Collaborations: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | April 18th, 2011

The occa­sion: A ben­e­fit for the arts in pub­lic schools.

The musi­cian: Cel­list Yo-Yo Ma.

The dancer: LA/Memphis street dancer Lil Buck.

The cam­era: Direc­tor Spike Jonze.

The result: A per­for­mance that is also the best pos­si­ble argu­ment for the cause it sup­ports. We could say more, but again, the video speaks for itself.

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:

Ful­ly Flared: Intro to Skate­board­ing direct­ed by Spike Jonze, Ty Evans and Cory Weincheque

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

The Pale King: How the Book Came Together (and How to Download the Novel in Audio)

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | April 18th, 2011

When David Fos­ter Wal­lace com­mit­ted sui­cide in Sep­tem­ber 2008, he left behind the man­u­script for The Pale King, an unfin­ished nov­el he start­ed research­ing back in 1997, not long after the pub­li­ca­tion of Infi­nite Jest. The Pale King was final­ly pub­lished this past Fri­day (April 15), a date that was hard­ly arbi­trary. Offer­ing a lengthy med­i­ta­tion on bore­dom, The Pale King is set in a Mid­west­ern I.R.S. office. And what was April 15th? The day when Amer­i­cans tra­di­tion­al­ly file their tax­es (although they have until the 18th this year).

The posthu­mous nov­el came togeth­er with the help of Wal­lace’s long­time edi­tor, Michael Pietsch, who spent two years work­ing through heaps of pages left in bins, draw­ers and wire bas­kets, hop­ing to turn this mass of mate­r­i­al into the most com­plete nov­el pos­si­ble. The inter­view with Pietsch above, along with this short piece in The New York Times, brings you inside the editing/making of The Pale King, which has already received some favor­able reviews.

If you’re look­ing to get your hands on the book, give this some thought: If you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load pret­ty much any audio book in Audi­ble’s cat­a­logue for free. And that cat­a­logue now includes The Pale King. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is yours…

Yale Rolls Out 10 New Courses — All Free

in Online Courses, Yale | April 15th, 2011

This week, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty rolled out its lat­est batch of open cours­es. This release, the first since Octo­ber 2009, fea­tures 10 new cours­es, and brings the total num­ber to 35. Find the com­plete list here.

We have list­ed the new addi­tions below, and added them to our ever-grow­ing list of 350 Free Online Cours­es. As always, Yale gives you access to their cours­es in mul­ti­ple for­mats. You can down­load lec­tures (usu­al­ly in audio and video) from iTunes, or direct­ly from the Yale web site. And then, of course, YouTube is a good third option…

• Cap­i­tal­ism: Suc­cess, Cri­sis and Reform — iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Dou­glas W. Rae
• Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote - iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Rober­to González Echevar­ría
• Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­land: Pol­i­tics, Reli­gion, and Soci­ety under the Tudors and Stu­arts — iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Kei­th E. Wright­son
• Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­tics and Law - iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — John P. War­go
• Epi­demics in West­ern Soci­ety Since 1600 — iTunes Video —  iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Frank Snow­den
• Finan­cial The­o­ry — iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — Web Site — John Geanako­p­los
• Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry - iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Iván Szelényi
• Fun­da­men­tals of Physics II - iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Rama­mur­ti Shankar
• The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion — iTunes Video - iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Joanne B. Free­man
• The Moral Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­tics - iTunes Video — iTunes Audio — YouTube — Web Site — Pro­fes­sor Ian Shapiro

Cormac McCarthy (RIP) and Werner Herzog Talk Science and Culture

in Film, Literature, Physics | April 14th, 2011

To kick off this won­der­ful episode of Sci­ence Fri­day (lis­ten below), physi­cist Lawrence M. Krauss sug­gests that sci­ence and art ask the same fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Who are we, and what is our place in the uni­verse?

Over the next hour, Krauss is joined in his explo­ration of this ques­tion by the great film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog (Griz­zly Man, Encoun­ters at the End of the World) and 2000 Pulitzer Prize win­ner Cor­mac McCarthy (The Cross­ing, The Road, No Coun­try For Old Men). Much of their dis­cus­sion revolves around Her­zog’s lat­est film, the 3‑D doc­u­men­tary The Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, but they also address bot­tle­neck the­o­ry, com­plex­i­ty sci­ence, the his­to­ry of paint­ing, and the upcom­ing rise of the machines.

High point: Her­zog reads a pas­sage from McCarthy’s All the Pret­ty Hors­es (38:00).

Low point: Her­zog asserts that Star Trek lied — human beings will nev­er learn to instant­ly trans­port from plan­et to plan­et. Krauss con­firms, and Trekkie hearts all over the world break into tiny unbeam­able pieces (17:00).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

How Cor­mac McCarthy Became a Copy-Edi­tor for Sci­en­tif­ic Books and One of the Most Influ­en­tial Arti­cles in Eco­nom­ics

Nov­el­ist Cor­mac McCarthy Gives Writ­ing Advice to Sci­en­tists … and Any­one Who Wants to Write Clear, Com­pelling Prose

via Metafil­ter

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Walter Kaufmann’s Classic Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

in Online Courses, Philosophy | April 14th, 2011

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty. You can hear them right below:

Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion

Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy

Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by oth­er major fig­ures, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

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:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda and More

in Film, Poetry, Video - Arts & Culture | April 13th, 2011

A few years ago, the genius­es over at Four Sea­sons Pro­duc­tions began shoot­ing evoca­tive short films set to clas­sic poet­ry. 21 fin­ished pieces, a long list of fes­ti­val prizes and a full DVD lat­er, many of their best “poem videos” are now avail­able to watch for free on their YouTube chan­nel.

