Smithsonian Digitizes & Lets You Download 40,000 Works of Asian and American Art

in Art | June 11th, 2015

Art lovers who vis­it my home­town of Wash­ing­ton, DC have an almost embar­rass­ing wealth of oppor­tu­ni­ties to view art col­lec­tions clas­si­cal, Baroque, Renais­sance, mod­ern, post­mod­ern, and oth­er­wise through the Smith­son­ian’s net­work of muse­ums. From the East and West Wings of the Nation­al Gallery, to the Hir­sh­horn, with its won­drous sculp­ture gar­den, to the Amer­i­can Art Muse­um and Ren­wick Gallery—I’ll admit, it can be a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, and far too much to take in dur­ing a week­end jaunt, espe­cial­ly if you’ve got rest­less fam­i­ly in tow. (One can’t, after all, miss the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry or Air and Space Muse­ums… or, you know… those mon­u­ments.)

In all the bus­tle of a DC vaca­tion, how­ev­er, one col­lec­tion tends to get over­looked, and it is one of my per­son­al favorites—the Freer and Sack­ler Gal­leries, which house the Smithsonian’s unique col­lec­tion of Asian art, includ­ing the James McNeill Whistler-dec­o­rat­ed Pea­cock Room. (See his “Har­mo­ny in Blue and Gold” above.)

Stand­ing in this re-cre­ation of muse­um founder Charles Freer’s per­son­al 19th cen­tu­ry gallery—which he had relo­cat­ed from Lon­don to his Detroit man­sion in 1904—is an aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence like no oth­er. And like most such expe­ri­ences, there real­ly is no vir­tu­al equiv­a­lent. Nonethe­less, should you have to hus­tle past the Freer and Sack­ler col­lec­tions on your DC vaca­tion, or should you be unable to vis­it the nation’s cap­i­tal at all, you can still get a taste of the beau­ti­ful works of art these build­ings con­tain.

Like many major muse­ums all over the world—including the Nation­al Gallery, the Rijksmu­se­um, The British Library, and over 200 oth­ers—the Freer/Sackler has made its col­lec­tion, all of it, avail­able to view online. You can also down­load much of it.

See del­i­cate 16th cen­tu­ry Iran­ian water­col­ors like “Woman with a spray of flow­ers” (top), pow­er­ful Edo peri­od Japan­ese ink on paper draw­ings like “Thun­der god” (above), and aston­ish­ing­ly intri­cate 15th cen­tu­ry Tibetan designs like the “Four Man­dala Vajravali Thang­ka” (below). And so, so much more.

As Freer/Sackler direc­tor Julian Raby describes the ini­tia­tive, “We strive to pro­mote the love and study of Asian art, and the best way we can do so is to free our unmatched resources for inspi­ra­tion, appre­ci­a­tion, aca­d­e­m­ic study, and artis­tic cre­ation.” There are, writes the gal­leries’ web­site, Ben­to, “thou­sands of works now ready for you to down­load, mod­i­fy, and share for non­com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.” More than 40,000, to be fair­ly pre­cise.

You can browse the col­lec­tion to your heart’s con­tent by “object type,” top­ic, name, place, date, or “on view.” Or you can con­duct tar­get­ed search­es for spe­cif­ic items. In addi­tion to cen­turies of art from all over the far and near East, the col­lec­tion includes a good deal of 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can art, like the sketch of Whistler’s moth­er, below, per­haps a prepara­to­ry draw­ing for his most famous paint­ing. Though I do rec­om­mend that you vis­it these exquis­ite gal­leries in per­son if you can, you must at least take in their col­lec­tions via this gen­er­ous online col­lec­tion and its boun­ty of inter­na­tion­al artis­tic trea­sures. Get start­ed today.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

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

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

The Sex Pistols’ 1976 Manchester “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

in Music | June 11th, 2015

“Ever get the feel­ing you’ve been cheat­ed?”

