Take a Free Online Course on Making Animations from Pixar & Khan Academy

in Animation, How to Learn for Free, Online Courses | February 11th, 2016

It’s a good month for nur­tur­ing your cre­ativ­i­ty: the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts just launched a free course on mak­ing comics. And now comes anoth­er free course that will teach you the basics of ani­ma­tion. Pixar and Khan Acad­e­my have teamed up to cre­ate “Pixar in a Box,” a free online cur­ricu­lum that shows how Pixar artists use com­put­er sci­ence and math con­cepts to cre­ate their inno­v­a­tive films. Top­ic include Rig­ging (how char­ac­ters are brought to life with con­trols), Ren­der­ing (how pix­els are paint­ed using alge­bra ), Char­ac­ter Mod­el­ing (how clay mod­els are trans­formed into dig­i­tal char­ac­ters using weight­ed aver­ages) and more. Enter the self-paced series of lessons, each filled with instruc­tive videos, here.

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 Make

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling … Makes for an Addic­tive Par­lor Game

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Com­ic Books, Com­pli­ments of the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

1150 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Download Hundreds of Van Gogh Paintings, Sketches & Letters in High Resolution

in Art | February 10th, 2016

As a cal­low young art stu­dent in high school, I dear­ly want­ed, and tried, to see the world with the same furi­ous inten­si­ty as Vin­cent van Gogh, and to cap­ture that kind of vision on paper and can­vas. I lat­er real­ized with cha­grin as I stood in a line sev­er­al blocks long for a wild­ly pop­u­lar exhib­it (Van Gogh’s Van Goghs at the Nation­al Gallery of Art) that I was but one of mil­lions who want­ed to see the world through Van Gogh’s eyes.

After wait­ing for what seemed like for­ev­er, not only could I bare­ly get a glimpse of any of the paint­ings through the scrum of tourists and gawk­ers, but I felt—in my pro­tec­tive bub­ble of Van Gogh veneration—that these peo­ple couldn’t pos­si­bly get Van Gogh the way I got Van Gogh.

Well, every­body has their own ver­sion of Van Gogh, per­haps, but one I’ve out­grown is the mad, mag­i­cal genius whose men­tal ill­ness act­ed as a trag­ic but nec­es­sary con­di­tion for his tran­scen­dent­ly pas­sion­ate work. Maybe it’s age and some famil­iar­i­ty with life’s hard­ship, but I no longer roman­ti­cize Van Gogh’s suf­fer­ing. And per­haps a more real­is­tic view of what was like­ly debil­i­tat­ing bipo­lar dis­or­der has giv­en me an even greater appre­ci­a­tion for his accom­plish­ments. Dur­ing the brief 10-year peri­od that Van Gogh pur­sued his art, he was as ded­i­cat­ed as it’s pos­si­ble to be—producing near­ly 900 can­vas­es and over 1,100 works on paper, and alter­ing the way we see the world, all while expe­ri­enc­ing severe­ly crip­pling bouts of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and self doubt; hav­ing his neigh­bors ostra­cize and evict him from his home; and spend­ing most of his final year in an insti­tu­tion.

Sad­ly, he felt him­self a medi­oc­rity at best, a fail­ure at worst. As the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art writes, “in 1890,” the final year of his life, “he mod­est­ly assessed his artis­tic lega­cy as of ‘very sec­ondary’ impor­tance.” (This despite the appre­ci­a­tion he’d begun to receive from sev­er­al gallery show­ings.) The posthu­mous recep­tion of his work—ubiquitously repro­duced and admired by count­less throngs in exhib­it after exhibit—can do noth­ing now to lift his spir­its, but sure­ly vin­di­cates his prodi­gious effort. Van Gogh’s fame has had the unfor­tu­nate side effect of crowd­ing out many stu­dents of his art from gallery exhi­bi­tions. Yet this dif­fi­cul­ty need not now pre­vent them from sur­vey­ing and see­ing up close his huge body of work in dig­i­tal archives like that of the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, the largest Van Gogh col­lec­tion in the world.

