Stairway to Heaven

in Media | September 26th, 2010

With­out these guys, you would­n’t have broad­cast radio or TV. It’s hard to watch beyond the 1:30 mark. Thanks Ian for send­ing along…

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter!

The Money Tree

in Life | September 24th, 2010

It’s not the first time a tree offers a win­dow into human­i­ty. Any­one who has read Shel Sil­ver­stein’s clas­sic knows that. But, even so, this lit­tle video by Amy Krouse Rosen­thal says a lit­tle some­thing about what we see and what we actu­al­ly notice. It was filmed this past sum­mer in Chica­go…

via Michael Wesch

John Cleese on the Origin of Creativity

in Creativity, Life, Psychology | September 23rd, 2010

British actor John Cleese is best known for his comedic tal­ent as one of the found­ing mem­bers of Mon­ty Python, which makes his intel­lec­tu­al insights on the ori­gin of cre­ativ­i­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. This talk from the 2009 Cre­ativ­i­ty World Forum in Ger­many is part cri­tique of moder­ni­ty’s hus­tle-and-bus­tle, part hand­book for cre­at­ing the right con­di­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty.

“We get our ideas from what I’m going to call for a moment our uncon­scious — the part of our mind that goes on work­ing, for exam­ple, when we’re asleep. So what I’m say­ing is that if you get into the right mood, then your mode of think­ing will become much more cre­ative. But if you’re rac­ing around all day, tick­ing things off a list, look­ing at your watch, mak­ing phone calls and gen­er­al­ly just keep­ing all the balls in the air, you are not going to have any cre­ative ideas.” ~ John Cleese

Cleese advo­cates cre­at­ing an “oasis” amidst the dai­ly stress where the ner­vous crea­ture that is your cre­ative mind can safe­ly come out and play, with the oasis being guard­ed by bound­aries of space and bound­aries of time.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing point Cleese makes is that know­ing you are good at some­thing requires pre­cise­ly the same skills you need to be good at it, so peo­ple who are hor­ri­ble at some­thing tend to have no idea they are hor­ri­ble at all. This echoes pre­cise­ly what film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris dis­cuss­es in “The Anosog­nosic’s Dilem­ma,” arguably one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing psy­chol­o­gy reads in The New York Times this year.

Curi­ous­ly, Cleese’s for­mu­la for cre­ativ­i­ty some­what con­tra­dicts anoth­er recent the­o­ry put forth by his­to­ri­an Steven John­son who, while dis­cussing where good ideas come from, makes a case for the con­nect­ed mind rather than the fenced off cre­ative oasis as the true source of cre­ativ­i­ty.

This video per­ma­nent­ly resides in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time on Twit­ter.

Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

in History, Media | September 23rd, 2010

Where do good ideas come from? Places that put us togeth­er. Places that allow good hunch­es to col­lide with oth­er good hunch­es, some­times cre­at­ing big break­throughs and inno­va­tions. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, this all hap­pened in Parisian salons and cof­fee hous­es. Nowa­days, it’s hap­pen­ing on the web, in places that defy your ordi­nary def­i­n­i­tion of “place.” In four ani­mat­ed min­utes, Steven John­son out­lines the argu­ment that he makes more ful­ly in his soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Inno­va­tion. The video is the lat­est from the RSAn­i­mate series.

PS: Last week, I wrote a guest post on 5 cap­ti­vat­ing RSA videos that mull over the flaws run­ning through mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. You can find it on Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time

The Paris Review Interviews Now Online

in Books, Literature, Writing | September 22nd, 2010

The Paris Review, the great lit­er­ary jour­nal co-found­ed by George Plimp­ton, unveiled last week a new web site and a big archive of inter­views with famous lit­er­ary fig­ures. Span­ning five decades, the inter­views often talk about the “how” of lit­er­a­ture (to bor­row a phrase from Salman Rushdie) – that is, how writ­ers go about writ­ing. Rum­mag­ing through the archive, you will encounter con­ver­sa­tions with TS Eliot, William Faulkn­er, Ralph Elli­son, Ernest Hem­ing­way, Simone de Beau­voir, Saul Bel­low, Jorge Luis Borges, Nor­man Mail­er, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, John Stein­beck, Joan Did­ion, Kurt Von­negut, Eudo­ra Wel­ty, Ray­mond Carv­er, Rus­sell Banks, Don DeLil­lo, Toni Mor­ri­son, Paul Auster, etc. And, amaz­ing­ly, this list only scratch­es the sur­face of what’s avail­able.

