Rubens’ Cupid Escapes His Painting & Flies Around Brussels Airport, Thanks to Projection Mapping Technology

in Art, Technology | November 17th, 2020

Peter Paul Rubens’ zaftig beau­ties and plump lit­tle angels burst with health. His “pow­er­ful and exu­ber­ant style,” notes one analy­sis of his tech­nique, “came to char­ac­ter­ize the Baroque art of north­ern Europe.” Rubens’ name became syn­ony­mous with fig­ures who were “real­is­tic, fleshy and indeed cor­pu­lent… set in dynam­ic com­po­si­tions that echo the grand orga­ni­za­tions of the Renais­sance mas­ters.”

An excel­lent exam­ple of such a com­po­si­tion is The Feast of Venus (1636), paint­ed in the “ecsta­t­ic inten­si­ty” of Rubens’ own style, writes the Kun­sthis­torisches Muse­um Wien, after a “descrip­tion in antiq­ui­ty of a Greek paint­ing in which a cult image of Aphrodite is dec­o­rat­ed by nymphs, with winged cupids danc­ing around it.” Venus may be at the cen­ter of the huge piece, but the cupids’ roly-poly arms and legs upstage her.

Rubens’ cupids already look like they’re going to pop off the can­vas. In the video at the top, one of them does—breaks right through the frame, scam­pers across the top and takes flight around the gallery over the heads of awed onlook­ers. Cupid retrieves a bow and arrows and begins fir­ing love darts around the room. The scene is Brus­sels Air­port, where a selec­tion of Rubens’ paint­ings recent­ly hung in an art-themed lounge.

The spec­ta­tors are pas­sen­gers wait­ing for their flights, and the escaped cupid is a trick of pro­jec­tion map­ping, cre­at­ed by the Bel­gian com­pa­ny SkullMap­ping and com­mis­sioned by the tourist agency Vis­it­Flan­ders. The cupid flew until April of last year, when the paint­ings were replaced by work from Brueghel as part of a larg­er project to pro­mote Flem­ish art and cul­ture in places where peo­ple are most like­ly to encounter it.

Would such small-scale pro­jec­tion maps, “mini-map­ping,” as it’s called, ever be employed in an actu­al gallery, to the work of revered old mas­ters? Might this be some­thing of an art world heresy? Or might we see in the near future huge, detailed can­vas­es of painters like Rubens and his role mod­el, Tit­ian, sud­den­ly burst into three dimen­sions, their sub­jects giv­en life, of some kind, and invit­ed to walk or fly around the halls?

Do these gim­micks triv­i­al­ize great art or renew appre­ci­a­tion for it? I’d wager that, if he were alive, Rubens might thrill to see his well-fed cupids and angels in motion, and he might just take to build­ing pro­jec­tion maps him­self. We have some small idea, at least, of what they might look like, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Largest & Most Detailed Pho­to­graph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Sassy Justice, the New Deepfake Satire Show Created by the Makers of South Park

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Technology, YouTube | November 16th, 2020

If any cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, or tech­no­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non of the past cou­ple of decades has­n’t been lam­pooned by South Park, it prob­a­bly did­n’t hap­pen. But the 21st cen­tu­ry has brought forth so much non­sense that even Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, cre­ators of that at once crude and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­ly satir­i­cal car­toon show, have had to expand into fea­ture films and even onto Broad­way to ridicule it all. The lat­est project takes the hum­bler but unde­ni­ably more rel­e­vant form of a Youtube series, and one mod­eled on the form of ultra-local tele­vi­sion news. Sassy Jus­tice comes host­ed by anchor Fred Sassy, a flam­boy­ant “con­sumer advo­cate” for the peo­ple of Cheyenne, Wyoming — and one pos­sessed, come to think of it, of an odd­ly famil­iar face.

