Jim Power, aka “the Mosaic Man,” Adorns the Lampposts of New York City’s East Village

in Art | July 24th, 2012

This short inter­net doc­u­men­tary from Etsy pro­files Jim Pow­er, a.k.a. “Mosa­ic Man,” an artist and local his­to­ri­an of sorts on Manhattan’s Low­er East Side who cre­ates tile por­traits of the city’s most sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple and places. Pow­er embod­ies all of the qual­i­ties that attract­ed me to the neigh­bor­hood in the ear­ly 2000’s—a hard-bit­ten do-it-your­self ethos and a ded­i­ca­tion to com­mu­nal val­ues. And he has with­stood the forces that drove me out: the often harsh impact of so-called “qual­i­ty of life” laws passed by May­ors Giu­liani and Bloomberg and the soar­ing rents occa­sioned by encroach­ing new devel­op­ments and ever-increas­ing demand for real-estate on the island. Dur­ing Giuliani’s tenure in the 90s much of the arts com­mu­ni­ty in low­er Man­hat­tan was swept away, includ­ing fifty light posts bear­ing Jim Power’s now-clas­sic mosaics.

But Pow­er is undaunt­ed and is work­ing to rebuild the “Mosa­ic Trail,” tile mosaics on a series of light poles and oth­er fix­tures rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al eras of Low­er East Side his­to­ry and cul­ture. Power’s mosaics have been a stal­wart fea­ture of the neighborhood’s idio­syn­crat­ic land­scape, as has the artist him­self. Home­less for near­ly thir­ty years, he is sus­tained by the gen­eros­i­ty of his neigh­bors, who have donat­ed stu­dio space and help­ing hands. But he con­tends with the harsh conditions—whether on the streets or in the city shelters—that all New York’s home­less must, as you can read on his web­site. Nonethe­less, Pow­er thrives, in part, because as the documentary’s direc­tor Tara Young writes on her Etsy blog, “Jim’s not out for fame. He makes his art for the com­mu­ni­ty that he loves and that loves him so dear­ly in return.”

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!

Impressionist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

in Art | July 20th, 2012

Edgar Degas was near­ly blind when this film footage was tak­en in 1915. The great French Impres­sion­ist painter had begun to lose his eye­sight in his thir­ties, when he became extreme­ly sen­si­tive to bright light and expe­ri­enced a loss of vision in his right eye. Degas devel­oped blind spots in both eyes, and by the time he was in his for­ties he had lost a sig­nif­i­cant part of his cen­tral vision.

Paint­ing was a strug­gle. The unbear­able­ness of bright light forced Degas to work indoors, and even­tu­al­ly he had to ask his mod­els for help iden­ti­fy­ing col­ors. By the time he was 57 he could no longer read. “How awful it is not being able to see clear­ly any­more,” Degas said late in his life. “I have to give up draw­ing and paint­ing and for years now con­tent myself with sculp­ture.… But if my eye­sight con­tin­ues to dim I won’t even be able to mod­el any more. What will I do with my days then?”

In 1912 Degas had to give up art alto­geth­er, and he filled his days by tak­ing long walks around Paris. When the young actor Sacha Gui­t­ry approached the retired artist about appear­ing in his film Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land” (we fea­tured Gui­t­ry’s footage of a severe­ly arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Wednes­day and Claude Mon­et in his gar­den at Giverny yes­ter­day), Degas flat­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate. Unde­terred, Gui­t­ry became a sort of pio­neer­ing paparazzi: He set up his cam­era near Degas’s home on the Boule­vard de Clichy and wait­ed in ambush for the 81-year-old man to pass by on one of his reg­u­lar walks.

The result­ing film is brief, but fas­ci­nat­ing. The great painter strolls along with a female helper, a bowler hat on his head and a fold­ed over­coat under one arm, using an umbrel­la as a walk­ing stick. When he gets clos­er to the cam­era we can see that Degas is wear­ing the tint­ed glass­es he cus­tom­ar­i­ly used to shield what was left of his eye­sight from the harsh day­light. When the old man reach­es the edge of the frame, the wom­an’s hand takes hold of his arm, and then he’s gone.

