Allen Ginsberg Reads His Famously Censored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | June 3rd, 2012

Before Banned Books Week comes to a close, we bring you Allen Gins­berg’s 1955 poem, Howl. The con­tro­ver­sial poem became his best known work, and it now occu­pies a cen­tral place in the Beat lit­er­ary canon, stand­ing right along­side Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Gins­berg first read the poem aloud on Octo­ber 7, 1955, to a crowd of about 150 at San Francisco’s Six Gallery. (James Fran­co reen­act­ed that moment in the 2010 film sim­ply called Howl.)

Things got dicey when City Lights pub­lished the poem in 1956, and espe­cial­ly when they tried to import 520 print­ed copies from Lon­don in ’57. US cus­toms offi­cials seized the copies, and Cal­i­for­nia pros­e­cu­tors tried City Lights founder Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti and his part­ner, Shigeyosi Murao, on obscen­i­ty charges that same year. Nine lit­er­ary experts tes­ti­fied to the redeem­ing social val­ue of Howl, and, after a lengthy tri­al, the judge ruled that the poem was of “redeem­ing social impor­tance.”

Above, we give you Gins­berg read­ing Howl in 1959. It’s also list­ed in the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. An online ver­sion of the text appears here.

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:

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

 

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The Best Animated Films of All Time, According to Terry Gilliam

in Animation, Film | June 1st, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here) , cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

It was pub­lished in The Guardian back in 2001, before the advent of YouTube, which makes things feel a lit­tle spare. So, today, we’re reviv­ing Gilliam’s list and adding some videos to the mix. Above, we start with The Mas­cot, a 1934 film by the Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Wla­dys­law Starewicz. The film pio­neered a num­ber of stop ani­ma­tion tech­niques, mak­ing it a sem­i­nal film in the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. About Starewicz’s film, Gilliam wrote:

His work is absolute­ly breath­tak­ing, sur­re­al, inven­tive and extra­or­di­nary, encom­pass­ing every­thing that Jan Svankma­jer, Waler­ian Borow­czyk and the Quay Broth­ers [see below] would do sub­se­quent­ly.… It is impor­tant, before you jour­ney through all these mind-bend­ing worlds, to remem­ber that it was all done years ago, by some­one most of us have for­got­ten about now. This is where it all began.


Tex Avery pro­duced car­toons dur­ing the Gold­en Age of Hol­ly­wood ani­ma­tion, most­ly for Warn­er Bros. and Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er stu­dios, and cre­at­ed some mem­o­rable char­ac­ters along the way — Daffy Duck, Bugs Bun­ny, Droopy dog and the rest. In 1943, Avery ani­mat­ed Red Hot Rid­ing Hood, which amount­ed to a rebel­lious retelling of the clas­sic Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood tale. 50 years lat­er, ani­ma­tors ranked it 7th on their list of The 50 Great­est Car­toons. Accord­ing to Gilliam, Avery’s work deliv­ers this:

The mag­ic of Tex Avery’s ani­ma­tion is the sheer extrem­i­ty of it all. The clas­sic Avery image is of some­one’s mouth falling open down to their feet, wham, their eyes whoop­ing out and their tongue unrolling for about half a mile: that is the most won­der­ful­ly lib­er­at­ing spec­ta­cle.… There is also a child­like sense of immor­tal­i­ty and inde­struc­tibil­i­ty in his work; peo­ple get squashed, mashed, bashed, bent out of shape, what­ev­er, and they bounce back. In essence, it is like the myth of eter­nal life.


Dur­ing the mid-1950s, Stan Van­der­beek began shoot­ing sur­re­al­ist col­lage films that, as NPR put it, “used clip­pings from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers to cre­ate whim­si­cal but point­ed com­men­tary.” If you think this sounds famil­iar, you’re right. It’s pre­cise­ly this approach that sur­faces lat­er in Gilliam’s own work. And if one film pro­vid­ed par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion, it was Van­der­beek’s 1963 film Breathdeath (right above).

 

About Waler­ian Borow­czyk and his 1964 film Les Jeux des Anges, Gilliam writes:

Borow­czyk was a twist­ed man whose films were infused with a unique cru­el­ty and weird­ness. He start­ed out mak­ing extra­or­di­nary ani­ma­tions, grad­u­at­ed to direct­ing clas­sics such as Goto, Island of Love and La B te… Les Jeux des Anges was my first expe­ri­ence of ani­ma­tion that was utter­ly impres­sion­is­tic. It did­n’t show me any­thing spe­cif­ic, just sound and move­ment from which you cre­ate a world of your own.