By enter­ing the col­lec­tion, you can see, for exam­ple, Self Por­trait with Straw Hat, at the top, from 1887, or the strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar por­trait of his broth­er and staunch sup­port­er Theo from the same year, just below it. Fur­ther down is the dark­ly humor­ous Head of a Skele­ton With a Burn­ing Cig­a­rette from 1886, and just above, see an 1882 let­ter to Theo, with a beau­ti­ful sketch of a Pol­lard Wil­low, an image he com­mit­ted to can­vas that year. Just below, see an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the very begin­nings of Van Gogh’s posthu­mous canonization—an 1891 cov­er sketch and short trib­ute arti­cle in the French satir­i­cal mag­a­zine Les hommes D’Aujourd’hui.

You can search or browse the col­lec­tion, and down­load and view these images, and many hun­dreds more paint­ings, sketch­es, draw­ings, let­ters, and much more, in res­o­lu­tion high enough to zoom in to every indi­vid­ual brush­stroke and ink pen flour­ish. Miss­ing from the expe­ri­ence is the three-dimen­sion­al­i­ty of Van Gogh’s heav­i­ly tex­tur­al paint­ing, but nowhere else will you have this lev­el of acces­si­bil­i­ty to so much of his work and life.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Dis­cov­er the Only Paint­ing Van Gogh Ever Sold Dur­ing His Life­time

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Final Paint­ing: Dis­cov­er Tree Roots, the Last Cre­ative Act of the Dutch Painter (1890)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Bestselling Book

in Life, Music | February 10th, 2016

Image by Hayeur­JF, via Flickr Com­mons

Though the buri­als of ancient Egypt­ian rulers offer at least one notable excep­tion, near­ly all the world’s reli­gions have agreed on one thing—if one thing only: you can’t take your stuff with you. You can leave it to the local church, mosque, or syn­a­gogue, your heirs, a char­i­ty of your choice, your dog; but your mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions will not go wher­ev­er you might when it’s over.

How­ev­er, should con­scious­ness some­how sur­vive the body, or get uploaded to a new one in some sci-fi future, per­haps you can take with you the expe­ri­ences, mem­o­ries, sen­sa­tions, and ideas you’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over a life­time. And if that’s the case, we should all be greedy for knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence rather than prop­er­ty and con­sumer goods. And the “1,000… Before You Die” series of books, might be con­sid­ered guides to curat­ing your after­life.

The series has rec­om­mend­ed 1,000 places to see, 1,000 foods to eat, and, in 2012, 1,000 record­ings to hear before you dent the buck­et. Musi­cian and crit­ic Tom Moon, author of 1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die, has cre­at­ed a list that ranges far and wide, leav­ing seem­ing­ly no genre, region, or peri­od out: from gang­ster rap, to opera, to krautrock, to coun­try, to met­al, to blues, to Zim­bab­wean folk, to… well, you name it, it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where.

For all the songs, artists, and albums I might have added to my own ver­sion of such a list, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find on Moon’s such indie clas­sics as Bon­nie “Prince” Billy’s haunt­ing I See a Dark­ness, hard­core mas­ter­pieces as Bad Brains’ i against i, and sem­i­nal elec­tron­i­ca as Aphex Twin’s Select­ed Ambi­ent Works. These less well-known record­ings sit next to those of John Coltrane (see A Love Supreme fea­tured above), Mar­i­an Ander­son, Son House, Pat­sy Cline, The Bea­t­les, Bach, Brahms, and vir­tu­al­ly any­one else you might think of, and dozens more you would­n’t.

