Paradise Lost

in Film | September 15th, 2010

It’s one part Bam­bi, nine parts Looney Tunes, and runs just under three min­utes. Dil­la, as the film is called, was cre­at­ed by four stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. It was appar­ent­ly their senior project com­plet­ed ear­li­er this year. Nice work Mike, Stan­ley, Dominic and Mikey …

Everything is a Remix

in Art, Media, Music | September 15th, 2010

“Remix­ing” has fig­ured cen­tral­ly in the Web 2.0 vocab­u­lary. But, remix­ing isn’t new. It has a long his­to­ry, going back as long as we’ve been mak­ing art. Artists have always been col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al, com­bin­ing it, and trans­form­ing it into some­thing new. Kir­by Fer­gu­son’s new video, Every­thing is a Remix, teas­es this apart as he brings you back to 1960s Paris and Lon­don – to the cut-up lit­er­a­ture of William S. Bur­roughs and the songs writ­ten by Led Zep­pelin with a lib­er­al amount of bor­row­ing. This video, the first in a series of four, appears on Fer­gu­son’s web site in a nice large for­mat. Have a look and con­sid­er donat­ing to his Every­thing is a Remix project.

How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb

in Art, History | September 14th, 2010

Now show­ing on the New York Times web site, a haunt­ing video slideshow called “Cap­tur­ing the Atom Bomb on Film.” It fea­tures 23 arrest­ing images of atom­ic bomb tests con­duct­ed by the US mil­i­tary between 1945 and 1962. The images (all orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the 2007 book How to Pho­to­graph an Atom­ic Bomb) are accom­pa­nied by an audio record­ing of George Yoshi­take. Now 82, he’s one of the few sur­viv­ing cam­era­men to cap­ture these destruc­tive weapons in action.

via @palafo

Free Golden Age Comics

in Media | September 14th, 2010

A quick fyi for the com­ic fan: A newish web­site, The Dig­i­tal Com­ic Archive, opens up free access to pub­lic domain Gold­en Age Comics, which fell into kids’ hands from the late 1930s until the ear­ly 1950s. You won’t find here the big name comics from the peri­od (Super­man, Bat­man, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Won­der Woman, Cap­tain Mar­vel, etc). But that should­n’t stop you from giv­ing the archive a good look. There are still a lot of gold­en comics to rum­mage through.

To get start­ed, sim­ply reg­is­ter for an account and then start sift­ing and down­load­ing the texts. The down­load­ing part can be a lit­tle tricky in some cas­es. So please vis­it their FAQs if you run into any prob­lems. Hap­py read­ing…

via Boing­Bo­ing

Martin Scorsese Picks the Best Gangster Movies

in Film | September 10th, 2010

Yes­ter­day Mar­tin Scors­ese, the leg­endary direc­tor, list­ed the 15 gang­ster films that shaped the way he has por­trayed crime on film (Good­fel­las, Mean Streets, Taxi Dri­ver, etc.). Scors­ese watched these films as a young­ster and young direc­tor, dur­ing his big moment of influ­ence. The first film (The Pub­lic Ene­my) came out in 1931, and the last one (Point Blank) in 1967. Above, you can watch scenes from the orig­i­nal Scar­face (1932), which appears on his list.  The rest of Scors­ese’s picks, along with relat­ed film clips, can be found here.

PS Don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. It now fea­tures 575 qual­i­ty films.

Bob Dylan in a Google Instant

in Google, Music | September 10th, 2010

Google Instant rolled out this week, backed by a pro­mo­tion­al adver­tise­ment (right above). Fans of Bob Dylan will instant­ly rec­og­nize the footage: A young Dylan flip­ping hand-drawn cards to the tune of “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues,” an icon­ic scene from D.A. Pen­nebak­er’s 1967 doc­u­men­tary, Don’t Look Back. This isn’t the first time the famous scene (watch it here) has been used in a mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Just a few years ago, while pro­mot­ing his new great­est hits album, Dylan let fans rework their own ver­sions of the scene. The gim­mick is still avail­able online. So have some fun with it.

Final­ly, don’t miss the new book Bob Dylan in Amer­i­ca by Sean Wilentz, an emi­nent Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an at Prince­ton who is also the his­to­ri­an-in-res­i­dence for Dylan’s offi­cial Web site, bobdylan.com. The book is now out and reviewed by The New York Times.

