Life in 4,748 Self-Portraits

in Art, Life | January 6th, 2012

It start­ed sim­ply enough in 1999. Jeff Har­ris, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er based in Toron­to, took his first self-por­trait, some­thing he has since repeat­ed every day. His visu­al diary now amounts to 4,748 pho­tos and they tell a very per­son­al sto­ry. They show the pass­ing of time, some fair­ly nor­mal moments, but also some dif­fi­cult ones. In Novem­ber 2008, Har­ris was diag­nosed with can­cer, and his expe­ri­ence with it — his surgery, radi­a­tion treat­ment, even­tu­al paral­y­sis in one leg — all gets visu­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed by his project. The video above, orig­i­nal­ly appear­ing on TIME’s web site, takes you inside Har­ris’ project. The clip runs 5 min­utes.

via @SteveSilberman

The Zen of Steve Jobs: A New Graphic Novel

in Apple, Art, Books | January 5th, 2012

Wal­ter Isaac­son’s new biog­ra­phy of Steve Jobs (click image below to get a free audio copy) cov­ers a lot of ground in 571 pages. By design, it’s broad and com­pre­hen­sive, but it does­n’t always go deep. One facet of Steve Jobs’ life that does­n’t get much cov­er­age here was his rela­tion­ship with Kobun Chi­no Oto­gawa (1938–2002), a Bud­dhist priest who taught Jobs the way of Zen and shared his pas­sion for art and design. The two became close — close enough that Kobun presided over the Steve Jobs-Lau­rene Pow­ell wed­ding in 1991. This rela­tion­ship receives a fuller treat­ment in The Zen of Steve Jobs, a new 80-page graph­ic nov­el that uses stripped down dia­logue and bold cal­li­graph­ic pan­els to tell this sto­ry. The book was authored by Forbes writer Caleb Mel­by, and the art­work pro­vid­ed by the cre­ative agency JESS3. The video above gives you a good intro­duc­tion to the imag­i­na­tive work. h/t Boing­Bo­ing

Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories

in Audio Books, Books, e-books, Sci Fi | January 3rd, 2012

Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 short sto­ries dur­ing his life­time and solid­i­fied his posi­tion as arguably the most lit­er­ary of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers. His nov­el Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els, and Dick is the only sci­ence fic­tion writer to get hon­ored in the pres­ti­gious Library of Amer­i­ca series, a kind of pan­theon of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you assured­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­lyand Minor­i­ty Report. Today, we bring you anoth­er way to get acquaint­ed with his writ­ing. We’re pre­sent­ing a selec­tion of Dick­’s sto­ries avail­able for free on the web. Below we have culled togeth­er 11 short sto­ries from our col­lec­tions. Some of the sto­ries col­lect­ed here have also found their way into the recent­ly-pub­lished book, Select­ed Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick, which fea­tures an intro­duc­tion by Jonathan Lethem.

eTexts 

• “Beyond the Door”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• ”Beyond Lies the Wub”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Mr. Space­ship”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Piper in the Woods”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Crys­tal Crypt”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Defend­ers”
  • iPhone/iPad – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Eyes Have It”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Gun”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Hang­ing Stranger”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats 
• “The Skull”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “The Vari­able Man”
  • iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
• “Tony and the Bee­tles”
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats

Audio

• “Beyond Lies the Wub” – Free MP3
• “Beyond the Door” — Free MP3
• “Sec­ond Vari­ety” – Free MP3 Zip File — Stream Online
• “The Defend­ers” — Free MP3
• “The Gun” — YouTube
• “The Vari­able Man” – Free MP3 Zip File — Stream Online

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

J.R.R. Tolkien in His Own Words

in Literature | January 3rd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, author of the fan­ta­sy nov­els The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings. He was born on Jan­u­ary 3, 1892 to British par­ents in Bloem­fontein, South Africa. His father died when he was 3 years old, and he moved with his moth­er to Eng­land. The young boy took an ear­ly lik­ing to sto­ries of mag­ic and myth. In his 1947 book On Fairy Sto­ries, Tolkien wrote:

I had very lit­tle desire to look for buried trea­sure or fight pirates, and Trea­sure Island left me cool. Red Indi­ans were bet­ter: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a whol­ly unsat­is­fied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange lan­guages, and glimpses of an archa­ic mode of life, and above all, forests in such sto­ries. But the land of Mer­lin and Arthur were bet­ter than these, and best of all the name­less North of Sig­urd and the Vol­sungs, and the prince of all drag­ons. Such lands were pre-emi­nent­ly desir­able.

