­doval
Los Ange­les, CA

Natureza Viva

Artists: Regg and Violant
Alfragide Por­tu­gal

Beetle

Artist: Klit
Alfragide, Por­tu­gal
A giant col­or­ful bee­tle tries to fly between the ceil­ing and the floor of this park­ing lot. His wings seem filled with flower petals. So, the “Liv­ing Nature” project brought a set of huge insects that car­ry a note of liv­ing spir­it to the space.

Deep Blue

Artist: Rai Cruz
Mani­la, Philip­pines

Nagel
Artist: Chris­ti­aan Nagel
Lon­don, Eng­land

Untitled Rome
Artist: Lady Aiko
Rome, Italy

Parsa

Artist: Andrew Ken­tish
Nepal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Free eBook: Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Brontë’s Grave

in e-books, Travel | March 2nd, 2015

Freud's Couch

Worth a quick note: Every month, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press makes avail­able a free ebook, which you can read online. This mon­th’s pick is Freud’s Couch, Scot­t’s But­tocks, Bron­të’s Grave, by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Clas­sics pro­fes­sor Simon Gold­hill, who dou­bles as the direc­tor of the Cam­bridge Vic­to­ri­an Stud­ies group. The press describes the book as fol­lows:

If you have toured the home of a famed writer, seen the desk at which they worked, or vis­it­ed their grave, you are a lit­er­ary pil­grim, par­tak­ing in a form of tourism first pop­u­lar in the Vic­to­ri­an era. In our free e‑book for March, Freud’s Couch, Scott’s But­tocks, Brontë’s Grave, Simon Gold­hill makes a pil­grim­age to Sir Wal­ter Scott’s baro­nial man­sion, Wordsworth’s cot­tage in the Lake Dis­trict, the Bron­të par­son­age, Shakespeare’s birth­place, and Freud’s office in Hamp­stead. He game­ly nego­ti­ates dis­trac­tions rang­ing from bro­ken bicy­cles to a flock of gig­gling Japan­ese school­girls, as he tries to dis­cern what our fore­bears were look­ing for at these sites, as well as what they have to say to the mod­ern pil­grim. Take your lit­er­ary pil­grim­age in our free e‑book, Freud’s Couch, Scott’s But­tocks, Brontë’s Grave.

The book, which got a warm review in The Wall Street Jour­nal, can be accessed via The U. Chica­go site.  Count­less more free ebooks (down­load­able ones!) can be found in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

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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Dubai in Flow Motion: A Short Film That Takes Hyperlapses to the Next Level

in Travel | February 19th, 2015

Dubai, locat­ed in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE), has become a bustling, metrop­o­lis, and a major busi­ness hub in the Per­sian Gulf region. “My first impres­sion of Dubai was that of super-tall build­ings jut­ting out of the desert sand,” writes Rob Whit­worth, the cre­ator of the film above. “Dubai may be home to the world’s most out­ra­geous sky­line,” but there’s more to it than that. After “3 months of explo­ration, research and film­ing,” Whit­worth con­tin­ues, “my last­ing impres­sion is of the eter­nal won­der of the desert and the impor­tance it holds for the Emi­rati peo­ple.” Sky­scrap­ers and desert dunes, they both get cap­tured in the pho­tog­ra­pher’s fast mov­ing short film called “Dubai Flow Motion” — a film which, as Petapix­el right­ly notes, takes “hyper­laps­es to the next lev­el.” Watch and you’ll see what they mean.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

 

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Three Strikingly Different Views of North Korea, the Most Secretive Country in the World

in Current Affairs, Travel | December 10th, 2014

I once asked a friend based in Seoul, South Korea who used to write for a pres­ti­gious news mag­a­zine what that mag­a­zine want­ed to hear from the Korea beat. “Let’s see… North Korea, North Korea, and more North Korea,” he replied. “Oh, and did I men­tion North Korea?” Since the cre­ation of two Kore­as after the Sec­ond World War, North Korea, the far less pop­u­lat­ed and infi­nite­ly more secre­tive sib­ling of the land of all-you-can-eat bar­be­cue and “Gang­nam Style,” has inspired deep and fear­ful fas­ci­na­tion in its observers. This has held truer and truer as time goes on; South and North Korea looked sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar in the twen­ty years or so right after they put the Kore­an War on pause, but now they’ve diverged so far that one can scarce­ly believe that so lit­tle time, and even less dis­tance, sep­a­rates the two.

