Jacques Derrida on Seinfeld: “Deconstruction Doesn’t Produce Any Sitcom”

in Philosophy, Television | February 2nd, 2016

Jacques Der­ri­da could enjoy a good movie like any­one else. In a 2002 inter­view with TIME, he declared “I have watched The God­fa­ther 10 times. I must watch it when­ev­er it’s on.” Who could­n’t?

Cop­po­la films were one thing. Appar­ent­ly sit­coms quite anoth­er. In anoth­er 2002 inter­view, a jour­nal­ist asked the French philoso­pher whether, in so many words, decon­struc­tion shared any­thing in com­mon with Sein­feld and the ironic/parodic way it looks at the world. This was tak­ing things too far. “Decon­struc­tion, as I under­stand it,” said Der­ri­da, “does­n’t pro­duce any sit­com. If sit­com is this, and peo­ple who watch this think decon­struc­tion is this, the only advice I have to give them is just stop watch­ing sit­com, do your home­work, and read.” The cringe­wor­thy scene orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the doc­u­men­tary, Der­ri­da, direct­ed by Kir­by Dick and Amy Zier­ing Hoff­man.

via Peter B. Kauf­man 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

Hear the Writ­ing of French The­o­rists Jacques Der­ri­da, Jean Bau­drillard & Roland Barthes Sung by Poet Ken­neth Gold­smith

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists

in Literature, Music | February 2nd, 2016

If you want a guide through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—the mod­ernist author’s “wordi­est aria,” writes Kirkus Reviews, “and sure­ly the strangest ever sung in any language”—you’d be hard pressed find a bet­ter one than nov­el­ist Antho­ny Burgess. Not only did Burgess turn his study of Joyce to very good account in cre­at­ing his own poly­glot lan­guage in A Clock­work Orange, but he has “taste­ful­ly select­ed the more read­able por­tions” of Joyce’s final nov­el in an abridged ver­sion, A Short­er Finnegans Wake. No doubt “pedants will object,” writes Kirkus, but if any­one can edit Joyce, it’s Burgess, who has writ­ten a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to Joyce’s lan­guage, a guide to Joyce “for the Ordi­nary Read­er,” and the most com­pre­hen­sive sum­ma­ry of Joyce’s last nov­el that I’ve ever encountered—proving that it can be done. Finnegans Wake makes sense!… sort of…

But not, how­ev­er, as any straight­for­ward sto­ry; after all, writes Burgess, “What Joyce is doing… is to make his hero re-live the whole of his­to­ry in a night’s sleep.” And what Burgess does is show us the com­plex scaf­fold­ing and sym­bol­ism of that dream. What he does not do is explain away the music of Joyce’s novel—for it is, after all, not only one long dream, but one long song, the “strangest ever sung.” We can hear Joyce him­self sing from the nov­el­’s Anna Livia Plura­belle sec­tion in the video at the top (accom­pa­nied by sub­ti­tles and a very cool ani­ma­tion, I must say). His lilt­ing tenor enthralls, but his is not the only way to sing Finnegans Wake. Indeed, the nov­el, though very odd and very dif­fi­cult, is Joyce’s invi­ta­tion to the world.

And the world has respond­ed (“Here Comes Every­body!”). Last year, Way­words and Mean­signs, a Joyce project co-found­ed by Derek Pyle, brought togeth­er artists and musi­cians from around the globe to sing, read, and set to music the words of Finnegans Wake. Open Cul­ture’s Ted Mills wrote a post describ­ing the “stag­ger­ing 30+ hours” of Joyce inter­pre­ta­tion, and con­clud­ed, “Those who read this and feel they’ve missed out on the cre­ativ­i­ty of tack­ling Finnegans Wake, don’t wor­ry.” The project was then solic­it­ing con­trib­u­tors for a forth­com­ing sec­ond edi­tion, and now it has arrived. You can hear it in full above, an answer to the ques­tion “How many ways are there to read James Joyce’s great and bizarre nov­el?”