Fred Sassy is based on Sassy Trump, a cre­ation of voice actor Peter Ser­afi­now­icz. Despite his for­mi­da­ble skills as an impres­sion­ist, the trou­ble Ser­afi­now­icz had nail­ing the sound and man­ner of the cur­rent U.S. Pres­i­dent gave him the idea of dub­bing over real footage of the man with delib­er­ate­ly invent­ed char­ac­ter voic­es. This led to an inter­est in deep­fakes, videos cre­at­ed using dig­i­tal like­ness­es of real peo­ple with­out their actu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The increas­ing­ly con­vinc­ing look of these pro­duc­tions once had a lot of peo­ple spooked, as you’ll recall if you can cast your mind back to 2019. Deep­fakes thus made per­fect sub­ject mat­ter for a Park­er-Stone project, but not long after they began col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ser­afi­now­icz on a deep­fake-sat­u­rat­ed Fred Sassy movie, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic put an end to pro­duc­tion. From the ash­es of that project ris­es Sassy Jus­tice, which pre­miered last month.

This first episode (with a clip playlist here) also pro­vides a glimpse of the sure­ly enor­mous all-deep­fake cast to come. Uncan­ny ver­sions of Al Gore, Mark Zucker­berg (now a dial­y­sis-cen­ter mag­nate), and Julie Andrews (as com­put­er tech­ni­cian “Lou Xiang,” a ref­er­ence that if you get, you get) all make appear­ances, as do those of White House reg­u­lars Jared Kush­n­er, Ivan­ka Trump, and even Don­ald Trump, on whose voice Ser­afi­now­icz seems to have made progress. But “it’s impos­si­ble for a human to accu­rate­ly mim­ic some­one else’s voice to 100 per­cent,” as Sassy is assured by a Zoom inter­vie­wee, the oft-imi­tat­ed actor Michael Caine — or is it? Less able than ever to tell real from the fake, let alone the deep­fake, “we’re all going to have to trust our gut, that inner voice,” as Sassy advis­es in the episode’s final seg­ment. “It’s all we have now.” But then, all effec­tive satire is a lit­tle fright­en­ing.

via MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Wis­dom of Alan Watts Ani­mat­ed by the Cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone

Amer­i­can His­to­ry: An Off-Kil­ter 1992 Stu­dent Film from South Park Cre­ator Trey Park­er

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Dr. Fauci’s Lecture from MIT’s Free Course on COVID-19: It’s Now Online

in Biology, Online Courses | November 16th, 2020

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we gave you a heads up on MIT’s free course on COVID-19. As we men­tioned, “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” runs from Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020 through Decem­ber 8, 2020. And it fea­tures a com­bi­na­tion of MIT fac­ul­ty and guest speak­ers, includ­ing Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, cov­er­ing the sci­ence of the pan­dem­ic. Since our orig­i­nal post, Dr. Fau­ci’s pre­sen­ta­tion, “Insights from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” has gone online. You can watch it above. Then find all of the oth­er lec­tures here.

MIT’s course has been added to the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Constantly Wrong: Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson Makes the Case Against Conspiracy Theories

in Current Affairs, History, Politics | November 16th, 2020

Dis­cor­dian writer and prankster Robert Anton Wil­son cel­e­brat­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as decen­tral­ized pow­er incar­nate. “Con­spir­a­cy is just anoth­er name for coali­tion,” he has a char­ac­ter say in The His­tor­i­cal Illu­mi­na­tus Chron­i­cles. Accord­ing to Wil­son, any suf­fi­cient­ly imag­i­na­tive group of peo­ple can make a fic­tion real. Anoth­er state­ment of his sounds more omi­nous, read in the light of how we usu­al­ly think about con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry: “Real­i­ty is what you can get away with.”

When his­to­ri­an Richard Hof­s­tadter diag­nosed what he called “the para­noid style in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics,” he was quick to point out that it pre­dat­ed the “extreme right-wingers” of his time by sev­er­al hun­dred years. Where Wil­son thinks of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry as a shin­ing exam­ple of ratio­nal thought against a con­spir­a­cy of Kings and Popes, Hof­s­tadter saw it as anti-Enlight­en­ment, an extreme reac­tion in the U.S. to Illu­min­ism, “a some­what naive and utopi­an move­ment,” Hof­s­tadter writes dis­mis­sive­ly.