One would have a very hard time mak­ing a case that Moon has any par­tic­u­lar bias against one form of music or anoth­er. (See the com­plete list here, and browse by genre, title, or artist at the 1,000 Record­ings web­site, where you can read Moon’s com­men­tary on each selec­tion.) When it came to select­ing songs or albums from artists with embar­rass­ing­ly rich cat­a­logs, Moon told NPR that he went with his gut. “I didn’t want to have a stan­dard cri­te­ria,” he said, “With­in any giv­en artist, you could go 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tions.” Agree or dis­agree with his choic­es, but mar­vel at his breadth and inclu­sive­ness.

In the past, it would have tak­en you a life­time just to track down all of these record­ings, much less find time to lis­ten to all of them. Now, you can hear 793 tracks from Moon’s 1,000 picks in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (Brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal; down­load Spo­ti­fy here if you need it). Spend the rest of your life not only mulling them over, but dis­cov­er­ing 1,000s more. Despite the title’s ref­er­ence to mor­tal­i­ty, and my some­what face­tious intro­duc­tion, Moon real­ly means his “Listener’s Life List,” as he calls it, to be a guide for living—and for becom­ing immersed in music in a pro­found­ly expan­sive way. (For this same pur­pose, I also thor­ough­ly endorse The Guardian’s series “1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” and its read­er-sourced adden­da. If any­one cares to turn the Guardian list into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, we’ll fea­ture it here too.)

As Moon sum­ma­rizes his intent, “the more you love music, the more music you love.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scors­ese & Tim Bur­ton Films Played by the Prague Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra: Stream Full Albums

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

Russian Superheroes: Artist Draws Traditional Russian Folk Heroes in a Modern Fantasy Style

in Comics/Cartoons | February 10th, 2016

Where do super­heroes come from? The con­cept did­n’t just emerge ful­ly formed into the world when, say, Super­man showed up on the cov­er of Action Comics in 1938. Human­i­ty has enjoyed sto­ries of super­hu­man hero fig­ures since time immemo­r­i­al; you can find prece­dents for the super­hero deep in the mytholo­gies of a vari­ety of cul­tures. When the Russ­ian illus­tra­tor Roman Pap­suev looked deep into the mythol­o­gy of his own cul­ture, he found plen­ty of mate­r­i­al he could car­ry right over into a mod­ern visu­al idiom. And what with the cur­rent Game of Thrones-dri­ven wave of swords and sor­cery in the glob­al pop-cul­ture zeit­geist, he picked the right time indeed to pub­lish his elab­o­rate draw­ings of Russ­ian folk­lore heroes in the style of today’s high-fan­ta­sy com­ic books, movies, TV shows, and video games.

“The first char­ac­ters were based on the author’s feel­ings and fan­tasies,” writes Daria Don­ina at Rus­sia Beyond the Head­lines. “He began, of course, with Ilya Muromets — the main Russ­ian epic hero and the strongest bogatyr or war­rior.” Then, “the more the author got immersed in the sub­ject, the more accu­rate his pic­tures became.

He began to reread the tales and study the works of famous folk­lorists.” Don­ina quotes Pap­suev him­self: “ ‘What I like most is when peo­ple look at my pic­tures and then begin to read the tales and under­stand why, for instance, Vasil­isa the Beau­ti­ful has a doll in her bag or why Vodyanoy rides a giant cat­fish. This grass­roots revival of ancient folk­lore through my hum­ble project gives me great plea­sure.’ ”

You can browse all of these illus­tra­tions and more at Pap­suev’s Insta­gram page, which includes not just fin­ished pieces but works in progress as well, so you can get an idea of just what sort of process it takes to ren­der a Russ­ian hero for the 21st cen­tu­ry. To a non-Russ­ian, this all may seem like sim­ply a neat art project, but any Russ­ian will rec­og­nize these char­ac­ters as cen­tral to a set of sto­ries them­selves cen­tral to the cul­ture. “The tales are stamped in the sub­con­scious from child­hood,” Pap­suev says in the Rus­sia Beyond the Head­line arti­cle, and as with any mate­r­i­al with which peo­ple grew up, any rein­ter­preter takes them into his own hands at his per­il.