Jan Svankma­jer is a sur­re­al­ist Czech ani­ma­tor whose work has influ­enced Tim Bur­ton, The Broth­ers Quay, and Ter­ry Gilliam him­self. In his Guardian list, Gilliam points us to one film, Svankma­jer’s stun­ning 1982 clay­ma­tion short, Dimen­sions of Dia­logue, in part because the film “has moments that evoke the night­mar­ish spec­tre of see­ing com­mon­place things com­ing unex­pect­ed­ly to life.”

Based on a short nov­el writ­ten by Bruno Schulz, Street of Croc­o­diles is a 1986 stop-motion ani­ma­tion direct­ed by the Broth­ers Quay, two Amer­i­can broth­ers who migrat­ed to Eng­land in 1969, short­ly after Gilliam, also Amer­i­can born, became a British cit­i­zen. In 2002, crit­ic Jonathan Rom­ney called Street of Croc­o­diles one of the ten best films of all time — sure­ly enough to make you give it a view.

Oth­er films men­tioned in Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, include:

Out of the Inkwell by Dave Fleis­ch­er (1938)

Pinoc­chio by Hamil­ton Luske and Ben Sharp­steen (1940)

Knick Knack by John Las­seter (1989)

South Park: Big­ger, Longer and Uncut by Trey Park­er (1999)

Some films list­ed above will appear in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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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All Eyes on Ai Weiwei: Life Under Surveillance … and on Twitter … After His Arrest

in Art, Current Affairs | June 1st, 2012

As the one-year anniver­sary of Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei’s release from jail draws near, the whole world seems to be watch­ing his every move. The whole world, that is, except for the Chi­nese peo­ple.

Ai is cut off from most of the pop­u­la­tion of his own coun­try after the gov­ern­ment shut down his blog and stopped him from using Chi­nese social media. When he was released from jail on June 22 of last year, after 81 days of deten­tion, Ai found that the gov­ern­ment had installed sur­veil­lance cam­eras all around his Bei­jing home and stu­dio. He count­ed 15 with­in a 100-meter area. In response, he set up four of of his own cam­eras inside his home ear­li­er this spring and began stream­ing a 24-hour live webfeed, called “Wei­wei Cam.” The regime quick­ly shut that site down, too.

But the Chi­nese author­i­ties have not com­plete­ly cut off Ai’s access to the world out­side of Chi­na. More than 147,000 peo­ple fol­low him on Twit­ter, one of the many West­ern sites blocked in Chi­na, and a steady stream of for­eign jour­nal­ists have been mak­ing their way to his Bei­jing com­pound for inter­views. Last week The New York Times pub­lished a har­row­ing account of the day in April, 2011, when police pulled a hood over Ai’s head and drove him to an undis­closed deten­tion cen­ter. And this week Slate pub­lished an arti­cle, “Some­one’s Always Watch­ing Me,” along with videos (above and below) of an inter­view with Ai con­duct­ed by Slate Group Edi­tor-in-Chief Jacob Weis­berg on May 14. “I feel that what makes them most fright­ened,” Ai told Weis­berg, refer­ring to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, “is my inter­na­tion­al pro­file, my inter­views with West­ern media.”

Ai is restrict­ed to Bei­jing until June 22. When­ev­er he leaves his house he must tell the police where he is going and who he will meet. “I basi­cal­ly obey their orders,” he told Evan Osnos of The New York­er in Jan­u­ary, “because it does­n’t mean any­thing. I also want to tell them I’m not afraid. I’m not secre­tive.” Every week he has to meet with the Pub­lic Secu­ri­ty Bureau for a chat. Like the for­eign jour­nal­ists, the Chi­nese police are eager to learn what Ai plans to do when restric­tions on his move­ment are lift­ed lat­er this month. “They asked me what I would do next when I met them last week­end,” Ai told a reporter for The Tele­graph this week. “They tried to make it very casu­al. After a chat, they said, ‘What comes next?’ I said: ‘It is an inter­est­ing ques­tion. What does this nation do next?’ ”

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The 15 Worst Covers of Beatles Songs: William Shatner, Bill Cosby, Tiny Tim, Sean Connery & Your Excellent Picks

in Music | June 1st, 2012

Thanks to The Wall Street Jour­nal, you can endure box­er Man­ny Pac­quiao singing a ver­sion of John Lennon’s 1971 peace anthem, Imag­ine. It’s pret­ty painful, not quite as painful as tak­ing a Pac­quiao punch, but painful nonethe­less. We float­ed it on Twit­ter (fol­low us here) and we were quick­ly remind­ed that Pac­quiao is hard­ly the first per­son to butch­er The Bea­t­les. (No real knock on him, we’re just hav­ing some fun here.) So we start­ed pulling togeth­er your favorites. What are the worst Bea­t­les’ cov­ers you’ve ever heard — ones so bad, they’re good? Let us know in the com­ments or on Twit­ter, and we’ll start adding them to the post.