Per­haps the utopi­an and the para­noid style are not so eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish­able, in that they both “promise to deliv­er pow­er­ful insights, promise to trans­form how you see for the bet­ter,” says Kir­by Fer­gu­son, cre­ator of the Every­thing is a Remix Series episode below. But no mat­ter how dark or illu­mi­nat­ed they may be, he sug­gests, all con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries share the com­mon fea­ture of being “con­stant­ly wrong.” Ferguson’s new film series, This is Not a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry digs deep­er into the “role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in Amer­i­can cul­ture,” he writes on his site.

Despite its osten­si­ble sub­ject, the project’s “ulti­mate pur­pose is to intro­duce peo­ple to the realms of sys­tems sci­ence, which is where we can bet­ter under­stand the hid­den forces that shape our lives.” Pro­duced over eight years in an enter­tain­ing “con­spir­a­cy-like style,” the film cham­pi­ons skep­ti­cism and com­plex­i­ty over the cer­tain­ty and pat, closed-cir­cle nar­ra­tives offered by con­spir­acists. Con­spir­a­cy theories—like the innu­mer­able per­mu­ta­tions of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Chem­trails, or Roswell—are “too much like movies,” he says, to con­tain very much real­i­ty.

Ferguson’s vision of the world resem­bles Wilson’s, who wrote most of his work before the inter­net. Real­i­ty, he says, is a “mas­sive, decen­tral­ized hive of activ­i­ty.” Pow­er and con­trol exist, of course, but there is no man behind the cur­tain, no secret hier­ar­chies. Just bil­lions of peo­ple pulling their own levers to make things hap­pen, cre­at­ing a real­i­ty that is a sum, at any giv­en moment, of all those lever-pulls. Are there no such thing as con­spir­a­cies? “To be sure,” as Michael Par­en­ti argues, “con­spir­a­cy is a legit­i­mate con­cept in law,” and actu­al con­spir­a­cies, like Water­gate or Iran-Con­tra, “are a mat­ter of pub­lic record.”

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates sus­pi­cion about events like these from what Par­en­ti calls “wacko con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries”? Maybe a sec­tion Fer­gu­son left out of his “Con­stant­ly Wrong” episode at the top will illu­mi­nate. A con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, he writes, “is a claim of secret crimes by a hid­den group, and this claim is dri­ven by a com­mu­ni­ty of ama­teurs” who are more eager to believe than to apply crit­i­cal think­ing. Learn more about Ferguson’s new film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing is a Remix: The Full Series, Explor­ing the Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty, Released in One Pol­ished HD Video on Its 5th Anniver­sary

Neil Arm­strong Sets Straight an Inter­net Truther Who Accused Him of Fak­ing the Moon Land­ing (2000)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Land­ing Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry

The Paul McCart­ney is Dead Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, Explained

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

John Waters Gives Art Collection to The Baltimore Museum Of Art in Exchange for Getting Its Bathrooms Named After Him

in Art, Film, Museums | November 16th, 2020

It’s not unusu­al for an insti­tu­tion to rec­og­nize a major benefactor’s gen­eros­i­ty by nam­ing some­thing in their hon­or — a wing, an atri­um, a library, a gym­na­si­um, a con­cert hall…

But bath­rooms?

It’s a fit­ting trib­ute for the Pope of Trash, film­mak­er John Waters.

So fit­ting that he him­self sug­gest­ed it when donat­ing 372 prints, paint­ings, and pho­tographs from his per­son­al col­lec­tion to the Bal­ti­more Muse­um Of Art.

With Har­vard, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado at Boul­der, New York City’s New Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art and famed down­town per­for­mance venue Dixon Place all boast­ing restrooms that dou­ble as tem­ples to phil­an­thropy, Waters is not the first donor to be lion­ized in latrine form…

But he is sure­ly the most famous, thanks to a career that spans six decades, includes numer­ous books and exhi­bi­tions of his pho­tog­ra­phy and sculp­tures, in addi­tion to his infa­mous cult films.

