Pete Eckert: Blind Photographer, Visual Artist

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 25th, 2011

Pete Eck­ert is blind, total­ly blind. But his dis­abil­i­ty (if you can call it that) has­n’t stopped him from express­ing him­self visu­al­ly. As Pete explains in the video above, he has always been a visu­al per­son. And pho­tog­ra­phy has become more than a cre­ative out­let for Pete. It’s a per­son­al form of artis­tic expres­sion, the way he sees the world through sound.

Eck­ert was named the Grand Prize recip­i­ent of Artists Want­ed: Expo­sure in 2008, an inter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion. You can learn more about Pete Eck­ert in this video and on his web page.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview

in Film, Television | February 24th, 2011


Bruce Lee’s act­ing career began on tele­vi­sion in 1966, when he land­ed a part in The Green Hor­net. (Watch his amaz­ing audi­tion here). But it took anoth­er five years before he gave his first (and only) tele­vi­sion inter­view. For 25 min­utes in Decem­ber 1971, the mar­tial arts star sat down with Pierre Berton, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, in Hong Kong. And their con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a fair amount of ground – Lee’s suc­cess star­ring in Man­darin films .… despite only speak­ing Can­tonese; his dif­fi­cul­ty devel­op­ing a career in a coun­try still hos­tile toward Chi­na; and his work train­ing oth­er Hol­ly­wood stars in the mar­tial arts. Berton prob­a­bly nev­er scored many points for his inter­view­ing style. But Berton is not the point here. It’s all about Lee. via Brain­Pick­ings

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Rauschenberg Erases De Kooning

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 24th, 2011

In 1953, Willem De Koon­ing was one of the world’s most revered liv­ing painters, and Robert Rauschen­berg was a tal­ent­ed ris­ing star, just a year out of art school. In this clip, Rauschen­berg tells of how, armed with noth­ing but chutz­pah and a bot­tle of Jack Daniels, he knocked on De Koon­ing’s door and flat-out asked the mas­ter for an orig­i­nal draw­ing — so he could erase it. De Koon­ing not only acqui­esced, but even chose a draw­ing he par­tic­u­lar­ly liked. Though it was con­tro­ver­sial at the time, Erased De Koon­ing is now con­sid­ered a con­cep­tu­al art clas­sic. And its influ­ence endures: Last year a stu­dent at Brown out-Rauschen­berg’d Rauschen­berg by eras­ing De Koon­ing’s wikipedia entry.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

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Kasparov Talks Chess, Technology and a Little Life at Google

in Google, Technology | February 23rd, 2011

Gar­ry Kas­parov, still the high­est-rat­ed play­er in the his­to­ry of chess, pulled through Google late last year and field­ed ques­tions from the Googlers. (Don’t miss Conan O’Brien’s hilar­i­ous riff on that term.) As you might expect, the ques­tions often drift­ed back to Kas­parov’s famous 1996–97 match­es against IBM’s Deep Blue (a pre­cur­sor to Wat­son) and more recent bat­tles between humans and com­put­ers. The 65 minute Q&A includes a lot more good chess talk, but it also gets into the cur­rent state of Russ­ian pol­i­tics (Kas­parov has opposed Vladimir Putin and ran for pres­i­dent in 2008), plus the chess mas­ter’s var­i­ous the­o­ries about lead­er­ship and strate­gic think­ing…

PS Be sure to read Kas­parov’s thoughts on Wat­son writ­ten imme­di­ate­ly after watch­ing the much pub­li­cized Jeop­ardy! pro­grams last week.

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A Free Archive of 85,000 Classical Music Scores

in Music | February 23rd, 2011

Worth a quick men­tion: The New York Times ran a sto­ry yes­ter­day pro­fil­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project, a crowd­sourced web site that index­es clas­si­cal music scores (though not with­out rais­ing some copy­right con­cerns along the way). IMSL hosts 85,000 scores with sev­er­al thou­sand new ones com­ing online every month. You can find Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nacht­musik, Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 5 – in short, the major ones along with the minor ones. And, in some cas­es, the archive includes audio record­ings. Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er offers an exam­ple. You can find a full list of free audio record­ings (arranged by com­pos­er) here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

A Big Bach Down­load — All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

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Teclópolis: Modernity in Stop Motion

in Art, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | February 23rd, 2011

