Google Art Project Expands, Bringing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Museums to the Web

in Art, Google, Museums | April 3rd, 2012

Last Feb­ru­ary, Google launched Art Project, which lets users take a vir­tu­al tour of 1,000 works of art from 17 great muse­ums — from the MoMA and Met in New York City, to the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, to the Van Gogh Muse­um and Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam. Now comes news that Art Project has great­ly expand­ed its cov­er­age, giv­ing users access to 30,000 high-res­o­lu­tion art­works appear­ing in 151 muse­ums across 40 coun­tries. The vir­tu­al tour includes paint­ings but also sculp­ture, street art and pho­tographs. And you can now explore col­lec­tions (see all) from the Nation­al Gallery of Mod­ern Art in Del­hi, the Musée d’Or­say in Paris, the Muse­um of Islam­ic Art in Qatar, the Museu De Arte Mod­er­na De São Paulo in Brazil, and the Tokyo Nation­al Muse­um. This is all part of Google’s effort to bring cul­tur­al arti­facts to the broad­est pos­si­ble audi­ence. Just last week, the folks at Google­plex helped launch the Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive and, before that, a high res­o­lu­tion ver­sion of The Dead Sea Scrolls. All we can say is keep it com­ing!

via Google Blog

Perpetual Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visualization of Our Ocean Currents

in Video - Science | April 3rd, 2012

Hats off to the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio, which pro­duced this three minute ani­ma­tion called Per­pet­u­al Ocean. The visu­al­iza­tion shows ocean cur­rents as they swirled around between June 2005 and Decem­ber 2007, and it was all pro­duced with a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el called ECCO2. ECCO2 attempts to mod­el the cir­cu­la­tion and cli­mate of the ocean, help­ing sci­en­tists to under­stand how the ocean will con­tribute to future cli­mate change. It’s some heady sci­ence that also yields some visu­al­ly impres­sive ani­ma­tions.

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:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Andy Warhol Digitally Paints Debbie Harry with the Amiga 1000 Computer (1985)

in Art, Technology, Television | April 3rd, 2012

Say what you will about mid-eight­ies Amer­i­can cul­ture, but how many his­tor­i­cal moments could bring togeth­er a world-famous visu­al artist and rock star over a gen­uine­ly inno­v­a­tive con­sumer prod­uct? Maybe Apple could orches­trate some­thing sim­i­lar today; after all, we endure no drought of celebri­ty enthu­si­asm for iPods, iPads, iMacs, and iPhones. But could they come up with par­tic­i­pants to match the icon­ic grav­i­ty of Andy Warhol and Deb­bie Har­ry? In the clip above, both of them arrive at the 1985 launch of the Com­modore Ami­ga, and the sil­ver-wigged one sits down to demon­strate the per­son­al com­put­er’s then-unpar­al­leled graph­i­cal pow­er by “paint­ing” the Blondie front­wom­an’s por­trait. He tints it blue, clicks some red paint buck­et here, clicks some yel­low paint buck­et there, and before we know it, we’re gaz­ing upon a Warho­lian image ready for admi­ra­tion, one we too could wield the dig­i­tal pow­er to cre­ate for a mere $1295 — in 1985 dol­lars.

To watch Warhol at the Ami­ga is to watch a man encounter a machine whose func­tions dove­tail uncan­ni­ly well with his own. The way he uses the com­put­er casts a light on what peo­ple seem to find most bril­liant and most infu­ri­at­ing about his work. “All he does is select fill and click on her hair and it turns yel­low and its done?” types one YouTube com­menter. “Her face is fuck­ing blue.” Depart­ing from the stan­dard tone of YouTube dis­course, anoth­er com­menter tries to break it down: “As an artist myself, I find Andy Warhol a genius in mak­ing him­self famous for art that any­one can do. I could take the same pic­ture of Debra [sic] Har­ry and do the same thing in Pho­to­shop. Andy Warhol was great at being Andy Warhol. His art was sim­ply an exten­sion of him­self — sim­ple and col­or­ful.” Indeed, Warhol and Har­ry alike seem to under­stand that their work con­sists as much in the mate­r­i­al they pro­duce as in who they are, leav­ing no dis­cernible bound­ary between the iden­ti­ty and val­ue of the cre­ator and the iden­ti­ty and val­ue of the cre­at­ed.

Ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts of Andy Warhol and/or the Com­modore Ami­ga might also give his 1986 inter­view in Ami­ga World a look, despite its sketchy scan qual­i­ty. It took place dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the MTV music- and talk-show Andy Warhol’s Fif­teen Min­utes, whose Ami­ga-enhanced pro­mo spot (which fea­tures Deb­bie Har­ry) you can watch above. “Do you think [the Ami­ga] will push the artists?” Ami­ga World asks. “Do you think that peo­ple will be inclined to use all the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of the art, music, video, etc.?” “That’s the best part about it,” Warhol replies. “An artist can real­ly do the whole thing. Actu­al­ly, he can make a film with every­thing on it, music and sound and art… every­thing.” “How do you feel about the fact that every­one’s work will now look like your own?” Ami­ga World asks. “But it does­n’t,” Warhol replies. Alas, Andy Warhol would not live to take advan­tage of the unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid devel­op­ment of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy the nineties would bring, but that par­tic­u­lar rev­o­lu­tion has offered us all, in some sense, the chance to get Warho­lian.

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:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol and Bian­ca Jag­ger

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

Stanley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Documentaries

in Film | April 2nd, 2012

In ear­ly 1950, Stan­ley Kubrick was a 21-year-old staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine. At night he haunt­ed the movie the­aters, watch­ing clas­sics at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and cur­rent releas­es else­where. He made a point of see­ing just about every movie that came out, no mat­ter how bad it was.

“I’d had my job with Look since I was sev­en­teen, and I’d always been inter­est­ed in films,” Kubrick told writer Joseph Gelmis in 1969, “but it nev­er actu­al­ly occurred to me to make a film on my own until I had a talk with a friend from high school, Alex Singer, who want­ed to be a direc­tor him­self.”

Singer worked as an office boy at The March of Time, a com­pa­ny that pro­duced news­reels. He told Kubrick that he heard the com­pa­ny spent $40,000 to make a one-reel doc­u­men­tary. Kubrick was deeply impressed. “I said to him, ‘Gee, that’s a lot of mon­ey,’ ” Kubrick told Jere­my Bern­stein of The New York­er in 1966. “I said ‘I can’t believe it costs that much to make eight or nine min­utes of film.’ ” Kubrick got on the phone to film sup­pli­ers, lab­o­ra­to­ries and equip­ment rental hous­es and crunched the num­bers. He cal­cu­lat­ed that he could make a nine-minute film for about $3,500. “We thought we could make a con­sid­er­able prof­it,” he told Bern­stein.

Kubrick decid­ed to make a film about mid­dleweight box­er Wal­ter Carti­er, who he had done a pho­to sto­ry on for Look the pre­vi­ous year. He rent­ed a spring-loaded 35mm Bell & How­ell Eye­mo cam­era and dived into the project. “I was cam­era­man, direc­tor, edi­tor, assis­tant edi­tor, sound effects man–you name it, I did it,” Kubrick told Gelmis. “It was invalu­able expe­ri­ence, because being forced to do every­thing myself I gained a sound and com­pre­hen­sive grasp of all the tech­ni­cal aspects of film­mak­ing.”

The result­ing film, Day of the Fight, brings the look and feel of film noir to the news­reel form. (Watch the com­plete 16-minute film above.) It fol­lows Carti­er and his twin broth­er, Vin­cent, in the hours lead­ing up to his fight with a for­mi­da­ble oppo­nent named Bob­by James. The scenes were all care­ful­ly planned, except for the big fight at the end, which was filmed live on April 17, 1950 at Lau­rel Gar­dens in Newark, New Jer­sey.

Kubrick rent­ed two Eye­mos that night, one for him­self and the oth­er for Singer. Kubrick hand-held his cam­era and moved around–at one point even hold­ing the cam­era under­neath the box­ers and shoot­ing straight upward–while Singer pro­vid­ed basic cov­er­age with his cam­era on a tri­pod. The Eye­mos took 100-foot rolls of film, which meant Kubrick and Singer were con­stant­ly chang­ing film. They tried to time it so that one was shoot­ing while the oth­er was reload­ing. “It was pret­ty busy and pret­ty hec­tic,” Singer told Vin­cent LoBrut­to for Stan­ley Kubrick: A Bio­graphy. “We had to get it. It had to be down on film–there was no pic­ture with­out get­ting this fight.”