Waters got his start as an art col­lec­tor at the age of 12: he spent $2 on a Joan Miró poster in the Bal­ti­more Museum’s gift shop:

After tak­ing it home and hang­ing it on my bed­room wall at my par­ents’ house, I real­ized from the hos­tile reac­tion of my neigh­bor­hood play­mates that art could pro­voke, shock, and cause trou­ble. I became a col­lec­tor for life. It’s only fit­ting that the fruits of my 60-year search for new art that could star­tle, antag­o­nize, and infu­ri­ate even me, ends up where it all began—in my home­town muse­um.

Muse­um direc­tor Christo­pher Bed­ford calls Waters a “man of extra­or­di­nary refine­ment” as well as “a local trea­sure.”

Cura­tor Asma Naeem adds that Waters’ dona­tion, in addi­tion to being one of the largest gifts of art in recent his­to­ry, is also one of the “most per­son­al and indi­vid­u­al­ized, show­ing the true stamp of the donor’s taste, eye, and predilec­tions.”

Among the 125 artists rep­re­sent­ed are Mike Kel­ley, Cindy Sher­man, Roy Licht­en­stein, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Waters him­self. (The muse­um host­ed a ret­ro­spec­tive of his visu­al art two years ago.)

Waters is per­son­al­ly acquaint­ed with many of the artists in his col­lec­tion, and has a strong pref­er­ence for ear­ly work. “They were nev­er blue-chip artists,” he told The New York Times. “They became that lat­er.”

In an inter­view with the CBC’s Car­ol Off, Waters reflect­ed that he loves art that inspires out­rage:

…because I’m in on it. You final­ly learn to see dif­fer­ent­ly if you like art. And it’s a secret club. It’s like a bik­er gang where you learn a spe­cial lan­guage, you have to dress a cer­tain way. I love all the ridicu­lous elit­ism about the art world. I think it’s hilar­i­ous.

In addi­tion to the two bath­rooms in the East Lob­by, a rotun­da in the Euro­pean art gal­leries will also bear Waters’ name.

The muse­um has pledged to nev­er deac­ces­sion the works in the col­lec­tion, and Waters spec­u­lates that it’s only a mat­ter of time until a gen­der-neu­tral bath­room bear­ing his name will also be made avail­able to patrons.

“I loved going [to the BMA],” he told Bal­ti­more Fish­bowl:

When I was a kid, that was a huge world that I was turned onto. Thank God my par­ents took me.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

John Waters Designs a Wit­ty Poster for the New York Film Fes­ti­val

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Life with­out A*Holes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Biblical Sci-Fi of “Raised by Wolves”–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #68

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | November 16th, 2020

What hap­pens when a male android loves a female android VERY much, and they nurse human embryos togeth­er on a dis­tant plan­et after flee­ing from war-torn Earth? Why the female android flies and makes a bunch of peo­ple explode with her eyes, that’s what hap­pens! …In the first episode of this bonkers HBO Max series by Aaron Guzikows­ki (with notable assis­tance from Rid­ley Scott of Alien and Blade Run­ner fame).

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er reflect on how much we’re sup­posed to under­stand, what if any char­ac­ter we’re sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, whether the imagery is just TOO heavy-hand­ed, and how this show com­pares with relat­ed sci-fi like West­world or post-apoc­a­lyp­tic shows like The Walk­ing Dead. Beware: Spoil­ers abound in this one, so you might want to watch the show, or just let us reveal its weird­ness to you.

