Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments

in Music | April 27th, 2012

Mat­teo — they’re a band from Salt Lake City that spent years “mean­der­ing through Chi­nese street mar­kets and moun­tains,” gath­er­ing “a hearty col­lec­tion of Chi­nese tra­di­tion­al instru­ments,” and then incor­po­rat­ing their sounds into their own brand of amer­i­can indie-folk music. Nat­u­ral­ly you’re won­der­ing what this fusion sounds like. So we give you Mat­teo per­form­ing “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” from the Talk­ing Heads’ fifth album, Speak­ing in Tongues. Find a live ver­sion of the orig­i­nal right below.

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:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, a 30-Minute Set in 1975

Why Man Creates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Winning Animated Look at Creativity (1968)

in Art, Film, History | April 27th, 2012

Maybe you already had a fas­ci­na­tion with Saul Bass’ cel­e­brat­ed movie title sequences, or maybe you gained one from yes­ter­day’s post about the cur­rent design­ers he’s inspired. Either way, you can round out your under­stand­ing of the man’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty by watch­ing Why Man Cre­ates, the ani­mat­ed film by Bass and his wife/collaborator Elaine which won the 1968 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. An eight-part med­i­ta­tion on the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty, the film mix­es ani­ma­tion and live action, using Bass’ advanced reper­toire of opti­cal tech­niques, to look at the issues sur­round­ing how and why humans have, through­out the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion, kept on mak­ing things. It begins with ear­ly hunters felling a beast and mak­ing a cave paint­ing out of it. From that cave ris­es a tow­er built out of every major phase of human civ­i­liza­tion: the wheel near the bot­tom, the pyra­mids some­what high­er up, the lit­er­al dark­ness of the Dark Ages as the cam­era ris­es high­er still, ulti­mate­ly capped by a heap of planes, trains, and auto­mo­biles. One won­ders how Bass might, in an update, have stacked his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the inter­net atop of all this, but the sequence’s dat­ed­ness costs it none of its vir­tu­os­i­ty.

Some of Why Man Cre­ates’ sub­se­quent chap­ters, in their bold late-six­ties “trip­pi­ness,” may strike you as more dat­ed than vir­tu­osic. But it would take a hard­ened view­er indeed not to crack a smile at Bass’ Pythonesque turn when a drawn hand flips open the tops of a series of unthink­ing par­ty­go­ers’ heads, reveal­ing the empti­ness inside. In its 29 short min­utes, the film also looks at the cre­ative strug­gle in terms of the coarse­ness of eval­u­a­tive crowds, the ten­den­cy of suc­cess­ful rad­i­cal ideas to become self-per­pet­u­at­ing insti­tu­tions, and how peo­ple just like things bet­ter when they have Amer­i­can flags on them. Its jour­ney ends in an unex­pect­ed set­ting, amid the toil of agri­cul­tur­al and med­ical sci­en­tists who may pur­sue an idea for years only to find that it has no appli­ca­tion. This note of frus­tra­tion leads into a mon­tage of sun, fire, stat­u­ary, the Sphinx, can­vass­es, and rock­ets. Assem­bled with Bass’ sig­na­ture sub­tle visu­al com­plex­i­ty, it takes us from antiq­ui­ty to moder­ni­ty in a way only he could.

Why Man Cre­ates has been added to our list of Free Oscar Films on the Web as well as our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

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

Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

in Education, K-12, Physics, Science | April 26th, 2012

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

A Quick Video Introduction to the World’s First Asteroid Mining Company

in Astronomy, Video - Science | April 26th, 2012

Per­haps you heard the news this week. Four bil­lion­aires (Lar­ry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Per­ot Jr. and Charles Simonyi) have thrown their finan­cial weight behind Plan­e­tary Resources, Inc., a Wash­ing­ton-based start­up with big and bold plans. Before our plan­et runs out of nat­ur­al resources, this ven­ture plans to start extract­ing water and met­als from resource-rich aster­oids fly­ing near Earth. One aster­oid, they spec­u­late, may con­tain more plat­inum than we’ve ever mined from Earth. Above, the com­pa­ny gives you a quick intro­duc­tion to their Sci­Fi-esque plans. The first Plan­e­tary Resources space­craft will launch with­in the next two years. via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

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

Steven Spielberg on the Genius of Stanley Kubrick

in Film | April 25th, 2012

“Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,” says Steven Spiel­berg in this reveal­ing 1999 inter­view with British film­mak­er Paul Joyce. Spiel­berg sat down with Joyce just four months after Kubrick­’s sud­den death from a heart attack. He talks about the emo­tion­al effect Kubrick­’s films had on him when he was a young man, the friend­ship the two men shared after Spiel­berg became suc­cess­ful, and Kubrick­’s James Joyce-like abil­i­ty to rein­vent him­self with each new work. “He was a chameleon,” Spiel­berg says. “He nev­er made the same pic­ture twice. Every sin­gle pic­ture is a dif­fer­ent genre, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a dif­fer­ent risk. The only thing that bond­ed all of his films was the incred­i­ble vir­tu­oso that he was with craft.”