Sev­en­teen dif­fer­ent musi­cians from all around the world, each assigned to ren­der a chap­ter aural­ly. The only require­ments: the chap­ter’s words must be audi­ble, unabridged, and more or less in their orig­i­nal order.

We begin with pages 3–29, “The Fall,” read in a rapid dead­pan over avant-garde free jazz by Mr. Smolin & Dou­ble Naught Spy Car. Next, we have “The Humphri­ad I: His Agnomen and Rep­u­ta­tion,” read by pro­duc­er David Kahne against a back­drop of min­i­mal­ist synths, tin­kling key­boards, and waves of bur­bling elec­tron­ic noise. Per­haps one of my favorite musicians—whose song­writ­ing has always struck me as par­tic­u­lar­ly Joycean—Mike Watt of the Min­ute­men and fIRE­HOSE promis­es to deliv­er his musi­cal con­tri­bu­tion for “Shem the Pen­man” very soon. In its place is a mes­sage from Pyle, who urges you to sign up for the Way­words and Mean­signs mail­ing list for updates. After his mes­sage is a brief excerpt from con­ver­sa­tion he had with Watt on the bass play­er’s pod­cast.

Finnegans Wake, says Watt, “shares with Ulysses the idea of want­i­ng to try and talk about every­thing.” Joyce, Watt goes on, want­ed to “tran­scend” in his writ­ing the cir­cum­stances of his trou­bled fam­i­ly life, fail­ing eye­sight, and finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties; and he was also just “hav­ing some fun.” That’s also a good descrip­tion of the var­i­ous ren­der­ings of Joyce rep­re­sent­ed in this com­pi­la­tion as these artists try to tran­scend ordi­nary ways of read­ing great lit­er­a­ture, and clear­ly have lots fun in the doing. See the Way­words and Mean­signs web­site for pro­duc­tion cred­its and a com­plete track­list­ing indi­cat­ing the spe­cif­ic pages, chap­ters, and sec­tions of each read­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Aloud & Set to Music: 31 Hours of Free Unabridged Audio

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ fromFinnegans Wake

See What Hap­pens When You Run Finnegans Wake Through a Spell Check­er

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

Download Marc Andreessen’s Influential Blog (“Pmarca”) as a Free eBook

in Business, e-books, Entrepreneurship | February 1st, 2016

Image by Joi, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For years Marc Andreessen–the entre­pre­neur best known for launch­ing Mosa­ic and lat­er Netscape–ran a pop­u­lar blog called “Pmar­ca” (appar­ent­ly short for “Pri­vate Marc Andreessen”) where he dis­pensed wis­dom on star­tups, busi­ness, invest­ing and beyond. If you’ve worked in star­tups, espe­cial­ly in Sil­i­con Val­ley, you prob­a­bly fol­lowed “Pmar­ca” fair­ly reli­gious­ly.

Like so many oth­ers, Andreessen even­tu­al­ly took down his blog and began “tweet­storm­ing” on Twit­ter–all while serv­ing on the boards of Face­book, eBay, and HP, and run­ning his now influ­en­tial VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Before “Pmar­ca” could fade com­plete­ly into obliv­ion, fans asked Andreessen to pre­serve the blog for pos­ter­i­ty. And that he did. You can now down­load an archive of “Pmar­ca” as a free ebook. Avail­able in three for­mats (ePub, Mobi, and PDF), the archived ver­sion can be read in pret­ty much the blog’s orig­i­nal for­mat. Start your down­loads 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

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

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, K-12, Literature, MOOCs | January 29th, 2016

Gath­er round, chil­dren and lis­ten to Grand­ma rem­i­niscin’ ‘bout the days when study­ing comics meant chang­ing out of your paja­mas and show­ing up at the bursar’s office, check in hand.

Actu­al­ly, Grandma’s full of it. Graph­ic nov­els are enjoy­ing unprece­dent­ed pop­u­lar­i­ty and edu­ca­tors are turn­ing to comics to reach reluc­tant read­ers, but as of this writ­ing, there still aren’t that many pro­grams for those inter­est­ed in mak­ing a career of this art form.

The Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts is a notable excep­tion. You can get your MFA in Comics there.

Even bet­ter, you need not enroll to sam­ple the 5 week course, Comics: Art in Rela­tion­ship, led by Comics MFA chair and Eis­ner Award-nom­i­nat­ed author of The Home­less Chan­nel, Matt Sila­dy.

You might write the next Scott Pil­grim.

Or ink the next Fun Home.

At the very least, you’ll learn a thing or two about lay­out, the rela­tion­ship of art to text, and using com­pres­sion to denote the pas­sage of time.

It’s the sort of nit­ty grit­ty train­ing that would ben­e­fit both vet­er­ans and new­bies alike.

Ready to sign up? The free course, which starts in Feb­ru­ary, will require approx­i­mate­ly 10 hours per week. The syl­labus is below.

Ses­sion 1: Defin­ing Comics

Iden­ti­fy key rela­tion­ships in sam­ple texts & demon­strate the use of var­i­ous cam­era angles on a comics page

Ses­sion 2: Comics Rela­tion­ships

Cre­ate Text-Image and Image-Image Pan­els

Ses­sion 3: Time And Space

One Sec­ond, One Hour, One Day Comics Chal­lenge

Ses­sion 4: Lay­out And Grid Design

Apply mul­ti­ple pan­el grids to pro­vid­ed script

Ses­sion 5: Thumb­nails

Cre­ate thumb­nail sketch­es of a mul­ti­page scene

Enroll here.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kapow! Stan Lee Is Co-Teach­ing a Free Com­ic Book MOOC, and You Can Enroll for Free

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

In Ani­mat­ed Car­toon, Ali­son Bechdel Sees Her Life Go From Puli­tiz­er Prize Win­ning Com­ic to Broad­way Musi­cal

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

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Samuel Beckett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Starring Alan Rickman & Kristin Scott Thomas

in Film, Theatre | January 29th, 2016

Here at Open Cul­ture, when we think of authors who write work made for the movies, we do, of course, think of names like Dan Brown, J.K. Rowl­ing, and Robert Lud­lum — but even more so of names like Samuel Beck­ett, whose push­ing of aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al bound­aries on the stage we wel­come now more than ever on the screen. And in a way, his works have under­gone more com­plete film adap­ta­tion than have the books of many best­selling main­stream writ­ers, thanks to the 2002 omnibus project Beck­ett on Film, which round­ed up nine­teen auteurs to direct films, rang­ing in length from sev­en min­utes to two hours, of each and every one of his nine­teen plays.

Beck­ett on Film’s ros­ter of direc­tors includes Michael Lind­say-Hogg doing Wait­ing for Godot, Atom Egoy­an doing Krap­p’s Last Tape, Neil Jor­dan doing Not I, the artist Damien Hirst doing Breath, and Antho­ny Minghel­la, he of The Eng­lish Patient and The Tal­ent­ed Mr. Rip­ley, doing Play, which you can watch above. The six­teen-minute pro­duc­tion adapts Beck­et­t’s 1963 one-act, a dis­tinc­tive­ly pur­ga­to­r­i­al sort of roman­tic dra­ma which presents a man (“M”), his wife (“W1”), and his mis­tress (“W2”), each trapped in an urn, each forced to speak about the details of their tri­an­gu­lar rela­tion­ship when, on stage, the spot­light turns to them. On film, Minghel­la choos­es to swap out the spot­light for the cam­era itself, which cuts, swings, and shifts focus swift­ly between the three, com­mand­ing the his­to­ry of the affair from all three per­spec­tives, each deliv­ered with flat, rapid-fire insis­tence yet with sur­pris­ing clar­i­ty and feel­ing as well.