Gaga-Inspired Opera

in Music, Theatre | September 9th, 2010

It’s get­ting hard to dis­miss the cul­tur­al influ­ence of Lady Gaga, espe­cial­ly when you see the Gaga phe­nom­e­non inspir­ing Györ­gy Ligeti’s satir­i­cal “anti-anti-opera” Le Grand Macabre staged at The New York Phil­har­mon­ic this sum­mer. In this clip, we encounter Gaga-inspired cos­tumes and per­for­mance as we watch Gepopo, chief of the secret ser­vice, telling Prince Go Go about the pan­ic break­ing out in the streets…

On a relat­ed note, don’t miss Christo­pher Walken read­ing Gaga’s “Pok­er Face”.

Big Thinkers: A Look Back

in Media, Technology | September 9th, 2010

Back in 1999, ZDTV launched Big Thinkers, a week­ly cable TV pro­gram that fea­tured half-hour inter­views with thinkers on the bleed­ing edge of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The show did­n’t have the longest run. But it did man­age to shine the spot­light on some impor­tant minds – Michio Kaku (the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist), Sher­ry Turkle (MIT psy­cho­an­a­lyst), Lawrence Lessig (law pro­fes­sor & free cul­ture advo­cate), and Esther Dyson (tech­nol­o­gy investor), to name a few. Big Thinkers was per­fect Open Cul­ture mate­r­i­al before the days of Open Cul­ture. So we’re pay­ing a lit­tle trib­ute to the show. Above, you will find an episode ded­i­cat­ed to Daniel Den­nett, the Amer­i­can philoso­pher and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist who has done exten­sive research on the phi­los­o­phy of mind. Part 1 appears above, and Part 2 and Part 3 here. Final­ly, you can watch oth­er Big Thinkers episodes (includ­ing those men­tioned above) on this YouTube chan­nel.

The Partially Examined Life: A Philosophy Podcast

in Philosophy, Podcasts | September 8th, 2010

A year-and-a-half ago, an old friend found me on Face­book and offered me a writ­ing job and par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pod­cast. I took him up on both.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er and I had been grad­u­ate stu­dents in phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin, but we both left before get­ting the PhD to try our hands at some­thing more prac­ti­cal. Mark sug­gest­ed we make that expe­ri­ence the theme of an ongo­ing philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion: we loved phi­los­o­phy but pre­ferred it as an avo­ca­tion. There was some­thing about the pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of phi­los­o­phy that seemed to go against the spir­it of it. We pre­ferred the “par­tial­ly exam­ined life” to the exam­ined life.

And so we decid­ed to cre­ate a phi­los­o­phy pod­cast with dis­cus­sions that were informed but not over­ly aca­d­e­m­ic, less like a class­room lec­ture and more like a con­ver­sa­tion over drinks after class, and uni­fied by the ques­tion of what makes phi­los­o­phy worth­while. We found anoth­er like­mind­ed for­mer col­league from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Seth Paskin, and began record­ing and pub­lish­ing our dis­cus­sions as The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. (Find the pod­cast on iTunes here.)

May 12 was the one year anniver­sary of our first episode. Dur­ing that time we’ve cov­ered top­ics rang­ing from Plato’s con­cep­tion of the exam­ined life to Nietzsche’s immoral­ism, God and faith, to the phi­los­o­phy of mind. Frankly I’m always amazed that there are peo­ple who want to lis­ten to three guys talk about these things, but we seem to have a chem­istry that works. One review—for bet­ter or for worse—pegs Mark as “the Jack Black-like musi­cian,” Seth as the “sad one with calm voice who usu­al­ly guides the rud­der of the con­ver­sa­tion back into the top­ic,” and me as “avun­cu­lar and wry.” We’ve also received a lot of great reviews on iTunes, and a thrilling com­pli­ment from philoso­pher Arthur C. Dan­to, who was gra­cious enough to lis­ten to our dis­cus­sion of two of his essays in The Philo­soph­i­cal Dis­en­fran­chise­ment of Art. We’ve been grat­i­fied to see our lis­ten­er­ship rise, but most impor­tant­ly we’re hap­py that the pod­cast has kept us con­nect­ed to phi­los­o­phy and allowed us to pur­sue it—partially—in a way that seems more com­pat­i­ble with the spir­it of the dis­ci­pline.

This post comes to us via Wes Alwan, an occa­sion­al con­trib­u­tor to Open Cul­ture.

A Day on Earth (as Seen From Space)

in Science, Video - Science | September 8th, 2010

Dur­ing his time on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, astro­naut Don Pet­tit trained his cam­era on plan­et Earth, and had it take a pho­to once every 15 sec­onds. The time lapse video above shows you Earth from day to night, com­plete with a sun­set, a moon­rise and the north­ern lights. Over­all, Pet­tit took 85 time-lapsed videos of Earth, and at least eight of them appear on this YouTube playlist.

via Wired