John­ny Rot­ten aka John Lydon’s clos­ing words at the last Sex Pis­tols gig (watch it online) seemed apt this week when Vir­gin Bank announced their cur­rent line of cred­it cards would fea­ture the band’s sig­na­ture art­work. That Jamie Reid’s famous cut-n-paste zine-cum-Sit­u­a­tion­al­ist aes­thet­ic has turned into a bit of cap­i­tal­ist plas­tic for your wal­let is an irony that the Sex Pis­tols might nev­er have seen com­ing back in 1976, when they played the “gig that changed the world.”

Recre­at­ed above in a clip from Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple, the June 4, 1976 gig at Manchester’s Less­er Free Trade Hall spawned the British punk move­ment and the post-punk move­ment that was soon to fol­low in a scant two years. For in the audi­ence were future mem­bers of the Buz­zcocks Howard Devo­to and Pete Shel­ley (who orga­nized the gig and opened for the Pis­tols); a nascent ver­sion of Joy Divi­sion; the two founders of Fac­to­ry Records Mar­tin Han­net and Tony Wil­son; Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Mick Huck­nall of Fran­tic Ele­va­tors and much lat­er Sim­ply Red; and a one Steven Patrick Mor­ris­sey, who would form The Smiths. (That’s Steve Coogan play­ing Tony Wil­son in the clip, by the way.)

The Sex Pis­tols played 13 songs in their set, includ­ing cov­ers of Dave Berry’s “Don’t Give Me No Lip Child,” Paul Revere and the Raiders “(I’m Not Your) Step­ping Stone”, the Small Faces “What’cha Gonna Do About It,” The Stooges’ “No Fun”, and The Who’s “Sub­sti­tute.” When asked for an encore, they played “No Fun” again.

Of their orig­i­nals, their two most famous songs–”God Save the Queen” and “Anar­chy in the U.K.” had yet to be written–but “Pret­ty Vacant,” “Prob­lems,” “New York,” “No Feel­ings” are all here in their raw form.

A few songs nev­er made it onto their first album, but can be found on their heav­i­ly boot­legged demo tape they record­ed the same year.

Also of note is how non “punk” the mem­bers are dressed, not in the sense of how Mal­colm McLaren and Vivi­enne West­wood would design, pack­age and sell the fash­ion. The boys look clos­er to the work­ing class job­bers of ear­ly Devo and the Stooges. Plus: no Sid Vicious. He’d come lat­er. That’s Glen Mat­lock on bass, who left the band in ear­ly ’77 after clash­ing with Lydon. He went on to form Rich Kids with Midge Ure.

When the Pis­tols returned to Lon­don, every­body in Man­ches­ter and beyond had start­ed a band, or at least that’s how it felt. By the time the Pis­tols got back to Lon­don, The Clash and The Damned had formed. And even if you hadn’t been at Less­er Free Trade Hall, you told your friends you had been and picked up a gui­tar.

The Sex Pis­tols would return three weeks lat­er to play the Hall again, play­ing to hun­dreds this time and solid­i­fy­ing the dawn of the punk era.

Below is a BBC doc­u­men­tary on the famous gig, telling­ly titled I Swear I Was There, which has an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

On a side note: Less­er Free Trade Hall–named after the rad­i­cal Free Trade polit­i­cal move­ment–was the site of anoth­er famous moment in rock his­to­ry. It was here that a new­ly elec­tri­fied Bob Dylan was called “Judas” by a very upset folk music fan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Do Dal­las: A Strange Con­cert from the Strangest Tour in His­to­ry (Jan­u­ary 10, 1978)

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Sid Vicious Sings Paul Anka’s “My Way” in His Own Spec­tac­u­lar Way

Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus Picks 10 Unex­pect­ed Songs That Tell the Sto­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll

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.