Those qual­i­ties nat­u­ral­ly owe to Beck­et­t’s mas­tery of the word, but also to the per­for­mances of the three actors, giv­en under absurd cir­cum­stances, caked with filth and stuffed into pots: Kristin Scott Thomas as the wife, Juli­et Steven­son as the mis­tress, and the late Alan Rick­man as the hic­cup­ing adul­ter­er. Every line they speak dis­tills some aspect of the Beck­et­t­ian world­view: “Silence and dark­ness were all I craved,” says Thomas’ W1. “Well, I get a cer­tain amount of both. They being one. Per­haps it is more wicked­ness to pray for more.” “Things may dis­im­prove,” says Steven­son’s W2. “Adul­ter­ers, take warn­ing,” says Rick­man’s M, “nev­er admit.” And the ulti­mate ques­tion: “When will all this have been… just play?” But in Beck­et­t’s real­i­ty, there’s noth­ing so “just” about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

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.

85 Compelling Films Starring and/or Directed By Women of Color: A List Created by Director Ava DuVernay & Friends on Twitter

in Film | January 29th, 2016

Image by Marie Maye, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you fol­low film news—or real­ly, just news—you’re well aware of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the cur­rent crop of Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nees. While awards extrav­a­gan­zas seem like lit­tle more than pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests, it is curi­ous that nei­ther the acclaimed lead actors nor the direc­tors received nom­i­na­tions for two of the most pop­u­lar films of the year—Creed and Straight Out­ta Comp­ton. (See SNL’s satir­i­cal take on this.) There’s been no short­age of crit­i­cal praise for the tal­ent in those films and oth­ers, cast­ing doubt on claims that actors, writ­ers, direc­tors, etc. of col­or sim­ply weren’t up to snuff. The truth is like­ly more banal: most of the Acad­e­my vot­ers are old­er white men. (“Old­er and more dude-heavy than just about any place in Amer­i­ca,” says The Atlantic, “and whiter than all but sev­en states.”) No need to allege out­right con­spir­a­cy when implic­it bias oper­ates to exclude peo­ple all the time with­out mali­cious intent.

Nor do cor­po­rate buzz­words like “diver­si­ty” car­ry much weight when it comes to cre­at­ing a more inclu­sive indus­try. “It’s a med­i­c­i­nal word,” says Sel­ma direc­tor Ava DuVer­nay, “that has no emo­tion­al res­o­nance… Diver­si­ty’s like, ‘Ugh, I have to do diver­si­ty.’ ” No one wants to attend a “diver­si­ty train­ing” or read a hir­ing man­u­al about how to “do diver­si­ty”; rec­og­niz­ing tal­ent should­n’t be a forced, pro­ce­dur­al mat­ter, but a mat­ter of course. The Acad­e­my has vowed to make changes by retir­ing many inac­tive mem­bers to non-vot­ing emer­i­tus sta­tus and—in an Orwellian turn of phrase—“doubling the num­ber of diverse mem­bers” by 2020, what­ev­er that means. The afore­men­tioned DuVer­nay has been sow­ing seeds of dis­con­tent with the sta­tus quo for quite some time now, online and in the indus­try itself with her dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny AFFRM+Array Releas­ing, which attempts to coun­ter­bal­ance the racial and gen­der dis­par­i­ties in the film world.

In a tweet last year, writ­ten off the cuff dur­ing a writ­ing break, she put out a call to fol­low­ers to “name three films you like with black, brown, native or Asian women leads” or direc­tors. Indiewire com­ments that “it seems like com­mon sense that these films exist,” yet “the ques­tion proved to be a seri­ous chal­lenge for Twit­ter.” Even­tu­al­ly, DuVer­nay and the Twit­ter denizens came up with a list of 85 titles star­ring and/or direct­ed by women of col­or, and you can see them all list­ed below. If you find your­self watch­ing movie after movie about the same kinds of expe­ri­ences, maybe con­sid­er mak­ing your own view­ing habits more “diverse” by check­ing out some of these excel­lent, and in most cas­es lit­tle-seen movies, includ­ing two well-reviewed films from DuVer­nay her­self, 2010’s I Will Fol­low and 2012’s Mid­dle of Nowhere.