Here are some arti­cles to feast on:

• “‘Raised by Wolves’ Finale Explained by Showrun­ner: WTF Was That?” by Adam Chit­wood
• “‘Raised by Wolves’ Showrun­ner Aaron Guzikows­ki on Craft­ing an Ambi­tious Sci­ence Fic­tion World” by Jack Giroux
• “‘Raised by Wolves’: Rid­ley Scott Explains That Mon­strous Finale” by Jen­nifer Vine­yard
• “‘Raised by Wolves’ Sea­son 2 The­o­ries That May (or May Not) Hap­pen” by Meghan O’Keefe
• “5 (Spoil­er-Free) Themes Under­ly­ing Sea­son 1 of the Sci-Fi Series, ‘Raised by Wolves’” by  Fru­men­tar­i­ous at Sand­boxx
• “The Aspi­ra­tional Android Par­ent­ing of ‘Raised by Wolves’ ” by Lydia Kies­ling

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Experience a Video Painting of Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Millions of People

in Music | November 13th, 2020

Bri­an Eno may not have invent­ed ambi­ent music, but he did give it a name. What bet­ter to call an album like his 1978 Music for Air­ports, whose slow­ly shift­ing pieces forego not just melody but all then-accept­ed meth­ods of com­po­si­tion and per­for­mance? The result, as its title sug­gests, is meant not to occu­py the inten­tion of the lis­ten­er but to col­or the atmos­phere of a space. This marked one evo­lu­tion­ary step for an idea Eno first essayed in 1975’s Dis­creet Music, issued on his own label Obscure Records in an era when much of the music peo­ple lis­tened to was any­thing but dis­creet. Record­ing tech­nol­o­gy first made ambi­ent music pos­si­ble; by the mid-1980s, video tech­nol­o­gy had devel­oped to the point that it could pos­sess a visu­al dimen­sion as well.

Just as Eno’s ambi­ent music was­n’t made for lis­ten­ing, Eno’s “video paint­ings,” as he called them, weren’t made for view­ing. 1981’s Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, cap­tures the urban land­scape out­side from Eno’s New York win­dow — iron­i­cal­ly, with a por­trait ori­en­ta­tion, so that any TV dis­play­ing it had to be turned on its side.

Thurs­day After­noon, the next in the series, looks not to the built envi­ron­ment but that oth­er tra­di­tion­al sub­ject of paint­ing, the female form: specif­i­cal­ly that of Eno’s friend, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Chris­tine Ali­ci­no. Here video mak­ing pos­si­ble some­thing tru­ly new, with no artis­tic con­nec­tion to, as Eno put it, “Sting’s new rock video” or “bor­ing, grimy ‘Video Art.’ ”

But just like a Hol­ly­wood movie, Thurs­day After­noon had an epony­mous sound­track album. Released in 1985, it cut the 80-minute video paint­ing’s ambi­ent score down to an unbro­ken track of near­ly 61 min­utes, a length made pos­si­ble by the recent­ly intro­duced Com­pact Disc. “Played” on an acoustic piano and syn­the­siz­ers, the music shifts sub­tly in tex­ture through­out the hour, cre­at­ing a son­ic envi­ron­ment that many have found high­ly con­ge­nial for work­ing, think­ing, and relax­ing. I myself have lis­tened to it hun­dreds of times over the past twen­ty years, and in the form of a Youtube video paint­ing made by fan Jonathan Jol­ly, it’s racked up more than four mil­lion views. The col­or-treat­ed time-lapse footage of pass­ing clouds fits right in with the spir­it of the music, and it cer­tain­ly seems to do the trick for the video’s com­menters, grate­ful as they are for reduced anx­i­eties, recov­ered mem­o­ries, increased focus, and even altered con­scious­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

A Six-Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Five Minute Museum: A Stop Motion Animation Shows the History of Civilization at Breakneck Speed

in Animation, Comedy, Fashion, History, Museums | November 13th, 2020

Exper­i­men­tal direc­tor and ani­ma­tor Paul Bush’s 2015 short film The Five-Minute Muse­um, above, is the dizzy­ing anti­dote to stand­ing, foot­sore, in front of a vit­rine crowd­ed with Ancient Greek amphoras or exquis­ite­ly craft­ed pock­et watch­es and won­der­ing, not about his­to­ry, cul­ture or the nature of time, but whether you can jus­ti­fy spend­ing $15 for an under­whelm­ing cheese and toma­to sand­wich in the muse­um cafe.

It’s a break­neck stop motion jour­ney through the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion via six muse­um collections—three in Lon­don and three in Switzer­land.