Note: Paul Joyce filmed sim­i­lar talks with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man, the stars of Kubrick­’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. You can see those inter­views by fol­low­ing these links: Cruise; Kid­man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash’

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Canterbury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Century, Yo

in Literature, Music | April 25th, 2012

Baba Brinkman, a self-pro­claimed “geek rap­per,” has a knack for com­bin­ing hip hop with seri­ous lit­er­a­ture and sci­ence. Last year, we fea­tured his Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion, an homage to Charles Dar­win that he pre­sent­ed in New York City and TEDxS­MU. And, before that, we show­cased Brinkman tak­ing on “Pro­fes­sor Ele­men­tal” in a no-holds-barred British v. Cana­di­an Lin­guis­tics Rap Bat­tle. Fun stuff.

But Brinkman first made his name by stag­ing the The Rap Can­ter­bury Tales, a cre­ative attempt to bring Chaucer’s 14th cen­tu­ry sto­ries into the 21st cen­tu­ry. The show pre­miered at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe in 2004. Then, Brinkman, a Cana­di­an schol­ar of medieval lit­er­a­ture, per­formed his show in sec­ondary schools across Eng­land, before bring­ing his act to the Unit­ed States — to Off Broad­way — late last year, where he got some glow­ing reviews.

Above, we have Brinkman rap­ping the The Miller’s Tale, the sec­ond of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales, at Bede’s World, 2009. And now that we have you warmed up, we’re going to men­tion Brinkman’s new stu­dio album, The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed, which brings his retelling of Chaucer’s tales to the wider world. You can pre­view his album online right here, and down­load orig­i­nal rap songs (in MP3 for­mat) for what­ev­er price you’re will­ing to pay. Or, find the album on iTunes for $9.99.

You can find The Can­ter­bury Tales (Chaucer’s ver­sion) in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

The Mystery of Picasso: Landmark Film of a Legendary Artist at Work, by Henri-Georges Clouzot

in Art, Film | April 24th, 2012

Pablo Picas­so’s art emerges in front of our eyes in this remark­able 1956 film by the French mas­ter of sus­pense, Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot.

The Mys­tery of Picas­so (in French Le Mys­tère Picas­so) is a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion between film­mak­er and painter. Pauline Kael called it “One of the most excit­ing and joy­ful movies ever made.” The film is not so much a doc­u­men­tary as a care­ful­ly con­trived cin­e­mat­ic depic­tion of Picas­so’s cre­ative process. While paint­ing is gen­er­al­ly expe­ri­enced as a fixed art form, in The Mys­tery of Picas­so we watch as it evolves over time.

In the first half of the 75-minute film, Picas­so uses col­or pens to make play­ful doo­dles on translu­cent screens. These sequences bear some resem­blance to a 1950 film by Bel­gian film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts called Vis­ite à Picas­so (A vis­it with Picas­so), which fea­tures Picas­so paint­ing on glass. As Clouzot’s film pro­gress­es, the art­works become more refined. Picas­so switch­es from ink pens to oil brush­es and paper col­lage. A work that took five hours to cre­ate unfolds in a ten-minute time-lapse. At the 54-minute mark Picas­so says “Give me a large can­vas,” and the film switch­es to Cin­e­maS­cope.

Indeed, in The Mys­tery of Picas­so, the film itself is the artist’s can­vas. Clouzot draws atten­tion to this fact through a series of con­trivances. At one point he high­lights the tem­po­ral con­straints of the medi­um by cre­at­ing an ele­ment of sus­pense. He asks  cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Claude Renoir (grand­son of the Impres­sion­ist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir) how much film is left, and then we watch as the film counter ticks away the time while the 76-year-old painter races to fin­ish a paint­ing. When the The Mys­tery of Picas­so ends, the artist “signs” the film by paint­ing his sig­na­ture on a can­vas large enough to fill the screen. As Clouzot lat­er wrote, “It is some­one else’s film, that of my friend Pablo Picas­so.”

The Mys­tery of Picas­so (now added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies) per­formed poor­ly at the box office but won the Spe­cial Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. In 1984 the French gov­ern­ment declared it a nation­al trea­sure. Picas­so’s paint­ings from the pro­duc­tion were report­ed­ly destroyed after­ward. They exist only in the film.

Alain de Botton’s Quest for The Perfect Home and Architectural Happiness

in Architecture, Television | April 24th, 2012

In the first episode of The Per­fect Home, embed­ded above, philo­soph­i­cal jour­nal­ist and broad­cast­er Alain de Bot­ton con­tends that we don’t live in the mod­ern world. Rather, we do live in the mod­ern world in that we exist in it, but we don’t live in the mod­ern world in that few of us choose to make our homes there. As de Bot­ton sees it, the res­i­dents of the devel­oped world have, despite keep­ing up with the lat­est cars, clothes, and gad­getry, cho­sen to hole up in shells of aes­thet­ic nos­tal­gia: our mock Tudors, our restored cot­tages, our Greek Revivals. Hav­ing writ­ten books and pre­sent­ed tele­vi­sion shows on philo­soph­i­cal sub­jects — you may remem­ber Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness — he even brings in Niet­zsche to diag­nose this archi­tec­tur­al dis­or­der as an abject denial of real­i­ty. Accord­ing to old Friedrich, he who builds him­self into a fake real­i­ty ulti­mate­ly pays a much greater price than what endur­ing real real­i­ty would have cost. With that omi­nous bit of wis­dom in mind, de Bot­ton trav­els the world in search of build­ings designed with mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy that nev­er­the­less make us hap­py with­out enabling self-delu­sion.