“35 Shots of Rum” by Claire Denis (2008)
“A Dif­fer­ent Image” by Alile Sharon Larkin (1982)
“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” by Ana Lily Amir­pour (2014)
“Advan­ta­geous” by Jen­nifer Phang (2015)
“Ala Modalain­di” by Nan­di­ni Bv Red­dy (2011)
“All About You” by Chris­tine Swan­son (2001)
“Alma’s Rain­bow” by Ayoka Chen­zi­ra (1994)
“Appro­pri­ate Behav­ior” by Desiree Akha­van (2014)
“B For Boy” by Chi­ka Anadu (2013)
“Bande de Filles/Girlhood” by Céline Sci­amma (2014)
“Belle” by Amma Asante (2013)
“Bend it Like Beck­ham” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2002)
“Bessie” by Dee Rees (2015)
“Beyond the Lights” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2014)
“Bha­ji on the Beach” by Gurinder Chad­ha (1993)
“Caramel” by Nadine Laba­ki  (2007)
“Cir­cum­stance” by Maryam Keshavarz (2011)
“Civ­il Brand” by Neema Bar­nette (2002)
“Com­pen­sa­tion” by Zeinabu irene Davis (199)
“Daugh­ters of the Dust” by Julie Dash (1991)
“Dou­ble Hap­pi­ness ” by Mina Shum (1994)
“Down in the Delta” by Maya Angelou (1998)
“Dry­long­so” by Cauleen Smith (1988)
“Earth” by Deepa Mehta (1998)
“Elza” by Mari­ette Mon­pierre (2011)
“End­less Dreams” by Susan Youssef (2009
“Eve’s Bay­ou” by Kasi Lem­mons (1997)
“Fire” by Deepa Mehta (1996)
“Fri­da” by Julie Tay­mor (2002)
“Girl in Progress” by Patri­cia Riggen (2012)
“Girl­fight” by Karyn Kusama (2000)
“Habibi Rasak Khar­ban” by Susan Youssef (2011)
“Hiss Dokhtarha Faryad Nem­izanand (Hush! Girls Don’t Scream)” by Pouran Der­ahkan­deh (2013)
“Hon­ey­trap” by Rebec­ca John­son (2014)
“I Like It Like That” by Dar­nell Mar­tin (1994)
“I Will Fol­low” by Ava DuVer­nay (2010
“In Between Days” by So-yong Kim (2006)
“Intro­duc­ing Dorothy Dan­dridge” by Martha Coolidge (1999)
“It’s a Won­der­ful After­life” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2010)
“Jumpin Jack Flash” by Pen­ny Mar­shall (1986)
“Just Anoth­er Girl on the IRT” by Leslie Har­ris (1992)
“Just Wright” by Sanaa Ham­ri (2010)
“Kama Sutra” by Mira Nair (1996)
“Los­ing Ground” by Kath­leen Collins (1982)
“Love & Bas­ket­ball” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2000)
“Luck by Chance” by Zoya Akhtar (2009)
“Mi Vida Loca” by Alli­son Anders (1993)
“Mid­dle of Nowhere” by Ava DuVer­nay (2012)
“Mis­sis­sip­pi Damned” by Tina Mabry (2009)
“Mis­sis­sip­pi Masala” by Mira Nair (1991)
“Mix­ing Nia” by Ali­son Swan (1998)
“Mon­soon Wed­ding” by Mira Nair (2001)
“Mosqui­ta y Mari” by Auro­ra Guer­rero (2012)
“Na-moo-eobs-neun san (Tree­less Moun­tain)” by So-yong Kim (2008)
“Night Catch­es Us” by Tanya Hamil­ton (2010)
“Pari­ah” by Dee Rees (2011)
“Pic­ture Bride” by Kayo Hat­ta (1994)
“Rain” by Maria Gov­an (2008)
“Real Women Have Curves” by Patri­cia Car­doso (2002)
“Sav­ing Face” by Alice Wu (2004)
“Sec­ond Com­ing” by Deb­bie Tuck­er Green (2014)
“Some­thing Nec­es­sary” by Judy Kibinge (2013)
“Some­thing New” by Sanaa Ham­ri (2006)
“Still the Water” by Nao­mi Kawase  (2014)
“Stranger Inside” by Cheryl Dun­ye (2001)
“Sug­ar Cane Alley/Black Shack Alley” by Euzhan Pal­cy (1983)
“The Kite” by Ran­da Cha­hal Sabag (2003)
“The Rich Man’s Wife” by Amy Hold­en Jones (1996)
“The Secret Life of Bees” by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood (2008)
“The Silence of the Palace” by Moufi­da Tlatli (1994)
“The Water­mel­on Woman” by Cheryl Dun­ye (1996)
“The Women of Brew­ster Place” by Don­na Deitch (1989)
“Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God” by Dar­nell Mar­tin (2005)
“Things We Lost in the Fire” by Susanne Bier  (2007)
“Wad­j­da” by Haifaa Al-Man­sour (2012)
“Water” by Deepa Mehta (2005)
“Whale Rid­er” by Niki Caro  (2002)
“What’s Cook­ing?” by Gurinder Chad­ha (2000)
“Where Do We Go Now?” by Nadine Laba­ki  (2011)
“Whit­ney” by Angela Bas­sett (2015)
“Woman Thou Art Loosed: On The 7th Day” by Neema Bar­nette (2012)
“Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl” by Joan Chen (1998)
“Yelling to the Sky” by Vic­to­ria Mahoney (2011)
“Young and Wild” by Mar­i­aly Rivas (2012)

