Watch Moving Short Films of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the “Blue House”

in Art | January 17th, 2013

Fans of Mex­i­can painter and pro­lif­ic self-por­traitist Fri­da Kahlo have one des­ti­na­tion above all oth­ers: the Blue House, her 1904 home, eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able by col­or, at the cor­ner of  Lon­dres and Allende in Mex­i­co City’s Coyoacán bor­ough. I myself dropped in a cou­ple years back, impressed at the atten­tion to detail in con­vert­ing the build­ing and its court­yard into the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um. (It repaid the time spent in a line that, even in the mid­dle of a week­day, stretched down the block.) Oth­er vis­i­tors, clear­ly lovers of Kahlo’s work, walked the grounds try­ing to sense how much of the artist’s spir­i­tu­al pres­ence remained. Just above, you can see film of the Blue House in its pre-muse­um years, fea­tur­ing the liv­ing pres­ences of both Kahlo and her mural­ist hus­band Diego Rivera. Though the artists them­selves have long gone, the effort to pre­serve their domi­cile has clear­ly suc­ceed­ed; gift shop aside, these parts of its grounds look much the same today.

“Nobody will ever know how much I love Diego,” says a nar­ra­tor read­ing Kahlo’s words as the cam­era cap­tures her and Rivera togeth­er:

I don’t want any­thing to hurt him, noth­ing to both­er him and rob him of the ener­gy he needs for liv­ing — for liv­ing as he likes, for paint­ing, see­ing, lov­ing, eat­ing, sleep­ing, being by him­self, being with some­one. But I’d nev­er want him to be sad. If I had good health, I’d give him all of it. If I had youth, he could take it all.

The footage above was shot by a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sig­nif­i­cant man in Kahlo’s life, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nick­o­las Muray, who put in a ten-year shift as her man on the side. Yet she pre­ferred Rivera to Muray as hus­band mate­r­i­al, divorc­ing and re-mar­ry­ing Rivera even as she spurned Muray’s pro­pos­als. But then, bohemi­an artists have always had their own way of han­dling mar­ried life; I recall one par­tic­u­lar framed Mex­i­can news­pa­per clip­ping dis­played at the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um, a sto­ry about how, despite his rep­u­ta­tion for ugli­ness, Rivera nev­er once had to suf­fer in the female depart­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Lux Aeterna: A Journey of Light, From Distant Galaxies to Small Drops of Water

in Animation, Science | January 17th, 2013

In years past, we’ve shared with you two ani­ma­tions by Cristóbal Vila — first Nature by Num­bers, which cap­tured the ways in which math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts (Fibonac­ci Sequence, Gold­en Num­ber, etc.) reveal them­selves in nature. And then Inspi­ra­tions, a short film cel­e­brat­ing the math­e­mat­i­cal art of M.C. Esch­er. Now Vila returns with Lux Aeter­na, a 3D study of light. On his web site, Vila describes the essence of the film.

[It’s] a look at light from sev­er­al points of view. On one side it’s a pow­er­ful radi­a­tion emit­ted by the most dis­tant stars in the uni­verse, and also by our Sun; light floods every­where in nature, from the largest things to the small­est, cre­at­ing inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful effects; humans always used light as a sym­bol­ic and spir­i­tu­al ele­ment; and it’s an intrigu­ing phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non deeply stud­ied by sci­ence too.

Vila’s site also hosts a series of screen­shots that take you into the mak­ing of the film. Down the line, the Span­ish artist plans to record a series of video tuto­ri­als in Span­ish ful­ly demon­strat­ing the cre­ative process. If you fol­low him on Twit­ter or Face­book, he’ll let you know when they’re ready for view­ing. Inci­den­tal­ly, you can catch Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter and Face­book too. Hope to see you there.