The Entirety of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless Artfully Compressed Into a 3 Minute Film

in Film | June 11th, 2015

Gérard Courant is a French film­mak­er, who, at least until 2011, held the dis­tinc­tion of direct­ing the longest film ever made. Clock­ing in at 192 hours, and shot over 36 years (1978–2006), Ciné­ma­ton con­sist­ed of “a series of over 2,880 silent vignettes (ciné­ma­tons), each 3 min­utes and 25 sec­onds long, of var­i­ous celebri­ties, artists, jour­nal­ists and friends of the direc­tor, each doing what­ev­er they want for the allot­ted time.” Ken Loach, Wim Wen­ders, Ter­ry Gilliam, Julie Delpy all made appear­ances. And so too did Jean-Luc Godard. (See below.)

While mak­ing Ciné­ma­ton, Courant also cre­at­ed anoth­er kind of exper­i­men­tal film — what he calls “com­pressed” films. In 1995, he shot Com­pres­sion de Alphav­ille, an accel­er­at­ed homage to Jean-Luc Godard 1965 sci-fi film, Alphav­ille. Then came a “com­pres­sion” (top) of Godard­’s À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), the clas­sic of French New Wave cin­e­ma.

Dur­ing the 1960s and 1970s, when Courant came of age as a film­mak­er, sculp­tors like César Bal­dac­ci­ni cre­at­ed art by com­press­ing every­day objects–like Coke cans–into mod­ern sculp­tures. So Courant took things a step fur­ther and fig­ured why not com­press art itself. Why not com­press a 90 minute film into 3–4 min­utes, while keep­ing the plot of the orig­i­nal film firm­ly intact.

Along the way, Courant asked him­self: Do com­pressed films hon­or the orig­i­nal? Does one have the right to touch these mas­ter­pieces? And can one decom­press these com­pressed films and then return them to their orig­i­nal form? Pon­der these ques­tions as you watch the exam­ples above.

Note: If you read French, Courant gives more of the back­sto­ry on his com­pressed films here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: From Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

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!

Jim Jarmusch’s 10 Favorite Films: Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Other Black & White Classics

in Film | June 10th, 2015

Jim Jar­musch, like his younger com­pa­tri­ots in film­mak­ing Quentin Taran­ti­no and Wes Ander­son, made his name as much with his taste as with his body of work. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that he’s made his name in large part by mak­ing films shaped by, and show­cas­ing, that taste. This seems to have held espe­cial­ly true in the case of Only Lovers Left Alive, his most recent fea­ture, which focus­es on a mar­ried cou­ple of vam­pire aes­thetes who split their time between her place in Tang­i­er stacked with yel­lowed vol­umes of poet­ry, and his decay­ing Detroit Vic­to­ri­an decked out with a noise-rock record­ing stu­dio and an iPhone patched through an old tube tele­vi­sion.

So Jar­musch’s fans will by def­i­n­i­tion have some famil­iar­i­ty with the direc­tor’s pref­er­ences in cloth­ing, music, Euro­pean cul­tures, and nich­es of Amer­i­cana. But what about in oth­er movies? Here we have a top ten list from the mak­er of Per­ma­nent Vaca­tion, Mys­tery Train, and Night on Earth, orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for the British Film Insti­tute’s 2002 Sight and Sound top ten poll. Three of Jar­musch’s selec­tions you can watch online here, or find them in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

1. L’Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
2. Tokyo Sto­ry (1953, Yasu­jiro Ozu)
3. They Live by Night (1949, Nicholas Ray)
4. Bob le Flam­beur (1955, Jean-Pierre Melville)
5. Sun­rise (1927, F.W. Mur­nau) 
6. The Cam­era­man (1928, Buster Keaton/Edward Sedg­wick) 
7. Mouchette (1967, Robert Bres­son)
8. Sev­en Samu­rai (1954, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa)
9. Bro­ken Blos­soms (1919, D.W. Grif­fith) 
10. Rome, Open City (1945, Rober­to Rosselli­ni)

The true Jar­musch enthu­si­ast will imme­di­ate­ly notice a num­ber of con­nec­tions between his own pic­tures and those he names as his favorites. He began his career work­ing as an assis­tant to the direc­tor of They Live by Night, Nicholas Ray (and you can even glimpse Jar­musch in Light­ning Over Water, Wim Wen­ders’ doc­u­men­tary on Ray’s final years).

