15,000 Balloons Promote TEDxAmsterdam (Watch It Live on November 30)

in TED Talks | November 29th, 2012

So what is human nature? Who are we, how do we think, feel and act? What are our limitations, and how can we overcome them? What do we share, how we are different, how we can be fooled and how lucky are we to be alive?

Those are the questions at the heart of the 2012 edition of TEDxAmsterdam, and you can watch it live online, in HD, starting tomorrow morning at 9am Amsterdam time. (The video will stream from the TEDxAmsterdam homepage here.)

If you check out the program, you’ll see that Dan Ariely will be among the speakers. He’s the Duke prof who will teach “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior,” a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) starting next year. (It’s in our collection of Free Online Certificate Courses & MOOCs from Great Universities.)

In anticipation of the event, artist Guido Verhoef blew up 15,000 balloons to reveal the true face of human nature. You can see what it looks like above.

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Watch as Alberto Giacometti Paints and Pursues the Elusive “Apparition” (1965)

in Art | November 29th, 2012

The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti is most often remembered for his famously thin, elongated sculptures of the human form. But Giacometti was a similarly brilliant and original draughtsman who maintained that drawing was the central skill of an artist. “One must stick exclusively to drawing,” he once said. “If one dominates drawing even a little bit then everything else becomes possible.”

Giacometti the draughtsman had a distinctive way of reworking a line, of going over it again and again as if he were sculpting in plaster. “When I make my drawings,” Giacometti said, “the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.” The resulting tangle of lines give his drawings a special vibrancy, a sense of motion and depth on the two-dimensional plane.

In this excerpt from the 1966 film Alberto Giacometti by the Swiss photographer Ernst Scheidegger, we watch as Giacometti paints the foundational lines of a portrait at his studio in Montparnasse. The footage was probably shot in 1965, the last year of Giacometti’s life. The artist reportedly saw the film not long before his death on January 11, 1966. Watching the film, we get a sense of Giacometti’s care for geometry as he draws organizational lines to work out the proportions. Giacometti would often leave these intersecting vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines–which would emerge organically as he went along–in his finished works.

In the German narration, the speaker describes Giacometti’s almost mystical sense of the process: A face appears on the canvas which is his own face but also that of another, distant person who will appear out of the depth if only you reach out for him. But as you do reach out the person recedes, remaining just beyond your grasp. “The apparition,” Giacometti once said: “Sometimes I think I can trap it, but then I lose it again and must begin once more.”

Special thanks to Matthias Rascher for his linguistic help.

Wassily Kandinsky Caught in the Act of Creation, 1926

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A Poignant, Elegant Tribute to the Mars Rover Curiosity

in Astronomy, Life | November 29th, 2012

The Curiosity mission on Mars will soon bring us some big news. We don’t know what it is. We just know, according to one NASA scientist, the discovery “is going to be one for the history books.” As we await more information, we bring you this: a short film by Dan Winters and Shervin Shaeri that weaves together commentary from NASA engineers and some arresting photographs. Together, they remind us of the heart and soul that went into putting a state-of-the-art rover on a red planet some 200 million miles away from our own “pale blue dot,” as Carl Sagan once called it.

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Arthur Conan Doyle Discusses Sherlock Holmes and Psychics in a Rare Filmed Interview (1927)

in Books, Literature | November 29th, 2012

While Scottish physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, he seems almost wholly of the nineteenth century: a trained scientist who fervently believed in “spiritualism” and fairies, and an accomplished and prolific writer whose most famous character—that most logical of detectives—had a cocaine addiction and more personal quirks than the average neurotic. Like Joseph Conrad, Doyle sailed–as a ship’s doctor–to European colonies in West Africa and found himself deeply affected by the brutal exploitation he encountered. And like Conrad, he seems to embody a turn-of-the-century Britishness poised between old and new worlds, when Victoria gave way to Edward and modernity limned the Empire. Although the age of film and of television have always embraced Sherlock Holmes, his creator belongs to the age of the novel. Nevertheless, he agreed to the 1927 interview above, possibly his only appearance on film. In the brief monologue, he discusses the two questions that he most received from curious fans and journalists: how he came to write the Sherlock Holmes stories and how he came to believe in “psychic matters.”

