The Guardian’s Guide to Opera (and Free Opera Until Sept. 12)

in Music | August 22nd, 2011

“Opera is thrilling, vibrant, ver­sa­tile – and thriv­ing. In fact, there has nev­er been a bet­ter time to fall in love with the art form” — Simon Cal­low.

This week­end, The Guardian pub­lished a handy mul­ti­me­dia guide called “How to Enjoy Opera,” and it coin­cid­ed with the stream­ing of a live per­for­mance of Ben­jamin Brit­ten’s The Turn of the Screw. If you missed it (we men­tioned it on our Twit­ter stream), you can still watch the per­for­mance online (and for free) until Sep­tem­ber 12th. In the mean­time, we would hearti­ly rec­om­mend spend­ing time with The Guardian’s accom­pa­ny­ing primers. They start you off with a list of The Top 50 Operas from 1607 to 1978, and then give you a tuto­r­i­al on how to sur­vive your first opera; a look at opera in the mod­ern age; and Simon Cal­low’s take on why “opera has nev­er been more alive.” All worth a look…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

Learn Ital­ian for Free. Part of Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free

The MIT “Checker Shadow Illusion” Brought to Life

in MIT, Science, Video - Science | August 19th, 2011

The video you’re watch­ing is a real-life demon­stra­tion of an opti­cal illu­sion devel­oped in 1995 by Edward Adel­son, a pro­fes­sor in MIT’s Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. The Check­er Shad­ow Illu­sion, as Adel­son calls it, shows that our “visu­al sys­tem is not very good at being a phys­i­cal light meter.” But more impor­tant­ly, the opti­cal illu­sion offers impor­tant insight into how our visu­al sys­tem tries to break down “image infor­ma­tion into mean­ing­ful com­po­nents, and there­by per­ceive the nature of the objects in view.” Adel­son’s full expla­na­tion of the illu­sion and what it reveals appears below the jump (or here). H/T 3 Quarks Dai­ly

(more…)

Marlene Dietrich’s Temperamental Screen Test for The Blue Angel (1929)

in Film | August 19th, 2011

In 1929, Josef von Stern­berg began assem­bling the cast for the first major Ger­man sound film — Der blaue Engel, oth­er­wise known as The Blue Angel. A clas­sic of Weimar cin­e­ma, the 1930 film fea­tured Mar­lene Diet­rich play­ing Lola-Lola, a seduc­tive singer in the local cabaret. Lola-Lola was, it has been said, a “lib­er­at­ed woman of the world who chose her men, earned her own liv­ing and viewed sex as a chal­lenge.” The per­sona cap­ti­vat­ed audi­ences, and it made Diet­rich an inter­na­tion­al star.

Above, you can watch Diet­rich’s screen test for the film. Inhab­it­ing the role, she gives the poor piano play­er an ear­ful (essen­tial­ly say­ing, “How the hell can I sing through this garbage with you play­ing like that?”). Then she works her way through “Why Cry at Part­ing?” and climbs on that piano, cig­a­rette no longer in hand, and puts on a show…

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!

The Beatles: Why Music Matters in Two Animated Minutes

in Animation, Life, Music | August 18th, 2011

Lee Gin­gold makes the point rather artis­ti­cal­ly by way of The Bea­t­les.

Music can shape our youth­ful minds (which reminds me of this great ani­mat­ed short, I Met the Wal­rus).

Music pro­vides the emo­tion­al sound­track for the good times and bad times in our lives.

It fires the imag­i­na­tion.

It brings us togeth­er. Just watch 13,500 peo­ple sing “Hey Jude” in Trafal­gar Square.

The bot­tom line? Music mat­ters…

via Kim Sher­rell & @Alyssa_Milano

Lou Gehrig, Yankee Legend, Stars in 1938 Western Rawhide

in Film | August 18th, 2011

In 1938, Lou Gehrig began his six­teenth sea­son as the New York Yan­kees’ first base­man. He con­tin­ued build­ing toward his leg­endary record of play­ing 2,130 con­sec­u­tive games. His bat­ting aver­age held at a respectable .295, though down from the scorch­ing .351 of the year before. And, dur­ing the pre­sea­son, Gehrig crossed over to Hol­ly­wood and starred in Rawhide, a West­ern film shot dur­ing an era when West­erns were a sta­ple of Amer­i­can film­go­ers. (John Wayne starred in more than 40 West­erns dur­ing the 1930s, and you can watch many of them online here.)

The plot of Rawhide is implau­si­ble, to say the least. The film starts with Gehrig play­ing him­self, telling reporters at Grand Cen­tral sta­tion:

I am through with base­ball… I got what I want. My sis­ter and I bought a swell ranch in a peace­ful val­ley.  I am going to wal­low in peace and qui­et for the rest of my life. I am going to hang up my spikes for a swell old pair of car­pet slip­pers.

Of course, things don’t turn out to be very peace­ful or qui­et in the town of Rawhide. And the 58 minute dra­ma unfolds from there. This being a no-spoil­er zone, we won’t tell you the rest.

The next year, the unthink­able hap­pened. The Iron Horse was afflict­ed by ALS. His bat­ting aver­age plum­met­ed to .145, and soon enough, Gehrig deliv­ered his “luck­i­est man on the face of the earth” speech and left base­ball. Years lat­er, neu­rol­o­gists looked back at Rawhide to see if Gehrig dis­played any vis­i­ble signs of the motor neu­ron dis­ease in ear­ly 1938. But none could be detect­ed.

Rawhide appears in the “West­erns” sec­tion of our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, along with The Pride of the Yan­kees, a Lou Gehrig biopic filmed in 1942. It starred Gary Coop­er was nom­i­nat­ed for a num­ber of Acad­e­my awards.

