The Always Bankable Banksy

in Art, Business | November 14th, 2011

You have to appre­ci­ate the para­dox of Banksy: A com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful anti-cap­i­tal­ist. A van­dal who adds val­ue. It’s the sort of amus­ing con­tra­dic­tion that appears often in the artist’s own work.

A case in point: In 2009 Banksy made a wall paint­ing on an indus­tri­al estate out­side Croy­don, South Lon­don, depict­ing a spike-head­ed punk rock­er puz­zling over a set of instruc­tions. Next to him is a box labeled “LARGE GRAFFITI SLOGAN,” with a jum­bled car­go of words–“SYSTEM,” “SMASH,” “POLICE”–spilling out, wait­ing to be assem­bled. The logo on the box is also dis­as­sem­bled, but eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able: IKEA.

The guer­ril­la artist had bare­ly fin­ished his mur­al when a pair of guer­ril­la busi­ness­men swooped in, sub­vert­ing the sub­ver­sive mes­sage. It’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry, nice­ly told in this nine-minute film pro­duced for Chan­nel 4 by Mar­tyn Gre­go­ry, shot and edit­ed by Paul Bernays and nar­rat­ed by Nick Glass.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Stars in New Symphony of Science

in Astronomy, Music, Video - Science | November 11th, 2011

Elec­tron­ic musi­cian John Boswell has just released the 12th install­ment in his “Sym­pho­ny of Sci­ence” series. Onward to the Edge cel­e­brates the adven­ture of space explo­ration and fea­tures the auto-tuned voic­es of astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, par­ti­cle physi­cist Bri­an Cox and plan­e­tary sci­en­tist Car­olyn Por­co. It’s a mashup of mate­r­i­al from four sources: Tyson’s My Favorite Uni­verse video course, Cox’s BBC series Won­ders of the Solar Sys­tem, a TED talk by Por­co and scenes from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s A Trav­el­er’s Guide to the Plan­ets.

The “Sym­pho­ny of Sci­ence” grew out of Boswell’s 2009 video, A Glo­ri­ous Dawn, which stitch­es togeth­er scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos and Stephen Hawk­ing’s Uni­verse and has been viewed over six mil­lion times on YouTube. You can down­load a free dig­i­tal album of all 12 songs from the series, along with a bonus track, here. H/T Boing­Bo­ing

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

in Music, Television | November 10th, 2011

Kel­log­g’s first start­ed mar­ket­ing Rice Krispies way back in 1928, and, ever since, we’ve grown accus­tomed to whole­some adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that fea­ture the car­toon mas­cots Snap, Crack­le and Pop. (See ad from 1939.) For a brief moment in 1964, all of this whole­some­ness was put aside when the J. Wal­ter Thomp­son ad agency worked with the Rolling Stones to cre­ate a hip­per, more inspired jin­gle. The result­ing com­mer­cial aired briefly only in the UK…

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!

Death Masks of Dante, Nietzsche, Joyce, Beethoven and Other Greats

in Life, Literature, Philosophy | November 9th, 2011

Death masks — they have been around since the days of King Tut in Ancient Egypt, and (per­haps) Agamem­non and Cas­san­dra in Ancient Greece. A way to remem­ber the char­ac­ter and expres­sions of the dead, this memo­r­i­al prac­tice con­tin­ued right down through the Mid­dle Ages when wax and plas­ter became the mate­ri­als of choice.

Today, we’re left with facial imprints of impor­tant his­tor­i­cal lead­ers (Cromwell, Napoleon, Peter the Great); cul­tur­al giants (Dante up top, Shake­speare, Voltaire, New­ton, Beethoven, James Joyce, Niet­zsche); and some recent­ly more depart­ed icons (Hitch­cock and Tim­o­thy Leary).

Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty hosts online a fair­ly large col­lec­tion of Life and Death Masks, and the good folks at Bib­liok­lept high­light masks of the intel­li­gent, pow­er­ful and famous on an ongo­ing basis. Unfor­tu­nate­ly these col­lec­tions skew almost entire­ly male — a sign of the times that came before us.

Above, you can see the masks of Niet­zsche, Dante, and Joyce mov­ing from top to bot­tom.

Yo-Yo Ma & The Goat Rodeo Sessions

in Music | November 9th, 2011

Cel­list Yo-Yo Ma is famous for his eclec­ti­cism. From Baroque cham­ber music to tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese melodies, Ma delights in dis­solv­ing bar­ri­ers. His lat­est genre-hop­ping project is The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions, an inven­tive blue­grass col­lab­o­ra­tion with bassist Edgar Mey­er, fid­dler Stu­art Dun­can and Man­dolin­ist Chris Thile. Vocal­ist Aoife O’Dono­van joins the group on two songs. The expres­sion “goat rodeo” refers to a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion where a group of peo­ple with dif­fer­ing view­points have to work togeth­er to avert dis­as­ter. When the group showed up recent­ly at Google’s New York offices for a brief per­for­mance and dis­cus­sion (see above), Ma com­pared The Goat Rodeo Ses­sions to the eco­log­i­cal “Edge Effect,” where con­trast­ing eco-sys­tems come togeth­er. “You have the least den­si­ty of life forms, but you actu­al­ly have the most vari­ety of new life forms,” explained Ma. “I think we all prob­a­bly, as a group, enjoy going to the edge because it’s thrilling to dis­cov­er new life forms. It’s thrilling to take from what you know and try some­thing that real­ly has­n’t quite hap­pened in the same way before.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz

in Music | November 7th, 2011

1959. It was a piv­otal year for jazz. Musi­cians start­ed break­ing away from bebop, explor­ing new, exper­i­men­tal forms. And four absolute­ly canon­i­cal LPs were record­ed that year: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis; Time Out by Dave Brubeck; Min­gus Ah Um by Charles Min­gus; and The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Cole­man. 1959 also found Amer­i­ca on the cusp of great social and polit­i­cal upheaval. Inte­gra­tion, Viet­nam, the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis — they were all com­ing around the bend, and some­times fig­ures like Min­gus and Cole­man com­ment­ed musi­cal­ly on these events.