They got it. When Carti­er deliv­ered the knock-out punch, Kubrick was reload­ing but Singer cap­tured the moment. To com­plete the project, Kubrick hired his child­hood friend Ger­ald Fried to com­pose music, and CBS news­man Dou­glas Edwards to pro­vide nar­ra­tion. Day of the Fight was gen­er­al­ly well-received. As LoBrut­to writes, “Kubrick­’s innate pho­to­graph­ic sense and the pas­sion he brought to the project result­ed in a film devoid of the com­mon pit­falls of novice film­mak­ers.”

But when Kubrick set out to mar­ket the film, he found he had already stum­bled into a pit­fall of the novice busi­ness­man. The movie had cost about $3,900 to make. “When we began to take it around to the var­i­ous com­pa­nies to sell it,” he told Bern­stein, “they all liked it, but we were offered things like $1,500 and $2,500. At one point I said to them, ‘Why are you offer­ing us so lit­tle for this? One-reel shorts get $40,000!’ They said, ‘You must be crazy.’ ”

Kubrick even­tu­al­ly sold it to RKO-Pathé for about $100 less than it cost him to make, he told Bern­stein. He did have the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing the Day of the Fight at New York’s Para­mount The­atre at an April 26, 1951 screen­ing of My For­bid­den Past, star­ring Robert Mitchum and Ava Gard­ner. “It was very excit­ing to see it on the screen, and it got a nation-wide and world-wide dis­tri­b­u­tion,” Kubrick told Bern­stein. “Every­body liked it and they said it was good. I thought that I’d get mil­lions of offers–of which I got none, to do any­thing.”

Fly­ing Padre:

Actu­al­ly Kubrick did get one offer after the suc­cess of Day of the Fight. RKO-Pathé paid him $1,500 to make a news­reel about a priest in New Mex­i­co who got around his vast parish in a Piper Cub air­plane. Fly­ing Padre (above) tells the sto­ry of two days in the life of Rev. Fred Stadt­mueller.

“Unlike Day of the Fight,” writes LoBrut­to, “Fly­ing Padre is a rather typ­i­cal human-inter­est news­reel doc­u­men­tary. Kubrick­’s film­mak­ing skills are assured but reveal less of the cin­e­mat­ic tal­ent that lies with­in. The pho­tog­ra­phy is even­ly lit. Shots are com­posed in clas­sic pho­to­jour­nal­ist style, pleas­ing and art­ful to the eye.”

All of Kubrick­’s expenses–travel, film, equip­ment rental–came out of his $1,500 fee, so again he made do with­out a crew. Even after restrict­ing the run­ning time to nine min­utes, he bare­ly broke even. Kubrick would lat­er describe the film, released in 1951, as “sil­ly.”

The Sea­far­ers:

After break­ing even on Fly­ing Padre, Kubrick could read the writ­ing on the wall. Short doc­u­men­taries did­n’t pay. Sur­pris­ing­ly, it was at pre­cise­ly this point that he decid­ed to for­mal­ly quit his job at Look and devote him­self to film­mak­ing. As he explained to Bern­stein, “I found out how much fea­ture films were being made for–you know, millions–and had cal­cu­lat­ed that I could make a fea­ture film for about ten thou­sand dol­lars.”

So once again Kubrick was off to the races. While rais­ing mon­ey for his first fea­ture film, Fear and Desire (find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online), he accept­ed a pay­ing job direct­ing a 30-minute film for the Sea­far­ers Inter­na­tion­al Union. The Sea­far­ers (above), released in 1953, is of lit­tle note aside from being Kubrick­’s first col­or film. He nev­er men­tioned it in inter­views.

Look­ing back on his ear­ly doc­u­men­tary work in a 1968 inter­view for Eye mag­a­zine, Kubrick put things into per­spec­tive: “Even though the first cou­ple of films were bad, they were well pho­tographed, and they had a good look about them, which did impress peo­ple.”