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essen­tial Movies – Now with Women Film­mak­ers

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

725 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

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

The Art from David Bowie’s Final Album, Blackstar, is Now Free for Fans to Download and Reuse

in Art, Music | January 28th, 2016

Jonathan Barn­brook, the British graph­ic design­er who cre­at­ed the cov­er art for sev­er­al of David Bowie’s more recent albums, had his cre­ative stu­dio issue an announce­ment on Face­book today, one which will sure­ly please many:

Barn­brook loved work­ing with David Bowie, he was sim­ply one of the most inspi­ra­tional, kind peo­ple we have met. So in the spir­it of open­ness and in remem­brance of David we are releas­ing the art­work ele­ments of his last album ★ (Black­star) to down­load here free under a Cre­ative Com­mons Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike licence. That means you can make t‑shirts for your­self, use them for tat­toos, put them up in your house to remem­ber David by and adapt them too, but we would ask that you do not in any way cre­ate or sell com­mer­cial prod­ucts with them or based on them.

Barn­brook was the cre­ative force behind Hea­then (2002), Real­i­ty (2003) and The Next Day (2013). In this in-depth inter­view, the design­er talks about his approach to cre­at­ing a visu­al lan­guage for Black­star, whose design ele­ments can now be freely down­loaded here.

via Pitch­fork

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:

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

An Animated Introduction to Goethe, Germany’s “Renaissance Man”

in History, Literature | January 28th, 2016

We all know the name Goethe — some of us even know the full name, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. I’ve nev­er lived in the renowned 18th- and 19th-cen­tu­ry writer, politi­cian, and cul­tur­al poly­math­’s home­land of Ger­many, but even when I lived in Los Ange­les, I reg­u­lar­ly went to my local branch of the Goethe-Insti­tute for Ger­man cul­tur­al events. Even in Korea, where I live now, Goethe has left a wide if shal­low mark: you can see The Sor­rows of Young Werther in the form of an elab­o­rate stage musi­cal, for instance, and buy almost all the goods you need in life from the enor­mous con­glom­er­ate named after the young lady on whom Werther con­cen­trates his doomed affec­tions, Lotte.

But why, more than 180 years after Goethe’s death, does his name still come up in so many dif­fer­ent con­texts? And giv­en that, why do so many of us know so lit­tle about his long, var­ied, col­or­ful, and high­ly pro­duc­tive life and career? This sounds like a job for the video wing of Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life, whose short primers con­tin­ue to bring us up to speed on why the lega­cies of so many cul­tur­al fig­ures (with one sec­tion giv­en over to the lit­er­ary) have endured, or should endure. “Goethe is one of the great minds of Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tion, though his work is large­ly unknown out­side of the Ger­man speak­ing coun­tries,” says de Bot­ton in their video on Goethe: “He deserves our renewed atten­tion.”