152 Big Thinkers Answer the Question “What Should We Be Worried About?”

in Life, Science | January 16th, 2013

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annu­al ques­tion to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2013 edi­tion asks the ques­tion, “What Should We Be Wor­ried About?”. And the replies — 152 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Nas­sim Nicholas Taleb, Daniel Den­nett, Sher­ry Turkle, Lawrence Krauss, and Esther Dyson, plus the ones excerpt­ed below. If you’re will­ing to go down the rab­bit hole, you can access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

What I fear most is that we will lack the will and the fore­sight to face the world’s prob­lems square­ly, but will instead retreat from them into super­sti­tion and igno­rance. Con­sid­er how in 375 AD, after a dream in which he was whipped for being “a Ciceron­ian” rather than a Chris­t­ian, Saint Jerome resolved no more to read the clas­si­cal authors and to restrict him­self only to Chris­t­ian texts, how the Chris­tians of Alexan­dria mur­dered the philoso­pher and math­e­mati­cian Hypa­tia in 415, and real­ize that, at least in part, the so-called dark ages were not some­thing imposed from with­out, a break­down of civ­i­liza­tion due to bar­bar­ian inva­sions, but a choice, a turn­ing away from knowl­edge and dis­cov­ery into a kind of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism. [Read the rest here.]

–Tim O’Reil­ly, Founder and CEO of O’Reil­ly Media, Inc.

Death is what makes this cycli­cal renew­al and steady advance in organ­isms pos­si­ble. Dis­cov­ered by liv­ing things mil­lions of years ago, aging and death per­mit a species to grow and flour­ish. Because nat­ur­al selec­tion ensures that the child-who-sur­vives-to-repro­duce is bet­ter than the par­ent (albeit infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly so, for that is how evo­lu­tion works), it is bet­ter for many species that the par­ent step out of the way and allow its (supe­ri­or) child to suc­ceed in its place.… So impor­tant is death that we have, wired into our genes, a self-destruct senes­cence pro­gram that shuts down oper­a­tions once we have suc­cess­ful­ly repro­duced, so that we even­tu­al­ly die, leav­ing our children—the fresh­er, new­er, shinier ver­sions of ourselves—to car­ry on with the best of what we have giv­en them: the best genes, the best art, and the best ideas. Four bil­lion years of death has served us well. Now, all this may be com­ing to an end, for one of the things we humans, with our evolved intel­li­gence, are work­ing hard at is try­ing to erad­i­cate death.[Read the rest here.]

–Kate Jef­fery, Head, Dept. of Cog­ni­tive, Per­cep­tu­al and Brain Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Lon­don

Most of the smart peo­ple I know want noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics. We avoid it like the plague… Is this because we feel that pol­i­tics isn’t where any­thing sig­nif­i­cant hap­pens? Or because we’re too tak­en up with what we’re doing, be it Quan­tum Physics or Sta­tis­ti­cal Genomics or Gen­er­a­tive Music? Or because we’re too polite to get into argu­ments with peo­ple? …  It’s pol­i­tics that’s bleed­ing the poor­er nations for the debts of their for­mer dic­ta­tors. It’s pol­i­tics that allows spe­cial inter­ests to run the coun­try. It’s pol­i­tics that helped the banks wreck the econ­o­my. It’s pol­i­tics that pro­hibits gay mar­riage and stem cell research but nur­tures Gaza and Guan­tanamo.… What wor­ries me is that while we’re lais­sez-ing, some­one else is faire-ing. [Read the rest here]

–Bri­an Eno, Artist, Com­pos­er, Pro­duc­er

You can dive into the full col­lec­tion at Edge.org. The pho­to above was tak­en by Katin­ka Mat­son.

The Beatles: Unplugged Collects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

in Music | January 16th, 2013

I am a child of Bea­t­les fans; we owned near­ly every album in orig­i­nal mono vinyl press­ings. But some­how there was a hole in our collection—a whale-sized hole, it turned out—because we didn’t have a copy of the White Album. I was intro­duced to it lat­er by a friend, who shared its secrets with me like one would share the favorite work of a favorite poet—reverently. We delved into the his­to­ry and learned that record­ing ses­sions were noto­ri­ous­ly fractious—with Ringo step­ping away for a while and Paul step­ping in on the drums, and with the oth­ers record­ing solo, some­times with ses­sion play­ers, rarely in the same room togeth­er— a sit­u­a­tion reflect­ed in the track­ing of the record, which feels like a com­pi­la­tion of songs by each Bea­t­le (but Ringo), rather than the usu­al smooth affair of Lennon/McCartney, and occa­sion­al Har­ri­son pro­duc­tions.