In 1968, William Shat­ner, rid­ing high on his Star Trek fame, released his first music album, The Trans­formed Man. It fea­tured poet­ry mixed with pop lyrics and a near­ly blas­phe­mous ver­sion of Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds. It’s here that the cheese began.

Also in 1968, the young come­di­an Bill Cos­by released Bill Cos­by Sings Hooray For The Sal­va­tion Army Band!. The par­o­dy album starts with Cos­by singing a semi-seri­ous ver­sion of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. It was a high point for nei­ther the come­di­an nor the band.

Tel­ly Savalas — you know him from Kojak — sings George Har­rison’s Some­thing in a very lounge lizard kind of way. So awful it’s awe­some.

Michael McK­ean (This is Spinal Tap!) offers up this: Mil­ton Berle singing The Yel­low Sub­ma­rine. It was­n’t one of The Bea­t­les’ best songs, let’s admit it. But Berle did­n’t exact­ly ele­vate it. Uncle Miltie’s record­ing was made in 1968 (do you see a trend here?), not long after the ani­mat­ed Yel­low Sub­ma­rine hit the­aters.

From her 1966 album Way Out West, old time movie star Mae West sings Day Trip­per. Rec­om­mend­ed by @tonymolloy.

Sean Con­nery talk­ing his way through In My Life. And amaz­ing­ly George Mar­tin is respon­si­ble for this.

You can’t talk about so-bad-they’re-good Bea­t­les cov­ers with­out giv­ing a nod to Wing. The Hong Kong-born singer, now based in New Zealand, has record­ed a full album in her out-of-tune singing style. Is it par­o­dy? Is it seri­ous? Who knows. Her album can be had here: Wing Sings the Bea­t­les

Elva Ruby Connes Miller, oth­er­wise known as Mrs. Miller, cov­ered numer­ous songs dur­ing the 1960s, includ­ing A Hard Day’s Night. Her voice was com­pared to the sound of “roach­es scur­ry­ing across a trash can lid.” More recent­ly, this clip was fea­tured on EarBleed.com … for pret­ty good rea­son. Good find Daniel.

And now the male answer to Mrs. Miller, the immor­tal Tiny Tim and his ver­sion of Nowhere Man.

Here is Ger­many’s answer to Wing.  It is Klaus Bey­er’s remake of Back in the U.S.S.R.

This is from “Ban­da Plás­ti­ca de Tepetlix­pa.” Accord­ing to leg­end, John and Paul went to Mex­i­co, to a town called Tepetlix­pa, where peo­ple received them as dis­tin­guished guests. Local brass bands start­ed play­ing the Bea­t­les’ music and moved the singer-song­writer duo to tears. Some time lat­er, the Tepetlix­pa band record­ed Adios a Los Bea­t­les (Good­bye to the Bea­t­les), a 10-song trib­ute to the genius­es from Liv­er­pool. Jaime Orte­ga has more back­sto­ry in the com­ments sec­tion below.

@Brian_M_Cassidy asks: Is this what you’re look­ing for? Indeed it is. The Red Navy Singers, Dancers & Musi­cians sings Let It Be, dur­ing the final days of the Sovi­et Union.

We would­n’t want to leave France out. Here, Les com­pagnons de la chan­son sing Le Sous-Marin Vert. Thanks Pierre.