The urge to com­pose his own tales came ear­ly, but Tolkien became side­tracked by an inter­est in the sub­tleties of lan­guage. In a let­ter to W.H. Auden in 1955 he wrote:

I first tried to write a sto­ry when I was about sev­en. It was about a drag­on. I remem­ber noth­ing about it except a philo­log­i­cal fact. My moth­er said noth­ing about the drag­on, but point­ed out that one could not say “A green great drag­on,” but had to say “a great green drag­on.” I won­dered why, and still do. The fact that I remem­ber this is pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a sto­ry again for many years, and was tak­en up with lan­guage.

Tolkien became a philol­o­gist. He stud­ied Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture at Exeter Col­lege, Oxford and–after a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence in the trench­es of World War I–embarked on an aca­d­e­m­ic career. He became an expert on Anglo Sax­on and Norse mythol­o­gy.

But the misty forests of Tolkien’s child­hood imag­i­na­tion nev­er left him. One day in the ear­ly 1930s, he was at home grad­ing a large stack of stu­dent papers when his mind began to wan­der. On a blank sheet in one of the papers, the pro­fes­sor found him­self writ­ing, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hob­bit.” He did­n’t know what a hob­bit was, but soon found him­self spin­ning a tale, which he told to his young chil­dren. In 1937 it was pub­lished as The Hob­bit.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Hob­bit, not only with chil­dren but with adults, led to requests for a sequel, and in 1954 and 1955 Tolkien’s epic tril­o­gy, The Lord of the Rings was pub­lished. It went on to become one of the most pop­u­lar works of fic­tion of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with over 150 mil­lion copies sold worldwide–and count­ing.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Tolkien’s 120th birth­day, we present a fas­ci­nat­ing film on the author from the BBC series In Their Own Words: British Nov­el­ists. The 27-minute film was first broad­cast in March of 1968, when Tolkien was 76 years old, and includes inter­views and footage of the old man at his haunts in Oxford. H/T The Writer’s Almanac.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Decline of Scientific Research in America

in Science | January 2nd, 2012

Sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery is an engine of eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er, and Amer­i­ca has long prid­ed itself on its lead­er­ship in research. But as astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in this video, there are some dark clouds on the hori­zon.

When you look at the trend­line, Tyson says, sci­en­tif­ic research in Amer­i­ca is clear­ly in a state of decline com­pared to oth­er regions, like Asia and West­ern Europe. “As every­one else under­stands the val­ue of inno­v­a­tive invest­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in ways that we do not,” says Tyson, “we slow­ly fade.”

The maps Tyson uses are from Worldmapper.org. The one that he says rep­re­sents change from “2000 to 2010” actu­al­ly depicts growth in sci­en­tif­ic research from 1990 to 2001. Dan­ny Dor­ling, pro­fes­sor of  Human Geog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield and part of the team that cre­at­ed Worldmap­per, con­firmed Tyson’s error but said, “I think Neil’s got it rough­ly right. He should just have said ‘this is the trend to 2001 and it is not just like­ly it has con­tin­ued, but it has prob­a­bly accel­er­at­ed.’ ”

Tyson’s com­ments are from a talk he gave in May at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton enti­tled, “Adven­tures of an Astro­physi­cist.” For a clos­er look at the maps he uses, see below.

The col­or-cod­ed world map above can be used for ref­er­ence when study­ing the maps below.

The map above rep­re­sents ter­ri­to­ry sizes in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of papers pub­lished in 2001 that were writ­ten by sci­en­tists liv­ing there. The num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic papers pub­lished by researchers liv­ing in Amer­i­ca was more than three times greater than the num­ber pub­lished in the sec­ond-high­est-pub­lish­ing coun­try, Japan. For more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing per capi­ta data, see Worldmap­per’s PDF poster.

The map above rep­re­sents the growth in sci­en­tif­ic research between 1990 and 2001. Ter­ri­to­ry sizes are pro­por­tion­al to the increase in sci­en­tif­ic papers by authors work­ing in those coun­tries in 2001 com­pared to 1990. If there was no increase dur­ing that peri­od, the coun­try has no area on the map.

Despite the fact that the Unit­ed States had the most pub­lished research in 2001 and a net increase in research betwen 1990 and 2001, its size is small­er on the map because of a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater growth rate by coun­tries like Japan, the Repub­lic of Korea, Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na and Ger­many. Although the data behind the maps are now a decade old, Dor­ling sug­gests that a cur­rent map might look sim­i­lar. “If I had to guess,” he said, “it would look worse for the USA giv­en the mas­sive cuts in fund­ing in Cal­i­for­nia to some of the major state Uni­ver­si­ties there.”