David Byrne: From Talking Heads Frontman to Leading Urban Cyclist

in Music | April 2nd, 2012

When David Byrne began rid­ing a bicy­cle in late-sev­en­ties and ear­ly-eight­ies New York, he drew fun­ny looks on the street. But the con­ve­nience of rolling from neigh­bor­hood to neigh­bor­hood, par­ty to par­ty, and gallery to gallery on two wheels could­n’t be denied, and now, over three decades lat­er, we find Byrne has evolved to occu­py a unique set of par­al­lel careers: singer-song­writer, artist of many media (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Microsoft Pow­er­Point), and urban cycling advo­cate. Over the past few years, what with sharply ris­ing gas prices and a rein­vig­o­rat­ed pub­lic inter­est in how bet­ter to use our cities, the world has paid espe­cial­ly close atten­tion to the lat­ter third of Byrne’s work. He’s respond­ed by writ­ing, tour­ing, lec­tur­ing, and even indus­tri­al-design­ing (bike racks, that is) in sup­port of the hum­ble bicy­cle, if not as human­i­ty’s only hope, then at least as a pret­ty darn per­son­al­ly and social­ly effec­tive way of get­ting from point A to point B.

“You don’t real­ly need the span­dex,” Byrne writes in his book Bicy­cle Diaries, whose pub­li­ca­tion occa­sioned the above New York Times video pro­file. He advo­cates cycling nei­ther as a hard-charg­ing sport nor as an atavis­tic hit of child­hood whim­sy, but as a full-fledged means of dai­ly trans­porta­tion. Not only does he wear reg­u­lar clothes doing it, but in this video he actu­al­ly goes hel­met­less, albeit on the car-free Hud­son Riv­er Green­way. As expressed in both book and video, Byrne’s thoughts on the exhil­a­ra­tion of cycling through cities — “there’s a sense of float­ing through the land­scape, watch­ing it as it goes by, but you can stop at any moment if some­thing catch­es your eye” — have kept me on my own bike. I ride it in Los Ange­les, a city of clear weath­er and flat ter­rain that some­times strikes me as an ide­al cycling envi­ron­ment — until Byrne or some­one else bring up Euro­pean towns, like Copen­hagen or Mod­e­na, through which tykes, octo­ge­nar­i­ans, and every­one in between ride reg­u­lar­ly and fear­less­ly. Even North Amer­i­ca’s most bike-friend­ly cities haven’t reached that lev­el yet, but with advo­cates as cre­ative and unbu­reau­crat­ic as David Byrne advis­ing them (though some­times with sug­ges­tions as grand as “bury the West Side High­way”), sure­ly it’s only a mat­ter of time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

The Physics of the Bike

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

NASA’s Stunning Tour of the Moon

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | April 2nd, 2012

On 18 June 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) from Cape Canaver­al to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions that would pave the way for future lunar explo­ration. The main objec­tives? To scout for safe and pro­duc­tive land­ing sites, locate poten­tial resources (with spe­cial atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of water ice) and char­ac­ter­ize the effects of pro­longed expo­sure to lunar radi­a­tion. All along, the LRO has col­lect­ed sci­en­tif­ic data about the moon’s topog­ra­phy and com­po­si­tion, result­ing in some of the most spec­tac­u­lar images ever tak­en of the moon. NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has assem­bled some of these images into a won­der­ful ani­mat­ed tour of the moon.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Download as a Free Audio Book & Free eBook

in Audio Books, Literature | April 1st, 2012

This is a nov­el that needs no intro­duc­tion, but we will give it a short one any­way. Pub­lished in ser­i­al for­mat between 1918 and 1920, James Joyce’s Ulysses was ini­tial­ly reviled by many and banned in the US and UK until the 1930s. Today, it’s wide­ly con­sid­ered a clas­sic in mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture, and The Mod­ern Library went so far as to call it the most impor­tant Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­el pub­lished dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry. Although chron­i­cling one ordi­nary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in 1904 Dublin, Ulysses is no small work. It sprawls over 750 pages, using over 250,000 words, and takes hours to read aloud. That you will find out when you hear the free audio book made avail­able by Archive.org. What makes the audio spe­cial is that it fea­tures a full-cast, dra­mat­ic per­for­mance of Ulysses. You can stream the audio right below, or (or via this Archive.org file) down­load a big zip file right here. You can also down­load ebook ver­sions of Ulysses in the fol­low­ing for­mats: iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Hyper­text.