And final­ly pulling up the rear, The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Male Voice Choir sing When I’m Six­ty Four. H/T Olidez

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The New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast: Where Great Writers Read Stories by Great Writers

in Literature, Podcasts | June 1st, 2012

Each major print pub­li­ca­tion expands into pod­cast­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. Some, hav­ing failed to find a suit­able form for the audio com­pan­ion to their text, scale the oper­a­tion way back and declare pod­cast­ing dead or dying. Oth­ers, through tri­al and error, even­tu­al­ly hap­pen upon a way of pod­cast­ing that clicks with both their own sen­si­bil­i­ty as well as their read­ers’ lis­ten­ing fas­ci­na­tions. The New York­er’s fic­tion pod­cast stands as an exam­ple of the lat­ter, trad­ing on more than one of the mag­a­zine’s strengths. As one of the longest-run­ning and last remain­ing venues for the short sto­ry, the New York­er has access to a wealth of fic­tion that one can read out loud with­in a com­fort­able pod­cast run­time. Giv­en their count­less con­nec­tions to respect­ed writ­ers, they’ve also got access to plen­ty of inter­est­ing peo­ple to do the read­ing.

Here’s the big inno­va­tion: these writ­ers don’t read their sto­ries out loud; they read their favorite sto­ries by oth­er writ­ers out loud. This has brought us pod­casts from, to name a few pair­ings:

In the past year, we’ve also heard Alle­gra Good­man read John Updike, Salman Rushdie read John Barthelme, and Matthew Klam read Charles D’Am­bro­sio. (A new episode appears every month.) The read­ers also have a brief dis­cus­sion about the sto­ry they’ve select­ed with the New York­er’s fic­tion edi­tor Deb­o­rah Treis­man. Being writ­ers them­selves, they talk about the pieces with a much dif­fer­ent sort of scruti­ny than you might remem­ber from all those hours of short-sto­ry analy­sis in Eng­lish class. They engage, to put it broad­ly, more with the writ­ing’s craft than with its testable mechan­ics. Some pod­cast-lis­ten­ers won­der aloud about the place of fic­tion in this new form; the New York­er has devel­oped a place for it by look­ing back to an old one.

The record­ings above have been indexed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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

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The Bill Evans Trio in London, 1965: Two Sets by the Legendary Combo

in Music | May 31st, 2012

On March 19, 1965, the Bill Evans Trio stopped by the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don to play a pair of sets on Jazz 625, the now-leg­endary pro­gram host­ed by the British trum­peter Humphrey Lyt­tel­ton. The combo–which fea­tured Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums–played two sets, includ­ing most of the songs from their just-com­plet­ed album, Trio ’65. The two 35-minute pro­grams (shown con­sec­u­tive­ly in the video above) take us back in time to see and hear one of the most bril­liant and influ­en­tial jazz pianists of all time, at work in a tight­ly inte­grat­ed trio.

Set One:

  1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
  2. “Elsa,” by Earl Zin­dars
  3. “Sum­mer­time,” by George Gersh­win
  4. “Come Rain or Come Shine,” by Harold Arlen
  5. “My Fool­ish Heart,” by Vic­tor Young
  6. “Re: Per­son I Knew,” by Bill Evans
  7. “Israel,” by John­ny Carisi
  8. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Set Two:

  1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
  2. “How My Heart Sings,” by Earl Zin­dars
  3. “Nardis,” by Miles Davis
  4. “Who Can I Turn To?” by Antho­ny New­ley and Leslie Bricusse
  5. “Some­day My Prince Will Come,” by Frank Churchill
  6. “How Deep is the Ocean?” by Bill Evans
  7. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

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“Good Chemistry” Explains Chemical Bonds with Cutout Animation and Teenage Romance

in Chemistry, K-12, Video - Science | May 31st, 2012

Love, or the promise of it, sells clothes, cologne and many a com­pact disc—but who’d think love could sell chem­istry? Six­teen-year-old Eli Ciri­no did, and was he ever right. The tenth grad­er sub­mit­ted an extra cred­it video for his chem­istry class and what he got was prob­a­bly way more than he bar­gained for. Good Chem­istry explains chem­i­cal bonds using con­struc­tion paper ani­ma­tion of pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ions and cova­lent bonds set against an orig­i­nal song sung by Ciri­no. It’s all edit­ed togeth­er with images of a cute cou­ple reach­ing out and clasp­ing hands. A sam­ple of Cirino’s lyrics: “We always on the look­out for a part­ner­ship, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive you get the drift.” It’s catchy and sweet, to the tune of more than 290,000 views on YouTube by the end of the day Wednes­day. Extra cred­it for Ciri­no for bring­ing the video in at pi-time: three min­utes, four­teen sec­onds.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lancer. Find more of her work at .