Jar­musch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samu­rai shares not just tit­u­lar but philo­soph­i­cal qual­i­ties with Kuro­sawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai. With Bob le Flam­beur, Jean-Pierre Melville gave birth to cin­e­mat­ic “cool,” a tra­di­tion Jar­musch has done his lev­el best to uphold. And if D.W. Grif­fith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms sounds a bit like Bro­ken Flow­ers, the sim­i­lar­i­ties — the indi­rect ones, at least — don’t end there.

And all cinephiles, Jar­musch fans or oth­er­wise, will notice that he has includ­ed not a sin­gle col­or film among his top ten. Some of this might have to do with his gen­er­al­ly retro sen­si­bil­i­ty (some­thing to which even casu­al view­ers of his work can attest), but the likes of Stranger Than Par­adise, Down By Law, Dead Man, and Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes sug­gest that he him­self counts as one of the finest users of black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy in the mod­ern day. The vivid col­ors Yorick Le Saux cap­tured for him in Only Lovers Left Alive (and Christo­pher Doyle did in its pre­de­ces­sor, The Lim­its of Con­trol), sug­gest that Jar­musch’s uni­verse exists equal­ly well in both visu­al realms, but speak­ing from my own Jar­musch fan­dom, I do hope he has at least one more black-and-white pic­ture in him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Short Films on Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes from Jim Jar­musch & Paul Thomas Ander­son

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Free: F. W. Murnau’s Sun­rise, the 1927 Mas­ter­piece Vot­ed the 5th Best Movie of All Time

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Queen & Elvis Presley Star in Delightfully Absurd Musicless Music Videos

in Comedy, Music, Random | June 10th, 2015

Some­time in the last decade, as both YouTube and smart phones became our pri­ma­ry means of cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion, the iso­lat­ed vocal track meme came into being, reach­ing its sum­mit in the sub­lime ridicu­lous­ness of David Lee Roth’s unadorned “Run­ning With the Dev­il” vocal tics. His yelps, howls, and “Whoooohoooos!” pro­duced the very best ver­sion of that vir­tu­al nov­el­ty known as the sound­board app, and wel­comed many a caller to many a kooky voice­mail greet­ing. The iso­lat­ed track has since become a phe­nom­e­non wor­thy of study, and we’ve done our share here of por­ing over var­i­ous voic­es and instru­ments stripped from their song’s con­text and placed before us in ways we’d nev­er heard before.

Per­haps seri­ous analy­sis too shall be the fate of a goofy visu­al meme that also thrives on the ridicu­lous­ness of pop music’s pre­sen­ta­tion: the musi­c­less music video. The idea is a sim­i­lar one, iso­lat­ing the image instead of the sound: pop­u­lar videos, already weird­ly over the top, become exer­cis­es in chore­o­graphed awk­ward­ness or voy­ages into uncan­ny val­leys as we watch their stars pose, preen, and con­tort them­selves in weird cos­tumes for seem­ing­ly no rea­son, accom­pa­nied only by the mun­dane sounds of their shuf­fling feet and grunts, belch­es, ner­vous laugh­ter, etc. Take the par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny exam­ples here: Mick Jag­ger and David Bowie pranc­ing through the bizarre “Danc­ing in the Streets” video (orig­i­nal here); the mem­bers of Queen per­form­ing domes­tic chores in “I Want to Break Free” (orig­i­nal); Elvis Pres­ley squeak­ing and spas­ming onstage in a TV take of “Blue Suede Shoes”; Nir­vana mop­ing and sway­ing in that high school gym while a near­by cus­to­di­an goes about his busi­ness…..