“This project has no rela­tion to real his­to­ry or real life,” says the artist. “These are just tales, trapped in a world of games. It’s a fun project. Don’t take it too seri­ous­ly.” But which enter­pris­ing Russ­ian devel­op­er, I won­der, will take it seri­ous­ly enough to go ahead and make an actu­al video game based on Pap­suev’s too-hero­ic-to-waste folk­loric char­ac­ters?

Find more draw­ings at at Pap­suev’s Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 650 Sovi­et Book Cov­ers, Many Sport­ing Won­der­ful Avant-Garde Designs (1917–1942)

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

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide Is Online: A Blue­print for Super­man, Bat­man & Your Oth­er Favorite Super­heroes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

New App Lets You Explore Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” in Virtual Reality

in Art | February 9th, 2016

Yes­ter­day, Col­in Mar­shall told you how you could take a Vir­tu­al Inter­ac­tive Tour Through Hierony­mus Bosch’s Mas­ter­piece “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights,” thanks to this web­site.

Today, we dis­cov­ered that there’s also an app (designed for iPhone, iPad and Android) that lets you take a vir­tu­al real­i­ty trip through the very same paint­ing. Cre­at­ed as part of the 500th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of Bosch’s life, the app–previewed in the trail­er above–lets you “ride on a fly­ing fish into a Gar­den of Eden, be tempt­ed by strange fruit and even stranger rit­u­als in the Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. And vis­it hell and hear the devil’s music.”

The app is free. And you can explore parts of Bosch’s famous trip­tych at no cost. It will cost you a small fee–$3.99–to unlock the remain­ing part.

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 The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

 Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Claymation Film Recreates Historic Chess Match Immortalized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

in Film, Games | February 9th, 2016

Fans of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey will remem­ber the scene: On a long jour­ney through space, astro­naut Frank Poole plays a casu­al game of chess with the HAL 9000 super­com­put­er … and los­es deci­sive­ly. No doubt about it. Watch it down below.

Pas­sion­ate about chess and noto­ri­ous­ly obsessed with detail, Kubrick based the scene on a chess match that took place in 1910, pit­ting the Ger­man chess­mas­ter Willi Schlage against a fel­low named A. Roesch. Whether Kubrick was per­son­al­ly famil­iar with the match, or sim­ply found it by perus­ing Irv­ing Chernev’s book The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (p. 148), it’s not entire­ly clear. But what we do know is that Kubrick­’s scene immor­tal­ized the Schlage — Roesch match played all of those years ago. And it inspired ani­ma­tor Ric­car­do Cro­cetta to recre­ate that 1910 match in the fine clay­ma­tion above. The notes accom­pa­ny­ing Cro­cetta’s film on YouTube record all of the orig­i­nal moves. Appar­ent­ly the ones fea­tured in 2001 come after black­’s 13th move.

Game: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. Qe2 b5 6. Bb3 Be7 7. c3 O‑O 8. O‑O d5 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nf4 11. Qe4 Nxe5 12. Qxa8 Qd3 13. Bd1 Bh3 14. Qxa6 Bxg2 15. Re1 Qf3 16. Bxf3 Nxf3#

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom & Advice of Mau­rice Ash­ley, the First African-Amer­i­can Chess Grand­mas­ter

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Priceless 145-Year-Old Martin Guitar Accidentally Gets Smashed to Smithereens in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight

in Film, Music | February 9th, 2016

Quentin Taran­ti­no has always had a way of get­ting on the wrong side of var­i­ous groups. Most recent­ly he angered the gui­tar-heads of the world when, to their shock and dis­may, it came out that, under the auteur’s watch on the set of his lat­est pic­ture, the post-Civ­il War inten­si­fied West­ern The Hate­ful Eight, a price­less 145-year-old six-string met its bru­tal end. “In the scene in ques­tion,” writes Van­i­ty Fair’s Rachel Han­dler, Kurt Rus­sell, “as boun­ty hunter John ‘The Hang­man’ Ruth, snatch­es the gui­tar from the hands of Jen­nifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy Domer­gue and hurls it against the wall, as one does.” That gui­tar — “an invalu­able his­tor­i­cal arti­fact,” Han­dler explains — came on loan from Pennsylvania’s Mar­tin Gui­tar Muse­um (and its like­ly irked direc­tor Dick Boak).

