Free Grateful Dead Concert Archive

in Internet Archive, Music | March 26th, 2011

“One More Sat­ur­day Night” for your Sat­ur­day night.

If this vin­tage clip filmed in Copen­hagen in 1972 reawak­ens your inner Dead Head, then you can always wade your way into the Inter­net Archive’s Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion, which hosts dozens of Dead shows from the 1970s through the 1990s. Some con­certs (usu­al­ly record­ed by mem­bers of the audi­ence) can be down­loaded. Oth­er audio (usu­al­ly tak­en from the sound­board) can be streamed. All togeth­er, you will find hun­dreds of hours of free con­cert record­ings.

A few items worth sam­pling include: Live at the Boston Gar­den (May 7, 1977); Live at the RFK Sta­di­um (June 10, 1973); or Live at Madi­son Square Gar­den (Sep­tem­ber 4, 1979).

David Lynch “Directs” Duran Duran Concert in L.A.

in Film, Music | March 25th, 2011

This past Wednes­day, YouTube streamed a web­cast of the lat­est install­ment of the Unstaged con­cert series. Arcade Fire kicked off the series last August in New York City. Now we cut to the Mayan The­ater in Los Ange­les, where Duran Duran took the stage. The 80s band is still around, still mak­ing music. And they’re smart­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with David Lynch, who cre­at­ed visu­als that were dou­ble-exposed over the live per­for­mance. Huff­Po inter­viewed Lynch about the col­lab­o­ra­tion (and more) here, and you can always head to YouTube to find videos of indi­vid­ual songs played dur­ing the show.

Blinky™: A Touching Short Film About A Killer Robot

in Film, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | March 25th, 2011

That’s right, touch­ing.

From Blade Run­ner to Ter­mi­na­tor to at least 30 per­cent of what made Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca great, vio­lent robot revolt is noth­ing new. But 27-year old Irish film­mak­er Ruairi Robin­son, who was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for his ani­mat­ed short Fifty Per­cent Grey, tweaks the for­mu­la by shrink­ing the are­na: This bat­tle­field isn’t a galaxy, a solar sys­tem or even a plan­et; it’s just the lone­ly sub­ur­ban home of a boy whose par­ents fight all day.

Max Record (Where the Wild Things Are) is fine as the angry son who hopes a new toy will solve all of his prob­lems, but this movie belongs to the robot: More WALL‑E than cylon, more R2-D2 than ED-209, and priced at just $999.99, Blinky is a machine the whole fam­i­ly can love. He catch­es, he cleans, he plays hide and seek, he’ll wait for you in the rain, and he just wants to be your friend.…Until he does­n’t.

A warn­ing here: Even though at its best Blinky speaks direct­ly to the bloody-mind­ed fifth-grad­er in all of us, we sug­gest watch­ing the whole thing before show­ing it to chil­dren, or even squea­mish adults.

(Vis­it the always excel­lent io9 for more free sci­ence fic­tion film rec­om­men­da­tions.)

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 New York Philharmonic Opens Digital Archives to the Public

in Music | March 24th, 2011

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The New York Phil­har­mon­ic recent­ly unveiled its dig­i­tal archives to the pub­lic. They haven’t fin­ished the archive quite yet, but they have com­plet­ed the Leonard Bern­stein years, also known as the  “Inter­na­tion­al Era.” You can find busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence, hand­writ­ten notes, 3,200 pro­grams, and gems like this Mahler score, full of nota­tions and com­ments in Bern­stein’s hand. As a recent New York Times arti­cle points out, the Bern­stein years (1942–70) saw some of the most tumul­tuous events in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and in no way was the Phil­har­mon­ic immune from its upheavals.

In the archives, one finds the orches­tra hir­ing women for the first time, scout­ing for African-Amer­i­can musi­cians (in 1969 they had just one), and even doing its bit to man­age U.S.-Soviet rela­tions with sev­er­al attempts to invite Shostakovich – unsuc­cess­ful­ly. Fans of Glenn Gould might par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy read­ing the min­utes of a meet­ing in which mem­bers of the board, out­raged over Gould’s famous­ly con­tro­ver­sial Brahms per­for­mance just one month ear­li­er, argued to release him from his con­tract. Bern­stein him­self also hat­ed Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion, but had nonethe­less defend­ed it before the audi­ence in an his­toric speech about the pianist’s artis­tic integri­ty and judge­ment. (The video above is of a hap­pi­er col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two mas­ters just two years ear­li­er.)

Also: On March 17, the NYPhil post­ed this video of a per­for­mance of Toru Takemit­su’s “Requiem for Strings,” to raise aware­ness of the plight in Japan and encour­age dona­tions.

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.

Le Flaneur: Time Lapse Video of Paris Without the People

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | March 23rd, 2011

Luke Shep­ard, a stu­dent at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris, began work­ing on Le Fla­neur as part of a project for school, but it quick­ly took on a life of its own. He used a Nikon D90 DSLR cam­era to take over 2,000 pho­tos of Paris at night, and then used Adobe After Effects and Pre­miere Pro to pro­duce this impres­sive tour of a world that most of us rarely see – Paris with­out Parisians. In Eng­lish, “fla­neur” trans­lates rough­ly as “stroller,” “loafer,”  or per­haps “aim­less walk­er,”  and, in an inter­view with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er, Shep­ard explained that he was  inspired to shoot these images in part by late-night plea­sure rides on his bicy­cle.