Pre­sent­ed pri­mar­i­ly as stills that flash by at a rate of 24 per sec­ond, Bush groups like objects togeth­er, “there­by allow­ing the tri­umphs of human endeav­or to be seen even in far cor­ners of the land, by the bedrid­den, the infirm and the lazy.”

His sense of humor asserts itself the minute an assort­ment of ancient shards appear to ren­der them­selves into not just a state of whole­ness, but an entire up close soci­ety in close-up. It doesn’t take long for these ves­sels’ clash­ing of war­riors to give way to a com­pos­ite por­trait of idle youth, whose flir­ta­tions are stoked by a num­ber of man­ic pipers in rapid suc­ces­sion, and Andy Cow­ton’s orig­i­nal music and sound design.

It’s a shock when Bush slows down and pulls back to show the source objects in their muse­um cas­es, qui­et as a tomb, the sort of dis­play most vis­i­tors blow past en route to some­thing sex­i­er, like a dinosaur or a block­buster exhib­it requir­ing timed entry tick­ets.

Oth­er high­lights include a live­ly assort­ments of guns, hats, chairs, and plas­tic toys.

If you start feel­ing over­whelmed by the visu­al inten­si­ty, don’t wor­ry. Bush builds in a bit of a breather once you hit the clocks, the bulk of which pre­sum­ably hail from the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um in Zurich.

The inge­nious ani­mat­ed short was 10 years in the mak­ing, a fact the artist mod­est­ly down­plays:

It’s very sim­ple. Sim­ple sto­ry, a sim­ple tech­nique and that’s what I like. Poet­ry should be a lit­tle bit stu­pid. This is what Pushkin says, and I try and make my films a lit­tle bit stu­pid as well.

In addi­tion to the Bey­er Clock and Watch Muse­um, you’ll find the fea­tured arti­facts housed in the British Muse­um, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, London’s Muse­um of the Home (for­mer­ly known as the Gef­frye Muse­um) as well as the Lucerne His­tor­i­cal Muse­um and the Bern His­tor­i­cal Muse­um.

Expect a much slow­er expe­ri­ence.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Help your­self to her free down­load­able poster series, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Akira Kurosawa Used Movement to Tell His Stories: A Video Essay

in Film | November 13th, 2020

The his­to­ry books say that there were three Japan­ese film­mak­ers to emerge in the 1950s – Ken­ji Mizoguchi, Yasu­jiro Ozu and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. Nev­er mind that Mizoguchi and Ozu made many of their best movies in the 1930s. Nev­er mind that mas­ter­ful, inno­v­a­tive direc­tors like Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshi­ta have been unfair­ly over­shad­owed by the bril­liance of these three greats.

Mizoguchi was an ear­ly mod­ernist who by the end of his career made med­i­ta­tive movies about how women suf­fer at the hands of men. His mas­ter­pieces like Uget­su and San­sho Dayu feel like Bud­dhist scroll paint­ings come to life. Ozu, “the most Japan­ese” of all film­mak­ers, made qui­et­ly mov­ing dra­mas about fam­i­lies, like Tokyo Sto­ry, but did so in a way that dis­card­ed such Hol­ly­wood prin­ci­ples as con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing and the 180 degree rule. Ozu was a qui­et rad­i­cal.

Com­pared to Ozu and Mizoguchi, Kurosawa’s movies are noisy, mas­cu­line and vital. Unlike Ozu, he didn’t chal­lenge Hol­ly­wood film form but improved on it. Born rough­ly a decade after the oth­er two film­mak­ers, Kuro­sawa spent his youth watch­ing West­ern movies, absorb­ing the lessons of his cin­e­mat­ic heroes like John Ford, Howard Hawks and Frank Capra. At his cre­ative height, in the 1950s and 60s, Kuro­sawa pro­duced mas­ter­piece after mas­ter­piece. Hol­ly­wood would remake or ref­er­ence Kuro­sawa con­stant­ly in the years that fol­lowed but few of those films had Kurosawa’s inven­tive­ness.