Though these skewed re-eval­u­a­tions of famous moments in pop his­to­ry make use of a sim­i­lar premise as the iso­lat­ed track, the sounds we hear are not—as they some­times seem—vérité audio record­ings from the videos’ sets. They are the cre­ation of Aus­tri­an sound design­er, edi­tor, and mix­er Mario Wienerroither, who, The Dai­ly Dot informs us, “works from a sound library that he’s spent years amass­ing.” The results, as you will hear for your­self, “range from humor­ous to dis­turb­ing and every­where in between.” Musi­c­less music videos remind us of how sil­ly and arti­fi­cial these kinds of staged, mimed pseu­do-per­for­mances real­ly are—they only become con­vinc­ing to us through the mag­i­cal edit­ing togeth­er sound and image on cue and on beat.

Wienerroither began his project with the Queen video, inspired when he caught it play­ing while his TV was on mute. The moment, he says, was “a vital spark.” Since then, dozens of musi­c­less music videos, and TV and film clips, have popped up on YouTube (see a size­able playlist here.) One of the most awk­ward, The Prodi­gy’s “Firestarter,” helped rock­et the phe­nom­e­non into major pop­u­lar­i­ty. Imi­ta­tors have since post­ed musi­c­less videos of the Friends intro and Miley Cyrus’ “Wreck­ing Ball.” What can we learn from these videos? Noth­ing, per­haps, we did­n’t already know: that pop cul­ture’s most endur­ing moments are also its most absurd, that nos­tal­gia is a dish best served remixed, that the internet—a pow­er­ful force for good as well as ill—is often at its best when it is a pow­er­ful force for weird. Though the medi­um may be friv­o­lous, these are mes­sages worth remem­ber­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

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

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cornell Will Give You the Answer

in Biology, Science | June 10th, 2015

Part of the mis­sion of the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy is to help peo­ple answer the ques­tion, “What is that bird?” And so, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Visi­pedia research project, they’ve designed Mer­lin, a free app avail­able on iTunes and Google Play.

The app asks you a few basic ques­tions — what’s the col­or, size, and behav­ior of the bird you saw, and also when and where did you see it — and then, draw­ing on a data­base of infor­ma­tion gath­ered by Cor­nell experts and thou­sands of bird enthu­si­asts, the app will give you a short­list of pos­si­bil­i­ties. From there you can zero in on the actu­al bird you saw.

The free app (intro­duced in the video above) launched with “285 species most com­mon­ly encoun­tered in North Amer­i­ca.” But Cor­nell plans to add more species and fea­tures over time. Mean­while, the cur­rent app already offers “more than 2,000 stun­ning images tak­en by top pho­tog­ra­phers,” “more than 1,000 audio record­ings from the Macaulay Library, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tips from experts, and range maps from the Birds of North Amer­i­ca Online.”

Hap­py bird­watch­ing!

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 Cor­nell/Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

A Bird Bal­let in South­ern France

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Reimagined as Wes Anderson and David Lynch Movies

in Film | June 10th, 2015

Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing might have left crit­ics scratch­ing their heads when it first came out, but it has since come to be rec­og­nized as a hor­ror mas­ter­piece. The film is both styl­is­ti­cal­ly dis­tinc­tive – those long track­ing shots, the one-point per­spec­tive, that com­plete­ly amaz­ing car­pet­ing – and nar­ra­tive­ly open-end­ed. Kubrick freights the movie with lots of sig­ni­fiers with­out clear­ly point­ing out what they sig­ni­fy: Like why is there Native Amer­i­can imagery through­out the film? Why is Jack Nichol­son writ­ing his mas­ter­piece on a Ger­man type­writer? And, for that mat­ter, why is he read­ing a Play­girl mag­a­zine while wait­ing for his job inter­view? The mul­ti­va­lence of The Shin­ing inspired a whole fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary about the mean­ing of the movie called Room 237, where var­i­ous the­o­rists talk through their inter­pre­ta­tions. Is it pos­si­ble that the movie is both about the hor­rors of the Holo­caust and about the stag­ing of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing?