The world’s inter­est in North Korea has run espe­cial­ly strong in the 21st cen­tu­ry, dur­ing the reigns of the late (and cinephilic) Kim Jong-Il and now his son, the even high­er-pro­file (and seem­ing­ly unap­pre­cia­tive of the upcom­ing North Korea-themed James Fran­co-Seth Rogen com­e­dy The Inter­view) Kim Jong-Un. Vice catered straight to it when they pro­duced the doc­u­men­tary The Vice Guide to North Korea at the top, which pro­vides a wise­crack­ing first-per­son per­spec­tive on what you get when you sign up for a tour of the place. (Shoot­ing pool with a lone­ly tea-shop girl ranks not low­est among the attrac­tions.) If you sign up for one your­self, you’ll prob­a­bly go with Koryo Tours, the firm with whose aid city-­bran­der JT Singh and video­g­ra­ph­er Rob Whit­worth put togeth­er “Enter Pyongyang,” the time-bend­ing com­pos­ite flight through the North Kore­an cap­i­tal just above.

prison-sinuiju

Pyon­gang shows up on illu­mi­na­tion maps as the sole point of light in an oth­er­wise dark coun­try. So what goes on in the rest of it? Accord­ing to One Free Korea, “the Com­mit­tee for Human Rights in North Korea esti­mates that North Korea holds as many as 120,000 peo­ple in its sys­tem of con­cen­tra­tion and deten­tion camps, and that 400,000 peo­ple have died in these camps from tor­ture, star­va­tion, dis­ease, and exe­cu­tion.” On that page, they’ve assem­bled Google Earth satel­lite images doc­u­ment­ing the prob­a­ble loca­tions and ele­ments of these camps. For more on these least-known parts of this least-known nation, see also Vice’s 40-minute pro­gram on North Kore­an Labor Camps below:

If all this does­n’t sati­ate your curios­i­ty about North Korea — and what amount of infor­ma­tion ever could? — have a look at Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Inside North Korea, a slow-motion film of an intense­ly chore­o­graphed North Kore­an mil­i­tary parade, and of course, our guide to the five best North Kore­an movies, all free to watch online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Dic­ta­tor Kim Jong-il’s Writ­ings on Cin­e­ma, Art & Opera: Cour­tesy of North Korea’s Free E‑Library

Orches­tral Manoeu­vres in North Korea Prove Yet Again That Music is Uni­ver­sal

A Slo-Mo Look Inside North Korea

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton’s Philosophical Look at Our Wanderlust Tendencies (2005)

in Philosophy, Television, Travel | December 5th, 2014

The tra­di­tion of the uncom­fort­able intel­lec­tu­al aboard a cruise ship, while not a par­tic­u­lar­ly long or wide one, has pro­duced a few intrigu­ing works. You may well know — and, if you’re any­thing like me, know very well indeed from count­less reread­ings — David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s essay about his sev­en-night Caribbean cruise, known as it first ran in Harper’s as “Ship­ping Out,” and lat­er in full form as the title piece of the col­lec­tion A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again. In this envi­ron­ment of con­stant­ly replen­ished ameni­ties and unceas­ing “pam­per­ing” (a word that gen­er­ates an essay’s worth of exe­ge­sis by itself), Wal­lace comes up against the inevitable ques­tion: can a cruise line, or any oth­er form of human effort, real­ly guar­an­tee our hap­pi­ness?

This ques­tion has also proven cen­tral to the career of anoth­er writer and thinker, Alain de Bot­ton. No mat­ter the sub­ject on which his focus may come to rest — archi­tec­ture, Proust, ancient phi­los­o­phy, work — his mind nev­er strays far from the issue of what makes us hap­py, and whether any­thing can keep us that way. The 2005 doc­u­men­tary The Art of Trav­el, a com­pan­ion to his book of the same name, finds de Bot­ton aboard a cruise lin­er, ful­ly equipped with fine wines and line-danc­ing class­es, bound for Spain. Will he dis­em­bark in the Barcelona of which he has dreamed, or will an obscure French nov­el­ist con­vince him of the fool­ish­ness of actu­al­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the very places you’ve long want­ed to? (The answer may not come as a sur­prise to those famil­iar with de Bot­ton’s pro­fes­sion­al tem­pera­ment.)

But our intre­pid host does­n’t stop at cruis­ing: he takes a week­end “city break” in Ams­ter­dam, fol­lows around a World War II bunker enthu­si­ast, goes for a road trip through east Ger­many, pon­ders the dis­tinc­tive lone­li­ness found only in Edward Hop­per paint­ings; gets the grand tour of a “swingers’ hotel,” boards an all-Japan­ese Cotswolds tour bus (and teach­es his fel­low pas­sen­gers about John Ruskin); and won­ders, final­ly, whether the def­i­n­i­tion of a trav­el­er comes not from the dis­tance and fre­quen­cy of the move­ment, but from the “atti­tude of curios­i­ty and recep­tiv­i­ty” to what­ev­er cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion. Hav­ing found myself in a career that involves more and more trav­el each year, I can’t ask myself these ques­tions too often. Whether you care about get­ting to far-off places or rich­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the ones near­by, per­haps de Bot­ton will get you ask­ing them too. At the very least, he’ll save you a cruise.

More films by de Bot­ton can be found in our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Socrates on TV, Cour­tesy of Alain de Bot­ton (2000)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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