Get more intel­li­gent media by fol­low­ing us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Entitled Opinions, the “Life and Literature” Podcast That Refuses to Dumb Things Down

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | May 31st, 2012

Proust. Mimet­ic desire. The infla­tion­ary uni­verse. 1910, Amer­i­can writ­ers in Paris. The his­to­ry of the book. These top­ics may sound unusu­al enough to pique your inter­est. They may float through your mind once in a while, cap­tur­ing an hour or two of your curios­i­ty. They may peri­od­i­cal­ly send you to the library on read­ing binges. But for KZSU-FM’s Enti­tled Opin­ions, they are meat and drink. Since 2005, pro­fes­sor-broad­cast­er Robert Har­ri­son has explored these top­ics and many more besides in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly expan­sive long-form con­ver­sa­tions he con­ducts on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s radio sta­tion. Always begin­ning with a mono­logue, Har­ri­son spends the bulk of his broad­casts think­ing aloud about these rich top­ics with philoso­phers like Richard Rorty, nov­el­ists like Orhan Pamuk, many a fel­low aca­d­e­m­ic, lis­ten­ers, and his own broth­er. (Some­times he up and con­ducts the entire show in French.) Each and every one of these he makes avail­able as a pod­cast, on the show’s site and on iTunes.

“These are not like Stan­ford cours­es online,” said Har­ri­son in a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News pro­file. “These are pro­grams where intel­lec­tu­als speak to each oth­er at a high lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al exchange—no one is exclud­ed per se, but you do have to have intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty. We refuse to dumb it down.” Hav­ing recent­ly returned from a pro­longed hia­tus, Enti­tled Opin­ions has kept not dumb­ing it down with con­ver­sa­tions on geog­ra­phy, her­maph­ro­ditism, polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Rawls, and Petrar­ch and Petrar­chism. I myself engaged Har­ri­son in a long-form inter­view on my pre­vi­ous pod­cast, The Mar­ket­place of Ideas, in which we dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of his show; his books on forests, gar­dens, and the dead;  his life as a rock musi­cian (so that explains those episodes on Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Jimi Hen­drix); and get­ting called “the most pre­ten­tious man in the world” over e‑mail. We die-hard Enti­tled Opin­ions fans demand to know these things.

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

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The Art of Making a Flamenco Guitar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Experienced in 3 Minutes

in Music | May 31st, 2012

The Fla­men­co gui­tar grew up in Andalu­sia, the major province in south­ern Spain, where it became inte­gral to the cul­ture dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. The mod­ern fla­men­co gui­tar (a first cousin of the mod­ern clas­si­cal gui­tar) is typ­i­cal­ly made with two of three woods — spruce on the top, and cypress or sycamore on the back and sides. When put in the hands of the right luthi­er, the gui­tar can become a thing of beau­ty. Case in point: This art­ful video by Greek film­mak­er Dim­itris Ladopou­los brings you inside the work­shop of Vasilis Lazarides, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing high qual­i­ty fla­men­co gui­tars by hand. (Vis­it his gui­tars online here.) 299 hours of blood, sweat, tears and love go into mak­ing each fine gui­tar. But you can watch it all hap­pen in a mat­ter of three min­utes, with the music of Edsart Udo de Haes pro­vid­ing the sound­track.

If elec­tric gui­tars hap­pen to be your thing, you can also watch Fend­ers being made in 1959 and 2012.

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:

Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirm­ing, Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary About a Fla­men­co Dance Class

Hear Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Cov­ered in Unex­pect­ed Styles: Gre­go­ri­an Choir, Cel­lo Ensem­ble, Finnish Blue­grass, Jazz Vocal & More

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Building the Golden Gate Bridge: A Retro Film Featuring Original Archival Footage

in History | May 30th, 2012

This past week­end, San Fran­cis­co cel­e­brat­ed the 75th anniver­sary of the Gold­en Gate Bridge. And if Beth­le­hem Steel were still around, it would have been cel­e­brat­ing too. Once Amer­i­ca’s sec­ond-largest steel pro­duc­er, the now bank­rupt com­pa­ny fab­ri­cat­ed the steel used in the con­struc­tion of the icon­ic bridge — all 68,000 tons of it. Some­where dur­ing the 1950s, the Penn­syl­va­nia-based firm revis­it­ed the mak­ing of the Gold­en Gate Bridge, pro­duc­ing a 26 minute film that incor­po­rat­ed some amaz­ing archival footage. Every phase of con­struc­tion gets cov­ered, and the film ends with the bridge’s big open­ing day in 1937. It’s not to be missed.

via The Atlantic

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

in Apple, Art, iPad, iPhone | May 30th, 2012

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

 

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