The Bayeux Tapestry Animated

in Animation, History | March 29th, 2012

We had to do it. We had to bring back a won­der­ful lit­tle ani­ma­tion of The Bayeux Tapes­try — you know, the famous embroi­dery that offers a pic­to­r­i­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land (1066) and the events lead­ing up to this piv­otal moment in medieval his­to­ry. Cur­rent­ly resid­ing in France, the tapes­try mea­sures 20 inch­es by 230 feet, and you can now see an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the sto­ry it nar­rates. The clip above starts rough­ly halfway through the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, with the appear­ance of Hal­ley’s Comet, and it con­cludes with the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066. The video cre­at­ed by David New­ton began as a stu­dent project at Gold­smiths Col­lege.

P.S. Don’t miss the many cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. They’re all from top flight uni­ver­si­ties.

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

The Animation of Billy Collins’ Poetry: Everyday Moments in Motion

in Animation, Poetry, TED Talks | March 26th, 2012

The first time I saw Bil­ly Collins speak, he appeared at my col­lege con­vo­ca­tion, toward the end of his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. Now, the sec­ond time I’ve seen Bil­ly Collins speak, he appears giv­ing this TEDTalk, “Every­day Moments, Caught in Time,” in which he makes fun of his own ten­den­cy to men­tion his years as Unit­ed States Poet Lau­re­ate. But he most­ly uses his fif­teen min­utes onstage in Long Beach in front of TED’s swoop­ing cam­eras to talk about how the Sun­dance Chan­nel ani­mat­ed five of his poems. A boost­er of poet­ry “off the shelf” and into pub­lic places — sub­ways, bill­boards, cere­al box­es — he fig­ured that even such an “unnat­ur­al and unnec­es­sary” merg­er could fur­ther the cause of elud­ing humanity’s “anti-poet­ry deflec­tor shields that were installed in high school.”

Collins also notes that the idea for the project stirred the embers of his “car­toon junkie” child­hood, when Bugs Bun­ny was his muse. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, how­ev­er, the pro­duc­ers at the Sun­dance Chan­nel kept quite far indeed from the Mer­rie Melodies. These ani­mat­ed poems opt instead for an aes­thet­ic that takes pieces of visu­al real­i­ty and repur­pos­es them in ways we don’t expect: look at the real arm slith­er­ing across the pages in the first poem, the tan­gi­ble-look­ing dolls and doll envi­ron­ments of the sec­ond poem, or the drift­ing pho­to­graph­ic cutouts of the third. Not to get too grand about it, but isn’t this what poet­ry itself is sup­posed to do? Don’t the words them­selves also cut out frag­ments of actu­al exis­tence and posi­tion them, recon­tex­tu­al­ize them, and move them around in ways that sur­prise us? The sub­stance of these shorts — foun­tain pens, fig­urines, car keys, paper boats, match­sticks, mice — may seem like the last word in mun­dan­i­ty, but per­ceived through the dif­fer­ent­ly “real” lens­es of Collins’ poet­ry and this unusu­al ani­ma­tion, they inspire curios­i­ty again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3 Year Old Recites Poem, “Litany” By Bil­ly Collins

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry At Con­struc­tion Site

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

RIP Peter Bergman; Hear the Firesign Theatre’s 1970 Masterpiece

in Comedy | March 13th, 2012

“I’m too young to have been around when these were cur­rent,” reads one YouTube com­ment post­ed to a piece of Fire­sign The­atre mate­r­i­al, “but as soon as I heard their first four albums or so, my dad’s jokes sud­den­ly made sense.” Respond­ing to anoth­er clip, some­one else recalls, “My father quot­ed bits of their show through­out my entire child­hood, and as we got old­er we asked where they came from.” A third com­menter appears below yet anoth­er arti­fact from a Fire­sign record: “My dad has been lis­ten­ing to this since it came out in 1969, and I myself have been lis­ten­ing to it since he showed me it when I was sev­en in 1989… and we’re STILL find­ing new things about it.” I count myself in this parade of late-twen­ties-ear­ly-thir­ties lis­ten­ers who embrace enthu­si­asm for the Fire­sign The­atre as their patro­cliny. Hav­ing nev­er known a world with­out all four of these guys whom Robert Christ­gau was call­ing “the grand old men of head com­e­dy” even in 1977, we find our­selves not just dis­mayed but star­tled by the pass­ing of found­ing mem­ber Peter Bergman last Fri­day.

