Pete Eckert: Blind Photographer, Visual Artist

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 25th, 2011

Pete Eck­ert is blind, total­ly blind. But his dis­abil­i­ty (if you can call it that) has­n’t stopped him from express­ing him­self visu­al­ly. As Pete explains in the video above, he has always been a visu­al per­son. And pho­tog­ra­phy has become more than a cre­ative out­let for Pete. It’s a per­son­al form of artis­tic expres­sion, the way he sees the world through sound.

Eck­ert was named the Grand Prize recip­i­ent of Artists Want­ed: Expo­sure in 2008, an inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion. You can learn more about Pete Eck­ert in this video and on his web page.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview

in Film, Television | February 24th, 2011

Bruce Lee’s act­ing career began on tele­vi­sion in 1966, when he land­ed a part in The Green Hor­net. (Watch his amaz­ing audi­tion here). But it took anoth­er five years before he gave his first (and only) tele­vi­sion inter­view. For 25 min­utes in Decem­ber 1971, the mar­tial arts star sat down with Pierre Berton, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, in Hong Kong. And their con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a fair amount of ground – Lee’s suc­cess star­ring in Man­darin films .… despite only speak­ing Can­tonese; his dif­fi­cul­ty devel­op­ing a career in a coun­try still hos­tile toward Chi­na; and his work train­ing oth­er Hol­ly­wood stars in the mar­tial arts. Berton prob­a­bly nev­er scored many points for his inter­view­ing style. But Berton is not the point here. It’s all about Lee. via Brain­Pick­ings

Rauschenberg Erases De Kooning

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 24th, 2011

In 1953, Willem De Koon­ing was one of the world’s most revered liv­ing painters, and Robert Rauschen­berg was a tal­ent­ed ris­ing star, just a year out of art school. In this clip, Rauschen­berg tells of how, armed with noth­ing but chutz­pah and a bot­tle of Jack Daniels, he knocked on De Koon­ing’s door and flat-out asked the mas­ter for an orig­i­nal draw­ing — so he could erase it. De Koon­ing not only acqui­esced, but even chose a draw­ing he par­tic­u­lar­ly liked. Though it was con­tro­ver­sial at the time, Erased De Koon­ing is now con­sid­ered a con­cep­tu­al art clas­sic. And its influ­ence endures: Last year a stu­dent at Brown out-Rauschen­berg’d Rauschen­berg by eras­ing De Koon­ing’s wikipedia entry.

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:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

A Free Archive of 85,000 Classical Music Scores

in Music | February 23rd, 2011

Worth a quick men­tion: The New York Times ran a sto­ry yes­ter­day pro­fil­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project, a crowd­sourced web site that index­es clas­si­cal music scores (though not with­out rais­ing some copy­right con­cerns along the way). IMSL hosts 85,000 scores with sev­er­al thou­sand new ones com­ing online every month. You can find Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nacht­musik, Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 5 – in short, the major ones along with the minor ones. And, in some cas­es, the archive includes audio record­ings. Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er offers an exam­ple. You can find a full list of free audio record­ings (arranged by com­pos­er) here.

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:

A Big Bach Down­load — All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Free Interactive Comic Book: Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum”

in Art, Literature | February 22nd, 2011

First came the stop motion film. Now comes the inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal com­ic book that gives you a mod­ern take on Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic hor­ror sto­ry, “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum.” (Find Poe’s orig­i­nal text here or lis­ten in audio here.) The dig­i­tal Pit and the Pen­du­lum com­ic book is the brain­child of Marc Lougee and Susan Ma, who have lay­ered infor­ma­tive links, QR codes and social media into their visu­al design, adding a new mea­sure of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty to the tra­di­tion­al com­ic book expe­ri­ence. To get the most out of the expe­ri­ence, you will need to down­load a good PDF read­er and QR code read­er. Find those resources here. And, on a relat­ed note, don’t for­get to watch anoth­er favorite of ours: the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. A clas­sic!

Sub Zero: Winter Time-Lapse in South Dakota

in Art, Life | February 21st, 2011

Ear­li­er this month, Randy Halver­son braved the cold South Dako­ta nights (where tem­per­a­tures often drop to ‑25 below wind chill), to cre­ate this night­time time-lapse film. Using a Canon 60D and T2i, Halver­son gave each shot a 20 sec­ond expo­sure, with a one sec­ond inter­val placed between shots. The result is pret­ty jaw-drop­ping. H/T @matthiasrascher.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: Animation Concepts

in Art, Books, Film, Literature | February 18th, 2011

Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

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 Ice Book, a Beautiful Pop-Up Book

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2011

The Ice Book, seen above, is a paper the­atre brought to life with light. Watch as sheets of paper are illu­mi­nat­ed in a daz­zling ani­ma­tion dis­play. Accord­ing to the artists, Davy and Kristin McGuire, The Ice Book tells the sto­ry of a mys­te­ri­ous princess who lures a boy into her mag­i­cal world to warm her heart of ice. It was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, with the actors super­im­posed onto the mon­tages using a makeshift green screen, and pro­jec­tions cre­at­ed in Adobe After Effects. A sim­ple yet remark­able achieve­ment. You can learn more about the project here. Don’t miss the page describ­ing the behind the scenes work, or this oth­er pri­mo video that savors books in stop motion film.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Christopher Hitchens Answers Reddit User Questions

in Current Affairs | February 17th, 2011

A lit­tle ways back, Christo­pher Hitchens field­ed ques­tions for 30 min­utes from Reddit.com users, answer­ing any and every ques­tion they threw his way. What his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, events or books have been under­em­pha­sized in Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion? Has the Iraq War (some­thing Hitchens sup­port­ed) had a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact on Islam­ic extrem­ism? What do social­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an­ism have in com­mon intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if any­thing? Oth­er fig­ures inter­viewed by Red­dit users include Richard Dawkins, Noam Chom­sky, and Ron Paul.

Evolution Made Us All

in Music, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net