So per­haps it isn’t sur­pris­ing that The Shin­ing has been the fod­der for film­mak­ers to impose their own mean­ing on the flick. A cou­ple recent video pieces have reimag­ined the movie as shot by two of the reign­ing auteurs of cin­e­ma – Wes Ander­son and David Lynch.

Wes Ander­son is, of course, the film­mak­er of such twee, for­mal­ly exact­ing works as The Roy­al Tenen­baums, Moon­rise King­dom and, most recent­ly, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Film­mak­er Steve Rams­den cre­ates a quick and wit­ty mash up of The Over­look Hotel and the Grand Budapest. The video rais­es all sorts of ques­tions. How, for exam­ple, would The Shin­ing have been dif­fer­ent with an offi­cious concierge with a pen­cil mus­tache? You can see Wes Anderson’s The Shin­ing above.

Of the two film­mak­ers, David Lynch is the­mat­i­cal­ly clos­er to Kubrick. Both have made vio­lent, con­tro­ver­sial movies that plumb the murky depths of the mas­cu­line mind. Both have made inno­v­a­tive films that play on mul­ti­ple lev­els. And both made movies that com­plete­ly freaked me out as a teenag­er. Kubrick was even a big fan of Lynch. In his book Catch­ing the Big Fish: Med­i­ta­tion, Con­scious­ness, and Cre­ativ­i­ty, Lynch recalls meet­ing Kubrick, and Kubrick telling the young film­mak­er that Eraser­head was his favorite movie. If that does­n’t pro­vide you with a lifetime’s worth of val­i­da­tion, I don’t know what will.

Richard Veri­na crams every sin­gle Lynchi­an quirk into his eight-minute video – from creepy red cur­tains to dream-like super­im­po­si­tions to real­ly inter­est­ing light fix­tures. Sure, the piece might be a minute or two too long but for hard­core fans this piece is a hoot. Veri­na even man­ages to work in ref­er­ences to Lynch’s bête noir, Dune. You can see Blue Shin­ing above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

The Mak­ing of The Shin­ing

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)

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 pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Tree of Languages Illustrated in a Big, Beautiful Infographic

in Art, Language Lessons | June 9th, 2015

Click image, then click again, to enlarge

Call it coun­ter­in­tu­itive click­bait if you must, but Forbes’ Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry made an intrigu­ing argu­ment when he grant­ed the title of “Lan­guage of the Future” to French, of all tongues. “French isn’t most­ly spo­ken by French peo­ple and hasn’t been for a long time now,” he admits,” but “the lan­guage is grow­ing fast, and grow­ing in the fastest-grow­ing areas of the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly sub-Saha­ran Africa. The lat­est pro­jec­tion is that French will be spo­ken by 750 mil­lion peo­ple by 2050. One study “even sug­gests that by that time, French could be the most-spo­ken lan­guage in the world, ahead of Eng­lish and even Man­darin.”

I don’t know about you, but I can nev­er believe in any wave of the future with­out a trace­able past. But the French lan­guage has one, of course, and a long and sto­ried one at that. You see it visu­al­ized in the infor­ma­tion graph­ic above (also avail­able in suit­able-for-fram­ing prints!) cre­at­ed by Min­na Sund­berg, author of the web­com­ic Stand Still. Stay Silent. 

“When lin­guists talk about the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between lan­guages, they use a tree metaphor,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Ari­ka Okrent. “An ancient source (say, Indo-Euro­pean) has var­i­ous branch­es (e.g., Romance, Ger­man­ic), which them­selves have branch­es (West Ger­man­ic, North Ger­man­ic), which feed into spe­cif­ic lan­guages (Swedish, Dan­ish, Nor­we­gian).”