To fill out the details pro­vid­ed in the School of Life’s video, you can read an overview of Goethe’s career (includ­ing details on the prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his name) in the accom­pa­ny­ing Book of Life entry online. It tells the sto­ry of not just Young Werther’s cre­ator, but “one of Europe’s big cul­tur­al heroes – com­pa­ra­ble to the likes of Shake­speare, Dante and Homer,” skilled in let­ters, of course, but also in “phys­i­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, botany and optics,” who also spent stretch­es of his career as “a diplo­mat, fash­ion guru, a senior civ­il ser­vant, a pornog­ra­ph­er, the head of a uni­ver­si­ty, a fine artist, an adven­tur­ous trav­eller, the direc­tor of a the­atre com­pa­ny and the head of a min­ing com­pa­ny.”

We might call Goethe, inso­far as he devel­oped his own mas­tery, span­ning so much of the human expe­ri­ence, a Renais­sance man out of time — but one who, in his way, out­did even the actu­al men of the Renais­sance. “We have so much to learn from him,” adds the Book of Life. “We don’t often hear peo­ple declar­ing a wish to be a lit­tle more like ‘Goethe.’ But if we did, the world would be a more vibrant and humane place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Death Masks of Great Authors: Dante, Goethe, Tol­stoy, Joyce & More

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Eugène Delacroix Illus­trates Goethe’s Faust, “One of the Very Great­est of All Illus­trat­ed Books”

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.

Stephen Hawking & Actor Paul Rudd Play an Epic Game of Quantum Chess, Narrated by Keanu Reeves

in Games, Physics | January 28th, 2016

The Insti­tute for Quan­tum Infor­ma­tion and Mat­ter (IQIM) at Cal­tech post­ed on its YouTube chan­nel today a fun lit­tle video called “Any­one Can Quantum”–the “Any­one” prob­a­bly refer­ring to actor Paul Rudd, who takes on Stephen Hawk­ing in a game of Quan­tum Chess, nar­rat­ed by Keanu Reeves. Quan­tum Chess, a made-up thing, a gim­mick, you say? Not so appar­ent­ly. It’s a thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Rare Video Captures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarotti in One of His Earliest Recorded Performances (1964)

in Music, Opera | January 28th, 2016

Some­times it’s hard to believe that cer­tain enter­tain­ers did not arrive ful­ly formed with their famous look already part of the act. It’s still weird to me, for exam­ple, to see very ear­ly George Car­lin, look­ing like a nephew to the but­ton-down com­e­dy of Bob Newhart. You might get the same shock see­ing this very early—possibly the first, but not verified—televised appear­ance of mas­ter tenor Luciano Pavarot­ti.

In this archived clip from Sovi­et tele­vi­sion, the future opera super­star looks more like come­di­an Jack­ie Glea­son than the beard­ed, icon­ic fig­ure he would become. Those eye­brows are work­ing over­time, though.

The year is 1964, only three years after his pro­fes­sion­al debut in a region­al Ital­ian opera house, where he played the lead, Rodol­fo, in a pro­duc­tion of La Boheme. It was also a year after his first major accom­plish­ment, sup­port­ing and singing with Joan Suther­land on an Aus­tralian tour. He was yet to have an Amer­i­can pre­miere, and was still try­ing to make a name for him­self.

This above clip, a jaun­ty and con­fi­dent take on Verdi’s “La Don­na e Mobile” from Rigo­let­to, shows all the youth­ful promise in his 29-year-old voice. Com­pare and con­trast below his 1982 ver­sion from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film ver­sion of the opera. It’s sweet­er and Pavarot­ti has less to prove, firm­ly estab­lished in the fir­ma­ment of singing stars. The song remains the same, but this ear­ly glimpse into Pavarotti’s career shows he knew he was going places, but just need­ed that chance to prove it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

New Web Site, “The Opera Plat­form,” Lets You Watch La Travi­a­ta and Oth­er First-Class Operas Free Online

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.