Even if you don’t play the gui­tar your­self, you’ve prob­a­bly heard of the Mar­tin brand name. Estab­lished in 1833 in New York as the cab­i­net-mak­ing C.F. Mar­tin & Com­pa­ny, they went on to intro­duce some of the inno­va­tions that have come to define the acoustic gui­tar as we know it today, from X‑bracing in the 1850s to met­al strings, replac­ing tra­di­tion­al catgut, in the ear­ly 1900s. The ill-fat­ed spec­i­men lost to the hands of Kurt Rus­sell — who, accord­ing to the pro­duc­tion’s offi­cial sto­ry, nev­er got the memo about cut­ting and swap­ping out a repli­ca before the smash — which the Mar­tin Gui­tar Muse­um orig­i­nal­ly acquired (and insured) for about $40,000, came out of the Mar­tin work­shop in the 1870s.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the far­ther back you go in gui­tar-mak­ing his­to­ry, the few­er gui­tars made at the time still exist. You can still go out and buy a ser­vice­able gui­tar from the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry with­out com­plete­ly wip­ing out your sav­ings, but you’d be hard pressed to find a Mar­tin made a few decades ear­li­er — such as the one smashed in The Hate­ful Eight — at any price at all; less than ten may exist any­where. But Mar­t­in’s sol­id stan­dard of crafts­man­ship ensured that their instru­ment would hold up over the 140 or so years until a film­mak­er want­ed to use it as a prop in his peri­od piece, where it still, aes­thet­i­cal­ly as well as son­i­cal­ly, fit right in. Still, no gui­tar could hold up against the vicious­ness of a char­ac­ter like The Hang­man as envi­sioned by Taran­ti­no — nor against the ded­i­ca­tion of a direc­tor like Taran­ti­no who, always in search of a per­fect­ly vis­cer­al moment, sim­ply can’t bear to cut.

Well, at least he was­n’t using the last playable Stradi­var­ius gui­tar in the world. The Mar­tin Muse­um retained the pres­ence of mind to ask for their gui­tar’s pieces back, and though they could­n’t put the his­tor­i­cal instru­ment back togeth­er again, maybe they’ll find a place to dis­play the frag­ments them­selves. That way, both gui­tar-heads and cinephiles could pay their respects.

via Geek.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Dave Grohl Shows How He Plays the Gui­tar As If It Were a Drum Kit

How Fend­er Gui­tars Are Made, Then (1959) and Nowa­days (2012)

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

The Real Val­ue of a Gui­tar

Eric Clap­ton Tries Out Gui­tars at Home and Talks About the Bea­t­les, Cream, and His Musi­cal Roots

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Take a Virtual Tour of Hieronymus Bosch’s Bewildering Masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights

in Art | February 8th, 2016

Art his­to­ri­ans have argued about the mean­ing of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights—Hierony­mus Bosch’s enor­mous­ly sized, lav­ish­ly detailed, and com­pelling­ly grotesque late 14th- or ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry triptych—more or less since the painter’s death. What does it real­ly say about the appear­ance and fall of man on Earth that it seems to depict? How seri­ous­ly or iron­i­cal­ly does it say it? Does it offer us a warn­ing against temp­ta­tion, or a cel­e­bra­tion of temp­ta­tion? Does it take a reli­gious or anti-reli­gious stance? And what’s with all those creepy ani­mals and bizarre pseu­do-sex acts? “In spite of all the inge­nious, eru­dite and in part extreme­ly use­ful research devot­ed to the task,” said schol­ar Erwin Panof­sky, “I can­not help feel­ing that the real secret of his mag­nif­i­cent night­mares and day­dreams has still to be dis­closed.”