Find more great works in our twin col­lec­tions: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Every­thing You Need to Enjoy Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses on Blooms­day

James Joyce Picked Drunk­en Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hem­ing­way; Hem­ing­way Called Joyce “The Great­est Writer in the World”

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet & PC in 1974

in Technology | March 31st, 2012

In 1974, the futurist/science fic­tion writer Arthur C. Clarke described for Jonathan, a lit­tle boy about five years old, what his life will look like in 2001. And boy did he get it right. Of course, these thoughts weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly new for Clarke. A decade ear­li­er, in 1964, he pre­dict­ed pret­ty much the same thing.

The video above comes cour­tesy of the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (ABC). H/T @CreativeCommons

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Futur­ist Arthur C. Clarke on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals

30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God & Rea­son

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

Hunter S. Thompson and Franz Kafka Inspire Animation for a Bookstore Benefiting Oxfam

in Animation, Books | March 30th, 2012

The online book­seller Good Books donates 100 per­cent of its retail prof­it to Oxfam’s char­i­ty projects, which tells you the sense of moral “good” their name means to evoke. But what about the oth­er sense, the sense of “good” you’d use when telling a friend about a thrilling lit­er­ary expe­ri­ence? Good Books clear­ly have their own ideas about that as well, and if you’d call Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Meta­mor­pho­sis “good books,” you’re of the same mind they are. Hav­ing com­mis­sioned a series of pro­mo­tion­al videos on the theme of Great Writ­ers, Good Books show us the kind of read­ers they are by begin­ning it with an intri­cate­ly ani­mat­ed mash-up of the spir­its of Franz Kaf­ka and Hunter S. Thomp­son. Under a buck­et hat, behind avi­a­tor sun­glass­es, and deep into an altered men­tal state, our nar­ra­tor feels the sud­den, urgent need for a copy of Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis. Unwill­ing to make the pur­chase in “the great riv­er of medi­oc­rity,” he instead makes the buy from “a bunch of rose-tint­ed, will­ful­ly delu­sion­al Pollyan­nas giv­ing away all the mon­ey they make — every guilt-rid­den cent.”

The ani­ma­tion, cre­at­ed by a stu­dio called Buck, should eas­i­ly meet the aes­thet­ic demands of any view­er in their own altered state or look­ing to get into one. Its ever-shift­ing shapes both chase and antic­i­pate the words of the nar­ra­tor’s loop­ing, stag­ger­ing mono­logue, com­ple­ment­ing the eeri­ly Thomp­son­ian voice with wave after wave of trou­bling­ly Kafkan imagery (at least, when­ev­er it set­tles into rec­og­niz­able fig­ures). Ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts can learn more about the painstak­ing work that went into all of this in Motiono­g­ra­pher’s inter­view with Buck­’s cre­ative direc­tors. What, you won­der, was the hard­est shot to ani­mate? Prob­a­bly the one “with the teth­ered goat and hun­dreds of bee­tles,” they reply. Some fret about the increas­ing inter­min­gling between com­mer­cials and the stranger, more raw, less sal­able arts, but if this at all rep­re­sents the future of adver­tise­ments, for char­i­ty stores or oth­er­wise, I say bring on the goats and bee­tles alike. via The Atlantic

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

Orson Welles’ Last Interview and Final Moments Captured on Film

in Film | March 30th, 2012

The clip brings you back to the final inter­view and moments of the great film­mak­er Orson Welles. On Octo­ber 10, 1985, Welles appeared on The Merv Grif­fin Show. He had just turned 70 and, rather omi­nous­ly, the con­ver­sa­tion brought Welles to take stock of his life. Again and again, the con­ver­sa­tion returned to aging and the decline of his lovers and friends. Just two hours lat­er, Welles would die of a heart attack at his home in Los Ange­les. And gone was the tal­ent who gave us Cit­i­zen Kane, The Stranger (watch in full), and The Tri­al (dit­to), not to men­tion the famous War of the Worlds radio broad­cast and great nar­ra­tions of works by Pla­to, Kaf­ka and Melville…

The films list­ed above, and many oth­er clas­sics, appear in 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!