You can find more on this map, includ­ing a print­able PDF poster with per capi­ta data by coun­try, along with infor­ma­tion on the sources and method­ol­o­gy behind its cre­ation, by vis­it­ing Worldmap­per.

Maps © Copy­right SASI Group (Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield) and Mark New­man (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan)

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Stories

in Audio Books, e-books, Literature | December 30th, 2011

Neil Gaiman is one of the hand­ful of writ­ers who has made comics respectable over the past sev­er­al decades. He has writ­ten some clas­sic chil­dren’s sto­ries, plus a nov­el that will be adapt­ed by HBO. A great deal of his out­put, though, has been in the form of short sto­ries, and we have pulled togeth­er some free copies for you today. Some sto­ries are avail­able in audio and video, oth­ers in text. (We have them all sep­a­rate­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tions:  1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.)

Audio & Video

And, since it’s cer­tain­ly time­ly, we leave you with Gaiman’s New Year’s Eve mes­sage deliv­ered to a crowd in Boston sev­er­al years ago:

May your com­ing year be filled with mag­ic and dreams and good mad­ness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss some­one who thinks you’re won­der­ful, and don’t for­get to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your com­ing year be a won­der­ful thing in which you dream both dan­ger­ous­ly and out­ra­geous­ly.

I hope you will make some­thing that did­n’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have peo­ple to love and to like in return. And most impor­tant­ly, because I think there should be more kind­ness and more wis­dom in the world right now — I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that some­where in the next year you sur­prise your­self.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

John Cage Performs Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

in Music, Television | December 30th, 2011

In 1952, John Cage com­posed his most con­tro­ver­sial piece, 4′33,″ a four-and-a-half minute reflec­tion on the sound of silence. Now fast for­ward eight years. It’s Feb­ru­ary, 1960, and we find the com­pos­er teach­ing his famous Exper­i­men­tal Com­po­si­tion cours­es at The New School in NYC, and pay­ing a vis­it to the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.” The TV show offered Cage some­thing of a teach­able moment, a chance to intro­duce the broad­er pub­lic to his brand of avant-garde music. Cage’s piece is called Water Walk (1959), and it’s all per­formed with uncon­ven­tion­al instru­ments, save a grand piano. A water pitch­er, iron pipe, goose call, bath­tub, rub­ber duck­ie, and five unplugged radios — they all make the music. And the audi­ence does­n’t quite know how to react, except with ner­vous laugh­ter. It was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly cour­te­ous. But, as one schol­ar has not­ed, it’s equal­ly remark­able that prime time TV gave ten min­utes of unin­ter­rupt­ed air­time to avant-garde music. You take the good with the bad.

via Bib­liok­lept/WFMU

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

in Sci Fi, Television | December 28th, 2011

Let’s do the time warp today and revis­it the Not-S0-Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped Amer­i­ca, and the Vari­ety Show TV for­mat would­n’t say die. So, pro­duc­ing The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial was a no-brain­er. The two-hour show takes you inside the domes­tic world of Chew­bac­ca and his fam­i­ly — his father Itchy, his wife Mal­la, and his son Lumpy — and fea­tures guest appear­ances by Jef­fer­son Star­ship, Har­vey Kor­man and Bea Arthur, plus a lit­tle stock footage of Alec Guin­ness. As for the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and spe­cial effects? They’re all text­book kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this was­n’t the finest hour for the Star Wars fran­chise. One crit­ic called it the “the worst two hours of tele­vi­sion ever.” And, when he’s will­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of the TV spe­cial, George Lucas read­i­ly admits that turn­ing Star Wars into a vari­ety show “was­n’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entire­ty, the hol­i­day spe­cial has gained some­thing of a cult sta­tus and cir­cu­lates “under­ground” on the web. Van­i­ty Fair has more on this mis­ad­ven­ture in tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming here. H/T goes to Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

Orson Welles Narrates Plato’s Cave Allegory, Kafka’s Parable, and Freedom River

in Animation, Film | December 28th, 2011

Orson Welles. A bril­liant direc­tor. A tal­ent­ed actor. And not a bad nar­ra­tor of ani­mat­ed films. We know one thing. The whole is often greater than the sum of the parts. So, today, we’re serv­ing up three ani­mat­ed films nar­rat­ed by Welles, plus some clas­sic radio broad­casts.

We start with an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry from 1973. The alle­go­ry is the most well known part of The Repub­lic (Down­load – Kin­dle), and Welles reads the famous lines deliv­ered by Socrates. Per­fect cast­ing. This is hard­ly the first ani­ma­tion of the cave alle­go­ry. Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life has a roundup of 20 ani­ma­tions, but we’re always par­tial to this bril­liant ver­sion done with clay­ma­tion.