For a refresh­er course — or even a first course — in the inim­itable Fire­sign sen­si­bil­i­ty, look no fur­ther than the quartet’s 1970 album Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers, avail­able in four parts on YouTube. Enthu­si­asts of stu­dio-record­ed com­e­dy con­sid­er it the Ulysses of the form (or even its Finnegans Wake), though you won’t have to per­form quite so much schol­ar­ship before you’re allowed to laugh at the jokes.

In the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, Bergman and his co-sur­re­al­ists Phil Austin, David Oss­man, and Philip Proc­tor real­ized they could use then-mod­ern record­ing stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy not just as a facil­i­ty for cap­tur­ing com­e­dy, but for cre­at­ing com­e­dy — a new kind of com­e­dy nobody had ever heard before. Lay­er­ing speech upon noise upon son­ic abstrac­tion, the Fire­sign The­atre did with the tra­di­tions of radio com­e­dy what Steely Dan did with those of jazz and rock, craft­ing a dense satir­i­cal polypho­ny of jab, word­play, allu­sion, and con­trolled inar­tic­u­la­cy that yields dif­fer­ent laughs on dif­fer­ent lev­els depend­ing on where, when, and who you are. This proved the ide­al way to tell the sto­ry of Don’t Crush That Dwarf’s pro­tag­o­nist George Leroy Tirebiter, for­mer teen actor and cur­rent wee-hour chan­nel-flip­per in a dystopi­an future Los Ange­les cloud­ed with evan­ge­lism, huck­ster­ism, and creep­ing para­noia.

Bergman him­self said they made their records to be heard about eighty times. If we in this newest wave of adult Fire­sign The­atre fan­dom believe the col­lege sto­ries our fathers tell, Don’t Crush That Dwarf could play eighty times dur­ing the course of a sin­gle par­ty. (Before the inven­tion of the inter­net, I sup­pose you took your intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion where you found it.) Unlike them, we didn’t come upon the album by way of an insis­tent friend sit­ting us down with a pair of head­phones and a joint; we’ve been hear­ing Dad play the thing since we were in dia­pers. I find it impos­si­ble to imag­ine a child­hood — indeed, an exis­tence — with­out con­stant ref­er­ences to hot-but­tered groat clus­ters, Morse Sci­ence High School, Ersatz Broth­ers Cof­fee, or the Depart­ment of Redun­dan­cy Depart­ment. I haven’t quite heard the Fire­sign Theatre’s mas­ter­piece eighty times yet, but when­ev­er I put on their inter­pre­ta­tion of Hesiod’s five ages of man by way of the five ages of Tirebiter’s life, I lis­ten with the con­fi­dence that it will last me through five of my own.

Links to each part of Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers: one, two, three, four

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

How Bertrand Russell Turned The Beatles Against the Vietnam War

in History, Music, Philosophy | March 10th, 2012

The Bea­t­les were so much a part of the youth move­ment that blos­somed in the 1960s that it’s amus­ing to think that one of the main issues that ener­gized the movement–peace–came to the Bea­t­les through a 92-year-old man.

As Paul McCart­ney explains in this clip from a Jan­u­ary 14, 2009 inter­view on The View, it hap­pened when he decid­ed to pay a vis­it to philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell. A co-founder of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy, Rus­sell had been a life-long social and polit­i­cal activist. Dur­ing World War I, he was not allowed to trav­el freely in Britain due to his anti-war views. He lost his fel­low­ship at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Cam­bridge, and was even­tu­al­ly jailed for six months for sup­pos­ed­ly inter­fer­ing with British For­eign Pol­i­cy. After World War II, Rus­sell lob­bied stren­u­ous­ly for the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, he opposed the Viet­nam War.

After the Bea­t­les became big in 1963 and 1964, McCart­ney began tak­ing advan­tage of his celebri­ty sta­tus by call­ing on peo­ple he admired. In an inter­view with Bar­ry Miles for the book Paul McCart­ney: Many Years From Now, McCart­ney describes his meet­ing with Rus­sell:

Some­how I got his num­ber and called him up. I fig­ured him as a good speak­er, I’d seen him on tele­vi­sion, I’d read var­i­ous bits and pieces and was very impressed by his dig­ni­ty and the clar­i­ty of this think­ing, so when I got a chance I went down and met him. Bertrand Rus­sell lived in Chelsea in one of those lit­tle ter­race hous­es, I think it was Flood Street. He had the arche­typ­al Amer­i­can assis­tant who seemed always to be at every­one’s door that you want­ed to meet. I sat round wait­ing, then went in and had a great lit­tle talk with him. Noth­ing earth-shat­ter­ing. He just clued me in to the fact that Viet­nam was a very bad war, it was an impe­ri­al­ist war and Amer­i­can vest­ed inter­ests were real­ly all it was all about. It was a bad war and we should be against it. That was all. It was pret­ty good from the mouth of the great philoso­pher. “Slip it to me, Bert.”