Shakespeare’s Satirical Sonnet 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

in iPad, Literature, Poetry | July 18th, 2012

“My mis­tress’ eyes are noth­ing like the sun,” begins Son­net 130 by William Shake­speare. But why read the rest when you can see and hear it, in the video above, from Stephen Fry? No mat­ter how often I’ve wished the voice inside my head could sound like his, I just can’t mas­ter intracra­nial­ly repli­cat­ing his dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of accent and man­ner. This defi­cien­cy both­ers me espe­cial­ly when read­ing works as wor­thy as Shake­speare’s son­nets. Son­net 130 in par­tic­u­lar, a satire of the increas­ing­ly and obvi­ous­ly hyper­bol­ic odes to female beau­ty pop­u­lar in Shake­speare’s day, prac­ti­cal­ly demands a per­sona as dry­ly know­ing as Fry’s. But nei­ther Fry in any of his work nor the Shake­speare of Son­net 130 seem con­tent to sim­ply pop bal­loons of grotesque­ly over­in­flat­ed sen­ti­ment. They know that, in refus­ing to trot out grand­ly tired com­par­isons of lips to coral and cheeks to ros­es, they pay their sub­jects a more last­ing, gen­uine trib­ute in the end.

Fry’s read­ing comes from a new iPad app, Shake­speare’s Son­nets. In an appar­ent real­iza­tion of all those lit­er­ary “mul­ti­me­dia expe­ri­ences” we dreamed of but could nev­er quite achieve in the mid-nineties, it presents the 154 son­nets as they looked in their 1609 quar­to edi­tion with schol­ar­ly notes, com­men­tary, and inter­views with experts. Oth­er per­form­ers enlist­ed to read them include Patrick Stew­art (pre­sum­ably anoth­er sine qua non for such a project), David Ten­nant, and — because hey, why not — Kim Cat­trall. A fine idea, but new-media vision­ar­ies should take note that I and many oth­ers are even now wait­ing for apps ded­i­cat­ed to noth­ing more than Stephen Fry read­ing things. Some­one’s got to cap­i­tal­ize on this demand.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Shake­speare in the Orig­i­nal Voice

Shakespeare’s Julius Cae­sar Read in Celebri­ty Voic­es

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)

City Poems: A New Lit­er­ary iPhone App

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela Retold with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

in History, Media, Technology | July 18th, 2012

Back in March, we told you about the launch of The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. Part­ly fund­ed by Google, the archive lets you revis­it impor­tant moments in Man­de­la’s life — his Ear­ly Life, his Prison Years, and his Pres­i­den­tial Years.

That Dig­i­tal Archive offers one way to tell Man­de­la’s sto­ry. Now here’s anoth­er. The cre­ators of the web site Man­dela Sto­ry launched a short video yes­ter­day that looks at Man­de­la’s life through the lens of social media. And it’s meant to raise a seri­ous ques­tion: “Would Man­dela have spent 27 years in cap­tiv­i­ty if he (and oth­ers) had access to the same tech­nol­o­gy, social media plat­forms and tools as we do today?”

It’s short and cer­tain­ly cre­ative. And if it speaks to you, you should check out Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line, a clip cre­at­ed by The Rijksmu­se­um that imag­ines the social life of the great Dutch painter.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Einstein’s Big Idea: E=mc²

in Physics, Television | July 17th, 2012

E=mc²: We’ve all heard of it. But what does it mean?

Ein­stein’s Big Idea, a film from the PBS Nova series, attempts to shed a lit­tle light on Albert Ein­stein’s equa­tion by break­ing it down into its com­po­nent parts and telling a sto­ry behind the devel­op­ment of each one. Nar­rat­ed by actor John Lith­gow, the film is based on David Bodanis’s 2000 best­seller E=mc²: A Biog­ra­phy of the World’s Most Famous Equa­tion. It pre­miered in 2005, the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s Annus Mirabilis–the “mirac­u­lous year” when the 26-year-old patent clerk pub­lished five papers with­in a six-month peri­od that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize 20th cen­tu­ry physics. Among those five were Ein­stein’s paper out­lin­ing what lat­er became known as the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and a short fol­low-up paper deriv­ing his for­mu­la for the equiv­a­lence of mass and ener­gy, which he first stat­ed as m=E/c².