These short pieces cap­ture the mood, rhythms and mean­ing of a wide range of poet­ic voic­es and styles in imag­i­na­tive ways. Our favorite is the above inter­pre­ta­tion of Langston Hugh­es’ “The Weary Blues,” but there are sev­er­al oth­er excep­tion­al shorts, includ­ing “Only Breath” by the great 13th cen­tu­ry sufi poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi and “100 Love Son­nets IX” by Pablo Neru­da. Note: The Neru­da poems are read in the orig­i­nal Span­ish.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stanley Kubrick’s Filmmaking Career Really Begins

in Film | April 13th, 2011

The evo­lu­tion of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s ear­ly career looks some­thing like this. A young Kubrick grad­u­ates from high school in 1945, and almost imme­di­ate­ly starts work­ing for LOOK Mag­a­zine as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, where he mas­ters his visu­al craft. (You can see a good sam­pling of his pho­to­graph­ic work right here.) By the ear­ly 1950s, Kubrick has his sights set on motion pic­tures, and, after shoot­ing a cou­ple of short doc­u­men­taries, he gets to work on fea­ture films. His first pro­duc­tion, Fear and Desire (1953), is some­thing of a let­down. Though crit­ics give it sound reviews, Kubrick is unhap­py with the result, and he works hard to remove all exist­ing copies from cir­cu­la­tion. Even so, you can still find grainy copies online.

Fast for­ward two years, and Kubrick, now 26, bor­rows $40,000 from his uncle and shoots Killer’s Kiss, a movie that sits square­ly in the film noir tra­di­tion. (Get more noir films here.) It’s short, run­ning only 67 min­utes. It pass­es the lit­mus test for Kubrick him­self, offi­cial­ly launch­ing his film­mak­ing career. And the mini noir is now avail­able on Dai­ly Motion. We also have Killer’s Kiss and Fear and Desire list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies. Enjoy…

“First Orbit”: Celebrating 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

in History, Video - Science | April 12th, 2011

To cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of manned space trav­el, Attic Room Pro­duc­tions has released First Orbit, a 99-minute free film that recre­ates Yuri Gagar­in’s his­toric launch into space on April 12, 1961 — in real time. We watched the whole film, which was shot entire­ly in space from on board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. And it’s breath­tak­ing. We were espe­cial­ly blown away by the re-entry sequence, start­ing at about 1:10:00.

A few oth­er links you may enjoy:

Google’s April 12, 2011 home page

The mak­ing of First Orbit

Video from 1961, com­plete with syn­the­siz­ers

Gagar­in’s Life in Pic­tures, from the Russ­ian Archives

Gagar­in’s 1961 inter­view with the BBC

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin is tweet­ing the Yuri Gagarin gala from the Krem­lin

Final­ly, and for pure­ly per­son­al and sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons, here’s Ray Brad­bury’s heart­break­ing 1951 short sto­ry “The Rock­et Man,” the first thing we ever read that filled us with long­ing for space trav­el.

via Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Photos of Famous Writers (and Rockers) with their Dogs

in Life, Literature, Music | April 12th, 2011

Cour­tesy of New York Social Diary, here is a love­ly series of pho­tographs fea­tur­ing famous authors and their dogs. If you’ve ever won­dered which breeds have served as muse to William Sty­ron, Stephen King, William F. Buck­ley, Kurt Von­negut, then this col­lec­tion is for you. But be warned: We’re still recov­er­ing from the sight of that Lhasa Apso flopped on Von­negut’s lap–we were hop­ing for a wolfhound.

For more artist-canine com­bi­na­tions, Fla­vor­wire has round­ed up a col­lec­tion of musi­cians and their dogs. Unlike the authors, these own­ers real­ly do look like their pets. (See Robert Plant.)

via @brainpicker and The Mil­lions

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Every Step You Take, They’ll Be Tracking You

in Media, Technology | April 12th, 2011

Malte Spitz, a mem­ber of the Green Par­ty in Ger­many, sued Deutsche Telekom and forced the com­pa­ny to hand over six months of record­ed cell phone data. The results were fair­ly eye open­ing.

Dur­ing a five month peri­od, DT tracked Spitz’s loca­tion and phone usage 35,000 times. If that sounds like a lot, you’re right. And it looks even worse when you visu­al­ize the data. Zeit Online took this geolo­ca­tion data and com­bined it with pub­licly-avail­able infor­ma­tion relat­ing to Spitz’s polit­i­cal life (e.g., his Twit­ter feeds and blog entries) and pro­duced a screen­cast that doc­u­ments two days in the life of the Green Par­ty politi­cian. The YouTube video above traces his steps. But the visu­als on the Zeit site let you track Spitz’s move­ments around Ger­many with fin­er pre­ci­sion. The moral of the sto­ry: Every step you take, your tel­co is like­ly track­ing you, whether you give con­sent or not. The New York Times has more on the sto­ry…