Tony Zhou, who has made a career of dis­sect­ing movies in his excel­lent video series Every Frame a Pic­ture, argues that the key to Kuro­sawa is move­ment. “A Kuro­sawa movie moves like no one else’s,” Zhou notes in his video. “Each one is a mas­ter class in dif­fer­ent types of motion and also ways to com­bine them.”

Kuro­sawa had an innate under­stand­ing that there is inher­ent dra­ma in the wind blow­ing in the trees. Like Andrei Tarkovsky and lat­er Ter­rence Mal­ick, he liked to place human dra­ma square­ly in the realm of nature. The rain falls, a fire rages and that move­ment makes an image com­pelling. He under­stood that graph­ic con­sid­er­a­tions out­weighed psy­cho­log­i­cal ones – he sim­pli­fied and exag­ger­at­ed a character’s move­ment with the frame to make char­ac­ter traits and emo­tions easy to reg­is­ter for the audi­ence. His cam­era move­ments were clear, moti­vat­ed and flu­id. Zhou com­pares Sev­en Samu­rai with The Avengers. You might have thought that The Avengers was unin­spired and soul­less but after watch­ing Zhou’s video, you’ll under­stand why – aside from the sil­ly plot and char­ac­ters – the movie was unin­spired and soul­less. The piece should be required view­ing for film­mak­ers every­where. You can watch it above.

And below you can see anoth­er video Zhou did on Kuro­sawa, focus­ing on his 1960 movie The Bad Sleep Well.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Peter Milton Walsh of The Apartments Rejects Assembly-Line Recording: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#135)

in Music, Podcasts | November 13th, 2020

Aus­tralian singer-song­writer Peter Mil­ton Walsh start­ed The Apart­ments in the late ’70s, and our inter­view begins with a snip­pet of the open­ing track from, “Help” from his 1979 Return of the Hyp­no­tist EP. He also around this time played with the Go Betweens and oth­er groups, and released The Apart­ments’ first LP, The Evening Visits…and Stays for Years, in 1985, a heart-wrench­ing affair which made it onto the New Music Express “albums of the year” list. This led to some sin­gles, one of which–“The Shyest Time”–made it onto the sound­track of the 1987 John Hugh­es film Some Kind of Won­der­ful.

The band had all the moody jan­gling of ear­ly REM, the Smiths, and The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, with a unique front man, strong melodies, and the mood of the moment? So why (pre­sum­ably) have you not heard of this group? Their 1993 album drift (the first full album since their debut) was appar­ent­ly a big hit in France, but none of their work sold par­tic­u­lar­ly well in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. As Peter reveals on this episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, he did­n’t much like high-pres­sure stu­dio record­ing, result­ing in whole eras of his song­writ­ing left large­ly undoc­u­ment­ed.

Per­son­al tragedy also derailed his career from the late ’90s until the late ’00s when he returned to live per­form­ing and even­tu­al­ly released a cou­ple of real­ly dev­as­tat­ing albums, includ­ing 2015’s No Song, No Spell, No Madri­gal and the new­ly released In and Out of the Light.

On each episode of the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Pod­cast, host Mark Lin­sen­may­er plays four of an artist’s songs in full and dis­cuss­es them with the song­writer at length. Here Mark and Peter dis­cuss the struc­ture and record­ing of two songs off the new album: “What’s Beau­ty to Do?” and “Where You Used to Be.” They then look back to the mid­dle of The Apart­ments’ ’90s out­put with “Sun­set Hotel” from Fête Foraine (1996), a song cap­tur­ing his obser­va­tions of a group of hero­in addicts. Final­ly you’ll hear “Look­ing for Anoth­er Town” from that 2015 come-back album.

For more Apart­ments: The first come-back song was real­ly 2011’s “Black Rib­bon,” which you can watch him play solo. Per­haps my favorite song he’s done is the doom-epic “What’s Left of Your Nerve” from drift. You can watch a recent live ver­sion of “Sun­set Hotel” and catch the offi­cial video for “What’s Beau­ty to Do.” More at theapartmentsmusic.com.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.