The search takes de Bot­ton all over the world, from Vic­to­ri­an theme-park­ish Eng­lish sub­ur­ban devel­op­ments to a Japan­ese Dutch vil­lage to Egypt­ian and Scan­di­na­vian embassies in Berlin to a heli­copter soar­ing above Lon­don with the archi­tect Nor­man Fos­ter to the con­crete-mod­ernist Zurich apart­ment of his own child­hood. Just as Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness grew from the same intel­lec­tu­al soil as de Bot­ton’s book The Con­so­la­tions of Phi­los­o­phy, so grows The Per­fect Home from The Archi­tec­ture of Hap­pi­ness. That book’s explo­rations pro­ceed­ed from the idea that we desire in our archi­tec­ture what­ev­er we feel we lack in our char­ac­ter: the undis­ci­plined grav­i­tate toward stark­ness and sim­plic­i­ty, per­haps, while the straight-laced build with more whim­sy. What does this say about the lady vis­it­ed in this first episode who devotes her every domes­tic impulse to con­struct­ing a “cozy” set­ting, burst­ing in every direc­tion with ted­dy bears? Though de Bot­ton demures from that ques­tion, he oth­er­wise goes to great lengths to find an escape from tire­some “pas­tiche” archi­tec­ture and a way our build­ings can embrace our times — a way, that is, we can final­ly live in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling­wa­terAni­mat­ed
Gehry’s Vision For Archi­tec­ture

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

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

Animated Plays by William Shakespeare: Macbeth, Othello and Other Great Tales Brought to Life

in Animation, K-12, Literature | April 24th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we gave you a fine BBC adap­ta­tion of Ham­let star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who), not real­iz­ing that it hap­pened to be Shake­speare’s death­day — the day when the Bard died in 1616. The pass­ing of that anniver­sary calls for some­thing a lit­tle spe­cial. So, here we have it: The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare.

Aired between 1992 and 1994 on the BBC and HBO, The Ani­mat­ed Shake­speare brings to life 12 famous Shake­speare plays. Leon Garfield, a well-known British chil­dren’s author, wrote the scripts, main­ly using Shake­spear­i­an lan­guage. And some tal­ent­ed Russ­ian artists did the ani­ma­tion. Above, we give you the ani­mat­ed Mac­beth.

Below you will find com­pan­ion ver­sions of Julius Cae­sar and Romeo & Juli­et, plus links to nine oth­er plays. The full set can be pur­chased on DVD in high­er res­o­lu­tion right here.

Oth­er Plays:

• Julius Cae­sar — Watch
• A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream — Watch
• Ham­let - Watch
• King Richard III - Watch
• Oth­el­lo — Watch
• The Tem­pest - Watch

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Space Exploration is Good for Our Culture (and More Good Links From Around the Web)

in Video - Science | April 23rd, 2012

Pre­sent­ing the keynote speech at the 28th Nation­al Space Sym­po­sium, the new pub­lic face of astro­physics, Neil deGrasse Tyson, con­tin­ued mak­ing his case for fund­ing NASA and fund­ing it well. Here he tried out a new argu­ment. NASA is not just good for sci­en­tif­ic progress. It’s good for our cre­ativ­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion and col­lec­tive cul­ture. His argu­ment begins at the 14:45 mark, which is where we start the video.…

Now dis­cov­er more Cul­ture from Around the Web (which all orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our Twit­ter Stream): 

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Har­vard Biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son Explains the Evo­lu­tion of Cul­ture

Extend­ed Trail­er for David Cro­nen­berg’s Adap­ta­tion of Don DeLil­lo’s Cos­mopo­lis Now on the Web

Lis­ten Online: Norah Jones’ New Album ‘Lit­tle Bro­ken Hearts’

Allen Gins­berg Reads “What would you do if you lost it?,” 1973

Ray­mond Chan­dler on the Split Infini­tive

To Infin­i­ty and Beyond: BBC Untan­gles the Most Expo­nen­tial Mys­tery

Alan Tur­ing’s WWII papers on Code Break­ing Released by British Gov­ern­ment

Wish You Could be Jane Eyre? Com­pa­ny Will Reprint Clas­sic Nov­els Star­ring You & Your Friends

Par­ents Were Pushy Too in Ancient Rome, Accord­ing to Mary Beard, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics, Cam­bridge U

Jen­nifer Egan and Neil Gaiman Vis­it Google and Talk Lit­er­a­ture.

Kurt Von­negut Reads the Begin­ning of “Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons”

The Craft of Verse: The Nor­ton Lec­tures, 1967–68 by Jorge Luis Borges. Audio

Spike Lee’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers

A Trove of Rare James Joyce’s Unpub­lished Man­u­scripts (inc Ulysses & Finnegans Wake) as PDFs