That rangi­ness is what makes the White Album spe­cial: it’s feels so famil­iar, and yet it’s not like any­thing they’d done before and presages the genius to come in their solo careers. So imag­ine my sur­prised delight at stum­bling across a boot­leg that die-hard com­pletists have sure­ly known about for ages (though it only saw release in 2002): The Bea­t­les: Unplugged is a record­ing of acoustic songs, most of which would appear on the the White Album, played and sung by John, Paul, and George at George’s house in Esher—hence the bootleg’s sub­ti­tle, the Kin­fauns-Ses­sions (Kin­fauns was the name of George’s home). Here are the close vocal har­monies that seemed to mark a group of musi­cians in near-per­fect har­mo­ny with each oth­er (but with­out Ringo, again). And here are some of the Bea­t­les’ most poignant, point­ed, and vaude­vil­lian songs live and direct, with­out any stu­dio tricks what­so­ev­er.

Of course these were record­ed as demos, and not meant for release of any kind, but even so, they’re fair­ly high-qual­i­ty, in a lo-fi kind of way. Lis­ten­ing to the songs in this form makes me think of the folk/psych revival­ism of the so-called New Weird Amer­i­ca that hear­kened back to so much six­ties’ trip­py play­ful­ness, but most­ly eschewed the major label stu­dio sound of six­ties’ records and wel­comed promi­nent tape hiss and sin­gle-track, bed­room takes. Giv­en the rapid pop-cul­ture recy­cling that is the hall­mark of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, The Bea­t­les: Unplugged sounds strange­ly mod­ern.

The Unplugged ses­sion includes a won­der­ful­ly airy ren­di­tion of “Dear Pru­dence,” which like so many of these songs, was writ­ten dur­ing The Bea­t­les’ sojourn in India, about Mia Farrow’s sis­ter (a com­plete track­list is here). The com­pil­ers of the release have tacked on three addi­tion­al songs: “Spir­i­tu­al Regen­er­a­tion India” (also a birth­day trib­ute to The Beach Boy’s Mike Love), an odd­ly upbeat stu­dio run-through of “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” and a free-form acoustic med­ley of tra­di­tion­al songs called “Rishikesh No. 9” (also called “Spir­i­tu­al Christ­mas”). In addi­tion to the slew of White Album songs, the record­ing ses­sion also fea­tures McCartney’s “Junk,” which lat­er appeared on his 1970 solo album McCart­ney and John Lennon’s “Jeal­ous Guy” (here called “Child of Nature”), which sur­faced on 1971’s Imag­ine. As Allmusic’s Bruce Eder writes, Unplugged is a boot­leg so good, “the folks at Apple and EMI ought to be kick­ing them­selves for not think­ing of it first.”

Relat­ed Con­tent

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Voic­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly fin­ished a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, land­scape, and labor. 

Bertrand Russell’s Improbable Appearance in a Bollywood Film (1967)

in Film, Philosophy | January 15th, 2013

Here’s one for Rip­ley’s Believe It Or Not: Bertrand Rus­sell, the emi­nent math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher, once made a cameo appear­ance in a Bol­ly­wood movie.

The year was 1967. Rus­sell was by then a very frail 95-year-old man. Besides fin­ish­ing work on his three-vol­ume auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Rus­sell was devot­ing much of his remain­ing time to the strug­gle for peace and nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment. To that end, he some­times made him­self avail­able to peo­ple he thought could help the cause. (See our March 2012 post, “How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned the Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War.”)

So when he was asked to appear in a movie called Aman, about a young Indi­an man who has just received his med­ical degree in Lon­don and wants to go to Japan to help vic­tims of the atom­ic bomb­ings at Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, Rus­sell said yes.

It’s a weird scene. The eager young grad­u­ate, played by Rajen­dra Kumar, is grant­ed an audi­ence with the famous philoso­pher, who gives him his bless­ing and offers a few words of wis­dom. Sad­ly, much of what Rus­sell has to say is drowned out by the Hin­di-lan­guage nar­ra­tion. But the clip above offers an intrigu­ing glimpse of Rus­sell at his home in Lon­don only three years before his death. Its appear­ance on the Inter­net has caused con­sid­er­able amuse­ment. One observ­er not­ed that, as an actor, Rus­sell has only three degrees of sep­a­ra­tion from Kevin Bacon. Truth real­ly is stranger than fic­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish

Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell (and a Col­lec­tion of Free Texts)

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

Stanford Makes Open Source Platform, Class2Go, Available to All; Launches MOOC on Platform Today

in Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | January 15th, 2013

Are you on the hunt for a free, open source plat­form that will let you deliv­er free online cours­es? We’ve already told you about one option: Google Course Builder. Now here’s anoth­er: Stan­ford’s Class2Go. The plat­form is open, mean­ing that you can grab the code base for free and run it on your very own serv­er. Class2Go is also portable, giv­ing schools the abil­i­ty to move doc­u­ments and media to oth­er plat­forms if they so choose. The Stan­ford plat­form is inter­op­er­a­ble in the sense that it builds on exist­ing soft­ware (MySQL, Github, Piaz­za, MySQL, Python Djan­go, etc.). And, unlike some oth­er plat­forms, Class2Go gives edu­ca­tors imme­di­ate access to valu­able data, allow­ing them to make refine­ments to the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.

Although still under devel­op­ment, Class2Go is ready for action. In the fall, Stan­ford offered two MOOCs through Class2Go (Com­put­er Net­work­ing and Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, & Bat­ter­ies). And it has a new MOOC get­ting start­ed today: Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es taught by Jen­nifer Widom, the Chair of Stan­ford’s famed Com­put­er Sci­ence depart­ment. (Watch her intro above.) You can take the course for free and learn all about data­base devel­op­ment. Or you can use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see Class2Go up close.

In the com­ing months, Class2Go will be deployed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. If you’re tempt­ed to do the same at your own uni­ver­si­ty, you can get the Class2Go code here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete list of MOOCs and Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties

650 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (a huge trove of video/audio lec­tures)

Watch Raymond Chandler’s Long-Unnoticed Cameo in Double Indemnity

in Film, Literature | January 15th, 2013

Philip Mar­lowe’s cre­ator Ray­mond Chan­dler did not, to put it mild­ly, seek out the lime­light. Any biog­ra­phy of that most assid­u­ous­ly stud­ied noir nov­el­ist can tell you so, but none can tell you that, albeit for less than a minute, Chan­dler appeared in a clas­sic of the sil­ver screen. The books have a good excuse for leav­ing out that strik­ing­ly unchar­ac­ter­is­tic detail: it took cinephiles decades to notices the cameo. “More than 60 years after its release, a French cin­e­ma his­to­ri­an and two US crime-writ­ers almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hap­pened on the same bizarre dis­cov­ery — that Ray­mond Chan­dler, uncred­it­ed and pre­vi­ous­ly unno­ticed, has a tiny cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty,” writes the Guardian’s Adri­an Woot­ton. “On 14 Jan­u­ary, the Amer­i­can mys­tery writer Mark Cog­gins, tipped off by anoth­er writer, John Bill­heimer, post­ed the news on his web­site, Rior­dan’s desk, while the French jour­nal­ist Olivi­er Eyquem, wrote about on his blog on March 30.”

While I per­son­al­ly rec­om­mend using this rev­e­la­tion as an excuse to watch Bil­ly Wilder’s immor­tal James M. Cain adap­ta­tion again in its entire­ty, you can view a clip of Chan­dler’s brief appear­ance in it above, which includes a slow-motion instant replay. “We will prob­a­bly nev­er know whose idea it was it to put Chan­dler in front of the cam­era, or if it took a few drinks to get him in the mood,” writes the Los Ange­les Times’ Car­olyn Kel­logg about this rare cin­e­mat­ic glimpse of the writer who did so much to earn Los Ange­les its place on the pulp-lit map. “And no one has suc­cess­ful­ly deci­phered the cov­er of what he’s read­ing, which would be nice to know too.” Alas, from this footage of lit­tle more than a seat­ed Chan­dler look­ing up from a book, we can expect to derive no seri­ous insights into his life or work; for those, we’ll need to go right back to the biogra­phies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Flem­ing in Con­ver­sa­tion (1958)

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe: The Radio Episodes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The ABC of Architects: An Animated Flipbook of Famous Architects and Their Best-Known Buildings

in Animation, Architecture, Design, Education | January 15th, 2013

As a new-ish par­ent, I’ve been inun­dat­ed with alpha­bet books from well-mean­ing friends and fam­i­ly, and I am most grate­ful for them all. But I’m espe­cial­ly glad for a set that uses images from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art to illus­trate each let­ter. My daugh­ter gets lost in the paint­ings, prints, etch­ings, etc., and you know what? So do I. It’s that rare meet­ing of adult high art and kid for­mat­ting that keeps us both engaged.