Sund­berg takes this tree metaphor to a delight­ful­ly lav­ish extreme, trac­ing, say, how Indo-Euro­pean lin­guis­tic roots sprout­ed a vari­ety of mod­ern-day liv­ing lan­guages includ­ing Hin­di, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Ital­ian — and, of course, our Lan­guage of the Future. The size of the branch­es and bunch­es of leaves rep­re­sent the num­ber of speak­ers of each lan­guage at dif­fer­ent times: the likes of Eng­lish and Span­ish have sprout­ed into mighty veg­e­ta­tive clus­ters, while oth­ers, like, Swedish, Dutch, and Pun­jabi, assert a more local dom­i­nance over their own, sep­a­rate­ly grown region­al branch­es. Will French’s now-mod­est leaves one day cast a shad­ow over the whole tree? Per­haps — but I’m not can­cel­ing my plans to attend Span­ish prac­tice group tonight.

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 Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Brought to Life in Sand Animations by the Hungarian Artist Ferenc Cakó

in Animation | June 9th, 2015

It seems per­fect­ly nat­ur­al to us that ani­ma­tion is a medi­um dom­i­nat­ed by cel-by-cel draw­ings, whether made with paint and brush or mouse and soft­ware. But it might have been oth­er­wise. After all, some ani­mat­ed films and videos have been made in less con­ven­tion­al for­mats with less con­ven­tion­al mate­ri­als. In the past, we’ve fea­tured here stop-motion ani­ma­tions made with dead bugs, inno­v­a­tive pin­screen ani­ma­tions, unusu­al cutout ani­ma­tions, and the “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion” of paint­ed plas­ter. And today, we bring you the live-action sand ani­ma­tion of Hun­gar­i­an artist Fer­enc Cakó, who projects his work on a screen for a the­atri­cal audi­ence. These more sculp­tur­al forms may be more painstak­ing than tra­di­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion, and for that rea­son more rare, but they are also often much more inter­est­ing.

Cakó per­forms his “sand ani­ma­tions,” all over the world, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions like Bach’s Orches­tral Suite No. 3 in D major and Orf­f’s Carmi­na Burana. Here we have his ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of the most well-known work of Vival­di, the Four Sea­sons (“Spring” and “Sum­mer” above, “Autumn” and “Win­ter” below.) The effect of Cakó’s live tech­nique is mes­mer­iz­ing; his hands and arms break the fourth wall in broad ges­tures under which suc­ces­sions of images take shape. His sand draw­ings tend to be rather static—instead the ani­mat­ed ele­ments in Cakó’s sand ani­ma­tions are his hands as he push­es the sand around, rapid­ly form­ing it into faces, flocks of birds, angry clouds. These are quick­ly wiped away and remade into trees, fright­ened hors­es, soli­tary shep­herds….

Watch­ing him work rais­es many a ques­tion: Is Cakó using from sto­ry­boards? (No.) How much of his live ani­ma­tion does he impro­vise? (A good deal.) And why sand, any­way? (It’s dry.) You will find more com­pre­hen­sive answers to these ques­tions and many more in an inter­view post­ed on Cakó’s web­site. Allud­ing to the dif­fi­cul­ty of his work, com­pound­ed by its per­for­ma­tive aspect, Cakó says, “Sand can­not be cor­rect­ed, so while work­ing I do not have con­trol, no motion con­trol. I do not have any oppor­tu­ni­ty, which car­toon­ists do, such as the trac­ing paper phase, dur­ing which they either draw the lines or scan them in the com­put­er.” In oth­er words, this is unique­ly dif­fi­cult art that requires the skills of a unique­ly con­fi­dent artist.

Cakó’s web­site also con­tains pho­tos of the artist at work, a biog­ra­phy that is also a film‑, art‑, and per­for­mance-ogra­phy, and a page devot­ed specif­i­cal­ly to script­ing “the way Mr Cakó should be announced,” com­plete with inex­plic­a­ble uses of paren­the­ses. It’s a fit­ting bit of brava­do for an artist who has legal­ly copy­right­ed his process.

(Ladies and Gen­tle­men, what you shall see tonight, is a)

Live Sand Ani­ma­tion Per­for­mance, cre­at­ed by Mr Cako, right here by his hands, to the rhythm of the music.

(on the stage and on the screen…….. Mr Fer­enc Cako!)

