500 Years of Women in Art (Give This Video Points for Creativity)

in Art | March 11th, 2008

This video takes you on a fair­ly amaz­ing tour of the great por­traits of women in West­ern art. It moves from da Vin­ci to Picas­so, and, along the way, the por­traits seam­less­ly morph one into anoth­er. This mor­ph­ing allows you to see how artis­tic styles changed over time, and also how the human face has been artis­ti­cal­ly treat­ed dur­ing dif­fer­ent peri­ods. Watch the video below, which is accom­pa­nied by Bach’s Suite No. 1 per­formed by Yo-Yo Ma. For infor­ma­tion on the paint­ings cov­ered in the clip, click here. And also see the relat­ed video, Women in Film.

More Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 11th, 2008

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Samantha Power & the Obama Controversy

in Current Affairs, Politics | March 11th, 2008

It’s rare that pro­fes­sors find them­selves at the cen­ter of a polit­i­cal firestorm. But that’s where Saman­tha Pow­er, Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice of Glob­al Lead­er­ship and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at Har­vard, found her­self last week when, dur­ing an off-the-record con­ver­sa­tion with a reporter, she referred to Hillary Clin­ton as a “mon­ster” and then had to resign as senior for­eign pol­i­cy to advis­er to Barack Oba­ma.

Until then, Pow­er had been rid­ing a big wave of suc­cess. Only 37 years old, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, A Prob­lem from Hell: Amer­i­ca and the Age of Geno­cide. She’s also now pro­mot­ing her sec­ond book, Chas­ing the Flame: Ser­gio Vieira de Mel­lo and the Fight to Save the World. (Watch a clip from the book tour here). And until this high pro­file slip-up, she was clear­ly help­ing shape Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy. You can hear Pow­er’s influ­ence in how Oba­ma answered the high­ly pub­li­cized ques­tion last sum­mer — would you, as pres­i­dent, nego­ti­ate direct­ly with Iran’s Ahmadine­jad? (He said yes.) Pow­er’s think­ing on inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy gets artic­u­lat­ed fair­ly well in this lengthy inter­view. Below, we’ve also post­ed a clip (from FORA.tv) of Pow­er speak­ing about Oba­ma and the ques­tion of nego­ti­at­ing with ene­mies. (Get the full talk here.)

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Australia’s Electronic Canvas

in Art | March 10th, 2008

We want­ed to post a quick pho­to from the light­ing show at the Ade­laide Fes­ti­val of Arts. Dur­ing the fes­ti­val, artists project lights on the city’s archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments, turn­ing the build­ings into elec­tron­ic can­vas­es. We’ve post­ed one pho­to below. For more good ones, see here. Thanks Car­ol for shar­ing these!

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David Sedaris Delivers a Pizza

in Comedy | March 9th, 2008

Appar­ent­ly not the real deal, but a pret­ty good imper­son­ation nonethe­less…

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Top 10 Grammar Myths

in English Language | March 9th, 2008

For Nation­al Gram­mar Day (March 4), The Gram­mar Girl (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site) issued anoth­er pop­u­lar pod­cast that out­lines and debunks 10 com­mon gram­mar myths. If you’re already up to speed on these (pre­view them here), con­grats. If not, give a lis­ten.

Listening to Famous Poets Reading Their Own Work

in Audio Books, Literature | March 6th, 2008

Today, we have a guest fea­ture by Don from Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a place where you can find a great line­up of poet­ry pod­casts. We wel­come oth­er guest con­trib­u­tors. So, if you’re inter­est­ed, just email us. Take it away (and thanks) Don…

The inter­net has giv­en poet­ry new scope and a new fresh­ness. It’s almost like the ‘70s, when punk fanzine read­ers were famous­ly told ‘Here are three chords, now form a band’. Today, the injunc­tion could be: ‘Here are three web sites, now per­form some poet­ry’.

And the empha­sis would very much be on per­for­mance, with read­ings tak­ing place on blogs (indi­vid­u­al­ly) and at poet­ry slams (col­lec­tive­ly).

But an inter­est in poet­ry read­ings is not con­fined to new work. My own dai­ly poet­ry pod­cast, Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud, is ded­i­cat­ed to any­thing in the Eng­lish lan­guage that is out of copy­right, and attracts lis­ten­ers on every con­ti­nent.

While pod­casts such as Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (see a Novem­ber Open Cul­ture post­ing for a list­ing of poet­ry pod­casts) fea­ture a range of poets, the inter­net also offers a wealth of record­ings of cel­e­brat­ed authors read­ing from their own work.

The BBC has a won­der­ful series of such record­ings at Poet­ry Out Loud. My favourites include: Men and their Bor­ing Argu­ments by con­tem­po­rary British poet Wendy Cope, and an excerpt from Tennyson’s cel­e­brat­ed Charge of the Light Brigade, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in 1890 on a wax cylin­der by Edi­son. In addi­tion, the BBC has a series of inter­views with poets dis­cussing their work.

The Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets’ lis­ten­ing booth offers more than 150 orig­i­nal read­ings. As well as the rolling tones of Dylan Thomas read­ing Do not go Gen­tle into that Good Night, there is Robert Frost’s The Road not Tak­en, and Gwen­dolyn Brooks’ We Real Cool – com­plete with an illu­mi­nat­ing, humor­ous, wry intro­duc­tion. This is an unashamed show stop­per read­ing of a poem that runs to just 24 words.

Indeed, one of the joys of lis­ten­ing to poets read­ing from their own work is often the com­ments and insights that they offer. T.S. Eliot does this in intro­duc­ing The Jour­ney of the Magi, one of three of his poems to fea­ture on the Poet­ry Archive. On this site, there are over 200 poems that fea­ture some form of intro­duc­tion by the poet.

The Poet­ry Archive is an ambi­tious project set up by British poet lau­re­ate Andrew Motion to cap­ture poet­ry read­ings. The range here is so vast that it is impos­si­ble to say how many poems are fea­tured on the site, but it makes for an invalu­able resource, with poems acces­si­ble by theme as well as by form.

Among British poets is for­mer lau­re­ate John Bet­je­man, appar­ent­ly unable to remem­ber the title of the poem he is best remem­bered for – A Subaltern’s Love Song – and he jokes with his audi­ence before launch­ing into a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly brisk and warm ren­di­tion. Not all of the Poet­ry Archive comes from the UK, though, and Allen Gins­berg reads three poems, includ­ing A Super­mar­ket in Cal­i­for­nia.

Author Andrew Keen has claimed that the inter­net is ‘killing cul­ture’. That’s a good, allit­er­a­tive tag line to sell books, but the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of poet­ry on the net shows that it’s also far from the truth.

Cat Shenanigans

in Comedy | March 6th, 2008

It may not qual­i­fy as cul­ture, but it’s fun­ny and rings awful­ly true … (Along sim­i­lar lines, you can get some good ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toons here and here.)

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Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Some Yo-Yo Ma and More: Free Classical Music Podcasts

in Music | March 5th, 2008

With the recent 250th anniver­sary of Mozart’s birth, there has been no short­age of pod­casts ded­i­cat­ed to Mozart’s mas­ter­pieces. First, Radio Swe­den (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) reis­sued a dig­i­tal archive of Mozart record­ings by the Roy­al Swedish Opera from the 1940s and 1950s. And, along very sim­i­lar lines, Dan­marks Radio (Feed — Web Site) issued pod­casts of nine Mozart sym­phonies record­ed by the Dan­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. (You’ll find here sym­phonies num­bers 15, 17, 23, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, and 41. Since the web site is in Dan­ish, we’d rec­om­mend access­ing these high qual­i­ty MP3’s through the rss feed list­ed above.) Last­ly, we should men­tion here that, as part of last year’s fes­tiv­i­ties, The Inter­na­tion­al Mozart Foun­da­tion pub­lished online for the first time the entire­ty of of Mozart’s musi­cal scores.

Along with Mozart, you can find plen­ty of Beethoven. We have high­light­ed here before, but it’s worth not­ing again, Deutsche Welle’s pod­cast col­lec­tion called Beethoven­fest (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). You’ll want to give it a look, and also see the pod­cast col­lec­tion put togeth­er by the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Con­ser­va­to­ry (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This edu­ca­tion­al series offers an exten­sive overview and record­ings of Beethoven’s work, as well as that of Arnold Schoen­berg. You can also catch more Beethoven (as well as a lit­tle Mozart and Bach) with the pod­cast series called The Con­cert (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which fea­tures record­ings from the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um in Boston.

Speak­ing of Bach, you may want to give some time to these two pod­casts: Bach Pod­cast from Magnatune.com (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and Bach Fes­ti­val of Philadel­phia (Feed — Web Site).

Let’s now leave you with a few oth­er good finds: Wag­n­er Operas Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) lets you lis­ten in on record­ings from the annu­al Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, plus more. An Inti­mate Tour Through the Music of Yo-Yo Ma (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) offers essen­tial­ly what the title says. Final­ly, we’d rec­om­mend Clas­si­cal Per­for­mance (iTunes Feed Web Site), which con­sists of clas­si­cal music per­for­mances from WGB­H’s Stu­dio One in Boston; The New York Phi­la­har­mon­ic Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) which intro­duces you to the music and per­form­ers fea­tured in the con­certs of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic; and From the Top. Live from Carnegie Hall Video Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast that show­cas­es the top-notch skills and com­pelling sto­ries of Amer­i­ca’s best young clas­si­cal musi­cians.

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Eat, Pray, Love @ Google

in Books | March 4th, 2008

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love has been on the New York Times best­seller list for 57 weeks. If you haven’t read it yet, then you may want to spend some time with Gilbert’s talk at Google. While her talk and read­ing did­n’t com­plete­ly strike a chord with me, it may well with you. So here you go (and, yes, we’ve added the video to our YouTube Playlist):

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