Does Ein­stein’s Big Idea actu­al­ly explain the equa­tion? Alas, no. Not even close. Appar­ent­ly, the film­mak­ers’ “big idea” was that they might be able to evoke empa­thy among young view­ers and stim­u­late inter­est in sci­ence by por­tray­ing Ein­stein as a rebel­lious young man with a healthy sex dri­ve. The movie fea­tures dra­mat­ic depic­tions of events, not only in Ein­stein’s ear­ly life, but in the lives of sev­er­al oth­er impor­tant fig­ures in the his­to­ry of sci­ence:  the 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­man Michael Fara­day, whose exten­sive exper­i­ments and intu­itive the­o­ries in elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism led direct­ly to James Clerk Maxwell’s for­mal dis­cov­ery that light was an elec­tro­mag­net­ic wave;  the 18th cen­tu­ry French chemist Antoine Lavoisi­er, whose dis­cov­ery of the con­ser­va­tion of mass had to be re-for­mu­lat­ed as the con­ser­va­tion of mass-ener­gy in the wake of Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty The­o­ry; the 18th cen­tu­ry French trans­la­tor of Isaac New­ton, Emi­lie du Châtelet, who used the empir­i­cal find­ings of Willem Gravesande to change New­ton’s for­mu­la for ener­gy from E=mv to the one favored by Got­tfried Wil­helm Leib­niz, E=mv²; and the Aus­tri­an-born physi­cist Lise Meit­ner, whose ground­break­ing research into nuclear fis­sion in the 1930s helped con­firm the accu­ra­cy of Ein­stein’s equa­tion. Togeth­er, the scenes depict the his­to­ry of sci­ence as a roman­tic strug­gle of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als against the resis­tance of less­er minds.

To learn more about Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and E=mc², here are some free online resources:

“On the Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics of Mov­ing Bod­ies”, Ein­stein’s famous paper from the June 30, 1905 edi­tion of Annalen der Physik, out­lin­ing the Spe­cial The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Avail­able as HTML or PDF.

“Does the Iner­tia of a Body Depend on Its Ener­gy Con­tent?”, Ein­stein’s three-page fol­low-up to the paper above, deriv­ing his famous equa­tion from the prin­ci­ples laid out in the ear­li­er work. It was pub­lished in Annalen der Physik on Sep­tem­ber 27, 1905 and is avail­able online as a PDF.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Spe­cial and Gen­er­al The­o­ry, Ein­stein’s clas­sic guide for the lay read­er, writ­ten in 1916 and avail­able free in var­i­ous for­mats at Project Guten­berg.

The ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, Bertrand Rus­sel­l’s very acces­si­ble 1925 book, avail­able in an abridged audio edi­tion through links in our Feb. 18 post.

Cours­es on Ein­stein can be found in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Cours­es. And don’t miss Ein­stein for the Mass­es, a lec­ture giv­en by Rama­mur­ti Shankar, Pro­fes­sor of Physics & Applied Physics at Yale.

The Rolling Stones First Played 50 Years Ago; Watch Them Explode Into Fame Shortly Thereafter

in History, Music | July 16th, 2012

Just four days ago, the Rolling Stones cel­e­brat­ed the fifti­eth anniver­sary of their first con­cert, which hap­pened on July 12, 1962 at Lon­don’s Mar­quee club. Arti­cles have quot­ed lead singer Mick Jag­ger as describ­ing the crowd that evening as the kind of audi­ence they’d expect­ed as a band: “col­lege stu­dents hav­ing a night out,” an “art-school kind of crowd” who “weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly demon­stra­tive, but they appre­ci­at­ed and enjoyed the set.” But the Stones’ demo­graph­ic would soon both shift and expand dra­mat­i­cal­ly: “A few months lat­er we were play­ing in front of 11 year olds who were scream­ing at us.” You can wit­ness this very phe­nom­e­non in the 1964 news­reel above; per­haps all of the kids lined up out­side the the­ater aren’t quite that young, but we’re def­i­nite­ly not look­ing at a col­le­giate crowd. Still, what this full house (“in fact,” the nar­ra­tor says, “it could have been filled ten times over”) lacks in matu­ri­ty, they make up for in raw enthu­si­asm.