(Note: Some view­ers may pre­fer to watch with the vol­ume off, as the chase scene-ready sound­track detracts a bit from the eerie sense of a vir­tu­al­ly desert­ed city.  For more time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, check out these videos of Mec­ca, New York City, and the Milky Way.)

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.

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

in Music, Religion, Video - Arts & Culture | March 22nd, 2011

If you’ve been feel­ing the End Times’ icy breath a lit­tle close on your shoul­ders these past few weeks, we rec­om­mend a healthy dose of Leonard Cohen. You can start with this 20-minute inter­view from 1993, con­duct­ed by Bar­bara Gowdy of the Cana­di­an lit­er­ary series, Imprint. And click “play” with cau­tion — it starts with Cohen read­ing the very NSFW poem “The Future,” from his epony­mous 1992 album.

The sec­ond you hear that famous blue bari­tone say “Give me absolute con­trol over every liv­ing soul,” you know the apoc­a­lypse can cer­tain­ly wait till the poem’s over. Or maybe it can’t, but at least you’ll have spent your last few moments lis­ten­ing to Leonard Cohen.

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

Kutiman’s Trip to Jerusalem

in Art, Life | March 22nd, 2011

The Israeli artist Ophir Kutiel, oth­er­wise known as Kuti­man, returns to YouTube with a rather dif­fer­ent project. No Moth­er of All Funk Chords. No Kuti­man-Thru-You. No new take on the remix, but rather a three-day stroll through Jerusalem with a Canon T21. An ancient, holy city seen through a mod­ern lens. The back­ground music is a Kuti­man orig­i­nal with Ita­mar Duari on per­cus­sion…

Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | March 21st, 2011

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, author of the best-sell­ing book The Physics of Star Trek, is a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and Pro­fes­sor of Physics at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. His research focus­es on the begin­ning and the end of the uni­verse.

This past Jan­u­ary, Krauss attend­ed the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos and was asked by 99 Faces TV to talk about his work. In a rel­a­tive­ly short 381 sec­onds, he speaks about the scale of the uni­verse, the con­cept of dark ener­gy and explains how “you real­ly are star­dust.” That is to say, every lit­tle atom in your body comes from a super­no­va (or explod­ing star). Krauss elab­o­rates on this poet­ic thought in this 2009 video (def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend­ed), and he’ll have more to say in his new book, A Uni­verse from Noth­ing.

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!

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.

Charismatic Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan Gives Public Lecture (1972)

in Philosophy, Psychology | March 21st, 2011

The footage above is from an extreme­ly rare – and unex­pect­ed­ly enter­tain­ing – video of the philoso­pher and psy­cho­an­a­lyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), giv­ing a lec­ture at The Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain in 1972. The film is notable for a cou­ple of rea­sons:

1. In France, Lacan’s rock star sta­tus owed much to his pop­u­lar pub­lic sem­i­nars. The charis­mat­ic icon­o­clast had been giv­ing free pub­lic lec­tures for decades, and those lec­tures were usu­al­ly packed with stu­dents, col­leagues, skep­tics, young rad­i­cals … and fans. The video gives you an idea of what the fuss was all about. Even at 70, Lacan still owns the room, and he has the pres­ence of a stage actor, com­plete with dra­mat­ic paus­es, iron­ic self-reflec­tion, and pitch-per­fect storms of emo­tion (see minute 15:07).

2. At minute 21:37, a polit­i­cal­ly inspired heck­ler tries to ambush him. It’s a moment right out of a com­e­dy show, if the com­e­dy show were chic and grainy and edit­ed by Jean-Luc God­dard. Note the grace with which Lacan neu­tral­izes the poor guy, lights his cig­ar and then con­cludes the lec­ture, even though the fall­out from their encounter is still stuck in his hair.

Lacan’s ideas have fall­en a bit out of fash­ion in the past two decades, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the U.S., where psy­cho­analy­sis has been nudged out of the spot­light by neu­ro­science and post-struc­tural­ism has lost ground to post-colo­nial stud­ies. But Lacan still has his fans, notably the “Elvis of Phi­los­o­phy,” Slavoj Zizek, who dom­i­nates YouTube the way his pre­de­ces­sor once did salons.

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

Alain de Botton Tweets Short Course in Political Philosophy

in Philosophy, Twitter | March 20th, 2011

Alain de Bot­ton has mas­tered the art of pop­u­lar­iz­ing great phi­los­o­phy. His books, lec­tures, tele­vised pro­grams and the Lon­don-based School of Life – they all help de Bot­ton get great ideas “out there.” And now he turns to Twit­ter. On Fri­day, @AlaindeBotton tweet­ed a short course in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy in sev­en parts. The course, with each les­son pre­sent­ed in 140 char­ac­ters or less, begins like this:

1: Pla­to: We should be ruled not by lead­ers cho­sen by a major­i­ty, but by those who are most intel­li­gent.

2. St Augus­tine: We should not try to build par­adise on earth. Aim for tol­er­a­ble gov­ern­ment, true gov­ern­ment only pos­si­ble in the next life.

3. Machi­avel­li: Politi­cian must choose between serv­ing the inter­ests of coun­try and the inter­ests of Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. Can’t have both.

You can fin­ish the course here, and start fol­low­ing us on Twit­ter here, where we post a steady flow of cul­tur­al good­ies through­out the day. If you like Open Cul­ture, you will love our Twit­ter stream (and our Face­book page)…