McCart­ney report­ed his expe­ri­ence to the oth­er mem­bers of the Bea­t­les, and it was John Lennon who real­ly took the anti-war mes­sage and ran with it. For a reminder of those days, watch the video below of Lennon and Yoko Ono at their “Bed-In” for peace in 1969:

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!

‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation Speech (2005)

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | March 6th, 2012

Last month, on the occa­sion of the author’s 50th birth­day, we post­ed a large col­lec­tion of free essays and sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. But we missed a rare item: the com­plete audio record­ing of the com­mence­ment address Wal­lace gave at Keny­on Col­lege, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life. The text of the speech has been pub­lished on the Inter­net and as a book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Deliv­ered on a Sig­nif­i­cant Occa­sion, about Liv­ing a Com­pas­sion­ate Life, but the com­plete audio ver­sion has been hard to find.

In the speech, Wal­lace talks about the chal­lenge of mov­ing beyond the super­fi­cial kind of free­dom that can be acquired through pow­er and wealth, toward a truer lib­er­a­tion that aris­es only when we become more ful­ly con­scious of the world out­side our “tiny skull-sized king­doms.” He says:

The real­ly impor­tant kind of free­dom involves atten­tion, and aware­ness, and dis­ci­pline, and effort, and being able tru­ly to care about oth­er peo­ple and to sac­ri­fice for them, over and over, in myr­i­ad pet­ty lit­tle unsexy ways, every day. That is real free­dom. The alter­na­tive is uncon­scious­ness, the default set­ting, the “rat race”–the con­stant gnaw­ing sense of hav­ing had and lost some infi­nite thing.

You can lis­ten to the first half of the speech above. And to delve deep­er into Wal­lace’s world­view, be sure to watch the fas­ci­nat­ing 84-minute inter­view he gave in 2003 to a Ger­man tele­vi­sion sta­tion. H/T Avi Burstein.

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:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

75 Free Philosophy Courses

in Philosophy | March 1st, 2012

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through a major update, and it now lists more than 75 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video — Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners - iTunes Video –Web Video — Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day, rock star philoso­phers — Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web

in e-books, Literature | February 22nd, 2012

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We start­ed the week expect­ing to pub­lish one David Fos­ter Wal­lace post. Then, because of the 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, it turned into two. And now three. We spent some time track­ing down free DFW sto­ries and essays avail­able on the web, and they’re all now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. But we did­n’t want them to escape your atten­tion. So here they are — 23 pieces pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

• “9/11: The View From the Mid­west” (Rolling Stone, Octo­ber 25, 2001)
• “All That” (New York­er, Decem­ber 14, 2009)
• “An Inter­val” (New York­er, Jan­u­ary 30, 1995)
• “Asset” (New York­er, Jan­u­ary 30, 1995)
• “Back­bone” An Excerpt from The Pale King (New York­er, March 7, 2011)
• “Big Red Son” from Con­sid­er the Lob­ster & Oth­er Essays
• “Brief Inter­views with Hideous Men” (The Paris Review, Fall 1997)
• “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” (Gourmet, August 2004)
• “David Lynch Keeps His Head” (Pre­miere, 1996)
• “Every­thing is Green” (Harpers, Sep­tem­ber 1989)
• “E Unibus Plu­ram: Tele­vi­sion and U.S. Fic­tion” (The Review of Con­tem­po­rary Fic­tion, June 22, 1993)
• “Fed­er­er as Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence” (New York Times, August 20, 2006)
• “Good Peo­ple” (New York­er, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2007)
• “Host” (The Atlantic, April 2005)
• “Incar­na­tions of Burned Chil­dren” (Esquire, April 21, 2009)
• “Laugh­ing with Kaf­ka” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1998)
• “Lit­tle Expres­sion­less Ani­mals” (The Paris Review, Spring 1988)
• “On Life and Work” (Keny­on Col­lege Com­mence­ment address, 2005)
• “Order and Flux in Northamp­ton” (Con­junc­tions, 1991)
• “Rab­bit Res­ur­rect­ed” (Harper’s, August 1992)
• “Sev­er­al Birds” (New York­er, June 17, 1994)
• “Ship­ping Out: On the (near­ly lethal) com­forts of a lux­u­ry cruise” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1996)
• “Ten­nis, trigonom­e­try, tor­na­does A Mid­west­ern boy­hood”  (Harper’s, Decem­ber 1991)
• “Tense Present: Democ­ra­cy, Eng­lish, and the wars over usage” (Harper’s, April 2001)
• “The Awak­en­ing of My Inter­est in Annu­lar Sys­tems” (Harper’s, Sep­tem­ber 1993)
• “The Com­pli­ance Branch” (Harper’s, Feb­ru­ary 2008)
• “The Depressed Per­son” (Harper’s, Jan­u­ary 1998)
• “The String The­o­ry” (Esquire, July 1996)
• “The Weasel, Twelve Mon­keys And The Shrub” (Rolling Stone, April 2000)
• “Tick­et to the Fair” (Harper’s, July 1994)
• “Wig­gle Room” (New York­er, March 9, 2009)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Read 17 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