This trans­for­ma­tive peri­od gets nice­ly cov­ered by the recent BBC doc­u­men­tary, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz. The out­take above focus­es on Ornette Cole­man and his inno­v­a­tive work as a free jazz musi­cian. If it whets your appetite, you can dive into the full pro­gram on YouTube. The doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing inter­views with Brubeck, Cole­man, Lou Reed, and Her­bie Han­cock is avail­able runs rough­ly 60 min­utes.

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!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Dis­cov­er the Church of St. John Coltrane, Found­ed on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

The Fabric of the Cosmos, Exploring Mysteries of Physics, Kicks Off with Live Webcast Tonight

in Physics, Television | November 2nd, 2011

The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Bri­an Greene returns to PBS, this time pre­sent­ing The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, a four-part look at the “mind-bog­gling real­i­ty beneath the sur­face of our every­day world.” The first seg­ment, “What Is Space?,” airs tonight at 9pm. Then come the remain­ing install­ments — “The Illu­sion of Time” (11/9), “Quan­tum Leap” (11/16), and “Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?” (11/23). If you can’t catch the episodes on TV, they will be streamed online too at video.pbs.org.

Bonus: At 10 pm east­ern time tonight, PBS will host a live, inter­ac­tive web­cast with Bri­an Greene and some spe­cial guests: renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Leonard Susskind (watch his the­o­ret­i­cal physics cours­es online) and Saul Perl­mut­ter, win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Togeth­er, they will “explore how sci­en­tists are piec­ing togeth­er the most com­plete pic­ture yet of space, time, and the uni­verse.” Get more details on the live event here.

Unre­lat­ed bonus: Tonight, at 6 pm east­ern time, MoMA will stream online “The Lan­guage of Objects,” a con­ver­sa­tion fea­tur­ing Ken­neth Gold­smith, poet; Ben Green­man, author and edi­tor, The New York­er; Leanne Shap­ton, illus­tra­tor, author, and pub­lish­er; and Cin­tra Wil­son, cul­ture crit­ic. Get more infor­ma­tion and watch here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches

in Comedy, Philosophy | November 1st, 2011

From dead par­rots to The Mean­ing of Life, Mon­ty Python cov­ered a lot of ter­ri­to­ry. Edu­cat­ed at Oxford and Cam­bridge, the Pythons made a habit of weav­ing arcane intel­lec­tu­al ref­er­ences into the sil­li­est of sketch­es. A clas­sic exam­ple is “Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Con­clu­sion Vis­it Jean-Paul Sartre,” (above) from episode 27 of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus.

The sketch fea­tures writ­ing part­ners John Cleese as Mrs. Premise and Gra­ham Chap­man as Mrs. Con­clu­sion, gab­bing away in a laun­derette about how best to put down a budgie. Mrs. Premise sug­gests flush­ing it down the loo. “Ooh! No!” protests Mrs. Con­clu­sion. “You should­n’t do that. No that’s dan­ger­ous. Yes, they breed in the sew­ers, and even­tu­al­ly you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled bud­gies fly­ing out of peo­ple’s lava­to­ries infring­ing their per­son­al free­dom.”

From there the con­ver­sa­tion veers straight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Free­dom. It’s a clas­sic sketch–vintage Python–and you can read a tran­script here while watch­ing it above.

Anoth­er clas­sic is the “Philoso­pher’s Drink­ing Song,” shown above in a scene from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The song was writ­ten and sung by Eric Idle. In the sketch, mem­bers of the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment at the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Wool­loomooloo” lead the audi­ence in singing, “Immanuel Kant was a real pis­sant who was very rarely sta­ble; Hei­deg­ger, Hei­deg­ger was a boozy beg­gar who could think you under the table…”

And one of our favorites: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match” (above), a filmed sequence from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl, pit­ting the Ancient Greeks against the Ger­mans, with Con­fu­cius as ref­er­ee. The sketch was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1972 in a two-part West Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus.

When you’re done laugh­ing, you can dive deep into phi­los­o­phy here with our col­lec­tion of 55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es online.

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:

Stephen Hawk­ing Sings Mon­ty Python’s “Galaxy Song”: Hear the New­ly-Released Sin­gle

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

Demystifying the Protect IP Act

in Law | October 31st, 2011

How to com­bat inter­net pira­cy, the dai­ly theft of copy­right­ed music, films and oth­er dig­i­tal goods? Our con­gres­sion­al lead­ers think they’ve fig­ured it out, and their solu­tion is called the Pro­tect IP Act. The only prob­lem is that the pend­ing leg­is­la­tion cre­ates more prob­lems than it solves. Kir­by Fer­gu­son, cre­ator of the Every­thing is a Remix video series, explains. And The New York Times offers its own objec­tions.…

Beware the Horror of…The Gawper

in Animation | October 31st, 2011

Abbott and Costel­lo meet Tim Bur­ton in this styl­ish lit­tle trib­ute to clas­sic hor­ror films by the British ani­ma­tion team at A Large Evil Cor­po­ra­tion. (Yes, friends, they’re peo­ple too.) The moon is full and the bell tolls two as a pair of bum­bling grave rob­bers enter a fog­gy grave­yard. What hap­pens next is unspeak­ably sil­ly. The com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed 3D film was direct­ed by Seth Watkins and runs an epic one minute, 28 sec­onds.