Doyle attributes the creation of Holmes to his scientific training, and to a keen irritation when reading detective stories whose protagonists stumbled on solutions by chance or narrative non sequitur. He also describes his admiration for a colleague’s impressive “deductive” abilities. What if, Conan Doyle reasoned, the detectives had the powers of a doctor? Oh, had he lived to see his premise flipped in House (and sue for royalties). Doyle also expresses his amusement at the credulity of his reading public, many of whom believed in the reality of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and who sent them regards and advice. At this point in the interview, Doyle turns to a subject upon which many thought him credulous: psychic and supernatural experience. He goes to some lengths to establish his bona fides, saying that he studied spiritualism for forty-one years and did not arrive at his ideas in haste. But Doyle was easily taken in by several hoaxes and insisted throughout his life that Harry Houdini possessed psychic powers, despite Houdini’s protests to the contrary. It seems this was one area in which Doyle’s reason failed him—in which he resembles the mystical Yeats more than the skeptical Watson and Holmes.

You can download free copies of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from our collections of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. You can also find four adaptations of Sherlock Holmes in our collection of Free Movies Online.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Tips for Teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1967)

in Literature, Writing | November 29th, 2012

Few who dip into Kurt Vonnegut’s work come away without the influence of his voice. If we can judge by his letter to Richard Gehman (click here to read it in large format), this will go for his personal correspondence as much as it does for his fiction. In addition to such novels as Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut left behind a great many letters, some of the most interesting of which have just come together in a new 464-page collection. We previously featured one of Vonnegut’s dispatches from the army, written to his parents at age 22. 22 years after that, he wrote the above page to Gehman, himself a noted man of letters. It contains the one thing for which nearly ever dedicated reader of Kurt Vonnegut must long: advice from Kurt Vonnegut.

“Mornings are for writing,” Vonnegut tells Gehman, “and so are most of the afternoons.” The recipient was preparing for a teaching stint at the University of Iowa’s famous Writer’s Workshop. Vonnegut’s own tour of duty there from 1965 to 1967 put him in a position to offer wise counsel. “The classes don’t matter much,” he writes, a sentiment that will strike creative writing teachers as at once dispiriting and sensible. “The real business, head-to-head, is done during office hours.” He also has much to say about university life and how to cope with the remoteness of Iowa City. “Forget your lack of credentials.” “You go to Cedar Rapids for seafood.” “Cancel classes whenever you damn please.” “Every so often you will go nuts. All of a sudden the cornfields get you.” “Run with the painters. I did.” “Go to all the football games. They are great.” Beyond these points, the letter only gets juicier — as a true Vonnegut fan would expect. Again you can read it in large format here.

via Slate

Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story

Kurt Vonnegut: “How To Get A Job Like Mine” (2002)

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Woody Allen Answers 12 Unconventional Questions He Has Never Been Asked Before

in Comedy, Film | November 28th, 2012

Woody Allen hates personal publicity. He doesn’t appear on talk shows or attend the Oscars. He rarely gives interviews, even when he has a new film to promote. But a few years back Allen opened up to filmmaker Robert B. Weide for the making of Woody Allen: A Documentary, which aired last year in the American Masters series on PBS. “He never refused a request,” Weide told PBS, “and he never declined to answer a question.” At one point Weide asked Allen a series of twelve questions that he was reasonably sure Allen had never been asked before. The resulting interview, shown above, is included as an extra in the DVD version of the film and offers a fascinating little portal into the reclusive filmmaker’s personality.

How Woody Allen Discovered Ingmar Bergman, and How You Can Too

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchilada Question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

in Life, Physics | November 28th, 2012

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by the Templeton Foundation to answer the unanswerable question “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?” He read his answer aloud, and Minute Physics helped animate it. If you head to the Templeton Foundation web site, you can find replies by other leading intellectuals, including Lawrence Krauss, Jane Goodall, and Elie Wiesel.

For more pearls of wisdom from Tyson, check out the following:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Delivers the Greatest Science Sermon Ever

Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Woody Guthrie’s Fan Letter To John Cage and Alan Hovhaness (1947)

in Letters, Music | November 28th, 2012

I’ve always felt a certain close affinity with Woody Guthrie. Could be my admiration for his unstinting working-man’s politics or that he hails from my mother’s home state of Oklahoma. Those are strong appeals, and I suppose it’s all of that and more: Guthrie could carve out compact granite sentences even Robert Frost would envy. If the letter above doesn’t convince you, read the man’s autobiography. In the letter, the unapologetic working-class folksinging Okie who embodied depression-era authenticity writes to “Disc Company of America” to enthuse over John Cage for his “overhaul of the family piano” and his “choked down odd and unusual kinds of things.”

Odd and unusual are two words that spring to mind when imagining Guthrie writing a letter in praise of Cage. (He also praises Armenian composer Alan Hovhaness—Guthrie spells it “Hovaness”). Written in 1947, it is the kind of text one wants to quote in its entirety. Fortunately, we have the reproduction above, and you can read it for yourself. What isn’t reproduced is the postscript, in which Guthrie wrote: “I need something like this oddstriking music to match the things I feel in my soul tonight.” He also wrote that that morning, his wife, Marjorie, had “given birth to a big 7‑pound boy”—Arlo.

Guthrie’s letter references a (now extremely rare) two-disc set entitled Piano Compositions by Alan Hovhaness and John Cage played by Maro Ajemian and Alan Hovhanes, featuring a hand-drawn cover by acclaimed jazz-record illustrator David Stone Martin. According to LA Times music critic Mark Swed, the Cage composition on Guthrie’s 78-rpm record was the prepared piano solos from Cage’s Amores, composed in 1943. Below, watch a performance of the “oddstriking” Amores by Spanish ensemble Neopercusión.

Thanks to Tristan for pointing us to this letter originally blogged over at Stool Pigeon.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

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The Epistemology of Dr. Seuss & More Philosophy Lessons from Great Children’s Stories

in K-12, Philosophy | November 28th, 2012

Now for a story which “raises questions about the theory and nature of knowledge.” An elephant “hears a faint noise coming from a small speck of dust; it seems to him like a tiny person is calling out for help.” He “finds it peculiar that a dust speck could speak so he reasons that there must be a very small creature on it. Without being able to see the creature, he seems to know it is there and that it is his duty to save it from harm. The other animals in the jungle see him speak to the dust speck and find it impossible that there could be a creature living on it.” Met with only disbelief, “he holds tight to what he knows is true and learns from the voice that there exists an entire universe.” At last, the speck’s resident tiny townspeople “come together and make enough noise for the animals to hear; they have proven their existence and the jungle animals are able to know what Horton has known all along.” Most of us have read this classic children’s book, Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss. But how many of us have probed its “questions about the nature of human knowledge”?

The last paragraph’s quoted text all comes from Teaching Children Philosophy’s Horton Hears a Who module. The project, an outgrowth of Mount Holyoke College professor Tom Wartenberg’s course “Philosophy for Children,” comes premised on the notion not only that youngsters can learn philosophy, but that they possess minds particularly well-suited to its study. Teaching Children Philosophy draws out the relevant philosophical issues and questions from the books they’ve been reading already, from the epistemology of Horton Hears a Who! to the metaphysics of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to philosophy of mind in Harold and the Purple Crayon. Targeted toward parents, educators, and kids themselves, the site promises great solace to any philosophically minded reader (or reader-aloud) of children’s stories who feel they have long since exhausted the depths of these beloved slim volumes. “How does Horton know that this voice means there is a person on the speck?” “Is the moon that Harold draws the same as the moon we can see in the sky at night?” “If Sylvester is still a donkey because he thinks, what happens when Sylvester is not thinking?” You supply the children’s books, and Wartenberg and company supply the philosophy.

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Concert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

in K-12, Music | November 27th, 2012

We’ve written before about the public service Leonard Bernstein rendered the American public as an ambassador of classical music. Bernstein made some appearances on an arts and culture program called Omnibus in the 50s, and in 1972, as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, he delivered a masterful series of public lectures. Through his various appearances on radio and television programs, he succeeded brilliantly in making high art accessible to the average person. In January of 1958, just two weeks after taking over duties as the director of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein took up a tradition in American orchestras called “young people’s concerts.” He would lead a total of 53 such concerts, even after his tenure at the Philharmonic ended in 1969, continuing as conductor emeritus until 1972. The concerts were first broadcast on Saturday mornings, but for a few years, CBS—probably in reaction to FCC director Newton Minow’s 1961 “vast wasteland” speech about the state of television—moved the program to prime time. Bernstein made the concerts central to his work at the Philharmonic, describing them in hindsight as “among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life.”