I could­n’t say it much bet­ter than Fes­ti­val­Ge­nius did: This Argen­tine stop motion film (cre­at­ed by Can Can Club) recounts the “strug­gles of an anachro­nis­tic Super 8 cam­era to main­tain rel­e­van­cy in the face of dizzy­ing and over­whelm­ing effects of exces­sive con­sump­tion and waste on an increas­ing­ly plas­tic civ­i­liza­tion.” In 12 min­utes, every­day objects form increas­ing­ly com­plex, almost unimag­in­able land­scapes. A won­der to see. Teclópo­lis was released in 2009.…

via Drag­on Stop Motion

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Free Interactive Comic Book: Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum”

in Art, Literature | February 22nd, 2011

First came the stop motion film. Now comes the inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal com­ic book that gives you a mod­ern take on Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic hor­ror sto­ry, “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum.” (Find Poe’s orig­i­nal text here or lis­ten in audio here.) The dig­i­tal Pit and the Pen­du­lum com­ic book is the brain­child of Marc Lougee and Susan Ma, who have lay­ered infor­ma­tive links, QR codes and social media into their visu­al design, adding a new mea­sure of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty to the tra­di­tion­al com­ic book expe­ri­ence. To get the most out of the expe­ri­ence, you will need to down­load a good PDF read­er and QR code read­er. Find those resources here. And, on a relat­ed note, don’t for­get to watch anoth­er favorite of ours: the 1953 ani­mat­ed film ver­sion of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” nar­rat­ed by James Mason. A clas­sic!

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Tim O’Brien & Tobias Wolff Talk “Writing and War”

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 21st, 2011

Last month, two award-win­ning writ­ers and Viet­nam vet­er­ans – Tim O’Brien and Tobias Wolff – met at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty to talk about war and lit­er­a­ture, a tra­di­tion that has giv­en us Tol­stoy’s War and Peace, Remar­que’s All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, and Mail­er’s The Naked and the Dead. O’Brien has con­front­ed war in two pre­vi­ous works, If I Die in a Com­bat Zone and Going After Cac­cia­to. But he’s best known for The Things They Car­ried, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the Viet­nam expe­ri­ence, and that’s now a sta­ple of high school and col­lege lit­er­a­ture cours­es. As for Tobias Wolff, his mem­oir recount­ing his dis­il­lu­sion­ing expe­ri­ence as a sol­dier in Viet­nam – In Pharao­h’s Army – was a Nation­al Book Award final­ist, rank­ing up there with This Boy’s Life and Old School. Their wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion runs 80 min­utes…

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Sub Zero: Winter Time-Lapse in South Dakota

in Art, Life | February 21st, 2011

Ear­li­er this month, Randy Halver­son braved the cold South Dako­ta nights (where tem­per­a­tures often drop to ‑25 below wind chill), to cre­ate this night­time time-lapse film. Using a Canon 60D and T2i, Halver­son gave each shot a 20 sec­ond expo­sure, with a one sec­ond inter­val placed between shots. The result is pret­ty jaw-drop­ping. H/T @matthiasrascher.

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The Great Train Robbery: Where Westerns Began

in Film | February 21st, 2011

A great film tra­di­tion – the West­ern – start­ed with The Great Train Rob­bery in 1903. Edwin S. Porter’s 10 minute film com­bined west­ern themes with inno­v­a­tive cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques (nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling, par­al­lel edit­ing, minor cam­era move­ment, loca­tion shoot­ing, etc.). And the film took its inspi­ra­tion from an event that became the stuff of leg­end: Butch Cas­sidy’s 1900 train heist, which end­ed with Cas­sidy blow­ing open a safe and escap­ing with $5,000 in cash.

Porter’s land­mark film helped spark Amer­i­ca’s love affair with West­ern films. Thou­sands of West­erns flood­ed cin­e­mas through­out the silent era — films like Bron­cho Bil­ly and The Greas­er (1914), Sky High (1922), and West of Hot Dog (1924). And though the West­ern fad­ed briefly with the advent of sound film (cir­ca 1927), the genre staged a major come­back with the release of Stage­coach (1939), a John Ford film that turned John Wayne into one of Hol­ly­wood’s endur­ing stars. And yes, we have cat­a­logued 25 free John Wayne Films right here. To find oth­er free West­erns, vis­it this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Trip to the Moon: Where Sci Fi Movies Began

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: Animation Concepts

in Art, Books, Film, Literature | February 18th, 2011

Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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