This short film comes from British Pathé, then known as Pathé News, a pro­duc­er of news­reels from the very ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry right up to the sev­en­ties. They cap­tured the Stones per­form­ing in 1964, after they had already racked up a con­sid­er­able degree of fame, espe­cial­ly in their own coun­try. The show itself takes place in Kingston upon Hull, a medi­um-sided city in the north­east of Eng­land. Sum­mon­ing the sur­pris­ing sense of fun that mid-six­ties Eng­lish media some­times could when cov­er­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture, this news­reel, called Rolling Stones Gath­er Moss, opens with Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bri­an Jones, Char­lie Watts, and Bill Wyman try­ing to hitch a ride along­side the grassy road to the venue. “Lit­tle do they know, they’re hav­ing their legs pulled,” the announc­er says of the unhesi­tat­ing motorists, “because these appar­ent hitch­hik­ers, so bland­ly ignored, are five of the most famous young men in show busi­ness, the Rolling Stones. Some of these motorists will be kick­ing them­selves when they learn they missed the chance of a life­time of get­ting to know them.” But the his­tor­i­cal moment remains cap­tured on film, as do count­less oth­ers, among the 90,000 clips in Pathé’s online archive.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain

in Music | July 16th, 2012

Flash­mob per­for­mances haven’t been a fresh con­cept for some time. And they’ve been some­what tak­en over by cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing recent years. But that does­n’t stop view­ers from enjoy­ing the per­for­mances, whether in per­son or on the web. Take this recent exam­ple orches­trat­ed by the finan­cial­ly-chal­lenged Span­ish bank, Ban­co Sabadell.

Ear­li­er this sum­mer, the bank brought togeth­er 100 musi­cians and singers from the Orches­tra Sim­fon­i­ca del Valles,Amics de l’Opera de Sabadell,Coral Belles Arts, and Cor Lieder Cam­era to per­form the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. It all hap­pens in the Plaça de Sant Roc in Sabadell, Spain, a lit­tle north of Barcelona. Per­haps this will put a smile on your face. Maybe you’ll even shed a tear. One way or anoth­er, make sure you turn up your speak­ers.…

For more flash­mob clas­si­cal per­for­mances see:

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Sta­tion

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Grieg’s Peer Gynt in the Sub­way

Opera in the Fruit & Veg­gie Mar­ket

Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens Debates Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig (2009)

in Philosophy, Religion | July 12th, 2012

When we talk about reli­gion around here, we often end up talk­ing about some­thing that falls between agnos­ti­cism and athe­ism. That’s because pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who com­ment on reli­gion fre­quent­ly fall into those camps. Here and there, the­ists polite­ly call us on it. They ask us to con­sid­er show­ing The Four Horse­men (Hitchens/Dawkins/Dennett/Harris) in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with reli­gious thinkers. It would be a step toward cre­at­ing some bal­ance, they say. We’ve done some of that before. But it has been a while. So we’re bring­ing you today the 2009 debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher. It was held at Bio­la Col­lege, a school that offers a “Bib­li­cal­ly Cen­tered Edu­ca­tion,” which puts Craig on the home court.

The basic ques­tion fram­ing the debate is “Does God Exist?,” and the answers are all ground­ed in phi­los­o­phy, though that did­n’t stop the con­ver­sa­tion from veer­ing into biol­o­gy, physics, cos­mol­o­gy, and moral the­o­ry. You might be sur­prised that Hitchens does­n’t take the stri­dent athe­ist posi­tion that would have let more sparks fly. No, he ends up in a more agnos­tic place, and there’s a kind of a humil­i­ty to his posi­tion, an accep­tance that we just can’t know the answers to the big ques­tions, at least not yet. That speaks to me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. But I’m sure oth­ers will see things dif­fer­ent­ly.

If you’re hun­ger­ing for more, you can watch Craig debate Sam Har­ris here. We thank Tay­lor for send­ing these videos along.

Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

Mr. Deity Greets Christopher Hitchens at the Gates of Heaven

in Comedy, Religion | July 11th, 2012

Christo­pher Hitchens left us sev­en months ago. Maybe, just maybe, that’s enough time for the light­heart­ed humor to begin. Enter Mr. Deity, the satir­i­cal video series that looks at the mun­dane strug­gles of our Cre­ator. In the new­ly-released sev­enth episode of Sea­son 5, Mr. Deity bum­bles his way through the lat­est dilem­ma — how to wel­come Hitchens to the heav­ens. Hitch remains, it turns out, as scrap­py and argu­men­ta­tive in death as in life. And, of course, there’s some­thing funny/ironic about a hard­ened athe­ist mak­ing a ruckus in the after­life. But per­haps you did­n’t need me to point that out.…

If you’re not acquaint­ed with Mr. Deity, you can start with the ear­li­est episodes here.

via Richard Dawkins