The Cookie Monster/Tom Waits Mashup

in Comedy, Music | August 17th, 2011

Tom Waits and Cook­ie Mon­ster. They are one-of-a-kind char­ac­ters … and yet strange­ly inter­change­able. Above, we have the body of Cook­ie Mon­ster chan­nel­ing the voice of Tom Waits, singing “God’s Away On Busi­ness.” And if you doubt the sim­i­lar­i­ties, sim­ply give a lis­ten to the all-time favorite C is for Cook­ie…

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

via metafil­ter

Our Extraterrestrial DNA

in Life, Physics, Video - Science | August 17th, 2011

The search for extrater­res­tri­al life brings us right back to where we start­ed, plan­et Earth, at least for a moment. NASA researchers have dis­cov­ered evi­dence that some build­ing blocks of DNA, the mol­e­cule that holds the genet­ic instruc­tions for life, were like­ly cre­at­ed in space and then brought to Earth by mete­orites, leav­ing behind a “kit of ready-made parts” that con­tributed to the ori­gin of life. All of this gets spelled out by Dr. Michael Calla­han in this video released last week by NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter.

If you still find your­self doubt­ing our extrater­res­tri­al ori­gins, then chew on this more basic fact under­scored by physi­cist Lawrence Krauss. We are all star­dust. Put sim­ply, every lit­tle atom in our bod­ies comes from a super­no­va, an explod­ing star…

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

Take Stanford Computer Science Courses This Fall: Free Worldwide

in Stanford, Technology | August 16th, 2011

This fall, pro­fes­sors from Stan­ford’s pres­ti­gious School of Engi­neer­ing will offer online three of its most pop­u­lar com­put­er sci­ence cours­es: Machine Learn­ing, Intro­duc­tion to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es. (You can sign up by click­ing on these links.) The cours­es will fea­ture short, inter­ac­tive video clips that stu­dents can watch when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want; short quizzes that pro­vide instant feed­back; and the abil­i­ty to rank ques­tions to be answered by Stan­ford instruc­tors. Accord­ing to the Stan­ford Report, “Already more than 58,000 peo­ple have expressed inter­est in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence course taught by Sebas­t­ian Thrun, a Stan­ford research pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence and a Google Fel­low, and Google Direc­tor of Research Peter Norvig.”

This isn’t the first time Stan­ford has offered free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es to the world. Back in 2008, Stan­ford Engi­neer­ing Every­where pre­sent­ed lec­tures from 10 com­plete online com­put­er sci­ence and elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing cours­es. This includes the three-course “Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence” sequence tak­en by the major­i­ty of Stan­ford under­grad­u­ates. These cours­es are all list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence and Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing sec­tions of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. H/T @eugenephoto

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence & Pro­gram­ming: Free Cours­es

Devel­op­ing Apps for iPhone & iPad: A Free Stan­ford Course

William S. Burroughs Tells the Story of How He Started Writing with the Cut-Up Technique

in Art, Books, Literature, Writing | August 16th, 2011

In late 1920, the Dadaist writer Tris­tan Tzara wrote “dada man­i­festo on fee­ble love and bit­ter love,” which includ­ed a sec­tion called “To Make a Dadaist Poem,” and it gave these instruc­tions:

Take a news­pa­per.
Take some scis­sors.
Choose from this paper an arti­cle of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the arti­cle.
Next care­ful­ly cut out each of the words that makes up this arti­cle and put them all in a bag.
Shake gen­tly.
Next take out each cut­ting one after the oth­er.
Copy con­sci­en­tious­ly in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resem­ble you.
And there you are — an infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.

Decades lat­er, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs took this basic con­cept and put his own twist on it. Between 1961 and 1964, Bur­roughs pub­lished The Nova Tril­o­gy, a series of three exper­i­men­tal nov­els fash­ioned with his own cut-up method. Often con­sid­ered his defin­i­tive work of cut-up writ­ing, The Soft Machine, the first nov­el in the tril­o­gy, stitched togeth­er pages from a series of man­u­scripts that Bur­roughs him­self wrote between 1953 and 1958.

You can watch Bur­roughs demon­strat­ing his cut-up tech­nique above, and for­ev­er find this clip in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons, which lets you see great writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and thinkers talk­ing in their own words.

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:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs’ Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film

Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita: Just Another Great Love Story?

in Books, Literature | August 16th, 2011

We take you back to the mid 1950s, to an inter­view with Vladimir Nabokov and lit­er­ary crit­ic Lionel Trilling con­duct­ed soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of Loli­ta (1955). Loli­ta’s basic plot is well known — mid­dle-aged Hum­bert Hum­bert devel­ops a pas­sion­ate obses­sion for twelve-year old Dolores Haze and takes her on the road. For some crit­ics, this was enough to reject the book out of hand. One British review­er called it “the filth­i­est book I have ever read” (which per­haps did­n’t say much about the scope of his read­ing). Oth­er lit­er­ary observers, Trilling includ­ed, rec­og­nized the book’s lit­er­ary mer­its straight­away. And years lat­er, crit­ics still agree. Recent­ly, The Mod­ern Library called it the fourth most impor­tant nov­el pub­lished in Eng­lish dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The video above fea­tures Nabokov and Trilling talk­ing inter­est­ing­ly about how Loli­ta finds its place in a grand lit­er­ary tra­di­tion that’s more con­cerned with love, often scan­dalous love, than with sex per se. And, it’s in this sense that Loli­ta sits in the same tra­di­tion as Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na.

The video is actu­al­ly the sec­ond part of a longer inter­view. You can start with Part I here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Nabokov Tweaks Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”