A Big Bach Download: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

in Music | November 24th, 2010

A quick fyi for Bach lovers: You can down­load for free the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. They were record­ed by Dr. James Kib­bie (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Leipzig, Ger­many. Start with a col­lec­tion of Favorite Mas­ter­works, or get the com­plete works that have been divid­ed into 13 groups for easy down­load. Once you down­load these zip files, you will need to unzip them and import them into iTunes or a sim­i­lar appli­ca­tion. Thanks for @Pdarche (Peter Darche) for flag­ging this for us.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online:

The Big Cheat

in Business, Math, Random | November 23rd, 2010

There’s high dra­ma in the class­room at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Flori­da. Richard Quinn, a long­time busi­ness instruc­tor, gives 600 stu­dents their mid-term exam. Then comes the anony­mous tip that cheat­ing is ram­pant. Foren­sic analy­sis bears that out. Ulti­ma­tums are made. Moral lessons drawn. Soon the con­fes­sions – all 200 of them – fol­low. A rough day for all involved.

Post­script: We poked around a bit more and read the stu­dent news­pa­per at UCF. It’s pos­si­ble that the cheat­ing ring may be less devi­ous than it first appears, but it’s still not entire­ly clear.

via Kottke.org

NPR Hip Hop

in Comedy, Music, Radio | November 23rd, 2010

You nev­er saw this com­ing, right? A lit­tle hip hop for NPR lis­ten­ers. Adam Cole, a Stan­ford stu­dent, raps it out with Jen­na Sul­li­van. Get the lyrics for “Good Radi­a­tion” below the jump…
(more…)

London 360

in Random | November 19th, 2010

Here’s an amaz­ing way to get the lay of the land in Lon­don. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jef­frey Mar­tin has stitched togeth­er 7,886 high-res images, cre­at­ing an 80 gigapix­el (or 80 bil­lion pix­el) panoram­ic pho­to­graph of Eng­land’s great cap­i­tal. The pho­to is also inter­ac­tive, which means you can play aer­i­al tourist. When you enter the site, click on “Show Land­marks” (low­er left cor­ner), make a selec­tion, and then start fly­ing around the city.

These pho­tos were tak­en from a 36 floor build­ing, using a DSLR cam­era and a 400mm lens. And it now stands as the world’s largest 360 pho­to.

via newslite

Frankenstein Hits the Silver Screen (1910)

in Film, Literature | November 17th, 2010

100 years ago, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the short, 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shel­ley’s lit­er­ary cre­ation was adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

You can down­load the movie at the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. (Also, you can find Mary Shel­ley’s nov­el  in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.) To get more infor­ma­tion on Daw­ley’s short film, please vis­it The Franken­stein blog.

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!

Evidence, Godfrey Reggio’s Short Film on What TV Does to Kids’ Brains

in Film, Television | November 16th, 2010

Between 1982 and 2002, direc­tor God­frey Reg­gio shot his well known Qat­si tril­o­gy — Koy­aanisqat­si, Powaqqat­si, and Naqoyqat­si. Some­where between the 2nd and 3rd install­ment, Reg­gio took a lit­tle detour and direct­ed a short eight minute film called Evi­dence. The main char­ac­ters? Kids watch­ing car­toons (Dum­bo, actu­al­ly) and look­ing “drugged,” “like the patients of a men­tal hos­pi­tal,” he writes on his web site.

The vil­lain? “Tele­vi­sion tech­nol­o­gy,” which “is eat­ing the sub­jects who sit before its gaze.” The weapon? Tele­vi­sion again. That “radi­a­tion gun aimed at the view­er” “holds its sub­jects in total con­trol.” A lit­tle house of hor­rors, to be sure. We have added Koy­aanisqat­si (fea­tur­ing the music of Philip Glass) and Evi­dence to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @katciz, the direc­tor of the new inter­ac­tive film Out My Win­dow.

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!

David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Display

in Art | November 14th, 2010

Famed British artist David Hock­ney start­ed cre­at­ing art for the iPhone in 2008, and then for the iPad this year, using noth­ing but his fin­gers and this handy Brush­es app. Ini­tial­ly, Hock­ney only shared his dig­i­tal draw­ings with a small cir­cle of friends. But now he’s mak­ing that cir­cle much larg­er. Start­ing in late Octo­ber, Hock­ney’s dig­i­tal fin­ger paint­ing went on dis­play at the Fon­da­tion Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Lau­rent in Paris. The exhi­bi­tion, enti­tled Fleurs fraîch­es (Fresh Flow­ers), runs until Jan­u­ary 30, 2011. Here, Hock­ney explains the basic think­ing behind the exhi­bi­tion, and here you can sam­ple some of the dig­i­tal works on dis­play. Just click and scroll down.

Thanks Ian in Brazil for send­ing this our way…

Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

This won­der­ful stop motion film makes you pine for the good old fash­ioned print­ed book, per­haps because we all real­ize that Guten­berg’s gift will even­tu­al­ly give way to the Kin­dle and oth­er devices. The three minute film (offi­cial­ly enti­tled This is Where We Live) was shot over three weeks in autumn 2008 to cel­e­brate the 25th anniver­sary of 4th Estate Pub­lish­ers. No less than 20 ani­ma­tors took part in the project, and no less than 1000 books were put to use.

Designrelated.com takes a lit­tle clos­er look at the mak­ing of the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing film. Big thanks to Mike for the good find…

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Time Piece: Jim Henson’s Short, Oscar-Nominated Film (1965)

in Film | November 9th, 2010

Back in 1965, Jim Hen­son, the great pup­peteer, wrote, direct­ed and starred in a short exper­i­men­tal film, Time Piece, which pre­miered at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in NYC. Run­ning a short nine min­utes, the film takes a sur­re­al look at the pass­ing of time. And, despite veer­ing off into rather strange ter­ri­to­ry, the film struck a chord with crit­ics and the film com­mu­ni­ty. Time Piece would be nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award.

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!

Do Physicists Believe in God?

in Physics, Religion, Science | November 8th, 2010

Every day, physi­cists and astronomers con­front the won­ders of the uni­verse. But does star­ing into the sub­lime abyss incline them toward a belief in God? Not if you ask the physi­cists at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham School of Physics and Astron­o­my, who answer big ques­tions on YouTube and Six­ty Sym­bols, includ­ing “What hap­pens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, the world’s largest par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor?

The Not­ting­ham physi­cists are in some good com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to a well-known 1997 study pub­lished in Nature, biol­o­gists with­in the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences reject­ed God and immor­tal­i­ty at rates of 65.2% and 69.0%. Mean­while, when phys­i­cal sci­en­tists were polled, the num­bers rose to 79.0% and 76.3%. The sum­ma­ry orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Nature now appears here.

via PourMe­Cof­fee