The David Foster Wallace Audio Archive: A Little Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birthday

in Literature | February 21st, 2012

When we fea­tured David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s big, uncut inter­view yes­ter­day, one impor­tant detail escaped us — the fact that the nov­el­ist would have turned 50 years old today. Kind of a stun­ning thought, espe­cial­ly if you vivid­ly remem­ber the wun­derkind tak­ing the lit­er­ary world by storm with Infi­nite Jest in 1996. Seems like only yes­ter­day.

To cel­e­brate his 50th, we’re high­light­ing for you The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project — a site that brings togeth­er most of the mean­ing­ful DFW audio avail­able on the web. Built in 2009 by Jor­dyn Bonds and Ryan Walsh, a short while after the nov­el­ist com­mit­ted sui­cide, the audio site is divid­ed into four sec­tions:

• Inter­views & Pro­files
• Read­ings
• Eulo­gies & Remem­brances
• ‘Brief Inter­views’ Staged Read­ings

As you sift through the col­lec­tion, you will find 70+ clips, includ­ing a seg­ment of DFW’s 2005 com­mence­ment speech at Keny­on Col­lege, his first and sec­ond appear­ances on the Char­lie Rose Show, his read­ing from “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” at UCLA, and the author con­tem­plat­ing the play of Roger Fed­er­er. Dive into the full col­lec­tion here.

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 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!

Harold Bloom Recites ‘Tea at the Palaz of Hoon’ by Wallace Stevens

in Literature, Poetry | February 3rd, 2012

Lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom once called Wal­lace Stevens (1879–1955) “the best and most rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amer­i­can poet of our time.” In this video from Boston Col­lege’s Guest­book Project, Bloom recites a poem from Steven­s’s first book, Har­mo­ni­um, which was pub­lished in 1923:

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

Not less because in pur­ple I descend­ed
The west­ern day through what you called
The loneli­est air, not less was I myself.

What was the oint­ment sprin­kled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the gold­en oint­ment rained,
And my ears made the blow­ing hymns they heard.
I was myself the com­pass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more tru­ly and more strange.

“The palaz of Hoon is sky and space seen as a gaudy and ornate dwelling,” writes Bloom in Wal­lace Stevens: The Poems of Our Cli­mate; “to have tea at the palaz is to watch the twi­light while con­vers­ing with the set­ting sun, who is hard­ly lone­ly since all the air is his and since all direc­tions are at home in him. He is him­self when most impe­r­i­al, in pur­ple and gold, and his set­ting is a coro­na­tion.”

The video con­cludes with Bloom recit­ing the open­ing stan­za from a lat­er poem by Stevens that echoes the ear­li­er one, a poem regret­tably titled “Like Dec­o­ra­tions in a Nig­ger Ceme­tery”:

In the far South the sun of autumn is pass­ing
Like Walt Whit­man walk­ing along a rud­dy shore.
He is singing and chant­i­ng the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Noth­ing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leap­ing flame.

“Whit­man, like Hoon,” writes Bloom, “both con­tains every­thing else and is an idea of the sun, not as a god but as a god might be. Hoon is him­self the com­pass of the sea whose tides sweep through him; Walt encom­pass­es worlds but him­self is not to be encom­passed.”