Panof­sky said that in the 1950s, by which era he summed up the accu­mu­lat­ed efforts to decode Bosch as hav­ing “bored a few holes through the door of the locked room; but some­how we do not seem to have dis­cov­ered the key.” Now you can at least try your own hand at knock­ing on the door with this “inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary” of The Gar­den of Ear­ly Delights, which allows you to explore the paint­ing in depth, read­ing and hear­ing what sto­ries we know of the many images night­mar­ish­ly and often hilar­i­ous­ly pre­sent­ed with­in, while you zoom far clos­er than you could while even stand­ing before the real thing at the Pra­do.

(Assum­ing you could suc­cess­ful­ly elbow your way past all the tour groups.)  “The vis­i­tor of the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary will get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what it was like to live in the Late Mid­dle Ages,” says the offi­cial descrip­tion, which also assures us we can “come back after a vis­it and pick up the book again from the shelf to fur­ther explore.”

The project comes as part of a larg­er “trans­me­dia tryp­tich,” which also con­sists of the tra­di­tion­al doc­u­men­tary film Hierony­mus Bosch, Touched by the Dev­il (whose trail­er you can see below) and a “vir­tu­al real­i­ty doc­u­men­tary” called Hierony­mus Bosch, the Eyes of the Owl. I find that last title espe­cial­ly appro­pri­ate, since I’ve long enjoyed Bosch’s recur­ring owls and appre­ci­ate the abil­i­ty this high­ly zoomable Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights offers me to count them one by one. Spend some time roam­ing Bosch’s vision’s par­adise, bac­cha­nal, and damna­tion and, whether you take the guid­ed tour through them or not, you’ll find much to stare at in sheer fas­ci­na­tion — and, as often as not, dis­be­lief.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun: A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Star Trek Continues: The Critically-Acclaimed, Fan-Made Sequel to the Original TV Series

in Sci Fi, Television | February 8th, 2016

Despite its lega­cy and influ­ence, the orig­i­nal Star Trek ran three sea­sons (or 79 episodes in total) before NBC can­celed the show in June, 1969. Only in syn­di­ca­tion did Star Trek achieve cult sta­tus, and did its grow­ing num­ber of fans start to won­der: What if Star Trek had con­tin­ued? How would the sto­ry have played out? Enter Star Trek Con­tin­ues, a crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed, fan-pro­duced web­series cre­at­ed by direc­tor and actor Vic Mignogna.

If you ask the son of Gene Rod­den­ber­ry, the cre­ator of the orig­i­nal TV series, Star Trek Con­tin­ues has man­aged to cre­ate a bona fide sequel. “I do have to say … I’m pret­ty damn sure my dad would con­sid­er this canon. The fact that you do sto­ries that mean some­thing, that have depth, that make us all think a lit­tle bit… I real­ly think he would applaud you guys.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal adds to this:

[Star Trek Con­tin­ues] comes fright­en­ing­ly close to repli­cat­ing the orig­i­nal series, in the sets, make-up and hair­styles, cos­tumes and music… The art direc­tion pre­cise­ly cap­tures the Day-Glo visu­als of ear­ly col­or TV. Most remark­able is Mr. Mignogna; no actor play­ing, for instance, James Bond has imi­tat­ed Sean Con­nery out­right, but Mr. Mignogna comes so scar­i­ly close to the dynam­ic, stac­ca­to ener­gy of William Shat­ner that we keep for­get­ting we’re look­ing at anoth­er actor.