The above video, while not strict­ly for chil­dren, could cer­tain­ly work as well. A con­cept of the Argen­tine group Ombu Archi­tec­ture and graph­ic design­er Fed­eri­co Gon­za­lez, “The ABC of Archi­tects” is a vin­tage flip­book trib­ute to the last 100 years or so in inter­na­tion­al archi­tec­ture, set to a jaun­ty, gold­en-age-of-radio score by Eugene C. Rose and George Ruble (which you can down­load for free here).

With the kind of quaint globe-hop­ping (but with­out the passé racism) of a Tintin com­ic, “The ABC of Archi­tects” skips through its list of twen­ty-six revered names from almost as many countries–from Fin­ish Alvar Aal­to to Iraqi-British Zaha Hadid. There are many names I don’t know and many famil­iar favorites. I can imag­ine this appeal­ing to preschool­ers or seri­ous stu­dents, and for some of the same rea­sons. While the cre­ators express grief at hav­ing to leave out so many artists, “The ABC of Archi­tects” is noth­ing less than joy­ous and inspir­ing.

via Dooby­Brain

h/t Jim­my Askew

Relat­ed Con­tent

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

Archi­tec­ture in Motion

Josh Jones is a writer, musi­cian, and muse­um-hop­ping father.

‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Hobo Blues’: Great Performances by John Lee Hooker

in Music | January 14th, 2013

Like mil­lions of African Amer­i­cans in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the blues­man John Lee Hook­er made the Great Migra­tion from the rur­al South to the urban North. Trav­el­ing a cir­cuitous route from his native Clarks­dale, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Hook­er set­tled in 1943 in Detroit, Michi­gan, where he worked at a car fac­to­ry by day and played in the blues clubs by night. In 1948 his first sin­gle, “Boo­gie Chillen,’ ” rose to num­ber one on the rhythm and blues charts and intro­duced Hook­er’s unique style of elec­tric blues, which sound­ed clos­er to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta than Chica­go. It was a style that would have an enor­mous impact on rock and roll. Hook­er’s dri­ving, one-chord boo­gie rhythms can be heard in the music of the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, George  Thoro­good and count­less oth­ers. Today we bring you two of our favorite videos of Hook­er. Above is a per­for­mance, cir­ca 1970, of Hook’s clas­sic 1961 sin­gle, “Boom Boom.” Below is a 1965 per­for­mance from the Amer­i­can Folk Blues Fes­ti­val of his sec­ond, less­er-known sin­gle from 1948, “Hobo Blues.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Lead Bel­ly: The Only Known Footage of the Great Blues­man, 1935 and 1945

Hunter S. Thompson Mocks the Living in a New Short Animation

in Animation, Literature | January 14th, 2013

Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son is back from the grave to mock the liv­ing in a Gonzo ani­ma­tion by Piotr Kabat. The inspi­ra­tion here is one of Thomp­son’s oft-repeat­ed quotes:

THE EDGE, there is no hon­est way to explain it because the only peo­ple who real­ly know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Kabat chan­nels the spir­it of the orig­i­nal with an impres­sion­is­tic two-minute run from the Gold­en Gate Park down to San­ta Cruz, no hel­met required. Whether or not this sounds cool to you is like­ly to hinge on expe­ri­ence. Per­haps you went to high school with some­one who did­n’t live to cel­e­brate the wind-burned eye­ball sen­sa­tion of push­ing it to 100…

The Edge more than deliv­ers as a surf-rock-and-testos­terone-fueled lit romp, but still, it might’ve been inter­est­ing had Kabat pushed into unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry. Per­haps have Thomp­son lose con­trol of his bike around the 80 mark, skid­ding hideous­ly on his bald head for how­ev­er many feet it’d take to turn the greyscale red, and roll cred­its on that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day saw Hunter S. Thomp­son rant­i­ng like a were­wolf loony on a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty stage. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday