Books Savored in Stop Motion Film

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

This won­der­ful stop motion film makes you pine for the good old fash­ioned print­ed book, per­haps because we all real­ize that Guten­berg’s gift will even­tu­al­ly give way to the Kin­dle and oth­er devices. The three minute film (offi­cial­ly enti­tled This is Where We Live) was shot over three weeks in autumn 2008 to cel­e­brate the 25th anniver­sary of 4th Estate Pub­lish­ers. No less than 20 ani­ma­tors took part in the project, and no less than 1000 books were put to use.

Designrelated.com takes a lit­tle clos­er look at the mak­ing of the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing film. Big thanks to Mike for the good find…

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Writing Studio Floating in Foliage

in Art, Books | November 11th, 2010

When asked to design a writ­ing stu­dio in the woods of New York, archi­tect Andrew Berman began work on his dream project. And here’s what he deliv­ered. If only we could all write in such lux­u­ry…

via Media Bistro

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Out My Window: An Interactive Documentary

in Film, Life, Web/Tech | November 11th, 2010

Out My Win­dow — it’s a new inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary, a film unlike any you have seen before. Kate­ri­na Cizek, the direc­tor, put it togeth­er over the course of years, and the award-win­ning film uses its nov­el approach to explore life, as it goes on, with­in high­ris­es — the most com­mon­ly built struc­tures dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry. Cre­at­ed with 360º video and high end web tech­nol­o­gy, Out My Win­dow brings you to 13 dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe, mov­ing from Chica­go to São Paulo, to Ban­ga­lore and Johan­nes­burg. And the sto­ry does­n’t unfold lin­ear­ly. You choose where and when you want the sto­ries (49 in total) to begin and end. The film is bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described. So my rec­om­men­da­tion: Watch the trail­er, or just jump into the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary and see for your­self.

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Paul Auster Reads from New Novel, Sunset Park

in Books, Literature | November 10th, 2010

This week, Paul Auster releas­es his 16th nov­el, Sun­set Park, which gives lit­er­ary expres­sion to the eco­nom­ic mis­for­tunes weigh­ing on the coun­try. The fore­clo­sures. The unem­ploy­ment. The reces­sion and depres­sion. The nov­el starts to paint the des­per­ate pic­ture quick­ly. Above, we have Paul Auster read­ing the begin­ning pages, and you can fol­low along with this tran­script post­ed online by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Auster also hap­pens to nar­rate the entire audio ver­sion of Sun­set Park, and, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here, you can down­load a free audio copy of the nov­el (or pret­ty much any oth­er book of your choice) if you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al of Audible.com. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it. It’s up to you. But, either way, you keep the book.

Thanks to Mike for spot­ting the Auster read­ing…

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Time Piece: Jim Henson’s Short, Oscar-Nominated Film (1965)

in Film | November 9th, 2010

Back in 1965, Jim Hen­son, the great pup­peteer, wrote, direct­ed and starred in a short exper­i­men­tal film, Time Piece, which pre­miered at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in NYC. Run­ning a short nine min­utes, the film takes a sur­re­al look at the pass­ing of time. And, despite veer­ing off into rather strange ter­ri­to­ry, the film struck a chord with crit­ics and the film com­mu­ni­ty. Time Piece would be nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award.

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Welcome to the Plutocracy! Bill Moyers Presents the First Howard Zinn Lecture

in Current Affairs, History, Life | November 9th, 2010

Howard Zinn, the Peo­ple’s his­to­ri­an, taught at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty for 24 years, until he died ear­li­er this year. In late Octo­ber, Bill Moy­ers deliv­ered the first Howard Zinn Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture dur­ing which, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, he focus­es on the chal­lenges fac­ing our democ­ra­cy, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­ca’s long drift toward plu­toc­ra­cy, where the rich get rich­er at the expense of the aver­age cit­i­zen. The talk (fol­lowed by a Q&A ses­sion) runs a good two hours, and Moy­ers him­self starts speak­ing at the 6:40 minute mark. You can watch the video here, or read the tran­script here.

via Metafil­ter

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A‑List Authors, Artists & Thinkers Draw Self Portraits

in Art, Literature | November 8th, 2010

Over the years, Burt Brit­ton con­vinced A‑list writ­ers and artists to draw self-por­traits of them­selves. He first enticed Nor­man Mail­er long ago, while work­ing as a bar­tender at the Vil­lage Van­guard in NYC. Then came Miles Davis, Jorge Luis Borges (who was already blind), Mar­garet Atwood, Frank Gehry, Saul Bel­low, David Hock­ney, Allen Gins­berg, Cor­mac McCarthy (see above) and a parade of oth­ers. The doo­dled por­traits were lat­er col­lect­ed in a now out-of-print book, Self-Por­trait: Book Peo­ple Pic­ture Them­selves. You can still find a small­er col­lec­tion online at The Dai­ly Beast. The New York Times gives you more of the back­sto­ry on this col­lec­tion here.

via Maud New­ton

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Spalding Gray Archives Head to the University of Texas

in Art, Theatre | November 8th, 2010

This week, the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin acquired the archives of Spald­ing Gray (1941–2004), the actor and play­wright most well known for his per­for­mance piece “Swim­ming to Cam­bo­dia” (clip here). Accord­ing to The New York Times, the archive spans some 40 years and fea­tures per­for­mance note­books (see image above), diaries, and tapes of Gray’s per­for­mances, includ­ing an ear­ly ver­sion of “Swim­ming to Cam­bo­dia” record­ed in 1983, and a clip from “Life Inter­rupt­ed,” the mono­logue Gray was work­ing on when he died in 2004. Gray’s mate­ri­als will reside along­side the papers of David Mamet, Nor­man Mail­er, James Joyce, Samuel Beck­ett and oth­ers.

 The NYTimes has the full sto­ry here.

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The Blue Ocean in RED

in Film, Life | November 8th, 2010

Dur­ing the past decade, Howard Hall has direct­ed four IMAX films that take you deep under the sea, right into the homes of amaz­ing marine life. Now, Hall has brought his act to Vimeo where he has post­ed a mon­tage of his favorite under­wa­ter shots from the past year. Filmed with a RED One cam­era, this footage was tak­en in the waters of the Mal­dives, Alas­ka, Cal­i­for­nia, Cos­ta Rica, and Mex­i­co. And it’s all fair­ly stun­ning. I would high­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing the video on Vimeo itself and siz­ing it to full screen. H/T to @eugenephoto.

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Do Physicists Believe in God?

in Physics, Religion, Science | November 8th, 2010

Every day, physi­cists and astronomers con­front the won­ders of the uni­verse. But does star­ing into the sub­lime abyss incline them toward a belief in God? Not if you ask the physi­cists at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham School of Physics and Astron­o­my, who answer big ques­tions on YouTube and Six­ty Sym­bols, includ­ing “What hap­pens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, the world’s largest par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor?

The Not­ting­ham physi­cists are in some good com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to a well-known 1997 study pub­lished in Nature, biol­o­gists with­in the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences reject­ed God and immor­tal­i­ty at rates of 65.2% and 69.0%. Mean­while, when phys­i­cal sci­en­tists were polled, the num­bers rose to 79.0% and 76.3%. The sum­ma­ry orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Nature now appears here.

via PourMe­Cof­fee

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3 Year Old Kid & Herbert von Karajan Conduct Beethoven’s 5th: Dueling Videos

in Music | November 7th, 2010

Going viral right now: 3 year old Jonathan con­duct­ing the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th, and doing a pret­ty good job of chan­nel­ing the spir­it of Her­bert von Kara­jan. What you hear in the back­ground is a record­ing of Kara­jan and the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker. And below we give you this: The real Kara­jan lead­ing the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic through the same move­ment of Beethoven’s mas­ter­piece cir­ca 1966.

via @neatorama

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