See many more “sandanimations”—and “paint animations”—at Cakó’s YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

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

The Mystical Poetry of Rumi Read By Tilda Swinton, Madonna, Robert Bly & Coleman Barks

in Poetry | June 8th, 2015

Everyone’s favorite mys­ti­cal poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥam­mad Rūmī, prob­a­bly could not have pre­dict­ed how much glob­al influ­ence his work would have eight cen­turies after his death. Nor could he have appre­ci­at­ed the irony of his 13th cen­tu­ry Islam­ic Per­sian verse mak­ing him the best-sell­ing poet in the U.S. And yet, a huge part of Rumi’s appeal to the major­i­ty of his read­ers, reli­gious and non‑, comes from his non-tra­di­tion­al­ism, his anti-dog­ma­tism, gen­tle icon­o­clasm, and roman­ti­cism.

Claims that the poet was gay may be con­tentious, but there’s no get­ting away from the eroti­cism, much of it homo­eroti­cism, in much of Rumi’s poet­ry. Rumi also inspired the hard­ly ortho­dox Sufi sect known as “Whirling Dervish­es,” who invoke a trance-like state through a rhyth­mic spin­ning rit­u­al based on the poet­’s own devo­tion­al prac­tices.

But Rumi did not begin his career as a mys­tic, or as a poet. Author Brad Gooch, who is writ­ing a biog­ra­phy of Rumi, describes him as “a tra­di­tion­al Mus­lim preach­er and schol­ar, as his father and grand­fa­ther had been.” That is until age 37, when in 1244, he met a mys­tic called Shams of Tabriz. “The two of them have this elec­tric friend­ship for three years—lover and beloved [or] dis­ci­ple and sheikh, it’s nev­er clear,” says Gooch.

After Shams’ death, pos­si­bly by mur­der, Rumi began writ­ing poet­ry. “Most of the poet­ry we have comes from age 37 to 67. He wrote 3,000 [love songs] to Shams, the prophet Muham­mad and God. He wrote 2,000 rubay­at, four-line qua­trains. He wrote in cou­plets a six-vol­ume spir­i­tu­al epic, The Mas­navi.” These poems, writes the BBC, are “recit­ed, chant­ed, set to music and used as inspi­ra­tion for nov­els, poems, music, films, YouTube videos and tweets.” Today we bring you some of those con­tem­po­rary appro­pri­a­tions of Rumi’s work.

At the top of the post, hear actress Til­da Swinton—who has her own glob­al cult of admirers—read Rumi’s “Like This.” Swin­ton recent­ly turned to Rumi’s poet­ry to pro­mote her line of fra­grances. Below Swin­ton’s read­ing, celebri­ty spir­i­tu­al adven­tur­er (some might say spir­i­tu­al tourist) Madon­na reads Rumi’s “Bit­ter Sweet” with her guru Deep­ak Chopra.

It was record­ed for the album, A Gift Of Love: Deep­ak & Friends Present Music Inspired By The Love Poems Of Rumi. And just above, we have two very devot­ed schol­ars and inter­preters of Rumi’s work, Cole­man Barks (who trans­lat­ed the poem Swin­ton reads) and poet Robert Bly, accom­pa­nied by tablas, sitar, and drums. Barks has done much to explain the glob­al reach of Rumi’s poet­ry, writ­ing in the intro­duc­tion to The Illu­mi­nat­ed Rumi that the poet­’s “whole life was a wit­ness to the bound­less uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the Heart…. His vision was a whole-world work and the poet­ry was part of the soul-unfold­ing done in a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty.” When Rumi died, Barks tells us, “he was mourned by Chris­tians and Jews, as well as Mus­lims and Bud­dhists.” Below, hear Barks attempt to expound on Rumi’s very non-tra­di­tion­al, non-West­ern, and dif­fi­cult-to-trans­late view of love.

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:

Til­da Swin­ton Recites Poem by Rumi While Reek­ing of Vetiv­er, Heliotrope & Musk

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

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