Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paintings & Museums to You

in Art, Google | February 1st, 2011

More good­ness out of Google­plex. Today, Google is rolling out a new tool called “Art Project,” which gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appear­ing in 17 great muse­ums across the world. Using Google’s Street View tech­nol­o­gy, you can now tour col­lec­tions at the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, the Van Gogh Muse­um and Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, the Nation­al Gallery in Lon­don – just to name a few muse­ums now vir­tu­al­ly open to you. And you can vis­it count­less paint­ings, some ren­dered in super high res­o­lu­tion. (We’re talk­ing 7 bil­lion pix­els!) Take for exam­ple, Ver­meer’s Offi­cer and Laugh­ing Girl (see above) or Van Gogh’s The Bed­room. When you view Van Gogh’s paint­ing, make sure you zoom in and look at the brush­work.

Although you won’t have access to the entire­ty of every muse­um (actu­al­ly the selec­tions are rather lim­it­ed in many cas­es), Google’s Art Project does put 385 rooms on dis­play. Not a bad start.  You can read more about the new ini­tia­tive on Google’s blog here. H/T to @eugenphoto

Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the Uke

in Music, TED Talks | February 1st, 2011

If you’ve nev­er seen Jake Shimabukuro han­dle the ukulele before, you’re in for a lit­tle treat. Known for his com­plex fin­ger­work, the ukulele vir­tu­oso now tours with Jim­my Buf­fet and has record­ed with Yo-Yo Ma. Mean­while his fab record­ing of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” has clocked 7,000,000 views on YouTube, all of which sets the stage for this: Shimabukuro bring­ing his act to the TED 2010 stage. For more ukulele fun, don’t miss The Com­plete Bea­t­les on Ukulele.

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!

Al Jazeera’s Live Stream of Egyptian Uprising

in Current Affairs, Politics | January 28th, 2011

A quick fyi: We may be wit­ness­ing a water­shed moment in the his­to­ry of Egypt and The Mid­dle East, with police bat­tling mas­sive protests across Cairo and oth­er Egypt­ian cities. These protests are being cov­ered on the ground by Al Jazeera in Eng­lish, and you can watch the live stream on the web right here, or down­load the free Al Jazeera iPhone app and watch the stream on the iPhone.

Note: If you’re look­ing for some resources that explain what’s hap­pen­ing in Egypt, you might want to vis­it these resources here and here. Both come at the rec­om­men­da­tion of Jad Abum­rad, the host of Radio Lab.

The Photography of The Sartorialist & Musings on the Creative Life

in Art | January 27th, 2011

In the lat­est video appear­ing in Intel’s Visu­al Life series, we get a look inside the cre­ative approach of Scott Schu­man, the edi­tor of the very pop­u­lar fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy blog The Sar­to­ri­al­ist. On the sur­face, this is all about how an influ­en­tial fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er goes about his craft. But the mes­sage – it’s more about doing and refin­ing your per­son­al approach, than for­mal school­ing – eas­i­ly extends to most any oth­er artis­tic endeav­or. Along sim­i­lar lines, if you’re look­ing for insight into the cre­ative process, you will want to revis­it come­di­an John Cleese talk­ing about The Ori­gins of Cre­ativ­i­ty itself…

Don’t You Eva Interrupt Me While I’m Reading a Book!

in Books, Comedy, Random | January 26th, 2011

This is for every read­er out there who gets the basic sen­ti­ment. A bit of ran­dom silli­ness, cour­tesy of YouTu­ber Julian Smith.

via The New York­er

MIT’s Vintage 1970 Calculus Courses Now Online … And Still Handy

in Math, MIT | January 26th, 2011

Long ago, long before MIT hatched plans for its Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive and lat­er edX, the uni­ver­si­ty taped a lec­ture series cov­er­ing the equiv­a­lent of a fresh­man-lev­el cal­cu­lus course. Released in 1970, the intro­duc­to­ry class taught by Her­bert Gross was suit­ed for any stu­dent brush­ing up on his/her cal­cu­lus, or learn­ing the sub­ject for the first time. MIT has now revived the lec­ture series, called “Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus,” along with two more advanced cours­es. Although times have changed, cal­cu­lus remains the same. And you’ll still find the series to be quite handy.

• Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus (1970) – YouTube — iTunes Video – Web Site
• Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus (1970) – YouTube – iTunes Video – Web
• Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Com­plex Vari­ables, Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions, and Lin­ear Alge­bra (1972) — YouTube — iTunes Video — Web

The cours­es are also list­ed in the Math sec­tion of our Free Online Course col­lec­tion (where you’ll find many oth­er calc cours­es)…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

MIT Intro­duces Com­plete Cours­es to Open­Course­Ware Project

Watch Alexander Calder Perform His “Circus,” a Toy Theatre Piece Filled With Amazing Kinetic Wire Sculptures

in Art | January 25th, 2011

Alexan­der “Sandy” Calder (1898 – 1976) was one of Amer­i­ca’s fore­most mod­ern artists, inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for his inven­tion of the mobile and his large-scale sculp­tures. At the age of eight, he start­ed work­ing with wire to make kinet­ic sculp­ture (one of his first was a small duck that would rock when pushed, done at the age of 11). Although he became an engi­neer and worked a vari­ety of jobs, he even­tu­al­ly enrolled in The Art Stu­dents League of New York. While there, he worked for the Nation­al Police Gazette, cov­er­ing, among oth­er things, the Rin­gling Broth­ers and Bar­num & Bai­ley Cir­cus­es.

Calder had a life­long fas­ci­na­tion with the cir­cus and, upon mov­ing to Paris in 1926, he cre­at­ed the Cirque Calder, a col­lec­tion of wire sculp­tures with com­plex mech­a­nisms allow­ing them to move and do var­i­ous tricks.  His first show­ing of his cir­cus was to fam­i­ly and friends, but his pop­u­lar­i­ty grew and he was soon giv­ing shows last­ing two hours in Paris and New York.  It was then that his artis­tic recog­ni­tion spread, and he enjoyed a pro­lif­ic career until his death in 1976. The video above comes to us via The Whit­ney Muse­um in NYC, which pre­sent­ed an exhi­bi­tion called “Alexan­der Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933” in 2008-09. And we also rec­om­mend watch­ing the 1961 short film, Le Cirque de Calder, where he talks about his toy-like cre­ations.

This is the first of hope­ful­ly many guest posts by Adri­enne Rum­sey.

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!

Sundance Film Festival 2011 on YouTube’s Screening Room

in Film | January 21st, 2011

A quick note for film afi­ciona­dos: The 2011 edi­tion of the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val is now under­way. And over the next two weeks, The YouTube Screen­ing Room will bring you short films from fes­ti­vals past and present. Right now, you can watch four new films by up-and-com­ing direc­tors – 8 Bits, Andy and Zach, The High Lev­el Bridge, and Skateis­tan: To Live and Skate in Kab­ul (above). More new films will be added on Jan­u­ary 27th and Feb­ru­ary 3rd. In the mean­time, you can catch sev­er­al oth­er short films that orig­i­nal­ly played at Sun­dance, or were made by Sun­dance Insti­tute alum­ni.

via Switched.com

Stop Motion Fun in Venice

in Random | January 20th, 2011

Shel­ley Jones and Marko Anstice “space hop” through Venice with the help of some stop motion pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s a win­tery Venice, very dif­fer­ent from the city (watch video) mil­lions come to know dur­ing the sum­mer months.

Appre­ci­ate the tip Ellen. If you have a great piece of intel­li­gent media to share with your fel­low read­ers, please send it our way. They’re always wel­come…

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: Free AudioBooks & eBooks

in e-books, Literature | January 20th, 2011

The Ili­ad and Odyssey — they form the bedrock of west­ern lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture. And now, thanks to Ian John­ston of Van­cou­ver Island Uni­ver­si­ty, you can find online numer­ous Eng­lish trans­la­tions of Home­r’s great epic poems, includ­ing some by major lit­er­ary heavy­weights. John­ston’s list fea­tures trans­la­tions of the Ili­ad by Thomas Hobbes (1675), George Chap­man (1614), Alexan­der Pope (1720), William Cullen Bryant (1870), Samuel But­ler (1888), and Rich­mond Lat­ti­more (1951), along with accom­pa­ny­ing ver­sions of the Odyssey. Sep­a­rate­ly, but cer­tain­ly worth not­ing, Lib­rivox offers free audio­book ver­sions of the Ili­ad and Odyssey, both based on the But­ler trans­la­tion. They’re now added to our list of Free Audio Books, and we have e‑texts with­in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pla­to’s Repub­lic … In Clay

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free