The first concert (above), entitled “What Music Means,” begins with Rossini’s “William Tell Overture.” While the orchestra works away with precision, the camera cuts to the faces of astonished kids reacting to what they knew at the time as the theme to The Lone Ranger TV show. Bernstein then stops the piece, the kids cry out “Lone Ranger!” and he deftly pivots from this disarming moment to a fascinating discussion of why music isn’t about “stories,” isn’t about “anything, it just is.” He communicates his formalist theory without dumbing-down or condescension, but with clarity and passion. Stripping away the popular notion that every work of art has some inherent “meaning” (or “hidden,” or “deep” meaning), Bernstein shows his young audience instead how all art–“high” or “low”–is first and foremost about aesthetic pleasure, and appreciation begins with an understanding of how any given work can only appeal to our emotions through the senses. Music, Bernstein insists, is just “made of notes.”

This concert, at Carnegie Hall, was the first of its kind to be televised. Later episodes marked the first concerts to be televised from New York’s Lincoln Center. The remaining three parts of “What Music Means” are available here (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), and a full version (with Spanish subtitles) can be found here.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Nine Classic Superman Cartoons Restored and Now on YouTube

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | November 27th, 2012

At the top of this post, you can watch 1941’s Superman, a short nominated for an Academy Award and (according to 1,000 animation professionals) the 33rd greatest cartoon of all time. When you’ve done that, how about eight more of the Man of Steel’s most aesthetically distinctive, pristinely restored animated adventures? Warner Brothers has just posted them, free for the watching, to their YouTube channel. They originally came out of Fleischer Studios, which animation buffs will know meant a true mark of quality back then. “Then,” in this case, means the early 1940s, and these Fleischer-produced Superman shorts brazenly bear the stylistic mark of that era. But if their rich, clean-lined look bursting with Technicolor strikes our eyes today as vintage, it also has a certain retro timelessness — if that doesn’t sound like too much of a contradiction in terms. No wonder they call this the Golden Age of Animation.

Just below, you’ll find Fleischer’s second Superman short, Mechanical Monsters, in which our hero battles exactly those. After it came Billion Dollar Limited, The Arctic Giant, The Bulleteers, The Magnetic Telecope, Electric Earthquake, Volcano, and Terror On The Midway and more— all within a span of under two years.

After 1942, Paramount handed the Superman contract to Famous Studios, which rose out of Fleischer’s dissolution. Eight additional shorts emerged, none now held in regard nearly as high as any of the Fleischer productions.

Where Fleischer possessed a surfeit of imagination, Famous seemed to suffer a deficit. (Their Second World War-themed Superman debut was titled Japoteurs.) But those first eight have enjoyed a long lifespan, particularly as high-profile influences. The Superman animated television series of the 1990s owes them a debt, as does even that same decade’s Batman series. Fans of Japanese animation will recognize the larcenous robots of Mechanical Monsters in Hayao Miyazaki’s series Lupin III and feature Castle in the Sky, and even the thoroughly irreverent Fox cartoon The Tick paid them homage. So, Hollywood types straining to dream up the next Superman franchise reboot: spend time with these still-entertaining, still-impressive pieces of animation, Hollywood cartoons like nothing Hollywood has put out since.

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.

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via Cartoon Brew

When Super Heroes Get Old and Retire to Miami

Free Golden Age Comics

Free Vintage Cartoons: Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop and More

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

15,000 Balloons Promote TEDxAmsterdam (Watch It Live on November 30)

Watch as Alberto Giacometti Paints and Pursues the Elusive “Apparition” (1965)

A Poignant, Elegant Tribute to the Mars Rover Curiosity

Arthur Conan Doyle Discusses Sherlock Holmes and Psychics in a Rare Filmed Interview (1927)

Kurt Vonnegut’s Tips for Teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1967)

Woody Allen Answers 12 Unconventional Questions He Has Never Been Asked Before

Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchilada Question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Letter To John Cage and Alan Hovhaness (1947)

The Epistemology of Dr. Seuss & More Philosophy Lessons from Great Children’s Stories

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Concert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Nine Classic Superman Cartoons Restored and Now on YouTube

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