In 1962, Orson Welles direct­ed The Tri­al, a film based on Franz Kafka’s last and arguably best-known nov­el. The film begins aus­pi­cious­ly with Welles nar­rat­ing an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of “Before the Law,” a para­ble from The Tri­al. And then the dra­mat­ic film unfolds. Lat­er in his life, Welles told the BBC, “Say what you will, but The Tri­al is the best film I have ever made. I have nev­er been so hap­py as when I made that film.”

The back­sto­ry behind this short ani­mat­ed film, Free­dom Riv­er, deserves a lit­tle men­tion. Accord­ing to Joseph Cavel­la, a writer for the film:

For sev­er­al years, Bosus­tow Pro­duc­tions had asked Orson Welles, then liv­ing in Paris, to nar­rate one of their films. He nev­er respond­ed. When I fin­ished the Free­dom Riv­er script, we sent it to him togeth­er with a portable reel to reel tape recorder and a siz­able check and crossed our fin­gers. He was either des­per­ate for mon­ey or (I would rather believe) some­thing in it touched him because two weeks lat­er we got the reel back with the nar­ra­tion word for word and we were on our way.

Filmed 40 years ago, Free­dom Riv­er offers some strong com­men­tary on Amer­i­ca, some of which will still res­onate today.

Final­ly, if you can’t get enough of Orson­’s voice, don’t miss The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, Welles’ radio pro­gram that brought the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves from 1938 to 1941. You can still find the broad­casts online, includ­ing the leg­endary War of the Worlds pro­gram from 1938 (lis­ten), and dra­ma­tized ver­sions of Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol (lis­ten) and Around the World in 80 Days (click the first item in playlist).

The short films men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, where you will also find some longer films by Welles.

The Short Films That Saved Pixar

in Animation, Film | December 27th, 2011

When Steve Jobs became the major­i­ty investor in Pixar in Jan­u­ary 1986, the com­pa­ny looked noth­ing like it does today. Back then, Pixar was main­ly a tech­nol­o­gy play. It sold expen­sive Image Com­put­ers to gov­ern­ment agen­cies and med­ical insti­tu­tions along with ren­der­ing soft­ware. That strat­e­gy did­n’t pay off par­tic­u­lar­ly well. The com­pa­ny hem­or­rhaged cash; lay­offs ensued; and things were gen­er­al­ly look­ing bleak for the young com­pa­ny.

Pixar’s for­tunes changed, how­ev­er, when it tapped into the tal­ents of a young ani­ma­tor named John Las­seter. Dur­ing Pixar’s ear­ly days, Steve Jobs and co-founder Ed Cat­mull asked Las­seter to devel­op a short ani­mat­ed film to help show off the capa­bil­i­ties of Pixar’s hard­ware and soft­ware. He came up with Luxo Jr. (above), which turned two lov­able lamps into movie stars. The short film won first prize at SIGGRAPH, the annu­al com­put­er graph­ics con­fer­ence held in 1986. Lat­er Luxo Jr. was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award.

In 1988, Pixar was still hang­ing on by a thread. But Jobs con­tin­ued to nur­ture Las­seter’s work and direct­ed pre­cious resources towards anoth­er short film. When giv­ing Las­seter funds ($300,000), Jobs said to the ani­ma­tor, “All I ask of you, John, is to make it great.” And that he did. The result, Tin Toy (above), won the ’88 Acad­e­my Award for ani­mat­ed short film, the first com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed film to win the award.

Tin Toy caught Dis­ney’s atten­tion, and they began to pur­sue Las­seter. But Las­seter stayed loy­al to Pixar, and before too long, Pixar and Dis­ney decid­ed to part­ner on the pro­duc­tion of Toy Sto­ry, which net­ted a prof­it of $330 mil­lion. Pixar dumped its hardware/software busi­ness and focused on mak­ing ani­mat­ed films from then on, before Dis­ney even­tu­al­ly pur­chased Pixar for $7.4 bil­lion in 2006.

If you’re look­ing for a lit­tle more ani­ma­tion, don’t miss The Adven­tures of André and Wal­ly B., the 1984 short film made by Las­seter at the Graph­ics Group, the unit with­in Lucas­Film that was even­tu­al­ly spun into Pixar. Also here we have the First 3D Dig­i­tal Film, which hap­pened to be cre­at­ed by Ed Cat­mull (1970). He co-found­ed Pixar and is now pres­i­dent of Walt Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios and Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios.

More Relat­ed Pixar Con­tent:

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

The Beau­ty of Pixar: 500 Scenes from 17 Films