Thanks to fund­ing raised by two Kick­starter cam­paigns, you can now watch 5 episodes. Click play and watch the episodes on a Youtube playlist above, from start to fin­ish. Or watch them on the offi­cial Star Trek Con­tin­ues web­site, where, among oth­er things, you can take a 360 vir­tu­al tour of the set. You can also make a dona­tion, which will help sup­port the 6th episode due out in May, and anoth­er 7 episodes beyond that.

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:

How Isaac Asi­mov Went from Star Trek Crit­ic to Star Trek­Fan & Advi­sor

Nichelle Nichols Explains How Mar­tin Luther King Con­vinced Her to Stay on Star Trek

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Hear Strung Out in Heaven, a Gorgeous Tribute to David Bowie by Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff’s, Made with Help from Neil Gaiman

in Art, Life, Music | February 8th, 2016

The last four weeks have seen thou­sands of trib­utes to rock­er David Bowie.

Strung Out In Heav­en: A Bowie String Quar­tet Trib­ute by Aman­da Palmer and her The­atre is Evil col­lab­o­ra­tor, pop poly­math Jherek Bischoff, is both gor­geous and ambi­tious.

It came togeth­er quick­ly. Bischoff arranged the album’s five tracks and spent three and a half hours record­ing the strings (Ser­e­na McK­in­ney and Alyssa Park​ on vio­lin, Ben Ullery​ on vio­la, and Jacob Braun on cel­lo).

Mean­while new moth­er Palmer lined up three days worth of babysit­ting in order to dive back into the stu­dio. She also tapped some famous friends, who con­tributed in small­er ways.

The record­ing, coor­di­na­tion, guest appear­ances… and babysit­ting were financed by a stock­pile from Palmer’s 7000-some sup­port­ers on the crowd­fund­ing site Patre­on.

It doesn’t sound like a whip out.

Here’s Palmer’s hus­band, author Neil Gaiman, count­ing down to lift-off on “Space Odd­i­ty:

And writer/director John Cameron Mitchell, who record­ed the “Heroes” call and response on an iPhone in his apart­ment…

…and chan­neled Hed­wig for the Ger­man ver­sion:

Gaiman ques­tioned Palmer’s choice to lead with the title track of Bowie’s final album, but as she told New Musi­cal Express, a lot of fresh­ly mint­ed mil­len­ni­al Bowie fans among her Patre­on sup­port­ers list­ed “Black­star” as a favorite. Singer Anna Calvi duets and plays gui­tar on this stripped down ver­sion:

Each tune is matched to a Bowie-cen­tric image by a visu­al artist. On Palmer’s Patre­on blog,“Blackstar” artist, ele­men­tary school teacher, and can­cer sur­vivor Cas­san­dra Long writes about dis­cussing Bowie’s death with a room­ful of kinder­garten­ers. Palmer plans to pro­vide a sim­i­lar plat­form to the oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing artists in the days to come.

The fin­ished prod­uct is both pro­fes­sion­al and a labor of love.

Music is the bind­ing agent of our mun­dane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dish­es, type the resumes, go to the funer­als, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the mem­o­ry, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawl­ing span of freaked-out kids over three gen­er­a­tions. He bond­ed us to our weird selves…Bowie worked on music up to the end to give us a part­ing gift. So this is how we, as musi­cians, mourn: keep­ing Bowie con­stant­ly in our ears and brains. 

 — Aman­da Palmer

The com­plete track­list is below. You can lis­ten for free, but an ante-up will help Palmer cov­er 9¢ in licens­ing fees every time one of the songs is streamed. Any left­over pro­ceeds from sales through March 5th will be donat­ed to Tufts Med­ical Cen­ter’s can­cer research wing in mem­o­ry of David Bowie.

Strung Out in Heav­en:

01 “Black­star”  fea­tur­ing Anna Calvi

02 “Space Odd­i­ty” fea­tur­ing Neil Gaiman

03 “Ash­es to Ash­es”

04 “Heroes” fea­tur­ing John Cameron Mitchell

05 Helden” fea­tur­ing  John Cameron Mitchell

06 “Life on Mars?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

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