Note: These inter­views are sep­a­rate­ly avail­able in book for­mat: The Paris Review Inter­views, Vol­umes 1–4.

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!

Ok Go & the Open Video Conference

in Music | September 21st, 2010

This week, OK Go released a new video sup­port­ing its lat­est sin­gle “White Knuck­les.” It’s the first since they released two viral videos (here and here) accom­pa­ny­ing “This Too Shall Pass.” Give the video a watch (above) and take into account these stats.

• The video gen­er­at­ed more than 1 mil­lion views on Mon­day alone (its first day on the web),
• It appar­ent­ly took 124 takes to make the video, and the video you see is actu­al­ly the 72nd take,
• 4 lbs of dog treats were used each day dur­ing the mak­ing of the video,
• There were 3–4 cof­fee runs per day for the humans involved, and
• The video will gen­er­ate dona­tions for the ASPCA.

Now this very relat­ed plug: Ok Go’s lead singer, Dami­an Kulash, will be a head­line speak­er at the Open Video Con­fer­ence tak­ing place in New York City on Octo­ber 1st & 2nd. He’s just one of 100 speak­ers tak­ing part in the con­fer­ence, and tick­ets start at $35. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it the Open Video Con­fer­ence web site.

The Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Ever

in Art, Film, Science | September 21st, 2010

From the mak­ers of Wal­lace and Gromit comes the small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion ever. The lil­liput­ian main char­ac­ter, apt­ly named Dot, stands a mere 0.35-inch-tall. Accord­ing to Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, the ani­ma­tors “used a 3D print­er to make 50 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Dot, because she is too small to manip­u­late or bend like they would oth­er stop-motion ani­ma­tion char­ac­ters.” Then each print-up was hand-paint­ed by artists look­ing through a micro­scope. Once the set and char­ac­ters were ready to go, the direc­tors attached a CellScope (a cell­phone cam­era with a 50x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion micro­scope) to a Nokia N8 and let the cam­eras roll. You can watch the final cut above.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

Dispatches from Afghanistan

in Current Affairs, Life | September 20th, 2010

If the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, has felt dis­tant, then this video report by Glob­al Post will give it some real col­or, if only for a short while. The ini­tial video spells out what you will see: the after­math – and human costs – of a fire­fight between U.S. and Tal­iban forces in the north­east­ern Kunar Province. Glob­al Post’s blog, Dis­patch­es: Afghanistan, is a live blog that tracks the coun­terin­sur­gency cam­paign and pro­vides vet­er­an report­ing from the field. You can fol­low it here.

The Jane Goodall Online Archive

in Science | September 18th, 2010

A quick fyi: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic has pulled togeth­er a handy dig­i­tal archive that fea­tures a slew of arti­cles writ­ten by (or about) Jane Goodall, the pio­neer­ing researcher who con­duct­ed a 45-year study of the social and fam­i­ly inter­ac­tions of wild chim­panzees in Tan­za­nia. The archive spans close to fifty years, mov­ing from 1963 to 2010, and it comes com­plete with a pho­to­graph gallery show­cas­ing Goodal­l’s work with chimps. If you want to strip down the impor­tance of her research to its most basic essen­tials, let me refer you to this video: What Makes Us Human?.

via metafil­ter

Reviewing Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” with Wit

in Comedy, Literature | September 16th, 2010

Every­where you turn, there’s a review of Jonathan Franzen’s new nov­el, Free­dom. Most appear in print, and they’re but­toned down. Not this one. It’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The video above fea­tures Ron Charles, The Wash­ing­ton Post’s fic­tion crit­ic, tak­ing his own approach.

Speak­ing of Franzen and book reviews: Franzen appeared on San Fran­cis­co radio ear­li­er this week. And the con­ver­sa­tion was mov­ing along quite smooth­ly until Franzen was asked about Michiko Kaku­tani, The New York Times book crit­ic. That’s when the knives came out. You can catch the com­ments below at the 33:20 mark…

[gplay­er href=“https://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/forum/2010/09/2010–09-13b-forum.mp3” ] Jonathan Franzen Inter­viewed on KQED Forum. Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010 [/gplayer]

Thanks Male­na for the tip!